Emerald Decision

by Craig Thomas

  He watched them, surrendering to the omnipotence of the moment, looking up at the moon, tensing as the edge of its disc slid from behind the cloud, then lining up the rifle-sight. The backsight needed some fine adjustment, and he attended to it like a conscientious workman. Then he aligned the foresight with the two shapes a hundred yards away. He selected one of them who moved for a moment slightly away from his companion, inhaled, then squeezed the trigger with the gentlest touch. He heard the noise of the rifle in his ear, saw the German topple slowly over, and then the components of the scene moved feverishly as he snicked back the bolt, resighted and fired again as a light in the farmhouse went out and the second German, startled but already moving, was flung forward onto his face. Two huddled, moonlit shadows like sleeping animals beneath the fruit trees.

  McBride got to his feet and began running along the hedge, following it as it angled towards the farmhouse. He could hear doors opening and banging shut, and the shouting of orders in German. He drew the Mauser from his waistband without pausing in his stride.

  October 198-

  Walsingham himself decided to enter the country house that had been converted into a hotel on the outskirts of Cheltenham, after they traced Goessler's hire car to the hotel's residents" car park and checked the register. The receptionist was helpful but bemused. Two German businessmen, yes — Herr Muller and Herr Schmitt, was there anything the matter?

  Exton showed her only the CID card he carried, and then asked to speak to the manager. Only the manager's wife was available, and Exton explained simply that the two men were suspected of currency illegalities and that he would cause as little disturbance as possible and he was sorry but it couldn't be postponed and he'd be grateful if the matter could be concluded immediately.

  While he talked at the desk, Walsingham stood where he could see into the lounge bar without himself being seen. He located Goessler and Lobke, enjoying their after-dinner coffee and brandies, and the moment welled in him like a hot, indigestible lump. He had found them, had them in his hand, and they were unaware of his presence. His plan for the two Germans stretched before him as easily and entirely as Emerald had come into his head, the absence of moral or human qualifications suggesting a brilliant, logical inevitability about its components. Those cold moments of clarity were Charles Walsingham's most gratifying and fulfilling experiences. He was, while they still occurred, not an old man on the verge of retirement, of being forced to relinquish his accustomed grip on clandestine power. Goessler laughed at something the more saturnine Lobke said, and Walsingham smiled in concert with him.

  Exton came over to him.

  "Everything satisfactory, Exton?"

  "Sir. They don't like it, but they won't argue — as long as we do it discreetly, sir." Exton smiled thinly.

  "With panache and taste always, Exton. Let's go and ask Herr Goessler to accompany us."

  Walsingham crossed the half-empty lounge bar swiftly, with a youthful step. As Goessler looked up at him, there was a recognition in his eyes that was not of an individual but a type. A kindred spirit. Lobke, startled and panicked, reached inside his coat but Goessler arrested the movement with his own hand. The barman watched as he dried a pint glass, and one or two of the customers looked up, then down again as Walsingham greeted Goessler familiarly.

  "Klaus, my dear fellow, how good to see you again!" He held out his hand, and Goessler took it in his own dry grip. Walsingham admitted the man's coolness, the sense of amusement that lingered in his eyes. Lobke's eyes were already darting towards doors, other people, windows.

  "My assistant, Rudi Lobke," Goessler said disarmingly.

  "And mine — ah, James Exton." Goessler seemed greatly amused at the hesitation while Walsingham recollected Exton's name.

  "Will you sit down, gentlemen — Charles. Walsingham was slightly taken aback, then nodded acknowledgement.

  "Of course." Walsingham's secret amusement at Goessler's behaviour increased as he saw the fat man relax, already make assumptions of diplomatic immunity, envisaging only deportation as a final solution, the ultimate weapon possessed by Walsingham. How wrong he was — "No, I think we'd all better get off straight away, don't you?"

  Goessler shrugged. "As you wish — our luggage?"

  "It will be taken care of."

  "Good. Is it a long drive?"

  "No. You'll not get cold. Shall we go?"

  He gestured towards the door. Lobke appeared dangerously nervous, and Goessler touched his hand with a feminine reassurance that made Walsingham embarrassed.

  "It's all right, Rudi — don't be foolish, liebchen." He took Lobke by the elbow and guided him, Exton alongside them, to the door of the lounge bar. Walsingham followed, satisfied with the smoothness of events, the professionalism that Goessler had displayed, was relying on, and about which he was totally mistaken.

  Outside, the night was fine and chilly, high stars pale above the halo of light from the hotel's floodlighting. Hard white light that seemed to distress Lobke. Perhaps he was picking up some kind of emitted signal from Exton or himself, Walsingham wondered, and waited until Goessler registered the absence of police cars. Just the one Granada, parked by their own Ford, with two men leaning against it but coming to alertness as they saw the party emerge from the hotel. Goessler turned to Walsingham.

  "A quiet and exclusive party, yes?"

  "Indeed, Herr Goessler. This way, please." He directed them to the car, and Exton, removing Lobke's gun from his shoulder-harness, pushed the young man into the back seat. The driver and his companion waited for Walsingham's orders. "Driver, you take us — and you, Peters, bring up the Ford. Keys, Professor?"

  Goessler seemed to be reassured by another close appraisal of Walsingham's face, and handed over the keys to Walsingham, who tossed them almost carelessly to Peters, then gestured to the open rear door of the Granada. Goessler shrugged and got in. Exton squeezed in beside the two Germans. Walsingham sat next to the driver, nodded, and the Granada pulled away from the harsh floodlighting out of the car park onto the A40 towards Andoversford. For a moment, Goessler experienced the acute fear that they had already located Moynihan, the woman and their prisoner, but he had to close his face against the expression of relief when Walsingham said:

  "Now, Professor, where are you keeping young McBride and his IRA friends?" Walsingham half-turned in his seat. The old man's profile was aquiline beyond the suggestion of a mere garden bird. This one preyed on meat. Lobke's leg, pressed against his on the bench seat, was throbbing with nerves, and Goessler patted the young man's thigh in warning and comfort.

  "I'm sorry, Herr Walsingham — these people — McBride? — strangers, I'm afraid."

  "You don't deny you are a senior officer in the East German intelligence service, I hope?"

  Exton, as if on cue, drew the Heckler & Koch VP-70 Parabellum from inside his coat, and laid it in a parody of innocence across his lap. Lobke was supremely aware that the gun contained eighteen cartridges in its magazine. Goessler smiled without apparent effort. Walsingham's eyes watched the lights of the Ford Escort behind them, then focused on Goessler again.

  "I am covered, of course, by diplomatic immunity."

  "Naturally — under ordinary circumstances. But, it is of the utmost importance — as you well understand — that I locate Professor Thomas McBride and anyone else who may have shared his information. You understand the — urgency of the matter, I'm sure. Therefore, I'm sure you will understand that the ordinary rules do not apply." Walsingham shrugged, declaring innocence and necessity and threat at the same moment. Goessler controlled the fading of the smile from his face, in the oncoming headlights of a car. Dark woods rushed by the Granada, and the half-caught gleam of a thin ribbon of reservoir water. Goessler knew they were still heading towards Andoversford.

  "I'm sure I don't understand you, Herr Walsingham."

  "You will. Where are they, Goessler — or perhaps little Rudi would like to tell us?" He reached back and lifted Lobke's face by the chin.
"Well, young man?" Exton dug the pistol into Lobke's side, making him gasp with pain. Lobke shook his head. "I see."

  "This is foolish," Goessler said.

  "Turn here," Walsingham snapped, and the driver slowed, came level with an unmarked track, and turned into its darkness. The lights of the Escort jiggled behind them as it, too, turned off the main road. The water of the reservoir gleamed through the trees to their left. Goessler felt chilly, aware of his thin woollen suit, the silk shirt, his underwear, and the fragility and slowness of the old body beneath the clothes. The big Ford bumped and wallowed along the rutted track, puddles hissing against the underside, thin branches slashing at the windows. It unnerved Goessler, though a fatness of mind remained complacent despite the reactions of his body. "Pull over here."

  The Granada slid between trees, down towards the gleam of the reservoir. Then it stopped well within the trees of Dowdeswell Wood, the place Walsingham had selected. He already knew that they would not volunteer the information he required. Gloucestershire Constabulary were poised to begin a search of the area at dawn, under the direction of the Assistant Chief Constable who would liaise directly with Walsingham. Army units from Cirencester were also on stand-by. It would simply be much easier if Goessler would tell them. Walsingham was certain he knew.

  "Very well, Goessler," he said in the silence after the engine was switched off. "I wish to know where we can find McBride, Claire Drummond, and anyone else who may be connected with this little operation of yours. I do not have a great deal of time, as you know only too well, and therefore I am impatient. Do you intend to tell me?"

  "I'm sorry, Herr Walsingham. I must ask to be allowed to contact my embassy—"

  "Forget the diplomatic niceties, you bloody fool!" Walsingham barked, making the driver next to him twitch with shock. "You're going to die out here, in these woods, if you don't tell me. Understand? You are expendable — at least to me."

  Goessler, visibly disconcerted, managed to say: "Then, as they say, you will never find out what you wish to know."

  "Take him!" Walsingham snapped, accelerating the scene through its emotional progression, creating vivid shock on Lobke's face, nervousness around Goessler's eyes. Exton dragged Lobke out of the car, across the moonlit clearing to where the Escort remained in deep shadow. Its driver, Peters, flicked on a torch. Lobke's face was white and strained.

  "What—?" Goessler began, then closed his mouth round an unpalatable reality.

  "You know what comes next." Walsingham wound down the window and rested his arm on the sill. The driver now covered Goessler with a gun, a Walther. "I shall kill your sweetheart unless you tell me what I wish to know."

  "You can't kill us!"

  "Oh, but I can. Indeed, one scenario would suggest I must — and blame McBride. A trade-off, his freedom for his silence. Mm?" Walsingham, in the emotional turbulence, wondered whether he had not miscalculated in revealing the scenario he intended to use, just as a threat. If Goessler really believed, then he might not open his mouth anyway— He added: "Of course, he could just be blamed for Hoskins" murder. We could manage that. Now, tell me."

  "No. No, I'm afraid you are bluffing." Goessler's throat was small and tight, but the words emerged calmly.

  "Be afraid." He raised his voice. "Very well, Exton."

  Exton opened the door of the Escort, and pushed Lobke into the back of the car. Then he began screwing a silencer into place on the VP-70, his hands allowing both Lobke and Goessler to see what he was doing. Goessler opened his mouth to protest, then clamped his lips tight. Both men heard Lobke's gasp of fear across the tiny clearing. Goessler exhaled raggedly. Walsingham ignored Goessler, staring at the Escort with a riveted, blank-faced attention. Exton had completed fitting the silencer. He raised the gun, pointing it through the open door of the Escort. He waited.

  "Well?" Walsingham asked.

  For seconds, Goessler remained silent, then said simply: "No."

  "Kill him!" Walsingham snapped, and Exton fired twice into the back of the Escort. Lobke's body twitched like a wired rabbit, his white blob of a face visible for a moment as meaningless as a rabbit's scut caught in a car's headlights, before the corpse slid down out of sight. Exton slammed the door of the Escort with suitable finality. Goessler uttered one dry, racking sob before he spoke.

  "Now, Herr Walsingham, we know how far you will go to protect yourself, the author of Emerald." His voice quavered with emotion, with grief and fear and defiance. Even as he listened, Walsingham, unable to interrupt, knew that Goessler would not tell him where they were hiding McBride. He had miscalculated. Goessler might not even want to live — the trouble with queers was one always underestimated their emotional involvement, saw luridly in imagination only the handclasps, the kisses, the sodomy — or he might know the only chance for his operation was to keep his secret. Perhaps he knew his own death was now inevitable. Whatever—

  "Yes, Herr Walsingham. You will be ruined by the disclosures that Professor McBride will make, and so will David Guthrie. It was a very clever and subtle scheme, as I'm sure you appreciate. I shall not tell you where they are, because it would not save my life. Besides, I cannot allow the English all the heroics. You must do as you intend, and shoot me. Unless you can find McBride, you will have no trade, as you put it. Once McBride talks, no one will believe he is also a murderer."

  "Get him out of the car!" Walsingham snapped, facing the windscreen, angry and humiliated by a fat German. The driver got out, dragged Goessler out of the back of the Granada. "Wait!" He looked up at Goessler, composed even though he was shivering with cold. With thicker underwear, Walsingham thought, he could die a brave man — and that's what it all amounted to, heroic death. Keeping the chill off with warm underwear. Michael McBride had died bravely, no doubt, so had all the Germans and all the Irish who had died. Even Lobke hadn't cried out much — now Goessler. "Well?" he said. Goessler did not even deign to answer his question. "Kill him!"

  Walsingham shuddered at the two soft plops of the silenced shots after the crackling footsteps across the clearing and the moment of silence. The door of the Escort slammed shut again. Walsingham rubbed his face with quivering hands. He felt oppressed and driven. He loathed what he was doing, and in the same moment knew that the self-loathing would pass swiftly.

  Even before Exton returned to the Granada, he was studying a map of the area on which were already marked the dispositions for the police search the following morning. McBride would not get away. And now he had his trade-off — two dead queers in their last embrace in the rear of a Ford Escort. He forced himself to shrug in amusement at the image, thereby cleansing it of all personal effect.

  * * *

  The woman had gone into Andoversford for food. Moynihan, red-eyed from the bravado of a sleepless night guarding him, was hungry and wanted breakfast. Claire Drummond had acquiesced reluctantly, sensing something uncalculating, vindictive about the Irishman. McBride, who was cramped and aching from sleeping on the sofa, felt dirty and helpless and angry. His sleep had been ragged and broken by dreams of his own danger and by the repetitive, insistent, humiliating impression of himself as a dupe, someone led by the nose by people cleverer than himself to this cottage and this captivity. On waking, his diminished self persisted, and he felt, too, the helplessness which would force him to fall in with Claire Drummond and Moynihan. How could he not do as they wanted?

  Moynihan grudgingly filled him a glass of water, tipped it against his mouth, waited while he gulped it down. The tepid, night-tasting liquid made his empty stomach rumble audibly. Moynihan sat opposite him, slumped in his chair. He looked tired and careless, yet also the animosity he felt towards McBride emanated from him like electricity, gleamed in his red-rimmed eyes. McBride was afraid of him. He believed the hatred was sexually inspired — Claire Drummond, who Moynihan could never possess, who had slept with McBride. He wondered whether Moynihan's political fanaticism was stronger than his jealousy, his gnawing sense of humiliation which he evidently blamed
on McBride.

  Moynihan stood up, and walked over to McBride, who flinched as the Irishman loomed over him. The gun was very evident, lightly held but dangling meaningfully towards McBride's lap. McBride was afraid, anxious for the return of the woman.

  "Was she good in bed, Yank?" Moynihan asked after a long time, as if he had reviewed the whole of his past relationship with Claire Drummond in the extended, creeping silence. The clock on the mantelpiece, rewound the previous night, ticked with a solemn hysteria.

  "What can I say that's safe," McBride heard himself saying as if the words and the casual tone belonged to someone else; a more considerable man than himself, or a figure from melodrama. "Either way you're going to hit me. If I say no, your ego will be insulted, and if I say yes, she was fine and she climbed all over me and don't you miss it nights, you're going to—" Moynihan hit him at that point, not with the temporarily forgotten gun but with his fist, as if he did not wish to take too much advantage, hurt too much, appear to need the gun to inflict himself on the American. Blood seeped from the corner of McBride's mouth, exciting Moynihan. His hand twitched at his side, where he hid it like something he did not wish to be accused of owning. But this was him, the Yank, the bastard who'd—

  "Was she good?" he ground out.

  "Yes, dammit! Why in hell's name do you want to know? What good can it do you?" McBride struggled to sit upright again, elbowing himself up, his bound hands tingling with cramp. He sensed he was on a path he had not consciously chosen, but which he had known was there for him to take. He hadn't meant to anger Moynihan, but he had done it deliberately, all the same. Suddenly, he knew that he didn't want Claire Drummond to come back yet. Not until—