Ken Follett - Eye Of The Needle

"Good-bye." Bloggs went out.

The woman was in the hall downstairs. She handed Bloggs a letter. "The boy's address is a Forces box number," she said. "Parkin's his name… no doubt you'll be able to find out where he is."

"You knew the Commander would be no use," Bloggs said.

"I suppose not. But a visitor makes his day." She opened the door. On impulse, Bloggs said, "Will you have dinner with me?"

A shadow crossed her face. "My husband is still on the Isle of Man."

"I'm sorry… I thought-"

"It's all right. I'm flattered."

"I wanted to convince you we're not the Gestapo."

"I know you're not. A woman alone just gets bitter."

Bloggs said, "I lost my wife in the bombing."

"Then you know how it makes you hate."

"Yes," said Bloggs. "It makes you hate." He went down the steps. The door closed behind him. It had started to rain…

It had been raining then too.

Bloggs was late home. He had been going over some new material with Godliman. Now he was hurrying, so that he would have half an hour with Christine before she went out to drive her ambulance. It was dark, and the raid had already started. The things Christine saw at night were so awful she had stopped talking about them.

Bloggs was proud of her, proud. The people she worked with said she was better than two men. She hurtled through blacked-out London, driving like a veteran, taking corners on two wheels, whistling and cracking jokes as the city turned to flame around her. Fearless, they called her. Bloggs knew better; she was terrified, but she would not let it show. He knew because he saw her eyes in the morning when he got up and she went to bed; when her guard was down and it was over for a few hours; he knew it was not fearlessness but courage, and he was proud.

It was raining harder when he got off the bus. He pulled down his hat and put up his collar. In a tobacconist's he bought cigarettes for Christine. She had started smoking recently, like a lot of women. The shopkeeper would let him have only five, because of the shortage. He put them in a Woolworth's bakelite cigarette case.

A policeman stopped him and asked for his identity card; another two minutes wasted. An ambulance passed him, similar to the one Christine drove; a requisitioned fruit truck, painted grey.

He began to get nervous as he approached home. The explosions were sounding closer, and he could hear the aircraft clearly. The East End was in for another bruising tonight; he would sleep in the Morrison shelter. There was a big one, terribly close, and he quickened his step. He would eat his supper in the shelter, too.

He turned into his own street, saw the ambulances and the fire engines, and broke into a run.

The bomb had landed on his side of the street, around the middle. It must be close to his own home. Jesus in heaven, not us, no! There had been a direct hit on the roof, and the house was literally flattened. He raced up to the crowd of people: neighbours and firemen and volunteers. "Is my wife all right? Is she out? Is she in there?"

A fireman looked at him. "Nobody's come out of there, mate."

Rescuers were picking over the rubble. Suddenly one of them shouted, "Over here!" Then he said, "Jesus, it's Fearless Bloggs!"

Frederick dashed to where the man stood. Christine was underneath a huge chunk of brickwork. Her face was visible; the eyes were closed. The rescuer called, "Lifting gear, boys, sharp's the word." Christine moaned and stirred.

"She's alive!" Bloggs said. He knelt down beside her and got his hand under the edge of the lump of rubble. The rescuer said, "You won't shift that, son."

The brickwork lifted.

"God, youll kill yourself," the rescuer said, and bent down to help.

When it was two feet off the ground they got their shoulders under it. The weight was off Christine now. A third man joined in, and a fourth. They all straightened up together. Bloggs said, "I'll lift her out."

He crawled under the sloping roof of brick and cradled his wife in his arms. "Fuck me-it's slipping!" someone shouted.

Bloggs scurried out from under with Christine held tightly to his chest. As soon as he was clear the rescuers let go of the rubble and jumped away. It fell back to earth with a sickening thud, and when Bloggs realised that that had landed on Christine, he knew she was going to die.

He carried her to the ambulance, and it took off immediately. She opened her eyes again once, before she died, and said, "You'll have to win the war without me kiddo."

More than a year later, as he walked downhill from Highgate into the bowl of London, with the rain on his face mingling with the tears again, he thought the woman in the spy's house had said a mighty truth: It makes you hate.

In war boys become men, and men become soldiers and soldiers get promoted; and this is why Bill Parkin, aged eighteen, late of a boarding house in Highgate, who should have been an apprentice in his father's tannery at Scarborough, was believed by the Army to be twenty-one, promoted to sergeant, and given the job of leading his advance squad through a hot, dry forest toward a dusty, whitewashed Italian village.

The Italians had surrendered but the Germans had not, and it was the Germans who were defending Italy against the combined British-American invasion. The Allies were going to Rome, and for Sergeant Parkin's squad it was a long walk.

They came out of the forest at the top of a hill, and lay flat on their bellies to look down on the village. Parkin got out his binoculars and said, "What wouldn't I fookin' give for a fookin' cup of fookin' tea." He had taken to drinking and cigarettes and women, and his language was like that of soldiers everywhere. He no longer went to prayer meetings. Some of these villages were defended and some were not. Parkin recognised that as sound tactics: you didn't know which were undefended, so you approached them all cautiously, and caution cost time. The downside of the hill held little cover -just a few bushes-and the village began at its foot. There were a few white houses, a river with a wooden bridge, then more houses around a little piazza with a town hall and a clock tower. There was a clear line of sight from the tower to the bridge. If the enemy were here at all, they would be in the town hall. A few figures worked in the surrounding fields; God knew who they were. They might be genuine peasants, or any one of a host of factions: fascists, mafia, corsos, partigianos, communisti… or even Germans. You didn't know whose side they would be on until the shooting started.

Parkin said, "All right, Corporal."

Corporal Watkins disappeared back into the forest and emerged, five minutes later, on the dirt road into the village, wearing a civilian hat and a filthy old blanket over his uniform. He shambled, rather than walked, and over his shoulder was a bundle that could have been anything from a bag of onions to a dead rabbit. He reached the near edge of the village and vanished into the darkness of a low cottage.

After a moment he came out. Standing close to the wall, where he could not be seen from the village, he looked toward the soldiers on the hilltop and waved: one, two, three.

The squad scrambled down the hillside into the village. "All the houses empty Sarge," Watkins said. Parkin nodded. It meant nothing.

They moved through the houses to the edge of the river. Parkin said. "Your turn, Smiler. Swim the Mississippi here."

Private 'Smiler' Hudson put his equipment in a neat pile, took off his helmet, boots, and tunic, and slid into the narrow stream. He emerged on the far side, climbed the bank, and disappeared among the houses. This time there was a longer wait: more area to check. Finally Hudson walked back across the wooden bridge. "If they're 'ere, they're 'iding." he said.

He retrieved his gear and the squad crossed the bridge into the village. They kept to the sides of the street as they walked toward the piazza. A bird flew off a roof and startled Parkin. Some of the men kicked open a few doors as they passed. There was nobody.