Emerald Decision

by Craig Thomas

  Walsingham crossed to the telephones ranged alongside each other on a fold-away table. Churchill watched his retreating back for a moment, then said, "Get them onto anything, let them sail as soon as possible." Again, he pointed with his cigar. "They'll require Cork airport. I presume they'll try to take it tomorrow, and land equipment and the Panzergrenadiers then. Then Cork harbour, and it would be all over." The colonel looked as if Churchill had touched a hidden nightmare or shame. "Very well. Then our relaid minefield had better work effectively, to give us time to round up the parachutists, on behalf of the sovereign republic of Eire." He emitted his gruff, barking laugh. The colonel realized, looking into his face, that there was a confidence that bordered on fanaticism in Churchill. The atmosphere of the War Office was cynical, depressed — even before Emerald — but it was as if Churchill were fighting personally, in some medieval combat with Hitler and knew his own superiority to the German leader. If he had no doubts, then Britain could not lose. Or was it a public-relations act, a pretence and nothing more? The colonel could not answer his own question. Churchill was speaking again.

  "We have to defend Cork airport and the harbour. If we can do that—" It was not a doubt — 'then the Nazis cannot land more troops except by parachute. And tanks are not dropped by parachute. Good. Walsingham—" He called across the room. Walsingham placed his hand over the mouthpiece.

  "Prime Minister?"

  "I want the First Sea Lord as soon as you've ordered your list of shipping. This transport of two regiments to Ireland must have absolute priority. They must be there by tomorrow at the latest."

  Churchill turned back to the wall map. Someone had added the position of the convoy carrying Patrick Terence Fitzgerald, now only a few hours" sailing from Valentia Island on the west coast of Ireland. The four pins for the cruiser and the three merchant ships were livid spots before his eyes and an interference with his thinking. Those four coloured pins were something he would have to deal with before the end of the afternoon.

  He inwardly saw his own hand resting on the final pages of Walsingham's Emerald file. Cigar ash scattered like dandruff over its typed, double-spaced lines. Walsingham had been prepared to sacrifice the convoy for the sake of complete surprise and to ensure the destruction of the U-boat convoy that was coming that night. He'd got the wrong end of the stick. The convoy from America might have to be destroyed, but not for that reason.

  There was another reason that burned at the back of Churchill's mind like a dark light, or a spillage of acid. Before that evening, he would have to allow it into the forebrain, dissect it, and act upon it.

  * * *

  David Guthrie watched the grey, choppy sea close over the last batch of mines from the deck of Palmerston. Nothing disturbed the water other than the wind which stirred and made ragged the sea-mist, and the wake of the minelayer. He felt cold inside his duffel-coat and thick sweater and uniform jacket. The sea looked forbidding, rubbed and abrased by the wind into a treacherous, insecure surface. There was no mood of satisfaction at the completion of their task, and he did not understand its absence. Nor did he comprehend the reason for his chill sense of foreboding, which lingered like the staleness of guilt in his mind.

  * * *

  Patrick Terence Fitzgerald thanked the officer who brought him the information that they were four hours" sailing from Valentia Island. He'd not see the coast, of course, because of the mist through which the drizzle squalled on the buffeting wind. The quarter deck was wet and treacherous, and he gripped the railing fiercely as if the sea suggested some siren call to him. He was cold, and dispirited and alone, and thankful that his journey was almost over. About the task confronting him, he was not prepared to think. He was almost ready for it, but not quite. By tomorrow, he told himself, he would be ready to go to work. By tomorrow.

  * * *

  Jean Perros watched from the harbour wall of St Anne-du-Portzic as the large U-boats, moving in line astern, slipped out of Brest down the Goulet de Brest towards the sea. Through the dusk and the drizzling mist he could make out their low, spectral shapes as they emerged and disappeared through the palpable, chilly air. There had been no fishing allowed by the Germans for the last two days. He'd been unable to make any accurate reports to London, via the radio set in St Pierre-Quilbignon. Now, he would be able to send the message they waited for—

  And he believed, so deeply that it rendered him weak and old, that his message would be too late to make any difference.

  He watched until the U-boats had finally vanished westwards, then hurried from the harbour wall to collect his bicycle to ride the mile and a half to send his signal.

  October 198-

  "You're going to talk to us, McBride, and not only to us. You're going to talk to the newspapers. You'll even get paid for it. We're making money for you — just look at it that way."

  Moynihan chuckled. He was sitting opposite McBride, whose hands were tied in front of him, resting on his lap. Claire Drummond was seated on an upright chair, taller than the prisoner on the battered sofa and the Irishman in the armchair by the fire, and suggesting by her posture and her silence that she was in command of the circumstances of that room. McBride, truculently silent, was still grateful for the light from the bulb above his head and for the warmth of the fire after the hours in the stifling, nightmarish boot of the car.

  Gagged and bound, he had thought himself slipping into insanity. Cramp was like the gradual onset of decay, even death. The gag in his mouth seemed to be sliding down his throat, into his nostrils to suffocate him. The smell of petrol and the road noise of the tyres sickened him. Then they'd stopped, finally, and dragged him out — he'd fallen over with the cramp in his body and had lain in the long wet grass, sobbing until they'd bundled him indoors. He'd caught a brief glimpse of fields dropping away, dark copses and grazing cattle, and of a dilapidated cottage directly ahead of him. When they'd got him inside, their satisfaction made them abandon any pretence to security. He was in the

  Cotswolds, just outside Andoversford. Claire Drummond had laughed at his bemusement, shouting into his face that he was near Cheltenham and hadn't he ever heard of the Cotswolds, the dumb stupid Yank that he was—

  Claire Drummond frightened him. The woman was high on success, on the weapon she believed he would become for her. He saw how much she hated the British, how much she despised him. She paced the room continually, until she finally settled in front of him on the hard chair. Neither the journey nor the lateness of the hour seemed to have tired her, or made her aware of any physical limitations on her driving hatred. McBride quailed inwardly. He could see no way in which he could resist them. They were determined he should talk — not to them but to the press.

  "Go to hell," he mumbled in reply to Moynihan. Moynihan crossed the room and struck him across the face. The woman seemed to enjoy the act, to anticipate a second or third blow and be disappointed when they did not come. Moynihan laughed, threatened with his open hand so that McBride flinched, and then returned to his seat.

  "Don't be bloody stupid, McBride," he said, picking up his glass of whisky from the rug beside his chair. "You're all on your own, in this delightful weekend cottage, no one knows you're here. You'll get yourself buried in the garden if you don't co-operate."

  "Then who'll believe your story?"

  "It'll still make good reading, cause quite a stir."

  "You need me — and not too knocked about, either, you dumb bunny," McBride sneered. He didn't know where the energy, the defiance had come from. Perhaps only from the woman's silence, her withdrawal from the verbal baiting. Moynihan made as if to rise again, slopping his whisky over his trousers. "Little wet-pants," McBride added, laughing.

  The woman suddenly stood up, and crossed to McBride. The gun in her hand, the little Astra she'd used in the car park, was close to his head. She grinned, pressing the hole of the barrel against his temple. She squeezed the trigger, very slowly and in plain sight. Her eyes were mad — she was going to kill him.
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br />   The hammer clicked, and she laughed. She showed him the magazine in her other hand. Then she leaned close to him. He could smell the grease of their flsh-and-chip supper on her breath — he'd been able, with terrible hunger, to smell the fish and chips in the boot as they sat in a lay-by and ate them — and he could see tiny fragments of white fish between her bottom front teeth. She leaned to his ear, and began whispering to him. He heard the magazine click back into the gun. She pressed the barrel against his groin, moving it in a rubbing motion as if it was a part of her body, her own crotch touching his. She pressed harder and harder.

  "I promise you, darling," she whispered in a grotesque parody of seductive tones, her breath quick and shallow and obscene in his ear, "I promise I'll let my gun make love to you, but not just yet, not just yet—" The gun hurt now, pressing into him. He winced. "You want it to love you, but not yet, darling, not just yet—"

  He screamed as she dug the barrel of the gun deeper, then drew back from him. Her eyes were alight, possessed. He clutched his bound hands over his groin, sobbing despite himself.

  He heard Claire Drummond saying: "He knows now I could do it, just as easily as anything. Blow off that thing he's had inside me. He knows his life isn't really worth a light!"

  McBride looked up. "You're mad."_ " -

  "Yes," she said, sitting down again, putting the gun back in her shoulder-bag as primly as if it were her make-up or cigarettes. "Oh, yes. The awful thing for you is — you know I'm aware of it, that I can use it, turn it on like a tap. You'll never know when I'll do it, or what effect it might have on you. Terrible, aren't I?" She lit a cigarette, exhaling the first smoke at the stained ceiling with its cracking plaster between smoke-blackened beams.

  "See?" Moynihan said as if he had planned the demonstration. "You'll co-operate." McBride blinked back his tears of pain and fear. "We want you to make a statement first of all, just a trailer for the main film, so to speak. On tape, and we can play it over the telephone or send it to one of the newspapers. You mention Guthrie's name, and the war, and a couple of other little items of interest, and we'll set up the meetings and make the financial arrangements. Oh, you won't be left out of it, darling. You'll stand to make — oh, fifty thousand. At least. That's about the going rate for serialization. You ought to make twice that. You can't prove Guthrie was queer as well, can you now? That'd be even better." Moynihan was speaking through his own laughter, enjoying his joke enormously.

  Then McBride was laughing, too, so that Moynihan fell silent. McBride shook his head. His voice was old and weak and tired and bereft of resistance. He said, "You dumb bastard — I was thinking of millions, not thousands. Millions! Now, isn't that the funniest part of the whole thing, uh? Isn't that a real belly-laugh?"

  The noise of the approaching car cut off his laughter. Claire Drummond rose swiftly from her chair.

  "Put the light out!" she snapped, moving to the window.

  * * *

  Walsingham put down the telephone with a quivering hand, rattling it in its cradle. Against all hope, against all hope—

  He couldn't help it. Of course, they'd temporarily lost the car again, after they'd spotted it in a pub car park outside Cirencester, but it had been seen. They knew the area. If it moved on any road in the Cotswolds that night, they would pick it up.

  But, his satisfaction and relief were almost overpowering. They'd traced the car-hire firm Goessler had used — a small one, not one of the giants — late in the afternoon, just before closing, then sent out a general alert to all police forces. By ten in the evening, a constable in a Panda patrol car of the Gloucestershire Constabulary had spotted the white Ford Escort in the pub car park. Goessler in his overconfidence had left it bathed in the white illumination of the country pub's floodlighting, unsuspicious that he was even "wanted for questioning". Goessler's unconcern, his illusory sense of safety, bolstered Walsingham's nerve more than any other factor. Goessler's unawareness of him put him at a disadvantage. It made him more stupid than Walsingham, slower and capable of being outwitted. He had Goessler in the palm of his hand now. He could, and would, crush him.

  The hatred was pure and deep and uplifting. Goessler had been out to get him. Now, he would finish Goessler, the author and onlie true begetter — he smiled at the quotation — of this operation. Finish him and stalemate McBride. A stand-off.

  Of course, for Goessler and for the Drummond woman and anyone else who knew, it was an end-game. That was another of the certainties he felt able to allow himself after Exton's telephone call.

  He looked around his sitting-room, at the high, corniced, shadowy ceiling then at the rich carpet. The substance of the room seemed to have returned. He seemed more substantial, heavier, sitting in his favourite armchair. All would be well.

  He raised his glass.

  "To a gallant loser — Herr Goessler," he mouthed, smiling, his lips seeming too thin and small to contain the vivid dentures.

  He would meet Goessler just the once, when they picked him up and before—

  He stopped the thought there, like breaking off chocolate to keep for later.

  * * *

  "Please don't be inhospitable, my friends!" the voice called from outside the door of the cottage. "I am not a stern parent come to spoil your happiness or invade your tree-house. Open the door. We are surely still friends!"

  McBride lifted his head. He couldn't believe that he recognized the voice and shook his head as if to clear it of deception. His groin ached and he was frightened and the voice seemed to belong to a calmer past. But, incredibly, Goessler went on speaking outside, addressing Claire Drummond and Moynihan. McBride, hunched over his bound wrists and aching groin, watched from under slitted lids; a physical approximation to cunning that had no inward reality. The woman opened the door, and Moynihan turned on the light as it closed again. It was Goessler, and Lobke, the so-called embassy official. The light seemed hard and dirty, making Goessler look older, fatter but with somehow hollower cheeks, stubbled and with the cheekbones emphasized like reminders of distant youth. Lobke looked wary, concentrating on Claire Drummond and Moynihan, both of whom still held their guns level on the two Germans.

  "Come, come," Goessler said with a bonhomie that made McBride's flesh creep. He was listening to the tones of someone it was easy to take for granted, even regard with a mild contempt — Goessler's academic mask that had deceived him completely. Then Goessler was standing in front of him. His pudgy hand lifted McBride's chin, inspected his face like a surgeon considering alterations. "You look tired, Thomas." There was no sense of irony in his words, but a kind of feminine condolence which made McBride shudder.

  "Get lost, Goessler," he said. Moynihan laughed.

  "I'm sorry if they've been rough with you, Thomas — they are animals." He turned on Claire Drummond and Moynihan. "Don't wave those stupid guns at me. I'm your paymaster, your arms dealer, your banker, your insurance. You can't kill me. Besides, I have come merely to congratulate you on your success, and to make certain that you find Professor McBride co-operative."

  "Were you followed?" Moynihan asked. Goessler merely looked at him with contempt and sat himself in the chair Moynihan had occupied. Lobke placed himself against the wall where he could watch the room and its occupants. Claire Drummond put her gun away, and sat down. Moynihan was forced to sit on the narrow sofa, next to McBride, who shuffled into a corner of the seat, hunched up, frightened and sullen. Goessler studied him intently for a long time, then spread his hands.

  "I'm sorry, Thomas — Professor. You should not have to endure this. Indeed, I am sorry—" Moynihan shuffled uncomfortably on the sofa. It was evident he hated and feared Goessler, the man's physical presence and voice disturbing him. "But I'm afraid it was all very necessary. As our friends here have told you — unless they are being even more secretive than usual — they belong to the Provisional IRA, though Miss Drummond is really a very Left-wing Trotsky disciple, mixed in with a little PLO and Italian terrorist ideology—" Claire Drumm
ond's face was white, her nostrils pinched into pinpricks, her mouth a bloodless single line. She was staring at Goessler, who ignored her, her eyes wide. "A very uncomfortable mixture, and highly volatile." Goessler smiled. "Sean is much less complicated — he simply hates the English. Both of them have a burning desire to see the forthcoming meetings between the British and Irish governments fail disastrously. You know what part the present Secretary of State, the Right Honourable David Guthrie, played in the prevention of the German invasion of Ireland. Our friends want you to tell that, to tell also what you know of the British atrocity that followed, and what you know of the death of a prominent American in the sinking of the special convoy—"

  Goessler unrolled the facts of McBride's investigations one by one, ticking them off on the pudgy fingers of his left hand. A ruby ring glowed on the same hand. McBride sat, his mouth hanging stupidly open, sensing a gulf opening up beneath him and his mind spinning. Goessler knew everything, everything—

  He could not stop the thought repeating and echoing, like something dreamed on the edge of sleep where the mind is uncontrolled and the body twists and turns to rid itself of the persistent, maddening images. Goessler knew everything— had always known.

  Goessler recognized the process going on in his head, and waited until McBride looked balefully, defeatedly up at him again.

  "Thomas," he said softly, "of course we've always known. There was no way we could not know. Menschler and people like him gave us everything, and we knew what must have happened to the convoy, and to the invasion, even who was involved. The present director of what they used to call MI5 evolved the plan that Churchill used—" He smiled. "You are the guarantor, the mask of accident, the facade of honour we sinister and untrustworthy people require. Of course, it would have been better had you gone ahead and published in your own time, but we could not afford to wait that long. You are the most welcome accident of all, being your father's son."