Betrayal

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Did they tell you they’ve had to dump the arms and ammunition?’

  Was it that she wanted to provoke him? ‘There’s still the money. With that, we’ll buy all the guns we need.’

  ‘The Nazis will only cheat you, Kevin. The money won’t be any good. They’ve counterfeited before just as they’ve continually broken their word. No one should trust them.’

  Sadly he said, ‘I could have wished for better times.’

  ‘When will that sub come in?’

  There could be no harm in telling her. ‘With luck, tonight. By midnight, or at one a.m. as agreed.’

  ‘Nolan wanted you to kill him, didn’t he?’

  She wouldn’t turn away, was demanding an answer. ‘Yes, Liam wanted that but didn’t think I would. Look, I don’t want to see you hurt, and that’s the God’s truth, but …’

  ‘But you have no other choice, have you, Kevin?’

  He wished she wouldn’t say his name like that. It both accused and expected better of him, was as if the two of them were back in that room of hers, he staring at her electric fire, not knowing she was watching him.

  ‘It’s cold in here,’ she said. ‘Has the fire gone out?’

  As she shivered, she clasped herself by the shoulders, and he said, ‘I’m sorry for what Liam and the others tried to do to you, Mary. There was no need for that.’

  He would use her first name now and she knew he must have some reason. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s over. I’m not glad he’s dead, Kevin. That’s odd of me, I know, but I feel nothing for or about him, no remorse, no sense of loss either or of fear, just an emptiness.’

  ‘Would you like me to ask your husband to kill you?’

  ‘Hamish? No … no, I … I’d prefer he didn’t see me die. You must separate us, Kevin. Take us each someplace different when the other doesn’t know of it.’

  O’Bannion nodded. Before she could say anything further, he turned from her and Mary watched in dismay as he left the kitchen, she not knowing if he’d take Hamish outside now, not knowing if she’d ever see Hamish alive again.

  Retreating to the stove to sit huddled before it, she tried not to blame herself for inadvertently having said the wrong thing and, when she could stand the uncertainty no longer, got up to open the firebox door. One of the IRA told her to leave the stove, that he’d attend to it soon enough.

  ‘What harm can there be in my adding another shovelful of coal?’

  He was standing across the room from her, was leaning against the wall by the entrance to the corridor. Reaching for the shovel, she took up a half of coal and showed it to him before throwing it into the firebox. Using the shovel as a poker, she threw the cartridges in and covered them as best she could before quickly shutting the door, but didn’t put the shovel down. The man was now trying to cadge a couple of puffs from the cigarette Flaherty had cadged from Angus, she to walk towards them, but would Galway still be on guard at the outer door? Would that Thompson gun still be leaning against that wall? Where was Mrs. Tulford’s wireless set—where was Hamish?

  There was one other of the IRA in the kitchen, slouched in a chair and trying to catch a bit of sleep. A Lee Enfield was across his lap …

  Still nothing happened in the stove and she couldn’t understand this, had now all but reached Flaherty who was rebelling at the loss of his only cigarette but had taken a last deep drag and given it again to the man.

  In all but simultaneous bangs the cartridges exploded, the bullets pinging around inside the firebox as she swung the shovel hard and saw the cigarette disintegrate in a rush of crimson froth.

  Flaherty leapt for the man in the chair and snatched the rifle away. Using its butt, he silenced him then turned the gun on the one she had hit with the shovel.

  Steps came from the corridor, Mary flattening herself against the inner wall as Galway burst into the kitchen firing from the hip. Flaherty never had a chance. The rifle’s stock was splintered, his hands and face smashed as Angus tried to turn away and was hit several times.

  She couldn’t seem to move. Pinned against the wall by the sound of that gun, she watched in horror as Angus fell into the counter by the sink, then hit the table which flew to pieces under another burst from that thing. Wanting to scream, wanting only to cower, Mary darted into the corridor and down it even as he swung the gun towards her. She would never make it, never get away …

  There was a rifle leaning against the wall just inside the mudroom, she snatching it up as she ran outside, the wall nearest to her being shot to pieces. Run … she must run. The wind hit her as she raced for the gap in the stone wall. She had to get through it, had to put as much distance behind her as she could. He would fire at her again, would cut her to pieces.

  When she reached the ruins of the cottage nearest the cove, Mary saw him and two of the others standing outside the lighthouse. The Thompson gun had jammed. He was fighting to free it, was trying to fit another clip into it.

  Kevin came out but there was still no sign of Hamish. Had he already been killed?

  Huber joined Kevin. One of them must have shouted something to Galway for he started after her.

  She raised the rifle, had to get him in the sights, had to hold the gun steady but its barrel kept dipping … The gun was too heavy for her, too awkward.

  In despair, Mary lowered the rifle to rest her aching arms only to see Hamish and find again that she couldn’t bring herself to move. Somehow he had managed to get down the stairs into the shed below the lighthouse. He was carrying Mrs. Tulford’s suitcase wireless, was walking away towards the stone wall. None of them had seen him yet. None of them.

  Raising the rifle, Mary fired at Galway, the gun leaping and kicking her shoulder, he just continuing to stride steadily towards her.

  Tearing her gaze from him, she searched the land behind her but there was no cover anywhere close. She would have to run for the edge of the cliff, would have to go down it and along the shore, but the waves … they’d still be far too high.

  At a run, she started out for the road, carrying the rifle in her right hand. The fog station was impossible. Galway had only to spray the road with that thing and she was done for. She would go down in a hail of bullets, would lose the child just as she had imagined at the border crossing, only Jimmy wouldn’t be the one to have done it. Jimmy …

  Mary turned and, after struggling frantically with it, managed to work the bolt action and slide another cartridge into the chamber. Galway hit the ground, she having pulled the trigger, but everyone was running now. Firing again, firing wildly, she turned and ran for the next set of ruins which lay well out in the fields, lay too far from her, too far …

  The Thompson gun tore up the ground, she screaming and throwing herself down to bury her face in the soggy turf and beg him to stop.

  Another burst came and then another. Knowing she mustn’t, she dragged herself up and ran. One hundred yards, fifty … With a shriek, she tripped and fell and the Thompson gun burst all around her, she cringing from it to hug the ground again.

  The ruins weren’t that far now. If only she could get to them, if only that gun of his would jam again. Starting out, she saw that there was a chimney, a bit of wall, one window frame, a steel forty-five-gallon drum, a litter of rubbish, a soot-blackened hearth with an iron hook …

  Throwing herself down behind the wall, Mary tried to see if Hamish was out there and wondered if he’d made it to the lee shore and the cover of the cliff.

  There wasn’t a sign of Galway, nor of anyone else. Working another cartridge into the chamber, she tried to swallow, was still out of breath. Where had they all gone?

  Only then did she realize that she’d chosen to fight on their terms and that they were far better at it than herself. In a place where there was nothing much to hide behind, they had automatically gone to ground.

  Her pulse easing, she searched the bar
ren, windswept terrain for them. Details she would never have noticed before came into focus and were sharpened. A low ridge of round boulders, a thing no more than a foot high and more often not of the same height, curved from the bend in the road at the foot of the lighthouse hill, around and across the fields. It would form an adequate cover for someone used to such and would lead them almost to her.

  This ridge was to her right, to the east and southeast, whereas the ruins of the cottage nearest to the cove below the light were to the northeast and to her left. Galway could perhaps have taken cover there. The wall nearest to her was badly crumbled and she could see much of its chimney, including a good deal of the hearth.

  The ruins were empty. Not a thing moved and yet there was this feeling that every minute she waited they would be creeping closer and closer.

  There were furrows in places behind her, the deep ruts upon whose humps of sand and seaweed, potatoes had been grown down through the centuries. These places, these plots were isolated and not everywhere apparent, but they, too, could be used as cover.

  Flattening herself against the ground, Mary crawled through a gap in the rear wall of the cottage and when she felt she could, raised herself up a little on her elbows to search behind.

  The ruins of another cottage lay off to her left perhaps a further three hundred yards. The fog station was still too far away. She mustn’t think of it, must save what bullets she had and make each of them count.

  Perhaps a third of the way between her and the ruins of that cottage there was another curving ridge of boulders and she realized then that the islanders must have used these ridges as boundary markers.

  Just beyond the ridge, there were the furrows of an old potato patch. Crawling back into the ruins of the first cottage, she again searched for Kevin and the others but there wasn’t a sight of anyone and only the sound of the wind and the waves. Even the seabirds had deserted the place.

  Worming her way across the land wasn’t easy. Her burns hurt constantly. The tussocky surface was rough, soggy and freezing, but by setting the rifle aside and grasping the tussocks with both hands, she could speed things up a little. Still, it was too slow a process. The urge to get up and run was almost more than she could bear but she had yielded to that sort of thing once by throwing the bullets into the stove when Hamish couldn’t possibly have known of it.

  Reaching the low stone ridge at last, she slithered over it to lie pressed to the ground behind its meagre cover. All Galway or any of the others had to do was to stand or climb one of the ruined walls. They’d see her soon enough.

  When she looked behind her, nothing moved but the tussocks. The furrows of the potato patch proved less than adequate. They were also drowned in meltwater and full of mud but she knew she had to go on, had no other choice. Again the urge to get up and run was almost more than she could bear.

  When she reached the next set of ruins, Mary didn’t get up at all but wormed her way around and back, to then crawl stealthily into them through the strewn rubble.

  Cleaning off the rifle, she forced herself to take time with the front sight which had become clogged with mud. Again there wasn’t a sound but that of the wind and the waves, and she thought then that Inishtrahull must be the loneliest of places.

  It would be a test of wills, she to wait, they to wait, each to hunt for the other. The fog station was now perhaps a half-mile to the west, its hill somewhat higher than that of the lighthouse and more exposed. The absence of a low stone wall surrounding it made reaching it seem impossible. Even the road had given up at the base of the hill, yet she’d been up there before, could still remember the narrow corridor inside the door, the harpoon that had leaned against the wall …

  A Bristol Beaufort was fighting its way into the wind, Mary hearing the distant drone of its engines as Kevin and the others would but telling herself not to stand and try to wave for help. Galway and the others would be watching for just such a thing.

  The plane came in low over the island, she refusing even to look at it, but a head and shoulders, thinking her distracted, rose up to search for her. She took aim … Steady … She must hold the rifle steady, mustn’t miss.

  As the sound of the shot came to her, she worked another cartridge into the breech. The man now lay slumped over the low ridge of boulders behind which he had been hiding. The rifle he had once held was lying on the ground.

  ‘I’ve killed him,’ she said, saddened by the thought, ‘but must somehow keep going.’

  The Beaufort circled, the sound of its engines heavy. When the plane was upwind of the island, it released bundle after bundle of white leaflets and these were caught by the wind and blown like confetti. The RAF could have offered covering fire but instead had scattered these, each of them no more than five or six inches square. ‘GIVE YOURSELVES UP. NO HARM WILL COME TO YOU. ALL RULES OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION WILL BE OBSERVED.’

  It was signed: Brigadier-General Martin Quigley, DSO and bar, MBE, QC, Acting Head, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Base Londonderry.

  Mary let the wind have it. Kevin still had Galway and three others with him. Then, too, there were Huber and Mrs. Tulford, and soon, some of the men from U-397 should they be able to land and think the matter of her death necessary.

  The confetti did one thing. As it blew about, it gave a brief, if new dimension to the land, helping her to focus better on the minute changes of relief.

  When she saw a man hugging the ground in a hollow not thirty yards from her, a surge of sickness came. If he was that close, were there not others, and why hadn’t she seen him before this? Why hadn’t he tried to kill her while she’d been preoccupied shooting the other one?

  He’d been afraid she would see him.

  Letting the sights line up with the top of his head, she fired, he flipping over and back and dropping his rifle. Now there were only two others besides Galway and Kevin, and Huber, and Mrs. Tulford, and she had killed again.

  The wasteland behind the cottage held one shallow depression and then another of the low ridges. The next set of ruins was well off to her right and she wondered if one of them hadn’t managed to get by her. Could he now be hiding in those ruins? Had she reloaded?

  Struggling with the bolt action, lying as flat to the ground as possible, she finally got it to work but stopped herself from closing the breech long enough to peer into it. There was at least one other cartridge left in the clip. Galway would have kept this rifle of his fully loaded—she was certain of it, but had as yet no idea of how many bullets that would mean.

  Worming her way across the ground, she wondered if the Beaufort’s leaflets would only help the others to spot her. The ruins of the next cottage were never near, always far. From time to time she tried to search the ground behind and in front but the tussocks often prevented this, the blowing leaflets a little more.

  When at last she reached the ruins, Mary intuitively knew someone was waiting for her. The place was desolate. Roof rafters stared blindly up at the sky while a china Jesus, having lost its head, lay on the floor near the soot-blackened hearth, the hands clasped in prayer.

  There was no one inside the ruins, and when she stood up gradually to lean against the wall, still not a sight of anyone, yet she felt certain someone was near.

  The tattered remains of an armchair revealed its springs and stuffing. A gumboot stood upright nearby and she wondered why it hadn’t been blown over by the wind during the storm, wondered why there wasn’t any water in it, she spinning round and trying to raise the rifle, trying to point it. Where was he?

  The cottage was very small—just a single room and smaller even than Mrs. Haney’s house, but here the walls were better than most on the island and, with the rafters above, she judged it to have been among the last to have been abandoned, but hadn’t they all left in 1928, all except those who would come to man the light?

  Mary knew there was someone nearby. By not knowing where
he was but by letting her sense his presence, he was both preventing her from watching for the others and allowing them to get closer should something happen to himself. All this and more she understood.

  Easing her head through the gap of the only small window in the place, she saw that there was a steel forty-five-gallon drum at the far end of the ruins. The man was behind it. He was waiting for her to start out again. It wasn’t Galway but the man’s back was to the barrel, so the thing must be full of water and he had thought it would stop a .303 bullet or slow it down enough not to kill.

  Worming her way out through the front doorway, she saw that there was perhaps ten feet of wall she would have to cover. After this, she must go around the corner and along a further fifteen feet of wall. By then there would be his boots, for the one he’d left upright hadn’t been his own. There would be the better part of his legs visible to her and the barrel of that Lee Enfield he held.

  Was it Kevin? she wondered. Had it all come to this?

  Turning away, Mary did what none of them would ever have thought possible. She started back towards the lighthouse but worked her way nearer to the road and as a result, well around the ruins, and when she reached the furrows of another potato patch, slid down into one of the muddy troughs and went along it and back to those same ruins.

  The leaflets blew about, the grey skies boiled, the surf beat against the shore.

  It wasn’t Kevin. It was one of the others but there was no moment of elation, no feeling of triumph. The stain was crimson before she heard the sound of the rifle in her hands.

  Mary started towards him. Even as the Thompson gun sprayed the ground, the wall, the body, smashing everything in sight, she knew she should have anticipated this. Galway had used the man as a decoy. Racing for the ruins, she saw him standing out in the field, saw him swing that thing towards her. Frantically she tried to reload the rifle. His legs were spread, the wind was in his hair and beard. He’d not had enough rounds to fill the Lee Enfield’s box clip. She was out of ammo and he knew it!