Jack of Spies (38 page)

“Ah.”

“And there’s a favor I’d like to ask you. If I sent you letters for her, could you mail them on from here?”

“Of course I will. I take it you don’t want her to know you’re in Ireland.”

It was McColl’s turn to sigh. “It’s not the simplest of romances.”

Which was something of an understatement, he thought an hour or so later, as the sleeper rattled out of Euston and chugged its way up Camden Bank. Two such different lives could be spliced together only by one person utterly subsuming the other. That was not going to happen to him and Caitlin, and he didn’t want it to. The things he admired about her were the things that made that impossible. The woman he loved would never settle for less than equality.

In the night bar, he composed the last letter he could send
himself, telling her he was back in England and on his way north to visit his parents. Two cigarettes and a whiskey later, he walked back to his compartment half expecting a sleepless night. The next thing he knew, a steward was shaking his shoulder with a ten-minute warning of their arrival. He had slept like a stone.

He’d sent a telegram the evening before, and Jed was waiting at the ticket barrier in a smart blue suit and tie. “I have to work this morning,” he said, “but I thought I’d meet you for a cup of tea.”

They sat in the buffet for twenty minutes, bringing each other up to date. According to Jed, things at home were much the same, which McColl supposed was better than worse. “Have you told them anything about my working for the government?” he asked his younger brother.

“A little,” Jed admitted. “Just that, I think. That you work for the government abroad. I might have mentioned the Foreign Office.”

He left McColl at the tram stop and walked briskly off down Hope Street. He seemed older, McColl thought, and, beneath the welcome, more subdued.

Twenty minutes later he was staring at the familiar house on Oakley Street and catching a glimpse of his mother at the window. She had the door opened before he reached it and stood there looking at him, tears running down her cheeks. Breakfast and his father were waiting in the back parlor, the one still warming on the stove, the other cold as ever. His father complimented him on his tan and somehow managed to make it sound like an accusation. He was home.

He talked to his mother for most of the morning, about the round-the-world trip and his brother, about neighbors and relations he hadn’t seen for years. Jed had told her about Caitlin, but his mother didn’t press when she realized his reluctance to discuss her. His father sat there listening for a while, interjecting the odd barbed joke, but then tired of the sport and took refuge in his garden shed.

Jed came home for lunch, and they contrived to act like a normal family for the time it took to eat it. After washing and drying,
the boys and their mother listened to the new gramophone Jed had bought her with his earnings, and then the brothers went out for a walk around the old neighborhood, which seemed even more depressing than McColl remembered. The weather played a part—the gray skies hanging over Glasgow were enough to make anyone yearn for Mexico.

Their father went down to his local soon after tea, and their mother insisted on their doing likewise and “giving her some peace.” They decided to brave the city center and joined a sizable crowd at the local tram stop.

“I don’t know how long I can stand living here,” Jed confessed as they waited.

“Get a room,” McColl suggested. “I’ll lend you some money if you need it.”

“No. I don’t mean with them. I mean Glasgow. Everyone’s so damn narrow-minded.”

“That’s true of most places.”

“Not London.”

“Not so much maybe. Is the job not going well?”

Jed shrugged. “I could do it in my sleep. Some days I do. It’s boring.”

It was hard for McColl to argue—fifteen years earlier he’d felt much the same. “Just don’t run away to join the army,” he warned. “They wrote the book on narrow-minded.”

Jed smiled. “You survived it.”

“Only just.”

The tram arrived, and everyone squeezed aboard. They ended up in a pub on Sauchiehall Street, reminiscing about their long trip and taking bets with each other on which of the male patrons would throw the first punch. In the end it was a middle-aged woman, who swung her handbag like a medieval mace and knocked a hapless youth to his knees.

“You’re not seeing anyone?” McColl asked.

“No one special. I don’t want more reasons to stay here.”

Their mother was drinking cocoa when they got back, and the two of them followed her upstairs rather than wait for their father. McColl lay awake in the dark listening for the sound of a key in the lock, remembering all those nights in the past when the sound of a curse or a stumble would tell him how drunk his father was. Tonight, though, the feet on the stairs were steady and the murmured conversation carried no hint of threat.

How did his father live with himself? How did he, come to that? Selling cars to the rich wouldn’t get him to heaven, and neither, he suspected, would working for Cumming. So far he had thrown one Chinese girl to the German wolves, helped keep Britain’s boot on India’s jugular, and prevented evidence of American atrocities in Mexico from seeing the light of day. All could be justified as preserving the British advantage in competition with the Kaiser’s Germany, an aim that seemed defensible, though some way short of meriting sainthood. But when it came down to it, the only enemies who didn’t leave him feeling conflicted were the Irish extremists and their nasty German friends. If only Colm Hanley hadn’t been one of them.

On Sunday morning he escorted his mother to church, then went to the pub with his father and brother while she stayed home to cook lunch. His father was on his best behavior, radiating unspoken pride in his two boys. It would have been hard for anyone present to imagine a cross word passing between them, let alone realize that the man’s sons couldn’t wait to get away from him.

While the brothers cleared up after lunch, both parents fell asleep in their armchairs, and eventually McColl found himself standing in the parlor doorway, staring at his mother and thinking how old she looked. She was pleased to see him, pleased to have Jed back, but there was an underlying sense of resignation that he hadn’t noticed before. Her husband might not beat her anymore—there were no bruises these days, and Jed would probably kill the old man if he did—but over the years he had slowly beaten her down. If Jed left Glasgow, she wouldn’t have much to live for.

As she saw him off at the door, fighting back the tears, McColl felt like a heel, felt like running. He and Jed took the tram to Central and sat, mostly in silence, with their cups of tea until his train was finally announced. “It was easier for you,” Jed said as they walked to the ticket barrier. “You knew I would still be there.”

An hour later the train pulled in to Ardrossan Harbour station. Boarding was already in progress, but it seemed hours before the ship pulled away from the jetty and out into the Firth of Clyde. He managed a few hours of fitful sleep, then took to the deck to enjoy the early sunrise, thinking that most of his life these days was spent on boats and trains. When the counter finally opened inside, the bacon rolls proved worth the wait.

It was almost six when the ship entered Belfast Lough, the sunlit green fields sloping up from the southern shore, the scattered white houses of Carrickfergus nestling beneath the hills to the north. Most of the city was still asleep when the ship docked, but a few of the old-style cabbies were waiting with their horses. As he listened to the iron-shod hooves clip-clopping across the cobbles, a heretical thought crept into McColl’s mind: that this mode of transport was something he would miss.

He bought a newspaper from the boy at the station entrance and glanced at the front page as he waited in line for his Dublin ticket. The writer of the lead article was spitting venom at all those responsible, no matter how obliquely, for the apocalypse known as Home Rule—the reckless Liberal government, their spineless Tory opponents, Redmond and his hated Nationalists, the Pope and all his works. If Ulster had to fight them all, then Ulster damn well would.

Elsewhere, as the adjacent article made clear, blood had already been shed. On the previous morning, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne had been riding through the Bosnian town of Sarajevo with his wife when a lone gunman had shot and killed them both. It was not yet known who the gunman was or what, if any, his motives had been.

Killoran’s Tavern

Arriving in Dublin late in the morning, McColl parked his suitcase at a modest-looking hotel close by Tara Street station and used the telephone in the lobby to call the number he’d been given in London. An Irish voice took his name, left him hanging for almost a minute, then returned with a name, a time, and a place. “You’ll be meeting Mr. Dunwood on the corner of Henry and Sackville streets—that’s by the general post office. At one o’clock. He’ll be carrying a red book.”

The hotel desk clerk had a map of the city for visitors to consult, and McColl spent some time familiarizing himself with the basic layout. The specified meeting place was on the other side of the river, only a ten-minute walk. He wandered down to the Liffey and worked his way eastward along the quay until he found an open bar. Someone had left a wooden chair outside, so he took his beer out into the sunshine and watched the people walking past on both sides of the river. It probably wasn’t the cleverest place to put himself, but the chances that Seán Tiernan or Colm Hanley might happen by seemed negligible.

He realized he should probably make some attempt to disguise himself. His hair was slightly longer than it had been in
New York, but letting it grow like a Sikh’s would only attract attention. He supposed he could grow a mustache or a beard, but the prospect was unappealing. Perhaps a pair of glasses, he thought. But how could he ask for a pair with plain lenses without raising suspicions?

The trials and tribulations of the secret agent.

He drained his glass and refrained, with some misgivings, from ordering another. Dublin felt like a friendly town, but few places on earth housed more of the empire’s bitterest enemies. He needed to keep his wits about him.

Sackville Street was the city’s finest, a wide boulevard lined with impressive stone buildings. A local version of Nelson’s Column stood between the tram lines at the junction with Henry Street, and as he approached the corner, McColl wondered how long the monument would survive an Irish republic. The man with the red book was already there, puffing on a pipe and looking around with obvious impatience. “Dunwood!” McColl said effusively, as if they’d known each other for years. The contact was a man of similar height to himself but considerably stouter, with a reddish face and sharp, almost cruel blue eyes. Ex-army, was McColl’s first thought.

At the other man’s instigation, they walked on up Sackville Street, crossed another wide road, and entered a well-tended square surrounded by Georgian buildings. “This’ll do,” Dunwood said. He had a southern Irish accent, McColl realized, and wondered why this was surprising. Most of Kell’s men in Dublin would be locals—Englishmen would be far too obvious for undercover work.

Having found an empty bench, Dunwood plunked himself down, re-lit his pipe, and asked McColl where he was staying. “That won’t do at all,” he said when supplied with the answer. “You’ll have to live rougher than that.”

“Okay,” McColl said equably. “Suggestions?”

“It’s all in the book,” Dunwood said, placing it between them.
“We’ve created a false identity for you, and all the details are there. I assume you can you manage an Australian accent?”

“Australian?”

“You’re visiting the old country after a spot of bother Down Under. Remember ‘Black Friday in Queensland’?”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, it was two years ago. You spent a year in prison for your part in it, and when you came out, you were on a blacklist. So now you’re back in your father’s country and angry as any damn republican.”

“What am I living on?” McColl wanted to know.

“You sold all your worldly goods before you left Australia, and you worked your passage. But the money won’t last forever, and you’re looking for a job. Really looking, I mean. There’s none to be had, but the real Paul O’Neill would keep on looking.”

“That’s my name, is it?”

“It is.”

“Right. So just to be clear, my one and only task is to find Seán Tiernan?”

“As of this moment.”

“And if I do?”

“Just lead us to him.”

“You don’t sound convinced he’s here in Dublin.”

“I’m not. We’ve looked everyplace we could think of.” He shrugged. “And not a trace.”

“Where
have
you looked?”

“All the hotels and guesthouses. The pubs and clubs we know the republicans use. We’ve had men in the audience at all the likely public meetings, and we have a lot of informers out there. A lot,” he repeated. “And they’re hearing stuff—there’s no end of talk about arms arriving for the Volunteers. But not a word on Tiernan. The people running the guns have heard of him, but they haven’t seen him for months.”