Echobeat (4 page)

On the way back to headquarters, McClure suggested it would be no harm to keep an eye on the Friends of Germany meeting in the Red Bank restaurant that evening. In case Goertz turned up. ‘I know it’s unlikely but you never know,’ he added. ‘He may think he’s immune from arrest too. We’ve got to pull out all the stops.’

Duggan murmured his assent, wondering if he wanted him to do it in person.

‘You’re going dancing tonight?’ McClure asked, confirming his suspicion.

‘Bill Sullivan organised a table at the Gresham.’

‘Big date?’

‘No,’ Duggan smiled, remembering Sullivan’s advance warnings from his companion for the evening. ‘Far from it.’

‘Wouldn’t matter then if you were a little late.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Good,’ McClure nodded. ‘You’re the only one who actually knows what he looks like. Take this car,’ he added. ‘Hang on to it for the evening.’

The night was cold, a raw edge to it that threatened more snow than the earlier hint which had left nothing more on the ground than a wet sheen now freezing on the streets. Duggan was parked on D’Olier
Street, across the road from the Red Bank. The car’s windows were steamed up and he had the driver’s window open a couple of inches to watch the restaurant’s entrance.

He shivered and jammed his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, trying to remember what Goertz looked like, how he walked, carried himself. A military bearing. Straight and straight-forward. A sharp-faced profile. It wasn’t much to go on, unless he got a long look at him, which was unlikely at this distance and in the reduced street light. And with a hat down and coat collar up …

It was a waste of time. The straggle of people going in walked quickly and were huddled in overcoats and hats. Hitler himself could walk in there and you wouldn’t recognise him from here, he thought.

A figure appeared at the driver’s window and two eyes glared in at him through the gap, making him jump. ‘Would you look at what the cat brought in?’ a voice said in a Dublin accent.

Duggan watched while the figure, a shadow through the muffled windscreen, walked around the front of the car and opened the passenger door. Garda Peter Gifford sat in.

‘Jesus,’ Duggan breathed. ‘You frightened the shit out of me.’

‘So I should,’ Gifford said. He was a member of the Special Branch, a couple of years older than Duggan. They had been friends since the previous summer when Gifford had helped Duggan with family problems while they were engaged in a joint operation against a suspected German spy. Their friendship contrasted with the mutual suspicion between their respective organisations. ‘That’s what we do to people loitering in cars on dark streets.’

Duggan turned to look back down the street and then spotted the car on the other side with a man at the wheel. The Special Branch. He hadn’t noticed it earlier. Some use I am at surveillance, he thought.

‘What’re you doing here?’ he asked, knowing the answer.

‘Same as yourself,’ Gifford said. ‘On the punishment detail.’

‘What’ve you done wrong now?’

‘Not keeping my mouth shut, as usual. And you?’

‘Keeping an eye out for our friend, Herr Goertz.’

‘Mr Brandy,’ Gifford nodded to himself, another of the names Goertz had used, and the one by which he was best known to the Special Branch.

‘Any sign of him? I can see fuck all from here.’ Duggan opened his coat and fished in his jacket pocket for his cigarette case and lighter.

‘Oh, an officer and a gentleman,’ Gifford smirked, catching sight of Duggan’s bow tie and dinner jacket. ‘This the new G2 uniform for stakeouts? Where are you on your way to?’

‘The Gresham.’

‘Who’s the lucky girl?’

‘Nobody. A friend of a colleague’s girlfriend.’

‘A blind date. The best kind.’

‘How’s Siobhan?’ She was Gifford’s girlfriend after flirting with both of them for a time and remained friendly with Duggan.

‘She’s fine. We’re like an old married couple now.’

‘You haven’t done it yet, have you?’

‘No. You’ll be the first to know. Best man and bridesmaid in one.’

Duggan laughed and exhaled a stream of smoke out the window and looked over at the restaurant. The street was empty now.

‘Jaysus,’ Gifford muttered, shaking his head. ‘Don’t they teach you anything in G2? Don’t blow smoke out a car window on a stakeout on a cold night.’

‘It’s a tactical manoeuvre,’ Duggan nodded his head back towards Gifford’s car. ‘They’ll try to avoid me and run straight into your friend’s arms.’

‘That’s G2 all right. A distraction. Bit of a diversion.’

‘Have you seen anyone interesting tonight?’

‘I wouldn’t recognise your man Goertz if he walked by me.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Like who?’

‘Anyone from the German legation? Or the IRA?’

Gifford thought about that for a moment. ‘Interesting,’ he said, ‘that you lump them together. But no.’ He nodded across at the Red Bank. ‘They’re a bunch of fantasists. Spend their time debating which of them will be Gauleiter for Munster or Dublin when the Nazis take over. Even the local lads couldn’t be bothered with them. Never mind the Germans.’

‘So why are we all sitting here then?’

‘In case they’re right, of course,’ Gifford laughed. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

Duggan tossed his cigarette end out the window and looked at his watch. It was well after eleven o’clock.

‘Go up to the Gresham and thaw yourself out,’ Gifford opened his door. ‘I’ll let you know if anything happens here.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Trust me,’ Gifford gave him a lop-sided grin. ‘Happy New Year.’

Duggan dumped his coat with a bored woman in the cloakroom and headed for the toilets. The Alex Caulfield band was playing a foxtrot, the music spilling out of the ballroom with the heat. Bill Sullivan pulled open the door of the gents as he was about to push it in.

‘Hah,’ Sullivan laughed. ‘You’re in the shithouse already.’

‘Didn’t you tell her I was going to be late?’

‘But not nearly three hours late.’

‘Fuck’s sake, I told you I might be.’

‘I hope it was worth it,’ Sullivan pushed him out of the doorway to let someone else enter.

‘What?’

‘Whatever it was you were doing.’

‘Where are we sitting?’

‘Round to the right. At the back.’

Duggan stopped inside the ballroom and lit a cigarette, trying to identify their table. The dance floor was crowded, couples circling the room in a steady stream round the fulcrum of the revolving crystal ball, which sprayed out splashes of coloured light. A couple of the tables at the back right were empty, drinks standing like lonely sentinels, ashtrays full, but he couldn’t figure out which was theirs. He turned to the bar and joined the queue and asked for a Paddy.

‘Just the one?’ the barman shouted at him.

Duggan nodded and leaned into the counter to pour water into the whiskey. He turned back to the dance floor and Sullivan and his girlfriend Carmel swept past. Sullivan indicated behind him with his thumb and gave him a broad wink. His would-be companion, Breda, was dancing with a tall man with blonde hair, moving fluidly and having an animated conversation. Carmel wiggled her fingers at him and gave him a sympathetic look over Sullivan’s shoulder.

The music ended and couples drifted back to their tables. Duggan followed Sullivan and Carmel to a table in the corner and she greeted him with a peck on the cheek.

‘Sorry I’m so late,’ he said.

‘You missed the dinner,’ she said, looking around for Breda. A couple of their colleagues and their partners arrived at the table and greeted him.

‘She’s over there,’ Sullivan pointed to the bar where Breda and the man she’d been dancing with were continuing their animated conversation. ‘Go and get her.’

‘She seems happy enough,’ Duggan replied. ‘It was only a matter of convenience, wasn’t it?’

Carmel gave Sullivan a slit-eyed look that put him on notice of trouble later. Duggan smiled to himself, sipped his whiskey and relaxed into the warmth.

The band leader began the countdown to the new year and there was a ragged cheer, mainly from those who were already drunk, as 1941 was announced. The band broke into ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and they all stood and joined hands and wished each other a happy New Year, the unspoken fears of what it would bring making the atmosphere of enforced gaiety brittle.

Duggan had a couple more whiskies and danced with all his colleagues’ wives and girlfriends, but Breda never came back to their table.

‘You know who she’s with?’ one of his work colleagues whispered to him, looking over at the table she had joined. ‘Somebody from the American legation.’

‘Really?’ Duggan followed his gaze to the distant table.

‘That’s David Gray, the US Minister. On the left.’

Duggan identified the elderly man on the left of the table. ‘Who are the others?’ he asked.

‘The only other one I recognise is Chapin, the first secretary. Sitting next to Gray’s wife. Don’t know who your friend’s with.’

Duggan was about to point out that Breda wasn’t his friend but didn’t bother.

She finally joined them after the national anthem marked the night’s end, nodded briefly at Duggan and went off with Carmel to the ladies and to get their coats.

‘Definitely want my money back now,’ Duggan said to Sullivan.

‘You’ll have to get it back off her,’ Sullivan grinned drunkenly.

When the two women came back Duggan offered a lame apology for his lateness. ‘That’s all right,’ Breda said. ‘I had a great time, thanks.’

The four of them left the hotel together, the sharp cold like an invisible wall that stopped them for a moment as they stepped out onto O’Connell Street. Taxis were lined up, a growing proportion of them old horse-drawn cabs as a result of the petrol rationing.

‘Let’s get a horse cab,’ Carmel said.

‘I’ve got a car,’ Duggan announced, nodding across the street to where he was parked.

‘How’d you get that?’ Sullivan demanded as they crossed to it. ‘Do they know you took it?’

‘Do you want a lift or not?’ Duggan said.

‘Yes, please,’ Carmel shivered.

Breda sat in the front with him and Duggan asked where they were going.

‘Home, James, and don’t spare the horses,’ Sullivan commanded from the back seat.

‘You can drop me first,’ Breda said. ‘Glasnevin. It’s on the way to Carmel’s.’

‘You better direct me,’ Duggan said. ‘I’m not sure of the way.’

He felt a little light-headed from the whiskey and the car waltzed slightly on a bend and he realised the road was slippery and slowed down. In the back Carmel was giggling and Sullivan whispered something to her and she said, ‘Stop that, Captain Sullivan,’ in a tone that suggested she didn’t mean it.

Breda leaned around her seat to look at them. ‘Oh, captain, my captain,’ she said and the two women burst into laughter at some private joke.

She directed him into a cul-de-sac of red-brick houses behind iron railings and small lawns and indicted where to stop. ‘I’ll walk you to the door,’ he said, putting the car into neutral and pulling up the handbrake.

‘There’s no need. Thanks, I had a great time.’ She turned back to Carmel. ‘I’ll call around tomorrow at two.’

Duggan dropped Carmel and Sullivan at her house in Mobhi Road and followed her directions back to the North Circular Road, heading for army headquarters. The road was empty, its trees spidery in the cold, the tall houses dark. He realised he was starving and lit a cigarette to kill the hunger.

He wasn’t sure at first that he had heard it over the engine of the car, the flat crump-crump of explosions. He opened the window and there was a faint drone of an aircraft fading into the distance. Otherwise the silence of the road was undisturbed.

He sped up and went down Infirmary Road and turned into the Red House, seeing immediately that something was up. The sentry was already at the barrier, alert.

‘What’s happened?’ Duggan asked.

‘There’s been an explosion across the river.’

‘A bomb?’

‘Sounded like two, sir.’

Duggan parked and hurried into the building and into the duty office where a harassed-looking lieutenant was on a phone, jotting down notes with his other hand. Another phone was ringing and Duggan picked it up and said, ‘Duty office.’

‘Who’s that?’ Duggan recognised McClure’s voice and identified himself. ‘What’s happening?’ McClure demanded.

‘There seems to have been a couple of bombs.’

‘Two, I think,’ McClure interrupted. ‘Unless there was an echo. Not far from here.’

Duggan knew he lived in Rathmines but his knowledge of the area was vague: the only times he’d been there had been to go to his uncle Timmy’s house. The lieutenant, waiting for someone on the phone, signalled to him and pointed to a spot on a map of the city on his desk.

‘Griffith Barracks,’ Duggan said into the phone.

‘What? The barracks was hit?’

The lieutenant shook his head and moved his finger a little to the right.

‘No,’ Duggan said. ‘Near there. South Circular Road.’ He twisted his head to read the street name under the lieutenant’s finger. ‘Donore something or other. I’ll get up there.’

‘Do that,’ McClure said.

The lieutenant raised a finger to hold Duggan while he finished his conversation. ‘Wait a moment,’ Duggan said to McClure.

‘There’s more reports of explosions north of Drogheda and near Dundalk,’ the lieutenant said, putting down his phone. It rang again immediately. ‘And somewhere near Enniscorthy,’ he added, picking up the phone.

Duggan repeated what he had said.

‘Jesus Christ,’ McClure said. ‘I’m on my way in.’

Duggan drove fast, his window open and collar up, listening for further sounds of planes and explosions. But the night was quiet, broken only by the distant bell of a fire engine or an ambulance. He followed the directions the sentry had given him, across Kingsbridge, right onto James’s Street and left after the hospital. An ambulance bell began ringing as he got closer and then there were people hurrying along the footpath beyond Rialto. He parked the car near a cigarette factory and joined them, hurrying up the middle of the road, littered with stones and glass and bits of slate.

The street lighting, such as it had been, was out, but there were lights on the road ahead, vehicle lights and flashlights darting back and forth. The windows were gone in all the houses, curtains hanging out, and roofs blotched with random holes. Some of their occupants stood by their doors, looking shocked, overcoats and dressing gowns over their nightclothes, their breaths ballooning in the cold air, staring in silence at the centre of activity farther on. The air was sharp and bitter and smelled of gas and cordite and left a taste of dust on the tongue.

At the junction with Donore Avenue two gardaí with outspread arms were trying to keep people back. ‘Please,’ one of them said. ‘Keep out of the way. There’s still people in the collapsed houses.’

‘Captain Duggan, army headquarters,’ he said to him and passed by.

The litter on the road turned into a carpet of debris as he neared the centre of the explosion. A couple of the terraced houses had collapsed into a heap of rubble and rescue workers were still pulling chunks of masonry and bits of carpentry off the piles. The front walls of other houses had fallen out, exposing tilting upper floors, beds covered in plaster, dining tables, chairs smashed against walls, pictures askew. A little red oil lamp was still burning in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary on the return of a house missing the second flight of stairs.

Two fire engines were angled to cast their headlights on the rescue workers and an ambulance, lights on, waited behind them. A group of soldiers were trying to clear a path through the debris, shovelling bricks and stones and glass to one side. The only other noises were the hum of engines, the mumble of voices, and the crash of falling masonry as bits fell off some of the damaged houses and the rescue workers sifted through the demolished ones.

‘Do you have somewhere to go?’ an ARP warden asked a young woman with two small children hanging onto her nightdress. Her hair was covered in dust and the children’s faces were streaked with dirt. ‘Mrs McCarthy will take us in,’ she said, on the verge of tears. ‘Down the road.’

The warden called over one of his colleagues and asked him to take the woman and children to their neighbour’s and ticked off a name on his clipboard. Another of his colleagues linked arms with an old woman who looked barely able to support the bull’s wool army greatcoat around her shoulders. The warden stopped him and asked who she was and ticked her name on his list. Then he went to the next house and shone his torch through the hall door which was hanging half-open on one hinge and called out names. There was no response.

Duggan spotted a major dispatching more men to help the gardaí
set up a cordon and saluted and introduced himself. ‘Is the battalion intelligence officer here?’ he asked.

‘Lieutenant Kelly,’ the major pointed to an officer standing by the crater in the road, stopping some soldiers from shovelling debris into it.

Duggan joined him and they swapped names. ‘Might be some bits of the bomb in there,’ Lieutenant Kelly said. ‘Might identify whose it was.’

‘Were there one or two?’

‘Two. Another fell behind those houses. On the banks of the canal. Didn’t do so much damage.’

‘Many dead?’

‘There’s two children unaccounted for in there,’ Kelly pointed towards one of the demolished houses where the rescue workers were lifting out a large sheet of ceiling. ‘They got everyone out of the other one. A clergyman and his family. From the church down there.’

‘How many wounded?’

‘Don’t know exactly. Ten or twenty gone to hospital. ‘

‘Anyone see the bomber?’ He looked up at the clear sky: the stars were sharp in the frosty air but were blacked out to the west by a cloud. More snow coming.

Kelly shook his head. ‘Not that I know of. Heard the fucker myself. I wasn’t long in the bed. Thought at first that he’d hit the barracks.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Nothing sobers you up faster than that. We were here within minutes. Total chaos. Screaming and shouting. People running everywhere. Debris still falling. Choking dust.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘I didn’t think anyone could come out of those houses alive.’

The major interrupted them to order Kelly to get more men to clear all the gawkers back behind the cordons. ‘And don’t let anyone back into their houses if they’re damaged. Tell them we’ll keep everything safe if they’re afraid of looting.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Duggan wandered back towards Griffith barracks, past a Presbyterian church with all its windows gone. Its wayside pulpit still proclaimed, ‘The Lord is good to all and His tender mercies are over all His workers.’ Someone was inside with a flashlight and he caught a glimpse of the pews covered in chunks of plaster and dust. He came to the cordon on that side of the scene before he reached the barracks and turned back.

‘They’re all right,’ one of the rescue workers at the demolished houses shouted. There was a ragged cheer and somebody began clapping. The ambulance moved forward along the path cleared for it and a couple of men went to the scene with stretchers. Duggan watched from a distance and then decided to go back to the Red House: he wasn’t doing anything useful here.

There were fewer people in the immediate area of the bomb now as the gardaí and soldiers cleared the area. Ahead of him, Duggan saw a soldier trying to move back a young woman with an overcoat over what he thought at first was a red nightdress. She had her arms folded tight across her stomach and was ignoring the soldier and his orders, staring over his head at the rescue scene.

Duggan looked at her again and realised it was Gerda Meier. But she doesn’t live here, he thought, confused. She raised a hand to push back her hair over her right ear and he saw a tear-drop earring and then a glimpse of a necklace above the top button of the coat and realised she was wearing an evening dress.

‘D’you live here or what?’ the soldier was saying, exasperation rising as she remained oblivious to his presence.

‘It’s okay.’ Duggan showed him his ID. ‘I’ll handle it.’ He waited until the soldier had moved away and said quietly, ‘
Was machen Sie hier
?’

She looked at him when she heard the German but gave no indication
that she recognised him. ‘You see?’ she said in English, tightening her arms around herself. ‘Even here. They’re trying to kill us.’

‘Who?’ he asked, confused.

‘The Jews. They won’t even wait until they invade.’ She seemed to see him for the first time, catching his confusion, and pointed to the building beside them. ‘Look at the synagogue.’

Its windows were all gone and its pillars and pediment pockmarked and pitted like it had been bombarded. ‘That’s a synagogue,’ he said, realising how stupid he sounded as soon as he said it. He hadn’t really noticed it when he had arrived, presumed it was a theatre or hall or something.

‘And that’s the rabbi’s house,’ she pointed back behind him, to one of the demolished houses.

‘I thought it was a clergyman,’ he stammered. ‘From the church down the road.’

‘The other house,’ she said, her look removing any doubt that she recognised him. ‘Don’t you know? This is where the Jews live in Dublin.’

He shook his head slightly. He had a vague memory of hearing somebody mention Little Jerusalem in some context or other but he had had no idea where exactly it was. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t know.’

She nodded, accepting his admission but not holding it against him.

‘Do you know him?’ he asked. ‘The rabbi?’

‘No. I don’t know anybody here.’ She paused. ‘I don’t live in this area.’

‘They’ve all survived. Nobody’s been killed.’

‘Yes.’ She gave a tired sigh.

A young warden ran by them towards someone up near the cordon, shouting, ‘Put out that fucking cigarette. D’you want to kill us all?’

‘I’ll drive you home,’ Duggan said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

In the car she remained quiet, lost in her own thoughts. Duggan tried to tread his way back to the city centre, down quiet streets that sparkled with frost in the headlights, where everyone seemed to be sleeping peacefully. But most must have heard the bombs. Are they all awake, lying there waiting for more to fall on this pretence of a peaceful sleeping city? he wondered.

‘They might not have been aiming at the synagogue,’ he said as they came upon Christchurch and he swung down into Dame Street.

‘What do you mean?’ she stirred, unfolding her arms.

‘They might have been aiming at the barracks.’

‘What barracks?’

‘There’s an army barracks just around the corner.’

She shook her head. ‘I know them,’ she said.

He waited for her to elaborate but she didn’t. He slowed at a red traffic light and dug out his cigarette case, flipped it open with one hand and offered it to her as he edged carefully through the junction.

‘I’ll do it.’ She took the case from his hand, extracted two cigarettes and put both in her mouth. He handed her his lighter as he sped up. She lit both and handed one to him.

‘This war,’ she inhaled deeply. ‘This is why they started it. To kill us. They don’t hide it. It’s what they say themselves.’

‘Did you have a bad time in Vienna? Before you left?’

‘No. Not then. We left early, before they took over. My father was very wise, he saw what was coming. My uncles and aunts didn’t believe him.’ She shrugged. ‘They know now. But it’s too late.’

They went up O’Connell Street, past the Metropole and the GPO. Across the road the Gresham Hotel was dark, looking like it was unoccupied. Ringing in the New Year in the warm ballroom there a few hours ago seemed like a distant memory.

‘My uncle Jacob is an obstetrician, a lovely man, so learned, civilised,’ she said. ‘He was one of those they made clean the footpath outside his hospital with a toothbrush. While they laughed and kicked and spat at them.’ She inhaled again and waved her cigarette in a metaphorical shrug. ‘You’ve read about all these things.’

Duggan made a non-committal noise. Yes, he had heard something about these things but it was all vague and distant and dismissed by some as propaganda. ‘It must’ve been difficult coming here. Leaving your friends. Learning a new language.’

‘Yes’ she said.

‘But you’re safe here.’ They were on Dorset Street, a railway bridge ahead of them. He looked out for Iona Road, knowing it was somewhere near here.

She gave him a curious glance that he caught. ‘It’s there,’ she said, indicating the turn.

‘I mean,’ he said, ‘they can’t find you here now.’

She gave a bitter little laugh of disbelief.

‘All the files were destroyed,’ he added.

‘What files?’

‘About people,’ he was about to say ‘like you’ but caught himself in time, ‘about people who’ve come here from the Continent.’

‘Destroyed by who?’

Fuck, he thought as he turned into her road. I shouldn’t have told her that: it was probably secret information.

‘By the government,’ he said, too late to withdraw it. ‘Sensitive files like that were burned last summer when people thought the Germans were about to invade.’

‘That’s true?’ She pointed at a house on the left ahead of them and he let the car coast to the kerb.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Please don’t tell anybody that. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ she said in a tone that reassured him. ‘But it won’t matter anyway. There are always people who will tell them such things. Who will help them.’

Duggan thought of Peter Gifford’s comment about the Friends of Germany dividing up the country between them under German rule. Some of them would be quick to bring an occupying force to Little Jerusalem. And Gerda’s earlier remark that she didn’t live there took on another dimension. Part of her efforts to hide her origins.

She pushed her cigarette into the ashtray. ‘Don’t speak to me in German again,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, taken aback. ‘I know my accent is—’

‘It’s not that,’ she cut him short. ‘I don’t want to hear it spoken.’

‘What about the café? Mrs Lynch’s?’

‘I’ll go there on Saturday. I only want to hear it from Nazis.’

‘Okay,’ he said, not really knowing what she meant but relieved she was continuing with the plan. ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’

‘Yes.’

She got out of the car and took a key from her coat pocket and opened the hall door. It was closed before he had finished the first leg of a three-point turn.

The Red House was the busiest he had seen it since the summer’s day when the government had ordered sensitive documents to be destroyed at the peak of a scare about a German invasion. Lights were on everywhere, men in mixtures of dress – uniforms, formal, casual – moved with purpose. The atmosphere was grim.

Captain Sullivan was in their office before him, grey-faced and dishevelled and looking like he had a premature hangover. He was on the phone, asking someone what height the planes were at when they crossed the coast. Commandant McClure came in, looking fresher than anyone
else, and sank into a chair beside Duggan’s end of the table. Duggan gave him a quick rundown on what he had seen and heard at the bomb site. ‘Could they have targeted the Jewish area?’ he concluded.

McClure rejected the idea with a shake of his head. ‘They were at ten thousand feet. Could just about hit the lit-up area of the city from that height.’

So Griffith Barracks couldn’t have been the target either, Duggan thought.

‘But the point is that they did hit the lit-up area of the city,’ McClure continued. He seemed keen to talk through what they knew. ‘First time this has happened. They can’t have thought they were over England since it’s all blacked out. The only places in this part of the world with any lights burning are in this country.’