by Joe Joyce
He stubbed out his cigarette and got up suddenly and walked to the window. ‘Jesus. Women.’ He stared at the hole in the garden. ‘It’s so hard to get anything done in this country sometimes,’ he said to himself. ‘Anyway,’ he turned back to Duggan, ‘it all blew up again the last Sunday she was here. I was under orders not to mention the fucking flat but you know how it is. One thing led to another and it got a bit hot and heavy and she stamped out.’
He sat down and lit another cigarette. ‘That’s it,’ he said.
‘I see,’ Duggan said. ‘Sorry to hear …’
Timmy waved his sympathy away with his cigarette, leaving a faint trail of smoke in the air.
‘Two weeks,’ Duggan began and paused, ‘is a long time. And she hasn’t been in touch with auntie Mona or her sisters?’
‘No. That’s the thing. I could understand her cutting me off. I could handle that. I’ve had my share of knocks. I could take it. But she knows that too. So she’s staying away from everyone, knowing that’ll put the pressure on me. Dropped out of her course as well. Hasn’t been seen there for two weeks either.’ He paused. ‘Anyway. You see why I don’t want the guards? Apart from anything else, it’s not a headline you want in the papers. “TD’s Daughter Missing”.’
‘You could keep it out of the papers.’
‘Oh, aye, Aiken. He loves being the censor in chief. Telling all those fuckers what to put in their papers now,’ he laughed. ‘Getting our own back for all the shite they wrote about us. No, the papers wouldn’t be the problem. But everyone’d know about it if the guards got involved. Still a lot of Free Staters and Blueshirts among them, keeping their heads down and talking out of the sides of their mouths. Only too happy to spread any dirt about the party.
‘No,’ Timmy went on. ‘What we need is some discreet inquiries to be made. Find out where Nuala is. Reassure your auntie Mona and the other girls. Put their minds at rest that she’s all right.’
Oh fuck, Duggan thought. This was worse than he had feared, worse than some political manoeuvre involving G2 information. ‘I don’t know how I could help,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea how to find somebody.’
‘You’re moving in those general areas. Investigations, and the like.’
‘I’m not, you know. I’m in an office, just moving files around. Today was the first day I was actually out of the office. In the field, so to speak.’
‘There you go,’ Timmy said, as if that proved his point. ‘Just make some discreet inquiries.’
‘I …’
‘I always say that there are times when you can only rely on family. When you can’t trust anybody. And Christ knows, you can never trust anybody in my business. Family’s all you’ve got.’
Timmy eased a sheet of paper from under the blotter on the table and handed it to Duggan.
‘That’s the address of the flat. You know Mount Street? The one with the Pepper Canister church in the middle of it?’
‘I think so.’
‘The secretarial place she’s supposed to be in is just around the corner. Gillespie’s Metropolitan College. That’s the name of one of her friends,’ he pointed at the sheet. ‘Stella Maloney. A nurse in Sir Patrick Dun’s. They have a nurses’ home around there too. That’s why she moved there. To be near Stella.’
‘And she hasn’t seen Nuala either?’
‘Not hide nor hair of her,’ Timmy said. ‘She says.’
Now that he had done what he wanted, Timmy snapped back to his jovial self. Duggan had a passing thought that his earlier look of anguish was a façade, part of an act. As if to kill the thought Timmy added: ‘Your auntie Mona will be so grateful if you can reassure her that Nuala’s all right. You don’t have to persuade her to come home. Just find her and talk to her and tell Mona she’s all right. It’ll ease her mind. Be the answer to her prayers.’ He looked at his watch and pressed a bell on the wall beside the fireplace. ‘These things still work you know,’ he said as if it was a surprise.
There was a tap at the door a few moments later and Cait returned. ‘Has the missus come back yet?’ Timmy asked her.
‘No, sir,’ she said.
‘Okay. You can take that tray away now.’
‘Go raibh maith agat. Bhí sé sin go an-bhlasta,’ Duggan said to her as she left with the tray. That was lovely.
‘She should be back any minute. She went off to the sodality, doing a novena for Nuala’s safe return. Pity she’s not here and she could tell you herself, what a weight it’ll be off her mind if you can find Nuala.’
Mother of God, Duggan sighed to himself.
‘Right,’ Timmy rubbed his hands together, making clear that he was finished. Duggan got up and went ahead of him into the hall.
‘Great things are happening in our times,’ Timmy said as he opened the hall door. ‘I’ve a fiver bet on with that Free State fecker Connolly that we’ll have a united Ireland by the end of all this.’ Connolly was a rival Fine Gael TD in his constituency.
‘You think so?’
‘A certainty. As long as we can hold off the British if they invade. Don’t want them creating a united Ireland.’ He laughed. ‘Though I’d still be able to collect off Connolly, wouldn’t I?’
‘Why are you so sure?’
‘Because the Germans have no interest in partition. Why would they? That fellow Hempel is sound on the national question. A dry old stick, bit stuck up, distant. Could be English actually. But he makes no secret of it, Germany will reunite Ireland.’
‘Do you think they’ll invade?’
‘Germany? No. Why would they? We’re not their enemy. Look to the Border, I tell you. That’s where the fight will be. Are you ready for it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I seem to be saying that a lot today, Duggan thought. But he really didn’t know the answer to this one. The big question. How would he shape up if the shooting started?
Timmy clapped him on the back. ‘You’ll be grand. Your father and I beat them in our day. And we hadn’t half the men and guns you have now.’
‘Different kind of war now, though.’
‘Have you met that fellow Petersen? The press fellow in the legation?’
Duggan shook his head.
‘He has a saying, krieg ist krieg, schnapps ist schnapps. What does that mean?’
‘War is war and schnapps is schnapps. It must be a proverb or something.’
‘That’s it,’ Timmy said and clapped him on the back again. ‘War is war. We beat them once and you’ll beat them again. You’ll be fine when the fighting starts. You’ll do your duty. Like we did in our day. And you’ll run them out of the country. Like we did.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
Timmy went down the steps and ran a hand along the sloping side of the Ford in the driveway. ‘What d’you think of the car? The new V8. Eight cylinders. Twenty-seven miles to the gallon. Sixty miles an hour no problem. Two hundred and fifty pounds all in.’
‘It’s lovely.’
‘Your father’ll be green with envy. I might drive over to see them when I’m down at the weekend for the constituency clinics.’
More likely puce with anger, Duggan thought. As Timmy seemed to go from strength to strength, getting richer and richer, he became more and more insufferable in his father’s view. He got his bicycle, turned it towards the gate and mounted it.
‘They’re all well? At home?’
‘I haven’t been down since I came to Dublin.’
‘Come down with me any weekend you want,’ Timmy said, running his hand along the slope of the car’s bonnet. ‘I’ll let you drive a bit of the way. Feel the power of her.’
‘Thanks.’
Timmy clapped him on the back and Duggan pushed hard on the pedals to get him through the gravel and onto the road.
Two
The sentry on the gate saluted Duggan as he walked out of the barracks and headed down to the Liffey, stretching the distance to the Red House to give himself a longer walk. It was another lovely morning, the ai
r still and cool with a sharp tang of hops from the brewery across the river. He paused at the river wall to light a cigarette with his mother of pearl lighter, a commissioning present from his parents, and inhaled the first sweet smoke of the day. The sky was a soft blue, cloudless, and the river was full, the tide covering the stench of its bed. A barge, already loaded with wooden barrels, was getting up steam on the brewery’s quay and he could see a plume of smoke from a train pulling into Kingsbridge Station as he set off up river.
He took his time and tossed the butt away as he went up the hill to Infirmary Road and through the checkpoint into army headquarters. A group of dispatch riders were firing up their motorbike engines and Captain McClure came out the door of the Red House with two bulky envelopes, handed one each to two dispatch riders. He stepped back and pointed both index fingers at the gate and shouted ‘Go!’ over the clatter of their engines, as if he was starting a race. Duggan stepped out of their way as they took off at speed.
McClure caught sight of him and called him over with an impatient wave of his hand. ‘Can you drive a car?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Get the keys of one of those from the duty office.’ He pointed to two dark green saloons parked nearby. Ford V8s, just like Timmy’s new car.
Duggan followed him inside and realized at once that something had happened. The normally sedate corridors were filled with officers and orderlies, all looking grim, nobody talking, everybody busy. He got the car key and went up to his office. McClure was selecting files from various piles and handing an occasional one to an orderly who held open a large canvas sack with one hand. On the side of the sack was painted in capital letters in red the word ‘BURN’.
‘Okay,’ he said to the orderly when he saw Duggan arrive. ‘That’ll do for the moment. And remember, don’t do it yet, until you get a direct order. But be ready to destroy everything when you get the order.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the orderly saluted and went out.
Duggan felt his stomach turn and his breath caught in his throat for a moment. It’s happening, he thought as McClure turned to him and said, ‘Come on.’ Duggan followed him down the corridor and out to the car. He sat in and started the engine.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked finally.
‘Invasion,’ McClure said, sounding preoccupied. ‘We’re going to Dublin Castle. D’you know the way?’
‘Where?’
‘Dublin Castle.’
‘Sorry. I meant where’s the invasion.’
‘It’s imminent. Hasn’t happened yet, as far as I know.’
The sentry at the gate raised the barrier for the car and Duggan drove through and stopped. ‘Left,’ McClure said. ‘And left again.’
‘The British or the Germans?’
The question seemed to break through McClure’s preoccupation and he looked sideways at Duggan. ‘Germans. Why’d you think it was the British?’
‘I didn’t,’ Duggan said, aware of Timmy’s warning to look towards the border. ‘Just thought it could be either.’
‘Or both,’ McClure said, almost to himself. ‘We’ll end up a battleground for both of them. Just a matter of who comes first.’
Duggan felt his stomach turn again and glanced at McClure. A phrase from the nights of family rosaries ran through his mind: pray for us now and at the hour of our death. They were driving past the Four Courts, the sun shining brightly, the sky still blue. The pavements were empty down here away from the city centre, few pedestrians about. It was hard to think they could be at war. Were already, for all he knew.
McClure rubbed his eyes and took his cigarette case from his tunic. He rolled down his window, lit a cigarette and breathed the smoke deeply. ‘What a night,’ he said. ‘Take the next right. Over the bridge.’
‘What happened?’ Duggan asked eventually, his need to find out what was happening overcoming his uncertainty about questioning a superior. ‘Last night?’
‘Special Branch raided a house out in Templeogue. Looking for a German parachutist who we think landed here a week or so ago. They fucked it up as usual. Should’ve waited till they were sure he was there. Only the owner’s mother was there.’
‘The German got away.’
‘He wasn’t there. And I don’t think he’ll be coming back. But they found a lot of interesting stuff in a locked room. Transmitter. Code books. Picked up the owner of the house when he eventually turned up in the early hours. Stephen Held, businessman, half-German.’
‘He’s working for them?’
‘We have to assume so,’ McClure sighed and indicated with his hand that Duggan should turn left at the junction facing the city hall. ‘And, to make it worse, he’s friendly with our local lads.’
‘The IRA.’
‘The self-styled IRA,’ McClure corrected him. ‘Go right here.’
Duggan stopped opposite the Olympia Theatre and waited for a strung out line of cyclists to go past before pulling across the road into the narrow laneway that led to the lower yard of Dublin Castle. A uniformed guard stopped the car and Duggan could see two plainclothes men with submachine guns behind him. McClure waved an identity card at the guard, who insisted on reading it before letting them through. The men with the submachine guns watched them closely as they drove in.
‘Typical,’ McClure snorted as he stared back at them. ‘Locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.’
McClure directed him around the back and told him to park when they neared the Ship Street gate. Duggan stayed in the car as the captain got out and then turned back to him and said, ‘Come with me. You may as well see this, too.’
Duggan followed him down a laneway, both slowing as they passed the building which had been badly damaged by an early morning IRA bomb that had injured five detectives and a caretaker a month earlier. A retaliation for the deaths in jail of two IRA hunger strikers, it was said. Rubble had been pushed to the side of the passageway and thick timbers propped against the sides of the blackened holes and the sagging roof. They went on and entered another building where McClure asked for a superintendent whose name Duggan couldn’t catch. A detective brought them to another room where he knocked, spoke to someone inside, and ushered them in.
The Superintendent took off his reading glasses, stood up and came around his desk as they went in. ‘Morning, men,’ he said. He was tall, in his fifties, balding and beginning to sag a little. ‘This is what you want to see.’
He brought them over to a table beside a window looking out on a lawn, the early summer grass almost luminous in the sunshine. One end of the table was covered with neat rows of American dollars of different depths, each bound with an elastic band. ‘Each pile’s a thousand dollars,’ the Superintendent said. ‘Twenty thousand altogether.’
‘Were they like that when you found them?’ McClure asked. ‘In thousand dollar packs?’
‘No. They were in a box. All mixed up. Ten dollar bills, twenties, so on. We had to count them.’
‘Twenty thousand exactly?’
The Superintendent nodded. ‘About five thousand pounds’ worth, I’m told.’
‘So he hadn’t got to spend any of it yet,’ McClure said.
At the other end of the table was a folded white silk parachute. It reminded Duggan for some reason of vestments. Between the money and the parachute were the wireless set, a pad of letters and numbers, several maps, crude drawings of what looked like ports and airports, and a small sheaf of papers clipped together with ‘Plan Kathleen’ typed on the cover. A Luftwaffe breast patch of blue-grey wool depicting an eagle with a swastika hanging from its claws, a German army officer’s cap, and some old military medals were also among the collection.
‘He wasn’t a pilot shot down anyway,’ the Superintendent said drily. ‘I’m sure the Germans don’t give all their pilots twenty thousand dollars to buy their way out of trouble.’
‘Or invasion plans for other countries.’ McClure pointed to the document that said Plan Kathleen. ‘Have you read it?’
The Superintendent nodded and gave a succinct summary. ‘Germans to drop by parachute in the west of the Six Counties. The IRA to move across the border from Leitrim to Fermanagh. They combine and throw the British out.’
‘When?’ Duggan asked and was sorry when they both looked at him.
‘It doesn’t say,’ the Superintendent said.
‘Have you had copies made?’ McClure asked him.
‘Done. One was sent over to you. Probably crossed paths when you were on your way here.’
McClure bent over some of the hand-drawn maps and turned his head sideways to get their orientation right. He didn’t touch anything. Duggan looked at the wireless. It didn’t look that different from the one his father had built years ago to listen to 2RN, a collection of valves, tuning coils, knobs and a dial. Except for the Morse keypad connected to it by a rubber-covered wire. He went on to the Luftwaffe badge and bent down to peer more closely at the inscriptions on one of the medals. It was a bronze cross, all the arms equal in size and the same shape, with swords crossed behind it and the figures 1914 above 1918 in a wreath at its centre.
‘Hindenburg Cross,’ McClure tapped his finger on the table beside it and Duggan straightened up. ‘The swords mean he served in the front line. Bit old to be a fly boy now if he was in the trenches. Bit old to be jumping out of planes too.’
‘Maybe it was his father’s,’ Duggan suggested.
McClure rested his chin on his thumb and forefinger and looked at it again. ‘That’d make sense. Father’s or some other close relative’s. Something of sentimental value. Why else pack that in your rucksack with all this other stuff?’