Emerald Decision

by Craig Thomas

  "Just some cosmetic work, I think," McBride murmured. "You stay here."

  McBride eased himself down the embankment until he could rest his weight against the branch of a bush. Then, removing his clasp-knife from his pocket, he proceeded to cut handfuls of reeds, and scatter them across the rear of the Citroen which now pointed up the embankment. Then he broke a large overhanging branch of the bush, pulling at it until it also helped to conceal the van. Breathing heavily, he clambered back to join Gilliatt.

  "Will that do?"

  "Have to. Probably no one but a local would find it anyway. And in twenty-four hours, we should be well on our way. Either that, or the discovery of the van won't matter all that much. Come on, we've got a nice walk before you climb into your own little bed again." McBride laughed, thumping Gilliatt on the back.

  "Proper caution you are," Gilliatt said in stage-Cockney.

  "I am that. You have to admit, with me there's never a dull moment, eh?"

  "Too many dull moments would finish you off, would they?"

  The wind whistled across the marsh, the reeds argued volubly in the silence before McBride answered.

  "That question might be a little too close to the mark, Peter. I think we'll pass on that one, eh?" He increased his pace. "Come on, otherwise we'll have the local cowmen out for early milking and wondering who we are!"

  Gilliatt trotted to catch up with him.

  October 198-

  McBride was having a shower, whistling tunelessly and happily to himself. Claire Drummond could hear him through the open door between their rooms as she liberally applied talcum powder to herself after her bath. Her hair was tied up with a ribbon, her face devoid of make-up. Her high cheekbones and slanting eyes seemed peculiarly suited to her look of concentration and suppressed anger. Her pale skin was further whitened by powder. She looked, even to herself, curiously dead, marbled, in the dressing-table mirror. She slipped on her robe, feeling suddenly cold. The sexual bout with McBride after he had shown her what he had filched from Hackney had taken a tiring, wearing concentration to achieve the calculated, simulated abandon which seemed required. McBride's rutting was thoughtless, self-satisfied, and he had noticed no reluctance — she was cautiously certain of that.

  But, she wanted to talk to Moynihan, now before they went out to dinner. It was obviously of importance in Goessler's scheme that this minefield business be exposed — or McBride was on the wrong trail altogether. If he was, then they were all wasting their time and Moynihan would have to make demands of Goessler, get out of him the stuff that would dynamite the meetings between Dublin and London.

  It didn't seem like much, a drunken Scotsman's deposition before a disciplinary hearing, but that was their trouble — they didn't know what was important and what was not. Goessler had offered them a scheme he said was foolproof, had been more than a year in the making, and could not fail. They'd been greedy for it on both sides of the border, especially when Guthrie was the big prize. Guthrie was a winner, and he had to go — especially now, when he looked like keeping Dublin in that bloody Anglo-Irish Agreement. That had to be stopped.

  She plucked the receiver off the rest as McBride went into an off-key version of a Neil Diamond song. She hesitated, listening, then dialled rapidly, tugging the cord she held in her left hand in time to each ring of the receiver at the other end. Seven, eight, nine — she was about to put it down when Moynihan answered.

  "Listen, I haven't much time. He's found something that might or might not be important. Has it anything to do with a minefield, for God's sake?"

  "Minefield? Goessler just called me, told me everything was satisfactory, fat bastard—"

  "Never mind that!" she whispered fiercely. "Listen. The Germans opened a channel through the British minefield in November 1940 — it must have something to do with the invasion plan. Where does that put us?" There was an exclusive, secretive emphasis on the last word.

  "Christ, Claire, I don't know—"

  "We have to get one up on Goessler. We can't afford for McBride to be following the wrong scent, that bloody bastard Guthrie has everyone dancing to his tune—!" She realized her hoarse, fierce whisper had grown louder, more intense, and glanced at the open door, paused to listen to McBride's whistling. Beethoven now. McBride the musical eclectic—

  "What do you want me to do?" Moynihan was resignedly subordinate.

  "How does Goessler know what McBride is doing? He must have someone inside—"

  "Could be."

  "Find out, then. For God's sake, Sean, go over there tomorrow and find out how Goessler is keeping his eye on McBride—" And then McBride was standing in the doorway, towelling his hair, another big towel draped round him. He was grinning perplexedly. That's right, McBride — eight-thirty. Thank you." She turned to him. "The restaurant — I was just checking the reservation," she explained.

  He crossed to her, kissed her. She eased her lips into softness, responsiveness, as their mouths met.

  "You'll have to learn, my darling, that I can organize dinner, if we're going anywhere with this affair—" The statement became almost a question. She kissed him again, moving her open mouth against his. His hand slipped inside her robe, kneading her breast.

  She laughed, pushed him playfully away. "I'm hungry."

  "Not as hungry as I am," he said with evident meaning, looking for something in her face, her eyes. She blenched inwardly at the intensity of his gaze. Then, even as she smiled, she dismissed him, removed him to a distance in her imagination where he was merely the instrument of her purpose.

  Sir Charles Walsingham was studying papers at home. He was seated on a green-covered sofa, legs crossed, malt whisky at his elbow on a leather-inset table, subdued lighting from the standard lamps and the wall-lighting falling yellowly on the material on his lap. The hands which sifted the reports and transcripts seemed little to do with him, operating robotically. The big room, richly carpeted, elegantly appointed — Walsingham had inherited the bulk of his mother's estate some years before, and purchased the lease of this flat and a country cottage — was close as a bandage around him. He felt a pressure round his temple like the onset of a migraine. He knew that unless he drank a great deal more of the Glenmorangie he would not sleep much.

  McBride had worked first from the German end, turning up clues in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz — so said the rushed report of an SIS agent in West Germany, via a contact in the BfV. The head of the intelligence branch of the British security machine had agreed to carry out the investigation for Walsingham without question. He would expect the same co-operation from the DS, counter-intelligence. Unlike many former heads of the two branches of the service, Walsingham worked smoothly and closely with his opposite number.

  Then McBride had come to England, to find that Gilliatt had died of a heart attack — no doubt about that, apparently, from the report of one of his own men who had interviewed the doctor who had signed the death certificate. Then to Ireland, and Drummond—

  Walsingham shifted his body on the sofa in discomfoit. McBride was homing like an arrow. What had he been doing in East Berlin, whom had he met, what discovered? That report would take a lot longer to prepare, and might never be satisfactory, though SIS were attempting the task.

  Drummond sent him back to England with the daughter, who once — falsely? — had some connection with known IRA men. Another Dugdale, they'd thought, but not so, Irish Special Branch had confirmed a couple of years before. Drummond had refused to amplify his telephone call, claiming when interviewed that morning by a Special Branch man from London that he merely wished Walsingham — who had been concerned in the Emerald affair — to know that McBride was digging into a past that might "create certain local difficulties".

  And McBride was now at Admiralty Records, Hackney; and had been reading the MILFORD HAVEN/DMS files. Close, but how close?

  Walsingham went on sitting, sipping his whisky, and staring at the papers in front of him. He arrived at his decision close to midnight. He
had not spoken to Guthrie as yet, reversing his decision of the previous day. He would again postpone that conversation. Instead, clumsy and obvious though it was, he would remove temptation from McBride.

  He got up heavily and crossed to the telephone. He dialled the number of the duty operations room in Curzon Street House, and spoke to Clarke, the Surveillance Director.

  "John — the McBride matter. I want the records removed from Hackney tonight, and McBride's notebooks must be recovered. And I want McBride watched from now on. All contacts, everything." He paused while Clarke suggested the operatives he would deploy. "Good. Oh, and the East Germans. I want to know whether there are any unaccounted for, or who've just moved onto the patch. No, I don't think anything, but I want to be sure. Oh, and watch the girl, too — just in case."

  He stood by the telephone for some moments after ending the call, remembering his one trip on a submarine, to pick up McBride's father and Gilliatt off Brest. A nasty business. He was going to wipe all trace of Emerald from the records, for the second time. He felt as if he were wiping out McBride — dear Michael — betraying the best field-agent he had ever known and one of his few friends.

  But, better that than what he might have to do to the son if he went on with it, turned up some of the real dirt. That he could hardly bear to consider, even though it was there at the back of his mind, waiting for a summons to the fore-brain. He had hated sending the father to Brest, dangerously underbriefed and underprotected, but the son—

  Let him stop, he told himself almost in a prayer. Let Michael's son stop now.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ministerial Responsibility

  October 198-

  Professor Thomas Sean McBride of the University of Oregon in Portland walked through the communicating door between his hotel room and that of Claire Drummond, where they had spent the night, and created for himself the conceit that he was moving between the sensual and the intellectual life. His nakedness prevented him from sustaining or elaborating the image.

  His notebooks were missing. He had tidied them the previous night, before making love and after returning from the restaurant — he had dwelt on them for a few moments of self-satisfaction, a vicarious and cerebral excitement deliberately indulged. Now, realization spread through his frame as slowly as that excitement had done. Passion was a sharp, shuddering, instantaneous reaction of skin and muscle to Claire's lightly brushing fingertips. This was different, but he began to shake with it, with anger and fear. Then he moved to the wardrobe, and found that the deposition of Campbell had been taken from his wallet. He tugged open his briefcase, and found it empty of the photocopying done in Berlin and Koblenz, the notes he had made of his interviews with Menschler and Kohl.

  Furiously, hands almost out of his control, he switched on his cassette recorder. A hiss of empty tape. He played back, and again the hiss of a clean tape. His prognostications of the previous evening had been removed. Every particle of evidence concerning Smaragdenhalskette and the minefield and the German invasion of Ireland had been stolen.

  Why?

  He was still shaking, as if cold water poured from some shower-rose just above his head. He could not stop asking the question, again and again, and being frightened of the answer. He kept looking back at the communicating door as if Claire, still sleeping, might have an answer or might provide something to take away the subtly, insidiously growing sense of insecurity. Corridors, silent reading rooms, dusty files, unshaded cellar lights, small, insignificant librarians and clerks, shadows — all now possessed a patina of menace. He had been watched, followed, robbed—

  Of something that had happened over forty years ago, and could have little significance for anyone except a popular historian with an eye on the New York Times bestseller lists.

  And then he was angry, very angry. They'd stolen a million dollars, maybe more. Hackney. The evidence still at Hackney — maybe more of it, waiting. He'd steal it this time.

  Who? Why?

  The questions now became tossed and overturned by his rising anger. Someone was trying to screw him. Some bastard. Hackney.

  * * *

  "I'm sorry, Professor, those files have been requisitioned for reclassification." The naval officer with the damaged leg and the sour disposition seemed to take pleasure from McBride's shock and surprise.

  "What in hell?"

  "Sorry, Professor. Collected this morning by Admiralty messenger. They might end up at Kew, if you'd like to wait ten or twenty years."

  "They've been transferred somewhere else, right?"

  "Sorry, Professor. Reclassified." He leaned confidentially over his desk. "You weren't working on anything sensitive, were you, Professor?"

  "Sensitive — no. Forty years old, dead as the dodo. Look, you're sure about this, uh?" McBride's anger was still there — he'd nursed it on the train like a secret passion for an unattainable woman — but he was winded now, confused and again the fear was bubbling under his heart, acid and sharp. Official interference, he kept repeating to himself in a bemused, unenlightened way.

  "Sorry, Professor. I know it's annoying for you, but they treat us here as nothing more than clerks." His thin face twisted, it seemed, from hair to chin to adopt the bitter line of his lips. "Stuff lies here for years, collecting dust — when it's being of use at last, or we're just about to get round to refiling and properly documenting, they come and remove it." McBride saw that he presumed the sudden requisition to be a comment on the running of the records repository and nothing more. A creeping, invidious sense of danger gradually assailed McBride as he sat in the man's office, the electric fire which warmed it seeming not to radiate in his direction. He felt alone, cut off by thick, almost soundproof glass from the other man.

  "I see — they do it often, then?" A straw. The navy man, usually insensitive to any but his own responses, was puzzled by the thick, clogged voice that issued from McBride. McBride looked pale, too—

  "You all right, Professor?"

  McBride nodded. "Yes, yes I'm OK. Just — infuriating, them taking all the stuff away just when I was working on it." He stood up. "Well, I guess you can't do anything, neither can I. I'll keep on looking—"

  "If you could tell us what you want—"

  McBride shook his head. "I'll know it when I see it. Thanks."

  When he was back in the cold staff room that was now a reading room, he could no longer control the shake that had developed like a palsy in his hands and spread through his frame. He felt very cold, and very, very alone. He clasped his hands together, to still them, but his body went on shivering beneath his topcoat. He sat down, cold perspiration down his back when he felt his shirt pressed against him by the chair, and cold patches under his arms. He rubbed his face with his hands.

  Everything was gone. Someone wanted to stop him, right there. Someone with official contacts, official powers. That was it. There was something he shouldn't find. The past had to stay underground, nice and buried like radioactivity. Who was going to get burned if he dug it up — apart from himself?

  For a long time he sat there unmoving, his body gradually growing warmer, the shaking subsiding. And, as with a storm that has passed, there was damage and the topography of his mind and body was not quite the same, but the violence of the storm itself could no longer impinge so forcibly. The weak sun of his curiosity came out from the clouds. He wanted to know what there was to know. He wanted to know what might be left here in Hackney, overlooked in the rush to remove the evidence.

  He didn't know where the bodies were buried, but he knew they hadn't died by accident. The epithet amused, calmed him. The sense of menace began to evaporate like floodwater.

  Walsingham indicated McBride's notebooks and papers with his hand. Exton, his senior aide in the Executive Branch of MI5, adopted a more attentive look and sat slightly straighter in his chair in Walsingham's office.

  "He was close, Exton, very close." Exton nodded, as if silence was all that was required. "These German papers and interviews on
the one side, then our own records. He had most of it—" Exton tried to look interested, but the old man had not put him fully in the picture, just issued orders to Clarke the previous night and had the stuff delivered direct to him. Exton, the perfect functionary, was not insulted or offended by the lack of a briefing or Walsingham's failure to consult him before they lifted this American's notebooks and raided the dust-heap at Hackney, but neither could he take the matter seriously. Which, he supposed, was what came of being only ten when the war ended. 1940 was the year he was five, and not significant for much other than that fact.

  "Sir," he murmured.

  Walsingham always treated Exton, whom he disliked, with excessive formality. Noting the stiffly returned politesse now, he remembered Michael McBride, and a spasm passed across his mouth, lifting one corner into a crooked, ironical smile. Exton was puzzled.

  "Exton, I want this German historian, Goessler, checked out. And all the other names in his notebooks. And I want Hackney gone over with a fine-tooth comb after he's got tired of mooching around there. This isn't going to happen again. And, while you're at it, get rid of all references to Guthrie in anything connected with 1940."

  Exton nodded, and stood up. "I'll get straight on with it."

  "Take this stuff with you— have it all broken down and properly sifted. Then, start daily reports on McBride, direct to me."

  When Exton had gone, Walsingham kept repeating to himself a single phrase, much as if he might have been invoking some god or protective spirit. A dose-run thing. Eventually, he was able to smile, with relief.

  November 1940

  The fishing smack owned by Jean Perros and his sons put out from Ste Anne-du-Portzic in a sudden and unexpected snowstorm, and on an incoming tide. McBride and Gilliatt, dressed in blue jerseys and oilskins, assiduously checked the nets and gear with Perros's two sons, Jean-Marie and Claude. The wind-driven sleet half-obscured the shoreline and the straggling suburb that joined Brest to the fishing village. To the east, they could not see — yet — the long, low, grey line that marked the harbour wall of Lanilon where the Germans had constructed their submarine pens.