Emerald Decision

by Craig Thomas

  "Get in," he said to Gilliatt, and the engine fired as he wired the ignition. Then the torches and the single searchlight came on, flooding the yard, picking out the van and McBride in a cold clear light.

  All McBride could think of was that he hadn't heard the truck arrive, that its noise had been shielded from them by the cottage and by the shooting. He hadn't heard the truck with the mobile searchlight—

  Then the voice, speaking in German through the megaphone.

  October 198-

  McBride stared into the box-file labelled MILFORD HAVEN, and his hands hovered over the mass of material it contained. Yesterday had brought nothing of any significance, and he was almost superstitious now about beginning again. If he touched it in the same way, in a different way—

  The papers were cards. He needed to be dealt another hand. He discarded immediately the material he had checked the day before, lifting it out in the solid wedge he had held together with an elastic band, putting it aside. Outside, rain ran down the window of the reading room, and he felt cold. The small electric fire did not work.

  He flicked through the uppermost scraps of paper, discarding everything dated later than January 1941. The mound of rejected paper and notebooks and official forms and dockets grew on his left, while the scratched and doodled deal table remained bare near his right hand.

  By lunchtime, he was in a fury of irritation and the first of the box-files had been re-filled and dumped on the floor by his briefcase. The second one, with an identical gummed label, was open, but he had no heart to begin it on an empty stomach and in his present defeatist mood. He had lost sight of the pattern of his researches again, and wondered whether he might not have been sidetracked once more. What could this have to do with Smaragdenhakkette, linked as it was only by the supposition that the St George's Channel minefield would have to be breached by the Germans?

  He had no evidence of that — had he been confused by the appearance of Gilliatt's name, by his father's shadowy proximity to events? He wasn't sure any longer.

  The seedy pub he found was unprepossessing, but he didn't want to walk any more in the rain and opened the door to the Saloon Bar. One or two faces looked up at him, a blowsy laugh faded as he was inspected by the landlady, and he saw in one corner, by the fireplace where a tiny fire clung to life, the male clerk from the records repository. Wispy greying hair damply wiped over a bald head, dentures making much of a cheese roll. A half-pint of beer in front of him on the table. He seemed to plead silently to be joined by McBride. And McBride was aware of the style and cost of his raincoat and slacks, and the red sweater he was wearing — and the wallet he took from his back pocket. He might have stepped back into an earlier time through the door of the bar.

  "Beer," he said. "And the same for my friend—" He indicated the clerk — Mr Hoskins, was it? He'd been introduced. The landlady nodded, pulled at the lever on the bar. The beer swished into a glass with a chip in it.

  "Haven't had many of your lot down this way since the war," the landlady observed. "Lot of "em here then, eh, Bert?" She addressed the last remark to a shrivelled man sitting at the far end of the cramped bar, reading Sporting Life. He merely tossed his head. The landlady's fonder memories of the Americans remained unshared. "He didn't like "em," she confided. "Always got on well with "em meself," she added with a wink, her preening of herself rusty, almost grotesque. McBride smiled. "I'm glad," he said. He picked up the beer. "Have you anything to eat?"

  "A pie, maybe." Even the woman looked dubious. Bert snorted in his beer.

  "Potato chips — sorry, crisps?" The landlady nodded, visibly brightening. "Two bags."

  He carried the beer over to Hoskins" table, who finished his own half-pint quickly and sipped at the new glass after raising it to McBride's health.

  "She makes my cheese roll for me," he observed. "Special order. I have to bring my own fruit." He brought an orange from a coat pocket, and proceeded to peel it. The imagined mingled flavours of beer and orange upset McBride's palate as he opened the bag of crisps. He smiled tentatively at Hoskins, his thoughts reaching back to the second MILFORD HAVEN/DMS box-file and the hours he would have to spend sifting through its disorganized, patchwork image of minesweeping operations. Even records of disciplinary action taken against drunken sailors—

  He tossed his head. Hoskins looked at him questioningly.

  "Professor? Something the matter?" He sucked on a segment of the orange. The weak fire was still too warm for McBride, and he slipped his arms out of his raincoat. Hoskins studied the coat with unmasked envy.

  "No. Just routine, is all. Dull, mm?"

  "Fascinating, some of that material, Professor. What is it you're looking for, by the way?" His face was ingenuous, grateful for conversation.

  "Oh, this and that."

  "Minesweeping, eh?"

  "That and other things."

  "November 1940, I gather, from some of the files you've requested?"

  "Yes—" McBride hid his hesitancy behind his glass, sipping at the cold thin beer.

  "Ah — merchant navy myself, during the war, that is."

  "I see."

  "Atlantic convoys."

  "You've worked here a long time, Mr Hoskins?"

  "Just over a year, Professor. Used to work at the Admiralty itself, but I'm just about to retire. Easy job. I was only a boy when I did my first convoy, in 1940." He smiled mysteriously. "We had shoreleave in New York before we set out—" He was being deliberately mysterious. "Three ships and a cruiser escort. Special fast run, going by the southern route round Ireland—"

  McBride hardly heard him.

  "Sure," he said. Hoskins seemed about to repeat himself, then took a pocket-watch from his waistcoat and consulted it. "Must get back, late already. See you later, Professor."

  Hoskins went out swiftly, pressing his trilby firmly down on his head, putting up his umbrella almost before he was through the door.

  McBride sat until he had finished both packets of crisps and his beer, and only as he got up to leave did Hoskins" last words register. And they puzzled him. But he couldn't remember the date that Hoskins had supplied, and he rejected the coincidence. The file loomed more distinctly in his imagination, and he tried to work up some enthusiasm for his task as he walked back to the repository, its parking area still marked out as a netball court.

  November 1940

  McBride slammed down the bonnet of the van, and moved to the door. Gilliatt was in the passenger seat, immobile and blinded by the light. McBride slipped the.38 № 2 revolver from beneath his jacket then turned on his heel, arm out straight like a duellist, and fired twice. Glass shattered, tinkled in the sudden darkness over by the silhouette of the truck.

  McBride clambered into the driving seat, revved the engine wildly, and let off the handbrake. The Citroen heaved off the mark, careering as McBride swung the wheel.

  "Get down, get down!" he yelled at Gilliatt, immobile as a stunned animal in the seat next to him.

  An instant later, the windscreen shattered and emptied its fragments over the shoulder and back of Gilliatt's jacket as he crouched, head covered by his arms, below the dashboard. McBride swung the wheel again, hearing the thud and tear of heavy bullets along the offside flank of the van. He was in darkness, but he knew the direction of the barn and the narrow passage between it and the cottage.

  A grey shape loomed, bounced off the offside wheel arch, and McBride spun the wheel again, feeling the rear wheels bite on some lump beneath them, then rush free, skidding hideously.

  "What's happening?" Gilliatt yelled.

  The van's nearside struck the wooden wall of the barn, more bullets ripped through the rear doors, angling out again through the driver's side above McBride's head — tyres still good, he thought, swinging the wheel, tearing off the nearside running-board, the van sliding with a groaning wobble into the narrow space. Starlight, then blackness, a heavy thump, a scream, and something rolling wildly across the roof over McBride's head and sliding off behind
the van. More bullets, and one of the double doors at the back of the van began flapping open, magnifying the shouts, the noise of engines behind them, the shots. McBride punched out the remainder of the windscreen, cutting his hand, cursing and elated.

  The Citroen lurched lamely out of the narrow gap between cottage and barn, engine screeching, wheels gripping the gravel of the track to the road.

  "Christ, what's happening!"

  "Don't worry, Peter, we're on our way!" McBride shouted, almost gaily. Lights dazzled in the rear-view mirror for a moment, then he had turned onto the road. The village lay ahead, a few poor lights defying the black-out. He pressed the accelerator, demanding more from the protesting engine. "Don't worry — you all right?"

  Gilliatt climbed awkwardly up out of the footwell, very carefully brushed glass from the seat, and slumped next to McBride as he was overbalanced by the van's cornering speed.

  "You're all right?"

  "Ah, hell — I'm always like this!"

  The first houses of the village. Lights behind them, spilling like ignited fuel up the road to engulf them.

  "I'll try to shut the doors," Gilliatt grinned. He accepted the adrenalin madness, felt it coursing through him like a transfusion from the Irishman. It wasn't a sane world any longer. "Try not to shoot me out onto the road, there's a good chap."

  McBride looked at him, then nodded, sensing a transformation in Gilliatt. He might now run almost as far, almost as fast as himself.

  "Hurry back, I need a navigator."

  The Citroen slowed slightly until McBride heard the doors slam, the road noise diminishing in his ears, then he accelerated again as Gilliatt clambered back over the seat. The map was in his hand. He flicked on a small torch.

  "They'll know we're heading for Brest," Gilliatt observed.

  "Sure they will. How did they know we were there — did they follow us, or were they told?"

  "Told? Left here!"

  The van swerved noisily, bumping into a lane overhung with leafless trees, rutted and puddled. McBride gripped the wheel like a rally driver, stiff-armed, ready to wrestle with its vagaries. "I don't know what I mean, either!" The noises in the van sounded as if it was tearing itself to pieces. "Hold on, you brave tyres!" he yelled, surrendering to Gilliatt's navigation and to the stupid, senseless excitement of the chase. Lights in the mirror, dipping and swinging into the lane. McBride felt the van lurch against the bank, tear at roots and earth, then pull free.

  "Another turn on the right, in maybe fifty — there it is!"

  McBride heaved on the wheel, the van slid in the opposite direction like an unwilling animal. McBride spun the wheel, evening out the skid, then he stamped on the accelerator as he met the slope of the new track and the Citroen almost refused.

  "All I know, Peter, is that they get closer to me every time I come for a visit — and they're not that clever!" Gilliatt listened but kept his eyes on the map. "But, what the hell! They must have heard the Wellington, wondered about it, then found Hoffer and put two and two—"

  The Citroen bounced off a low wall surrounding an isolated church. Gilliatt saw McBride cross himself with one hand, steering with the other, the grin never disappearing for a moment from his lips. Then they were over a rise, swinging down. McBride switched on the headlights for a moment to orient himself, then doused them again. He turned left into thicker trees that had thrown back the headlight beams in twisted, skeletal whiteness. McBride then drove totally on reaction, concentrating grimly, swerving innumerable times, hitting the boles of trees glancing blows twice, stalling the engine once, skidding frequently.

  Then they were out of the trees.

  "Nearest track?" he snapped.

  "Keep ahead. We may have to open a gate or two, but eventually we'll find the road!"

  McBride looked at him, and winked.

  "That we will — we will." He laughed.

  Behind them, the first of the pursuing vehicles, an open Einheits-programme VW Type 82, entered the trees, headlights on full, followed more cautiously by an Opel Blitz three-ton truck with a platoon aboard and the dead, glassless searchlight for which there were no spare bulbs. They were a little more than a quarter of a mile behind the Citroen van, fifteen kilometres from the outskirts of Brest.

  October 198-

  He'd found two items by the time the records office was due to close, and he was tempted to take them with him, knowing they would be unlikely to be missed, perhaps for years. The first was a notification from the Admiralty that Lieutenant Gilliatt had been temporarily reassigned to shore duties, and that his replacement, Sub-Lieutenant Thomas, would be arriving in forty-eight hours. There were no other details. He could not find a later reassignment of Gilliatt to the Bisley, or any ship at Milford Haven.

  The second item was the deposition of a Leading Seaman Campbell who was charged with being drunk and disorderly while on shore leave from Bisley in Milford Haven. He was also accused of discussing, in a manner prejudicial to security and the safety of his ship, the sweep from which Bisley had just returned. After three days on board twiddling his thumbs, Campbell explained that he was disgruntled and resentful, but had not intended to breach the strict security under which he had carried out his recent duties. He claimed to be unaware of the level of security.

  He referred, in his deposition, to the breach that had been found in Winnie's Welcome Mat — McBride had been puzzled by the soubriquet until Campbell had referred to it more properly later in his statement. And then he had indulged his delight. A German sweep of the minefield, recently carried out, running north-south between Ireland and France.

  McBride, the evening closing in, cloudy and rain-threatening outside the windows, the unshaded lamp throwing a hard, dusty light on the papers and the table, wanted to leave at once, be with Claire as his just reward for successful industry. Evidence of Emerald Necklace — he could open up the whole can of worms with it. He looked around him, and swiftly pocketed the deposition, then closed the file. Hoskins could return it. Hoskins, something about Hoskins—

  He grinned. He was seeing links everywhere. It was a popular history, a best-seller he was writing, not the scheme of some mystic philosophy. He laughed, picked up his briefcase, and left.

  Outside, Hoskins was watching for him. When McBride headed for the station at London Fields and disappeared from sight in the rainy evening, Hoskins entered the telephone booth beside which he had been sheltering. He arranged his ten pence pieces on the directory, wrinkled his nose at the graffiti scrawled on the small mirror in felt pen, and dialled a number. The hotel switchboard put him through to the room he requested.

  "Yes?" It was Goessler.

  "He's found something — probably Campbell's deposition, or something like it. Pleased as Punch, he is."

  "Good. You've made an approach?"

  "Yes. He didn't seem to hear me, though."

  "Never mind. Tomorrow will do, Hoskins. Tell him in plainer terms, eh?" Goessler laughed. "Well done, Hoskins. Report on any further progress at the same time tomorrow."

  The connection was broken. The telephone purred in Hoskins" ear, and despite his umbrella and trilby, a thin dribble of water which must have lodged in his hair ran down his collar, much to his annoyance.

  November 1940

  Gilliatt was dog-tired, the adrenalin having seemingly vanished from his bloodstream, taking energy, willpower, consciousness with it. He watched the map, in the mesmeric pool of torchlight, move in and out of focus, taunting his eyes. Villages, hamlets, no more than spots in front of his eyes—

  He rubbed his eyes.

  "You OK?"

  "Mm, what? Oh, sure," Gilliatt replied, stretching his eyes, stifling a yawn. McBride smiled at him. They had crossed the river Penfeld north of Brest half an hour earlier. It was four in the morning and his own energy reserves seemed dangerously consumed. The weaving, backtracking course he had almost whimsically followed for two hours had thrown off all pursuit — they'd hidden in a stand of trees while their immediat
e pursuers had flashed by, headlights ablaze, the steel helmets of the platoon in the back of the Opel truck clearly visible. Then, back roads, tracks, lanes, moving north for some time away from Brest and any search or road-blocks, then cutting west. Now, McBride estimated they were no more than a few kilometres north of the fishing village of Ste Anne-du-Portzic, where Lampau's relative, a fisherman, lived. It was time to abandon the van. Gilliatt looked all but finished, out on his feet. But McBride was satisfied with his companion, and this caused him to nudge the other man's arm, and grin.

  "Come on, Christopher Robin, almost time for bed."

  Gilliatt smiled tiredly. "Where are we?"

  "On a very minor road — why am I telling you, you've got the map?" McBride laughed. "Marshy country. We get rid of the van here."

  Gilliatt concentrated afresh on the map. "We're some where off the D105, I think." McBride's finger tapped at the map on Gilliatt's knee.

  "Just there."

  He jolted the van on down the narrow, hedged track for a time, then slowed and tugged on the handbrake. The hedge had given way to open, dyke-like country, almost Dutch. The track was slightly above the level of the fields. McBride got out of the van, and was chilled immediately by the cold, searching wind. Dead reeds rattled eerily below the road. Gilliatt joined him, rubbing his hands together.

  "Great country."

  "For us, yes. Just tip the old wagon over the side of the road — have to use the headlights for a bit. Shame, that—"

  They got back in the van, and McBride switched on the lights. A pale wash of light showed dead reeds, a few spindly trees lining the road at intervals, and the flat marshland smoothly sliding away into darkness. In another minute, McBride stopped again, the van turned so that its nose was at the edge of the road. Below the lights were reeds and bushes, and a dull gleam of water.

  "Right, over the side with the old lady."

  They got behind the van, and heaved against it. Slowly, with a dignified reluctance, the Citroen toppled nose first down the embankment, tearing through the bushes and reeds, splashing into the water, then settling. McBride shone a torch down the embankment. The Citroen seemed impossibly small, toy-like. It was half-concealed by the bushes, and buried up to the windscreen in marshy water.