Emerald Decision

football, in bright cagoules and yellow and red plastic boots. He leaned against the window, the cold glass cooling his head. The room was on the first floor. He unlatched the window, and raised it.

Leaning out, he could see a narrow flower-bed like a margin along the fasade of the house. He had no plan, no idea of his whereabouts, and a desire to escape from Moynihan and the woman that came and went like a distant, illusory mirage. Weakness and betrayal unnerved him like an anaesthetic. He could not imagine who had been using him beyond Moynihan and the woman; so keen was the sense of betrayal he felt emanating from Claire Drummond that it bounded his horizon. She had used him. They wanted his researches to put at the disposal of the IRA — which meant Guthrie was the real target.

He teetered in the window frame, and grabbed the sill, steadying himself. He lifted one leg tiredly over the sill, and sat astride it, looking down and registering the flower-bed winking larger and smaller, undulating in width like a moving snake. He swung his other leg out, then turned to look back into the room as if he had forgotten something. His hands gripped the sill, his arms taking his weight while his legs dangled free. Then he dropped, his feet almost immediately striking the wet earth that resisted his impact, causing him to double over and fall sideways into a sitting position. The thorns of a blown rose stabbed through his trousers, keeping his attention fixed on his immediate circumstances. He felt as if he had been sleepless for days.

Slowly, cautiously he stood up, aware of the body that might default on him rather than any danger from Moynihan and the woman. He felt chilly now that the rain was soaking through his shirt. He stepped out of the flowerbed suddenly angry, a spurt of self-pity acting like adrenalin. He was going to get away from them, he'd see the bitch in hell before—

Moynihan was standing right beside him, his automatic drawn and thrust into McBride's side. The Irishman was angry and malevolent but already McBride didn't care, the last energy draining from him so that he slumped against Moynihan who had to strain to hold him upright.

'You bastard,' Moynihan breathed in his ear, but McBride's head had slumped forward and he had regained unconsciousness.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Prisoners of Circumstance

October 198-

Walsingham felt caged and hampered by his room at the Home Office, sensed the heavy furnishings and dark panelling press upon his immediate concerns and make incongruous Exton's reports and his very presence. Exton, the complete functionary, was out of place there, too modern, too mechanical. Yet what he brought with him into the room promised some scarcely expected solution. At least it was a map with the names of places added, and footpaths clearly marked.

Walsingham was crippled in will by the sense of Nemesis that had assailed him all the way back from Guthrie's house — Guthrie left small and vulnerable and ridiculously youngly dressed on the steps, waving feebly — and would not leave him even here, on home ground. McBride was in the hands of the IRA, Emerald would come out and he would be finished. The justice of it impressed him.

'You can't trace this East German on your list — Goessler, you say?' he murmured, standing at the window watching legged umbrellas hunch down Birdcage Walk and across the Park. The sun of the early afternoon — how chilly it had been in Guthrie's study — had vanished like an omen, and the soaking, persistent drizzle had taken its place, seemingly for good.

The German connection — origin?

'No, sir. He hasn't flown out again, so he must still be in the UK. He hasn't booked out of his hotel room.'

'That doesn't mean he'll go back there.'

'No, sir.'

'We have nothing on him — SIS has nothing on him?' Someone slipped on wet leaves at the corner of the Walk and Horse Guards, splaying onto his back. An old man who had to be helped to his feet. To his dismay, Walsingham was appalled by the minor accident, suffered it psychosomatically.

'No, sir. He's never been in the field, he's always been what he pretended to be — an academic. SIS understanding of the home-birds in the HVA isn't what it might be, sir.'

'I appreciate that, Exton. Now, where is he?' The old man down on the wet pavement started on his way again, leaving those who had assisted him as if he had been cast adrift. His progress was painfully slow. 'We have to know where he is. He introduced McBride to the whole business of—' He was about to say Emerald, and clamped his mouth round the word, stifling it, ' — this German invasion plan. It must have been his inspiration, this operation. There's no other explanation. Would you say?'

He turned suddenly to face the impassive Exton.

'No, sir,' Exton commented without expression.

'The object of the exercise has been achieved, Exton — the IRA now has the man with the proof it needs. But, Goessler wouldn't want to miss the end. He's not going to leave the cinema early on this occasion, just to dodge the anthem—' Walsingham smiled, his lips curling round the metaphor. 'It's such a devious plan, he'll be incautiously delighted with its success. Hire cars?'

'The Branch have got men on it, sir. They're still checking. The hotel switchboard can't help, and he didn't hire one through the desk.'

'You think he's in London, don't you?'

'Most likely, sir.'

'No. I think he's somewhere out of the way, a long way away from the point of the explosion—' His face narrowed, grew older and more cunning. An old man with a feverish grip on life. 'Find the car and we'll find him, Exton.'

'Yes, sir. What about McBride, when we find him?'

'I have — an idea for McBride, Exton. Let's find him first.'

He dismissed Exton with a gesture of his hand, then returned to the window. The build-up of traffic splashed a red tail-light glow on the wet street, and rain sparkled in headlights. The slow movement of the traffic was appropriate to some solemn occasion, a funeral. He remembered Churchill's state funeral. Emerald might even have been necessary. Churchill had thought it so.

Goessler. Clever Professor Goessler of the university, and of the HVA. It might still not be too late—

Walsingham felt weary, and oppressed by a sense of justice moving large and blind against him, blundering down his castles of deception. He hated the need for some kind of expiation in himself. He would win, had to win.

And he knew, once he had Goessler, how to — castrate McBride, pull out his tongue. Eunuch and mute, never to speak of the secrets he knew. The violence of the images satisfied him, replaced the lingering fragility of the old man who had slipped on the wet pavement.

* * *

The garden was quiet, almost unreal as it slipped into night. Robert Drummond walked in it, regretting the blown roses and the drifting leaves. The house was at his back like a last line of defence, but indeed he had been driven out of its empty rooms by their heaviness of association, by the manner in which they were now only stage backcloths for the events of November forty years before. And he suspected he dwelt on those because he could not bear to consider the present, in which Claire moved like an alien life-form, entirely separate from himself yet vividly identical.

Fanatic.

She had the strength he had not been able to find in himself, when he came into contact with Menschler and the parachute troops and the invasion. The field-grey was too close, the swastika too vivid to be saluted like a distant love. He had been afraid, and had wanted to escape. And the thought of Michael McBride had tormented him, assumed the proportions of a vengeful god. He somehow knew that McBride had seen him with the Germans,