Emerald Decision

by Craig Thomas

  Thatch, leaded windows, brass door-knocker. McBride, as he shook off the ironies of the cottage's appearance, almost expected Mrs Miniver to appear in the doorway. Instead, Gilliatt's daughter was small and neat and dark, and her face was wan, strained, without make-up. She gestured him inside without a greeting, and he noticed the wedding-ring on her hand. She was aware of his glance, and rubbed one hand with the other.

  "I'm staying here for the moment, though I don't like it — since the break-in. Through there, please—" Rugs covered the flagstones of the hall. He ducked under an exposed beam, and went into the lounge which overlooked the garden behind the cottage. Dark wood panels, bright prints on the old, substantial furniture, french windows out onto the terrace.

  He said, shocked awake: "What break-in? When?"

  He turned on her, even as she was gesturing him to sit down, and she flinched as if struck. She sat down, brushing her pleated skirt smooth, then plucking at the collar of her blouse. She was in her late thirties, McBride estimated, and normally a self-composed, assured woman. Worn down by grief? Or something else?

  "It was last week — just after the funeral. I came down at the weekend to find his papers and stuff everywhere—" Her hand swept vaguely across her skirt, indicating the carpet. "It — seemed more terrible because he was dead, can you understand?" He nodded. "And so ridiculous here — my father had lived here for years, it couldn't be anyone from the district—" He wondered whether she was reassuring herself. "I've stayed here this week — my husband's coming from Bristol on Friday."

  "You're frightened," he said bluntly. "Why?"

  "I don't know—" She frowned, the broad clear forehead running into furrows, her small mouth pursing. "Perhaps — puzzled, and that's become fear. Nothing was taken, you see. My father had a small collection of jade, and a few items of silver. I'd packed them away — but that wouldn't have stopped a thief, would it?" Her hands were fidgeting now, stabbing in emphasis, or lying irresolutely, unrestfully, on her lap. "Anyway, I decided to stay — there were things to do, his solicitor in Sherborne—" She smiled, nervously. He sensed she had been happy here as a child and a young woman, and she wanted to absorb something of it, for the sake of the years ahead — but what had once been a good, if maudlin, idea was now making her nervous, afraid, and vulnerable.

  "Why are you afraid — they won't come back. Burglary isn't like that—"

  "I suppose not. It's just that—" She seemed to scrutinize him, as if to check her impulse to spill the whole story into his hands, make him share its oppressive weight. "My father, last time I was here, when he wrote to you — was certain he was being watched — he said, under surveillance, and laughed, actually." The memory warmed her for a moment, then the tears stood at her eyes, making them glisten. She seemed determined to ignore them. "He claimed it was the most interesting time of his life, since the war—"

  "Why did he write me?"

  "He explained — didn't he?" She seemed to have little patience to talk about his concerns.

  "He wrote me like a novelist — full of mystery—" He consciously employed his most disarming smile, and she responded slowly. He noticed her nose had reddened with the restrained tears. "He said he had a visitor — did he?"

  "I wasn't here that week—" In the way she spoke, there was something that made him not envy her husband. He was vying with a worshipped father who would now be beatified by memory. He hoped her husband in Bristol had learned to cope. "But I believe my father. Someone came — he said from the government in his most mysterious tone—" A slight, almost luxurious smile. "Interested in you, and your work. But he didn't explain — the visitor, I mean — and made my father very angry that he'd been warned not to talk to you—"

  "What did he want to say to me, Mrs—?"

  "Forbes," she said simply, announcing something of minor significance. She talked of her father much as his own mother had talked of Michael McBride, and he wondered about two men so easily, casually capable of inspiring love.

  "Mrs Forbes, your father's letter intrigued me, I have to admit. But it didn't tell me anything — do you know anything?"

  As he asked, he was aware again of the break-in, and the fact that the jade and silver wasn't missing. She looked thoughtful.

  "It was the work he and your father were involved in — in 1940, I think. He didn't talk much about the war, funnily enough — not until this happened."

  McBride realized his mouth must be open, and his eyes furiously active. She seemed frightened, as she might have been of a harmless but retarded person in the street, suddenly encountered.

  "Papers — what about his papers? Were any missing?"

  "I can't say — there was a mess, and I tidied it all into cardboard boxes, but I didn't know what was there.

  Nothing of any importance, I'm sure. My father didn't hoard things, never kept a scrapbook, or took a lot of pictures, even when my mother was alive. He was always clearing out cupboards and drawers, throwing things away. He had a very good memory — perhaps he was just careless about who and what he once had been—?" The thought seemed to have just struck her, and she evidently found it uncomfortable.

  "So you wouldn't know?" She shook her head. McBride was beginning to believe the unimportance of the burglary; it retreated in his consciousness, though he knew, dimly, that he wasn't finished with it. "The man who came to see your father — was your father frightened in any way?" She laughed out loud, then clapped her hand to her mouth as if caught in an irreverence. But she was still smiling when she uncovered her mouth.

  "Of course not. My father thought him stupid, and impudent."

  "And he didn't threaten your father?"

  "No, why should he? Official secrets? My father hadn't learned any for forty years, Mr McBride. Would you like coffee — some lunch?" He shook his head.

  "No to the lunch, yes to coffee."

  While he listened to her making coffee in the kitchen, he pondered Gilliatt's death, and the frustration of this minor part of his visit to England. But, 19407 It was too coincidental.

  When he had taken the delicate china cup with the heavy rose-pattern in the deep pink saucer, sipped and complimented her, he said, "Your father didn't mention exactly what it was he wanted to talk about, I suppose?" He was resigned to it being idle speculation — her answer had a startling clarity.

  "He was still laughing when he told me. He said that your connection with it was the best irony. It put the wind up the people in Whitehall, he was certain of that — the same name, you see, and the blood connection. The man from London told him that you were interested in the operation my father was part of in late 1940—"

  "Emerald Necklace?" he asked in a hoarse voice, the cup tilting in his hand as his attention was forced from it.

  "Careful," she warned. "I'm sorry — I don't know what you mean—"

  "The operation was called Emerald Necklace."

  "I don't know — was it? My father didn't refer to it by name. He simply said it was to do with a German plan to invade southern Ireland, late in 1940. Are you interested in something like that?"

  * * *

  Sean Moynihan handed over the papers he was required to carry under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, as Peter Morgan, visitor to the Republic. He'd filled a sheaf of forms at Heathrow, which attempted to stop people like himself from travelling freely in and out of Eire.

  The passport official at Cork Airport accepted the papers and the Welsh accent that Moynihan had assumed, and the single suitcase and the false passport. Outside the tiny, almost empty terminal building, Donovan was waiting for him with his car.

  When they were on the L42, driving back towards Cork, and Moynihan had maintained a deliberate silence in order to irritate Donovan, the driver said, "You had a satisfactory trip, I take it?" He wiped a hand over his thinning hair, as if nervous at having trodden on some private grief.

  "I did, Rory, I did." But his face portrayed only the mirror of his angry frustration at the hands of Goessler. "Herr Go
essler was his usual smiling, fat, bloody self."

  "Well — what did you get from him? What can we use?"

  "Nothing — nothing yet."

  Donovan was emboldened by disappointment. "But you promised — look, Sean, I've got the Committee on fire for some startling piece of usable information, and you come back with nothing?"

  "Shut your gob and drive, Rory — you do that best."

  After a silence which seemed to mist the windscreen slightly, Donovan said, "I'm sorry, but the Committee is pressing. Dublin keeps reassuring us — but we don't trust them. Gerry thinks there's a real chance they'll go along with the Brits and keep that fucking Agreement. So, we need—"

  "Fuck Provisional Sinn Fein, Rory!" Moynihan snapped.

  Donovan flushed angrily. "You can't talk to me like—"

  "I can, Rory."

  "We want next week's meetings stopped as much as you do!"

  "Then you'll have to be patient. I've nothing for you — not yet. Goessler has us by the balls, Donovan, you know that."

  "What's going to happen, then?"

  "Goessler's set his elaborate scheme in motion—"

  "McBride?"

  "Yes. He's in London now. Soon, he'll be coming here, following an old, old trail—"

  "How long is this going to take?" Donovan's round eyes blinked behind his thick spectacles as he looked almost desperately at Moynihan.

  "Watch the cart," Moynihan said, and when they had swerved to avoid it, added, "Not too long — damn you, Donovan, I can't help it, and I don't like it, either! So Dublin goes to these meetings — OK. Those meetings will take weeks to decide, one way or the other — it'll all be out in the open before then!"

  "You hope," Donovan said quietly.

  "Shut up and drive."

  November 1940

  For McBride, the bridge of HMS Bisley was of no special significance. He was being delivered back to Drummond and to his home in County Cork by the most convenient route — as part of a minesweeping flotilla. Another borrowed duffel-coat, a cap picked up at Otterbourne, someone else's seaboots, his dried roll-neck sweater — Walsingham had brought McBride's jacket, but the cap had been mislaid. He was amused at his own amateurishness, and felt no superiority of function to the first lieutenant of the minesweeper,

  Gilliatt. A mild discomfort at being amongst a ship's officers and crew was always just below the surface, as if he were some sort of ignorant civilian guest — but it was a feeling that was in himself not in those around him. They accepted his uniform as proclaiming the man, and enjoyed the mystery and shadows that seemed just beyond his physical presence.

  The flotilla consisted of just seven ships, moving out of Milford Haven harbour into the sound, down towards St Anne's Head. It was a grey early morning, the sea already alien, inhospitable. One of the flotilla was having her boilers cleaned, so six ships would sweep and one would act as 'spare sweeper". McBride had no interest in their objective — the Germans might have sown a new minefield by aircraft or submarine across Swansea Bay or Cardiff docks, or at Bristol. Routine, par for the course. The two dan-laying vessels had already left port to rendezvous, presumably, at the location of the sweep.

  He smiled as he remembered Walsingham's words. The m/s davits, kites and floats on each side of the quarter deck of the Bisley had indeed informed him of the purpose of the big U-boats on Guernsey — minesweeping duties. They had been rigged out to sweep a minefield on the surface, he suspected now, carrying the sweep along behind them. He presumed it had something to do with keeping the U-boat pens along the French coast clear of the mines the Navy and Coastal Command had started laying. Its importance had already diminished, and the small mystery of their function, being solved, led him to no further interest. He was anxious now to get home.

  "Cigarette?" Gilliatt offered him a Capstan Full Strength from a battered packet. Then he and McBride lit up. McBride sensed the proprietorial affection the lieutenant felt for the bridge, now that the captain had left it and gone below to his cabin. Gilliatt was to join him when the flotilla had passed St Anne's Head and turned away to starboard. McBride had not been invited, so he presumed it would be some kind of briefing. "On your way home, sir?" Gilliatt added casually as they stood behind the helmsman, watching St Anne's Head emerge from the early mist. Rain-squalls spattered the bridge screen. The young sub-lieutenant who was officer of the watch was in effective command of the bridge. It was therefore Gilliatt's indulgence to engage McBride in conversation.

  McBride nodded. "I am. And you — you're already home?"

  Gilliatt looked startled and very young, then he smiled. "You noticed," he said.

  "A friend told me you were once in Admiralty Intelligence?"

  "Once — a long time ago. I ran away to sea."

  McBride laughed. "I try not to stay at my desk," he said. "And, before you ask, I'm Anglo-Irish. My sainted mother, God rest her soul, was a Dublin girl, and my father worked for an English firm of paper-makers. Now, does that much careless talk cost me anything?"

  "The helmsman's a German spy — aren't you, Campbell?"

  "Sir — Glasgow branch," the helmsman replied without turning his head.

  St Anne's Head slid alongside them as they passed down the west channel. Gilliatt looked once at McBride, and nodded.

  "Excuse me, sir, the captain wants me. Good luck," he added in a quieter voice. McBride saw a moment of envy, a reassertion of satisfaction, and smiled.

  "Rather you than me," he offered, indicating the bridge of the minesweeper with a traversing gaze.

  Gilliatt went below. The curtain was across the captain's door. He knocked on the bulkhead.

  "Come in, Peter."

  Gilliatt entered. The flotilla commander, Captain James Ashe, nodded, returned his gaze immediately to the papers on his folding desk.

  "Close the door, Peter," he said. Gilliatt closed the door of the tiny, cramped cabin. "Find a seat — you may need it." Gilliatt's face retained the grin of ignorance. Ashe looked set, determined. Secretive. Gilliatt glanced at the Admiralty chart held open on the desk. A spread-legged compass lay across the St George's Channel, its dog-leg minefield marked in red — officially laid in July 1940. When Ashe picked up the compass, and tapped at the minefield, close in to the coast of Ireland, Gilliatt felt a sudden, inexplicable pluck of nervousness. He even wondered for a moment whether the presence of McBride had been somehow explained to him — then dismissed the idea.

  "Bloody minefield's only been there just over four months," Ashe grumbled, as if deploring impermanence, shoddy workmanship.

  "What is it, sir?"

  "We are on a special job, Peter. What we are going to do is to sweep a thousand-yard passage through the St George's Channel minefield — Winston's Welcome Mat, as they call it in the Admiralty."

  Gilliatt was stunned. The minefield ran in a huge dog-leg from the Eire coast to that of north Cornwall. It followed the coast from Carnsore Point south of Wexford to the Old Head of Kinsale, west of Cork, and ran along the Cornish coast from Hartland Point on the southern arm of Barnstaple Bay to Trevose Head beyond Padstow. It protected the St George's Channel, the Irish Sea, the Bristol Channel from enemy ships and submarines, and the coasts of Ireland, Wales and Cornwall and Devon from enemy invasion. It was — with the development of radar, RAF Fighter Command, British escort vessels and the American convoys — more than anything else responsible for the survival of Britain into the hard winter of 1940.

  "Sir — why?" Gilliatt waved his hands loosely, at a loss to explain the orders to himself, disqualified from comment upon them.

  "Ah, I presume their Lordships felt called upon to give a reason — in case we refused to carry out the order on the grounds of its insanity!" Ashe could not quite conceal his sense of satisfaction at being privy, as a mere flotilla commander, to Admiralty thinking and strategy. "They're not ready to let the German Navy come sailing up the Bristol Channel—" His laughter barked like a gruff hound in his throat.

  "Thank God fo
r that," Gilliatt breathed, staring at the red-marked minefield lying across the chart like a peppering of attendance marks on a school register.

  "A convoy is on its way from Halifax—" Gilliatt looked up. "Nothing special — except for the fact that it's three big merchantmen and a single cruiser escort. Its route is special — it's ignoring the North Channel and the Irish Sea and coming by the southern route — the one we'll open for it."

  "What—?"

  "It's the loss of ships — over a hundred last month—" Again, Gilliatt appeared stunned, and a shadow passed across his features, an uneasiness as if ground beneath his feet had become treacherous marsh.

  "That many?"

  "That many — and more expected this month. By January, I don't think we could go on." Ashe's face was stiff with feeling, each line carved. This was a conclusion of his own, rather than something he had been told. Gilliatt realized that his captain had been shunted out of his natural habitat into a place which reeked of power, and of impotence and despair. He shuddered, because in Ashe's face he could see the Admiralty staring out. "Certainly February — more U-boats all the time, whole packs of them waiting out in the Atlantic, clustering round the coast of Ulster, as the convoys funnel into the North Channel — hopeless."

  "And — this is the answer"?"

  "They hope so — it's an experiment, a new operation on a dying patient, Peter. A narrow passage, marked, through Winston's Welcome Mat for a few ships sailing line astern — they'll have run a fast zig-zag across the Atlantic, slip through as near the coast of Ireland as they dare, into Swansea, Cardiff or Bristol."

  "Can it be done?"

  "Dammit, it's got to be done. If it works, then it can work again and again."

  "Until the Germans get wind of it, catch on—"