Echoland (10 page)

To his surprise, there was an envelope waiting for him when he got to the Dáil. He thanked the usher who gave it to him, got back on his bicycle, and tore it open. A pound note almost fell out as he
unfolded
the paper. The surprisingly childlike handwriting said, ‘Thanks to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour for prayers answered – You’re a great lad altogether’. Timmy had dropped his initials from the text of the ad; there was nothing in the envelope to identify him.

He put it in his pocket and cycled down Kildare Street and was about to swing into Nassau Street when Hans and Eliza Harbusch crossed the road in front of him, hand in hand, ignoring the little
traffic
there was. He braked to let them by and looked back towards Merrion Square. Gifford was walking towards him, waving.

‘Howya,’ Gifford said in a loud voice from ten yards away. ‘Pity you didn’t have a car and keep going,’ he dropped his voice when he reached him. ‘Saved the world a lot of trouble if you’d run them down.’

Duggan dismounted and walked alongside him with his bicycle on the pavement. ‘Where’re they going?’

‘Grafton Street, I suppose,’ Gifford sighed. ‘I have news for you.’

Duggan had to wheel his bicycle onto the road to avoid two young women who were not going to make way for him.

‘First,’ Gifford said when he was back beside him. ‘They haven’t posted anything. And second, your cousin hasn’t gone to England.’

‘What?’ Duggan said, making no attempt to hide his surprise.

‘Definitely not,’ Gifford looked at him. ‘Forced my eyes away from the lovely Eliza every time we came near a pillar box. They didn’t go within a foot of one.’

‘Okay,’ Duggan said. ‘Nuala?’

Gifford shook his head. ‘She didn’t get a permit. Didn’t ask for one.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘That’s what my man says.’

‘Her friend says she went on the Holyhead boat.’ Was Stella
spinning
me another story? he wondered. No. He’d have put money on her telling the truth. She was too surprised, too taken aback by the ransom stuff.

‘Did he see her go?’ Gifford asked.

‘She,’ Duggan corrected him. ‘No, she didn’t. She was supposed to go out to Dun Laoghaire with her. But couldn’t at the last minute.’

They crossed the bottom of Dawson Street, Hans and Eliza still striding along ahead of them, not paying attention to anything to the left or right of them.

‘Maybe there are ways around the permits,’ Gifford offered. ‘But my man says it’s strict enough. Applies in the North as well, so there’s no use getting a train to Belfast and trying to go from there.’

‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ Duggan said, repeating a growing refrain in his own head. ‘She told her friend she was going. Wanted
her to come to the boat with her. But had no entry permit.’

‘And didn’t apply for one either.’

‘And she couldn’t have known her friend wouldn’t go to the boat with her,’ Duggan said. ‘It couldn’t have been a pretence.’ Shit, he thought, Stella has to be lying. But he would have sworn she wasn’t.

They followed the Harbusches across Grafton Street and went up the opposite footpath behind them, Duggan stepping into the gutter with his bicycle to avoid the pedestrians on the narrow footpath. He had to step back onto the footpath and stop to let a bus go by. He was so busy manoeuvring the bicycle through both kinds of traffic that he lost sight of the couple until Gifford said, ‘Go with him this time.’

Hans and Eliza had stopped outside Switzers. She bent down to kiss him on the cheek and he went into the department store while she continued up the street. Duggan looked for somewhere to leave the bicycle which wasn’t against a shop window, found a narrow stretch of wall, and hurried in after him.

Hans was wandering slowly through the make-up department, pausing to look at displays of lipsticks and powder-compacts. A
saleswoman
offered to help him but he declined with a smile and a little bow, doffing his hat. Duggan meandered around behind him,
keeping
what he thought was a discreet distance. The shop was not busy, a scattering of women wandering around, browsing. Hans wandered into the lingerie department, studied some mannequin displays at his leisure, picked up a flesh-coloured silk slip and held it out in front of him on its hanger. A young saleswoman gave him a filthy look as she went by, not offering any assistance. Hans bowed slightly, doffed his hat, and said in a soft voice, ‘
Fraulein
.’ She passed by Duggan giving him a look that also said ‘pervert’. He blushed a bright red, cursed to himself, and retreated to the staircase in the centre of the floor and took refuge behind it.

He could still see Hans’s hat wandering about, in no hurry. What
was he doing? Trying to meet somebody? Shake off anyone following him? If he was meeting someone it had to be a woman: there were no men at all on the floor apart from the two of them. If he was trying to spot a follower, he’d probably succeeded. Duggan felt himself stick out like a red warning signal.

Hans eventually drifted towards a door onto Wicklow Street and Duggan waited until he went through it before he made a dash for it. He looked left and right as he exited. Hans was going back towards Grafton Street. He followed him up the street past Bewley’s Café. Hans stopped outside the Royal Bank on the corner of Harry Street and seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. Duggan halted a few doors down outside the Grafton Cinema and pretended to look at the poster for
The Stars Look Down
. It showed Michael Redgrave bending down to kiss Margaret Lockwood’s
forehead
as she looked towards the future with satisfaction. Hans seemed to change his mind about going into the bank and waited instead for a gap in the traffic to cross the street. Duggan crossed too and
followed
him.

Hans turned into the Monument Creamery Café and Duggan saw Gifford sitting inside the window, pouring himself a cup of tea. Hans went into the back of the room where Eliza was waiting. Duggan sat down opposite Gifford, facing the street.

‘You been running?’ Gifford asked. ‘You’re looking a little flushed.’

Duggan reddened again as he told Gifford what had happened.

‘Oh, Hansi,’ Gifford laughed. ‘Imagine if he’s our
gauleiter
in
waiting
. What the country’ll be like if he ends up in charge of it.’

Duggan looked at the
Evening Herald
folded on the table. A
half-page
ad shouted in big type ‘Ireland Wants Men! She wants them at once! – She wants you ALL!’ The recruiting campaign had gone into overdrive with the imminent collapse of France. And the discovery
of Brandy, Duggan thought. He’s more likely to be the
gauleiter
in waiting.

‘Listen,’ he said as Gifford detached the paper from a queen cake with a glob of cream on top. ‘I’ve got to go and do something.’

‘The cousin?’

Duggan nodded. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a mess. But I’ve got to do it.’ If he didn’t get the ad in the
Herald
today it mightn’t appear before the weekend.

‘Not to worry.’ Gifford turned the cake around to see how best to attack it without getting cream all over his face. ‘We’ll just be
sauntering
home after this little outing.’

‘Thanks,’ Duggan said.

‘And I’ll keep an eye on the pillar boxes.’ Gifford took a large bite.

Duggan walked back to his bicycle which he was half surprised to find where he left it. He cycled down Grafton Street and over O’Connell Bridge and into Middle Abbey Street where he climbed the granite steps into the newspaper office. Its public office had a long counter on one side and a couple of lectern-like stands on the other with bound copies of its recent newspapers. A few old men were thumbing through past copies. He told a grey man at the counter what he wanted and got a form to fill in. Duggan copied the text from Timmy’s note and put his TM initials at the end of it.

‘Thanksgiving section,’ the man said when he returned it to him. ‘Name and address. You have to put it there. For anything in the Thanksgiving section.’

Fucking Timmy, Duggan thought. He must’ve known that. Didn’t want to be recognised and have to put in his real name and address or risk putting in a false name. He wrote in his own name and put down his home address.

‘One insertion?’

‘In tomorrow’s
Herald
, please.’

The man turned to the clock on the wall behind him; it was just after 4.30. ‘Bit late for tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Might have to wait till Saturday now.’

‘Oh,’ Duggan said. ‘It’d be a great help if it could go in tomorrow’s paper.’

The man pursed his lips, wondering what difference a day would make to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. ‘Very well,’ he said and counted the words. ‘That’ll be one shilling.’

‘Thanks very much,’ Duggan said. The man rooted in a drawer for the change for Timmy’s pound, counted out a half crown, a shilling and a sixpenny bit on the counter and smoothed out a ten shilling note beside them.

‘Orders from the captain,’ Bill Sullivan told Duggan when he got back to his office. ‘We’re to go out to Monkstown at half seven. Keep an eye on a party at the German envoy’s house.’

‘Where’s that?’ Duggan asked.

‘I know where it is,’ Sullivan told him.

‘And what’re we supposed to do about them?’

‘Observe and report.’

Duggan saw the envelope with Hans Harbusch’s latest letter still on his desk. ‘He didn’t say anything about this?’ he waved the
envelope
.

Sullivan shook his head. ‘More piggy wiggy stuff?’

‘No. Boring.’

He took the envelope and went in search of Captain McClure and found him in the other office. He and another officer were looking at a map of south Dublin pinned on a blackboard and easel. Duggan waited until McClure saw him.

‘This letter. Should we send it on?’

McClure looked at it briefly. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think we should. Something seems to have happened. The whole tone of it is much more enthusiastic than his usual letters.’

McClure tapped it against his fingernails. ‘Brandy?’

‘Could be.’

‘Okay. I’ll pass on your recommendation.’

‘If I could make another suggestion?’ McClure nodded at him and Duggan continued. ‘It might be a good idea to increase the
surveillance
on Harbusch.’

‘Because of this letter?’

‘Yes. And he managed to put it in the post without the
surveillance
seeing him do it.’

‘Damn Special Branch,’ McClure sighed.

‘I don’t think it’s his fault,’ Duggan said, feeling a twinge of guilt over Gifford. ‘He’s all alone. Only one man. And we need a closer eye on Harbusch in case Brandy links up with him.’

‘Any other changes in his routine?’

Duggan shook his head and told him about Hans’s visit to Switzers lingerie department, trying and failing to stop himself from blushing.

‘We don’t have the manpower to put more men on Harbusch at the moment,’ McClure ignored his blushes. ‘The Branch is stretched to the limit with the IRA. Did Sullivan tell you I want the two of you to go out to Herr Hempel’s house this evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s having a garden party. At short notice. A victory party, apparently. Though they’re not calling it that.’ McClure saw the look of surprise on Duggan’s face. ‘The Wehrmacht marched into Paris today. Unopposed.’

‘Oh,’ Duggan said, not knowing what else to say. ‘Has France
surrendered
?’

‘It will, as soon as they can find someone in charge to do it,’ McClure said. ‘Not a surprise after the last few weeks. Still, changes everything.’

‘Plan Kathleen?’

McClure made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. ‘The experts think it’s a non-runner. Flying paratroopers across England to get to Fermanagh is too risky. The RAF’d be all over them. But if they have airfields in Normandy and Brittany that changes the situation. The improbable becomes possible. A possible invasion becomes probable.’

Jesus, Duggan thought. Concentrating on Nuala and Harbusch had pushed the prospect of an invasion to the back of his mind.

‘So,’ McClure continued, ‘we’ve got to keep on top of all
possibilities
. See who’s going to celebrate this historic day with Herr Hempel.’

Duggan was about to suggest that he was not the person to do this as he wouldn’t recognise anyone, but McClure added: ‘I’ve arranged for a local sergeant to go along with you and Sullivan. Not a Branch man, a good local guard. He knows everyone out there.’

On the way back to his office Duggan diverted to the toilet and pushed in the door. It banged against someone coming out, a tall man of military bearing wearing a well-cut civilian suit. ‘Sorry, sir,’ Duggan saluted automatically.

‘I do beg your pardon,’ the man said in an unmistakable
upper-class
English accent.

Duggan watched him go. At least a colonel, he thought, going by his age and demeanour. But not in this army.

Sullivan drove, jerking the car as they set off and cursing each time he crashed the gears as they went down the quays and through the city centre. ‘This thing’s like a tank,’ he said.

‘Have you driven much?’ Duggan asked, offering him a cigarette. He refused and Duggan lit one for himself.

‘Not a lot,’ Sullivan swore again as he mangled the move into
second
gear turning onto O’Connell Bridge. The guard on point duty
made a face as they went by. The neon signs overlooking the bridge were all unlit, their tubes like faint ghosts of the pre-war era saying ‘Players Please’ and ‘Smoke Bendico’. ‘Obvious, I suppose.’

The sun had broken through again and the streets were bathed in its light. There were few people about, the evening rush hour over, too early for the evening cinemagoers and entertainment seekers. They went along Westmoreland Street, past Trinity College, along Nassau Street, and into Merrion Square. ‘Harbusch’s hideout’s up there,’ Duggan indicated as they went by. ‘I wonder if he’ll be out for the celebration.’

They went on down Lower Mount Street where a group of young women were coming out of the nurses’ home, laughing. Stella was not among them, Duggan noted as they went by. Stella. He found it
difficult
to believe that she was lying about Nuala going to London. That she was that good a liar. But how else could he square the circle between her story and the fact that Nuala never sought a travel
permit
?

‘You heard the news from France?’ Sullivan asked as they went over Ball’s bridge. ‘You know Italy’s about to invade them too?’

‘I hadn’t heard that bit. What about Spain?’

‘They haven’t moved. So far.’

‘You think we’re next?’

‘Looks that way.’ Sullivan swung by a slow-moving tram on the Merrion Road.

‘Jesus,’ Duggan wound down his window and tossed out his
cigarette
end. ‘How long’ll we last against them?’

Sullivan shrugged. ‘Not long. Not in a formal sense anyway. We’ll be in flying columns pretty quickly, I think. Hit and run stuff.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘Was your family involved in the War of Independence?’

‘Yeah,’ Duggan said. ‘My father.’

‘Mine too. He stuck with de Valera afterwards.’ It was a subtle question, to see where Duggan’s father had stood during the Civil War.

‘Mine didn’t take sides. He kept out of it all afterwards.’

‘Wise man.’

‘Never talks about it.’

‘Jaysus, you’re lucky,’ Sullivan gave a short laugh. ‘My old fellow never shuts up about it. Politics morning, noon and night in our house. That’s why I had to join the army. Get some peace.’

Duggan laughed. ‘That mightn’t last too long.’

‘Every time I go home I get lectures on strategies. How to fight the Germans on the beaches and the British on the border. One or other or both at the same time.’

‘Was he in a Flying Column?’

‘Flying Column my arse. He was never out of the city in his life. That’s not to say he didn’t do his bit. He certainly did. If even half his stories are true. Or even half true.’

It was hard to imagine, Duggan thought. A beautiful summer’s evening like this. And somebody somewhere might be unrolling their plan to invade. Bring all that death and destruction here. Just as part of a bigger game. Not even the main objective. A sideshow. But there wouldn’t be much time for imagining once it began.

‘Where d’you think they’ll land? The Germans?’

‘Waterford. That’s what the old fellow says. Just like the Normans, he says. And if we’d stopped the fucking Normans in Waterford in eleven whatever it was we’d have saved ourselves a load of trouble.’

‘As good a guess as anywhere else.’

‘Yeah, he has it all worked out. If we don’t stop them on the
beaches
we fall back to the line of the Suir.’

‘I doubt there’d be only one front,’ Duggan offered, wondering if Sullivan knew about Plan Kathleen. ‘They’ll bomb the hell out of
some place. Dublin probably. Land paratroopers somewhere else. And invade from the sea.’

‘Jesus,’ Sullivan glanced at him. ‘Is that what the captain thinks?’

‘I don’t know what he thinks. That’s the way they’ve done it with the other neutrals. Once they get the numbers and the armour on the ground they’ll go like the clappers.’

And we don’t have the men or equipment to stop them, he thought. They’d go for the North, engage the British there, defeat them, and take over the whole island as another base for invading Britain. Or, at the very least, tie up a lot of British troops there, keep open the option of invading England or Wales from the west as well as the south and east. And where would we be in the middle of it? Just pawns. With the IRA backing the Germans. Others backing the British. Another civil war in the middle of a world war. Jesus.

‘I saw a stranger in the corridor today,’ Duggan said.

‘Oh,’ Sullivan said. ‘You met the top secret?’

‘I ran into him as I was going into the jacks. Who is he?’

‘A British Army colonel. Don’t know his name.’

‘And what’s he doing here?’

‘That’s the question,’ Sullivan said. ‘You know Murphy?’ –
another
young officer whom Duggan knew slightly – ‘He asked one of the lads in the British section about him and got a lecture about the Official Secrets Act and the Treason Act.’

‘Treason?’

‘Yeah. It’s obviously very sensitive. And very secret,’ Sullivan said. ‘I suppose it’s about contingency planning. About asking the Brits for help if the Germans invade.’

‘I thought we were neutral,’ Duggan said. ‘Are we doing any
contingency
planning with the Germans? In case the British invade?’

‘Don’t ask me. Haven’t seen any goose-steppers around. Have you?’

‘No.’

They drove down into Blackrock village and stopped outside the Garda station. Sullivan went inside and returned after a moment with a middle-aged guard with a sergeant’s stripes on his uniform. Duggan got out of the front passenger seat and climbed into the back seat.

‘Well, boys,’ the sergeant said as they drove off, up Temple Road, ‘a grand evening for a garden party. Do you know this neck of the woods at all?’

‘A little,’ Sullivan said. ‘I’m from Dundrum.’ He indicated back to Duggan. ‘He’s up from the country.’

‘What part?’ the sergeant asked over his shoulder. He had a ruddy round face and his hair was receding, beginning to grey.

‘Galway.’

‘I’m a Mayo man myself. Been here a long time now. Was on my way to the mail boat in 1918 but events got in the way.’ He didn’t elaborate and neither of them asked him for an explanation.

They went up Temple Hill and rounded a tram stopped in its tracks as the conductor tried to re-connect the trolley to the overhead wire. The sergeant waved at him and shook his head as they passed by. ‘Always the same spot,’ he said.

They veered into Monkstown Road, to the left of the church, and then the sergeant said, ‘Look out for a sharp turn to the right around the bend here now.’ Sullivan slowed and they turned into a twisty stretch of road leading uphill to De Vesci Terrace. ‘Down at the end,’ the sergeant said. ‘And park it on this side.’ They went by the terrace of large houses and stopped before a T-junction. A large house
opposite
them with two entrances and a circular driveway had a flagstaff in front, the German swastika hanging from it barely moving in the gentle evening breeze. There were a number of cars already in the driveway.

‘Are you boys looking for someone in particular?’

‘No,’ Sullivan said, taking a notebook and a pen from his pockets. ‘Just note down everyone who attends.’

‘Everyone,’ the sergeant repeated, taking out his pipe and smoker’s knife. ‘That could be quite a job. I expect we’ll have a good turnout this evening. Given the day that’s in it. But we’ll do our best.’

He scraped loose the ash in the pipe, lowered his window, and tipped the ash out of the bowl. ‘There’s the Count,’ he said as a black car swept into the driveway.

‘The Count?’

‘Count Berardis. The Italian envoy.’ The sergeant took out a tobacco pouch and began to fill his pipe. Sullivan made a note. ‘Good friend of Herr Hempel these days. Following their leaders.’

‘Do you know him? Herr Hempel?’ Sullivan asked.

‘Oh, yes. Very old school. Prim and proper. A straight dealer, the Herr Doktor.’ The sergeant put a match to his pipe, blew out a cloud of smoke and tamped the burning tobacco with the flat end of his knife. Sullivan had a fit of coughing. Duggan opened his window and lit a Sweet Afton.

Four men came walking up the path, looking serious. The sergeant rattled off their names, two of them in Irish. Members of the Irish Friends of Germany, he said. They all glowered across at the car. A few minutes later a young man in a dark suit marched down the
driveway
to the nearest entrance gate, looked at them, and came across the road. Sullivan slipped his notebook under his thigh.

‘Good evening, Herr Thomsen,’ the sergeant said through his open window.

‘Good evening, sergeant,’ Thomsen said in accented English. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Not at all. Just here to make sure that nobody bothers you.’

Thomsen did not look convinced, glanced at Duggan and Sullivan. ‘You have a great evening for it,’ the sergeant offered.

‘It is a great day.’ Thomsen gave them the Hitler salute, turned and walked back into the grounds of Gortleitragh.

‘A great day for them all right,’ the sergeant said calmly. ‘Certainly got their own back on the French now. Herr Thomsen is number two at the legation. And Herr Hempel’s minder. They say he’s the Gestapo man there. But I wouldn’t know anything about that.’

‘He had the Nazi party badge in his lapel,’ Duggan said.

‘They all wear that now,’ the sergeant said. ‘Like the
fáinne
, I
suppose
.’

Another black car came up the road with two men in it and turned into the driveway.

‘The general and his factotum,’ the sergeant puffed on his pipe and continued in a reminiscing tone. ‘General Eoin O’Duffy. A man who thinks that his time might be coming again. Only have to swap his blue shirt for a brown one any day now. A good man in his day. Gone off the rails. And his second in command, Liam Walsh. He had a nice little number with the Italian legation but I hear they dispensed with his services recently. Probably dipping his hand in the till again.’