Emerald Decision

Drummond he had never liked, forty years before at the height of the affair. McBride's control — and yet Walsingham had possessed a deep affection for the rootless, uncaring Irishman and nothing more than civility towards the Englishman, Drummond. He remembered at one time, possibly in '41 or '42, they'd suspected Drummond of assisting German agents in Ireland — which had been patent nonsense, and nothing more than the hare-brained guesswork of one of the reckless young men who succeeded McBride…

Why had he remembered that about Drummond?

He would call Drummond in the morning, expecting to get no more than that out of him. But the son — McBride's son, of all people in the world. Now, at this critical time—

For a moment, he suspected an elaborate and devious plot — then dismissed the idea as ridiculous. It was nothing more than the externalizing of his own selfish fears. What the devil could young McBride drag up? Anything — everything? If he did, then Walsingham himself was finished, Guthrie was certainly finished — perhaps Ulster itself, even this government…

The ripples spread on the ruffled pond of his imagination. McBride was a heavy stone, and he had already been thrown, apparently. He would have to be watched. There ought to be nothing — no clues — for him to discover, but after forty years who could any longer be sure that there were no scraps of paper, no old memories, no loose tongues lying around. McBride — Walsingham had read Gates of Hell and disliked it — was looking for an angle, for something sensational. The Emerald business would be just what he would be looking for.

In that office, it was hard for Walsingham to feel genuinely fearful. Forty years of power, privilege and ascent were a barrier against fear. But, he still could not control his imagination, even though nothing of its images transferred to nerves or sweat-glands. He wasn't twitching, or getting damp, but he knew, with a kind of cold fear that went on thinking clearly, envisaging the consequences, that everything was at the hazard, that McBride could, with the right information, ruin everything.

Then the small selfish thought — war crime. He'd be finished, buried by an avalanche of contumely, national and international. Most of the other decision-makers and decision-takers were dead. He would retire next year. He was already beyond official retirement age for his rank in the civil service. Now, he'd be the one — he and Guthrie, of course, the obedient instrument — who'd be blamed for the Emerald Decision.

He picked up one of the telephones on his desk. McBride, and quickly — whereabouts, recent enquiries, state of knowledge.

Possible solutions.

He'd ring Guthrie later, before the Minister retired for the night—

But of all people, McBride's son — now of all possible times…

CHAPTER NINE According to the Record

November 1940

Gilliatt had a hurried, confused impression of the smells of dung, butter, then warm hay as he followed McBride along a lightless path between cottage and barn and into the silent, dark interior of the latter. A horse whinnied softly, disturbed by the creaking of the door.

'Michael?' he called, losing sight of McBride's shadowy form almost at once when the door was shut behind them.

'Over here,' came the reply. Gilliatt moved gingerly across the uneven floor of the barn-cum-stable, catching his shin against a sharp-edged implement and swearing softly, shuffling his feet in the strewn hay. McBride's hand grabbed him, pulled him down behind a mound of hay, pressing him close to it, almost making him sneeze.

'What are they looking for?' he whispered, hearing distantly the bark of the dog, and the rapping of a fist or boot against the door of the cottage.

'With the dog — Hoffer is my guess,' McBride whispered back, irritated by his companion as by a slow- learning pupil. 'He's been reported missing. Perhaps Lampau and his goons nabbed him a couple of hours earlier than they need. Walsingham wouldn't be pleased at that. Listen!'

Gilliatt strained his hearing. Voices being raised, one French — but he couldn't pick out the words — and the other German. Then the slamming of a door. A few moments later, the fractured, eager barking of the dog.

'The scent—' Gilliatt whispered.

'They've given it Hoffer's scent all right. I wonder where the body is?'

As if in reply or confirmation, the dog's barking became almost frantic, and had moved out of the house again, presumably behind the cottage.

'What about us?'

'Wait!'

Gilliatt was aware of the hay beneath and around him, its rich, stored smell heady, almost nauseous to the stomach he had so violently emptied. He listened, sensed McBride beside him alert and motionless. The dog went on barking, and behind its noise orders were being shouted. A French voice, raised in protest, but they could clearly hear the strained, high-pitched fear in it. Where had Lampau, Foret, Venec been when they heard the knock on the door? McBride had had no time to warn them, perhaps not even the inclination. They had run immediately for the shelter of the barn.

They each heard the running footsteps, distinctly, in the moment before the first shots from a machine-pistol on automatic. The bullets thudded into the wall of the barn behind them, then something else, something heavier, collided with the same wall, slithered down in a grotesque aural impersonation of reptilian movement. Gilliatt, swallowing bile, wondered which one of them it was. He almost hoped that it was Lampau. Then he heard the revolver firing.

'What—?' he began.

'It couldn't work out better for us, Peter. They'll get themselves killed, all three of them.' A burst from a machine-gun, the answering chatter of the Schmeissers. The horse whinnied more loudly, shuffled nervously in its stall. Gilliatt couldn't even see it as a shape in the lightless barn. Revolver again, then machine-pistols, then the machine-gun cut off in mid-sentence. The revolver three, four times, then a drowning chorus from the German machine-pistols.

Then silence, into which dripped like water the sound of boots moving about the yard, grunts of satisfaction, the noises of someone wounded who was lifted up and carried — the boot-noises became slower, heavier — and a single pistol shot as someone dying was finished off. A tidiness about the sounds of the aftermath. The dog had ceased to bark.

It might even have been dead.

Gilliatt and McBride waited for fifteen minutes, and then there were no other noises. McBride nudged Gilliatt and rose to his knees.

'Come on — our chance now.'

Gilliatt stood up, fastidiously clearing stalks of hay from his clothing. Then what McBride had said struck him.

'You wanted them to die, didn't you?'

'Not at all. But they can't talk now, can they? And, Peter, you'd have killed them all half an hour ago, just for hurting the German lad. Mm?'

McBride moved to the door of the barn, and opened it slowly and as silently as he could. It creaked with the slowness, the mounting noise of a yawn. McBride stepped outside. A minute later, he called to Gilliatt to join him.

'What do we do now?'

'Use the van they collected us in. Drive to Brest, of course.'

Gilliatt sensed the excitement in McBride. They were perhaps fifteen or twenty kilometres from the centre of the port, and from Lampau's cousin, a fisherman.

'Lampau — he was to vouch for us.'