Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  Michael Collins

  Minister of Finance.

  Andrew refolded the letter, slipped it back into its envelope, and tapped it on his knee reflectively.

  ‘So, Mr Daly,’ he said. ‘You are a colleague of Mr Collins. Shall we say a soldier of the Irish Republic?’

  ‘You can say that,’ Daly agreed. And who the hell are you? he thought, as he studied the face before him. The left cheek was horrifically scarred; the white ridge of the scar zigzagging across it like the track of some drunken, sharp-toothed snail; but the rest of the face was sharp, cold, intelligent. Daly had not met any Germans before. He only knew of the propaganda stereotype: square head, bulging eyes, broken, snarling teeth. This man was nothing like that; but then of course he wouldn’t be. That was all lies put about by the British. This man seemed suave, confident, with the arrogance of an English landlord. Yet he had those funny foreign mannerisms, and the accent seemed genuine enough.

  Nonethless, Daly was suspicious. Bluntly, he said: ‘You say you’ve got some machine guns to sell. Where are they?’

  Andrew raised an eyebrow. He took out a cigarette case, offered one to Daly, and, when the Irishman refused, tapped his own reflectively against the hard metal of the case before lighting it. His voice, when he spoke, was deliberately sharp.

  ‘I had asked for my proposal to be kept in strictest confidence, but I see you know everything. How many others, then?’

  Daly was impressed by his tone. ‘Not many. Only the inner council. I’m the officer in charge of the Dublin Squad. I have to know. Where are these Maxim guns?’

  ‘In Germany.’ Andrew took a drag of his cigarette and waved his hand contemptuously around the hotel room. The gesture asked: You think I could hide them here? He gazed at Daly calmly, assessing his strength. No fool, he thought; no weakling either. He doesn’t trust me, and if he decides his opinion is right, he’ll kill me without a thought.

  Andrew decided to humour him. ‘I have the pistols here, of course. You will like to see them, perhaps?’

  He got up and fetched a folding leather bag from a wardrobe. He lifted out an oilskin bundle, unwrapped it carefully, and held out an automatic pistol. It was heavy, clean, well-greased.

  Daly looked mildly interested. ‘I’ve used them. 9-mm Parabellum. But it’s got a longer barrel than ours.’

  ‘Correct,’ Andrew said. The weapon was nearly a foot long. ‘This is the artillery model. Much more accurate than the small one, and the sight - is that how you say? - this aiming part, is good for 800 metres. Also, it is possible to fit with this - what we call snail magazine - to hold thirty-two cartridges instead of eight.’

  Andrew passed over the pistol and magazine. Both were empty; there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks. Daly played with them curiously for a few moments.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘But it’s a big thing to carry round in your pocket. Have you not got any of the smaller ones?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. Most officers at the front required the best possible aiming power. I have also this.’ Andrew unwrapped a second oilskin bundle, to reveal an equally large pistol with a magazine in front of the trigger guard, and a large red number 9 stamped on the butt. ‘Mauser Selbstladepistole C-96. Also fires 9-mm Parabellum cartridge.’

  Daly examined that too, clearly impressed with the weight and quality of the weapons. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Still, it’s a pity you didn’t bring the Maxims.’

  Andrew reached inside his jacket pocket, took a photograph out of his wallet, and passed it across. ‘You have not seen a Maxim, perhaps? Here. I have twenty like this.’

  Daly looked at the photograph. Despite his suspicion, he was fascinated. The gun was short: about two and a half feet long, perhaps. It was mounted on a low four-legged stand slightly longer than itself. There was a periscope sight at the rear end, and the gunner presumably gripped the gun and fired by looking through this and holding on to two handgrips just below it. There were pads on the rear two legs of the stand, for him to rest his elbows on. There was no stock, so he imagined the stand absorbed most of the recoil. The bullets were fed in by a belt from the side, and a curious long rubber hose trailed from the covered muzzle, ending in what looked like a squashy foot-bellows.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, pointing.

  Andrew smiled. ‘The gun is water-cooled, you understand? When the barrel is hot, the water becomes steam. But we do not want the enemy to see steam rising from our firing positions, and also it wastes water. So the steam goes down this tube, into the bag, and it … how do you say? It cools and is water again.’

  ‘It condenses,’ Daly said. It looked a highly effective piece of precision engineering, almost like a telescope, rather than a gun. The bottom of the stand had a number of solid-looking screw calipers around it, no doubt to enable the gunners to aim it precisely at a pre-set target.

  Andrew was gratified by the Irishman’s obvious interest. Elaborating his role as arms salesman, he said: ‘That is the most efficient weapon of its kind in the world. I myself have seen two of them destroy a battalion in five minutes.’

  It was nearly a true story. Andrew himself was one of the four who had survived. He felt a sudden rush of pain and anger at the memory, and stilled it by biting the inside of his lip.

  ‘A beautiful piece of German engineering.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Andrew remembered how quiet the water-cooled Maxims had been, after the bludgeoning artillery. Tick, tick, tick - like a distant woodpecker. And we all fall down.

  Daly handed the photograph back, and met his eyes. ‘It looks too heavy for us to use in the city, of course, but out in the country - it’d be pure bloody murder.’

  ‘As you say.’ Andrew took a soothing drag on his cigarette, and watched Daly calmly. You’re hooked now, Paddy, he thought. ‘So how did you get them, Mr Hessel?’

  ‘I was an officer in the General Staff, with responsibility for - what is it you say? - supply. I control the trains from the factory to the front. When the armistice comes …’ He shrugged and blew a smoke ring. ‘The railway runs close to my father’s Schloss. Underneath it are many cellars.’

  ‘So how will you get them to us?’

  ‘That is my problem. First, we must make an agreement about the money. And for that I need Mr Collins.’

  ‘This country isn’t rich, you know,’ said Daly.

  Andrew stubbed out the cigarette decisively. Humouring Daly had gone far enough, he decided. ‘Perhaps not. But I don’t negotiate with you. I make my business with Michael Collins only, understand? Him and me alone together.’

  Daly scowled. ‘Oh no, you won’t be alone. Mr Collins is a bit too important to us for that. The most important man in Ireland, probably. I’m his bodyguard.’

  That’s a pity, Andrew thought. But he waved his hand again, dismissively. ‘All right, guards, I do not mean guards. I mean, the business of the guns must be made between him and me alone, you understand? I will not negotiate with any underofficers.’

  Daly nodded. ‘That’s clear enough,’ he said. ‘He’s the boss. But it won’t be for a day or two. Mr Collins is a busy man.’

  ‘I too am busy. I leave Dublin on Friday. If you do not want the guns, say so. Otherwise, I must know where and when to meet.’

  Oh no you don’t, Paddy thought. No appointments booked days ahead, so that you can have a regiment of tanks waiting outside when we get there. He said: ‘You’ll find that out when I come and get you. Not before.’

  Andrew thought carefully. This was what he had feared. Radford had insisted that the police must be involved; but conditions like this were going to make it impossible. If so, Radford would just have to accept it.

  He said: ‘You do not trust me with an address?’

  No, I don’t, Paddy thought. But on the other hand, it’ll be a test. And we’ve got young Sean outside to follow it through. He said: ‘Do you know Brendan Road?’

  As he spoke, he watched Andrew’s eyes carefully. Was there a flicker
there, a slight involuntary acknowledgement that he had given away a vital piece of information? Paddy wasn’t sure. The cold, hard nature of the man had begun to impress itself upon him. Perhaps the German was genuine. Certainly he could have been a soldier - a tough one at that. He knew what he wanted, too; and the story of the guns was plausible enough.

  Andrew said: ‘No. But I can hire a cab, if you tell me the number.’

  Daly said: ‘Forget it. It’s better for me to meet you here. I’ll come tomorrow - either between ten and half past in the morning, or between four and five in the afternoon. Will that do?’

  Andrew could think of no reasonable objection, so he agreed. Daly stood up to go. Before he left, he strolled casually to the window again, where anyone in the street outside could see him.

  When he had gone, Andrew slipped through to his bedroom, where the lamp was not lit. He stood as far back in the room as he could, so that no light would shine on him from outside.

  He saw Daly cross the street quickly. There was a young man in a flat cap, lounging in the doorway opposite, who made the mistake of watching Daly all the time as he crossed the road. Daly did not stop or turn his head as he walked past the young man, but Andrew thought some words passed between them, nonetheless.

  He smiled, stood still, and watched his watcher watching him.

  It was cold in the street, and shortly after Paddy Daly came out, it began to rain. Sean turned up his collar and shrank back as far as he could into the doorway. Even so, he felt conspicuous. It was clear he had no business in the building, and he had been there an hour already. Then a man came out of the door, unexpectedly, and Sean moved away with a hurried apology.

  He took to pacing up and down the street, looking as though he were going somewhere, but never allowing himself to get quite out of sight of the hotel entrance. The rain settled into a steady downpour, and began to soak through the shoulders of his coat and drip from the peak of his cap.

  He still hadn’t even seen the German. Paddy Daly hadn’t stopped to speak to Sean in the street, but he had sent a complete description to him, via Frank Brophy, the lad who was watching the back. ‘He’s a tall fellow,’ Frank said. ‘Twenty-five to thirty years old. Left cheek all scarred to hell. Quite fit, strong-looking, like an army officer. Black hair, little pencil moustache. Very cool-looking customer, Paddy says. Not likely to be any others like him in that hotel.’

  I hope not, Sean thought. In some hotels there are dozens of men like that. Even with a few scars, missing eyes, faces half blown away. But very few came and went into Lambert’s; and certainly most of the customers here were old.

  The street became busier after six o’clock, and Sean stationed himself directly outside the main entrance, a damp newspaper in his hands. The oil lamp in the German’s room was still on, he noticed. The smell of cooking drifted out towards him, and an ancient couple paid off their horse-drawn cab and stepped into the foyer. Sean imagined the German officer marching smartly downstairs, bowing stiffly to all the waiters, and settling down with a sigh of satisfaction in front of fresh warm rolls, butter, and a piping hot bowl of soup.

  He began to think of Catherine.

  They were due to meet later that evening, at the Gaelic League. It looked as though he was going to disappoint her. He had left a note there earlier, for her to find. The note apologized but didn’t explain why. She would have to realize, if he was on active service, he couldn’t always be clinging to her skirts.

  Active service, indeed! The rain had begun to trickle into his socks now. A sudden, painful vision came to him of Catherine in his room by the hot, blazing fire, with no skirts on at all … It was so overwhelming he nearly walked away that very moment.

  When he had met her, he had never believed such a fine thing could happen to him. He had not even been able to imagine it. The girls he had known, his sisters, the girls of his village, had been ordinary, bumptious creatures, with their share of snub noses, gawkiness, giggles, silly secrets, bossiness, generosity, and love of children. There had been no mystery to them; no sense that eventual marriage would be anything more than a further round of the same, with a wife becoming rounder and more distant and harassed as her children multiplied around her. To the young Sean, women provided cooking and comfort and children and control. They were something a young man would want to escape from as long as he could; his own father, like most men in the village, had not married until he was nearly forty.

  Catherine had awakened something in him which he had not known existed. From the moment he had seen her he had not been able to get her out of his mind. He had wanted to talk to her just so he could watch the way she spoke, admire the perfection of her hands so close to his in the library or lecture room. Images of her had filled his dreams at night. The graceful way she walked obsessed him; he imagined her swinging into the saddle of a great brown hunter, leaping hedges, cantering along country roads. She was very fit, yet so slender. He was fascinated with the way her body contrasted with those male ones he had wrestled and struggled against on the school sports field, and was overcome with tenderness, a desire to hold and touch …

  As he had now done. He had not slept for hours after she had left him the other night. The vision of her had stayed with him so clearly he had thought he might be arrested in the street for following a naked ghost. And the day after he had found it so hard to think about what Paddy Daly was saying that his orders had to be repeated three times.

  He knew it was a sin, but he did not want to see it as the priest had. Once or twice when he was alone he felt shame, but that was for the squalor of his room, for the fact that he could offer her no home, no future. But that seemed so far away when he saw her; it did not matter.

  The other reason for shame was that she was taking him away from his duties. The future of the Republic might depend on his surveillance of this German officer, and here he was, remembering the touch of her thighs …

  A man came down the steps of the hotel, briskly, and set off across the street, dodging between the traffic. He had his back to Sean, his coat collar turned up against the rain, and a soft hat pulled down over his eyes.

  Is that him? But I didn’t see his face, Sean thought, I can’t tell.

  The man was moving so quickly along the far side of the street that in a moment he would reach the crossroads and be gone. Sean glanced inside the foyer, then set off hurriedly after him.

  At the crossroads the man turned left. Sean was on the wrong side of the road. A motor lorry was coming towards him on one side, and an ancient hansom cab clattered along on the other.

  Sean dashed out between them.

  When he reached the crossroads, the man was gone.

  There were a group of men staggering out of a pub, and beyond them, no one at all.

  He sprinted down the side street towards the next junction, nearly forty yards away. When he got there, there was no sign of the man in either direction. Only then did he think to look back.

  I’ve lost him, he thought. I’ve lost the bugger in ten seconds flat!

  It had been even easier than Andrew had hoped. Before he had left the hotel, he had checked from his window that O’Shaughnessy’s Bar on the corner had, as he remembered, an entrance in the main street as well as another round the corner. He had gone round the corner, stepped in at one entrance, glanced through the windows to see Sean sprint past, and calmly walked out of the other. Now he strode briskly past the Lambert Hotel in the opposite direction.

  It was twenty past eight. Probably Radford would reach the house in Nelson Street before him. It didn’t matter, Andrew had given him a key.

  He took a deliberately circuitous route, doubling back on himself several times, until he was quite sure no one at all was following.

  Radford felt distinctly uncomfortable in the empty house. He had let himself in at the back with his key, but despite his caution he had bumped into a dustbin and set a cat yowling, which was hardly the way a professional burglar would have made his entry. The
last thing I need, he thought, is for some honest citizen to get suspicious, and call the police.

  Well, almost the last thing. There were other people the neighbours might call. Twice in the past week Radford had been followed in the street by burly men in cloth caps, who watched him intently, and kept their hands in the pockets of their coats. Even in the spy campaign in Belfast during the war, that had never happened. He had taken to wearing a bullet-proof waistcoat, and, even so, had to nerve himself each time he went out alone.

  He wished he could have brought Kee with him, but Kee would never have approved of this. That was the trouble with old Tom, he could not see when rules had to be broken. If we play it by the book in this city, we won’t survive. But even if he could have persuaded Kee, the man Butler had insisted that no one else in the DMP should be involved. He could not fault Butler’s reasoning. Undoubtedly there were people in the Dublin force sympathetic to Collins, and since Butler had no idea who they were, he preferred to trust no one. I would do the same in his place, Radford thought. Especially if I were risking my neck as he is.

  On his other visits Butler had been here before him. This time he explored the house quietly, shining a torch around each room to try to get some idea of the character of the man he was dealing with. But the chief impression was of emptiness; of a house untenanted, bereft of its soul. The walls had pictures of horses hunting and racing, sketches of a large country house, pictures of sailing ships. Most of the furniture was solid, heavy, old-fashioned, though the bedding and curtains were a blend of light pink and lemon colours in one bedroom - a woman’s, he supposed. To his surprise he found a number of German books and magazines in here, too, beginning to yellow with age. Then he remembered - Sir Jonathan had said something about Butler’s mother being a German. That must be where the son had learnt the language, so well. Well enough to fool the Sinn Feiners, anyway, he hoped.

  The room he settled down in was a sort of living room and library combined. There were books on three of the walls, comfortable leather armchairs, and yesterday’s ashes in the grate. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table too, an unwashed glass and some biscuit crumbs. Presumably this was the room Butler used when he came here, and sat, alone.