"Come, come," Goessler said with a bonhomie that made McBride's flesh creep. He was listening to the tones of someone it was easy to take for granted, even regard with a mild contempt — Goessler's academic mask that had deceived him completely. Then Goessler was standing in front of him. His pudgy hand lifted McBride's chin, inspected his face like a surgeon considering alterations. "You look tired, Thomas." There was no sense of irony in his words, but a kind of feminine condolence which made McBride shudder.
"Get lost, Goessler," he said. Moynihan laughed.
"I'm sorry if they've been rough with you, Thomas — they are animals." He turned on Claire Drummond and Moynihan. "Don't wave those stupid guns at me. I'm your paymaster, your arms dealer, your banker, your insurance. You can't kill me. Besides, I have come merely to congratulate you on your success, and to make certain that you find Professor McBride co-operative."
"Were you followed?" Moynihan asked. Goessler merely looked at him with contempt and sat himself in the chair Moynihan had occupied. Lobke placed himself against the wall where he could watch the room and its occupants. Claire Drummond put her gun away, and sat down. Moynihan was forced to sit on the narrow sofa, next to McBride, who shuffled into a corner of the seat, hunched up, frightened and sullen. Goessler studied him intently for a long time, then spread his hands.
"I'm sorry, Thomas — Professor. You should not have to endure this. Indeed, I am sorry—" Moynihan shuffled uncomfortably on the sofa. It was evident he hated and feared Goessler, the man's physical presence and voice disturbing him. "But I'm afraid it was all very necessary. As our friends here have told you — unless they are being even more secretive than usual — they belong to the Provisional IRA, though Miss Drummond is really a very Left-wing Trotsky disciple, mixed in with a little PLO and Italian terrorist ideology—" Claire Drummond's face was white, her nostrils pinched into pinpricks, her mouth a bloodless single line. She was staring at Goessler, who ignored her, her eyes wide. "A very uncomfortable mixture, and highly volatile." Goessler smiled. "Sean is much less complicated — he simply hates the English. Both of them have a burning desire to see the forthcoming meetings between the British and Irish governments fail disastrously. You know what part the present Secretary of State, the Right Honourable David Guthrie, played in the prevention of the German invasion of Ireland. Our friends want you to tell that, to tell also what you know of the British atrocity that followed, and what you know of the death of a prominent American in the sinking of the special convoy—"
Goessler unrolled the facts of McBride's investigations one by one, ticking them off on the pudgy fingers of his left hand. A ruby ring glowed on the same hand. McBride sat, his mouth hanging stupidly open, sensing a gulf opening up beneath him and his mind spinning. Goessler knew everything, everything—
He could not stop the thought repeating and echoing, like something dreamed on the edge of sleep where the mind is uncontrolled and the body twists and turns to rid itself of the persistent, maddening images. Goessler knew everything— had always known.
Goessler recognized the process going on in his head, and waited until McBride looked balefully, defeatedly up at him again.
"Thomas," he said softly, "of course we've always known. There was no way we could not know. Menschler and people like him gave us everything, and we knew what must have happened to the convoy, and to the invasion, even who was involved. The present director of what they used to call MI5 evolved the plan that Churchill used—" He smiled. "You are the guarantor, the mask of accident, the facade of honour we sinister and untrustworthy people require. Of course, it would have been better had you gone ahead and published in your own time, but we could not afford to wait that long. You are the most welcome accident of all, being your father's son."
It was evident that Goessler had another nugget of information that he wished to impart. His face became as impassive as a page of print. He wanted McBride to ask the right question. Claire Drummond frowned, watching McBride's facial reactions carefully. And McBride remembered his father, as if recalling some piece of information that had been of only tangential importance to his investigations.
"What happened to my father?"
Claire Drummond was moved by an obscure guilt, even pity— but at what or for whom she had little idea. "Don't tell him."
Goessler looked at her, then ignored her. "Your father was killed by her father," he said bluntly. "Robert Drummond killed your father because your father discovered he was a traitor." Claire Drummond winced at the accusation, readopting long-abandoned sensitivities for a moment. "Oh, it wasn't unusual in Englishmen of his class and upbringing in the thirties. Many of them embraced the illusion of Russia under the benevolent government of Stalin, and others became sycophantic admirers of the Führer's New Order in Germany, the strength through joy which led to the work making free. Arbeit machtfrei. True, many of them would not have been so fascinated if they had known about Dachau and Auschwitz and the other places, but then so many of your poets would not have loved Stalin if they had known he was liquidating millions more even than Hitler. Beliefs are strange things — it is perhaps better to live without them." A trace of doubt flitted on Goessler's face for a moment, like a tiny cloud moving across the sun, then he nodded his head. "Robert Drummond worked for the Germans throughout the war, most especially during November 1940. He killed your father."
McBride looked at Claire Drummond, who snapped, "Why did you tell him that? He'll never help us now!" There was something close to fear in her voice.
"Of course he will. It is his only chance of life, is it not, Thomas?" He smiled at McBride. "Let him think it over for a time. Do not be in too much of a hurry to prompt him, and do not hurt him." He stood up, hands spread in front of him, shrugging off any harm he might have done. "That is my advice to you both." He sounded obscenely fatherly.
Claire Drummond was puzzled. "Is that it? Is that all you came for?"
"For now — yes. Rudi and I will be staying nearby, of course, and we will call on you again tomorrow." He smiled expansively. Moynihan writhed visibly on the sofa next to McBride. McBride realized, through a miasma of contradictory emotions, that both the woman and Moynihan were powerless to behave independently of the East German. He controlled them, they were his employees. Even the girl, stronger than her partner, was afraid of Goessler. They'd outrun him in kidnapping McBride, but now they'd stepped back into line.
"Goodnight, Thomas," Goessler said from the door, even as McBride's skin was still registering the change in temperature from the open door. He did not reply, and Goessler shrugged, then went out.
He had to escape. He knew that there had to be a moment, one chance, to get out and away. Otherwise he would talk, he would be working for Goessler, the man without beliefs. But the thought of escape daunted him, like a mountain he had to climb without oxygen or ropes or boots or courage. He let his head drop forward on his chest as he heard Goessler's car pull away from the cottage. He'd never make it, couldn't do it—
The parachute troops pulled out at midday. The weather remained to their advantage, misty and drizzling persistently, the landscape grey and stifled and almost obscured. McBride and Maureen and Gilliatt were not questioned again by the Oberst. He merely dismissed them from his considerations and handed them over to Riordan and two other local IRA men — one of them Gilliatt was certain had been among their original pursuers, a short, red-headed man with a whey-coloured face that looked only half-shaped from its human clay.