Storm Island Read online

  Storm Island

  by

  Ken Follett

  `;0<3' ISBN: 0-109-5210-1

  April, 1944.

  One man holds the secret that could jeopardise the Allied Invasion

  plans for D-Day-and the outcome of World War II hangs in the balance.

  The success of the Invasion depends upon the Germans being convinced

  that the Normandy landings are a bluff-that the full force of the

  Allied thrust will be earlier than expected, and through Calais. Hence

  the brilliantly audacious scheme put into action by British Military

  Intelligence-Operation Fortitude.

  Abwehr intelligence reports and British radio traffic indicate that

  vast numbers of American troops are assembling under the legendary

  General Patton in East Anglia. The few Luftwaffe reconnaissance

  photographs available show barracks and airfields, and a complete fleet

  of ships anchored in the Wash. But none of it is real.

  Hitler and his General Staff know only too well what is at stake:-"The

  Enemy's entire invasion must not be allowed to survive longer than a

  few hours. Once defeated, they will never again try to invade ..." And

  only Hitler suspects a shameless charade. He just needs one man to

  slip through the net with the truth.

  That man is Henry Faber. His weapon is the stiletto, his code name:

  The Needle. A cold professional, a lethal killer, he is soon headed

  for Scotland and a waiting U-boat with filmed proof of the Fortitude

  deception-and a trail of death behind him. But when he is driven by

  adverse weather onto Storm Island, a remote outcrop of rock in the

  North Sea, MIS loses him.

  Only the inhabitants of the island can stop the vital information

  reaching its destination. Amongst them, nursing her crippled husband,

  lives a desperate, lonely girl. She takes The Needle into her home-and

  into her heart. Then she begins to suspect him. Finally she knows she

  must destroy him.

  The Author: Ken Follett was born in Cardiff in 1949. After reading

  philosophy at University College, London, he worked as a newspaper

  reporter, first for the South Wales Echo and later for the London

  Evening News. Whilst with the Evening News he wrote his first novel.

  Shortly afterwards he joined a publishing company, eventually becoming

  Deputy Managing Director. He resigned in September 1977 to write

  full-time. Ken Follett's considerable output includes thrillers,

  children's books, non-fiction, science fiction, short stories and

  scripts, many of which have been written under a variety of pseudonyms.

  He is married with two children and lives in Surrey. His interests

  include cathedrals and rock and roll.

  Acknowledgement My thanks to Malcolm Hulke for invaluable help,

  generously given.

  STORI11

  KENFOLLHT

  BOOK CLUB ASSOCIATES LONDON

  HRPAD'Vt f Arnrr

  1978 by Book Club Associates by arrangement with Macdonald and

  Jane's/Futura Printed and bound in Great Britain by Billing & Sons

  Limited Guildford, London and Worcester All rights reserved

  PREFACE

  Early in 1944 German Intelligence was piecing together evidence of a

  huge army in south-eastern England. Reconnaissance planes brought back

  photographs of barracks and airfields and fleets of ships in the Wash;

  General George S. Patton was seen in his unmistakable pink jodhpurs

  walking his white bulldog; there were bursts of wireless activity,

  signals between regiments, in the area; confirming signs were reported

  by German spies in Britain.

  There was no army, of course. The ships were rubber-and-timber fakes,

  the barracks no more real than a movie set; Patton did not have a

  single man under his command; the radio signals were meaningless; the

  spies were double agents.

  The object was to fool the enemy into preparing for an invasion via the

  Pas de Calais, so that on D-Day the Normandy assault would have the

  advantage of surprise.

  It was a huge, near-impossible deception. Literally thousands of

  people were involved in perpetrating the trick. It would have been a

  miracle if none of Hitler's spies ever got to know abouVit.

  Were there any spies? At the time people thought they were surrounded

  by what were then called Fifth Columnists. After the war a myth grew

  up that Mlf had rounded up the lot by Christmas 1939. The truth seems

  to be that there were very few: MI5 did capture nearly all of them.

  But it only needs one... We know that the Germans saw the signs they

  were meant to see in East Anglia. We also know that they suspected a

  trick. And we know that they tried very hard to discover the truth.

  That much is history, and I have discovered no facts that aren't

  already in history books. What follows is fiction.

  Still and all, I think something like this must have happened ..,

  Camberley, Surrey June 1977 The Germans were almost completely

  deceived only Hitler guessed right, and he hesitated to back his

  hunch... A. J. P. Taylor English History 1914-1945

  PART ONE

  ONE

  It was the coldest winter for forty-five years. Villages in the

  English countryside were cut off by the snow, and the Thames froze

  over. One day in January the Glasgow to London train arrived at Euston

  twenty-four hours late. The snow and the blackout combined to make

  motoring perilous: road accidents doubled, and people told jokes about

  how it was more risky to drive an Austin Seven along Piccadilly at

  night than to take a tank across the Siegfried Line.

  Then, when the spring came, it was glorious. Barrage balloons floated

  majestically in bright blue skies, and soldiers on leave flirted with

  girls in sleeveless dresses on the streets of London.

  The city did not look much like the capital of a nation at war. There

  were signs, of course; and Henry Faber, cycling from Waterloo Station

  toward Highgate, noted them: piles of sandbags outside important public

  buildings, Anderson shelters in suburban gardens, propaganda posters

  about evacuation and Air Raid Precautions. Faber watched such things

  he was considerably more observant than the average railway clerk. He

  saw crowds of children in the parks, and concluded that evacuation had

  been a failure. He marked the number of motor cars on the road,

  despite petrol rationing; and he read about the new models announced by

  the motor manufacturers. He knew the significance of night-shift

  workers pouring into factories where, only months previously, there had

  been hardly enough work for the day shift. Most of all he monitored

  the movement of troops around Britain's railway network: all the

  paperwork passed through his office. One could learn a lot from that

  paperwork. Today, for example, he had rubber-stamped a batch of forms

  which led him to believe that a new Expeditionary Force was being

  gathered. He was fairly sure that it would have a complement of about

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p; 100,000 men, and that it was for Finland.

  There were signs, yes; but there was something jokey about it all.

  Radio shows sat irised the red tape of wartime regulations, there was

  community singing in the air-raid shelters, and fashionable women

  carried their gas masks in couturier-designed containers. They talked

  about the Bore War. It was at once larger-than-life and trivial, like

  a moving-picture show. All the air-raid warnings, without exception,

  had been false alarms.

  Faber had a different point of view but then, he was a different kind

  of person.

  He steered his cycle into Archway Road and leaned forward a little to

  take the uphill slope, his long legs pumping as tirelessly as the

  pistons of a railway engine. He was very fit for his age, which was

  thirty-nine, although he lied about it: he lied about most things, as a

  safety precaution.

  He began to perspire as he climbed the hill into Highgate. The

  building in which he lived was one of the highest in London, which was

  why he chose to live 'there. It was a Victorian brick house at one end

  of a terrace of six. The houses were high, narrow and dark, like the

  minds of the men for whom they had been built. Each had three storeys

  plus a basement with a servants' entrance the English middle class of

  the nineteenth century insisted on a servants' entrance, even if they

  had no servants. Faber was a cynic about the English.

  Number six had been owned by Mr. Harold Garden, of Garden's Tea And

  Coffee, a small company which went broke in the Slump. Having lived by

  the principle that insolvency is a mortal sin, the bankrupt Mr. Garden

  had no option but to die. The house was all he bequeathed to his

  widow, who was then obliged to take in lodgers. She enjoyed being a

  landlady, although the etiquette of her social circle demanded that she

  pretend to be a little ashamed of it. Faber had a room on the top

  floor with a dormer window. He lived there from Monday to Friday, and

  told Mrs. Garden that he spent weekends with his mother in Erith. In

  fact he had another landlady in Blackheath who called him Mr. Baker

  and believed he was a travelling salesman for a stationery manufacturer

  and spent all week on the road.

  He wheeled his cycle up the garden path under the disapproving frown

  of the tall front-room windows. He put it in the shed and padlocked it

  to the lawn-mower it was against the law to leave a vehicle unlocked.

  The seed potatoes in boxes all around the shed were sprouting. Mrs.

  Garden had turned her flower beds over to vegetables for the war

  effort.

  Faber entered the house, hung his hat on the hall-stand, washed his

  hands and went in to tea.

  Three of the other lodgers were already eating: a pimply boy from

  Yorkshire who was trying to get into the Army; a confectionery salesman

  with receding sandy hair; and a retired naval officer who, Faber was

  convinced, was a degenerate. Faber nodded to them and sat down.

  The salesman was telling a joke.

  "So the Squadron-Leader says, "You're back early!" and the pilot turns

  round and says, "Yes, I dropped my leaflets in bundles, wasn't that

  right?" so the Squadron-Leader says, "Good God! You might've hurt

  somebody!"

  The naval officer cackled and Faber smiled. Mrs. Garden came in with

  a teapot.

  "Good evening, Mr. Faber. We started without you1 hope you don't

  mind."

  Faber spread margarine thinly on a slice of whole meal bread, and

  momentarily yearned for a fat sausage.

  "Your seed potatoes are ready to plant," he told her.

  Faber hurried through his tea. The others were arguing over whether

  Chamberlain should be sacked and replaced by Churchill. Mrs. Garden

  kept voicing opinions then looking at Faber for a reaction. She was a

  blowsy woman, a little overweight. About Faber's age, she wore the

  clothes of a woman of thirty, and he guessed she wanted another

  husband. He kept out of the discussion.

  Mrs. Garden turned on the radio. It hummed for a while, then an

  announcer said: "This is the BBC Home Service. It's That Man Againl'

  Faber had heard the show. It regularly featured a German spy called

  Funf. He excused himself and went up to his room.

  ii Mrs. Garden was left alone after It's That Man Again: the naval

  officer went to the pub with the salesman, and the boy from Yorkshire,

  who was religious, went to a prayer meeting. She sat in the parlour

  with a small glass of gin, looking at the blackout curtains and

  thinking about Mr. Faber. She wished he wouldn't spend so much time

  in his room. She needed company, and he was the kind of company she

  needed.

  Such thoughts made her feel guilty. To assuage the guilt she thought

  of Mr. Garden. Her memories were familiar but blurred, like an old

  print of a movie with worn sprocket-holes and an indistinct soundtrack;

  so that, although she could easily remember what it was like to have

  him here in the room with her, it was difficult to imagine his face, or

  the clothes he might be wearing, or the comment he would make on the

  day's war news. He had been a small, dapper man, successful in

  business when he was lucky and unsuccessful when he was not,

  undemonstrative in public and insatiably affectionate in bed. She had

  loved him a lot. There would be many women in her position if this war

  ever got going properly. She poured another drink.

  Mr. Faber was a quiet one that was the trouble. He didn't seem to

  have any vices. He didn't smoke, she had never smelled drink on his

  breath, and he spent every evening in his room, listening to classical

  music on his radio. He read a lot of newspapers and went for long

  walks. She suspected he was quite clever, despite his humble job: his

  contributions to the conversation in the dining-room were always a

  shade more thoughtful than anyone else's. He surely could get a better

  job if he tried. He seemed not to give himself the chance he

  deserved.

  It was the same with his appearance. He was a fine figure of a man:

  tall, quite heavy around the neck and shoulders, not a bit fat, with

  long legs. And he had a strong face, with a high forehead and a long

  jaw and bright blue eyes; not pretty, like a film star, but the kind of

  face that appealed to a woman. Except for the mouth that was small and

  thin, and she could imagine him being cruel. Mr. Garden had been

  incapable of cruelty.

  And yet at first sight he was not the kind of man a woman would look

  at twice. The trousers of his old worn suit were never pressed she

  would have done that for him, and gladly, but he never asked and he

  always wore a shabby raincoat and a flat docker's cap. He had no

  moustache, and his hair was trimmed short every fortnight. It was as

  if he wanted to look like a nonentity.

  He needed a woman, there was no doubt of that. She wondered for a

  moment whether he might be what people called effeminate, but she

  dismissed the idea quickly. He needed a wife to smarten him up and

  give him ambition. She needed a man to keep her company and for well,
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  love.

  Yet he never made a move. Sometimes she could scream with frustration.

  She was sure she was attractive. She looked in a mirror as she poured

  another gin. She had a nice face, and fair curly hair, and there was

  something for a man to get hold of ... She giggled at that thought. She

  must be getting tiddly.

  She sipped her drink and considered whether she ought to make the first

  move. Mr. Faber was obviously shy chronically shy. He wasn't sexless

  she could tell by the look in his eyes on the two occasions he had seen

  her in her nightdress. Perhaps she could overcome his shyness by being

  brazen. What did she have to lose? She tried imagining the worst,

  just to see what it felt like. Suppose he rejected her. Well, it

  would be embarrassing even humiliating. It would be a blow to her

  pride. But nobody else need know it had happened. He would just have

  to leave.

  The thought of rejection had put her off the whole idea. She got to

  her feet slowly, thinking: I'm just not the brazen type. It was

  bedtime. If she had one more gin in bed she would be able to sleep.

  She took the bottle upstairs.

  Her bedroom was below Mr. Faber's, and she could hear violin music

  from his radio as she undressed. She put on a new nightdress pink,

  with an embroidered neckline, and no one to see it! and made her last

  drink. She wondered what Mr. Faber looked Like undressed. He would

  have a flat stomach, and hairs on his nipples, and you would be able to

  see his ribs, because he was slim. He probably had a small bottom.