"Exactly!" Walsingham's glance at the ceiling was almost theatrical, his face slightly flushed, his body alert with nerves. "Exactly!" He studied Gilliatt for a moment, then nodded. "Lieutenant Gilliatt, I am familiar with your record, and you can be of use to me. You'll consider yourself re-assigned, pending confirmation."
Before Gilliatt could protest, Walsingham had gone, leaving Gilliatt to wander to the window and look morosely down at Horse Guards Parade and St James's Park. Walsingham's enthusiasm confirmed more dire prognostications than Ashe and March put together. He did not wish to become involved any closer with the fate of his country.
McBride bundled the IRA youth into the back of the Morris and climbed in after him. Drummond took the wheel, started the engine, and screeched off along the cliff-road looking for a junction with the track the German had taken inland.
"Come on, start explaining!" McBride snapped, his hand in the stuff of the youth's sweater, bunching it under his chin. "Where is our friend heading?"
The youth shook his head. Carroty hair, freckles, pale skin. Scared stiff, but stubborn. He'd taken oaths, belonged—
"Ask him which way — again," Drummond offered.
"Where are you from?" McBride asked, leaning against the youth. The leather of the bench-seat creaked. Drummond stopped the car, and turned in his seat.
"Which way?" he demanded.
"We are going to find out, you know," McBride said with a smile, letting go of the sweater, taking out cigarettes. "We'll all have a quiet smoke, and then we'll have a talk, mm?"
The youth took the cigarette, McBride lit it, the boy coughed, looked defiant, then dragged deeply. Suddenly, he appeared very vulnerable, and aware of the closeness of the car around him, the proximity of the two tall men much older — and wiser and more ruthless, no doubt — than he. He coughed again.
"English cigarettes, eh?" McBride said, his accent slightly broader than before. "Like everything else, they're not for the Irish, eh, lad?"
"Why are you working for them, McBride?" the lad snapped back, nodding at Drummond. "We know all about you, McBride—" He flinched as McBride's face hardened.
"Now, that's not the way to get out of here in one piece, lad. What's your name?"
A long hesitation, then: "Dermot."
Tearse, O" Connell, Yeats, Gonne, Casement — which is it?" The boy appeared puzzled, then realized he was being mocked. "You've joined then, have you?" The boy nodded. "So, Dermot, you've got a bloody great gun, and you're told to go and blow my head off — and you nearly did, mm? But it isn't quite the same as shooting pheasants or crows, is it?" The boy disliked the turn of the conversation. "How old are you, Dermot?"
"Twenty—"
"Grow a moustache, Dermot. If you're over eighteen, I'm a Black-and-Tan. And just say I am and I'll push all your teeth down your throat, Dermot."
The humour and the threats disturbed Dermot. Drummond turned away on cue, just as the boy began to look to him as a silent, and therefore rational, being.
"Piss off, you—" The flinch was just below the surface, the shudder one layer of skin too deep to show. But McBride knew Dermot was hanging onto his new identity in the IRA. The German probably meant nothing to him at that moment.
"That's a brave lad. They'll give you a martyr's funeral, no doubt of it. I'll tell them you were spitting defiance up to the last." He paused, smiling, then: "You little cunt, you tried to kill me! You're going to pay for that—" He opened the door, and pulled the boy bodily across the back seat and out of the car after him. Without hesitation, he dragged him to the cliff-edge, then held him at arms" length, teetering on the edge, body inclined so that if McBride released him he would be unable to regain his balance, would fall. "You've tried to kill your last Irishman, Dermot — your last anything!" The wind plucked at Dermot's grey mackintosh, at his red hair, His face was shining with a ghostly paleness. His eyes kept moving from the beach below to McBride's pitiless face. "You think it's like the Boy Scouts, do you, Dermot? It isn't lad, it isn't. You've joined the scum, the bombers and the assassins — the comedians of destruction! You're going over, Dermot. I'm going to save your soul, Dermot. Save you from yourself! There's time, Dermot — start saying your confession. Absolution follows!" He bellowed with laughter. Dermot screamed. McBride loosened his grip on the boy's arm, then jerked him backwards. Dermot collapsed on the grass in a faint. Vomit leaked thinly from the corner of his mouth. McBride turned him over so that he would not choke on it.
When Dermot regained consciousness, he found himself back in the car, a tartan rug wrapped round him.
Drummond pressed a flask of rum to his lips. He coughed as he swallowed, but the drink seemed to revive memories, and his eyes darted in his head. He was obviously looking for McBride.
"I've sent him for a walk, to calm down. But, you did try to kill us, Dermot. It did make him angry."
"He's mad," Dermot mumbled, swigging again at the rum. "McBride is as mad as a hatter, mister!"
"Tell me — why you, Dermot?"
A long silence in which Drummond could almost hear the fragile raft of Dermot's recent oaths strain and break against the rocks of immediate experience.
Dermot told Drummond everything — which wasn't much. He'd been available, had a gun — once his father's, his grandfather's originally — and the German had needed help. He'd been ordered to give it. The German hadn't joined up with any other Germans, as far as he knew. Yes, the Skibbereen Battalion was giving help to the Germans — how many? Three or four since Dermot joined. Yes, they were still about—
Eventually, the little cargo of information had diminished to nothing. Drummond was certain of it. He said, "Right-ho, Dermot, on your way." The boy was nonplussed and did not move. Drummond opened the rear door for him, waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. "Go, and sin no more," he added, then: "Dermot, you're free to go — go and tell them you got away from us, you told us nothing, what the devil you like — but go!"
Dermot scrambled out of the Morris and away, soon disappearing behind a dip of the headland, coat-tails flying behind him. After a while, Drummond lit a cigarette, and McBride rolled out from underneath the car, stood up and brushed himself off, and joined Drummond.
"Fat lot of use he was, our Dermot," he observed. "Quite a good choice by our German friend. Young enough not to think of the consequences, and young enough, too, to know nothing."
"We'll not get anything out of the Skibbereen Battalion. A dead end, if they're protecting German agents."
"You know — I would have thrown him over if I thought that way I could have done him the favour of keeping him out of their hands — and if I could be ruthless enough."
"Michael — you mean it, don't you?"
"Yes. Oh, you didn't know they killed my father, did you? No wonder it came as a surprise to you." Drummond studied McBride, who was staring through the windscreen, memory racing. He could ask no more questions.
"What do you think?"
"If they want to get rid of us, then I think they must be very close to whatever they have planned. It's so out of character for those Skibbereen clowns, they're being hard-pressed by someone else. God, they think the Germans are going to help them unite Ireland! No, forget it—" McBride was talking almost to himself." They must be scared stiff of us — not because of who we are or what we know, but just because of what they're up to! We're a danger just because we're here — now, tell me what it might be."