The shower ended. The threatened storm had not arrived, but the sky remained dark and the atmosphere foreboding.

Faber passed through Crawford, nestling in green hills; Abington, a church and a post office on the west bank of the River Clyde; and Lesmahagow, on the edge of a heathery moor.

Half an hour later he reached the outskirts of Glasgow. As soon as he entered the built-up area he turned north off the main road, hoping to circumvent the city. He followed a succession of minor roads, crossing the major arteries into the city's east side, until he reached Cumbernauld Road where he turned east again and sped out of the city.

It had been quicker than he expected. His luck was holding.

He was on the A80 road, passing factories, mines and farms. More Scots place-names drifted in and out of his consciousness: Millerston, Stepps, Muirhead, Mollinburn, Condorrat. His luck ran out between Cumbernauld and Stirling.

He was accelerating along a straight stretch of road, slightly downhill, with open fields on either side. As the speedometer needle touched forty-five there was a sudden very loud noise from the engine; a heavy rattle, like the sound of a large chain pulling over a cog. He slowed to thirty, but the noise did not get perceptibly quieter. Clearly some large and important piece of the mechanism had failed. Faber listened carefully. It was either a cracked ballbearing in the transmission or a hole in a big end. Certainly it was nothing so simple as a blocked carburetor or a dirty spark plug; nothing that could be repaired outside a workshop. He pulled up and looked under the bonnet. There seemed to be a good deal of oil everywhere, but otherwise he could see no clues. He got back behind the wheel and drove off. There was a definite loss of power, but at least the car would still go.

Three miles further on steam began to billow out of the radiator. Faber realised that the car would soon stop altogether. He looked for a place to dump it and found a mud track leading off the main road, presumably to a farm. One hundred yards from the road the track curved behind a blackberry bush. Faber parked the car close to the bush and killed the engine. The hiss of escaping steam gradually subsided. He got out and locked the door. He felt a twinge of regret for Emma and Jessie, who would find it very difficult to get their car repaired before the end of the war.

He walked back to the main road. From there, the car could not be seen. It might be a day or even two before the abandoned vehicle aroused suspicion. By then, Faber thought, I may be in Berlin.

He began to walk. Sooner or later he would hit a town where he could steal another vehicle. He was doing well enough: it was less than twenty-four hours since he had left London, and he still had a whole day before the U-boat arrived at the rendezvous at six P.M. tomorrow.

The sun had set long ago, and now darkness fell suddenly. Faber could hardly see. Fortunately there was a painted white line down the middle of the road-a safety innovation made necessary by the blackout-and he was just able to follow it. Because of the night silence he would hear an oncoming car in ample time.

In fact only one car passed him. He heard its deep-throated engine in the distance, and went off the road a few yards to lie out of sight until it had gone. It was a large car, a Vauxhall Ten, Faber guessed, and it was travelling at speed. He let it go by, then got up and resumed walking. Twenty minutes later he saw it again, parked by the roadside. He would have taken a detour across the field if he had noticed the car in time, but its lights were off and its engine silent and he almost bumped into it in the darkness.

Before he could consider what to do, a flashlight shone up toward him from under the car's bonnet, and a voice said: "I say, is anybody there?"

Faber moved into the beam and asked, "Having trouble?"

"I'll say."

The light was pointed down, and as Faber moved closer he could see by the reflected light the moustached face of a middle-aged man in a double-breasted coat. In his other hand the man held, rather uncertainly, a large wrench, seeming unsure of what to do with it. Faber looked at the engine. "What's wrong?"

"Loss of power," the man said, pronouncing it "Lorse of par."

"One moment she was going like a top, the next she started to hobble. I'm afraid I'm not much of a mechanic." He shone the light at Faber again. "Are you?" he finished hopefully.

"Not exactly," Faber said, "but I know a disconnected lead when I see one." He took the flashlight from the man, reached down into the engine and plugged the stray lead back onto the cylinder head. "Try her now." The man got into the car and started the engine. "Perfect!" he shouted over the noise. "You're a genius! Hop in."

It crossed Faber's mind that this might be an elaborate MI5 trap, but he dismissed the thought; in the unlikely event they knew where he was, why should they tread softly? They could as easily send twenty policemen and a couple of armoured cars to pick him up. He got in.

The driver pulled away and moved rapidly up through the gears until the car was travelling at a good speed. Faber made himself comfortable. The driver said, "By the way, I'm Richard Porter."

Faber thought quickly of the identity card in his wallet. "James Baker."

"How do you do. I must have passed you on the road back there. Didn't see you."

Faber realised the man was apologising for not picking him up; everyone picked up hitchhikers since the petrol shortage. "It's okay," Faber said. "I was probably off the road, behind a bush, answering a call of nature. I did hear a car."

"Have you come far?" Porter offered a cigar.

"It's good of you, but I don't smoke," Faber said. "Yes, I've come from London."

"Hitchhiked all the way?"

"No. My car broke down in Edinburgh. Apparently it requires a spare part which isn't in stock, so I had to leave it at the garage."

"Hard luck. Well, I'm going to Aberdeen, so I can drop you anywhere along the way."

This was indeed a piece of good fortune. He closed his eyes and pictured the map of Scotland. "That's marvellous," he said. "I'm going to Banff, so Aberdeen would be a great help. Except I was planning to take the high road… I didn't get myself a pass. Is Aberdeen a restricted area?"

"Only the harbour," Porter said. "Anyway, you needn't worry about that sort of thing while you're in my car-I'm a J.P. and a member of the Watch Committee. How's that?"

Faber smiled in the darkness. "Thank you. Is that a full-time job? Being a magistrate, I mean?"

Porter put a match to his cigar and puffed smoke. "Not really. I'm semi-retired, y'know. Used to be a solicitor, until they discovered my weak heart."

"Ah." Faber tried to put some sympathy into his voice.

"Hope you don't mind the smoke?" Porter waved the fat cigar.

"Not a bit."

"What takes you to Banff?"

"I'm an engineer. There's a problem in a factory… actually, the job is sort of classified."

Porter held up his hand. "Don't say another word. I understand." There was a silence for a while. The car flashed through several towns. Porter obviously knew the road very well to drive so fast in the blackout. The big car gobbled up the miles. Its smooth progress was soporific. Faber smothered a yawn.

"Damn, you must be tired," Porter said. "Silly of me. Don't be too polite to have a nap."

"Thank you," said Faber. "I will." He closed his eyes.

The motion of the car was like the rocking of a train, and Faber had his arrival nightmare again, only this time it was slightly different. Instead of dining on the train and talking politics with the fellow-passenger, he was obliged for some unknown reason to travel in the coal tender, sitting on his suitcase radio with his back against the hard iron side of the truck. When the train arrived at Waterloo, everyone including the disembarking passengers was carrying a little duplicated photograph of Faber in the running team, and they were all looking at each other and comparing the faces they saw with the face in the picture. At the ticket barrier the collector took his shoulder and said: "You're the man in the photo, aren't you?" Faber found himself speechless. All he could do was stare at the photograph and remember the way he had run to win that cup. God, how he had run; he had peaked a shade too early, started his final burst a quarter of a mile sooner than he had planned, and for the last 500 metres he'd wanted to die and now perhaps he would die, because of that photograph in the ticket collector's hand… The collector was saying, "Wake up! Wake up!" and suddenly Faber was back in Richard Porter's Vauxhall Ten, and it was Porter who was telling him to wake up.