Emerald Decision

Charles?'

'Admiralty records.'

'What?' Disbelief rather than anxiety.

'There is still material in existence, material that has been overlooked up to now.'

'My name, Charles. How did he get my name?'

'I'm not certain. I'm having that checked. However, he has it.'

Guthrie went on nodding periodically in the silence that followed, punctuating some internal debate. Walsingham was being made to feel at fault, incompetent. All the while, however, Guthrie's face remained a smooth, inexpressive mask; unless the gloom disguised tiny flickers of emotion. Walsingham wanted a light to study him by. Eventually, Guthrie spoke. 'It would be far better than shooting me, wouldn't it?' He grinned. 'Much better.'

'Yes.'

'Is there an IRA connection?' He seemed to be asking himself, going back over his recent meeting, perhaps re-examining it in another, colder light.

'I don't know. I've checked with his agents over here. They don't have much idea of what he's working on, but they do know he's aiming for a very big sale, and a lot of money.'

'Simple cupidity?'

'It could be.'

'Any connection through the father?'

'No. He was an agent of mine, that is true. But there was nothing to give rise to a motive there.' Walsingham rubbed his forehead, inspected his hand. 'Rather the reverse. He'd not like the IRA because of his father.'

'Then is it as sinister as it seems?' Guthrie held up his hand. 'I fully realize the consequences for myself and for future relations between ourselves and Dublin — the dreadful consequences for the whole of Ulster — should this matter become public. But, does it need to become public? Can't you talk to this man McBride?'

'We could, but I'm not certain that I want to do that. Oh, we are having him watched, and we know more or less how much he knows.' He paused, but did not elaborate. 'But, we know very little about him as yet, and I do not want to make any precipitate moves.'

'I understand that. There are no Irish hands in this pie, you suggest?'

'Not that we know. As far as we can be certain, McBride has no connection, even in the United States, with any Irish organization, and since our surveillance began there has been no contact with any suspected person.' The statement sounded dry, official as it was meant to. Walsingham now almost regretted making this personal appearance, as if he had run to Guthrie to apologize or confess. 'If we obtain evidence of any — organized plot against you or next week's meetings, then we shall act. In any case, McBride can never be allowed to publish.'

'Then it might come to the same thing, might it not, whether he's alone or part of a conspiracy?' Guthrie's voice was similarly dry, official. He steepled his hands in front of his shadowed face.

Reluctantly, Walsingham nodded. He could see Michael McBride's face, imposed upon the white, featureless mask across the table from him. Hallucinatory, and unsettling.

'Yes, it might.' McBride might well have to die. He saw Guthrie nod, satisfied it seemed with the monosyllable. Walsingham wanted to tell Guthrie about Hoskins' murder, suddenly, to unsettle and disturb him, show him that events might have run away from them already. Who was Hoskins? Who had just smothered him as they might have done a Christmas puppy they had tired of amusing and feeding? Who had killed Hoskins, and was the killing connected?

The thoughts seemed to ally him more closely, even indissolubly, with Guthrie. Common interest, common enemy. He nodded, then repeated himself more strongly.

'Yes,' he said, and now the processes involved were not too covert, too removed from moral precepts to be voiced. 'McBride will, in all probability, have to be removed.'

November 1940

The dark shape of the man came steadily towards him. All his attention was focused on the shape which he could see clearly, sharply even against the night sky. He hovered on the edge of unconsciousness, fighting back the black surges that ran through his body and enveloped his thoughts in order to keep the image of the approaching man clear and unaffected. He had given up trying to move his arm, and his left eye had closed against the trickle of blood from his scalp. But he wanted to see the man's face, in the last moment. He had come to believe he would see Drummond's long, sardonic face, cheeks drawn in as against the flavour of a lemon, before he was finished off. That imperative, that his leap of suspicion should be proven, dominated his wavering awareness.

Ten yards, five. A coat against the cold, a cap. The gun hidden against the form. McBride did not see the other two figures, behind the shadow over himself. The figure paused. McBride stared up, and hopelessly tried to make out the man's face. Then, in a dislocated sequence, overlapping on his senses and understanding like a distressed sea in which he was drowning, the man above him pitched forward as if he had tripped over McBride's body and did not even put out his hands to break his fall. McBride rolled his head to watch what the man would do next even as the noise of Gilliatt's gun reached him, reverberating as if it had been fired in a small room, then he rolled his head back when the man in the coat and cap did not move, attracted by two further shots. Something whistled shrilly and angrily in the air above him but he could not focus on the nearest shapes — a man and a stunted tree — nor on the more distant shape that seemed to be running. His arm hurt too much now, and he turned his head lollingly once more to study the body on the ground near him, which did not move, then he felt everything going a long way away as the pain shuddered through him, followed by utter blackness in which the flames from Gilliatt's gun pricked on the retinae like fireflies for a moment before they, too, faded.

When he responded to the gentle slaps of Gilliatt's hand, he felt his arm quarrel with movement and consciousness immediately. Gilliatt — he was close enough for his face not to be a blank — was kneeling over him, cradling his head in one hand, slapping him lightly with the other.

'Sorry,' he said, 'but I thought you'd prefer it to ditch water.'

'I–I'm all right.'

'I know. I've had a look at you. Arm sliced open, forehead with a three-inch gash back into your hair, but otherwise OK.'

'How long—?'

'No more than three or four minutes. I'm afraid we'd better move—'

'Yes, they'll be back. You?'

'Just stunned. The grenade exploded nearer you than me. I fell in the ditch and kept quiet until I could see how many there were. Three — one dead, another wounded I think, but two of the three have scarpered.' Gilliatt appeared suddenly reflective, and a spasm of disgust crossed his face, white in the moonlight coming suddenly from behind a cloud. McBride's teeth were chattering in the suddenly sensed cold wind, but he managed to say:

'We're all the bloody same when threatened, Peter. All the bloody same.'

'Doesn't help, finding out, does it? I enjoyed it, for God's sake. Shooting him in the back—'

'Help me up. They'll be back.'

McBride groaned as Gilliatt hauled him to his feet, then leant against the taller man, breathing raggedly, trying to control the lightheadedness that made the moonlit scene swirl and dip. He concentrated on his last rational thought as he lay on the ground, the shadowy figure whose face he half-expected moving towards him.

'Drummond,' he said through clenched teeth.

'You think they got him?'

'No!' McBride gripped Gilliatt's supporting arm fiercely. 'It's Drummond — he set the dogs on us.'

'You're delirious. Can you walk?'

'Listen to me!' McBride began a coughing fit. His arm throbbed intolerably. When his breathing was loud but steady again, he went on: 'Only Drummond knew — only Drummond. Don't you understand?'

Gilliatt felt he wanted to physically separate himself from McBride. The accent, the anger and hatred made him understand something beyond McBride, some spurious vision of Ireland. He tried to dismiss it, but it clung like a cold mist to muscle and bone and mind.

'Accident,' he replied without conviction.