The intelligence colonel cleared his throat. "We could land a couple of regiments today. The Dorsets and the Herefords are on full alert. They've not been told why."
"Colonel, you know it would take today to get them to the coast and aboard suitable vessels, even if we had them. By tomorrow night, they might have begun to disembark in Cork harbour, if we were very lucky." He paused while the colonel flushed slightly. "Very well, get them to the coast, Bristol or Cardiff, as quickly as possible. Just bodies — forget heavy equipment. I will talk to the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic and inform him that dockside facilities will be required in Cobh or Cork tomorrow. You have a list of vessels in Bristol and Cardiff—" Walsingham looked into Churchill's eyes, and shook his head. "Get one!"
Walsingham crossed to the telephones ranged alongside each other on a fold-away table. Churchill watched his retreating back for a moment, then said, "Get them onto anything, let them sail as soon as possible." Again, he pointed with his cigar. "They'll require Cork airport. I presume they'll try to take it tomorrow, and land equipment and the Panzergrenadiers then. Then Cork harbour, and it would be all over." The colonel looked as if Churchill had touched a hidden nightmare or shame. "Very well. Then our relaid minefield had better work effectively, to give us time to round up the parachutists, on behalf of the sovereign republic of Eire." He emitted his gruff, barking laugh. The colonel realized, looking into his face, that there was a confidence that bordered on fanaticism in Churchill. The atmosphere of the War Office was cynical, depressed — even before Emerald — but it was as if Churchill were fighting personally, in some medieval combat with Hitler and knew his own superiority to the German leader. If he had no doubts, then Britain could not lose. Or was it a public-relations act, a pretence and nothing more? The colonel could not answer his own question. Churchill was speaking again.
"We have to defend Cork airport and the harbour. If we can do that—" It was not a doubt — 'then the Nazis cannot land more troops except by parachute. And tanks are not dropped by parachute. Good. Walsingham—" He called across the room. Walsingham placed his hand over the mouthpiece.
"Prime Minister?"
"I want the First Sea Lord as soon as you've ordered your list of shipping. This transport of two regiments to Ireland must have absolute priority. They must be there by tomorrow at the latest."
Churchill turned back to the wall map. Someone had added the position of the convoy carrying Patrick Terence Fitzgerald, now only a few hours" sailing from Valentia Island on the west coast of Ireland. The four pins for the cruiser and the three merchant ships were livid spots before his eyes and an interference with his thinking. Those four coloured pins were something he would have to deal with before the end of the afternoon.
He inwardly saw his own hand resting on the final pages of Walsingham's Emerald file. Cigar ash scattered like dandruff over its typed, double-spaced lines. Walsingham had been prepared to sacrifice the convoy for the sake of complete surprise and to ensure the destruction of the U-boat convoy that was coming that night. He'd got the wrong end of the stick. The convoy from America might have to be destroyed, but not for that reason.
There was another reason that burned at the back of Churchill's mind like a dark light, or a spillage of acid. Before that evening, he would have to allow it into the forebrain, dissect it, and act upon it.
David Guthrie watched the grey, choppy sea close over the last batch of mines from the deck of Palmerston. Nothing disturbed the water other than the wind which stirred and made ragged the sea-mist, and the wake of the minelayer. He felt cold inside his duffel-coat and thick sweater and uniform jacket. The sea looked forbidding, rubbed and abrased by the wind into a treacherous, insecure surface. There was no mood of satisfaction at the completion of their task, and he did not understand its absence. Nor did he comprehend the reason for his chill sense of foreboding, which lingered like the staleness of guilt in his mind.
Patrick Terence Fitzgerald thanked the officer who brought him the information that they were four hours" sailing from Valentia Island. He'd not see the coast, of course, because of the mist through which the drizzle squalled on the buffeting wind. The quarter deck was wet and treacherous, and he gripped the railing fiercely as if the sea suggested some siren call to him. He was cold, and dispirited and alone, and thankful that his journey was almost over. About the task confronting him, he was not prepared to think. He was almost ready for it, but not quite. By tomorrow, he told himself, he would be ready to go to work. By tomorrow.
Jean Perros watched from the harbour wall of St Anne-du-Portzic as the large U-boats, moving in line astern, slipped out of Brest down the Goulet de Brest towards the sea. Through the dusk and the drizzling mist he could make out their low, spectral shapes as they emerged and disappeared through the palpable, chilly air. There had been no fishing allowed by the Germans for the last two days. He'd been unable to make any accurate reports to London, via the radio set in St Pierre-Quilbignon. Now, he would be able to send the message they waited for—
And he believed, so deeply that it rendered him weak and old, that his message would be too late to make any difference.
He watched until the U-boats had finally vanished westwards, then hurried from the harbour wall to collect his bicycle to ride the mile and a half to send his signal.
"You're going to talk to us, McBride, and not only to us. You're going to talk to the newspapers. You'll even get paid for it. We're making money for you — just look at it that way."
Moynihan chuckled. He was sitting opposite McBride, whose hands were tied in front of him, resting on his lap. Claire Drummond was seated on an upright chair, taller than the prisoner on the battered sofa and the Irishman in the armchair by the fire, and suggesting by her posture and her silence that she was in command of the circumstances of that room. McBride, truculently silent, was still grateful for the light from the bulb above his head and for the warmth of the fire after the hours in the stifling, nightmarish boot of the car.
Gagged and bound, he had thought himself slipping into insanity. Cramp was like the gradual onset of decay, even death. The gag in his mouth seemed to be sliding down his throat, into his nostrils to suffocate him. The smell of petrol and the road noise of the tyres sickened him. Then they'd stopped, finally, and dragged him out — he'd fallen over with the cramp in his body and had lain in the long wet grass, sobbing until they'd bundled him indoors. He'd caught a brief glimpse of fields dropping away, dark copses and grazing cattle, and of a dilapidated cottage directly ahead of him. When they'd got him inside, their satisfaction made them abandon any pretence to security. He was in the
Cotswolds, just outside Andoversford. Claire Drummond had laughed at his bemusement, shouting into his face that he was near Cheltenham and hadn't he ever heard of the Cotswolds, the dumb stupid Yank that he was—
Claire Drummond frightened him. The woman was high on success, on the weapon she believed he would become for her. He saw how much she hated the British, how much she despised him. She paced the room continually, until she finally settled in front of him on the hard chair. Neither the journey nor the lateness of the hour seemed to have tired her, or made her aware of any physical limitations on her driving hatred. McBride quailed inwardly. He could see no way in which he could resist them. They were determined he should talk — not to them but to the press.