Echobeat (20 page)

‘Course not,’ Gifford dismissed the idea. ‘Just don’t like to see people living in fantasy lands.’

Commandant McClure had his eyes closed and gave no sign that he had heard Duggan’s knock as he had tapped the door and opened it in one move. Duggan cleared his throat and McClure opened an eye and said, ‘Well?’

Duggan told him what had happened and concluded, ‘I don’t think we should raid Benny Reilly’s house until we’re sure Goertz is there. It’d only tip him off and he’d disappear again.’

McClure nodded and straightened himself behind his desk.

‘I suggest we put surveillance on Reilly,’ Duggan continued.

McClure gave him one of his disconcerting silent stares but Duggan was used to them by now and waited for him to speak. ‘Take
too long to set up properly,’ he said at last. ‘From what you say about the house.’

‘We could detain him over his black-market activities. Question him then.’

McClure picked up his cigarette lighter and tossed it into the air a couple of times. ‘Better to talk to him,’ he said. ‘Hold the threat of arrest over his head. He’s a man who understands self-interest.’

Duggan turned towards the door but McClure interrupted him. ‘We may be running out of time. Our friend in External Affairs, Mr Ó Murchú, has been on to me. The Germans are pressing their request for landing details at Foynes, to bring in their extra staff. And this weather isn’t going to last forever.’

So we’ll find out soon if the German bombings were accidents or a message, Duggan thought. ‘How soon?’ he asked.

‘Who knows,’ McClure shrugged. ‘But Ó Murchú says he can’t keep stalling them indefinitely. Got to give them a yes or no soon. And he’d like to have something more on the table when he says no.’

Duggan remembered something Timmy had said to him about Goertz, that he saw himself as the German military attaché in Dublin as there wasn’t one in the legation. He mentioned it again to McClure.

‘Which suggests that Goertz knows about the legation’s demand for more staff,’ McClure nodded. ‘Which means he’s in touch with them. While conspiring at the same time with the IRA against our government. Which is not the activity of a supposedly friendly nation. Trying to involve us in a war in which they say they support our neutrality.’

‘I don’t see how catching Goertz can help with this,’ Duggan said. ‘Apart from anything he can tell us about the reasons for the bombing.’

‘Ó Murchú sees him as a counterweight,’ McClure lit himself a cigarette. ‘We can threaten to put him on public trial, expose his IRA
activities and Germany’s hypocrisy towards our neutrality. Which could be an excuse for us to join the Allies. So,’ he gave a friendly grin, ‘please don’t do anything to upset the delicate balance of the applecart like insisting on your right to bring more spies into your embassy right now.’

Duggan lit a cigarette and sat down opposite him. ‘Will it work?’

‘Why not?’ McClure reached for a slim folder. ‘But that’s only one of Mr Ó Murchú’s current concerns. He has also become more interested in the Glenn document, the letter from Churchill to Roosevelt and where it came from. Mr Aiken is heading off to Lisbon on his way to Washington in a couple of days and wants to know more.’ He opened the folder which contained only a few documents: Duggan recognised the top one as his last report on Gerda’s meeting with Glenn. The postcard Glenn had given her was clipped to it and McClure slid it free.

To Duggan’s surprise, two postcards came away, both the same black and white view of O’Connell Street. McClure pushed them across the desk to him. Duggan picked one up and turned it over. The back was filled in, the message and address Glenn had given to Gerda written with a clear flowing hand: ‘Dear Aunt Agnes, I’m having such a nice time here I’m staying another week! Hope all the family are well. Love, Marjorie’.

Duggan picked up the other postcard and turned it over. The back was blank except along the top and left edge of the message area. Brown letters, crudely written, said, ‘contact made need more docs’.

Duggan gave a quiet whistle in surprise. ‘Invisible ink?’

McClure nodded. ‘Milk,’ he said.

‘Milk?’ Duggan laughed.

‘Very basic. But it works. Just heat it up and that’s what happens,’ he pointed towards the card still in Duggan’s hand.

‘And this one?’ Duggan pointed at the addressed card.

‘That’s the one we’re posting.’

Duggan picked it up and looked at the edges where the hidden message had been on the other one. There was nothing visible.

‘We’ve copied the message onto it,’ McClure said. ‘As similar as possible. Using the sharp end of a broken matchstick to write it. That’s what they think he used. Or something like it.’

McClure reached for the addressed card and put it to one side. He took the original from Duggan’s hand and slipped it back in the file under its paperclip. ‘No word from Glenn?’ he asked.

‘No. Gerda will contact me as soon as he calls.’

‘Good.’

‘He’s probably waiting to get more documents. So he won’t call for a while.’

McClure nodded. ‘We need to hurry things up.’

‘How? We can’t contact him.’

McClure sighed with a stream of cigarette smoke. ‘Tell Gerda to seek an immediate meeting as soon as he contacts her. That’s all we can do.’

They smoked in silence for a moment. Duggan debated whether to voice an idea that had been coming back to him since Gerda’s meeting with Glenn. ‘Suppose she tells him that the Luftwaffe officer has agreed to meet him,’ he said. ‘Sets up a meeting and I go along as the German.’

McClure laughed and shook his head.

‘Why not?’ Duggan felt mildly affronted. ‘I can speak German and ask him all the questions we want answered.’

‘And put on a phony German accent while speaking English?’ McClure smiled.

‘Maybe he speaks German.’

‘Maybe he knows all about bombers and he asks you a question about the stall speed of a Heinkel with a full load of bombs.’

‘Okay,’ Duggan admitted. ‘A stupid idea.’

‘No,’ McClure replied. ‘Just too risky. Until we know more about him.’

‘He must be an amateur if he’s using milk as invisible ink.’

‘Or he wants everyone to think he’s an amateur.’

‘But he doesn’t know we’re on to him.’

‘No. But he may want the Germans to think he’s an amateur. The ideal informant: an innocent, well-meaning person who comes across information whose significance he doesn’t really understand. Every intelligence agency’s dream.’

‘But they’ll be suspicious. It’s too good to be true.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So what’s the point?’

‘Depends,’ McClure leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. ‘If it’s a British operation they may be leaking true information in order to discredit the same information the Germans have got from another source. To undermine a
really
dangerous spy.’

‘Jesus,’ Duggan scratched the back of his neck. ‘That’s complicated.’

McClure found another file on his desk and stood up. ‘Spend too much time thinking about these things and you’ll end up in Grangegorman babbling about conspiracies and double and quadruple agents. Be dismissed as a harmless lunatic.’

‘So what about Mrs Agnes Smith in Chelsea?’ Duggan got to his feet too.

‘The British haven’t come back yet with any info about her.’

‘But they know we know about Glenn. If he’s one of them.’

McClure came around his desk. ‘Yep. But we’re not likely to upset their operation. And the fact that they know we know gives us another card to play if we need it for something else.’

Duggan laughed, thinking Timmy was wasted in politics: he’d love this stuff. He opened the door for McClure to pass through.

‘Meanwhile,’ McClure paused. ‘Talk to Benny Reilly. Keep it informal. We’re just suspicious, don’t really know anything.’

‘Who’s Marjorie?’ Duggan asked as they went down the corridor.

‘My wife.’

‘Oh,’ Duggan said, embarrassed that he had gone too far. He knew nothing about McClure’s life outside the office. They had never shared any personal information.

‘She wrote the card,’ McClure stopped outside Duggan’s office. ‘Her name’s actually Caroline. You must come around to the house and meet her some day.’

Sullivan was smirking at him as he came into the office. ‘What?’ Duggan demanded, aware he had heard McClure’s parting comment.

‘Like I said,’ Sullivan said. ‘The commandant’s pet.’

Duggan grunted at him, a dismissive sound.

‘I had to tell him,’ Sullivan dropped his voice to a contrite note. ‘He put a gun to my head.’

‘Who?’

Sullivan looked at the open door behind Duggan and waited for him to close it. ‘Anderson,’ he said. ‘He was asking about you.’

‘Asking what?’ Duggan demanded, wondering if Sullivan knew Gerda’s real identity and had told Anderson.

‘Asking what you were up to. Why you spent so much time out of the office. Using cars like they were your own.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘The truth. I had to,’ Sullivan widened his eyes with innocence. ‘That you’re the commandant’s pet. He lets you do whatever you want. Swan around town. Not have to sit here doing the hard work all day.’

Duggan wondered if Anderson had actually asked Sullivan anything or if Sullivan was just voicing his own views. ‘What else did he ask?’

‘Nothing. Said it was strange that no one seemed to know what you were up to. But I didn’t mention a word about your homo friend.’

Duggan laughed with relief. ‘I thought you didn’t like Anderson.’

‘Pushy fucker,’ Sullivan said. ‘That’s why I didn’t tell him about Gifford. What’s he up to anyway?’

‘He thinks we’re holding back information about someone he thinks might be a possible British spy,’ Duggan shrugged.

‘You wouldn’t do that,’ Sullivan looked shocked.

‘Of course not,’ Duggan said. ‘But he’s got a bee in his bonnet about it for some reason.’

A cold wind came up the river with the tide, bringing the acrid smell of the gasworks farther inland to mix with the bitter tang of hops from the Guinness brewery. Duggan cycled along the northern quays through the afternoon darkness, wishing he had taken a car again and to hell with Anderson. The road was treacherous for the bicycle, the limited lighting making it difficult to distinguish between hard-packed snow and yielding drifts. He hit the side of what he thought was a ball of snow but turned out to be a stone or a frozen lump of horse shit. The front wheel jerked to the right, threatening to unbalance the bike and he slid his foot along the ground to keep it upright. He recovered his equilibrium and pushed on, following the tracks of a horse and cart ahead of him: two messenger boys hung onto its stubby back shafts with a hand, their other hands struggling to keep their handlebars balanced.

Gifford was waiting for him at the corner of O’Connell Street, between Kapp and Peterson’s tobacconists and Harris’s radio shop, his back against the wall under the unlit neon signs. He had his hands in his pockets, watching the parade of passers-by with the half-sneer of a practised corner boy. Duggan was breathing hard with the extra effort and concentration as he stopped in the gutter and tried to get a stable foothold on the path.

They went back down Bachelors Walk a short distance and into a narrow laneway that cut through to Middle Abbey Street. Duggan told him his instructions in a low voice as they walked and they worked out
how they were going to get Benny to reveal Goertz’s whereabouts without telling him they knew that he was in touch with the German and that he had passed on his coded message to the sailor en route to Lisbon.

They turned into North Lotts, an unlit laneway of former stables, now mainly stores, their eyes adjusting to the gloom. Above them, the clouds seemed brighter with a dull reflection of the city but there were few lights visible here, an odd pool from a printer’s window or store door ajar. There was no one in sight and the lane’s length was broken only by the shadow of a vehicle a third of the way down. It turned out to be what they hoped it was. Benny Reilly’s van.

A faint light showed between the cracks of the double doors behind it. Duggan put his bike against the next entrance and nodded to Gifford who knocked on the wicket door. There was a shuffling noise inside, the sound of a latch lifting, and the small door opened inwards. The man inside had to bend down to look up at them. ‘Lads,’ he said, glancing from one to the other, identifying them as policemen.

‘Mr Reilly,’ Gifford said as if he had found a long lost friend. ‘Can we come in?’

Reilly opened the door and they bent down to step through it. There was a bench running around two sides of the garage and various implements and horse harnesses hanging on the third wall. A high barstool stood before the bench at the back wall, close to a lit oil lamp. A closed ledger and an open ink bottle and pen were on the bench in front of the stool. There was a paraffin oil heater on the ground nearby, its dome glowing red, the distinctive smell of its fumes all pervasive.

Gifford closed his eyes and inhaled. ‘Ah, the smell of paraffin,’ he said. ‘They say it’ll be rarer than perfume in a few months.’

‘Aye,’ Reilly nodded as if he had heard a piece of inspired wisdom. He was in his mid-forties, about five foot eight, wiry, and had a deeply furrowed forehead from exaggerating what he thought was an honest face. There was a cigarette propped behind his left ear.

‘Surprised you’re wasting it like that,’ Gifford rubbed his hands in front on the heater. ‘But makes it very cosy in here.’

‘You have to have a bit of heat and light,’ Reilly pointed to the ledger. ‘Just doing up the accounts. Maybe for the last time.’

‘Really?’ Gifford encouraged him.

‘The haulage business is fucked, if you’ll excuse the expression. That van outside’s only a liability now.’

‘No petrol?’

Reilly shook his head in affirmation. ‘Only scrap metal without the juice. And I wasted two hundred quid on it last year.’

‘You were robbed.’ Gifford said in sympathy.

‘I was and all. Nothing but trouble since I got it.’

‘I was reading in the paper that there’s a special petrol allowance for lorries and vans that keep essential supplies moving.’