Emerald Decision

atmosphere of the War Office was cynical, depressed — even before Emerald — but it was as if Churchill were fighting personally, in some medieval combat with Hitler and knew his own superiority to the German leader. If he had no doubts, then Britain could not lose. Or was it a public- relations act, a pretence and nothing more? The colonel could not answer his own question. Churchill was speaking again.

'We have to defend Cork airport and the harbour. If we can do that—' It was not a doubt — 'then the Nazis cannot land more troops except by parachute. And tanks are not dropped by parachute. Good. Walsingham—' He called across the room. Walsingham placed his hand over the mouthpiece.

'Prime Minister?'

'I want the First Sea Lord as soon as you've ordered your list of shipping. This transport of two regiments to Ireland must have absolute priority. They must be there by tomorrow at the latest.'

Churchill turned back to the wall map. Someone had added the position of the convoy carrying Patrick Terence Fitzgerald, now only a few hours' sailing from Valentia Island on the west coast of Ireland. The four pins for the cruiser and the three merchant ships were livid spots before his eyes and an interference with his thinking. Those four coloured pins were something he would have to deal with before the end of the afternoon.

He inwardly saw his own hand resting on the final pages of Walsingham's Emerald file. Cigar ash scattered like dandruff over its typed, double-spaced lines. Walsingham had been prepared to sacrifice the convoy for the sake of complete surprise and to ensure the destruction of the U-boat convoy that was coming that night. He'd got the wrong end of the stick. The convoy from America might have to be destroyed, but not for that reason.

There was another reason that burned at the back of Churchill's mind like a dark light, or a spillage of acid. Before that evening, he would have to allow it into the forebrain, dissect it, and act upon it.

* * *

David Guthrie watched the grey, choppy sea close over the last batch of mines from the deck of Palmerston. Nothing disturbed the water other than the wind which stirred and made ragged the sea-mist, and the wake of the minelayer. He felt cold inside his duffel-coat and thick sweater and uniform jacket. The sea looked forbidding, rubbed and abrased by the wind into a treacherous, insecure surface. There was no mood of satisfaction at the completion of their task, and he did not understand its absence. Nor did he comprehend the reason for his chill sense of foreboding, which lingered like the staleness of guilt in his mind.

* * *

Patrick Terence Fitzgerald thanked the officer who brought him the information that they were four hours' sailing from Valentia Island. He'd not see the coast, of course, because of the mist through which the drizzle squalled on the buffeting wind. The quarter deck was wet and treacherous, and he gripped the railing fiercely as if the sea suggested some siren call to him. He was cold, and dispirited and alone, and thankful that his journey was almost over. About the task confronting him, he was not prepared to think. He was almost ready for it, but not quite. By tomorrow, he told himself, he would be ready to go to work. By tomorrow.

* * *

Jean Perros watched from the harbour wall of St Anne-du-Portzic as the large U-boats, moving in line astern, slipped out of Brest down the Goulet de Brest towards the sea. Through the dusk and the drizzling mist he could make out their low, spectral shapes as they emerged and disappeared through the palpable, chilly air. There had been no fishing allowed by the Germans for the last two days. He'd been unable to make any accurate reports to London, via the radio set in St Pierre-Quilbignon. Now, he would be able to send the message they waited for—

And he believed, so deeply that it rendered him weak and old, that his message would be too late to make any difference.

He watched until the U-boats had finally vanished westwards, then hurried from the harbour wall to collect his bicycle to ride the mile and a half to send his signal.

October 198-

'You're going to talk to us, McBride, and not only to us. You're going to talk to the newspapers. You'll even get paid for it. We're making money for you — just look at it that way.'

Moynihan chuckled. He was sitting opposite McBride, whose hands were tied in front of him, resting on his lap. Claire Drummond was seated on an upright chair, taller than the prisoner on the battered sofa and the Irishman in the armchair by the fire, and suggesting by her posture and her silence that she was in command of the circumstances of that room. McBride, truculently silent, was still grateful for the light from the bulb above his head and for the warmth of the fire after the hours in the stifling, nightmarish boot of the car.

Gagged and bound, he had thought himself slipping into insanity. Cramp was like the gradual onset of decay, even death. The gag in his mouth seemed to be sliding down his throat, into his nostrils to suffocate him. The smell of petrol and the road noise of the tyres sickened him. Then they'd stopped, finally, and dragged him out — he'd fallen over with the cramp in his body and had lain in the long wet grass, sobbing until they'd bundled him indoors. He'd caught a brief glimpse of fields dropping away, dark copses and grazing cattle, and of a dilapidated cottage directly ahead of him. When they'd got him inside, their satisfaction made them abandon any pretence to security. He was in the

Cotswolds, just outside Andoversford. Claire Drummond had laughed at his bemusement, shouting into his face that he was near Cheltenham and hadn't he ever heard of the Cotswolds, the dumb stupid Yank that he was —

Claire Drummond frightened him. The woman was high on success, on the weapon she believed he would become for her. He saw how much she hated the British, how much she despised him. She paced the room continually, until she finally settled in front of him on the hard chair. Neither the journey nor the lateness of the hour seemed to have tired her, or made her aware of any physical limitations on her driving hatred. McBride quailed inwardly. He could see no way in which he could resist them. They were determined he should talk — not to them but to the press.

'Go to hell,' he mumbled in reply to Moynihan. Moynihan crossed the room and struck him across the face. The woman seemed to enjoy the act, to anticipate a second or third blow and be disappointed when they did not come. Moynihan laughed, threatened with his open hand so that McBride flinched, and then returned to his seat.

'Don't be bloody stupid, McBride,' he said, picking up his glass of whisky from the rug beside his chair. 'You're all on your own, in this delightful weekend cottage, no one knows you're here. You'll get yourself buried in the garden if you don't co-operate.'

'Then who'll believe your story?'

'It'll still make good reading, cause quite a stir.'

'You need me — and not too knocked about, either, you dumb bunny,' McBride sneered. He didn't know where the energy, the defiance had come from. Perhaps only from the woman's silence, her withdrawal from the verbal baiting. Moynihan made as if to rise again, slopping his whisky over his trousers. 'Little wet-pants,' McBride added, laughing.

The woman suddenly stood up, and crossed to McBride. The gun in her hand, the little Astra she'd used in the car park, was close to his head. She grinned, pressing the hole of the barrel against his temple. She squeezed the trigger, very slowly and in plain sight. Her eyes were mad — she was going to kill him.

The hammer clicked, and she laughed. She showed him the magazine in her other hand. Then she leaned close to him. He could smell the grease of their flsh-and-chip supper on her breath — he'd been able, with terrible hunger, to smell the fish and chips in the boot as they sat in a lay-by and ate them — and he could see tiny fragments of white fish between her bottom front teeth. She leaned to his ear, and began whispering to him. He heard the magazine click back into the gun. She pressed the barrel against his groin, moving it in a rubbing motion as if it was a part of her body, her own crotch touching his. She pressed harder and harder.

'I promise you, darling,' she whispered in a grotesque parody of seductive tones, her breath quick and shallow and obscene in his ear, 'I promise I'll let my gun make love to you, but not just yet, not just yet—' The gun hurt now, pressing into him. He winced. 'You want it to love you, but not yet, darling, not just yet—'

He screamed as she dug the barrel of the gun deeper, then drew back from him. Her eyes were alight, possessed. He clutched his bound hands over his groin, sobbing despite himself.