by Craig Thomas
She nodded. "Good," she answered abstractedly. "Good."
* * *
Captain Brooks Gillis, USN, the Naval Attache at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, was mildly puzzled by the historian, Thomas McBride, who had made and kept an appointment to consult him on some matters of naval history. McBride, seated facing the light through the open Venetian blinds, appeared intense, tightly within himself as if afraid of spilling some secret from his pockets, but capable of being reduced in importance by the fact that he was an academic. Gillis had done his share of lecturing, and he felt he understood the American academic, the almost Wall Street hustling, the secretiveness applied to academic papers and researches that would not have been out of place in Standard Oil or the CIA. However, he had an easy day before a cocktail party for a Russian trade delegation at the embassy, where he would fulfill his function of psyching out any possible recruits for the Company, and so he did not resent giving his time to McBride.
"1940?" he said, standing at the window, half his attention on Blackburnes Mews below him. A girl got out of a Ferrari, and he studied her with the detachment of a connoisseur. The fur coat was a little ostentatious on a fine October day, but striking nonetheless. He wished his father, who'd seen action in the Pacific and the North Atlantic in that long-ago war, had been there with McBride. The old man would have loosened his tongue, and they'd have been rolling all night. The girl disappeared into Upper Grosvenor Street. "A long time ago, Professor. How can I help?"
"British records are very sketchy for the period, and very disorganized." Gillis smiled at the attempt to ingratiate. "I thought you might have access to records of convoys that sailed during November of that year. Just the sailing dates and arrival dates in this country would be enough for the moment."
Gillis turned to him. He preferred American cars, American girls. That one had looked Arabic, maybe. "I guess there are records — maybe even here." He smiled. He'd had one of his junior staff hunt them down. A lot of the records from Eisenhower's headquarters across at no. 20 on the square had been dumped in the cellars of the embassy after it was completed in 1960. A lot of it had never got passage across to the States and lay still mouldering down there. Andrews had got dirty, but he seemed to have had fun.
"Have you had a chance to check—" McBride let the question hang.
"This is just local colour, right?" Gillis asked sharply. McBride appeared confused, impatient even, then nodded. "OK — we'll get credit, naturally?" Again, McBride nodded. "Man, but there's some stuff down there. Eisenhower had as much material as he could stored in his headquarters after 1943. Maybe he was going to write a book?" He grinned. "All the paperwork from the clearing-houses, a lot of OSS stuff, early intelligence reports, you know the kind of thing." He paused. "I had one of my men go over some of the material after you called. I'll have him bring it in." McBride's eyes blazed. Gillis spoke into the intercom, and a navy lieutenant came in, deposited some still grimy files on the desk, and left.
Gillis saw McBride's anxiety, and dismissed it as merely professional. He had a dismissive respect for college teachers, and an anxiety to be an intelligent man of action. He considered himself superior to most of the graduate kids the CIA sent to liaise with him in London, and disliked the new rapprochement with the CIA embarked upon by the Office of Navy Intelligence.
"I have to stay here, naturally," he said, "and you can't take any of this away. But you can quote from it, take notes. Help yourself, Professor. It's called open government."
McBride shunted his chair closer to Gillis's desk, picked up the top file fastidiously as if nervous of its grime, and opened it. Gillis walked to the percolator, poured two cups of coffee and, placing one for the unnoticing McBride, returned to the window. He was never bored with his own thoughts.
McBride read through the files as swiftly as his concentration allowed, but not so quickly that Gillis would think he was searching for just one item of information. It took him an hour or more, and the coffee cooled undrunk and Gillis occasionally scratched his head or shuffled over by the window but remained silent and somehow completely composed — like machinery switched off until again required. There was some arbitrary documentation of convoys, mostly of the invoice kind for goods received. A check-list of shipping lost, more detail regarding their cargoes than their crews. He sensed Britain hanging by a thread three thousand miles long and the Germans trying to cut it in a dozen places. Especially the North Channel, around the coast of Northern Ireland. All the convoys went that way round, because of the minefield.
Eventually, he found what he was seeking. An invoice which checked off what had been lost — precise tonnages — when a three-ship convoy went down late in November, together with its cruiser escort. It was clipped to a report from the Admiralty that stated the convoy was sunk still two days out from Liverpool. At the bottom of the Admiralty note, someone with an illegible signature had scribbled "Fitzgerald lost — inform eyes only R." Roosevelt? he wondered.
"Captain Gillis?" Gillis turned slowly from the window as if coming to life.
"Yes?"
"Could you explain this?" He held out the two clipped-together sheets. He tapped the bottom of the page. Gillis mused silently.
"No. R. was the President, of course. Fitzgerald? Not a name I know. British convoy, British warship escort — no, I don't know Fitzgerald's name. Is it important?" McBride tried to appear ingenuous.
"I don't know. It's a mystery, and mysteries intrigue me. Why should someone here issue an order like that, eyes only for the President? Convoys were going down every day, and most of them were reported routinely to the Navy Department, weren't they?"
"They were. Mm. Hang on, Professor. I'll check it out." He picked up the telephone extension, and asked for a Washington number. To hide his growing excitement, McBride pretended to study the files he had earlier discarded. It was Hoskins" convoy, heading for the southern approach to Britain, through the minefield — and expecting that minefield to be swept for them. It hadn't been, and minelayers had sailed from Milford—
Gillis was talking to a friend in the Navy Department, apparently, mincing through the social niceties of silicone cocktail waitresses and the permissive London scene and families — a sudden moralistic tone invading Gillis's voice — and old times, then Gillis asked about Fitzgerald.
"Old buddy, you were hot on the period at Annapolis. Who was Fitzgerald?" He listened. McBride caught himself straining for the repJy, which was long and voluble. Then niceties again, after the explanation, then the connection severed with a chuckle by Gillis. "That guy, I could tell you—" He was struck by the intense, burning look in McBride's eyes. "I got you an answer. Boston banker thick with the President. Sent over on some fact-finding mission, maybe. Anyway, he was what they started calling a "Special Envoy" around that time." He shrugged. "Poor guy — seasick all the way, I bet, then he gets his ass blown off two days out from England."
"Yes," McBride said strangely. "Poor guy."
Minesweepers, minelayers, St George's Channel, an American envoy, a cover-up—
It had to be worth a million, maybe more. It had to be—
* * *
The man's name was Treacey. Moynihan had met him only three or four times in the last year, to receive instructions on policy initiation or to make reports on tactical progress. Treacey spent much of his time on the mainland as Operations Commandant. Ulster was not, officially, his concern or under his jurisdiction. Nevertheless, he represented Moynihan's superiors as he sat opposite him in the Bloomsbury hotel room, and Moynihan had to abide the man's anger, however much he inwardly squirmed and however unjustified he felt it to be. He concentrated on keeping his face inexpressive, neutral as Treacey's accusations stung him.
"Then Goessler had this man Hoskins killed in case you got to him — that's what you're suggesting, is it, Sean?" There was a weighted, clumsy irony, and the broad, loose face opened beneath the pudgy nose in what might have been a smile. It appeared to Moynihan as nothing
more than a vehicle of threat; Treacey's smiles always did. He nodded. "Ah, Sean, the General Staff are concerned to gain control of this business." He paused, but not for any reply. His body and face impressed a tangible weight on the much smaller-framed Moynihan. "You've done very well up to now—" There was a lightness of tone that denied the truth of the compliment, " — but you're not in control here, Goessler is. Now, we may owe Herr Goessler and the organization he represents—" Moynihan was aware once more of the affection Treacey had for his own voice, his own ideas, " — and we're grateful to him for his present scheme. But he doesn't seem to want us to get hold of it. Time is getting short, as you well know, and if anything is to be done, then it will have to be done by us. We have to know the details of Goessler's scheme and put it into action ourselves. You understand me?"
Again, Moynihan nodded, despising the dryness he felt at the back of his throat. He did not want to swallow; his prominent Adam's apple would betray him if he did so. He could not even clear his throat without an admission of subordination.
"Yes, I understand." He was grateful for the ease and volume with which the words emerged. He sat more forward in his chair, matching the hunched posture of Treacey opposite him. "I agree with you. Goessler thinks we can't handle the operation. He's going to hand us the result like a sweet for a kid!"
"The indications are that the bloody meetings next week will reach an agreement. They'll agree to go on helping the British from Dublin — time's very short. What do you intend to do?"
"Hoskins obviously gave some indication to McBride, to lead him on. McBride's next move should be to act on what he knows or suspects. We have to go on watching him—"
"That might not be enough. What about the girl?" His face twisted in mistrust and contempt. Treacey loathed the Marxism which tinged the girl's attitudes. She was, for him, little different from Goessler and the East Germans and the PLO and the Russians — anyone who helped them for their own ends. The girl was English, anyway, even if she had been born in County Cork. Privilege, education, money enough to make her comfortable. Like Dugdale, an intellectual convert, or perhaps just a fanatical dilettante. He mistrusted her anyway. She should belong to the INLA, not the Provisional, with her ideology. "What about her? She's getting into bed with McBride. What does she know about his investigations?"
"She didn't see the notebooks before they were stolen."
"And who stole them?"
"It must have been Goessler — it was Goessler. Like removing Hoskins, to drive McBride along the right path." Treacey looked doubtful, disbelieving. "I'm certain it had to be Goessler," he added hurriedly, angry with himself for showing even that much weakness.
"So you may be, Sean. I hope to God you're right. The girl had better start going everywhere with McBride, instead of spending her time in department stores. Tell her that, from the General Staff." Treacey suddenly looked as if there were others behind him, physical presences who had impressed, disturbed him. He added: "If we bomb or shoot Guthrie, then we make a martyr of him, like Neave. He's got to be disgraced. But, they're getting impatient. They've given us — you, a week and no more. Then they're threatening to pick up Goessler themselves and squeeze it out of him."
"They can't—"
"I know. They shouldn't, but they will unless there's an alternative. Which means, you've created a Frankenstein. You were responsible for the adoption of this plan of Goessler's, and now you've got them so hooked on it they can't think of anything else except running it themselves. If it doesn't work, you'll be to blame, Sean." Treacey's upper lip was damp. His own standing with the General Staff in Belfast had evidently dropped. He wasn't speaking from strength and the realization of his weakness came as no comfort to Moynihan. They were hungry for a decisive blow against the Agreement, and very afraid of the following week's meetings. They had to have results, even if they invoked the wrath of the East Germans. They evidently saw Goessler's operation as the hammer-blow, the war-winning tactic, the final solution. Moynihan was afraid.
It was evident that Treacey blamed him exactly as he would have blamed the carrier of a disease that had infected him..He said, "I — they've just got to be patient. Goessler is someone we have to trust—"
"Is he someone we can trust?"
Moynihan nodded, then opened his hands. "I think so."
"Belfast is desperate for results. The feedback is worrying them. Guthrie may well carry the day. That's why you only have a week. Get something by then."
He stood up, as if anxious now to depart. Moynihan, busy with his own thoughts, did not bother to see him out. When Treacey had gone, however, he poured himself a large whiskey, swallowing it greedily, a suppressed tremor running through his body as if he had taken some unpalatable medicine or a poison. The room depressed and diminished him. It was no scene for grand designs, for solutions to problems. He wanted to go out, walk off his mood, but decided against it.
The General Staff- Mulligan, O" Hare, Quinn, Lennon, all of them — had indeed become his Frankenstein. They'd abandoned other plans, even slowed the mainland bombing campaign, in order to adopt Goessler's scheme to ruin Guthrie. They'd taken it on trust, like greedy children a promise of cake. Taken his word, because he was convinced and his was the best tactical mind in Belfast. Now they wanted results.
He had to deliver. Inside a week. Claire Drummond had to come up with something—
He swallowed again at the whiskey, coughing on its harshness as if it did indeed contain some poison.
* * *
McBride was about to tell Claire Drummond what he had discovered at the embassy — she could see his excitement like the halo of a St Elmo's Fire, animating and enveloping his frame with electricity — when the telephone rang in his room. Her face darkened with anger.
It was Goessler.
"Professor Goessler, good to hear from you!" McBride yelled into the telephone. Bad line, he mouthed to Claire, grinning and hardly noticing how pale she had become. "Yes, I'm well, and back from Ireland safely." He chuckled at some joke of Goessler's, and Claire Drummond turned in her chair so that her back was to him. She could hardly control the tension nagging her hands and feet into helpless movement. Goessler — why?
McBride listened as Goessler launched into a long, apologetic explanation. Goessler had rung him once in Cork, to report only minimal progress in collating supporting evidence of the documents they had unearthed. No one else like Kohl had appeared. Now, he seemed to be trying to explain, with excessive bonhomie, that he had stopped working. McBride suspected a demand for a greater share of the potential profits, but he wasn't going to agree, bearing in mind what he had unearthed since leaving East Berlin. Goessler was out, except for the agreed percentage. Maybe not even that.
"You see," Goessler was explaining, 'they do not have to say why, or for what reason, my friend. All they say is, stop doing this, stop helping this man or that man, don't ask those questions. And, we agree with them. We stop."
"With who, Professor? Who are we talking about?" He had one finger in his ear to shut out all extraneous sound and was trying to hear through the excessive mush on the line. "What?"
"The police, of course. Oh, they have many names, and ranks and jobs — but, the police. You would call them the secret police."
McBride was puzzled rather than chilled, not taking Goessler more seriously at first than as another historian prying into his researches; then he went cold, and the missing files and then the pillow shutting out Hoskins" face were omnipresent.
"Why — why would they be interested, Professor?"
"Oh, they're not interested, my friend, not in your researches. It's me they keep an eye on. Too many contacts with Westerners, and they suspect my motives. Don't worry — I am ringing only to apologize for not being able to continue our work. A lengthy pause, into which it seemed McBride was to pour some unobtrusive but satisfying balm.
"Our arrangement stands, Professor," he said finally. Goessler's relief was almost audible.
"I kn
ew I could rely upon you, my friend. Good luck with your work."
And then the connection was cut with chilling suddenness. McBride put down the receiver slowly.
"What is it?" Claire asked.
"Mm? Oh, Goessler's backing out — some trouble with the police, or something."
"Hag-ridden with police, those eastern European countries," she observed, seemingly indifferent. "Neurotic about contact with the West. Do you need him?"
"He could have been useful — but, no, I don't need him now." He smiled. Her answering smile invited confidentiality, and he seemed to see her more seriously. She could help him. He put aside the reluctance that bubbled up, and sat down next to her. Quickly, he told her what
Gillis had found, and the explanation. Then he back-tracked, beginning with Menschler — she'd heard some of it before, but he pedantically ignored the state of her knowledge, as if a confessional necessity had overcome all reluctance — going on to her father, to Hackney and Hoskins.
When he had finished, he appeared drained. She poured him a drink, aware again of the fine net of nerves lying just below her skin and which threatened to betray her excitement, her weakness in the grip of personal and ideological passions. McBride had been pointed ahead by Goessler's withdrawal, prompted into quicker, more intense enquiry by an increased sense of being alone. Venal motive, but appealing to the ego, too. Goessler was a clever man. She handed McBride the drink, and he took it with a smile as he might have done from a wife. She had succeeded. She was now the ally, the amanuensis.
"Trinity House," she said firmly.
"What?"
"Merchant Navy records in Trinity House. You could check there on this convoy, and whether Hoskins served on one of the ships. If he survived, then—"
"You're right!" He was animated again, and proud of her, she saw. Clever girl. She swallowed an irritation she had felt often with Moynihan when he was patronizing her intelligence. "By God, girl, you're right. Witnesses are what we need. If that convoy went down in the minefield, then they'd know it. My God—" He was galvanized now, and she enjoyed the control she had just exercised over him.