by Jack Higgins
The necessity of a supply bag to the parachutist is that dangling twenty feet below him on a cord it hits the ground first, a useful precaution when landing in the dark. A crescent moon showed occasionally which helped. Devlin made an excellent landing and within minutes had his suitcase and a trenching shovel out of the supply bag, a dark raincoat and trilby. He found a ditch, scraped a hole, put the supply bag, parachute and flying suit in it then tossed the shovel into a nearby pool.
He put on his raincoat and hat, opened the case and found the steel-rimmed spectacles which he carried in there for safety. Underneath the neatly folded uniform was a webbing belt and holster containing a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, the type frequently issued to British officers. There was a box of fifty cartridges to go with it. Everything seemed in order. He put on the spectacles and stood up.
'Hail Mary full of Grace, here am I, a sinner,' he said softly. 'Do what you can for me,' and he crossed himself, picked up his suitcase and moved on.
The Ulster border, to anyone who knew it, was never a problem. He followed a network of country lanes and the occasional field path and by four fifteen was safe in Ulster and standing on British soil.
And then he had an incredible piece of luck. A farm truck passed him, stopped and the driver, a man in his sixties, looked out. 'Jesus, Father, and where would you be walking to at this time of the morning?'
'Armagh,' Devlin said. 'To catch the milk train to Belfast.'
'Now isn't that the strange thing and me going all the way to Belfast market.'
'God bless you, my son,' Devlin said and climbed in beside him.
'Nothing to it, Father,' the farmer told him as he drove away. 'After all, if a priest can't get a helping hand in Ireland, where would he get one?'
It was later that morning, at ten o'clock, when Schellenberg knocked on the Reichsfuhrer's door and went in.
'Yes?' Himmler said. 'What is it?'
'I've had confirmation from Laville, Reichsführer, that Devlin jumped into Southern Ireland at approximately two a.m.'
'Really?' Himmler said. 'You've moved fast, Brig-adefuhrer. My congratulations.'
'Of course none of this guarantees success, Reichsführer. We have to take even Devlin's safe landing on faith and the whole business when he gets to London is very open-ended.'
'There's been a change in our plans,' Himmler said. 'The Führer's conference at Belle Ile will now take place on the fifteenth.'
'But Reichsführer, that only gives us a week.'
'Yes, well we're in the Führer's hands. It is not for us to query his decisions. Still, I know you'll do your best. Carry on, General.'
Schellenberg went out, closing the door, feeling totally bewildered. 'For God's sake, what's the bastard playing at?' he said softly and went back to his office.
Chapter Eight
IN BELFAST, DEVLIN found it impossible to get a ticket for the crossing to Heysham in Lancashire. There was a waiting list and the situation was no better on the Glasgow route. Which left Larne, north of Belfast, to Stranraer, the way he had got across the water for Operation Eagle. It was a short run and a special boat train all the way to London, but this time he wasn't going to take any chances. He caught the local train from Belfast to Larne, went into a public toilet on the docks and locked himself in. When he came out fifteen minutes later, he was in uniform.
It paid off immediately. The boat was full, but not to military personnel. He produced the travel voucher they had given him in Berlin. The booking clerk hardly looked at it, took in the major's uniform, the ribbon for the Military Cross and the clergyman's dog collar and booked him on board immediately.
It was the same at Stranraer where, in spite of the incredible number of people being carried by the train, he was allocated a seat in a first-class carriage.
Stranraer to Glasgow, Glasgow down to Birmingham and then to London arriving at King's Cross at three o'clock the following morning. When he walked from the train, one face amongst the crowd, the first thing he heard was an air-raid siren.
The beginning of 1944 became known to Londoners as the Little Blitz as the Luftwaffe, the performance of its planes greatly improved, turned attention to night raids on London again. The siren Devlin heard heralded the approach of JUS 8 pathfinders from Chartres in France. The heavy bombers came later but by then he was, like thousands of others, far below ground, sitting out a hard night in the comparative safety of a London tube station.
Mary Ryan was a girl that people remarked on, not because she was particularly beautiful, but because there was a strange, almost ethereal look to her. The truth was her health had never been good and the pressures of wartime didn't help. Her face was always pale, with dark smudges beneath her eyes, and she had a heavy limp which had been a fact of life for her since birth. She was only nineteen and looked old beyond her years.
Her father, an IRA activist, had died of a heart attack in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin just before the war, her mother of cancer in 1940 leaving her with only one relative, her uncle Michael, her father's younger brother who had lived in London for years, on his own since the death of his wife in 1938. She had moved from Dublin to London and now kept house for him and worked as an assistant in a large grocery store in Wapping High Street.
No more though for when she reported for work at eight o'clock that morning, the shop and a sizeable section of the street was reduced to a pile of smoking rubble. She stayed, watching the ambulances, the firemen dousing things down, the men of the heavy rescue unit sifting through the foundations for those who might still be alive.
After doing what she could to help, she turned and walked away, a strange figure in her black beret and the old raincoat, limping rapidly along the pavement. She stopped at a back-street shop, purchased milk and a loaf of bread, some cigarettes for her uncle, then went out again. It started to rain as she turned into Cable Wharf.
There had originally been twenty houses backing on to the river. Fifteen had been demolished by a bomb during the Blitz. Four more were boarded up. She and her uncle lived in the end one. The kitchen door was at the side and reached by an iron terrace, the waters of the Thames below. She paused at the rail, looking down towards Tower Bridge and the Tower of London in the near distance. She loved the river, never tired of it. The large ships from the London docks passing to and fro, the constant barge traffic. There was a wooden stairway at the end of the terrace dropping down to a small private jetty. Her uncle kept two boats moored there. A rowing skiff and a larger craft, a small motor boat with a cabin. As she looked over she saw a man smoking a cigarette and sheltering from the rain. He wore a black hat and raincoat and a suitcase was on the jetty beside him.
'Who are you?' she called sharply. 'It's private property down there.'
'Good day to you, a colleen,' he called cheerfully, lifted the case and came up the stairs.
'What do you want?' she said.
Devlin smiled. 'It's Michael Ryan I'm after. Would you be knowing him? I tried the door, but there was no answer.'
'I'm his niece, Mary,' she said. 'Uncle Michael's not due home just yet. He was on a night shift.'
'A night shift?' Devlin asked.
'Yes, on the cabs. Ten till ten. Twelve hours.'
'I see.' He glanced at his watch. 'Another hour and a half then.'
She was slightly uncertain, unwilling to ask him in, he sensed that. Instead she said, 'I don't think I've seen you before.'
'Not surprising and me only just over from Ireland.'
'You know Uncle Michael then?'
'Oh, yes, old friends from way back. Conlon's my name. Father Harry Conlon,' he added, opening the top of his dark raincoat so that she could see the dog collar.
She relaxed at once. 'Would you like to come in and wait, Father?'
'I don't think so. I'll take a little walk and come back later. Could I leave my suitcase?'
'Of course.'
She unlocked the kitchen door. He followed her in and put the case down. 'Would you know St M
ary's Priory, by any chance?'
'Oh, yes,' she said. 'You go along Wapping High Street
to Wapping Wall. It's near St James's Stairs on the river. About a mile.'
He stepped back outside. 'The grand view you have here. There's a book by Dickens that starts with a girl and her father in a boat on the Thames searching for the bodies of the drowned and what was in their pockets.'
'Our Mutual Friend,' she told him. 'The girl's name was Lizzie.'
'By God, girl, and aren't you the well-read one?'
She warmed to him for that. 'Books are everything.'
'And isn't that the fact?' He touched his hat. 'I'll be back.'
He walked away along the terrace, his footsteps echoing on the boards and she closed the door.
From Wapping High Street the damage done to the London Docks in the Blitz was plain to see and yet the amazing thing was how busy they were, ships everywhere.
'I wonder what old Adolf would make of this?' Devlin said softly. 'Give him a nasty surprise, I shouldn't wonder.'
He found St Mary's Priory with no trouble. It stood on the other side of the main road from the river, high walls in grey stone, darkened even more by the filth of the city over the years, the roof of the chapel clear to see on the other side, a bell tower rising above it. Interestingly enough the great oak door that was the entrance stood open.
The notice board beside it said: 'St Mary's Priory, Little Sisters of Pity: Mother Superior, Sister Maria Palmer.' Devlin leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette and watched. After a while a porter in a blue uniform appeared. He stood on the top step looking up and down the road then went back in.
Below there was a narrow band of shingle and mud between the river and the retaining wall. Some little distance away were steps down from the wall. Devlin descended casually and strolled along the strip of shingle, remembering the architect's drawings and the old drainage tunnel. The shingle ran out, water lapped in against the wall and then he saw it, an arched entrance almost completely flooded, a couple of feet of headroom only.
He went back up to the road and on the next corner from the Priory found a public house called The Bargee. He went into the saloon bar. There was a young woman in headscarf and slacks mopping the floor. She looked up, surprise on her face. 'Yes, what do you want? We don't open till eleven.'
Devlin had unbuttoned his raincoat and she saw the dog collar. 'I'm sorry to bother you. Conlon — Father Conlon.'
There was a chain round her neck and he saw the crucifix. Her attitude changed at once. 'What can I do for you, Father?'
'I knew I was going to be in the neighbourhood and a colleague asked me to look up a friend of his. Father confessor at St Mary's Priory. Stupid of me, but I've forgotten his name.'
'That would be Father Frank.' She smiled. 'Well, that's what we call him. Father Frank Martin. He's't priest in charge at St Patrick's down the road and he handles the Priory as well. God alone knows how he manages at his age. Has no help at all, but then there's a war on I suppose.'
'St Patrick's, you say? God bless you,' Devlin told her and went out.
There was nothing very remarkable about the church. It was late Victorian in architecture like most Catholic churches in England, built after changes in English law had legitimized that branch of the Christian religion.
It had the usual smells, candles, incense, religious images, the Stations of the Cross, things which, in spite of his Jesuit education, had never meant very much to Devlin. He sat down in a pew and after a while Father Martin came out of the sacristy and genuflected at the altar. The old man stayed on his knees praying and Devlin got up and left quietly.
Michael Ryan was a little over six feet and carried himself well for his sixty years. Sitting at the kitchen table he wore a black leather jacket and white scarf, a tweed cap beside him. He was drinking tea from a large mug Mary had given him.
'Conlon, you say?' He shook his head. 'I never had a friend called Conlon. Come to think of it, I never had a friend who was a priest.'
There was a knock at the kitchen door. Mary went and opened it. Devlin stood there in the rain. 'God bless all here,' he said and stepped inside.
Ryan stared at him, frowning and then an expression of bewilderment appeared on his face. 'Dear God in Heaven. It can't be - Liam Devlin. It is you?'
He stood up and Devlin put his hands on his shoulders. 'The years have been kind to you, Michael.'
'But you, Liam, what have they done to you?'
'Oh, don't believe everything you see. I needed a change in appearance. A few years added on.' He took his hat off and ran his fingers through the grey stubble. 'The hair owes more to the chemical industry at the moment than it does to nature.'
'Come in, man, come in.' Ryan shut the door. 'Are you on the run or what?'
'Something like that. It needs explaining.'
Ryan said, 'This is my niece, Mary. Remember my elder brother, Seamus? He that died in Mountjoy Prison.'
'A good man on the worst of days,' Devlin said.
'Mary - this is my old friend Liam Devlin.'
The effect on the girl was quite extraordinary. It was as if a light had been turned on inside. There was a look on her face that was almost holy. 'You are Liam Devlin? Sweet Mother of Jesus, I've heard of you ever since I was a little girl.'
'Nothing bad, I hope,' Devlin said.
'Sit down - please. Will you have some tea? Have you had your breakfast?'
'Come to think of it, I haven't.'
'I've got some eggs and there's a little of Uncle Michael's black-market bacon left. You can share it.'
While she busied herself at the stove Devlin took off his coat and sat opposite Ryan. 'Have you a telephone here?'
'Yes. In the hall.'
'Good. I need to make a call later.'
'What is it, Liam? Has the IRA decided to start up again in London?'
'I'm not from the IRA this time,' Devlin told him. 'Not directly. To be frank, I'm from Berlin.'
Ryan said, 'I'd heard the organization had had dealings with the Germans, but to what purpose, Liam? Are you telling me you actually approve of that lot?'
'Nazi bastards most of them,' Devlin said. 'Not all, mind you. Their aim is to win the war, mine is a united Ireland. I've had the odd dealing with them, always for money, money paid into a Swiss account on behalf of the organization.'
'And you're here for them now? Why?'
'British Intelligence have a man under guard not far from here at St Mary's Priory. A Colonel Steiner. As it happens, he's a good man and no Nazi. You'll have to take my word for that. It also happens that the Germans want him back. That's why I'm here.'
'To break him out?' Ryan shook his head. 'There was never anyone else like you. A raving bloody lunatic.'
'I'll try not to involve you too much, but I do need a little help. Nothing too strenuous, I promise. I could ask you to do it for old times' sake, but I won't.'
Devlin picked up the case, put it on the table and opened it. He pushed the clothes out of the way, ran a finger round the bottom and pulled out the lining revealing the money he had carried in there. He took out a bundle of white five-pound notes and laid them on the table. 'A thousand pounds, Michael.'
Ryan ran his fingers through his hair. 'My God, Liam, what can I say?'
The girl put plates of egg and bacon in front of each of them. 'You should be ashamed to take a penny piece after the stories you've told me about Mr Devlin. You should be happy to do it for nothing.'
'Oh, what it is to be young.' Devlin put an arm about her waist. 'If only life were like that, but hang on to your dreams, girl.' He turned to Ryan. 'Well Michael?'
'Christ, Liam, you only live once, but to show I'm a weak man, I'll take the thousand quid!'
'First things first. Do you happen to have a gun about the place?'
'A Luger pistol from before the war under the floorboards in my bedroom. Must have been there five years and the ammunition to go with it.'
'I'll ch
eck it over. Is it convenient for me to stay here? It won't be for long.'
'Fine. We've plenty of room.'
'Transport. I saw your black cab outside. Is that it?'
'No, I have a Ford van in the shed. I only use it now and then. It's the petrol situation, you see.'
'That's fine. I'll use your phone now if I may.'
'Help yourself.'
Devlin closed the door and stood alone at the telephone. He rang directory enquiries and asked for the telephone number for Shaw Place
. There was a delay of two or three minutes only and then the girl gave him the number and he wrote it down. He sat on a chair beside the phone, thinking about it for a while, then picked it up, dialled the operator and gave her the number.
After a while the phone was picked up at the other end and a woman's voice said, 'Charbury three-one-four.'
'Would Sir Maxwell Shaw be at home?'
'No, he isn't. Who is this?'
Devlin decided to take a chance. Remembering from the file that she had reverted to using her maiden name years ago, he said, 'Would that be Miss Lavinia Shaw?'
'Yes it is. Who are you?'
Devlin said, 'Does the Falcon still wait? It is now time to strike.'
The effect was immediate and dramatic. 'Oh, my God!' Lavinia Shaw said and then there was silence.
Devlin waited for a moment, then said, 'Are you there, Miss Shaw?'
'Yes, I'm here.'
'I must see you and your brother as soon as possible. It's urgent.'
She said, 'My brother's in London. He had to see his solicitor. He's staying at the Army and Navy Club. He told me he'd have lunch there and catch the train back this afternoon.'
'Excellent. Get in touch with him and tell him to expect me. Let's say two o'clock. Conlon - Major Harry Conlon.'
There was a pause. She said, 'Is it coming?'
'Is what coming, Miss Shaw?'