Emerald Decision

He heard Claire Drummond saying: 'He knows now I could do it, just as easily as anything. Blow off that thing he's had inside me. He knows his life isn't really worth a light!'

McBride looked up. 'You're mad.'_ ' -

'Yes,' she said, sitting down again, putting the gun back in her shoulder-bag as primly as if it were her make-up or cigarettes. 'Oh, yes. The awful thing for you is — you know I'm aware of it, that I can use it, turn it on like a tap. You'll never know when I'll do it, or what effect it might have on you. Terrible, aren't I?' She lit a cigarette, exhaling the first smoke at the stained ceiling with its cracking plaster between smoke-blackened beams.

'See?' Moynihan said as if he had planned the demonstration. 'You'll co-operate.' McBride blinked back his tears of pain and fear. 'We want you to make a statement first of all, just a trailer for the main film, so to speak. On tape, and we can play it over the telephone or send it to one of the newspapers. You mention Guthrie's name, and the war, and a couple of other little items of interest, and we'll set up the meetings and make the financial arrangements. Oh, you won't be left out of it, darling. You'll stand to make — oh, fifty thousand. At least. That's about the going rate for serialization. You ought to make twice that. You can't prove Guthrie was queer as well, can you now? That'd be even better.' Moynihan was speaking through his own laughter, enjoying his joke enormously.

Then McBride was laughing, too, so that Moynihan fell silent. McBride shook his head. His voice was old and weak and tired and bereft of resistance. He said, 'You dumb bastard — I was thinking of millions, not thousands. Millions! Now, isn't that the funniest part of the whole thing, uh? Isn't that a real belly- laugh?'

The noise of the approaching car cut off his laughter. Claire Drummond rose swiftly from her chair.

'Put the light out!' she snapped, moving to the window.

* * *

Walsingham put down the telephone with a quivering hand, rattling it in its cradle. Against all hope, against all hope—

He couldn't help it. Of course, they'd temporarily lost the car again, after they'd spotted it in a pub car park outside Cirencester, but it had been seen. They knew the area. If it moved on any road in the Cotswolds that night, they would pick it up.

But, his satisfaction and relief were almost overpowering. They'd traced the car-hire firm Goessler had used — a small one, not one of the giants — late in the afternoon, just before closing, then sent out a general alert to all police forces. By ten in the evening, a constable in a Panda patrol car of the Gloucestershire Constabulary had spotted the white Ford Escort in the pub car park. Goessler in his overconfidence had left it bathed in the white illumination of the country pub's floodlighting, unsuspicious that he was even 'wanted for questioning'. Goessler's unconcern, his illusory sense of safety, bolstered Walsingham's nerve more than any other factor. Goessler's unawareness of him put him at a disadvantage. It made him more stupid than Walsingham, slower and capable of being outwitted. He had Goessler in the palm of his hand now. He could, and would, crush him.

The hatred was pure and deep and uplifting. Goessler had been out to get him. Now, he would finish Goessler, the author and onlie true begetter — he smiled at the quotation — of this operation. Finish him and stalemate McBride. A stand-off.

Of course, for Goessler and for the Drummond woman and anyone else who knew, it was an end-game. That was another of the certainties he felt able to allow himself after Exton's telephone call.

He looked around his sitting-room, at the high, corniced, shadowy ceiling then at the rich carpet. The substance of the room seemed to have returned. He seemed more substantial, heavier, sitting in his favourite armchair. All would be well.

He raised his glass.

'To a gallant loser — Herr Goessler,' he mouthed, smiling, his lips seeming too thin and small to contain the vivid dentures.

He would meet Goessler just the once, when they picked him up and before—

He stopped the thought there, like breaking off chocolate to keep for later.

* * *

'Please don't be inhospitable, my friends!' the voice called from outside the door of the cottage. 'I am not a stern parent come to spoil your happiness or invade your tree-house. Open the door. We are surely still friends!'

McBride lifted his head. He couldn't believe that he recognized the voice and shook his head as if to clear it of deception. His groin ached and he was frightened and the voice seemed to belong to a calmer past. But, incredibly, Goessler went on speaking outside, addressing Claire Drummond and Moynihan. McBride, hunched over his bound wrists and aching groin, watched from under slitted lids; a physical approximation to cunning that had no inward reality. The woman opened the door, and Moynihan turned on the light as it closed again. It was Goessler, and Lobke, the so-called embassy official. The light seemed hard and dirty, making Goessler look older, fatter but with somehow hollower cheeks, stubbled and with the cheekbones emphasized like reminders of distant youth. Lobke looked wary, concentrating on Claire Drummond and Moynihan, both of whom still held their guns level on the two Germans.

'Come, come,' Goessler said with a bonhomie that made McBride's flesh creep. He was listening to the tones of someone it was easy to take for granted, even regard with a mild contempt — Goessler's academic mask that had deceived him completely. Then Goessler was standing in front of him. His pudgy hand lifted McBride's chin, inspected his face like a surgeon considering alterations. 'You look tired, Thomas.' There was no sense of irony in his words, but a kind of feminine condolence which made McBride shudder.

'Get lost, Goessler,' he said. Moynihan laughed.

'I'm sorry if they've been rough with you, Thomas — they are animals.' He turned on Claire Drummond and Moynihan. 'Don't wave those stupid guns at me. I'm your paymaster, your arms dealer, your banker, your insurance. You can't kill me. Besides, I have come merely to congratulate you on your success, and to make certain that you find Professor McBride co-operative.'

'Were you followed?' Moynihan asked. Goessler merely looked at him with contempt and sat himself in the chair Moynihan had occupied. Lobke placed himself against the wall where he could watch the room and its occupants. Claire Drummond put her gun away, and sat down. Moynihan was forced to sit on the narrow sofa, next to McBride, who shuffled into a corner of the seat, hunched up, frightened and sullen. Goessler studied him intently for a long time, then spread his hands.

'I'm sorry, Thomas — Professor. You should not have to endure this. Indeed, I am sorry—' Moynihan shuffled uncomfortably on the sofa. It was evident he hated and feared Goessler, the man's physical presence and voice disturbing him. 'But I'm afraid it was all very necessary. As our friends here have told you — unless they are being even more secretive than usual — they belong to the Provisional IRA, though Miss Drummond is really a very Left- wing Trotsky disciple, mixed in with a little PLO and Italian terrorist ideology—' Claire Drummond's face was white, her nostrils pinched into pinpricks, her mouth a bloodless single line. She was staring at Goessler, who ignored her, her eyes wide. 'A very uncomfortable mixture, and highly volatile.' Goessler smiled. 'Sean is much less complicated — he simply hates the English. Both of them have a burning desire to see the forthcoming meetings between the British and Irish governments fail disastrously. You know what part the present Secretary of State, the Right Honourable David Guthrie, played in the prevention of the German invasion of Ireland. Our friends want you to tell that, to tell also what you know of the British atrocity that followed, and what you know of the death of a prominent American in the sinking of the special convoy—'

Goessler unrolled the facts of McBride's investigations one by one, ticking them off on the pudgy fingers of his left hand. A ruby ring glowed on the same hand. McBride sat, his mouth hanging stupidly open, sensing a gulf opening up beneath him and his mind spinning. Goessler knew everything, everything—

He could not stop the thought repeating and echoing, like something dreamed on the edge of sleep where the mind is uncontrolled and the body twists and turns to rid itself of the persistent, maddening images. Goessler knew everything— had always known.

Goessler recognized the process going on in his head, and waited until McBride looked balefully, defeatedly up at him again.

'Thomas,' he said softly, 'of course we've always known. There was no way we could not know. Menschler