Betrayal (32 page)

Alone again, Mary moved about the flat. There were some fine pieces of porcelain in a superb mahogany vitrine. Dover pillow lace lay under Derby and Coalport cups and saucers, French biscuit porcelain figurines and lovely Meissen ones. A handful of Roman and Etruscan coins—nothing too valuable, not of gold, but things picked up on archaeological digs, lay scattered between the figurines, forcing her to ask again whose place it was and to wonder why its owner would have let them use it.

The woman whose portrait hung above the mantelpiece must have been the owner's mother. Beautiful, regal—the very epitome of the English aristocracy, and there was Mrs. Ursula Tulford huddled somewhere over her wireless, tapping out the message in dots and dashes at 3.02 a.m. Did she always transmit in the small hours of the morning?

A million pounds. Enough to finance such a campaign of terror, but also guns and ammunition enough to start a second front. No wonder de Valera and his government were worried; no wonder Trant and Jimmy and the colonel would do all they could to stop it.

O'Bannion watched her from the doorway. He had the thought that she was equal in beauty to the woman into whose portrait she seemed to have retreated, and he didn't like the thought of his thinking this. ‘Where's Ursula?'

Startled, Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser gripped the mantelpiece but didn't turn, exuding a fear he found worrying.

She told him plainly enough, but just what the bloody hell had she been thinking? ‘Don't get to wondering whose place this is. Forget what you've seen of it. The owner's away, that's all, and we're using it in his absence.'

‘You've been staying here with her. That … that tenement room was only for show and my benefit.'

She still hadn't turned to face him, was still hanging on to that mantelpiece as if it were the rack. ‘Lying's become a pastime with us.'

He would have smiled at the thought had he known, but she wished he'd not used that term, for death really was the Irish pastime. ‘Did you have to shoot that Secret Service man?'

Had she hoped it not possible of him? ‘Davies got in the way. Look, we're fighting a war. I couldn't have you leading him to us, now could I?'

‘So you had to check everything out and take me halfway across the city only to bring me back?'

O'Bannion felt the curse rise in his gullet but forced it down even though she was being far too smart for her own good and still stood with her back to him, gripping the mantelpiece like that. ‘Davies is the one in the canal, Mrs. Fraser. Be thankful it's not yourself. Now hopefully no one will know you've been out and about the night, and you'll be away first thing in the morning.'

‘Right after breakfast?'

At last she had turned to face him. ‘I didn't think you were eating that these days.'

‘In your own way you're just as cruel as Liam, aren't you?'

He didn't answer. He simply took out a cigarette and, pausing to look at her again, lit it.

The Tulford woman didn't come back into the room until 4.27 a.m. Berlin couldn't have been pleased with the contents of the message. There must have been argument, discussion—others to contact, orders from above, so many things, and then the wording of a reply and its encoding and sending, but when Kevin asked its meaning, the woman said, ‘That is only for the High Command at Tralane and you know this. In any case, it is not in the code I use.'

‘Try it and see,' he said.

‘I already have.'

‘Then bloody well try it again!'

‘Kevin, it will do no good. I can't go back. I've closed off the set and shut down and taken in the aerial. If I were to try to reach them, they would automatically think the wireless compromised. In any case, the code …'

‘They don't just go by the day, Ursula. I'm not a bloody fool. Sometimes the code is used for several days.'

The woman reached out to him. ‘But it would not matter. As I've already told you, the vice admiral must be using a code that is known only to C-and-C U-boats and himself.'

‘Then she'll have to take the message back into Tralane for us.'

Had he been disappointed? wondered Mary, only to hear the woman saying, ‘But must memorize it now.'

‘Ursula, there isn't time!'

‘Make it! Don't be foolish. Why waste everything when you have the answer you want right in your hand?'

For an instant they looked at each other, then he said, ‘All right. Have your things packed and ready to go. I don't like your staying here any longer. We'll find you some place else when I come back from delivering this one to her hotel.'

‘By then it will be daylight.'

He nodded acceptance of the fact, reached for his coat, and Mary knew then that she had just witnessed the bond that was between two vastly different people who must live in constant danger. Though Ursula Tulford might think little of the IRA as a group, she both liked and respected Kevin O'Bannion.

The Shelbourne was just around the corner and he didn't even bother to try to hide the fact, for there really wasn't much he could have done about it. They went in at the tradesman's entrance and climbed the back stairs to her floor. Following her into the room, he put the lock on just in case there might be trouble, and only then switched on the bedside lamp.

‘Don't pay any mind to what Ursula might have said about us, Mrs. Fraser. The Germans are a funny lot of people.'

‘She's right, though, about my memorizing this.'

‘Tuck it away for now. Leave first thing as I've said, but be sure to lie down here and not drift off, or you'll miss your train.'

‘I couldn't sleep anyway.'

‘Get out of those things of yours in any case or else the chambermaid will know it soon enough when she brings your tea.'

He watched as Mary took off her coat and went over to the closet to hang it up, watched as she began to unbutton the jerkin, gave no sign of leaving.

The jerkin went on to its hanger. Unfastening her skirt, this lover of a U-boat captain, stepped out of it and took the time to carefully smooth it down, knowing every second that she was still being watched but was she wondering what did he really see in her? A badly frightened woman, a traitor or nothing but a beautiful woman?

‘You'd best go, hadn't you,' she said, her voice strange-sounding in the half-light.

The blouse came off, and she stood there with it in hand, her back to him. O'Bannion knew he had to wonder why she'd not objected but had she a purpose of her own?

Unfastening her hair, she shook it out and ran the fingers of both hands through it, tilting back that head of hers, the slip white, no lace at all, just slender straps of satin across her shoulders, overtop those of her brassiere.

Still with her back to him, she began to take off her stockings, to reach up and under the slip to unhook the bloody things, knowing he was still watching her.

Switching off the light, he stepped quickly over to the windows to part the curtains and peer down at the street below. ‘A car,' was all he said. Mary hadn't even heard it, but somewhere now a lift door opened, he turning from the windows to swiftly say, ‘Get into bed. Look as if you've been asleep for hours but switch that light back on.'

The steps came soon enough and with them a panic she could not fight down. There were two men rushing along the corridor: the night clerk objecting to the intrusion, the other one having none of it.

O'Bannion had flattened himself against the wall so as not to be behind the door when it opened, but rather a little ways from it and still out of sight—a clear shot then at whoever it was, that person being distracted by her and by the bedside lamp.

Knocking shattered the silence. ‘Mrs. Fraser … ? Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser?'

Was she to be arrested? ‘Yes … Yes, what is it, please?'

‘The Garda, m'am. Detective Inspector Hanlan.'

Had something happened to Hamish? she wondered, panicking all the more and stumbling blindly into a chair, O'Bannion grabbing her by an arm. ‘Your dressing gown,' he whispered. ‘For Christ's sake, woman, look as though you've been asleep!'

He tussled her hair and nudged her with the gown before going back to stand with his back to the wall.

‘Mrs. Fraser, m'am, I must ask you to open this door.'

Mary tried to think what would be best. ‘I'm coming, Inspector. You've awakened me.'

Blinking at the supposedly unaccustomed light, she looked out into the corridor. Hanlan was in his late fifties, a big man with a wide moustache, black bowler hat and no patience.

‘Are you all right, m'am?' he asked. She'd been asleep, she had, and was clutching the dressing gown about herself.

‘Is it my husband?' she asked. ‘Has something happened to him? Well, has it? Please, you must tell me.'

Hanlan was genuinely baffled, ‘No, m'am. I just thought … That is … Ah th' divil take it. I must have been mistaken.'

He had thought she wouldn't have been in the room at all, or certainly not alone and not asleep, but she knew then, too, that they must have found Davies's body and had come looking for answers. And yes, she had just let Kevin O'Bannion know she must still be very much in love with Hamish.

They didn't stop her at the border, didn't even bother to go through her luggage, just asked a few routine questions. The dry cell battery and pocket watch had been in her handbag with their respective proofs of purchase but she'd not even had to open it or mention them. There'd been no questions either from Trant or Jimmy or any of their men, no sign at all of them, and she'd not been followed home, she was as certain of this as she could be.

The murder of Davies must be hanging over them. Certainly they would suspect her of having met with the IRA, but they'd have no proof as yet, none either in so far as Mrs. Tulford was concerned, but Mary knew she was getting in deeper and deeper. This thing was not going to stop, and would only become far worse.

Unsettled, she lit the stove in the kitchen and then the copper boiler. It would take a good hour to heat water for a bath. Pulling on her gumboots and the old raincoat she wore for rough work, she went out to the stable to see to the pony, couldn't help but think of having to move the dynamite, but O'Bannion had said they'd not need the blasting machine—had he tried to make things easier for her?

Finding two apples, Mary fed them to the pony, rubbed his muzzle and scratched behind his ears. ‘I think we should rename you Cuchulain or Brian Boru at least. You're a dear, dear thing, and I know I love you very much.'

She fed him properly, brushed him down, mucked out the stall and listened to the rain. Standing in the doorway, she watched the puddles in the yard, the concentric rings the hammering droplets made and just as instantly destroyed. Would she have that fifty minutes? she wondered. Would the bomb even work?

At 4.30 p.m., and with the doors and windows all locked and Robbie over at Mrs. Haney's, she went upstairs to the bath. Steam fogged the mahogany oval of the mirror that hung behind the sink. Large bronze hooks protruded from either side of it, but there were others on the back of the panelled door—that, too, was locked, though it wouldn't keep anyone out if they really wanted to get at her.

The two bullets and the message lay on a corner of the sink. She would never be able to memorize the thing, would never be able to destroy it. ‘DKYBI,' she began. ‘MZTUH …'

Forcing herself not to look, she tried printing it out on the fogged glass of the mirror, each of the letters giving slices of herself. The ring and the key were still around her neck, their string now soaked through and clinging to her. ‘DKYBI slash MZTUH slash VT … VTLIQ—yes, that's it, I think.'

She would have to memorize it. Trant or Jimmy would have her thoroughly searched this time. And what about the bullets? Was she to leave them behind, and take them in only on a last visit?

‘DKYBI slash MZTUH slash VTLIQ slash BGZRO …' Ducking her head, she hurriedly read the rest. ‘MWBSP slash RYWJE slash BYAPV slash YUBKJ slash CCRMR.'

There it was again at the end of the message. Deftly she printed it all out across the mirror, the condensation running down the glass beneath each stroke.

CCRMR couldn't have meant Huber then, but rather their code name for the escape. Five letters out of forty-five this time, the message perhaps to read: HAVE AGREED TO IRA DEMANDS STOP ARRANGE ESCAPE NIGHT 7 NOVEMBER—would that be too soon? Wouldn't the tenth be better, or even the fifteenth, somewhere closer to the full moon?

An island … would they use one as the rendezvous? There were lots of them off the west and northwest coasts and many of them were uninhabited.

HAVE AGREED TO IRA DEMANDS STOP ARRANGE 13 NOVEMBER STOP KRAMER AND OTHERS OF U-121 TO BE TAKEN OFF WITH HUBER TATLINGER STORCH AND TULFORD. Signed … ? What would their code name be for the operation? Tory Island? No mention of Nolan, none of Kevin, and none of herself either, but still far too many letters. Then what about: AGREE DEMANDS RENDEZVOUS 13 NOVEMBER AT 0100 HOURS STOP KRAMER TO BE TAKEN OFF WITH TULFORD?

There were still too many letters, and why, please, a code that wasn't being used for normal clandestine transmissions unless the British really
had
broken the German naval codes or there was fear of this?

‘M'am, there's a powerful lot of flour missing from this here bin. Was you baking bread and not letting it rise?'

‘Bread … ? Why, yes, I was, Mrs. Haney. I did spoil it. I should have waited for you to come back. I'm sorry if I've run you short. I … I fed it to the swans and the Brants down at Lough Loughie.'

And her looking across th' water like Guinevere at King Arthur's Camelot! ‘Parker's wake was hard, m'am. With Bridget away the while, I shall have to take things easy.'

‘I wish you'd just stay at home and rest up. Hamish won't be back for a week at least. I can manage on my own.'