“She’d like that. What will you say about us?”
“I don’t know. Nothing, I think. I don’t want to jinx things.”
It was raining again two nights later when she told him he had to leave Dublin. “As soon as you can, but by Friday night at the latest. Don’t ask how I know, but there are plans to grab you off the street sometime over the weekend. I know the men involved—they’re relatives of boys who were shot in the Tower—and they mean to take you off somewhere for some sort of trial and then shoot you.”
“I—”
“I know you’re going to say you’ve got a job to do,” she interjected. “Well, I don’t want to read about your body washing up in Dublin Bay, so I’ll tell you what you want to know. There’ll be no insurrection.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. I’m a journalist, I have sources, and I know people through Colm. I’m not going to give you any names, am I? If you pass them on to your bosses, then I’ve betrayed them, and if you don’t, then you wouldn’t be doing your job.” She was finding it easier to look him in the eye than she’d expected, but deceiving him still felt bad. She was beginning to understand how difficult he must have found all those weeks of deceiving her.
He was asking why they’d decided against a rising. “Because there’s not enough support,” she told him. “Because they haven’t got enough weapons. If your government decides to bring in conscription here, the first might change, but not the second. And they’ve given up hope of help from the Germans.” All of which was true, she thought, yet still they planned to fight. God help them. “So you’ve no reason to stay here.”
“You’re a pretty good reason.”
“I’m off to Scotland tomorrow,” she lied, “so there’s nothing to keep you.”
“Oh.”
“Promise me you’ll leave,” she said, putting her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
He kissed her. “I promise.”
“But God knows when we’ll next see each other,” she added. Or if, she thought. His tale of the Indian gun that jammed still brought a chill to her heart.
“But that is what you want?”
“Yes,” she said simply. She remembered Kollontai’s admonition, that when the cup of love’s joy was empty, you threw it away without regret and bitterness. Well, this cup wasn’t empty. There were times she thought it never would be.
Next morning McColl passed the intelligence on to Dunwood.
“Do you trust her?” the Irishman asked.
“What she said made sense.”
Dunwood pulled a face. “Well, it would have to make sense, wouldn’t it? What if it’s a setup, designed to put us off our guard?”
This possibility had already occurred to McColl, and he had forced himself to examine it. “She was in Dublin before I was, and at that point no one knew I was coming.”
“The republicans might have seen you arrive, known she was here, and decided to use your past against you.”
“I suppose that’s possible . . .”
“But not likely,” Dunwood agreed.
“No. And look, we agree that any insurrection would be doomed from the start, don’t we?”
“We do.”
“And she’s told us that they’ve decided against it for just that reason.”
“True.”
“So why look a gift horse in the mouth?”
She was tired of the Imperial’s bar. “I’ve told him,” she informed Mulryan late that same afternoon, “and I’ll let you know when he’s passed it on.”
Mulryan smiled at her. “No need, my dear. Your work is over.”
“What do you mean?”
“He has passed it on.”
She suddenly felt a chill reach up her spine. “How do you know?”
“How do you think? We have people in Dublin Castle. McColl told his friend Jimmy Dunwood when they met up this morning.” He gave her a sharp look. “I thought you’d be pleased—you can’t have been enjoying these past few days.” There was the slightest hint of a question mark attached to the final sentence.
“What do you think?” she retorted. “But I owed it to Colm,” she added flatly, picking up her bag. “And now I must go.”
“Ah, don’t rush off. Let’s have a drink to celebrate.”
“Some of us have work to do,” she snapped, leaping to her feet. She managed a steady walk to the door, then almost ran to the curb, scanning for the street for a taxi. There wasn’t one in sight.
She walked hurriedly south toward the river and managed to catch one emerging from Lower Abbey Street. “And please hurry,” she told the young driver, who took her at her word, almost knocking down a cyclist as they crossed the O’Connell Bridge. After he’d screeched to a halt outside the Royal, she passed him a generous handful of coins and rushed up the steps, praying she’d find McColl gone.
And yes, he had checked out, the desk clerk told her. But as he’d already paid for the week, he’d left his suitcase up in his room, for collection later that day. As madam presumably knew, the gentleman had booked a passage on the night ferry to Liverpool.
Mind racing, Caitlin sat down in a lobby chair and tried to decide on the best course of action. She couldn’t just wait there for him to return—Mulryan’s friends might already be on his trail. She had to try to find him, hopeless as that seemed. And leave a message at the desk in case he returned.
Make that when he returned, she corrected herself, reaching for a sheet of the hotel notepaper.
After leaving Dunwood, McColl strolled down Sackville Street, half hoping to see her one more time. Their parting that morning had brought back the one in New York, when she’d been starting her new job and he’d been Mexico-bound. At that time everything had been colored by his lack of honesty, and now it felt so good to be truthful. If Cumming found out, he might be dismissed from the Service, but there seemed no reason he should, and if he did . . . well, that was a price that McColl was willing to pay. There had been a shift, slight but still important, in his priorities. His own experiences in India, what he knew from others of the wider war, had nibbled away at his notion of who and what he was serving and with that at his sense of duty. He was still convinced that a British victory would be better for the world, and he would play what part he could in bringing that about. As long as Jed—and all the thousands of others—were going through hell in the trenches, he felt morally obliged to put his own life at risk in the British cause.
But—and it was a big but—he’d been given a second chance with Caitlin, and he wasn’t about to throw that away. If he had to choose between her and the Service, then Cumming would be the jilted party.
He reached the O’Connell Bridge and paused there for a moment, leaning on the balustrade and gazing downriver. It was another beautiful day, and he didn’t want to spend it cooped up in his hotel or sitting in the departure shed at Kingstown. And even if his enemies were waiting for Saturday, he didn’t want to wander the streets.
A film, he thought. That would fill an hour or so.
The first cinema he passed was showing Chaplin’s Tramp, which he’d already seen; the second had a film that he knew divided opinions, The Birth of a Nation. A fellow passenger on the Marmora had thought it absolutely wonderful, but Caitlin had told him how progressives had picketed American cinemas to protest the film’s depiction of Negroes.
He decided to make up his own mind. The cinema was almost empty for the early-afternoon show, and he opted for a seat in the farthest corner, where he couldn’t be approached from behind.
By the time the film ended, he could see both points of view. There was something startlingly original about it, in the way the camera moved, perhaps—he couldn’t be sure. The story rattled along, and it all seemed bigger, more extravagant than the films he was used to—the makers must have put
half the men in Los Angeles in either a blue or a gray uniform. That said, he could see the boycotters’ point. The Negroes—white actors with blacked-up faces—circled the film’s white women like sex-mad sharks, while the vigilante Ku Klux Klan—“hooded cretins,” Caitlin had called them—seemed unlikely saviors of civilization. Birth of a Nation might be good drama, but as a representation of American history it left a lot to be desired.
As he emerged onto the street, eyes narrowed against the afternoon sun, a rumbling in the stomach reminded him that he hadn’t had lunch. By the time a worker’s café off Grafton Street had supplied the necessary, it was gone four—time, he thought, to head for Kingstown.
He was halfway across the Royal’s lobby when the desk clerk called him over. “The lady left a message for you,” he said, and passed McColl an envelope. Hoping for a fond farewell, and dreading an unexpected brush-off, he tore it open and read the two short sentences. “They’re not waiting for Saturday. Go at once.”
Heart beating a little faster, he put the note back into the envelope and the envelope into his pocket. “Has anyone else asked for me?” he inquired of the desk clerk.
“No one, sir.”
“I’ll just go up for my luggage, then,” McColl said. It seemed sensible to advertise the fact that he was going to his room.
He took the four flights slowly, stopping at each landing to listen for noises above. But the hotel was quiet, and his corridor, when he reached it, was empty.
He tiptoed to his door and stood for almost half a minute with an ear pressed to the wood. The only thing he heard was a ship’s horn out in the harbor.
He put his key in the lock, clicked it open, and pushed the door back slowly, gun out and ready. The room had been cleaned, the bed made. His suitcase was by the window, where he’d left it.
As he stepped across the threshold, something cold and hard pushed into the side of his neck, and a soft Irish voice invited him to “step right in.”
Caitlin hurried up Grafton Street and along the Liffey, scanning the roads on either side with increasingly anxious eyes. Where could he be? Signing off at Dublin Castle, perhaps. They had made a pact never to discuss their work in Ireland, so she had no idea if that was where his superiors were based. She could hardly go banging on the gate for him.
Nevertheless, she made her way down Parliament Street to the corner of Cork Hill and stood there staring at the ancient seat of English rule. Stood there too long, in fact, according to the policeman who came over and politely asked her to move on.
Fuming, she walked back to the river and east along the northern side until she reached the bottom of Sackville Street. Which way now? she asked herself. This really was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
A café across the way caught her eye—if she sat in the window looking out on the busiest street in the city, there seemed a fair chance he might walk by. But she reckoned without her own impatience. After watching people pass for what felt like an hour, but which the clock insisted was only fifteen minutes, she could sit there no longer. It was growing dark, and soon he would have to return for his luggage, if he hadn’t already done so.
She recrossed the river and started down Westmoreland Street, walking so fast she was almost running.
There were two of them behind the door. The one holding the gun to McColl’s neck was about forty, with curly brown hair and a round face; he wore a cheap gray suit and a collarless shirt. His partner was younger and thinner, with a sharp face and short black hair; he was wearing a rough jacket over workingmen’s overalls. The latter’s face looked familiar to McColl—one of the men captured in 1914 had shared similar features. Kieran Breslin had been his name, and this must be a relation.
The older man had relieved him of the Webley and was now giving him the sort of look a cat might give a saucer of milk.
“Who the hell are you?” McColl blustered like an innocent. “And what the hell do you want?”
The older man laughed. “It’s just your past catching up with you, Jack McColl. The way we see it, this is not your country. And spies in other people’s countries are usually taken out and shot.”
The only point in arguing was in winning a few seconds’ grace, but that was point enough. “Another few years and we’ll be gone, and you’ll have your country back. But not yet. You’re the outlaw here.”
“One with a gun,” the Irishman agreed. “And you’ll have your chance to split hairs in front of a judge.”
“And then we’ll shoot you,” the younger man added coldly. He turned to his partner. “How about we stop all the yapping and get moving? It must be dark enough by now.”
The older man glanced at the window. “We’ll give it another ten minutes or so. Jack’s in no hurry, I’m sure.”
They were presumably going to take him down the fire escape, McColl thought. There might be a car waiting, or perhaps they intended walking him to the republican stronghold down by the docks. He had a mental picture of Killoran’s Tavern dressed up as a courtroom, with the regulars forming the jury and the barman pronouncing sentence.
The younger man had pushed up the lower sash on the window and was peering out. “It’s dark enough now.”
“Patience!” his partner insisted. “I’ve no desire to spend five years in Kilmainham Gaol just because you couldn’t bear to wait a few minutes.”
“I need a piss.”
“The toilet’s down the corridor,” McColl said helpfully.
“Can’t you wait?” the older man said wearily.
“I’ve been waiting for two hours already. What’s the problem—you’ve got the gun, haven’t you?”
“Jesus Christ! Be quick.”
Once the younger man had slipped out through the door, they could hear him whistling his way down the corridor.
“Don’t try anything,” the older one warned. “I wouldn’t like to deprive you of your day in court, but if needs must . . .”
McColl had few doubts on that score, but this was likely to be his only chance. Above him, as he knew from the hours he and Caitlin had spent in bed, were four shaded lamps arranged on the ends of a metal cross, which hung from the ceiling on a single vertical rod. If he reached up on tiptoe, grabbed the cross, and pulled down hard, the light would surely go out. If it didn’t, he hadn’t lost anything, unless the man in front of him started blazing away. Would he do that and probably thwart his own chances of escape? Or would he simply take the couple of steps needed to reach the door and make use of the corridor light? If he chose the latter course, McColl would have only two or three seconds of darkness in which to rearrange the odds.
Was it worth the risk?
He couldn’t decide. And then he heard whistling in the distance and knew the younger man was coming back. He turned his eyes upward, reached for the cross, and pulled himself up off the floor. For a split second, he thought it would take his weight, but then the whole fixture came out of the ceiling in a shower of plaster. He had a fleeting glimpse of the other man’s indecision before the room was plunged into darkness.
After dropping into a crouch, he quickly moved to the right. No shots were fired—the Irishman, as McColl had half expected, was reaching for the door. As he crossed the thin line of light seeping in around its edges, McColl hit him with his shoulder, driving him into the wall. The thud of something hitting the carpet had to be the gun.
Outside in the corridor, the whistling had stopped.
McColl moved toward the window, the pale square growing lighter as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Throwing a leg across the frame, he ducked his head and wriggled out, just as the corridor door swung open, flooding the room with light. The young republican was silhouetted in the doorway, the older one still on the floor, reaching for his gun.
McColl slammed down the sash, took a second to get his bearings, and then scrambled, almost tumbled, down the first flight
of iron stairs. He had just reached the next landing down when the window above him crashed open, letting angry voices out. As he hastened down the next flight, McColl expected the pounding of feet in pursuit, but what he heard was a drawn-out scream of surprise as someone flew past him only a few feet away. The scream gave way to a thump and a crack when whoever it was hit the ground.
And now feet were crashing down the steps above. As he continued his own descent, McColl wondered what the hell had happened to send one of them over the rail—a jostle for the lead?
Seeing movement below, he realized he had more important things to worry about. There was an automobile parked by the back gates and a man standing beside it staring into the yard, as if unsure who or what had just come out of the sky.
More lights went on in the back of the hotel, casting the yard in a pale yellow glow, and the man by the car broke into a run, crossing the yard and sinking to his knees beside the spread-eagled body. He cradled the head in his arms, oblivious to both McColl and the shouts of his other comrade.
As he reached the foot of the fire escape, McColl hesitated for a second, half expecting the man to pull out a gun and confront him. He didn’t. A door opened, revealing curious watchers, and a police whistle sounded not far away, but neither caused the man to lift his head.
McColl hurried past him, out through the gate and onto Leinster Street, not slowing his pace to a walk until certain there was no one behind him.
Caitlin arrived at the same time as the ambulance and spent a very long minute fearing the worst. When she finally got a view of the victim’s face, she almost retched with relief.
The man on the stretcher was a Breslin, and so was the younger one holding his hand. Despite falling forty feet, the victim had survived; he was, someone told her, unconscious but breathing. But even laid straight on the stretcher, he looked terribly misshapen.
She tried to find out what had happened, but no one seemed to know. “His brother said he was pushed,” a woman was saying, “but his friend said he fell.”
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