'No. I suppose there's nothing to any of those rumors?'
'Well, I can't say for certain it wasn't German agents who broke in here. As for the rest, I'm pretty sure not.'
'OK. Show me around, then I'd like to talk to Sergeant Brennan. I assume he's still here?'
'Pete? Yeah. He's one of our best ordnance guys. He's hasn't been here long, but he's a hard worker. Doesn't mix with the other men much. He does his job and spends a lot of time down on the beach, staring at the waves.'
'The base goes all the way to the coast?'
'Yeah. The locals call the beach Tyrella. Nice stretch of sand. Our fences go down to the water but the beach is open to personnel.'
'Is that where the German sub was sighted?'
'No, that was in Newcastle Harbor, after a few pints, I think. Come on, I'll show you around and we'll see if we can find Brennan.'
'Why is he such a loner, do you suppose?' I asked as I followed Saul out of his office.
'Couldn't say. He does his job, so I don't see any reason to force him to be chummy with the guys.'
'Is he fresh from the States or another unit here in Ireland?'
'Neither. He was wounded in Italy, at Salerno. After he recovered, they sent him here.'
I followed Saul out of the building, wondering what had happened to Brennan at Salerno, but knowing that the details didn't matter. Salerno had happened. In his fresh-faced world, through no real fault of his own, Saul couldn't make the connection. God bless him for it then. His time would come.
'This was all one big parking area,' he said, gesturing at the fence in front of the building. 'Any vehicle could drive right up to the depot.'
'Was the fence your idea?'
'Yes, and the guards as well. We also locked a side door. Now the only way in is through the office, which is in clear sight of the guards. And we have one guard on the loading dock at all times.'
'What about before, when Stan was in charge?' I asked as I followed Saul to the other end of the building, about thirty yards.
'Hey, it wasn't Stan's fault! No one gave it a second thought; the depot is right in the middle of a military base, for crying out loud. We have most of the 11th Regiment here, we're surrounded by GIs.'
'OK, I get the point. Just tell me what the procedures were.'
'No fence, no guards. Pretty much anyone could enter the building, although any locals would have been stopped. To draw any supplies, you'd need a signed requisition. We have men on duty around the clock, in the arms storage areas and ordnance repair shop.'
We entered through the loading dock, which opened into a wide area for temporary storage of items coming in and out of the building. Behind it, through a narrow hallway, was the ordnance repair shop. Workbenches ran along each wall, and every type of small arms imaginable was stacked everywhere, in various stages of disassembly. Rifles, machine guns, and mortars, along with pistols hung from their trigger guards from hooks on the wall. Two GIs in oil-stained coveralls greeted the lieutenant and went back to their work.
'Brennan around?' he asked.
'Said he was goin' to the beach coupla hours ago,' one of them said. 'He got that MG42 workin' 'fore he took off.'
'Why do you have a German machine gun?' I asked.
'Familiarization,' Saul answered. 'Another one of Thornton's ideas. We have some British weapons as well, and we run everyone through a familiarization course, so they can recognize the sound of each weapon, and understand basic operation.'
'Believe me, you don't need a course to recognize one of these,' I said, laying my hand on the smooth black metal, so dark it almost absorbed the light around it. It felt cold, as cold as a corpse. 'It fires so fast you can't even hear the individual shots. It sounds like ripping cloth, one long, long piece of fabric being torn. Or a chain saw, some people say. The Germans call it the Bonesaw, with good reason.'
I closed my eyes and heard it, and jerked my hand away as if the gun barrel were smoking hot. I saw Saul and the two GIs staring at me, and I couldn't escape the sensation of a spray of blood against my face. I knew it wasn't happening. But it had happened, the last time I heard the Bonesaw at work.
'Come on,' I said to Saul, sorry that they'd caught a glimpse of things to come, and desperately trying not to rub the blood from my face. I took some deep breaths and walked away from the MG42.
Saul led me into the cellar. Boxes of ammunition were stacked chest-high around us, and crates of M1 carbines stood along the walls. A bright red sign proclaimed NO SMOKING next to a poster cautioning that careless talk costs lives. Or BARs. Another, more faded poster looked like a leftover from the last war. John Bull, his big belly tucked into a union jack vest, standing in front of a line of British soldiers, asking, WHO'S ABSENT, IS IT YOU?
'They came down these steps, right to where the BARs were,' Saul said.
'How do you know that?' I asked.
'It had been raining all day. Stan told me there were muddy boot prints from the loading dock, straight to the cellar and right to the crated BARs. Besides the ammo, they didn't take anything else.'
'It must have been tempting but they had to get out fast and hide the stuff,' I said, half to myself. 'How long do you think it took them?'
'Assuming no more than two or three guys, I'd say twenty minutes. Half hour tops.'
'Who was on duty?'
'Sergeant Brennan. He was in the office, said he never heard a thing.'
'Is that likely? He wouldn't notice a truck pulling up?'
'Probably not. Remember, there was no fence, no gate around the place, and it was dark. They must have come in from the opposite direction, backed up to the loading dock, and broken in.'
'How'd they do it? I assume the door was locked.'
'It was. They popped the hinges. It wasn't hard; this building wasn't designed as a bank.'
'And Brennan heard nothing?'
'It was raining to beat the band, Billy. It was windy too. I can believe it. And night duty didn't mean anything other than being ready if a call came in for something. No one ever thought we needed guards in the middle of the camp.'
'Do you know if anyone checked the boot prints?'
'For what?'
'Never mind.' Maybe Carrick had. Saul didn't have a suspicious nature, that much was clear. The first thing I would have done was see if any of the boot prints had a GI tread.
I scanned the room in back of the stairway. Another faded, yellowing poster was nailed to the side of a shelf. BRITISHERS, ENLIST TODAY!
'Obviously this was an English base in the last war,' I said.
'Yeah, I think a lot of the local units went through here. They have some sort of militia or something.'
'The Ulster Volunteer Force,' I said, remembering Uncle Dan talking about the Covenant, the document many Protestants signed in their own blood, vowing to resist Home Rule for Ireland if it was granted. The UVF was formed to be ready to fight to keep Ulster British, but they didn't have to. UVF units signed up to fight in France, and this would have been where they would have been trained and turned into real soldiers.
'Something like that. I think Inspector Carrick said he'd been in the first war. Maybe he'd been through Ballykinler back then.'
'Maybe,' I said. 'Maybe he knows the place very well.' Had he signed the Covenant in his own blood? For the first time I thought about the assumption that the IRA had been behind the theft. It was fair enough, since an IRA man had been found dead nearby, but that raised the issue of who had killed him. The IRA, because he was an informer? Or the Red Hand, to confuse things?
'I'm going to the beach,' I said, hoping the salt air would clear my head of the swirling suspicions and mistrust that seemed to spring from the soil of Northern Ireland.
