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man!”
    Bourke laughed. But Blake looked more serious.
    â€œI hope no one saw us come into the house,” he said. “Every policeman in London will be looking for me.”
    The next day Bourke went out to find a doctor. Blake knew Bourke had a network of sympathetic friends, but his own background in espionage taught him that no one could really be trusted. Every contact they made like this laid them open to the possibility of betrayal.
    Around noon, Bourke returned with a doctor, and a bundle of newspapers. The doctor was a serious young man who greeted Blake coolly, then treated his broken wrist. It was agonizing, and Blake drank the last of Bourke’s whisky to deaden the pain.
    After the doctor had gone, Blake said:
    â€œAre you sure he won’t betray us? He didn’t seem very friendly.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Bourke. “He’s on our side. He was probably just worried about helping a runaway convict! Now look at this…”
    Bourke showed Blake the day’s papers. They were full of stories of the escape. One paper had made much of the chrysanthemums Bourke had left behind in his hurry to get away. The paper painted a picture of him as a shadowy criminal mastermind, and wrote that his chrysanthemums were a mysterious calling card.
    The two men laughed at the way their escape had been presented to the British public. They were particularly amused by one newspaper’s theory that a substitute had been sent to prison in his place and allowed to escape, while the real Blake had returned to Moscow as a double agent.
    But all this publicity was bad news. Blake’s face was on the front page of every newspaper, and flashed on television at every news broadcast. They were going to have to be extremely careful. Although the doctor who treated Blake’s wrist never did give them away, they still thought it best to move to a nearby house to stay with a man who was a friend of Randle and Pottle. This proved to be a disaster. The man’s wife told her psychiatrist that they were hiding two men from the police, so another bolt hole was needed urgently.
    Bourke too had made a silly mistake. Despite all his careful planning for the escape, he had bought the getaway car they used in his own name, and the police had traced it. Now his photograph was appearing alongside Blake’s on every newspaper front page, and his name was being mentioned on every radio and television news bulletin.
    By early November they had moved to Pat Pottle’s house, which was also in London. Tired of all this hiding, Blake was now desperate to leave the country. But, two weeks after the escape, his name and photograph were still all over the papers and television. It would be too risky to try to leave the country in the normal way, via a ferry or plane, even using a false passport.
    Pottle and Randle tried to alter Blake’s appearance dramatically. They gave him a drug called Meladinin which was supposed to make skin much darker, and also put him under a sun-lamp for several tanning sessions. The experiment was a miserable failure. Blake still looked instantly recognizable. But Randle came to the rescue with another ruse.
    He had a large Volkswagen camper van, and Blake was hidden in its blanket compartment. Randle and his family drove to Europe, telling border police they were going sight-seeing in East Germany. At the time, this country was controlled by the Soviet Union so Blake would be safe there.
    The trip went without a hitch, and a very stiff and slightly carsick Blake was dropped off just outside Berlin. He introduced himself to the first East German soldier he could find, but no one believed his story. He was taken to Berlin, and a Soviet secret service officer who knew him personally was flown over to see him. When this officer walked in, hugged him and started to shout “It’s him! It’s him!” Blake knew his troubles were over.

    After the escape
    Blake was