Echoland

by Joe Joyce

  ‘The secret police never sleep,’ Gifford sniggered. ‘Hope you didn’t tell her that.’

  Duggan took a perfunctory look out the window at the Harbusches’ flat. ‘Nothing moving over there?’

  ‘Not a sausage.’

  ‘Seriously,’ Duggan said. ‘What d’you think he’s up to?’

  ‘Apart from the obvious?’

  ‘Nobody’s paying him from a Swiss bank for that.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Gifford clicked his fingers, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. ‘Even Hansi couldn’t be that lucky.’

  They stood in silence, side by side, looking out the window for a few moments. Gifford shrugged and turned back into the room. ‘Fucked if I know,’ he said, serious for once. ‘I presume our masters know more than they’re telling us.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Duggan said. He looked down at the street, busier now as the offices around the square emptied for the day and bicycles and a few cars headed for the suburbs. He was still thinking about Nuala. What was she up to? There was no doubt her friend Stella knew more than she was saying. And she didn’t seem to be really worried about Nuala? Why had she let him look at Nuala’s flat? She didn’t have to. Had she been trying to tell him something without saying anything? What? Fucked if I know, he thought, echoing Gifford.

  ‘Could I ask your advice about something?’ Duggan turned from the window.

  Gifford was pacing up and down the room like it was a cage, swinging his arms. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘Not official. A … a personal matter.’ Gifford stopped pacing and nodded. Duggan went on, ‘How hard would it be to find out if someone’s gone to England?’

  Gifford shrugged. ‘Not hard. Not since the British introduced the permit requirements. Their office is just up the road. They’d have a record of everybody travelling.’

  Duggan nodded. ‘Would it be possible to check someone out? To see if someone had gone to England in the last fortnight?’

  ‘Last fortnight shouldn’t be a great problem,’ Gifford said. ‘Short period to check.’

  ‘This is totally unofficial. A family matter.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. I know one of the lads who liaises with the British permit guys. They’re always checking out who’s coming and going.’ Gifford took a pen from his shirt pocket and tore a strip off a page of the Evening Herald. ‘What’s the name and address?’

  ‘Nuala Monaghan,’ Duggan said and gave her Mount Street address.

  Gifford wrote down the details and folded the slip of paper and put it in his shirt pocket. ‘No problemo,’ he said. ‘Take a day or two, I suppose.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Tut, tut,’ Gifford shook his head at him. ‘She up the pole?’

  ‘She’s my cousin.’

  ‘Oh,’ Gifford laughed. ‘Sorry. I thought you were about to surprise me. Reveal more hidden depths.’

  ‘She could be in trouble,’ Duggan agreed. ‘Or she could’ve just gone there to work. Either way, she’s gone somewhere without telling anybody. Her mother’s doing her nut. You can imagine.’

  Gifford nodded in sympathy. ‘Family’s usually the last to know in those situations. Sudden disappearance of young woman is either a love child or pursuit of a man. It’s all in the secret policeman’s handbook. Chapter seven, Affairs of the Heart.’

  Back in the Red House Duggan found a thick buff file marked Hans Harbusch dob 11/7/1897 on the table in front of his chair with a note from McClure saying, ‘For your information’.

  Lieutenant Bill Sullivan, another member of the German section of G2 with whom he shared an office, was huddled over a type written document, underlining phrases with red ink. ‘Something I wanted to ask you,’ he said, raising a finger to signal to Duggan to wait as he looked around the desk for another piece of paper. He found it, a list of names in Irish, and pointed to one which had a question mark in pencil after it.

  Duggan took the page – it was the latest list he had compiled of people mentioned in Professor Ludwig Mühlhausen’s weekly broadcast in Irish from Germany. He had had the job of listening to the professor’s broadcast the previous Sunday night. It was the usual stuff, a recitation of Black and Tan atrocities in Ireland, the burnings of Balbriggan, Cork and Mallow this time, and greetings to friends in the Gaeltacht where Mühlhausen had studied Irish. G2’s interest was in the people he named.

  ‘Are you sure about that name?’ Sullivan asked him. ‘The guards don’t know anyone of that name in Gweedore.’

  Duggan cast his mind back to Mühlhausen’s slightly accented Irish, a more structured and precise intonation than the native speaker. He closed his eyes and could hear him talking about the man and the lovely day, lá breá álainn, they had once spent on his boat off the Donegal coast.

  ‘I’m nearly certain that was the name,’ Duggan said. ‘That’s what it sounded like.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sullivan said, ‘I’ll tell them. The reference to a boat got them all excited.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Duggan said. There was a lot of activity off the Donegal coast, regular rumbles of torpedo explosions coming ashore, followed by bodies and debris from the daily attacks and counter-attacks on the British convoys and their U-boat hunters just over the horizon.

  ‘By the way, the admin officer was looking for you,’ Sullivan said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You haven’t filled in your AF90. Your bicycle allowance.’

  ‘Right,’ Duggan nodded absently. ‘Where’s the boss?’

  ‘Around somewhere,’ Sullivan went back to his reading.

  Duggan found McClure coming out of another office and told him that the Special Branch had found where Harbusch’s money had come from. ‘Good work,’ McClure said. ‘Get onto the Superintendent’s office in the Castle and get the details. I’ve left the complete Harbusch file on your desk. I want you to take charge of him from now on.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ Duggan said, pleased to be given responsibility.

  ‘He’s more important than ever with this Brandy fellow on the loose,’ McClure added. ‘Possible he’s a sleeper waiting for something like Brandy’s arrival. So any changes in his pattern of activity could be important.’

  Duggan nodded his understanding.

  ‘How’re you getting on with that Branch man watching Harbusch?’

  ‘Well,’ Duggan said. ‘He seems helpful.’

  ‘Good. But don’t tell him more than he needs to know.’ He paused at a door. ‘A lot of people are playing their own games these days.’ He knocked at the door and waited for an answer before entering.

  Back in his room, Duggan settled himself at his table, lit a cigarette and opened the Harbusch file. Much of the information in it had come from the British, from MI5, who had tracked Harbusch from his arrival in London in 1936. They had tried without a lot of success to fill in his background in Germany but there were no indications of military activity or intelligence involvement. It was all a bit sketchy. In London he had had an import/export company too, but never seemed to do anything other than send vague business letters to a couple of addresses on the Continent, including the one in Copenhagen to which he had sent his latest. Surveillance on him had never tied him to any other suspected spies or places in which they might be interested. Indeed, he didn’t seem to go out much at all. He had arrived in London with a woman called Inge who was presumed to be his wife and about whom even less was known. She seemed to have gone back to Germany late in 1938. Shortly afterwards he met Eliza.

  The file was much more detailed about Eliza. She was born in 1909, parents a small shopkeeper and a seamstress in the east end of London, minimal schooling, and a variety of jobs. She had come to MI5’s notice as a hanger-on at some of the British Union of Fascists’ marches and meetings. ‘Her interest is less in politics than in her apparent attraction to men in black uniforms, straight arm salutes, and the so-called charisma of Oswald Mosley,’ one sour British Special Branch man had written about her. Interesting, Duggan thought, that may
explain what she’s doing with Hans, a political connection. Though Hans would not look good in a black or brown shirt. In fact, he thought, he’d look stupid giving straight-arm salutes. But Hitler was no film star either.

  The telephone rang and he picked it up. ‘G2. Duggan.’

  ‘The hard man,’ Timmy said.

  ‘Uncle Timmy,’ Duggan said, his body slumping back in the chair.

  ‘We need to talk.’ Timmy was unusually businesslike.

  ‘I’m still at work.’

  ‘Like myself, like myself,’ Timmy said. ‘It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to come in here’ – Duggan assumed he meant Leinster House − ‘but I’ll see you in Buswell’s Hotel in an hour.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can get—’

  ‘There’ve been developments,’ Timmy cut him short. ‘A lot of things you need to know.’

  He hung up as Duggan was about to protest that he was in the army and couldn’t just go off about family business at the drop of a hat. Not that that argument would have cut any ice with Timmy. Family business was national business to him. Why, he wondered, didn’t Timmy want him to come into Leinster House today when he wanted to parade him around there yesterday?

  He sighed and went back to the Harbusch file. The British thought Harbusch moved to Ireland in July 1939 because he saw the war coming and didn’t want to be executed as a spy. Even though they seemed to have no hard evidence that he was spying. At the very least, they would have interned him as an enemy alien. So was his, and Eliza’s, move to Dublin just to save their own skins? Duggan wondered. She could’ve been interned too in England for her fascist sympathies, whether they were political or sexual; Mosley himself had just been locked up. Or was Hans acting under Abwehr orders?

  He flicked quickly through the surveillance reports on the couple since their arrival in Ireland. They were mainly a collection of negatives; they didn’t go near the German legation, didn’t go to any of the depleted German community’s functions in the Gresham Hotel, didn’t mix with the Irish German Friendship Society in the Red Bank restaurant. A report of a surreptitious search of their flat caught his attention. The Special Branch had broken in when the couple were on one of their rare outings but had found nothing incriminating. No transmitters, no code books, only some German novels and English romantic ones. Duggan wondered if Gifford had been on the search.

  He flicked forward to copies of letters from a woman in Holland, addressed to Hans care of a shop in Westland Row. A Special Branch report noted that the shopkeeper had been questioned and was cooperating, tipping them off when letters arrived, delaying their delivery to Hans. ‘I remember with passion our last night of love,’ Duggan read at random from one, its English slightly off key. ‘God willing it will not be long before we do it again and I can still your trembling body with the caress of mine.’ Jesus, Duggan thought, I don’t understand any of this. Why was Hans getting love letters from another woman? In English from a non-English speaker? Using a different address meant he didn’t want Eliza to know about her. Or was it all some kind of elaborate setup? For what?

  He put a slip of paper in the file to mark where he had finished reading, left the office half expecting someone to ask him where he was going but nobody did. He got on his bicycle and sped down the hill to the quays and headed for the city centre. There was hardly any traffic and he kept up the initial momentum, cycling fast and enjoying the exercise, letting it clear his head of all the mysteries it was accumulating. The setting sun was just above a bank of cloud rising from the western horizon and cast a long shadow ahead of him. Beside him, the Liffey was now running faster to the sea as the tide ebbed, hurrying under the bridges as their pillars narrowed its path. Over the sounds of the still evening he became aware of a droning noise, growing steadily. He looked up but couldn’t see the aircraft anywhere; it sounded like a couple of them. It stopped growing louder and began to fade. Probably out over the sea, he thought.

  He left his bicycle at the railings in front of Buswell’s Hotel, a couple of Georgian houses knocked into one inside. He climbed the steps and glanced over at Leinster House. There were a handful of cars parked inside the railings, on either side of the incongruous statue of a lugubrious Queen Victoria. ‘Should’ve been blown up years ago,’ Timmy would shake his head regularly. But blowing it up would’ve broken every window in Leinster House, the National Library and the National Museum. At the very least.

  Timmy was in the bar, holding court with a circle of cronies, all laughing too loudly at some banter. ‘I must talk to this man here,’ Timmy slapped one of them on the back when he saw Duggan. ‘Man of the future. Not like you fucking has-beens.’

  Timmy had recovered his hail-fellow-well-met demeanour and led Duggan to a quiet corner of the bar. ‘What’ll you have?’ he asked. ‘Brandy seems to be the order of the day.’

  ‘Glass of Guinness will be fine,’ Duggan said, pretending to ignore Timmy’s broad wink. His heart sank, hoping Timmy hadn’t dragged him here just to pump him for information about the latest German spy. Timmy called to the barman and raised his almost empty glass for another whiskey.

  ‘Somebody’s happy with his day’s work today,’ Timmy said in a disapproving tone. ‘Must’ve been laughing their heads off when they saw the black smoke coming out of the departments’ chimneys this morning. On a boiling hot summer’s day.’

  The barman gave Timmy another glass of Paddy and put a half-pint glass of water beside it. Duggan waited for him to explain what he was talking about, knowing he didn’t need to ask, he’d be told.

  ‘Caused a right old panic,’ Timmy tipped the remnants of his old glass into the new one and topped it up with a splash of water. ‘Herr Brandy’s arrival. Had them burning files all over the place. Until wiser heads prevailed. Realized what it was all about.’

  Duggan said nothing, remembering the bags of documents marked ‘BURN’ in the Red House. Timmy tasted the whiskey and nodded and put it down on a coaster. ‘Brandy,’ he said slowly, ‘is a plant.’

  ‘A plant?’

  ‘Fucking Brits,’ Timmy said. ‘You can’t be up to them. Just the sort of trick they love to pull.’

  ‘Brandy is a British agent?’ Duggan looked at him.

  Timmy gave him a solemn nod. ‘Some of us are too long in the tooth to be fooled by this kind of trickery. Might have worked once upon a time. Not anymore.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Duggan thought of the array of material seized from Held’s house. The money, the military insignia, the transmitter, the code book, Plan Kathleen.

  ‘Take a step back,’ Timmy took an unconscious step backwards. ‘Think about it. Who benefited from all the panic this morning? Sensitive files being burned in some places. The Germans coming, moryah. Parachutists raining down on us any minute.’ Timmy gave a snort, dismissing the idea as ludicrous. ‘Whose interest was all that in?’ He nodded at Duggan as if he had answered him. ‘Right. The Brits.’

  The barman put the glass of Guinness in front of Duggan and Timmy dug some coins out of his trouser pocket and put the price of the drinks on the counter. Duggan took a sip of the stout.

  ‘Result was a right old panic,’ Timmy continued. ‘Everyone on high alert. A step away from falling on our knees and begging the British to come over the border and save us.’

  Timmy put down his drink and took out his cigarette case, finished. He offered Duggan a cigarette but he said he’d have one of his own. Timmy lit both of them and inhaled a lungful of smoke with satisfaction.

  ‘Do you think Held is a British agent too?’ Duggan asked.

  ‘Who knows what Held is?’ Timmy gave an expansive wave with the hand holding the cigarette.

  ‘He’s half German.’

  Timmy conceded that with a nod. ‘But do you know who’s living with him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A woman who’s not his wife,’ Timmy said. ‘A woman who’s the wife of an RAF officer.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ Timmy
said with satisfaction, resting his case.

  They sipped at their drinks, pulled on their cigarettes, thinking their own thoughts. If Timmy only knew about G2’s contacts with MI5, Duggan thought. And that MI5 had added to the overnight panic with a warning of an imminent German invasion. Unternehmen Seelöwe and Unternehmen Grün. Straws in the wind? And the ties that bind them together? The code book, he thought. That’d prove who Brandy worked for. If it deciphered other encrypted German messages.

  Timmy looked around the bar. It wasn’t full but it was getting to the stage where voices were too loud, laughter was too hearty, and stories were being repeated and seemed even funnier than the first time round. Two of his earlier drinking companions came over to him.

  ‘Can we get a lift up to Lamb Doyle’s later?’ one of them asked while the other swayed in front of Timmy and Duggan.

  ‘If I’m going,’ Timmy said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you be going?’ the drunker of the two demanded.

  ‘Later, men, later,’ Timmy shooed them away. He turned his back to the room and took a typed document from his inside pocket, unfolded it slowly, keeping it shielded by his body. ‘Take a quick look at that.’

  The first sentences grabbed Duggan’s attention: ‘England is beaten. Neither time nor gold can save her now.’ His eyes ran down the page, absorbing, rather than reading, the content. Now was not the time, it argued, to do anything to alienate the Germans. Every other remaining neutral was trying to come to terms with them, getting off the fence, getting on the winning side, looking to the post-war world, Germany ruling all of Europe. Joining the Allies now would be disastrous, no matter what they offered on the North; we’d be on the losing side and pay the penalty. We’d be occupied, maybe lumped together with Britain in one colonised unit. At the very least a pro-German neutrality would leave us in an advantageous position in relation to the national question when the post-war situation was being negotiated. There was even a case to be made for joining … Timmy took it from his hand before he could read any more, folded it and put it back in his pocket.

  Duggan gave him a questioning look. There had been no heading on the document, no name at the end of it.