Emerald Decision

betraying her? How would that get her out of Moynihan's hands? He'd led McBride on, played his part in McBride's betrayal, as she had wanted and demanded. But what had he done to her, telling Walsingham?

Even after Moynihan had left, indifferent to the old man's silence, he sat on staring into the fire, the empty glass still clenched in his hand. What had he done to Claire? What would happen to her?

Even when he occasionally glanced at the ceiling, it was only a screen for the past. McBride's father. All those years ago, what had he done to Michael McBride?

CHAPTER EIGHT French Leave

October 198-

On the screen, the Irish Prime Minister — the bastard — was waving to the camera, smiling broadly yet with appropriate gravity at the little knot of reporters and their microphones closing in on him like an ambush. Nodding — giving away what he had to say even before he opened his bloody mouth — smiling like a child, beatifically… like a priest at a fund-raising. Beginning to answer the press of questions, the excited demands to know of the Cabinet's decision… would he go to London next week? Nod, nod — nod -

Guthrie had done it, he'd persuaded Dublin to talk, to take the first step in reaffirming that bloody, damned, bloody Agreement over Ulster and the Provisionals!

Moynihan crossed the room and switched off the television. The screen flared down to a white spot which he watched as if mesmerized. Then, when he seemed satisfied that the images from the BBC news would not reassert themselves on the screen, he returned to his chair. The hotel room was thick with cigarette smoke, there were opened and empty beer bottles on the small writing-desk and the low table by his chair. The bed was unmade. The hotel in Bloomsbury had been his London base on more than one occasion; one of those anonymous hotels used by commercial travellers or football supporters and by members of illegal organizations. Moynihan was not a man the Special Branch or MI5 put high on wanted lists or whose movements they assiduously watched, and the hotel was one remove from the seedier refuges of terrorists and illegal immigrants.

He lit another cigarette, glancing distastefully at the crowded ash-tray as he did so. He exhaled the smoke towards the ceiling. He knew — they all knew by now — that Guthrie and the British had gained a crucial advantage; they had outwitted and outdistanced the whole organization! A furious, angry frustration possessed him, making his free hand clench and unclench repeatedly as he sat waiting for his visitor. He was impotent, in the hands of others. He wanted to hit back, make assertions of his own. Claire was in London with McBride, but the thought brought no comfort or respite from his anger. McBride, fiddling in old records, could not, in Moynihan's imagination, successfully oppose this latest setback. People wanted results — he wanted results. This was no way to get them. Damn the British — they'd seized the advantage. He was left with McBride, a useless dummy. There was a knock at his door. He stubbed out the cigarette instantly, came out of the chair like a lithe animal, gun appearing in his hands from behind the cushion, and he moved silently to the door. Action, even this action, charged him with a subtle electricity. He almost wanted it to be Special Branch on the other side of the flimsy woodwork, flimsy as flesh and bone—

'Yes?'

'Lobke.'

Carefully, he opened the door on its safety-chain. The young East German's face smiled at him, saw the gun, and smiled more broadly. Moynihan unlatched the chain and let Lobke in.

'You're late,' he said, closing the door. Lobke seated himself almost primly in a chair opposite that bearing the impression of Moynihan's weight. He had shaken his head quickly at the unmade bed.

'I'm sorry, Herr Moynihan. Business, you know—' He raised his hands, let them drop, recollecting his purchases in Selfridge's and John Lewis's.

'Making sure McBride dots his i's and crosses his t's, I suppose?' Moynihan sneered.

'You seem on edge, Herr Moynihan?' Lobke was looking at the beer bottles. He waved towards them with one hand. 'You have any that are full?'

Moynihan took two bottles of Guinness from the string bag under the bed, opened them and poured some of the black stout into a tooth-glass, almost deliberately letting the thick head overflow. He handed it to Lobke, who sipped, then said, 'I prefer the dark beer they make in Prague — you've tried it, Herr Moynihan?' He sipped again. 'It's very good — the Czech beer, I mean.'

'Bloody connoisseur,' Moynihan muttered, sitting down, lighting another cigarette. Lobke watched him.

'Count the stubs, Herr Lobke?' Moynihan invited. Lobke shook his head, smiling.

'I understand how you feel — like a caged animal.' Moynihan nodded, disliking even that much agreement with Lobke's analysis. 'Herr Goessler has sent me to tell you that we think McBride is making good progress — he is refining his researches just as we would wish.'

'God, this bloody game you and fatty Goessler are playing!' Lobke's nose wrinkled in disgust. Moynihan leaned forward in his chair, drawing deeply on the cigarette. Stout slopped from his own glass onto the thin carpet between his feet. 'You tied my bloody hands from the beginning, Lobke. I had no choice!' His fist clenched in front of him; the glass of stout appeared fragile and threatened in his other hand.

'You were like a greedy child,' Lobke observed, speaking almost with Goessler's tones.

'Mother of God, you take some beating, Lobke. Goessler offers me the chance to create the biggest mess the Brits could find themselves in — what in hell do you think I'd have done for that? You can have my right arm, Lobke, but for God's sake get something done!' Moynihan's upper lip was shining with sweat. His eyes were intense, burning as if with a fever.

'Calm down, Herr Moynihan. McBride is now clearly on the right track. He will soon bring to the surface the elements of the situation that you require. Then — you can have him.'

'Tell me—'

'No. Not yet. But it will ruin Guthrie, it will discredit the British Government in Ulster, poison the atmosphere for future talks for perhaps ten years, alienate world opinion, especially America, bring funds from NORAID and Libya flooding back into your pockets — what more could you ask, Herr Moynihan?' Lobke's smile was especially irritating at that moment. Moynihan wanted to hit him, but wanted more to remove from his own features the hungry eagerness he knew they displayed.

'So you say,' he said.

'We know, Herr Moynihan. What we promise, we deliver. Guns, explosives, papers — and Guthrie's head on a plate. But, patience is a virtue—'

'All right, all right. What about Claire?'

'She is doing her job, I believe?'

'Has she been to bed with him yet?'

'Soon, I believe. Another little sacrifice, Herr Moynihan. In the expectation of great things, mm?'

'Just deliver, Lobke — or I'll have your balls, so help me I will. In a specimen jar, and labelled.'

* * *

Thomas McBride considered, as he heard the key scraping in the lock of her hotel room next door to his, the last few days, since their meal in Kilbrittain. Moynihan had been a momentary irritation, having left after sharing a drink with them, walking out of their lives quite deliberately, it now seemed to him. She had explained him away as a friend, and he believed her. He listened intently, sitting at his desk, the day's notes in front of him, as she opened her door and entered her room. The kisses on the hill above Leap, and since, had promised without fulfilment. He did want her, yet more he attended to her noises in the next room as if to something loved through familiarity. He was prepared to wait for her.

He disregarded his recent sexual experiences, the few relationships with students of his — plus one brief affair with a feminist associate professor that had ended a year before — because Claire Drummond had placed them in an un-flattering, immature light. They displayed themselves to his memory as pointless affairs of self- flattery, affairs of taking rather than giving. By ignoring or despising them now he understood himself to be more than half in love with Claire already, and entirely acquiescent to the idea of loving her.