The needle

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The needle is a novel by Ken Follett published by Futura Verlag in 1978 (original title: Storm Island or Eye of the needle ). It was filmed in 1981 under the title of the same name (including with Donald Sutherland ) ( English title: Eye of the Needle ).

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Front cover of the Italian edition (Mondadori 1979).

The story begins in England in 1940, where a German spy, the homeowner Mrs. Garden , who operates there mostly under the name of Henry Faber (baptized as Henrik Rudolf Hans von Müller-Guder ) and later known to British counterintelligence under the nickname “Die Nadel” with a stiletto (hence his nickname) kills after breaking into his room while he was sending a coded message and risking his cover being blown.

In 1944 another spy gave him an important military assignment. He is supposed to observe a large base of the British Army in order to assess its strength and danger. As a precaution, Faber kills the other spy coldly, as he is being shadowed by MI5 and could betray him in the event of an arrest. However, this was a mistake, as the two agents Godliman and Bloggs can see a connection between this murder and the murder of Mrs. Garden. The young Parkins, who, like Faber, was a tenant of Mrs. Garden in 1940, can recognize Faber in an old picture from Germany. The hunt begins.

Faber takes a rented boat very close to the secret restricted area in the south of England. Faber finds out there that the huge army is nothing but cardboard and a dummy and is thus intended to fool the Germans into believing that the Allied landing in Calais should take place in Normandy instead of as planned . He records his discoveries with photos. On his way back to the boat, he has to murder four vigilante men who wanted to arrest him because he was near the restricted area for no reason. Then he flees. During his escape, he breaks into a photo lab and develops the films. He wants to send the images to the German embassy in Portugal through an ally in the Portuguese embassy. To be on the safe side, he also wants to personally bring the negatives to Germany with the help of a German submarine waiting in Scotland .

Since an employee of the Portuguese embassy hands the pictures over to MI5, Godliman and Bloggs only realize how dangerous Faber the spy will be for the further course of the war. They find out that Faber wants to take a train to Scotland. They send Parkins, disguised as a conductor, on the train, on which they suspect Faber, since Faber is the only one who can identify Faber.

However, Faber recognizes the trap and kills Parkins. Faber now knows that he is being followed and that he must reach the submarine on the coast before he is caught. He escapes his pursuers by hiding on the train's coal wagon, and the MI5 initially loses its track. He steals an old car on his way to Scotland. When the car had an engine failure, he was hitchhiked to Aberdeen . There Faber "organized" a boat to get to the meeting point with the submarine, but got caught in a violent storm and capsized. With a lot of luck he will end up on the small island of Storm Island, on which only a shepherd named Tom, a married couple, Lucy and her amputee husband David, and their child Jo live.

Over time, Godliman and Bloggs find the stolen car, and due to the nationwide search for Faber, the driver who took Faber to Aberdeen also reports. The two men from MI5 combine well and suspect that Faber must have fled with the stolen boat. They assume that he perished in the heavy storm at sea, but Godliman wants to be sure and orders that the nearby island be inspected as soon as the storm subsides.

The Faber, weakened by the accident, finds shelter with the Rose couple. The wife Lucy Rose has been sexually frustrated since her husband David's car accident in which he lost his legs and has an affair with Faber. However, the suspicious David, who started a career as a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force (RAF) before his accident, notices this and happens to find the negatives in Faber's jacket pocket. He suspects that Faber is a German spy and confronts him while driving a car. A fight breaks out. Faber almost loses this fight against the handicapped, but muscular David, but can ultimately tumble him down the cliff and kill him.

But Faber is injured and therefore explains to Lucy that there was an accident with the sheep at the shepherd's house Tom and that David stayed there to tend the wounded animals. Lucy believes him, but the next day finds David's body washed ashore on the beach. She realizes that Faber must be the stiletto killer from London. She and her son Jo flee from Faber by car to get to safety with the shepherd Tom. But this was already killed by Faber. Faber follows Lucy to Tom's house. There it comes to a fight between Lucy and the spy. Lucy barricades the house, sets the dog on him, shoots him with a shotgun and finally hacks off two fingers. But the injured Faber still manages to overpower Lucy. However, he leaves her alive because of a certain sympathy for her.

When Faber wants to make contact with the submarine by radio, Lucy manages to interrupt the power connection by bridging the contacts of a light bulb socket with her fingers, which is quite painful and now even Faber admires it incredibly strong-willed woman compels. All he sees is the chance to run to the coast and hope that you will see him from there. He descends a cliff, but is pelted with boulders from above by Lucy with the last of her strength and finally falls to his death.

Shortly afterwards, MI5 arrives on the island to save Lucy. With Faber's killing, unnoticed by the Germans, the British secret service succeeded in sending a forged radio message in the name of Henry Faber, which convinced Hitler that the Allies would land in Calais and not in Normandy. Because of Lucy's heroism, the negatives never came into the possession of the Germans, and the war was won by the ingenious trap of the Allies in Normandy.

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