No dog barked. At 8.37 a.m. the yard looked deserted. Malin Village was now well behind them, the road unclassified as had been all of them since then.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘we’ll go in and ask to warm ourselves by the fire.’
Irritably Bannerman flung his cigarette aside. The cottage was both a blessing and a curse. There would be witnesses to what was to come, but there’d be a moment when whomever was inside the place would see the gun and realize something was up, thereby distracting Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser long enough.
He’d jump her, would throw the slut against a wall, kick her, hit her, knock that bloody firearm from her no matter what.
Peat smouldered in the blackened hearth, the kettle was on the hob, the table still laid with the ruins of a hasty breakfast for more than one, though the bed in a far corner behind its open screen hadn’t been slept in, a puzzle, but Allanby headed straight for the hearth as he should have done and was yanking off his gloves. He’d crouch and prod that fire to life. Now more than afraid, the Fraser woman hesitantly closed the door behind her.
Bannerman shook the water from his cap. ‘May I?’ he asked.
Setting the rucksack on the floor next to the door, she gave him a nod, he unbuttoning his greatcoat as Jimmy smashed a reed basket into pieces with which to feed the fire, its light now coming in bursts which all too soon died away to nothing.
‘Mind that hearthrug, Captain,’ said Bannerman. ‘We are but guests, are we not?’
He had pulled off his coat.
‘Blessed thing is soaked right through and weighs a ton, Captain.’
More of the basket was thrown into the fire. Again there was light but then a pall of heavy smoke!
Blinded, fighting, stumbling backwards against the weight of the coat, Mary pulled the trigger, firing once, only once. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t fire any more as she hit the floor, was lifted up, smashed down again and again, couldn’t get free of the coat, couldn’t see a thing, tried to hit back, and was smashed again against the floor.
‘Out … The cunt’s bloody well out, Captain, and it’s about time!’ shouted Bannerman. He’d not lost the touch. No, by God, he hadn’t! ‘Get her up. Tie the slut into that chair and I’ll teach her some lessons. The sooner she talks the better.’
They were burning the spinning wheel, piece by piece, but they’d not yet seen that she’d awakened. Jimmy was getting ready to leave. He’d take the car and try to reach Malin Village, would telephone Derry from there, leaving her alone with the colonel. They had removed her coat, boots and pullover, had opened her blouse and bared her breasts. A poker had been jammed deeply into the embers. ‘What time is it?’ she asked, startling them both.
‘Well, well now,’ said Bannerman. ‘Awake at last, are we? It’s nearly noon. We thought you might have been in a coma.’
‘Mary, tell us where their meeting place is. You know you’ve lost, that it’s over for you.’
‘I never did know where it was, only that it was a place Huber would never forget.’
‘And the rendezvous with this submarine?’ asked Bannerman. She’d a nice pair of tits and would be worrying about them. The hill tribes had had many ways of making the recalcitrant talk. Fire had only been one of them and she knew what he was on about—oh my yes, but she did, knew, too, that she’d scream her heart out when touched.
‘It … it must be somewhere along the coast,’ she said.
‘In spite of all the cliffs?’ scoffed Bannerman. ‘That’s not good enough, is it, Captain?’
‘Colonel, I don’t think we should …’
‘Shut it, Captain. Please just shut it.’
‘Colonel, if I knew, I’d tell you. Hamish has been my only concern in this.’ He was going to touch her with that poker—he had that look about him.
‘The doctor, yes. Hold her, will you, Captain, and that is an order.’
Her scream must have filled the cottage but she had no memory of it. Someone was gently slapping her into consciousness. Laughter sounded.
Again she felt herself slipping away. They’d get nothing from her. Hamish would be in danger if she told them where the rendezvous was. Hamish …
‘Mary … Mary, lass, it’s me. Wake up.’
It was Hamish, and behind him, holding a gun to the colonel’s head, was Nolan.
The cliffs ran out to sea, the land lay shrouded in dense fog, and everywhere now there was the booming of the surf and the cries of hidden gulls and solitary ravens, a mad torment too, as masses of boulders were thrown against the base of the cliffs some eight hundred feet below.
Fay Darcy was in the lead, Nolan brought up the rear. One other, their guide when he chose, walked at the middle of the column: Dermid Galway.
The three of them were well armed. The colonel and Hamish were tied by the wrists and roped between Fay and Galway; then came herself and Jimmy. Galway had the broad, blunt, bony features of the Celt, the shoulders too, and lack of height. His beard was shaggy, the mass of dark brown hair left long and free to blow about were it not for the grease of too little washing. He did not speak much, was guttural, taciturn, secretive, intent on seeing this thing through, and totally without fear. It was odd, though, the things one discovered simply by walking behind a person. Galway loved water. If a rivulet or pool were there, he’d step in it rather than avoid the thing. It cleaned off his boots, made him master of all he crossed, made the well-worn Lee Enfield he carried seem as if of a man long-accustomed to doing so.
He also stank of sweat, urine, raw wool and sheep dung.
The column had stopped.
‘Give us a fag, Liam.’
Fay Darcy’s voice sounded very near yet she was perhaps twenty-five feet away.
‘Later. We’re too exposed up here.’
‘It can do no harm,’ snorted Bannerman. ‘Good God, man, who in their right mind would …’
Fay smashed him in the mouth with her gun. Blood streamed from battered lips as shock registered.
‘Fay …’
‘Liam, you’re not the high king himself. He needed that. Fat tub of lard. You’re going to die, Colonel. Die, do you understand? We’re going to fling you off them bloody cliffs.’
‘Let me see to him. Come, come, Miss Darcy, cut me loose. You’ve broken his teeth,’ said Hamish, doing nothing to disguise the outrage he felt.
‘Have I now,’ taunted Fay. ‘And was you wanting the same?’ She yanked on the rope, trying to pull Hamish off his feet.
‘The Nazis will want the colonel in one piece,’ he said, having braced himself. ‘Och, they’ll want to take him and Captain Allanby back to Germany as prisoners of war. Think of the propaganda value to them, if you must.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says Dr. Goebbels.’
‘They might and they might not,’ countered Fay, tossing her head. ‘If I were you, Doctor, sir, I’d be worrying about that missus of yours, I would. Didn’t the colonel brand her with the mark of a slut?’
‘Fay, cut it out! Let’s get a move on. The others will be wondering where we’ve got to.’
The woman gave Nolan a dark look but did as asked. Yanking savagely on the rope, she pulled Bannerman’s arms straight out in front of him and he was forced to stumble among the hummocks where Sphagnum moss, leatherleaf, Arctic willow and Arctic tea grew with cranberry and other stunted shrubs. The smell of the bog, that stench of rotten eggs, came with every step. Between the hummocks there were pools of water or springy patches of moss that leaked. Fay deliberately led them through the wet places. Bannerman wore only shoes; Hamish also, and Jimmy. Their feet must be freezing. Mary was glad of her gumboots and the dry socks Nolan had let Hamish take from her rucksack at the cottage.
All too soon, though, they left the hill and headed down into a long valley that ran under the fog and out towards the cliffs. There were bo
ulders here, sedges, rushes, geese and ducks taking wing at their approach, feather mosses and tall grasses whose tussocks had been twisted together by the wind. More than once someone tripped on these last. Fay never let up. Galway seemed to spur her on.
Then there it was, the very edge of the cliffs vanishing suddenly into the clinging fog. They came across a sheep track and followed this into the rain the salt spray and the fog produced. Miserable, it was cold and wet, the burns on her left breast chaffing and stinging with each step even though under gauze and the Glasgow Cream1 Hamish had used, he having said, ‘Mary, it is yourself who should be forgiving me. It was all my fault.’
After another hour of mostly slogging it uphill, they took shelter in the lee of a ragged ledge of rock. Nolan offered cigarettes, lighting them for those whose hands were tied. Fay sat apart; Galway silently having gone off to keep a lookout.
‘You really ought to let me attend to the colonel,’ said Hamish to Nolan. ‘The Nazis will want him. I’d also like to look at those burns of my wife’s.’
Suspicion registered, since an element of privacy would be demanded for the latter.
‘We’re not far from the meeting place. You can do it then.’
Another hour brought them on to a plateau to which the fog clung thickly. In places the ground was bare of soil and they walked across a land scraped clean by glaciers of long ago but littered with boulders of all sizes. In places there was stunted grass, then tufts of it and sedges, patches of wetland, but on the plateau and reaching up into the fog, the long, low shape of a hill rose incongruously off to their left. Since leaving their rest stop, Galway had changed places with Fay. God only knew how he found his way across the terrain, but he seemed to know every rock outcropping and boulder.
The hill grew steadily. There were no boulders on its slopes or crest, simply turf, but it wasn’t until they had come much closer that Mary realized with a start just why Nolan had said the vice admiral would never forget the meeting place.
‘It’s a Neolithic passage grave, a long barrow, Hamish. Those portal stones must each weigh several tons.’
He had no liking for it, nor had the colonel and Jimmy, for it had but one entrance, its exit.
At some point in the night Mary awoke to hear the endless crashing and booming of the surf against the cliffs and then, as a higher whistling, sighing series of sounds, the wind. The fire had gone down but trails of peat smoke continued to make her eyes water. The burns on her left breast constantly stung.
Across from her, the Darcy woman sat alone with Hamish’s revolver clutched in one hand and a pistol in the other. Above them, above the central chamber, the roof was corbelled, large slabs of grey soot-stained stone lying in layers, one atop the half of another to bridge the span like the underside of an ancient staircase. The main chamber was perhaps no more than twelve feet across but nearly twenty in height. Giant stones formed the base of the wall, large upright ones having been inset into the four corners so that the encircling of the wall passed through them.
Fay was now looking at Bannerman and Jimmy who feigned sleep but not well enough. Perhaps Nolan and Galway had gone off to find Kevin, perhaps the woman felt she had her hands full—they’d never know for sure, but when the wind stirred the powdery ashes to life, her expression softened only to tighten at some other sound.
At last she could stand the waiting no longer and, leaving them, backed away and down the central passage on her hands and knees. There were two lesser chambers, the central passageway being nearly eighty feet in length. Burial vaults with their own cremation pits opened off each chamber. More than once Fay had threatened to shut them all into them. Dear God, what were they to do?
‘Mary, try not to let the blisters break,’ whispered Hamish. ‘The longer they’re kept, the better. Infection’s the thing we must watch for. Even if the gauze gets wet and dirty, it’s better than nothing. We must keep the air away for as long as possible.’
Was he thinking she would be left behind while he and the others were taken to Inishtrahull, or did he sense he’d be the one to be left?
‘They’re agitated, lass. They’re not in command of themselves. Something must have happened to O’Bannion and the others.’
Bannerman pulled himself into a sitting position. ‘Captain, see if you can get this rope off me.’
Fraser knew the time for such could never be better. ‘Kramer has a flesh wound in the right shoulder, Colonel. That shouldn’t have held them back but are there others in worse shape?’
‘Just you and that wife of yours keep talking. You’re the ones that bitch will first see when she comes back through that portal. I’m going to bash her bloody brains in.’
He had a boulder of granite in mind. Jimmy’s fingers were stiff, but at last he managed to free him and then be freed himself. Fay still hadn’t come back. Had Kevin and the others run into an ambush?
Mary felt her hands come free, Hamish having untied her, but still they had to wait, still there was only the constant sound of the surf and the wind …
‘Put the fire out!’ hissed Bannerman. The toes of someone’s boots or shoes were scraping the floor of the passageway, now to brace themselves, now to be dragged forward.
‘It’s not the Darcy woman,’ said Mary, her disappointment all too clear.
The scraping took nearly a half-hour, and only then, did they hear the laboured breathing. Bannerman lowered the boulder and, reaching well into the passageway, said, ‘Come on, man. I’ve got you now. There’s a good chap. Just hang on a bit longer. Dr. Fraser’s here and will attend to you.’
Jimmy struck a match. Hans Schleiger lay in the colonel’s arms, the whole front of his turtleneck pullover soaked with blood.
Hamish knew there was no hope. By degrees they got the fire going, but by then Schleiger had died and they were left to wonder what had happened to the others and why Fay Darcy had not returned.
‘I’m going out,’ whispered Allanby. ‘Cover me, Colonel.’
Bannerman’s look was one of, ‘Do you really mean it?’
‘Someone has to,’ he said. ‘It had best be myself.’
As they disappeared into the passageway, Hamish drew her close. Perhaps twenty minutes passed, perhaps a little more, then Bannerman returned, grim and silent. Blood streamed down the right side of Jimmy’s face and neck. In shock, he was right back at Dunkirk, had that look about him.
‘She’ll have his balls next,’ breathed Bannerman. ‘Lay in wait for us. Placed that revolver of yours against his forehead. He froze, poor bastard. Pissed himself and I can’t say that I blame him.’
Fay had cut off Jimmy’s right ear and had tightly closed his hand about it. Hamish did what he could for him, but two others soon came. Both had been badly shot up and were grey with fatigue and pain, the one having been carried for miles. His name was Horst Laggerfeld and he was one of Erich’s other officers. Helmut Wolfganger, though, was with him, a bullet in the left lung. Philosophical about it, he gave her a wan smile and managed to say, ‘So we meet again.’
‘Helmut, why did you have to come with them?’ She was clearly distressed.
‘Why not? We all knew it was a chance.’
‘But you must have been ordered not to join them?’
Again he gave her that smile, causing her to wonder what he was thinking.
‘Someone had to take home the truth about Bachmann, Mrs. Fraser. He was one of the best and they had no right to do that to him. Bachmann’s wife and family need to know this.’
‘Did Philip Werner escape?’
‘On crutches? But of course. I … I was helping him. The dogs …’
Wolfganger choked. Hamish warned him not to talk, but Helmut raised a hand. ‘It is all right, Doctor. This lady and I have things to discuss.’
A British Army lorry had been commandeered and that’s when the shooting had happened. Erich hadn’t
been with them but two others had. Philip had had to be left behind, but had managed to walk away. Outside of Omagh, they had run into Kevin O’Bannion, Vice Admiral Huber and some others in a stolen butcher’s van. Kevin had got them across the border and had delegated one of his men to guide them. Huber hadn’t been wounded. Erich had, as Hamish had said, and was with them now, but Kevin had not been seen since.
‘They are very worried,’ managed Wolfganger. ‘It appears to have all been for nothing.’
Telling him to rest, Mary thanked him for having been kind to her at Tralane. Things were now so crowded, she offered to crawl into one of the burial vaults, and when Helmut said he’d not mind joining her if that were possible, she did her best to make him comfortable, he holding her with a look.
‘They’ll kill you, Mrs. Fraser. The vice admiral will not be able to stop them. Too much is at stake.’
‘Won’t they take us to the island?’ she asked in barely a whisper.
He took her by the hand. ‘I don’t see how they can. There are at least seven of them in addition to Huber, Erich and the others. You’ll be taken out and shot. The Genickschuss. The back of the neck. It’s the way of this lousy war, or so I’ve heard my own have been doing in Poland and other places, the camps, too, that no one wishes to speak of.’
‘But Hamish …’
‘The others are either not wounded or not so badly. The doctor is of no further use once Horst and myself are gone.’
‘But Kevin …’
Had she some thought O’Bannion might have sympathy for her and the husband? ‘O’Bannion gave the order before he left us.’
Releasing his hand, Mary turned swiftly away. The roof of the burial vault was just above her, the walls with their carved spirals close, shadows flickering over them from the one candle she had brought with her from home and had lighted.
Crouching, she removed everything from her rucksack but the bomb. Shielding it from Helmut, she knelt looking at it for the longest time. In spite of knowing that they’d all be killed, she checked to see that the hands of the watch were where she’d set them. All that was really needed, then, was for her to push the stem in. Hopefully Kevin and Mrs. Tulford would soon arrive, but she’d have to wait until they did, would have to force herself to say nothing of this to Hamish, but just to be with him when it went off.
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