The sniper was standing up, yelling to his companion a couple of hundred yards away — no, more than that, he corrected himself. Three, three-fifty even. He seemed to have temporarily lost interest in McBride, perhaps was even at a loss. His accent was Irish, and at the same time as that realization chilled McBride he understood that the local IRA were in the business of executions on German orders, and why the boy — he was little more than that from the back — was now puzzled. He was taking orders, and more orders were now required. Who was going down to the beach? When?
The boy had assumed that McBride — unarmed, insect-like McBride running brokenly, dementedly across the rocks and sand below — was evading him, not coming for him. He was confident his target huddled below him now, catching his breath and praying for rescue.
McBride balanced again, testing the strength of his arms and the toe-holds he would use.
The German voice was shouting something about making certain that McBride — he knew his name? — didn't escape by following the cliff-face around Toe Head, no, he couldn't see him against the cliff-face from where he was, and maybe the other one would take the same route, and he'd better get down onto the beach at once—
McBride heaved himself up onto the cliff-edge, scrabbling with his feet to push him beyond his centre of gravity then pulling with his arms, his legs swinging sideways and over, finally pushing himself upright. The German shouted and the boy began turning. The rifle came round, lifting towards him as he thrust forward, cannoning into the boy — who was impossibly thin and light as soon as he touched him — and knocking him down. He rolled over with him, the rifle sandwiched between them far harder than the boy's bones under him. He hit the boy once, hard across the jaw, felt the neck snap round as if it had broken as easily as a twig, and the boy's eyes closed, his head lolled. McBride solicitously joggled the head, knew the neck was not broken — then hefted the rifle into his own hands, taking aim while he still straddled the boy, wanting only the German now that he was armed, loosing off three shots, tearing his fingers on the bolt action of the Lee Enfield that might have come from the Rising, almost certainly from a Black-and-Tan and now a family heirloom.
The German ducked down, then began running, away beyond the car, down into a dip, then up again where McBride loosed off two more shots before the German disappeared again. Moments later, he heard the sound of an engine firing, held back and made distant by the wind from the sea but there, nevertheless, quite clearly.
McBride stood over the boy.
"Drummond, Drummond!" he yelled. "Get up here — quickly. Get up here!" Again, he wanted to vomit with exhaustion. Instead, he hauled the boy to his feet, held him against him tender as a lover, the rifle under his other arm.
They'd get the bastard now — if Drummond was bloody quick enough!
Room T was familiar to Gilliatt, though he had hoped never to return to it. It was in no way sinister — no part of the Admiralty was that — but it had a deadening, musty, arcane quality he had long ago rejected; finally, he had thought.
It had taken them hours to get this far, after the enervating train journey from Pembrokeshire. Swansea had been bombed again, and there had been a derailment that held them up. There was bomb rubble on the tracks just outside Paddington from the raid the previous night, and that had meant a further delay. Then the initial debriefing, then the waiting around while their reports were digested, then the summons to Room T, and a man called Walsingham and his superior officer, Rear Admiral March. The two men looked as if they had been quarrelling just before summoning Gilliatt and Ashe. Gilliatt had the uncomfortable feeling of someone intruding on a family dispute. Walsingham, Gilliatt noticed, was RNVR, and it was evident from his youth and rank that he was a former civilian intelligence officer drafted into the Admiralty. Gilliatt was silently amused at the idea that he might have taken his own place. The humour of the situation gave him a sense of superiority to the room and its occupants.
Ashe was tired, worn, drained. As if respecting an invalid, March concentrated his questions on Gilliatt. He snapped them out, primarily retracing the ground that lay tracked in the typed sheets in front of him on the table, supplementing with one or two riders to the initial debriefing. It took less than fifteen minutes, and nothing in March's voice or face indicated the weight he attached to what he asked or received in reply. Gilliatt was gradually assailed by a loss of reality surrounding what they had discovered in St George's Channel. Winnie's Welcome Mat was still out there, unbreached. March's strong, unmoving face suggested as much. The late afternoon sun behind his head haloed the white hair, tipped the ears with pink — an elderly rabbit. Nothing bad was going to happen—
Gilliatt jerked awake. The questioning had transferred to Ashe briefly, then back to him.
"Sir?" he fumbled.
"What are your conclusions, Mr Gilliatt? As a former intelligence officer?" March snapped, scowling at Gilliatt and the debriefing report in turn.
"It has to be — well, it has to be to land troops in Ireland, from the sea — I suppose."
Walsingham, who had said little, beamed and seemed suddenly much more aware. March looked at him, momentary puzzlement hardening into a more habitual authority.
"Very well, I'll leave Commander Walsingham to talk to you, while you and I, Captain Ashe, have our own discussion. You'll want tea sent in, Charles?" Walsingham seemed unconcerned.
"Please," Gilliatt said.
Ashe left like an old man being taken to a hospital ward, disturbed as to what his forthcoming tests might reveal. March was erect, and did not look back as he vacated the high-ceilinged room, its tall windows spilling light across the carpet and over Walsingham's head and shoulders, so that he squinted. A mock seafaring look, Gilliatt observed.
Walsingham wandered over to the fireplace, and seemed to study the dwarfed gas fire that squatted in it. He leaned on the high, cream-painted mantelpiece almost in a deliberate pose of abstraction. Then he turned to Gilliatt.
"I believe you," he said simply.
"Is it a question of belief?"
"It might be. No one here wants to believe it, of that you may be certain. To their Lordships, it would be the last straw. Tell me — how do you think the Germans would have swept the minefield?"
Gilliatt studied Walsingham across the room. There was something almost obsessive about him, a barely-restrained energy. Obscurely, Gilliatt didn't like him, aware at the same time that he might only be disliking a former self.
"Submarine, on the surface, probably."
"Yes, I have other opinions that would confirm that. How would they land troops, then?"
"Ship?" Gilliatt realized he was being led to ponder the darkest unpleasantries; invited to contemplate disaster by the bland voice. "No — submarine again. Their biggest U-boats could transport eighty to a hundred men — each."
"How many troops could they land in one night?" Walsingham was almost crouching towards him by the fireplace, demanding an answer that confirmed his worst suspicions.
Gilliatt considered. "Close to two thousand if they had the subs — and the weather."
"And what about the present weather, Lieutenant Gilliatt?"
After a long silence, Gilliatt, appalled, said, "I would — would consider the weather good enough, at present."