He shuffled the handwritten sheets in front of him, then leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He wondered briefly about McBride, then excised him from his mind, realizing as he did so that he was behaving with the same bunkered disregard for realities which so angered him in their Lordships. Even March, who should have been convinced by now.
He yawned.
Another reality insisted, came to light and to a sudden prominence in his mind so that he could not ignore it. The convoy. What could they do about the convoy?
And, with a colder insistence, something stirred like a nightmare he had not relived since childhood but which was now coming back with all its old force; an idea that had the terror of a shambling, nameless creature, an idea he knew, finally, would be adopted.
A war crime — would they call it that?
Yes.
Sir Charles Walsingham, Head of the Directorate of Security, MI5, sat in his spacious civil servant's office in the Home Office, where his official rank was Permanent Under-Secretary, his fingers splayed upon the green blotter in the middle of his oak desk. He seemed possessed by an old dream or nightmare, his lips compressed to a single thin line, his forehead deeply trenched with creases, his eyes vacant yet inwardly intent and mesmerized. It was late in the evening, and outside in Parliament Street the lamps bloomed in soft, insinuating rain. His room was lit by his table-lamp and by an ornate standard lamp in one corner. He preferred the shadows at that moment.
He had called at the Home Office before returning to his flat in Chesham Place. Drummond's cryptic, almost insolent telephone message was waiting for him in his aide's neat, womanish handwriting — a large question mark beneath the final words.
Drummond he had never liked, forty years before at the height of the affair. McBride's control — and yet Walsingham had possessed a deep affection for the rootless, uncaring Irishman and nothing more than civility towards the Englishman, Drummond. He remembered at one time, possibly in "41 or "42, they'd suspected Drummond of assisting German agents in Ireland — which had been patent nonsense, and nothing more than the hare-brained guesswork of one of the reckless young men who succeeded McBride…
Why had he remembered that about Drummond?
He would call Drummond in the morning, expecting to get no more than that out of him. But the son — McBride's son, of all people in the world. Now, at this critical time—
For a moment, he suspected an elaborate and devious plot — then dismissed the idea as ridiculous. It was nothing more than the externalizing of his own selfish fears. What the devil could young McBride drag up? Anything — everything? If he did, then Walsingham himself was finished, Guthrie was certainly finished — perhaps Ulster itself, even this government…
The ripples spread on the ruffled pond of his imagination. McBride was a heavy stone, and he had already been thrown, apparently. He would have to be watched. There ought to be nothing — no clues — for him to discover, but after forty years who could any longer be sure that there were no scraps of paper, no old memories, no loose tongues lying around. McBride — Walsingham had read Gates of Hell and disliked it — was looking for an angle, for something sensational. The Emerald business would be just what he would be looking for.
In that office, it was hard for Walsingham to feel genuinely fearful. Forty years of power, privilege and ascent were a barrier against fear. But, he still could not control his imagination, even though nothing of its images transferred to nerves or sweat-glands. He wasn't twitching, or getting damp, but he knew, with a kind of cold fear that went on thinking clearly, envisaging the consequences, that everything was at the hazard, that McBride could, with the right information, ruin everything.
Then the small selfish thought — war crime. He'd be finished, buried by an avalanche of contumely, national and international. Most of the other decision-makers and decision-takers were dead. He would retire next year. He was already beyond official retirement age for his rank in the civil service. Now, he'd be the one — he and Guthrie, of course, the obedient instrument — who'd be blamed for the Emerald Decision.
He picked up one of the telephones on his desk. McBride, and quickly — whereabouts, recent enquiries, state of knowledge.
Possible solutions.
He'd ring Guthrie later, before the Minister retired for the night—
But of all people, McBride's son — now of all possible times…
CHAPTER NINE
According to the Record
Gilliatt had a hurried, confused impression of the smells of dung, butter, then warm hay as he followed McBride along a lightless path between cottage and barn and into the silent, dark interior of the latter. A horse whinnied softly, disturbed by the creaking of the door.
"Michael?" he called, losing sight of McBride's shadowy form almost at once when the door was shut behind them.
"Over here," came the reply. Gilliatt moved gingerly across the uneven floor of the barn-cum-stable, catching his shin against a sharp-edged implement and swearing softly, shuffling his feet in the strewn hay. McBride's hand grabbed him, pulled him down behind a mound of hay, pressing him close to it, almost making him sneeze.
"What are they looking for?" he whispered, hearing distantly the bark of the dog, and the rapping of a fist or boot against the door of the cottage.
"With the dog — Hoffer is my guess," McBride whispered back, irritated by his companion as by a slow-learning pupil. "He's been reported missing. Perhaps Lampau and his goons nabbed him a couple of hours earlier than they need. Walsingham wouldn't be pleased at that. Listen!"
Gilliatt strained his hearing. Voices being raised, one French — but he couldn't pick out the words — and the other German. Then the slamming of a door. A few moments later, the fractured, eager barking of the dog.
"The scent—" Gilliatt whispered.
"They've given it Hoffer's scent all right. I wonder where the body is?"
As if in reply or confirmation, the dog's barking became almost frantic, and had moved out of the house again, presumably behind the cottage.
"What about us?"
"Wait!"
Gilliatt was aware of the hay beneath and around him, its rich, stored smell heady, almost nauseous to the stomach he had so violently emptied. He listened, sensed McBride beside him alert and motionless. The dog went on barking, and behind its noise orders were being shouted. A French voice, raised in protest, but they could clearly hear the strained, high-pitched fear in it. Where had Lampau, Foret, Venec been when they heard the knock on the door? McBride had had no time to warn them, perhaps not even the inclination. They had run immediately for the shelter of the barn.
They each heard the running footsteps, distinctly, in the moment before the first shots from a machine-pistol on automatic. The bullets thudded into the wall of the barn behind them, then something else, something heavier, collided with the same wall, slithered down in a grotesque aural impersonation of reptilian movement. Gilliatt, swallowing bile, wondered which one of them it was. He almost hoped that it was Lampau. Then he heard the revolver firing.