Emerald Decision

November—' The avenues of investigation bubbled out of him now, as Lobke from the Ministry opened the door of the Zil and made him aware, by looking at his watch, that his journey to Tegel could not be longer delayed. McBride nodded at Lobke. 'OK, OK.'

'Go along now, Thomas — and leave everything with me. You'll be hearing from me very soon, I am certain.'

His hand was released and McBride climbed into the car. As it pulled away from in front of the Hotel Spree, McBride looked out of the rear window. Goessler was waving enthusiastically after the car.

November 1940

The morning was crisp, cold, clear, a sky washed of imperfections except for the smudge on the southern horizon which was the effluent of Southampton's bombing. McBride nevertheless felt invigorated by the air, the frost crunching like powdered glass underfoot, the chill on his wan, tired face. He rubbed one hand through his hair, tousling it. Walsingham walked beside him, deep in contemplation of the debriefing, of the notes he had studied and the tape-recorded dialogue with the weary McBride.

McBride liked Walsingham, effectively his special operations controller for OIC for the past year. Walsingham was a few years younger, though his rank of Commander, RNVR, seemed to belie his age — his age belied the sudden rank, McBride corrected himself. He had been drafted into OIC by means of an RNVR(S) commission at the outbreak of war, by Rear Admiral Godfrey — Director of Naval Intelligence — himself, from his job in civilian intelligence. By general repute, Walsingham was brilliant, painstaking, thorough, imaginative — and ruthless. McBride liked him as much for the suggestion of that latter quality that always seemed close to his eyes and mouth as for his more acceptable qualities. He was what McBride could accept, and admire, in his operations controller. And Walsingham respected his qualities as a field-agent.

A rook called from a bare tree, hunched above its great lump of a nest. Both men looked up at the noise, smiled.

'Well, Charlie-boy? Have you learned what you wanted? You're being remarkably silent, even for you.'

'And your sudden brogue isn't having the slightest effect on me, Michael lad,' Walsingham observed, looking down at his shoes, rimed with the frost on the lawn in front of the house.

'Touche!' McBride stopped, facing Walsingham. 'What's it about, Charlie? I'm not an idiot — even I could smell something big — what is it?'

Walsingham wandered a few steps away, then turned to face McBride. He was suddenly boyish rather than donnish as he rubbed at his fair hair, making it stand up away from his pale forehead.

'I wish I knew, Michael, I wish I knew.'

'Listen, Charlie, it's a two-way process. You talk to me, now.'

Walsingham, as if ignoring McBride's demand, walked away from him, seeming to study the bare trees, the last curled leaves on the lawn — scuffing some of them with his foot, a sharp, crackling sound. McBride was surprised not at his reluctance, which he considered only apparent, but by the intense mental agitation that Walsingham's young face clearly evidenced. Walsingham looked up.

'I discount, of course, your remarks concerning the camaraderie of the Kriegsmarine and the Wehrmacht — at least, I want to ignore it, perhaps simply because it's so tantalizing to speculate on it.' He smiled, almost in a hurt, defensive way. He thrust his hands in the pockets of his brown jacket — Walsingham was rarely in uniform — as if to limit the dramatic emphasis he might bring to bear on his remarks. 'Your drawing is quite inadequate, you know — your skill with the pencil, I mean—'

'Charlie, are you trying to tell me something?' McBride grinned. 'Go for your gun, Kincaid,' he observed. Both men stood, ten yards apart, hands in pockets.

'Don't joke.' It was said with the affronted dignity of a lover.

'OK — talk me through it, then.'

'I guessed the sheds concealed submarines, but I couldn't understand why they were so— so flimsy—' He surrendered to emphasis, waved his hand briefly at his side, replaced it in his pocket. He looked like a schoolboy trying to explain a breach of discipline. 'And the submarines in there — Raeder and Donitz don't have that many submarines, so this use of Guernsey is quite out of character, and ties up a lot of boats — look, they must have been building these big U-boats at the expense of other vessels!' He looked up at McBride, as if for confirmation, and McBride realized for the first time that Walsingham was rehearsing an argument; or was repeating one that had already failed to convince other people.

'Go on, Charlie,' he said.

'Let's cut over this way,' Walsingham said quietly, pointing towards a grove of trees that ran down to the stream that crossed the estate around the house. McBride nodded, and they walked in silence until Walsingham pursued his argument, the cry of another rook seeming to galvanize him into speech.

'Those boats you say — you think they were ocean-going big boys, right?' McBride nodded. 'But they might have been milchcows, right?' Again, McBride nodded. 'And again, they could have been a new type — what do you think they were doing? Had been doing?'

McBride walked on in silence for a time, listening to his own footsteps and those of his companion.

'I don't know, Charlie, I really don't. Your eyes lit up when I described the stuff on them — you tell me.'

'I'm going to have to talk to the Admiralty — to confirm my suspicions. They weren't loading, refuelling, anything like that?' McBride shook his head. They emerged from the trees, and the narrow stream was filmed with grey ice. It appeared remarkably forlorn, evocative. The grass along the bank was stiff, sharp-edged, with rime. Beyond the stream, the countryside to the edge of the estate — where it was bordered by a farm — was dulled, rendered vacant and inhospitable by the grey air, the trees fuzzed into rounded lumps of frosty branches. In the distance, cows picked their way, painfully slowly, across a white field.

'No, they were repairing the damaged sub — but I had the sense of mission over, rather than mission ahead.' McBride stared into the distance, seeing the Friesians taking and losing shape against the background. 'What had they been doing, Charlie?'

Walsingham looked at him, and seemed to judge that the moment was right.

'By the way, you're going back to Ireland via Milford Haven, with a minesweeping flotilla — it should be illuminating!' He chuckled. 'Sorry — I want you to see for yourself, then tell me — via Drummond or the captain of the minesweeper, of course.'

'Just tell me, simply — what are the Germans up to?'

'Drummond's crying out for your return, you know — there have been several reports of submarine activity, and of at least one agent landing west of Cork—'

'Charlie, don't be irritating—'

Walsingham flung his arms wide like a magician. He looked more like a schoolboy than ever.

'I think the Germans are going to invade the Republic of Ireland — and I think they're going to do it soon!'

October 198-

Heathrow was conspicuously neat, and orderly, and cool. McBride had used the airport many times before, either travelling to England or in transit for Europe. The limited chaos that he always perceived by comparison with Kennedy or Dulles or Logan — those long cool corridors, the quiet, the whisper of luggage-conveyors and escalators — had disappeared; he had always regarded Heathrow as the triumph of desperation, perhaps the apogee of the British capacity to make do as a way of life. Yet now the busiest airport in the world was creeping about its business.

Because of the soldiers.

The terminal was full of them, armed, and the baggage search seemed endless, and his passport was checked with a thoroughness perhaps more appropriate to Dusseldorf — in fact, he realized as the passport controller, with a soldier standing armed and bored behind him, held his passport face-down beneath his desk, that the British had imported, and put to use, the German computerized passport system they used at Federal Republic airports.

It was almost an hour and a half after he disembarked from the Trident 3 that he emerged with his bags into the lounge of the terminal. He looked immediately for a telephone, found one near the bookstall, and dialled directory enquiries.

He was eager to work in London, go over all the wartime records he could lay hands on, and therefore he