Ken Follett - Eye Of The Needle

Faber moved toward the cliff edge. The jeep gathered speed. Faber knew that, for a moment at least, he was incapable of running. He looked over the cliff-a rocky, almost vertical slope-to the angry sea a hundred feet below. The jeep was coming straight down the cliff edge toward him. Faber looked up and down for a ledge, or even a foothold. There was none. The jeep was four or five yards away, travelling at something like forty miles per hour. Its wheels were less than two feet from the cliff edge. Faber dropped flat and swung his legs out into space, supporting his weight on his forearms as he hung on the brink.

The wheels passed him within inches. A few yards further on one tyre actually slipped over the edge. For a moment Faber thought the whole vehicle would slide over and fall into the sea below, but the other three wheels dragged the jeep to safety.

The ground under Faber's arms shifted. The vibration of the jeep's passing had loosened the earth. He felt himself slip a fraction. One hundred feet below, the sea boiled among the rocks. Faber stretched one arm to its farthest extent and dug his fingers deep into the soft ground. He felt a nail tear, and ignored it. He repeated the process with his other arm. With two hands anchored in the earth he pulled himself upward. It was agonisingly slow, but eventually his head drew level with his hands, his hips reached firm ground, and he was able to swivel around and roll away from the edge.

The jeep was turning again. Faber ran toward it.

His foot was painful, but not, he decided, broken. David accelerated for another pass. Faber turned and ran at right angles to the jeep's direction, forcing David to turn the wheel and consequently slow down.

Faber knew he could not keep this up much longer; he was certain to tire before David did. This had to be the last pass.

He ran faster. David steered an interception course, headed for a point in front of Faber. Faber doubled back, and the jeep zigzagged. It was now quite close. Faber broke into a sprint, his course forcing David to drive in a tight circle. The jeep was getting slower and Faber was getting closer.

There were only a few yards between them when David realised what Faber was up to. He steered away but it was too late. Faber rushed to the jeep's side and threw himself upward, landing face down on the top of the canvas roof.

He lay there for a few seconds, catching his breath. His injured foot felt as if it was being held in a fire; his lungs ached.

The jeep was still moving. Faber drew the stiletto from its sheath under his sleeve and cut a long, jagged tear in the canvas roof. The material flapped downward and Faber found himself staring at the back of David's head.

David looked up and back; a look of astonishment crossed his face. Faber drew back his arm for a knife thrust…

David jammed the throttle open and heaved the wheel around. The jeep leaped forward and lifted on two wheels as it screeched around in a tight curve.

Faber struggled to stay on. The jeep, still gathering speed, crashed down onto four wheels, then lifted again. It teetered precariously for a few yards, the wheels slipped on the sodden ground, and the vehicle toppled onto its side with a grinding crash.

Faber was thrown several yards and landed awkwardly, the breath knocked out of him by the impact. It was several seconds before he could move.

The jeep's crazy course had once again taken it perilously close to the cliff.

Faber saw his knife in the grass a few yards away.

He picked it up, then turned to the jeep.

Somehow, David had got himself and his wheelchair out through the ripped roof, and he was now sitting in the chair and pushing himself away along the cliff edge. Faber, running after him, had to acknowledge his courage.

David must have heard the footsteps, because just before Faber caught up with the chair it stopped dead and spun around; and Faber glimpsed a heavy wrench in David's hand.

Faber crashed into the wheelchair, overturning it. His last thought was that both of them and the chair might end up in the sea below and then the wrench hit the back of his head and he blacked out.

When he came to, the wheelchair lay beside him, but David was nowhere to be seen. He stood up and looked around in dazed puzzlement.

"Here."

The voice came from over the cliff. David must have just been able to hit him with the wrench before being flung from the chair and over the edge.

Faber crawled to the cliff and looked over.

David had one hand around the stem of a bush that grew just under the lip of the cliff. The other hand was jammed into a small crevice in the rock.

He hung suspended, just as Faber had a few minutes earlier. His bravado had gone now.

"Pull me up, for God's sake," he called hoarsely.

Faber leaned closer. "How did you know about the film?" he said.

"Help me, please."

"Tell me about the film."

"Oh, God." David made a mighty effort to concentrate. "When you went to Tom's outhouse you left your jacket drying in the kitchen, Tom went upstairs for more whisky and I went through your pockets and I found the negatives."

"And that was evidence enough for you to try to kill me?"

"That, and what you did with my wife in my house… no Englishman would behave like that "

Faber could not help laughing. The man was a boy, after all. "Where are the negatives now?"

"In my pocket…"

"Give them to me, and I'll pull you up."

"You'll have to take them. I can't let go. Hurry…"

Faber lay flat on his stomach and reached down, under David's oilskin, to the breast pocket of his jacket. He sighed in relief as his fingers reached the film can and carefully withdrew it. He looked at the films; they all seemed to be there. He put the can in the pocket of his jacket, buttoned the flap, and reached down to David again. No more mistakes. He took hold of the bush David was clinging to and uprooted it with a savage jerk.

David screamed, "No!" and scrabbled desperately for grip as his other hand slipped inexorably out of the crack in the rock.

"It's not fair," he screamed, and then his hand came away from the crevice.

He seemed to hang in midair for a moment, then dropped, bouncing twice against the cliff on his way down, until he hit the water with a splash.

Faber watched for a while to make sure he did not come up again. "Not fair? Not fair? Don't you know there's a war on?"

He looked down at the sea for some minutes. Once he thought he saw a flash of yellow oilskin on the surface but it was gone before he could focus on it. There was just the sea and the rocks.

Suddenly he felt terribly tired. His injuries penetrated his consciousness one by one: the damaged foot, the bump on his head, the bruises all over his face. David Rose had been something of a fool, also a braggart and a poor husband, and he had died screaming for mercy; but he had been a brave man, and he had died for his country, which had been his contribution. Faber wondered whether his own death would be as good. He turned away from the cliff edge and walked back toward the overturned jeep.

Percival Godliman felt refreshed, determined, even-rare for him-inspired. When he reflected on it, this made him uncomfortable. Pep-talks were for the rank-and-file, and intellectuals believed themselves immune from inspirational speeches. Yet, although he knew that the great man's performance had been carefully scripted, the crescendos and diminuendos of the speech predetermined like a symphony, nevertheless it had worked on him, as effectively as if he had been the captain of the school cricket team hearing last-minute exhortations from the games master. He got back to his office itching to do something.

He dropped his umbrella in the umbrella stand, hung up his wet raincoat, and looked at himself in the mirror on the inside of the cupboard door. Without doubt something had happened to his face since he became one of England's spycatchers. The other day he had come across a photograph of himself taken in 1936, with a group of students at a seminar in Oxford. In those days he actually looked older than he did now: pale skin, wispy hair, the patchy shave and ill-fitting clothes of a retired man. The wispy hair had gone; he was now bald except for a monkish fringe. His clothes were those of a business executive, not a teacher. It seemed to him-he might, he supposed, have been imagining it-that the set of his jaw was firmer, his eyes were brighter, and he took more care shaving. He sat down behind his desk and lit a cigarette. That innovation was not welcome; he had developed a cough, tried to give it up, and discovered that he had become addicted. But almost everybody smoked in wartime Britain, even some of the women. Well, they were doing men's jobs; they were entitled to masculine vices. The smoke caught in Godliman's throat, making him cough. He put the cigarette out in the tin lid he used for an ashtray (crockery was scarce).