He heard the German moving over the angle of the roof, his foot scraping on the slates, one shirting slightly. McBride's leg was still, his hands firm, his heart racing but under control.
A slate fell down the sloping roof, snapped with a hideously loud noise on the paved path between the cottage and the outhouse. Then silence from the roof, and McBride fed on the guessed-at mood of the German, suddenly unnerved in his turn. And he did not know McBride was unarmed.
Minutes. Then the first movement, a quick stutter of footsteps across the now treacherous slates, the drop to the path on the other side of the house, and the silence again — all advantage canceled. The German knew he had not run, but lurked in the shadow of the cottage, as he now did himself.
And he had a gun.
Which way? He knew the direction of McBride's dash for cover, knew his approximate location.
Which way?
McBride eased silently around the cottage until he reached the front door. He paused, listening again, then opened the door quickly, banging it back against the passage wall, then slamming it shut again.
He retreated then as quickly as he could, back to the angle of the building.
He'd seen the German's outline. His threat was compacted into a frame of medium build dressed in a grey mackintosh. He was the man called "cousin Mike" in Clonakilty, nobody more than that.
He listened as the German came round the corner of the cottage towards the front door. He heard his footsteps pause, undecided, trying to assess the element of bluff. He was less than ten feet away — nearer seven, maybe eight at most. The cottage shrank — it was three paces from McBride to the German.
Open the door, open it—
He had to look now.
The German, boot raised to kick open the door — as McBride had hoped, off-balance and gun on the far side in his right hand. McBride launched himself as the German kicked open the cottage door and regained his balance. He caught the German in a tackle, wrapping his arms around the man, reaching with his hands for the gun. The German tried to tear free as they fell to the ground — the gun fired, then again, and again, deafening McBride, before he could get his hands on it.
The German pulled his right arm free of the tackle, tried to roll over, attempted to strike McBride across the face with his left forearm. McBride shifted his concentration to the German's face, hit down with his fist and made contact, knuckles against bared teeth, so that he knew there was no power, no effect. The German heaved up at him, turning his body, and McBride felt himself rolling off the German. He raised his body, struck again across the German's face with his forearm, immediately groping in the darkness for the hand that held the gun. His hearing was returning, he could hear his own breath and that of the German, roaring as they struggled on the wet ground.
A blow across the side of his head stunned him, but he reached up, his hand sliding across the smear of blood, and grabbed the gun barrel. He wrenched down, then away, hurting the German, freeing the gun. The German threw the rest of his weight off him, and got to his feet, reckless with the knowledge that McBride had the gun, secure in that he would be unlikely to kill, needing to interrogate him.
McBride wiped at his eyes with his left hand, fumbled the gun around with his right. When he could see again, there was the noise of heavy running footsteps. He fired off two hopeful shots in their direction as he knelt by the front door of the cottage, the blood seeping into his left eye again from the cut across his forehead. The footsteps diminished with distance, with undiminished pace. The German had got away.
McBride rubbed at the trickling blood again, cursing.
HMS Bisley was signalled to anchor off Milford Haven, and her crew, with the exception of the captain and first lieutenant, were to remain aboard. Gilliatt and Ashe went ashore in the minesweeper's motorboat, the grey water choppy across the half-mile to the dock-side. Gilliatt was huddled in his duffel-coat, hood pulled over his cap, arms thrust down into the deep pockets. He felt peculiarly uneasy, almost disorientated, like some prisoner being transported from one confinement to another. It was a localized feeling, one he sensed he had deliberately though subconsciously induced. It alleviated the pressure of Ashe's presence, his mood of inward shrinking. Ashe had the Admiralty plague of looming defeat, picked up in Whitehall. And Gilliatt knew that was where he was to proceed.
On the jetty waiting for them, impatient to help them from the motorboat, anxious and desperate to hear their expansion of the one brief coded message they had radioed to Milford, were two commanders from NOIC's HQ at Milford, Western Approaches Command, together with a captain Gilliatt did not recognize, and an armed escort. The prisoner analogy struck Gilliatt even more forcibly, but deeper anxieties broke through that surface. He could not shake off Ashe's gloomiest prognostications.
"We'll go straight to NOIC," the captain informed them, assessing each of them swiftly then indicating the staff car with its driver. There was a jeep, too, for the escort. Gilliatt suddenly wanted to walk away from it all, get back in the motorboat and go on pretending that the war was winnable as long as he and others like him did their duty, carried out their allotted tasks.
He climbed into the back of the big Austin-next to Ashe, who smiled at him like an encouraging parent, as if Gilliatt were about to vanish round the dentist's door. The car pulled away immediately the captain got in next to the driver, hurrying out of the dock area as if towards some emergency. Milford was grey and drying after overnight rain, scoured by a cold wind that whistled outside the car windows. The captain in the front seat said nothing. The Austin pulled up the hill — Gilliatt resisted a valedictory look back at the low hull of Bisley slopping in the bay — and into the drive of the imposing house that had become NOIC's HQ for Milford.
The captain ushered them through the door, upstairs to what once had been a drawing-room but was now partitioned by board into three or four small offices with impossibly high ceilings and strips of green carpet that were off-cuts from other offices. Maps provided a temporary artwork, there was a paraffin heater for warmth, and a utility desk and chairs. One long window, which looked down towards the sound. Again, Gilliatt refused to acknowledge the image of Bisley. That, he knew with a sullen certainty, was part of the past already.
As if to confirm it, the captain's first words as he took their coats were to Gilliatt, and dropped heavy as stones.
"Admiralty Intelligence until a few years ago, Lieutenant?"
"Yes, sir." The captain studied the tone for insolence, almost tasting it with a movement of his lips, then nodded, recognizing it as disappointment.
"Captain Ashe, if you would describe exactly what you encountered during your sweep of the suspect area?" The Intelligence captain sat down behind the desk, his bulk threatening it, the braid of office folded like handcuffs in front of him. Ashe told him.
"What did you do, Commander, after the first profound shock?"
Ashe looked at Gilliatt almost resentfully, as if to protest the unfairness of Gilliatt not having to answer the questions. Ashe appeared to Gilliatt to be reliving the experience. Shadows, forebodings, hovered round him. His captain had grown older in the passage of hours.
"We — I ordered the sweep to continue—" The captain raised his eyebrows, but nodded — 'then carried out our orders. I detached Bisley and we proceeded to check the channel that had already been swept."