Echoland (5 page)

‘So what is it then? If it’s not a real plan?’

‘A deliberate plant to try and fool us. Make us think they were going to attack the North.’

‘All that stuff was put there just to fool us?’

McClure shook his head. ‘No, no. Just Plan Kathleen. Brandy might’ve been going to plant that through some channel or other. I don’t think he planned to lose the transmitter and the dollars.’ He paused. ‘Or the medals, for that matter.’

‘If he’s only been here a few days, scouting locations, how could an invasion be imminent?’ Duggan sought reassurance that their fears were unfounded.

‘We don’t know how long he’s been here. He could’ve been here for months.’

‘But he only landed a week or two ago?’

‘We don’t know that for sure. There was a parachute found in a ditch in County Meath last week. But that could’ve been somebody else. He had a used parachute.’

‘But he hadn’t got to spend any of the money yet.’

‘Looks that way. But it could be my wishful thinking. I don’t know how much he had to start with.’

Jesus, Duggan thought. This was like trying to stop a burst pipe with your finger. Water spraying everywhere. Move your finger one way and it went another.

‘Brandy confirms without doubt that the Germans are serious about us. But he’s not the only straw,’ McClure said. ‘The IRA’s upped their activities dramatically in recent weeks.’

‘I thought that was just a response to the hunger strikers’ deaths,’ Duggan said, realizing as he said it that he was clutching at a straw himself.

McClure shook his head. ‘They’ve been in contact with the Germans since before the war, looking for arms and so on. They’re their fifth columnists here. Think they’re going to get a united Ireland out of it. And that they’ll be running it. For the Germans.’

They aren’t the only ones, Duggan thought, thinking of Timmy.

‘And the British have warned us that an invasion could be imminent.’

Duggan gave an involuntary snort. ‘Can we believe them?’

‘Not necessarily,’ McClure said. He took out another cigarette. ‘Want one?’

‘Yes, please.’

McClure tapped the end of another cigarette on his case and put it between Duggan’s lips. ‘You watch the road,’ he said, putting the flame of his lighter to the tip of Duggan’s cigarette. Duggan inhaled deeply, got stronger smoke than he was used to, and began to cough. He took the cigarette from his mouth and held it with the steering wheel as he caught his breath.

‘Scepticism is good in this business,’ McClure said. ‘Paranoia isn’t.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Duggan blushed, the ‘sir’ slipping out without thinking.

‘Yes,’ McClure continued. ‘The British want Berehaven to protect their Atlantic convoys. They want us in on their side. Last thing they want, I imagine, is another front right now. If they force their way, we’ll fight them. Have to. And our German friends would come to our aid.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Like they rescued Denmark from an imminent Allied invasion.’

Duggan turned into Infirmary Road and into the entrance to headquarters and stopped at the barrier. A soldier came out of the sandbagged sentry post, raised the barrier and saluted as they went in. He parked the car where it had been previously.

‘That’s the real danger,’ McClure said, making no move to get out. ‘That one or other will make a pre-emptive move. Because they think the other is going to. And that’s why we need to know what’s going on. And not let our hopes or fears get in the way of careful analysis.’

Duggan knew he was being given a lesson, but he didn’t resent it this time. Something had changed in his relationship with McClure this morning; he was now treating him more seriously.

‘Just to finish the straws,’ McClure said. ‘MI5 passed on some
documents
that Dutch intelligence had found on a captured German before they were overrun. They included references to the invasion of England and Ireland,
Unternehmen Seelöwe
and
Unternehmen Grün
.’

He looked at him to see if he understood.

‘Not very imaginative names.’ McClure went on, ‘And the biggest straw of all of course is the war itself. France is defeated.’

‘But most of its army’s still intact,’ Duggan said.

‘The size of an army doesn’t necessarily matter. Its effectiveness as a fighting force is what matters. The French army is finished. Italy’s shaping up to declare war and will probably invade the south of France any day now. Spain might do the same. France is now a mopping up operation. So the Germans are looking at their next objective.’

England, Duggan thought. And us. Opening another front on England’s western flank. Especially before the English had time to regroup after Dunkirk. It was imminent, he thought. Oh, God.

McClure stepped out of the car and ground his cigarette under his foot. Inside, the corridors had calmed down. Duggan dropped back the car key to the duty office and made his way upstairs to his own
office. When he got there, McClure was standing by the table,
scanning
a copy of Plan Kathleen, its pages held together by a metal clip. He shook his head when he had finished. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it adds up. If they’re going to invade, the south is best for beaches and strategically for parachutists. They only have to deal with us and we don’t have the heavy stuff to stop them getting a secure foothold. So they’d get a bigger foothold much quicker. Why take on the British directly in the North? Even if they could get there.’

He looked at Duggan who was trying to form a defence of the Irish army in his mind. But McClure was thinking out loud.

‘It’d cause us no end of trouble, of course. Politically. The Germans and IRA fighting the British in the North. Nationalist uprising there. Usual unionist reaction. Massacres of Catholics. Outrage and uproar down here. What’re we supposed to do?’ McClure looked at him again but Duggan had no response, knew none was required. ‘Have to join in. Fucking nightmare.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘That’s it,’ he concluded. ‘Militarily, it’s
ridiculous
. Politically, it’s a nightmare.’

McClure dropped the document on the table, selected some other papers, put them on top of it, and picked them all up in one hand. ‘Got a meeting about this,’ he said. ‘See what the experts think. After you call Dr Hayes, go back down to the Harbusch stakeout and see if you can pick up anything else down there.’

He was turning to the door when he caught the disappointed look on Duggan’s face. Balding and waddling Hans Harbusch seemed a long way from what was really going on. ‘That was useful stuff you got yesterday,’ McClure said. ‘Ninety-nine pounds for a necklace. We’ve got to pay more attention to the money. Remember,’ he added as he went out, ‘straws in the wind. And what might bind them together. That’s what we’re looking for.’

The workmen digging the air-raid shelter in Merrion Square were still there but must have been on a break as he chained his bicycle to the railings. There was no sound of shovelling soil, only of men’s voices in a confusion of conversations. He crossed the road to the building where Gifford had his perch and waved to the receptionist as he went by the open door of her office. He stopped and went back.

‘Ah,’ he said to her, ‘d’you think I could get a cup of tea too? If someone is bringing it upstairs?’

She turned and looked at the clock on the wall behind her. ‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘Just in time. Would you like a biscuit, too?’

‘If that’s not too much trouble.’

‘Less trouble than trying to steal one of Petey’s,’ she smiled.

He thanked her and went on up to Gifford’s room.

‘Ah,’ Gifford was sitting in the window, reading the
Evening Herald
. ‘Herr Oberst.’

‘Sinéad downstairs calls you Petey,’ Duggan said.

‘Sinéad’s a dote. She can call me anything she likes.’ He pointed a finger at Duggan. ‘Don’t you be trying anything there.’

‘I was just asking for a cup of tea.’

‘Fucking culchies,’ Gifford stood up and stretched himself. ‘Walk into your house and next thing you know they’re drinking your tea, eating your biscuits. Sleeping in your bed.’

Duggan took off his jacket and looked for somewhere to put it. There was nowhere, so he hung it on the knob of the door.

‘There you are,’ Gifford said, as if that proved his point. ‘Would you like to take my chair?’

‘No, thanks.’ Duggan went to the window and looked out. There was no sign of life in the Harbusches’ flat. The sun was still shining but the blue of the sky was now spotted with small white clouds that looked as high as they were wide. The weather’s going to break, he
thought, the small clouds an advance party ahead of the main force. He couldn’t shake the thought of an invasion. The image of the sky full of parachutists and screaming Stukas and lumbering Heinkels. Which town would they make an example of? Like they had of Rotterdam. It was a different kind of warfare, no matter what Timmy said, fast and fierce, brutal and inhuman, soft bodies against hard machines. Not like the last war, not like Timmy’s and his father’s guerrilla days. Denmark had lasted six hours, Holland five days. How long will we last?

‘No news?’ he asked Gifford.

‘Not a word,’ Gifford gestured to the newspaper, ‘about Herr Brandy.’

‘Were you out there?’

‘No, I’m here. On the punishment detail.’

‘What are they punishing you for?’

‘If I knew that I could get them to stop. Instead, they’re torturing me day after day. Forcing me to sit here and drive myself mad
thinking
of what Hansi’s doing in there.’

There was a knock on the door and Sinéad came in, balancing a tray on one hand as she opened the door.

‘The saviour of my sanity,’ Gifford said as he went to help her.

She blushed slightly as he took the tray from her. There were two cups of tea on it, a sugar bowl, and a plate with four plain biscuits. ‘I didn’t know if you took sugar,’ she said to Duggan.

‘Two spoons,’ he said.

‘And you made her carry all that extra weight up those flights of stairs,’ Gifford said to him. ‘You couldn’t have told her that
downstairs
?’ He turned to her. ‘Typical of the bloody army. Trample all over us poor civilians.’

‘Don’t fight over the biscuits,’ she said. ‘Two each.’ She waved her
fingers above her shoulder as she went out.

‘Nice girl,’ Duggan said, taking a cup of tea and stirring two spoons of sugar into it. ‘And a culchie too.’

‘Different rules for culchie women,’ Gifford took the other cup and bit on a biscuit. ‘They can come into my house and sleep in my bed anytime.’ Gifford took a noisy slurp of tea. ‘The money came from Switzerland,’ he said. ‘Five hundred pounds.’

‘Five hundred?’ Duggan gave a low whistle – that was a good year’s salary. Gifford had followed Harbusch into the Royal Bank on Grafton Street the previous day while Duggan was with Eliza in the jewellers. He had got into a queue behind Harbusch and heard him ask the teller if a deposit had arrived for his account. The teller went away and came back and said it had. He wrote the amount on a slip of paper and handed it to Harbusch. Hans looked pleased, thanked him and clicked his heels.

‘No wonder Eliza was blowing it,’ Gifford said. ‘Hansi was
obviously
expecting it.’

‘How’d you find out?’

‘One of our Kerrymen talked to the manager this morning. The kind that like their meat raw with blood dripping from it. The
manager
hummed and hawed about the sanctity of bank secrecy and
customer
confidentiality. Our man ground his molars and the manager caved in. Hansi’s been getting regular irregular lumps of money from this Swiss bank since he got here.’

‘How much?’

‘I don’t know the total but the five hundred is the biggest single one yet,’ Gifford said. ‘Somebody must be pleased with Hansi.’ He looked out the window and drained the cup. ‘And to think of the pleasure he gets from his work.’

‘Some fellows have all the luck.’

‘That’s the main thing I’ve learned from this job,’ Gifford sighed. ‘Everybody we watch is having a better time than we’re having
watching
them.’

‘Which bank is it? In Switzerland?’

‘I don’t know that. But your lads will get the answer now that they know the right question to ask.’ Gifford gave him a conspiratorial look.

Duggan nodded. This was perfect. Pay more attention to the money, McClure had suggested. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

Gifford looked surprised. ‘Couldn’t have you sent back to the bogs. Now that you’ve seen the city lights.’

Duggan finished his tea and sat down on the chair and picked the
Evening Herald
off the floor. Gifford stretched out on the linoleum, put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes with a sigh of
pleasure
. The news was all about the war, rival communiqués interspersed with smudgy hand-drawn maps covered in arrows. The British were saying their escape from Dunkirk was a great victory. The Germans were saying they’d taken a hundred thousand Allied prisoners. The French were on the run everywhere. Italy was hinting at a big announcement very soon. Poland had disappeared between the claws of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army.

He was too restless to concentrate on all the details but the big picture was clear. The Germans were going through everything before them, like a hot knife through butter. He looked out on the afternoon calm, the sun still shining, a gentle breeze barely stirring the leaves on the top of the trees, a lone seagull up from the sea at Ringsend floating on outstretched wings. It was hard to imagine the newspaper world of arrows and maps, broken-up buildings, bodies lying on streets coming here. But it was hard to see how we could avoid it. Unless the British did a deal. But everyone said Churchill
wouldn’t do a deal. If they’d picked someone else …

At best I’ll probably end up a prisoner of war, he thought. At worst, dead. Or somewhere in between, wounded or on the run, fighting a doomed guerrilla campaign. Like the War of Independence, but against impossible odds this time. And how would he stand up? He had no idea.

Duggan got up and dropped the paper on the chair. He had to be doing something. Sitting around thinking bleak thoughts about the future wasn’t doing him any good. ‘I’m going out for a walk,’ he said.