Emerald Decision

away. He had a very good memory — perhaps he was just careless about who and what he once had been—?' The thought seemed to have just struck her, and she evidently found it uncomfortable.

'So you wouldn't know?' She shook her head. McBride was beginning to believe the unimportance of the burglary; it retreated in his consciousness, though he knew, dimly, that he wasn't finished with it. 'The man who came to see your father — was your father frightened in any way?' She laughed out loud, then clapped her hand to her mouth as if caught in an irreverence. But she was still smiling when she uncovered her mouth.

'Of course not. My father thought him stupid, and impudent.'

'And he didn't threaten your father?'

'No, why should he? Official secrets? My father hadn't learned any for forty years, Mr McBride. Would you like coffee — some lunch?' He shook his head.

'No to the lunch, yes to coffee.'

While he listened to her making coffee in the kitchen, he pondered Gilliatt's death, and the frustration of this minor part of his visit to England. But, 19407 It was too coincidental.

When he had taken the delicate china cup with the heavy rose-pattern in the deep pink saucer, sipped and complimented her, he said, 'Your father didn't mention exactly what it was he wanted to talk about, I suppose?' He was resigned to it being idle speculation — her answer had a startling clarity.

'He was still laughing when he told me. He said that your connection with it was the best irony. It put the wind up the people in Whitehall, he was certain of that — the same name, you see, and the blood connection. The man from London told him that you were interested in the operation my father was part of in late 1940—'

'Emerald Necklace?' he asked in a hoarse voice, the cup tilting in his hand as his attention was forced from it.

'Careful,' she warned. 'I'm sorry — I don't know what you mean—'

'The operation was called Emerald Necklace.'

'I don't know — was it? My father didn't refer to it by name. He simply said it was to do with a German plan to invade southern Ireland, late in 1940. Are you interested in something like that?'

* * *

Sean Moynihan handed over the papers he was required to carry under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, as Peter Morgan, visitor to the Republic. He'd filled a sheaf of forms at Heathrow, which attempted to stop people like himself from travelling freely in and out of Eire.

The passport official at Cork Airport accepted the papers and the Welsh accent that Moynihan had assumed, and the single suitcase and the false passport. Outside the tiny, almost empty terminal building, Donovan was waiting for him with his car.

When they were on the L42, driving back towards Cork, and Moynihan had maintained a deliberate silence in order to irritate Donovan, the driver said, 'You had a satisfactory trip, I take it?' He wiped a hand over his thinning hair, as if nervous at having trodden on some private grief.

'I did, Rory, I did.' But his face portrayed only the mirror of his angry frustration at the hands of Goessler. 'Herr Goessler was his usual smiling, fat, bloody self.'

'Well — what did you get from him? What can we use?'

'Nothing — nothing yet.'

Donovan was emboldened by disappointment. 'But you promised — look, Sean, I've got the Committee on fire for some startling piece of usable information, and you come back with nothing?'

'Shut your gob and drive, Rory — you do that best.'

After a silence which seemed to mist the windscreen slightly, Donovan said, 'I'm sorry, but the Committee is pressing. Dublin keeps reassuring us — but we don't trust them. Gerry thinks there's a real chance they'll go along with the Brits and keep that fucking Agreement. So, we need—'

'Fuck Provisional Sinn Fein, Rory!' Moynihan snapped.

Donovan flushed angrily. 'You can't talk to me like—'

'I can, Rory.'

'We want next week's meetings stopped as much as you do!'

'Then you'll have to be patient. I've nothing for you — not yet. Goessler has us by the balls, Donovan, you know that.'

'What's going to happen, then?'

'Goessler's set his elaborate scheme in motion—'

'McBride?'

'Yes. He's in London now. Soon, he'll be coming here, following an old, old trail—'

'How long is this going to take?' Donovan's round eyes blinked behind his thick spectacles as he looked almost desperately at Moynihan.

'Watch the cart,' Moynihan said, and when they had swerved to avoid it, added, 'Not too long — damn you, Donovan, I can't help it, and I don't like it, either! So Dublin goes to these meetings — OK. Those meetings will take weeks to decide, one way or the other — it'll all be out in the open before then!'

'You hope,' Donovan said quietly.

'Shut up and drive.'

November 1940

For McBride, the bridge of HMS Bisley was of no special significance. He was being delivered back to Drummond and to his home in County Cork by the most convenient route — as part of a minesweeping flotilla. Another borrowed duffel-coat, a cap picked up at Otterbourne, someone else's seaboots, his dried roll-neck sweater — Walsingham had brought McBride's jacket, but the cap had been mislaid. He was amused at his own amateurishness, and felt no superiority of function to the first lieutenant of the minesweeper,

Gilliatt. A mild discomfort at being amongst a ship's officers and crew was always just below the surface, as if he were some sort of ignorant civilian guest — but it was a feeling that was in himself not in those around him. They accepted his uniform as proclaiming the man, and enjoyed the mystery and shadows that seemed just beyond his physical presence.

The flotilla consisted of just seven ships, moving out of Milford Haven harbour into the sound, down towards St Anne's Head. It was a grey early morning, the sea already alien, inhospitable. One of the flotilla was having her boilers cleaned, so six ships would sweep and one would act as 'spare sweeper'. McBride had no interest in their objective — the Germans might have sown a new minefield by aircraft or submarine across Swansea Bay or Cardiff docks, or at Bristol. Routine, par for the course. The two dan-laying vessels had already left port to rendezvous, presumably, at the location of the sweep.

He smiled as he remembered Walsingham's words. The m/s davits, kites and floats on each side of the quarter deck of the Bisley had indeed informed him of the purpose of the big U-boats on Guernsey — minesweeping duties. They had been rigged out to sweep a minefield on the surface, he suspected now, carrying the sweep along behind them. He presumed it had something to do with keeping the U-boat pens along the French coast clear of the mines the Navy and Coastal Command had started laying. Its importance had already diminished, and the small mystery of their function, being solved, led him to no further interest. He was anxious now to get home.

'Cigarette?' Gilliatt offered him a Capstan Full Strength from a battered packet. Then he and McBride lit up. McBride sensed the proprietorial affection the lieutenant felt for the bridge, now that the captain had left it and gone below to his cabin. Gilliatt was to join him when the flotilla had passed St Anne's Head and turned away to starboard. McBride had not been invited, so he presumed it would be some kind of briefing. 'On your way home, sir?' Gilliatt added casually as they stood behind the helmsman, watching St Anne's Head emerge from the early mist. Rain-squalls spattered the bridge screen. The young sub-lieutenant who was officer of the watch was in effective command of the bridge. It was therefore Gilliatt's indulgence to engage McBride in conversation.

McBride nodded. 'I am. And you — you're already home?'

Gilliatt looked startled and very young, then he smiled. 'You noticed,' he said.

'A friend told me you were once in Admiralty Intelligence?'

'Once — a long time ago. I ran away to sea.'

McBride laughed. 'I try not to stay at my desk,' he said. 'And, before you ask, I'm Anglo- Irish. My sainted mother, God rest her soul, was a Dublin girl, and my father worked for an English firm of paper-makers. Now, does that much careless talk cost me anything?'