Emerald Decision

by Craig Thomas

  The thoughts seemed to ally him more closely, even indissolubly, with Guthrie. Common interest, common enemy. He nodded, then repeated himself more strongly.

  "Yes," he said, and now the processes involved were not too covert, too removed from moral precepts to be voiced. "McBride will, in all probability, have to be removed."

  November 1940

  The dark shape of the man came steadily towards him. All his attention was focused on the shape which he could see clearly, sharply even against the night sky. He hovered on the edge of unconsciousness, fighting back the black surges that ran through his body and enveloped his thoughts in order to keep the image of the approaching man clear and unaffected. He had given up trying to move his arm, and his left eye had closed against the trickle of blood from his scalp. But he wanted to see the man's face, in the last moment. He had come to believe he would see Drummond's long, sardonic face, cheeks drawn in as against the flavour of a lemon, before he was finished off. That imperative, that his leap of suspicion should be proven, dominated his wavering awareness.

  Ten yards, five. A coat against the cold, a cap. The gun hidden against the form. McBride did not see the other two figures, behind the shadow over himself. The figure paused. McBride stared up, and hopelessly tried to make out the man's face. Then, in a dislocated sequence, overlapping on his senses and understanding like a distressed sea in which he was drowning, the man above him pitched forward as if he had tripped over McBride's body and did not even put out his hands to break his fall. McBride rolled his head to watch what the man would do next even as the noise of Gilliatt's gun reached him, reverberating as if it had been fired in a small room, then he rolled his head back when the man in the coat and cap did not move, attracted by two further shots. Something whistled shrilly and angrily in the air above him but he could not focus on the nearest shapes — a man and a stunted tree — nor on the more distant shape that seemed to be running. His arm hurt too much now, and he turned his head lollingly once more to study the body on the ground near him, which did not move, then he felt everything going a long way away as the pain shuddered through him, followed by utter blackness in which the flames from Gilliatt's gun pricked on the retinae like fireflies for a moment before they, too, faded.

  When he responded to the gentle slaps of Gilliatt's hand, he felt his arm quarrel with movement and consciousness immediately. Gilliatt — he was close enough for his face not to be a blank — was kneeling over him, cradling his head in one hand, slapping him lightly with the other.

  "Sorry," he said, "but I thought you'd prefer it to ditch water."

  "I–I'm all right."

  "I know. I've had a look at you. Arm sliced open, forehead with a three-inch gash back into your hair, but otherwise OK."

  "How long—?"

  "No more than three or four minutes. I'm afraid we'd better move—"

  "Yes, they'll be back. You?"

  "Just stunned. The grenade exploded nearer you than me. I fell in the ditch and kept quiet until I could see how many there were. Three — one dead, another wounded I think, but two of the three have scarpered." Gilliatt appeared suddenly reflective, and a spasm of disgust crossed his face, white in the moonlight coming suddenly from behind a cloud. McBride's teeth were chattering in the suddenly sensed cold wind, but he managed to say:

  "We're all the bloody same when threatened, Peter. All the bloody same."

  "Doesn't help, finding out, does it? I enjoyed it, for God's sake. Shooting him in the back—"

  "Help me up. They'll be back."

  McBride groaned as Gilliatt hauled him to his feet, then leant against the taller man, breathing raggedly, trying to control the lightheadedness that made the moonlit scene swirl and dip. He concentrated on his last rational thought as he lay on the ground, the shadowy figure whose face he half-expected moving towards him.

  "Drummond," he said through clenched teeth.

  "You think they got him?"

  "No!" McBride gripped Gilliatt's supporting arm fiercely. "It's Drummond — he set the dogs on us."

  "You're delirious. Can you walk?"

  "Listen to me!" McBride began a coughing fit. His arm throbbed intolerably. When his breathing was loud but steady again, he went on: "Only Drummond knew — only Drummond. Don't you understand?"

  Gilliatt felt he wanted to physically separate himself from McBride. The accent, the anger and hatred made him understand something beyond McBride, some spurious vision of Ireland. He tried to dismiss it, but it clung like a cold mist to muscle and bone and mind.

  "Accident," he replied without conviction.

  "No. No accident. Drummond wants us dead." Again the accent. Gilliatt wanted to side with Drummond, a man he had never met but who was a naval officer working undercover in that alien country. Hatred. It chilled him.

  "Let's get out of here. Which way — to where?" Gilliatt felt alone, exposed and vulnerable as if he had walked into some disputed territory.

  "Drummond—"

  "No, God damn you! Your place — how far is it from here?"

  "Twenty miles."

  Gilliatt looked out to sea, towards the direction in which the ML had disappeared. Vulnerability soughed against him like the chilly wind, and McBride's shaking transmitted itself like fear.

  "We'll have to make it, then, won't we?" he said abruptly.

  McBride studied his hanging arm. He could feel, through the pain, the binding Gilliatt had applied, realizing at the same moment that it was part of his shirt. He touched his head, felt the blood congealing at the hairline, then dismissed the wound.

  "OK, skipper. My place—" He broke off, distracted, then he murmured: "Maureen—"

  "What did you say?"

  "My wife."

  "You think she's—?"

  "Drummond's not such a fool. Waste of effort. Come on, then." McBride had dismissed any fears on behalf of his wife, but he could not disguise the determination that fear had lent him. Gilliatt let go of his arm. "We're going to be running from this moment, Peter."

  Gilliatt hesitated, as if the first step might be the most dangerous.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean you can forget the job we're supposed to do, forget the mission—" He almost spat out the word. "Forget anything except staying alive."

  "Don't be hysterical."

  "Hysterical?" McBride moved the couple of paces that separated them. "Drummond must have been helping our friends across the Channel for a long time. If he had — and he has — then he's in with the IRA as well. Don't you understand? Drummond set up this ambush. Where is he, eh? Waiting at his bloody farm for news of our tragic demise, Peter! He'll want to finish us off now not because of the Germans, but because we know about him. He's been sitting in Ireland for the last few years with plenty of time to despise Chamberlain and plenty of time to be impressed by the Fuhrer. Perhaps you can't live in this God-forsaken country without hating the British! Look, I know Drummond wants us dead. If you don't believe it, then just act as if you do. It might save your life. What's that?"

  "A car?"

  Both men strained to listen. The wind whipped the sound away from them, then lulled so that they could hear the almost-silence of a car engine just turning over, then being switched off.

  The silence menaced them.

  "The track is over there," McBride whispered, pointing north to a line of pencilled blackness. A hedge, Gilliatt supposed. The moon disappeared behind more blown cloud. "Cut across this way."

  McBride moved off the path they had been following up from the beach, climbing heavily into then out of the ditch, breathing stertorously. Gilliatt jumped the ditch, caught up with him. McBride dragged himself stubbornly, angrily through a gap in the thorny hedge, and Gilliatt followed him more cautiously, snagging his coat and hands. Then they heard Drummond's call from no more than thirty yards away.

  "Michael? Michael, are you all right?"

  Gilliatt was about to comment when McBride pulled him roughly down beside him into the s
hadow of the hedge.

  "Shut up!" McBride whispered savagely, glaring into Gilliatt's face.

  "But—"

  "Shut up, damn you!"

  Again, Gilliatt sensed the distance between them like an uncrossable gulf, aware of nationalities which dictated their individuality, governed it. Drummond's English tones again, then, a further assertion that Gilliatt was somehow on the wrong side in a war not of his choosing.

  "Michael?" They could hear his footsteps now, coming down the track to the beach. "Michael — where are you?" There was no hesitation and no fear in the footsteps. Gilliatt saw Drummond's form through the hedge, passing them. He listened until the footsteps stopped by the dead body. A low whistle of surprise, a grunt as Drummond got to his feet again. "Michael?"

  Gilliatt realized that McBride had his revolver in his good hand, saw his implacable face.

  Gilliatt grabbed McBride's gun hand, and the Irishman looked at him with unconcealed hatred in his eyes. Gilliatt looked back at Drummond, who was casting about for any sign of them. He wanted to stand up, call out to Drummond and disprove McBride's wild suspicions. But he felt the quiver of hate running through McBride's frame, and Drummond was little more than a dark upright shadow and there was a dead IRA man on the ground only yards from them, and the impression of danger was so omnipresent that he remained silent.

  Drummond hurried away, back up the track. McBride immediately got to his feet, as if to pursue him. Gilliatt stood up.

  "Are we going after him?"

  McBride seemed to debate the matter, then shook his head. "No. Not yet. He's got too many helpers."

  Drummond's treachery seemed improbable, McBride's suspicions delirious. "What do we do, then?"

  "No night for us to be walking the countryside," McBride said, grinning, leaning into Gilliatt's face. "We'll try the beach. The tide's out, we can cross the inlet to Harbour View, maybe walk all the way to Timoleague before we join the Clonakilty road."

  "Can you make it?" Gilliatt already knew the answer.

  "Oh, don't worry about me. I'm not going to die just yet. I have to see a man about a coffin and a funeral service. Come on, let's get back down to the beach before the moon comes out again."

  McBride squeezed roughly back through the hedge, and Gilliatt hesitated for a moment, in the grip of a momentous, undeniable reluctance. Then fear came with a sudden chill blast of wind, and he hurried after McBride.

  * * *

  The First Sea Lord Turned from the tall window of his spacious office in the Admiralty, hands still behind his back. He had been looking across St James's Park to a smudge on the grey horizon which was the last sky-writing of the previous evening's Luftwaffe raid. The smoke over Battersea worked powerfully upon his imagination, suggesting the necessity of the man Walsingham's proposal, Emerald, while it also seemed some kind of prophetic warning, a commandment rather than a sign to follow. He unclenched his hands, then attended to March and Walsingham, who sat on the other side of his massive desk. The long room that was his office seemed to press around him once he turned from the window, almost threatening in the dull gleam of morning light from the polished dark wood and the book-shelves. The high light ceiling seemed lower. Conspiracy had entered the room. The ranks of portraits on the walls seemed to frown with disturbing unanimity. The First Sea Lord consciously did not glance in the direction of Nelson's portrait, above the fireplace.

  "Commander Walsingham, while I accept the evidence you have so assiduously amassed, and believe that the Germans plan to mount an invasion of the Irish Republic—" He glanced swiftly and keenly at Walsingham, seeing the quick passage of emotion on the man's face before he gained control of his features and they reassumed their non-committal tightness. Then his eyes, as he continued speaking, wandered again over the dark wood in the room. The light often made the wood translucent and alive, but now only depths were suggested, the absorption of light. "But I cannot recommend to the War Cabinet the suggestion contained in your Emerald file. I shall, however, request a meeting with the Prime Minister later today, and I am certain the evidence you have presented will be discussed in full Cabinet either today or tomorrow."

  The hour-long meeting was suddenly over. The First Sea Lord felt no relief, for immediately he finished speaking the full weight of Walsingham's evidence seemed to settle on his shoulders. The man's solution was unthinkable—

  Yet he sensed a battered city beyond his office, and a country beleaguered beyond that. Britain was powerless to prevent the invasion of Ireland and the opening up of a second front. He hoped March and Walsingham would leave his office quickly. He needed to sit down.

  * * *

  The thin grey trail of smoke was apparent to them as they cycled down the last half-mile of the road to Leap. McBride had borrowed two ancient and unsafe cycles in Clonakilty from his wife's cousin, and they had made good time through the last hours of the night and the slow grey dawn. Gilliatt was weary, yet the relief of having encountered none of Drummond's men remained with him until they saw the smoke beyond the last slope. He glanced at McBride, who at once began to ride furiously up the slope. His face was chalk-white, strained, tired and afraid. The hours making good time along the still wet shoreline to Timoleague seemed to have taken little out of him, even wounded — even the jarring of his arm as he guided the cycle seemed to leave him with reserves of purpose and a kind of wild, determined pleasure in outrunning Drummond. Now, however, he appeared drained and fearful.

  McBride was twenty yards ahead as Gilliatt topped the rise, pedalling furiously towards the shell of a burned-out cottage that Gilliatt knew must be McBride's home. Gilliatt paused, as if not to intrude upon an evident grief. Another, more selfish emotion occupied him gradually. The IRA had committed an atrocity, whether McBride's wife was amid the ruins of the cottage or not. Gilliatt was afraid for himself. He could hear McBride calling his wife's name as he flung down the bicycle and clambered into the smouldering ruins of the cottage — white distemper scarred and blackened, the roof fallen in, smoke wreathing the small, demented figure of McBride. Gilliatt pedalled down the slope, pulling up in front of the cottage just as McBride emerged. His hands and face were blackened, and he was sweating so that rivulets of white appeared down his cheeks. His eyes were feverishly bright.

  "Is she—?" Gilliatt began, letting his cycle fall to the ground.

  "No. I can't find her." There was no relief.

  "Where could she be?"

  McBride seemed not to have considered any hopeful explanation, and to be nonplussed. He rubbed the dirt on his good hand into his face, making a wilder figure of himself. The hand then flapped loosely at the air as if trying to gain some grip or purchase.

  "Her father's—"

  "Where, man?"

  "Ross Carbery. She might be there — sometimes when I'm away she goes, sometimes not. I don't know—"

  Gilliatt interrupted the leaky tap of McBride's thoughts, stopped the dribble of rusty ideas. "Let's go there. You're sure?" He indicated the ruined cottage with a nod of his head. McBride shook his head like a wounded animal. As if to complement the image, he seemed made aware of his arm, and clutched it to stop it hurting.

  "No. She's not there."

  "Come on, then."

  McBride turned to look at the remains of his home. He felt the blackened timbers, the charred walls and burst, scorched furniture wrench at him. He understood the house as a destination rather than a home, but that did not weaken its impact upon him. Broken china, charred books similarly now seemed to bear a weight of significance never previously possessed. The sight of the cottage distracted him from thoughts of his wife for some moments. Then he turned his back on it, picked up his bicycle — stifling a groan as pain shot through his damaged arm — and mounted it.

  "Come on, Peter." He saw Gilliatt's expression of bemused, anxious fear. "It's all right," he added gently. "I think she'll be with her father. This—" He tossed his head to indicate the cottage at his back, " — is just to tell me the game
is up, there's nowhere to hide. Quite the little Nazi, isn't he?" He grinned brokenly, swallowing as something of Gilliatt's fear reached him. He shrugged it off. "I don't believe it could be Drummond—"

  McBride studied Gilliatt in scornful silence. "We'll have to ask him when we meet him again, won't we?" He hesitated, then some urgency seemed to press on him. "Come on. I'm hungry."

  November 1940

  The Trinity House records had supplied the present whereabouts of seamen listed as sailing on the three ships of the convoy lost in November 1940, where and if they had entered homes administered by Trinity House or an affiliated organization. McBride had a small handful of names of men still living, scattered across the country in seamen's homes. His eagerness had selected the home in Chatham, less than thirty miles from London.

  The day was bright, clear and warm and he was grateful for the company of Claire Drummond. He intended to go on from Chatham to Hastings and the third name on his short list, and to spend the night with her possibly, in Canterbury. He had never seen the cathedral city, and the lightness of tourism seemed appropriate — or desirous at the least. As they left Lewisham behind and crossed the river Darent, McBride felt the weight of recent events diminish. Hoskins" murder, the theft of his notebooks and files, receded.

  He was not aware of the tail car at any point in their journey along the A2, and they arrived in Chatham just before lunch. McBride was enjoying merely the pleasure of driving and the woman's company. As they turned into the car park of the Red Dog Inn in the centre of the town, he anticipated pickle and bread and cheese as fiercely as he might have done something of much more significance. Claire Drummond was aware of the mercurial changes of mood of which McBride was capable. He seemed able to shed past experience almost at will, leaving it neatly packaged against some vague time when he might need it and return to it. She had been surprised at his easiness in the aftermath of Hoskins" death, his lack of curiosity concerning the perpetrator, even his lack of fear concerning his own safety. For herself, she could not share his enthusiasm for seeking out derelict sailors who might or might not have something of interest to say. But she and Moynihan had determined that she must accompany him everywhere while they followed his trail, because he was their only chance of circumventing Goessler.