Hughes sat at the bar, nursing a pint of Bass when Ryan entered. They shook hands, the warmth between them muted by the unfamiliarity of their civilian dress. Ryan realised he had never seen Hughes in anything but a uniform.
They took a table in a dark corner, exchanged a few stories about old comrades, some still alive, some not.
“So what have you been up to?” Hughes asked.
“Nothing,” Ryan said. “That’s the problem. Outside of the army, I’m no use to anyone.”
“Are you thinking of re-enlisting?”
“I don’t know. What else is there for me?”
“How about settling down?” Hughes asked. “Get married. Have some kids. Get fat and grow vegetables in your garden.”
Ryan couldn’t help but smile at the image. “Can you see me up to my ankles in fertiliser?”
Hughes laughed. “I’ve seen you in worse.”
They sat quiet for a time, listening to the coarse jokes of the dock and shipyard workers who drifted in as their shifts ended. Hard, wiry men, tattoos of girls’ names on their forearms, swollen knuckles and mighty thirsts.
“There is one way I could point you,” Hughes said.
Ryan leaned forward. “What’s that?”
“I was contacted a while back, when I was home visiting my mother in Monaghan. A fella in a suit came up to me in the pub near our old house, started talking all casual, acting like he knew me. He starts asking what I thought I might do when I left the army. I never talk about the job much back home. You know what it’s like, some aren’t too keen on Irish lads fighting for the Brits. So I didn’t say much back to him.
“Anyway, after talking around it for half an hour, he says he works for the government. Says they’re looking for Irish boys who’ve come out of the British Army, boys who’ve seen action. The lads in the Irish Army do plenty of square bashing and exercises, but most of them’s never slept in a trench or shot at anything but a paper target. He says they need boys like us for his department.”
“Which department?” Ryan asked.
“The Directorate of Intelligence,” Hughes said. “G2, they call it.”
“So he was trying to recruit you?”
“No,” Hughes said. “He knew I was in for life. But he wanted me to whisper in a few ears, talk to any lads that might be good material for them.”
“Like me,” Ryan said.
Hughes smiled, took a swig of ale, and fetched a pencil from his jacket pocket. He scribbled a name and a telephone number on a beer mat, slid it across the table.
“Think about it,” Hughes said.
Ryan hardly thought about it at all. He called the number the very next morning.
CHAPTER FORTY
Skorzeny woke early, bathed, and ate a stout breakfast with good coffee. He walked in the fields for an hour or so, watched the sheep graze, observed Tiernan working on exercises with his dogs.
Lainé had kept himself out of sight since the night before last, holed up in his room, empty bottles gathering by the kitchen door the only visible sign of his presence. Skorzeny occasionally heard the pup’s mewling, but little else.
In truth, he was glad of it. He did not find Célestin Lainé at all agreeable, but the Breton was useful, so he tolerated his presence in the house. Frau Tiernan found him less tolerable, had complained about Lainé several times since his arrival, but Skorzeny assured her he would move on before long, and she wouldn’t have to worry about the messes he and that damned pup left behind.
Skorzeny had spent much of the last thirty six hours in thought, considering options, entertaining suspicions. Of course Ryan was correct; Skorzeny should simply board a flight to Madrid and stay there enjoying the sunshine until this foolishness was over. But if he had been the type to back down, to flee when danger thundered in the distance, he would not be Otto Skorzeny. He would never have tasted the glory, or the women, or enjoyed the power and the riches at his disposal. He would still be an engineer, toiling at a desk in Vienna, waiting for a pension or a heart attack, whichever came first.
Whoever these terrorists — yes, terrorists was the correct word — whoever they were, and whatever they wanted, he would stand here on his land, would not be dislodged by threat or action. If they wanted to come at him, they had better be prepared for a fight.
And Otto Skorzeny had never lost a fight.
Besides, Madrid might not be that welcoming for the time being, given recent events.
In Tarragona, Luca Impelliteri had sat across the table from Skorzeny eight hours after making his demands, smiling that damned smile of his as the rest of Franco’s guests chattered around them. A young Spanish woman had sat by the Italian’s side, her hand constantly brushing the tanned skin of his forearm.
Occasionally, Impelliteri spoke into her ear, causing her to smile and blush. Then he glanced up at Skorzeny, his looks a barbed reminder of the prize he believed he had won from the older man.
But he had won nothing other than the fate he deserved.
In the small hours of the following morning, Skorzeny was woken by a telephone call to his hotel room.
“SS-Obersturmbannführer Skorzeny?”
A woman’s voice.
“Who is this?” he asked, though he knew the answer.
“I have come at the request of your old friend.”
“Good,” Skorzeny said. “Where are you?”
“In a hotel at the far end of the Rambla Nova.”
“Do you know what I want from you?”
“I know what, but not who.”
As the Mediterranean lapped at the rocks beneath his window, Skorzeny gave her a name.
He made his way back to the house, cleaned his boots outside the door, and entered through the kitchen.
Frau Tiernan stood at the sink washing the breakfast things.
“I would like some coffee in my study,” he said in German. “Have Esteban bring it to me when it’s ready.”
She looked up from her scrubbing. “Yes, sir. The post is on your desk.”
Skorzeny went to the study, sat behind his desk, and lit a cigarette. He leafed through the five envelopes. A letter from Pieter Menten in Holland, one from a bishop in Portugal, two from old Kameraden in Argentina.
And one with a Dublin postmark, the address typewritten to SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny.
His mouth dried. He drew hard on the cigarette, placed it in the ashtray, and opened the envelope.
One page, typewritten.
He read. Anger simmered in his gut. He clenched a fist, read the letter once more.
Then he laughed.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
Ryan read through his notes from the night before, though there had been little to write about as the dark hours dragged on. Somewhere he had heard a baby cry every few hours, demanding its feed. A couple had argued loud and fierce on past midnight. A dog barked every so often. In the house closest to him, Ryan heard the rattle of a headboard through the open bedroom window, the grunts of a man’s climax, the closing of a door, a woman’s tears.
Ryan moved a few feet away from his nest when he needed to relieve his bladder, crawling slow and careful through the ivy.
As the night deepened, Ryan fought sleep with coffee. Still it slipped over him. He awoke from a nightmare, walls collapsing around him, burying him, as the dawn train screamed past. Once he’d gathered his senses, he checked his wristwatch. Not quite six thirty.