by Craig Thomas
"I would understand that, except that I'm sure that the people of this country — of the United Kingdom — understand by now that our attempt to preserve the Anglo-Irish Agreement is the only answer, immediately and in the longer term, to the bombings, the killings and the violence. It is not the cause—" He smiled at the camera soberly, with gravitas. "It is my belief, firmly held, that all the parties here, in Ulster, and in the Irish Republic, with the. sole exception of the IRA, really do want the Agreement to continue to be the basis of our approach to the problems of the Province. What we must not do is to lose resolution. We can win — we will win—"
"Mr Guthrie, you say that we can win. You hold out a degree of optimism. But is it not a fact that the Irish Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues are interested in ending the Anglo-Irish Agreement?"
Guthrie was silent for no more than a moment. He smiled gravely and shook his head almost delicately. "No," he said. "My meetings with him and his colleagues next week are occasions I approach with a deal of cautious optimism." He looked directly into the camera. "The Dublin government is not interested in chaos in Ulster. The Prime Minister of the Republic feels the grave responsibility of the hour as much as I do myself. I am firmly convinced that he will not be persuaded by acts of terrorism to withdraw his support for the Agreement. If the Provisional IRA believe that either government will compromise on its determination to defeat the men of violence, then I must tell them that they are wrong."
"What other subjects — apart from the maintenance of the Agreement — will be on your conference agenda, Minister?"
Guthrie smiled. Authority and confidence, he told himself. Would they come…? How many more bombs would it take to make Dublin give in— cancel Ulster's future…? He felt perspiration begin at his hairline. His smile did not waver. A close-run thing…
"I am not prepared to prejudice our meetings by announcing specific objectives. We will, I am certain, reaffirm our joint resolve to overcome violence. Next week will not be the end of an accord, but the beginning of a new understanding. A point from which we will go forward. The Provisional IRA are desperate. Why are they so afraid of my meeting with the Irish Prime Minister if he intends to renege on our Agreement—?"
"Just one moment, Minister—" The interviewer touched his earphone, listened, and his face became grave, pressing into its most belligerent lines. He nodded, then said bluntly: "We've just received news of an explosion in a restaurant off the Charing Cross Road— there may be as many as thirty dead and wounded."
Guthrie looked appalled, as if some direct and violent attack had been made upon him. The studio appeared no longer bare; more it was insulated, safe.
"We'll go to the newsroom for more details—" the interviewer added, almost unnecessarily. Guthrie appeared unable to speak.
Not one arrest — not a single arrest. People would be frightened, would contemplate drawing back. He knew he was poised upon a critical moment, yet he was unable to speak, to reassure, to offer solutions. His initiative, his career, lay with the bodies and the broken glass and the walls stained and scorched. The Proves had brought their war to him, and they could yet win. The red light winked off on his camera, and he rubbed his face as if trying to remould flesh grown suddenly loose, shapeless.
November 1940
He had perhaps two minutes in which to get the carlin float down to the waves, inflate it, and begin rowing out to sea — to nothing and no rendezvous. The sub must have moved offshore, dived deeper, when they picked up the S-boat on asdic. Another truck moved along the cliff-top, stopped, and he could hear the soldiers being disgorged. What he had seen he was not to be allowed to report.
What had he seen, then?
Get on, get on — There was no time to debate the significance of the sheds and what they concealed. He was simply a camera, film waiting to be developed by an expert.
He could not hope to mingle with the searching patrols when they reached the beach, no chance that they would not find the deflated carlin float hidden in the rocks. Yet as soon as he moved, even on that dark beach, he would be spotted. Time was to be measured in strokes of a paddle, and the range of a German rifle.
He flicked the ident twice, then sent the emergency distress code. His head wavered between the cliff-top — crunch of boots on the loose gravel of the cliff-path — and the empty sea. Then he moved, crouching his way to the float, hoisted it on his shoulder, and began running, labouredly and reluctantly, down the beach towards the water. Even the wind resisted his efforts, it seemed, and his feet began to sink into the newly uncovered sand, slowing him. All the time, he listened behind him and looked ahead, waiting.
They must have seen him, must have—
He splashed through the shallows, flung down the float, knelt by it in the bubbling white foam, and released the stop on the compressed-air canister. The air roared, and the yellow float bucked out of his grip, writhing as it inflated automatically, growing like a nearing target.
Shouts"?
He looked out to sea — black shape against the darkest grey? No.
He experienced a moment of paralysis close to panic, until the first hopeful shots from the cliff-path could be heard above the noise of the waves and the wind, and he was startled into looking back. He could see torch-light wobbling and hurrying down the side of the cliff, see the headlights of the trucks as they backed and turned seaward to illuminate him. Torches flashed uselessly out to sea. He stumbled through the surf, cursing himself and tugging off the restraining, sodden German greatcoat. The wind cut through him as he let it go and clambered into the float which seemed to want to rush back towards the shore, then tumble away from him out into the cove. He unhooked the paddle, began pushing at the water, desperately overcoming the onrush of the water, waiting in a space full of shouting and gunfire, then feeling the retreating tide grip his float more severely, lifting him out to sea. He paddled furiously as soon as its grip lessened, fighting the next incoming wave — water splashed into his face, froze his hands almost at once, drenched his body through the three sweaters. He yelled, struck, yelled, struck — driving the bobbing, wild float into deeper water.
Bullets plucked at the water to left and right — one cried closer than the wind, and he instinctively ducked. Nothing, nothing out to sea. The signal-lamp had gone, with the greatcoat or with the water slopping in and out of the float. The wind palpably restrained him.
Radio — there must be a radio in one of the trucks in touch with the S-boat, to bring it back to pick him up.
He looked back, fleetingly, as if ducking from the blow of the next wave and the slosh of stinging, icy water the wind whipped off its crest — saw the figures on the shore-line, in the stance of riflemen.
It would take one bullet. He ducked into his next stroke, renewing the frenzy of his activity, his vision confined to the bottom of the float, which was gradually filling, and to the next wave. Hearing above the wind the buzz of bullets, the shouted orders now far behind him, but with no sense of the futility of his escape—
He looked up.
Black shape, bow-on. A submarine surfacing, blowing its tanks, the conning-tower running with water, decks awash — perhaps five hundred yards from him. Increased firing, but he was suddenly invulnerable. He struck madly with the flat paddle, heaving the float through the waves, his arms and shoulders protesting and his hands dead and fixed vice-like by the cold to the paddle.
He was up to his waist in water suddenly, having heard nothing of the bullet's passage through the float, with no sense of impact or deflation. But the carlin float ducked almost shamefully beneath the next big wave, and the paddle remained too deep in the water to make its next stroke. He unclenched his hands, and was at once at the mercy of the waves, flung under then up as he struggled, then under again. The sweaters and his stolen jackboots seemed impossibly heavy — he struggled out of the boots, swallowing water, coughing, let the boots drop away through the water, tried to pull off one of the sweaters, but could not tread water
to do so.
He looked ahead — the submarine was still five hundred yards away, but he could see the dinghy they'd launched, and began to swim very slowly, furiously, towards it.
He was in the water for a long time, aware of the recurring drag of the tide taking him out, but seeming always weaker than the water that heaved over his head with each incoming wave. He drove forward with heavy arms, legs kicking feebly, the weight of his clothes increasing; deadweight. He was not certain, but there seemed to be short black intervals between successive strokes, between the times he lifted his head to try to spot the dinghy — a view through a lens-shutter, alternating, the black moments elongating, swallowing reason—
They dragged him in, unceremoniously, head-first so that his face was plunged into the slopping water in the bottom of the dinghy. Two men in oilskins immediately began to pull back towards the submarine, and a third pulled him into a sitting position. He was grinned at in the darkness.
"All right, sir?"
He nodded, retched but brought none of the swallowed water up, then nodded again with more affirmation.
"That S-boat—" he began hoarsely.
"Skipper's watching out for it, sir, don't worry."
And McBride simply nodded, and retreated a little into his sense of relief until the dinghy banged against the hull of the submarine, and hands took hold of its ropes, and the Petty Officer in the dinghy handled him like a child being lifted up to see some passing sight above a crowd of heads. Other men in oilskins — the smell of them was omnipresent — assisted him along the swaying, unsteady, awash after-deck towards the conning-tower.
"Ditch that dinghy! Our friend's back," he heard from close to him. Two young faces under caps, one of which nodded to him, and round the headland he had a momentary glimpse of the reappearance of the S-boat, searchlight trained ahead of the craft to pick them up.
"Shake it up down there!" someone barked. McBride was bundled down the conning-tower ladder, stumbling and weak. "Clear the bridge!" he heard the same voice call above him. Seaboots thumped over his head, and then his rescuers dropped one by one into the confined space. He was aware of faces watching him intently, then the captain closed the hatch, and dropped at his side. The klaxon sounded. "Dive, dive, dive!"
After someone had thrown a blanket over his shoulders, no one took any more notice of him. His rescuers disappeared, and each man but himself seemed to have a task that precluded all other activity or sensation.
"HE at Green Nine-Oh, increasing, sir," the asdic operator called.
"Starboard 30, steer Three-Two-Oh — full ahead together."
"Three-Two-Oh, full ahead together, sir," the coxswain answered. Then there was a sudden strained silence, punctuated only by the pinging of the asdic as the S-boat closed on their position. McBride was suddenly entirely apart from the men in the control room — the cause of their danger. McBride glanced from face to face — the captain alert beside him near the periscope column, the first officer at the diving panel, the two men at the hydroplane controls, and the coxswain at the wheel.
McBride heard the throb of the S-boat's screws, beating on the thin hull of the submarine like someone forcing entry. Eyes sought the hull above them, and the silence intensified as the screws faded.
"HE fading, sir, and now bearing Green One-One-Oh."
Something scraped on the hull, as if sliding past it.
"Christ—" someone breathed.
"Not yet, I hope," the captain murmured. "Hold tight, Commander," he added, as if aware of McBride for the first time. McBride clutched himself to the periscope housing, feeling slightly ridiculous, very weak, and dizzy with tension. He was shivering with cold. Then the muffled explosion beneath them and behind, the lurch through the length of the submarine, the flicker-douse-flicker back of the lights, water running from a slight leak, and the sense of people picking themselves out of a ruin and shaking themselves like wet hounds. Everyone grinning as the second depth-charge roared like a breath some distance away.
"Take her down, number one — to the bottom."
The first officer looked away from the diving panel. "It's risky, sir."
The young-faced Lt Commander replied: "We'll sit this one out. Jerry will be buzzing around up there like a blue-arsed fly. He's only got small depth-charges, but even they could make a hole in our nice submarine—" He grinned. "If we sit still, he'll get cheesed off."
"Sir."
McBride felt the submarine settle gently on the bottom a moment later. A slight list to port. Silence. The pinging from the asdic seemed a long way away. The water had dribbled almost to a stop from the strain-leak.
"Silent routine."
The captain looked into McBride's face, as if assessing some prize he had won. When he nodded, McBride felt he had passed some test successfully. And was able to smile.
"Thanks."
"Your pal's in my cabin, wants to talk to you — if you're ready. Better change first, mm?"
McBride nodded. The asdic increased its tempo once more, but McBride felt calmed by the confidence, the almost alien superiority these submariners exuded like a gas. He was out, and on his way home.
The next brace of depth-charges shook the submarine, and the lights merely flickered. Someone cheered quietly.
"Silly cunt—"
"Bloody awful shot."
He followed the Lt Commander out of the control room.
October 198-
"Why won't you tell me now, Goessler? Why do I have to play this elaborate bloody game which amuses you so much?" Goessler's companion was young, dark and broad-faced. The expression of the face was angry, creased into lines such as a bad-tempered child might display when denied some treat. It was a face that could have been pleasant, open, vivid with pleasure. But perhaps something of its secret life had grown on it like a patina, rusting the intensity of its emotions, restricting its expressiveness. Moynihan, sitting in Klaus Goessler's office in HVA HQ in East Berlin — a grey Trade Ministry building on the
Wilhelm-Pieckstrasse — was being made to feel younger than his twenty-eight years, and distinctly inferior in mind and position to the academic who was Deputy Director of the East German Intelligence Service's Western Europe Section.
The Operations Commandant for the Belfast Battalion of the Provisional IRA writhed in silence under the unctuous yet steel voice of the balding German. Now, in answer to his blurted, sulky question, Goessler smoothed the wings of hair flat against his head, and smiled, leaning back in his leather chair. He looked over Moynihan's head at an oil painting of the pre-war Unter den Linden that hung on his office wall. Only after almost a half-minute did he speak.
"My dear Sean—" Moynihan's face winced at the pretended equality, its superiority sticking through like a broken bone. "I have explained to you. We must not be seen to be involved in this — the scandal must emerge naturally." His hands imitated a growth, an explosion, on the top of his desk. "Naturally, also, you have the impatience of all youth—" A slight shake of the head. "As impatient as Professor McBride in his more academic way. If I told you what, you would want to take the how into your own hands. Like a mad dog — which is what I sometimes think you are." A glint of contempt in Goessler's eyes. "You would go for the throat. You would lose, like a poor actor, your sense of timing completely."
"God, do you think you're running our show, or something, Goessler?" Moynihan was holding one hand with the other on his lap, afraid to make them into protesting fists. But he could not control his tongue. "You've got the bloody bomb we need, you bastard! Give us the bloody thing and we'll blow Guthrie and his fucking meetings sky-high!"
Goessler banged his hand flat on his desk, once. Leaned forward, and said, levelly, each word weighted: "That is exactly why you will not be told, but will do as you are told. You are bomb-happy — real or metaphorical. You could not be trusted to exploit the situation to its maximum advantage. Your strategy may not work. Indeed, it is the view of experts here that it will not. The mainland bombing campa
ign has not discredited Guthrie, nor his initiative to hold the Anglo-Irish Agreement together… no, don't make childish faces or spit on my carpet, Sean! It is true. Guthrie may well have persuaded Dublin to honour the Agreement, even to extend it. If that should happen, your organization would, slowly but certainly, bleed to death."
"Then give us the means of blowing Guthrie out of sight, damn you!" Moynihan's fist banged Goessler's desk. His frame twitched and stirred with frustrated, humiliated rage.
"Not yet. When the moment is right, and natural, you will have it. Not before. If Guthrie is discredited — utterly — in the particular way we intend, then Dublin will certainly withdraw from all cooperation with London. There might be no new agreement between them for five, perhaps as many as ten years. America will be outraged—"
"Then, damn you, tell me what it is!"
Goessler shook his head. He brushed smooth the wings of grey hair, his features amusedly superior. A slim, clever mind was reflected in his bright gaze.
"The British have managed to install an extradition treaty with the Americans — block off your funds from there. That has dried up other sources of revenue. All of that will alter when Guthrie is discredited."
"Time's running short—"
"Which is why you are here simply to see McBride. When he goes to England, you will go with him. When he finally reaches Ireland — as we intend he shall — you will continue to watch him. When the moment is right, you shall have him. He will provide you with your grand explosion, and without help from you. Just let him do so. In a couple of days, at most, he will find what he needs here and be on his way. A man has written to him from England — we will point him in that direction."
"It's all too bloody coincidental!"
"No it is not!" Goessler saw Moynihan blench. "Just wait.
It will work. And when it does, you will have enough time to make certain that this time you win your armed struggle." There was a mocking light in Goessler's eyes, and the gleam of assessment. When he seemed satisfied, he added: "Very well, Sean — you may go."