Only Drummond, he kept on thinking. He did not even consider whether Gilliatt was dead or alive. Only Drummond.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Survivors
The Rt Hon. David Guthrie'S PPS, a man Walsingham hardly knew, informed him that the Secretary of State was unable to see him at the moment because he was receiving representatives of the Dublin government in an attempt to finalize the initial meeting with the Irish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Fingers crossed, things are looking quite hopeful, the PPS confided to Walsingham as he was conducted to a small, comfortable sitting room to await Guthrie.
Walsingham set the small cassette-recorder down on the low table, and slipped the single cassette he had brought with him out of his coat pocket. It was in a buff envelope which he left beside the recorder. The tape was a transfer from reel-to-reel of the call McBride had made to the minister's office that afternoon. The envelope's innocence in the room's gathering dusk was false and uncomfortable to Walsingham. McBride was an angry man, had resented being deflected and turned away by a secretary, had spoken of the minister's wartime experiences with a cunning masked by ingenuousness. McBride was somehow no longer the straightforward academic or his effrontery merely that of a gauche American. It would be interesting to watch Guthrie's face as he heard McBride's words for the first time. There was, at the same time, a pressure in Walsingham to go on thinking of McBride as an historian, even as an American. Both ideas made something objective and unknown of him, effectively severing him from Michael McBride in his mind.
Walsingham glanced round the room, then got up and poured himself a whisky at the cocktail cabinet. Then he moved to the tall window and looked down at Whitehall splashed by the last of the sun. The very familiarity of the scene threw his mental landscape into greater relief. How dangerous was McBride? What would they have to do about him?
McBride was angry that his notebooks had been stolen from him. Walsingham now felt that move had been precipitate, an over-reaction. And he had discovered the body of the man Hoskins — would he believe that to have been some kind of official interference? Who was Hoskins, anyway, and what part was he to have played, or had he played? The questions lit his mind garishly, detonations along the hillside he had to assault.
He returned to the sofa, sitting down heavily like a fat old man. Special Branch had no leads on Hoskins" killer. Was it connected? Wasn't it all too accidental, too convenient, that McBride and the events seemingly attendant on him should appear at the precise moment of this crisis of relations between London and Dublin? Was McBride being used? But if he was, then by whom?
The door opened, and Guthrie entered smiling, his hand extended to Walsingham. Walsingham studied him as they shook hands. Guthrie was tired, but there was also a combative light in his eyes, and a suggestion that his reserves of energy and patience remained almost unimpaired.
He poured himself a drink, refilled Walsingham's glass, then said: "I apologize for keeping you waiting, Charles. Bloody obstructive people—" The smile did not go away. Infighting seemed to tone Guthrie like a cold shower. "Your call sounded urgent, even by the time it got to me. Something the matter?"
Walsingham indicated chairs, reseated himself on the sofa, and Guthrie sat casually opposite him in an armchair, crossing his long legs, cradling his drink in both hands as if to protect the crystal glass. He was attentive, unperturbed, curious. Walsingham, with some sense of the theatrical, took the cassette from the envelope and inserted it into the recorder.
"This call was made to your office yesterday—"
"A tape?" Guthrie asked quickly. Walsingham nodded. It was evident the minister expected some death-threat from a crank with an Irish accent that might have been real or assumed.
"Listen to it, please."
Walsingham played the tape. When he had done so, Guthrie indicated that it should be replayed. After a second hearing, the minister said: "McBride? Is there an Irish connection?"
"His father was Irish. I knew him during the war."
Guthrie was puzzled. "What's going on, Charles?"
"This man McBride is a bona fide historian, but he's also had some success with a sensational account of Hitler's last days in the Berlin bunker. His current project concerns the proposed German invasion of Ireland in 1940—" There was still no reaction from Guthrie, except that he nodded his head to punctuate Walsingham's narrative. "He — has come into possession of certain information concerning the British response to that threat, including your name."
Guthrie replied, in a chilly voice that gathered force from the dusky gloom: "How did that happen, Charles?"
"Admiralty records."
"What?" Disbelief rather than anxiety.
"There is still material in existence, material that has been overlooked up to now."
"My name, Charles. How did he get my name?"
"I'm not certain. I'm having that checked. However, he has it."
Guthrie went on nodding periodically in the silence that followed, punctuating some internal debate. Walsingham was being made to feel at fault, incompetent. All the while, however, Guthrie's face remained a smooth, inexpressive mask; unless the gloom disguised tiny flickers of emotion. Walsingham wanted a light to study him by. Eventually, Guthrie spoke. "It would be far better than shooting me, wouldn't it?" He grinned. "Much better."
"Yes."
"Is there an IRA connection?" He seemed to be asking himself, going back over his recent meeting, perhaps re-examining it in another, colder light.
"I don't know. I've checked with his agents over here. They don't have much idea of what he's working on, but they do know he's aiming for a very big sale, and a lot of money."
"Simple cupidity?"
"It could be."
"Any connection through the father?"
"No. He was an agent of mine, that is true. But there was nothing to give rise to a motive there." Walsingham rubbed his forehead, inspected his hand. "Rather the reverse. He'd not like the IRA because of his father."
"Then is it as sinister as it seems?" Guthrie held up his hand. "I fully realize the consequences for myself and for future relations between ourselves and Dublin — the dreadful consequences for the whole of Ulster — should this matter become public. But, does it need to become public? Can't you talk to this man McBride?"
"We could, but I'm not certain that I want to do that. Oh, we are having him watched, and we know more or less how much he knows." He paused, but did not elaborate. "But, we know very little about him as yet, and I do not want to make any precipitate moves."
"I understand that. There are no Irish hands in this pie, you suggest?"
"Not that we know. As far as we can be certain, McBride has no connection, even in the United States, with any Irish organization, and since our surveillance began there has been no contact with any suspected person." The statement sounded dry, official as it was meant to. Walsingham now almost regretted making this personal appearance, as if he had run to Guthrie to apologize or confess. "If we obtain evidence of any — organized plot against you or next week's meetings, then we shall act. In any case, McBride can never be allowed to publish."
"Then it might come to the same thing, might it not, whether he's alone or part of a conspiracy?" Guthrie's voice was similarly dry, official. He steepled his hands in front of his shadowed face.