Free Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett Page B

at Euston Station at 9 A.M .”
    “Can’t you make it sooner?”
    Faber hung up and stepped outside. Walking quickly, he rounded two corners and came within sight of the phone booth in the Square. He saw the agent walking in the direction of Piccadilly. There was no sign of the tail. Faber followed the agent.
    The man went into Piccadilly Circus underground station, and bought a ticket to Stockwell. Faber immediately realized he could get there by a more direct route. He came out of the station, walked quickly to Leicester Square and got on a Northern Line train. The agent would have to change trains at Waterloo, whereas Faber’s train was direct; so Faber would reach Stockwell first, or at the worst they would arrive on the same train.
    In fact Faber had to wait outside the station at Stockwell for twenty-five minutes before the agent emerged. Faber followed him again. He went into a cafe.
    There was absolutely nowhere nearby where a man could plausibly stand still for any length of time: no shop windows to gaze into, no benches to sit on or parks to walk around, no bus stops or taxi ranks or public buildings. Faber had to walk up and down the street, always looking as if he were going somewhere, carrying on until he was just out of sight of the cafe then returning on the opposite side, while the agent sat in the warm, steamy cafe drinking tea and eating hot toast.
    He came out after half an hour. Faber tailed him through a succession of residential streets. The agent knew where he was going, but was in no hurry. He walked like a man who is going home with nothing to do for the rest of the day. He did not look back, and Faber thought, Another amateur.
    At last he went into a house—one of the poor, anonymous, inconspicuous lodging houses used by spies and errant husbands everywhere. It had a dormer window in the roof; that would be the agent’s room, high up for better wireless reception.
    Faber walked past, scanning the opposite side of the street. Yes—there. A movement behind an upstairs window, a glimpseof a jacket and tie, a watching face withdrawn—the opposition was here too. The agent must have gone to the rendezvous yesterday and allowed himself to be followed home by MI5—unless, of course, he was MI5.
    Faber turned the corner and walked down the next parallel street, counting the houses. Almost directly behind the place the agent had entered there was the bomb-damaged shell of what had been a pair of semidetached houses. Good.
    As he walked back to the station his step was springier, his heart beat a shade faster and he looked around him with bright-eyed interest. It was good. The game was on.
     
     
     
    HE DRESSED IN BLACK that night—a woolen hat, a turtleneck sweater under a short leather flying jacket, trousers tucked into socks, rubber-soled shoes—all black. He would be almost invisible, for London, too, was blacked out.
    He cycled through the quiet streets with dimmed lights, keeping off main roads. It was after midnight, and he saw no one. He left the bike a quarter of a mile away from his destination, padlocking it to the fence in a pub yard.
    He went, not to the agent’s house, but to the bombed-out shell in the next street. He picked his way carefully across the rubble in the front garden, entered the gaping doorway, and went through the house to the back. It was very dark. A thick screen of low cloud hid the moon and stars. Faber had to walk slowly with his hands in front of him.
    He reached the end of the garden, jumped over the fence, and crossed the next two gardens. In one of the houses a dog barked for a moment.
    The garden of the lodging house was unkempt. Faber walked into a blackberry bush and stumbled. The thorns scratched his face. He ducked under a line of washing—there was enough light for him to see that.
    He found the kitchen window and took from his pocket a small tool with a scoop-shaped blade. The putty around the glass was old and brittle, and already flaking away in