depressed. The sniper had fired only twice since he showed himself. He was waiting, lining up, had him now in the notch of the sight, his progress so much slower from that angle and height, his body bulky and unmissable—
He wanted to shout out, wave his arms, felt his nerve going finally as his sense of his own fragility all but overcame him. He knew his legs were going, slowing down, his breath catching up in pace. And the rifleman was waiting for that, waiting for the exposed fly to lose its nerve, crack. Anything else would be a waste of bullets. He was very close to screaming.
He stumbled into the overhang, felt the cliff at his fingertips, heard the rattle of rifle fire as the man on the cliff-top squeezed off four in rapid succession to express his frustration, the overconfidence outrun and baffled. McBride scuttled forward until he was sitting hunched into the rock, his back pressed against it, shaking, his arms hugging his knees, his breath roaring to drown every other sound. He could not believe that he had made it, even as he accepted that he had survived the gamble that the rifleman would wait just a moment too long for the optimum shot at a target moving towards him. McBride knew — an instructor somewhere had said it — that the first, second, even third man you killed could not be running towards you, could not be so easy a target, growing bigger in the sight-notch. It unnerved, but more than that it rendered complacent, expanded time until it ran out before you noticed.
McBride had never believed the instructor — not completely— until that moment. Now, he wanted to laugh, and vomit while he laughed. He kept his teeth pressed together.
The first man who had opened up on them was nowhere to be seen. Drummond's arm waved from behind some boulders, seemingly a huge distance away, then it went back out of sight. Drummond would have to take his chance.
Recovery time,
He forced himself to his feet, and immediately felt light-headed and weak, his legs leaden and useless. He jogged a couple of yards, tried to feel better but didn't, then forced himself into an awkward, shambling run around the point, keeping drunkenly close to the cliff-face for shelter and support, his feet skittering and scrabbling in the loose shale.
He rounded the point, into a notch of rock with a pebbly beach which opened out further on into the cliffs of Toe Head. If he were simply running away now, he could keep on all the way round to Toe Head Bay, away from the two snipers. He moved along the bottom of the low cliff slowly now, eyes always flitting between the rock above him and the places where he carefully put his feet.
A split in the rocks, like a jagged knife-cut. His hand almost caressed it. He slid into it, back braced, boots wedged against the opposite side of the slit. Then he began moving up, using his back, his shoulders, his feet, his grasping hands — scuttling like a beetle or other insect as quickly as he could. The wind seemed to want to dislodge him. He did not look down. It was an easy climb, only difficult because he was climbing towards a rifle, he was already nervously exhausted, and because he was doing it in a hurry. His hands reached over two sharp lips of rock, and he heaved at the rest of his reluctant body — balanced — then raised himself by his arms until his head was just above the cliff-edge, his eyes level with the thin grass, with an old cigarette-end which lay right at the edge of the cliff.
The sniper was standing up, yelling to his companion a couple of hundred yards away — no, more than that, he corrected himself. Three, three-fifty even. He seemed to have temporarily lost interest in McBride, perhaps was even at a loss. His accent was Irish, and at the same time as that realization chilled McBride he understood that the local IRA were in the business of executions on German orders, and why the boy — he was little more than that from the back — was now puzzled. He was taking orders, and more orders were now required. Who was going down to the beach? When?
The boy had assumed that McBride — unarmed, insect-like McBride running brokenly, dementedly across the rocks and sand below — was evading him, not coming for him. He was confident his target huddled below him now, catching his breath and praying for rescue.
McBride balanced again, testing the strength of his arms and the toe-holds he would use.
The German voice was shouting something about making certain that McBride —
McBride heaved himself up onto the cliff-edge, scrabbling with his feet to push him beyond his centre of gravity then pulling with his arms, his legs swinging sideways and over, finally pushing himself upright. The German shouted and the boy began turning. The rifle came round, lifting towards him as he thrust forward, cannoning into the boy — who was impossibly thin and light as soon as he touched him — and knocking him down. He rolled over with him, the rifle sandwiched between them far harder than the boy's bones under him. He hit the boy once, hard across the jaw, felt the neck snap round as if it had broken as easily as a twig, and the boy's eyes closed, his head lolled. McBride solicitously joggled the head, knew the neck was not broken — then hefted the rifle into his own hands, taking aim while he still straddled the boy, wanting only the German now that he was armed, loosing off three shots, tearing his fingers on the bolt action of the Lee Enfield that might have come from the Rising, almost certainly from a Black-and-Tan and now a family heirloom.
The German ducked down, then began running, away beyond the car, down into a dip, then up again where McBride loosed off two more shots before the German disappeared again. Moments later, he heard the sound of an engine firing, held back and made distant by the wind from the sea but there, nevertheless, quite clearly.
McBride stood over the boy.
'Drummond, Drummond!' he yelled. 'Get up here — quickly. Get up here!' Again, he wanted to vomit with exhaustion. Instead, he hauled the boy to his feet, held him against him tender as a lover, the rifle under his other arm.
They'd get the bastard now — if Drummond was bloody quick enough!
Room T was familiar to Gilliatt, though he had hoped never to return to it. It was in no way sinister — no part of the Admiralty was that — but it had a deadening, musty, arcane quality he had long ago rejected; finally, he had thought.
It had taken them hours to get this far, after the enervating train journey from Pembrokeshire. Swansea had been bombed again, and there had been a derailment that held them up. There was bomb rubble on the tracks just outside Paddington from the raid the previous night, and that had meant a further delay. Then the initial debriefing, then the waiting around while their reports were digested, then the summons to Room T, and a man called Walsingham and his superior officer, Rear Admiral March. The two men looked as if they had been quarrelling just before summoning Gilliatt and Ashe. Gilliatt had the uncomfortable feeling of someone intruding on a family dispute. Walsingham, Gilliatt noticed, was RNVR, and it was evident from his youth and rank that he was a former civilian intelligence officer drafted into the Admiralty. Gilliatt was silently amused at the idea that he might have taken his own place. The humour of the situation gave him a sense of superiority to the room and its occupants.
Ashe was tired, worn, drained. As if respecting an invalid, March concentrated his questions on Gilliatt. He snapped them out, primarily retracing the ground that lay tracked in the typed sheets in front of him on the table, supplementing with one or two riders to the initial debriefing. It took less than fifteen minutes, and nothing in March's voice or face indicated the weight he attached to what he asked or received in reply. Gilliatt was gradually assailed by a loss of reality surrounding what they had discovered in St George's Channel. Winnie's Welcome Mat was still out there, unbreached. March's strong, unmoving face suggested as much. The late afternoon sun behind his head haloed the white hair, tipped the ears with pink — an elderly rabbit. Nothing bad was going to happen—
Gilliatt jerked awake. The questioning had transferred to Ashe briefly, then back to him.
'Sir?' he fumbled.
'What are your conclusions, Mr Gilliatt? As a former intelligence officer?' March snapped, scowling at Gilliatt and the debriefing report in turn.
'It has to be — well, it has to be to land troops in Ireland, from the sea — I suppose.'
Walsingham, who had said little, beamed and seemed suddenly much more aware. March looked at him, momentary puzzlement hardening into a more habitual authority.
'Very well, I'll leave Commander Walsingham to talk to you, while you and I, Captain Ashe, have our own discussion. You'll want tea sent in, Charles?' Walsingham seemed unconcerned.
