Betrayal

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Finished.’ Allanby shook the rain from his cape before flinging it back over his shoulders. ‘Sodding country,’ he said. ‘Bastard place. You know how much I hate it.’ She had said the reverse about Kramer to the major and must have lied about it only being Bauer who’d been after her. Huber must have had to step in to save her. ‘Wait here while I have a look in the loft.’

  With a start, Mary realized what she’d done. It took him an age to come back.

  ‘You’re just saying you’re pregnant.’

  She shook her head. ‘I wish I wasn’t, but am.’

  Somehow the evening passed, somehow she pulled herself together. Jimmy was letting her sweat it out. He must know what she’d done; he was watching the house to see what she’d do.

  Outside there was only darkness. Trant and the colonel would expect her to be at the castle tomorrow at 2.00 p.m. sharp. She would have to do exactly as they said, and while she was away they’d have the house searched. Jimmy’d find the rest of the dynamite, the fuse and blasting caps, the bomb she’d made. It would all have been for nothing.

  Hamish hadn’t understood her loneliness, how could he have? His bedroom was empty, the sheets like ice. When sleep wouldn’t come, she did what she had never done before but had often, in her doubting moments, tried to find the courage.

  He had a steamer trunk in the attic, a thing from that other war. Perhaps he’d oiled its leather countless times, but since finding her and coming to Ireland he’d put it up here out of the way.

  The attic was all but empty—they’d not had time to collect the passing memories of a long and happily married life, nor had he brought much from the days with his first wife.

  There were dormers—chances for Jimmy to catch a glimpse of light, if she was so foolish. The trunk was at the far end, near one of the chimneys—great stalwart things of brick these were. Mould clung to her fingers. The leather straps were stiff, the buckles tight.

  Setting the torch she’d brought down on the floor, Mary struggled to turn the trunk so that when the lid was opened and left up, it would shield the light.

  A strong smell of camphor came, the coarse feel of khaki. Under a sliver of light it all looked so neat and tidy. Hamish had belonged to one of the Highland regiments. His dress tartan, with dirk and sporran, were to her left, the uniforms to the right. He’d once owned a motorcycle and at first she thought the goggles that lay buried between the two must have come from that, but it was his gas mask.

  Try as she did, she found it hard to imagine him as a young man in that other war. Far from bringing her closer to him, the contents put distance between them. It was something private, something from another life, and she but an intruder.

  When she found photographs of the French girl he’d been in love with, that girl stared out of the past with accusation and a sense of being violated, of horror at what she was doing. Pretty, very French and not quite twenty by the look, with large dark, dusky eyes and the sharpness of feature the Midi-French so often have, the hair thick, dark and worn long just like her own.

  Marie … her name had been Marie-Louise but was it meaningful or just coincidence that half her name should have been the same as that of the daughter she’d had to leave behind?

  A portrait photograph revealed that the girl had had a lovely expression but had the eyes been just like her own? Had Hamish seen this girl in herself when they’d first met—had that been why he’d sought her out?

  There was nothing to indicate why the two had parted. A handkerchief that had lost all trace of its scent, seemed the only bit of evidence, but his gun lay beneath it. Had he had it out for some reason—that bridge they’d had to cross on their way to find Caithleen?

  It was a Webley service revolver and just like the one she’d taken into Tralane. There was a box of cartridges. Breaking the cylinder open, revealed that he’d not reloaded it, not since he’d had to shoot one of the enemy in a shell crater during that other war. Hamish had been finished with war then, had not even removed the spent cartridge or unloaded the rest, had simply hated what he’d had to do and himself.

  Knowing this, Mary put the gun back exactly as found. It was now the night of Wednesday, 12 November. There were exactly six days left to the prison break and a further five to the rendezvous.

  In the morning there was a letter from him. They’d had a good crossing. Caithleen was settling in. He had tried to book passage back but with the war, every avenue had been blocked which meant, of course, that he’d been prevented from returning.

  At noon she left the house to watch the swans, and at 2.00 p.m. was at the castle. Trant was busy at his desk and didn’t look up or offer a greeting of any kind. Unbuttoning her coat, Mary waited for him to speak but nothing came from him, not even when Dr. Connor was shown in, he nodding self-consciously and giving her the shallow grin of the deceitful.

  They’d got to him then—Trant and Jimmy and the colonel. Connor had told them about the dynamite. He had that whipped, hangdog expression.

  ‘You’ve met with Nolan?’ asked Trant suddenly, but still not bothering to look up.

  Had he had enough of her lies? she wondered, glancing uncertainly at Dr. Connor. ‘The rendezvous …’ she began, only to hesitate.

  Still not looking up, Trant indicated that she was to continue. ‘There are to be no secrets from the doctor, Mrs. Fraser. He’s in one everything, or didn’t we inform you of this?’

  Must she be forced to carry on?

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  ‘Major, the rendezvous is … is to be on the night of the twenty-seventh of this month.’ There, she’d got that much out.

  ‘So late?’ he asked, looking up at her now in doubt.

  She mustn’t waver, mustn’t give herself away—must play it out no matter what Dr. Connor had told them. ‘The break is scheduled for the night of the twenty-third at just past midnight. Twelve fifteen.’

  Trant shoved the sketch he’d been perusing across the desk towards her. ‘Have a look at this and tell me where that tunnel is.’

  ‘Major, if I knew, I’d have told you already.’

  ‘Then take a guess.’

  He ignored Dr. Connor. The sketch was a plan of the cellars. Passageways ran beneath the rampart walls to each of the towers. There was a dungeon beneath the cantling tower, then the brewhouse and the tunnel that had already been discovered. Beyond this tunnel, there were the kitchens and storerooms, a warren of passageways, some of which led to the chapel where she had met the High Command.

  There were sewers and ‘latrine pit holes,’ water wells and ‘grottoes,’ even a catacomb. It was possible to walk from the barbican and south gate right around the bailey without ever seeing the light of day.

  ‘I don’t know, Major. I can’t even guess. I would only mislead you.’

  ‘Dr. Connor, enlighten Mrs. Fraser.’

  ‘Surely, Major, but I wish to God you’d not brought the two of us together.’

  ‘Oh, and why is that?’

  Ignoring the giving of such an obvious answer, Connor ducked his head and tapped the sketch with a forefinger. ‘The tunnel runs from the foot of these stairs to the barbican and main gatehouse.’

  Just beyond the kitchens and the first of the storerooms there was a square stairwell. Mary tried to visualize the castle above it. There’d be an entrance to what had once been the owner’s private apartments. There was an arched entrance … yes … yes, she had it now: well to the south of the keep. The staircase would be just inside that entrance and on the ground floor below the southwestern corner of the great hall and not far from the library. How had they managed to dig such a tunnel in secret? It must be at least two hundred yards in length. Totally unexpected because it ran not from the castle walls to freedom, but under the inner courtyard.

  ‘Just what have they got planned for this?’ asked Trant, ‘now that the dynamite’s
been taken care of?’

  Connor … she mustn’t look at him, he having definitely given her away. ‘I … I haven’t the slightest idea, Major.’

  ‘It leads to a blind wall, a footing beneath the barbican,’ he said, lost to it, or seemingly so, but was it the fake tunnel Huber had said they wanted the British to find? she wondered. Nolan had said to tell the Nazis to use most of the dynamite beneath the barbican and the main gatehouse so as to make it look like the breakout would occur there. This tunnel led straight to them.

  With a sinking feeling, she realized they had found the real tunnel, but had Dr. Connor been the one to tell Trant of it or had he shown Connor where it was?

  ‘What did Nolan say they would do with this tunnel, Mrs. Fraser?’

  Mary thought to run, thought how foolish that would be.

  ‘The truth,’ he said, ‘or else.’

  Jimmy had found she’d taken the dynamite from the stable; Dr. Connor had been caught with some of it and had betrayed her. A tunnel … explosives placed under the barbican and the gatehouse; 12.15 a.m., 18 November, not the twenty-third as she’d only just told him. ‘I guess Nolan planned to use the explosives there.’

  ‘You guess,’ snorted Trant. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t realize the two of you were working together?’

  ‘We’re not. I …’

  ‘It’s the God’s truth, Major. Don’t be daft, man. Mrs. Fraser may be doing what you want with the prisoners but as for myself, I …’

  ‘Uphold the law and the rights of the British Crown, that it?’

  ‘You know it is. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll be away to my rounds.’

  ‘Just don’t let the bastards know we’ve discovered their tunnel. I’m warning you.’

  ‘Warn all you like, but leave me to do my job.’

  Connor reached for his bag which he’d set on a chair. He was at the door when Trant said, ‘Take Mrs. Fraser with you, then. She and I are finished for now.’

  Once again the walls closed about her. As the wind gusted across the bailey, Trant’s parting words clung until at last she said, ‘I thought you’d given me away.’

  ‘And there was me thinking the same of yourself. Sure and the major’s a tricky devil, but if he’s so suspicious, why is he giving us a chance to talk?’

  The wind lifted a corner of her coat, forcing her to hold it down. ‘Because if we’re working together, we’ll now doubt each other, and because he likes to put people out here all on their own so that he can take the long view of them from that office of his.’

  ‘Right-oh, then, we’ll give him the thumbs up. I’ve got that dynamite you gave me in this bag of mine.’

  He hadn’t! ‘I just wish you had the rest of it. They’ve got dogs that can smell that stuff. Dogs!’

  ‘You’re getting to be quite an expert, aren’t you? God it’s a marvel what necessity makes a person do.’

  ‘Like this latest tunnel we’re walking over,’ she shouted. ‘What will Huber and the others do now that Trant’s discovered it?’

  They’d be above the thing, they would, and she with the eye of a coal miner! ‘Dig another,’ he shouted back. ‘Prisoners have but one task; jailers another.’

  At the door to the keep, Mary told him there wouldn’t be time. Though worried and afraid, Connor found the will to grin. ‘You’ve played the lark with the major, you have. See that you play it with the others in here and maybe the two of us will come out of this alive.’

  He left her then, left her all on her own. Empty halls, not a soul about and the prisoners confined to their quarters—of course they’d be. No chance to meet with them, no chance to tell them anything.

  They were punishing the men again. Trant … Trant had let her come in here thinking she’d be able to meet with Huber.

  Mary started to cross the great hall, but it was so like that time before, she had to stop in its centre. Waiting, she looked up to each of the stone balustrades, expecting to find Trant looking down at her. When he didn’t come, she went on to the library but now everything was tumbling in on her, the lies, the deceit, the betrayal of Hamish and her country, the need to tell Huber she hadn’t had the ghost of an idea where their tunnel had been, that Trant had tried to pin the blame for its discovery on her.

  Erich … there’d be no escape because there never could be. There’d be no new tunnel, no explosives under the barbican and the main gatehouse, no breakout on Tuesday, 18 November.

  No rendezvous. Nothing.

  ‘M’am, will you not eat a thing?’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t, Mrs. Haney. It … it looks lovely. Shepherd’s pie has always been a favourite of mine.’

  ‘It’s them goings on at the castle. Tunnels was it? And them Nazis burying themselves like moles of a Sunday, burrowing holes t’ get them all out of that place and under them walls.’

  ‘Mrs. Haney …’

  ‘M’am?’

  ‘Nothing. No, never mind. I … I just don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘If only the doctor would come home, he’d put things to rights, he would.’

  ‘He mustn’t, Mrs. Haney. For his sake and for my own.’

  Had it come to that? Sure and there’d be no good come of all these goings-on, and her looking like the Shroud of Turin wrapped round the very Lamb of God. ‘Is it that you’re in trouble, m’am, and if so, could I not be of some assistance, seeing as the good doctor is away?’

  ‘I can’t have you mixed up in things. It … it wouldn’t be right of me.’

  Ria ladled out a healthy portion of the shepherd’s pie. Adding steamed sprouts and chopped carrots, she set the plate in front of the missus, then took a slice of the whole wheat bread she had baked that very day, and buttered it. ‘Now you eat something solid and you listen. Trouble comes when it’s never wanted. It has to be turned and the only way for a body to do that, is to face it with trouble of your own.’

  Mary wanted to reach out to her. Mrs. Haney was such a big, strong, dependable, kindhearted woman, but she couldn’t involve her in things, mustn’t do so no matter how desperate.

  ‘Liam Nolan and Fay Darcy are over the hills a piece, m’am. If it’s wanting to send a message to them, I could find a way.’

  Tears that hadn’t been able to come for some time, came suddenly. Ria watched in compassionate silence as they ran down those fair cheeks the good doctor loved. ‘M’am?’ she asked, stern and insistent now.

  ‘Tell Nolan they’ve found the tunnel. Tell him I wasn’t allowed to see the Germans.’

  ‘Is the house still under surveillance?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘And by preventing you from meeting with them Nazis, does the major not wish to force you into seeking a meeting with the others?’

  ‘Yes … Yes, I suppose he could have had that in mind. I hadn’t thought of it, though.’

  ‘Then Liam’s not the one to tell, else he’ll come traipsing in here of a dark night and he so reckless he’d break eggs before ever they was laid.’

  Friday came and went with no sign of Mrs. Haney, no word at all. Saturday came and then Sunday. Mary leapt when there was a knock at the front door, a pounding. Trant … was it Trant or Jimmy Allanby?

  But it was only Dr. Connor. ‘I’ve come to pull those stitches. Now I’ve not forgotten.’

  Led through to the kitchen, it was clear that she was in a state—he could see this at a glance. ‘I’ll just wash my hands,’ he said. She didn’t look well. No, indeed, she did not. ‘You weren’t at the castle yesterday. The major was asking after you.’

  Connor was taking his time at the sink. ‘I … I didn’t feel well. I … If you must know, Doctor, I couldn’t face it.’

  ‘Small wonder.’

  He took one of Mrs. Haney’s tea towels and proceeded to do the unpardonable by drying his hands on it, then set his b
ag down on the big deal table where the cares of the world had been rolled to smithereens more times than one. Using tweezers and surgical scissors, he first tugged at each suture, then snipped it off and pulled it free before at last brushing a thumb over the cut. ‘A small scar, but nothing, though you’ve a slight allergy to catgut. Best to keep it in mind.’

  For what? And why wouldn’t he tell her what had happened at the castle?

  When Trant stepped into the kitchen, she felt her stomach wrench.

  Outside the house, and wearing a black beret and battle fatigues, Jimmy Allanby strode quickly past the window. He had a Thompson submachine gun cradled in his arms, was fiercely grim. She heard him trying the door to the mudroom.

  Trant told Dr. Connor to go and open it. ‘The house is surrounded. There’s nothing either of you can do.’

  Forever that moment would remain fixed in memory. The stove, the copper boiler, the shamrocks on the biscuit-work plates that hung on the wall next to the plaster cross to which had been nailed a pitifully thin, unshaven and sorrowful Christ in lime green, pearly, iridescent, aquatint tones with a god-awful frame to which a dried yellow rose had been fastened. The clock above it …

  Trant’s black brogue was planted firmly on the seat of Mrs. Haney’s favourite chair. Jimmy came into the room, still cradling the ugliness of that gun. ‘Stable and outbuildings swept, sir. Gardens being searched. House secured.’

  He’d not a glance for her, not a thought, and she knew then that if she ran for it, he’d cut her to pieces with that thing.

  ‘Mrs. Haney … ?’ began Trant, the suspicion all too clear. ‘Gone into the South, I take it?’

  Jimmy hadn’t moved from the mudroom’s inner door but stood to one side of it. Dr. Connor looked oddly foolish, caught out perhaps, pilloried beneath the single, unlighted electric bulb that hung from the ceiling in its shade of Edwardian glass.

  ‘Gone South?’ she heard herself asking.

  Trant lifted his shoe from the chair. ‘Oh, sorry about that,’ he said of the mud he’d left on the cushion. ‘Gone South, yes, to County Meath, to see her brother at his farm near Kilmessan. Paid the Hill of Tara a pilgrimage. Did all the things a penitent should.’