The General Staff- Mulligan, O" Hare, Quinn, Lennon, all of them — had indeed become his Frankenstein. They'd abandoned other plans, even slowed the mainland bombing campaign, in order to adopt Goessler's scheme to ruin Guthrie. They'd taken it on trust, like greedy children a promise of cake. Taken his word, because he was convinced and his was the best tactical mind in Belfast. Now they wanted results.
He had to deliver. Inside a week. Claire Drummond had to come up with something—
He swallowed again at the whiskey, coughing on its harshness as if it did indeed contain some poison.
McBride was about to tell Claire Drummond what he had discovered at the embassy — she could see his excitement like the halo of a St Elmo's Fire, animating and enveloping his frame with electricity — when the telephone rang in his room. Her face darkened with anger.
It was Goessler.
"Professor Goessler, good to hear from you!" McBride yelled into the telephone. Bad line, he mouthed to Claire, grinning and hardly noticing how pale she had become. "Yes, I'm well, and back from Ireland safely." He chuckled at some joke of Goessler's, and Claire Drummond turned in her chair so that her back was to him. She could hardly control the tension nagging her hands and feet into helpless movement. Goessler — why?
McBride listened as Goessler launched into a long, apologetic explanation. Goessler had rung him once in Cork, to report only minimal progress in collating supporting evidence of the documents they had unearthed. No one else like Kohl had appeared. Now, he seemed to be trying to explain, with excessive bonhomie, that he had stopped working. McBride suspected a demand for a greater share of the potential profits, but he wasn't going to agree, bearing in mind what he had unearthed since leaving East Berlin. Goessler was out, except for the agreed percentage. Maybe not even that.
"You see," Goessler was explaining, 'they do not have to say why, or for what reason, my friend. All they say is, stop doing this, stop helping this man or that man, don't ask those questions. And, we agree with them. We stop."
"With who, Professor? Who are we talking about?" He had one finger in his ear to shut out all extraneous sound and was trying to hear through the excessive mush on the line. "What?"
"The police, of course. Oh, they have many names, and ranks and jobs — but, the police. You would call them the secret police."
McBride was puzzled rather than chilled, not taking Goessler more seriously at first than as another historian prying into his researches; then he went cold, and the missing files and then the pillow shutting out Hoskins" face were omnipresent.
"Why — why would they be interested, Professor?"
"Oh, they're not interested, my friend, not in your researches. It's me they keep an eye on. Too many contacts with Westerners, and they suspect my motives. Don't worry — I am ringing only to apologize for not being able to continue our work. A lengthy pause, into which it seemed McBride was to pour some unobtrusive but satisfying balm.
"Our arrangement stands, Professor," he said finally. Goessler's relief was almost audible.
"I knew I could rely upon you, my friend. Good luck with your work."
And then the connection was cut with chilling suddenness. McBride put down the receiver slowly.
"What is it?" Claire asked.
"Mm? Oh, Goessler's backing out — some trouble with the police, or something."
"Hag-ridden with police, those eastern European countries," she observed, seemingly indifferent. "Neurotic about contact with the West. Do you need him?"
"He could have been useful — but, no, I don't need him now." He smiled. Her answering smile invited confidentiality, and he seemed to see her more seriously. She could help him. He put aside the reluctance that bubbled up, and sat down next to her. Quickly, he told her what
Gillis had found, and the explanation. Then he back-tracked, beginning with Menschler — she'd heard some of it before, but he pedantically ignored the state of her knowledge, as if a confessional necessity had overcome all reluctance — going on to her father, to Hackney and Hoskins.
When he had finished, he appeared drained. She poured him a drink, aware again of the fine net of nerves lying just below her skin and which threatened to betray her excitement, her weakness in the grip of personal and ideological passions. McBride had been pointed ahead by Goessler's withdrawal, prompted into quicker, more intense enquiry by an increased sense of being alone. Venal motive, but appealing to the ego, too. Goessler was a clever man. She handed McBride the drink, and he took it with a smile as he might have done from a wife. She had succeeded. She was now the ally, the amanuensis.
"Trinity House," she said firmly.
"What?"
"Merchant Navy records in Trinity House. You could check there on this convoy, and whether Hoskins served on one of the ships. If he survived, then—"
"You're right!" He was animated again, and proud of her, she saw. Clever girl. She swallowed an irritation she had felt often with Moynihan when he was patronizing her intelligence. "By God, girl, you're right. Witnesses are what we need. If that convoy went down in the minefield, then they'd know it. My God—" He was galvanized now, and she enjoyed the control she had just exercised over him.
"You'd better look up their number," she said as he embraced her. Allies.
She'd call Moynihan later, and set up a meeting. He'd have to hear it in person, what she chose to tell him. She'd make him bring Treacey. She nibbled at McBride's ear as she felt with a crawling sensation his breath on her neck.
Walsingham's duty surveillance team watched McBride enter Trinity House on Tower Hill, then parked their Vauxhall near Tower Hill Station, from which point they could observe the main portico and steps of Trinity House. To be certain they did not miss McBride when he came out again, one of them, Ryan, took a newspaper and sat on a bench in Trinity Square gardens. When McBride left, he would signal the car, then go in and discover what McBride was doing there. To elicit the information would require no more than his CID card, one of the many organizations of security to which he was accredited.
McBride came out again near lunchtime. The woman that the man on the park bench had been observing waved to McBride, then joined him on the pavement opposite the gardens. They embraced. The watcher stood up, could almost hear the starting of the Vauxhall's engine though he knew that was impossible in the lunch hour traffic. He watched McBride and the woman — Drummond's daughter from his briefing — talking animatedly as they walked away towards Tower Hill, saw the Vauxhall tailing them down Savage Gardens, then he crossed the road to the main steps of Trinity House. In the imposing Front Hall with its numerous models of ships, he showed his CID card to the security guard, who put through a call to the Assistant Keeper of Records. In five minutes, Ryan was closeted with the Assistant Keeper, being shown the material that McBride had requested.
No, the Assistant Keeper had no way of knowing which names McBride had been concerned to check. Were there specific names? Professor McBride from the University of Oregon was interested in the kind of records, their history and comprehensiveness. Something for a paper he was to deliver to the American History of the Sea and Seafarers Society in Boston on his return to the United States. Ryan almost laughed, inwardly applauding the smokescreen McBride was capable of creating, his pulse quickening at the implications of such an elaborate subterfuge.
Records — just lists of names, sailors and the ships on which they had served. Period 1940 to "45. Trinity House, as Ryan well knew, was and is responsible for the relief of distressed and aged master mariners, but it also keeps records of all merchant seamen in distress or requiring any kind of help — all the old men with a life at sea behind them and nothing in front — together with its work in erecting and maintaining all lightships and lighthouses and being the chief pilotage authority in Britain.