Emerald Decision

and people like him gave us everything, and we knew what must have happened to the convoy, and to the invasion, even who was involved. The present director of what they used to call MI5 evolved the plan that Churchill used—' He smiled. 'You are the guarantor, the mask of accident, the facade of honour we sinister and untrustworthy people require. Of course, it would have been better had you gone ahead and published in your own time, but we could not afford to wait that long. You are the most welcome accident of all, being your father's son.'

It was evident that Goessler had another nugget of information that he wished to impart. His face became as impassive as a page of print. He wanted McBride to ask the right question. Claire Drummond frowned, watching McBride's facial reactions carefully. And McBride remembered his father, as if recalling some piece of information that had been of only tangential importance to his investigations.

'What happened to my father?'

Claire Drummond was moved by an obscure guilt, even pity— but at what or for whom she had little idea. 'Don't tell him.'

Goessler looked at her, then ignored her. 'Your father was killed by her father,' he said bluntly. 'Robert Drummond killed your father because your father discovered he was a traitor.' Claire Drummond winced at the accusation, readopting long-abandoned sensitivities for a moment. 'Oh, it wasn't unusual in Englishmen of his class and upbringing in the thirties. Many of them embraced the illusion of Russia under the benevolent government of Stalin, and others became sycophantic admirers of the Fuhrer's New Order in Germany, the strength through joy which led to the work making free. Arbeit machtfrei. True, many of them would not have been so fascinated if they had known about Dachau and Auschwitz and the other places, but then so many of your poets would not have loved Stalin if they had known he was liquidating millions more even than Hitler. Beliefs are strange things — it is perhaps better to live without them.' A trace of doubt flitted on Goessler's face for a moment, like a tiny cloud moving across the sun, then he nodded his head. 'Robert Drummond worked for the Germans throughout the war, most especially during November 1940. He killed your father.'

McBride looked at Claire Drummond, who snapped, 'Why did you tell him that? He'll never help us now!' There was something close to fear in her voice.

'Of course he will. It is his only chance of life, is it not, Thomas?' He smiled at McBride. 'Let him think it over for a time. Do not be in too much of a hurry to prompt him, and do not hurt him.' He stood up, hands spread in front of him, shrugging off any harm he might have done. 'That is my advice to you both.' He sounded obscenely fatherly.

Claire Drummond was puzzled. 'Is that it? Is that all you came for?'

'For now — yes. Rudi and I will be staying nearby, of course, and we will call on you again tomorrow.' He smiled expansively. Moynihan writhed visibly on the sofa next to McBride. McBride realized, through a miasma of contradictory emotions, that both the woman and Moynihan were powerless to behave independently of the East German. He controlled them, they were his employees. Even the girl, stronger than her partner, was afraid of Goessler. They'd outrun him in kidnapping McBride, but now they'd stepped back into line.

'Goodnight, Thomas,' Goessler said from the door, even as McBride's skin was still registering the change in temperature from the open door. He did not reply, and Goessler shrugged, then went out.

He had to escape. He knew that there had to be a moment, one chance, to get out and away. Otherwise he would talk, he would be working for Goessler, the man without beliefs. But the thought of escape daunted him, like a mountain he had to climb without oxygen or ropes or boots or courage. He let his head drop forward on his chest as he heard Goessler's car pull away from the cottage. He'd never make it, couldn't do it—

November 1940

The parachute troops pulled out at midday. The weather remained to their advantage, misty and drizzling persistently, the landscape grey and stifled and almost obscured. McBride and Maureen and Gilliatt were not questioned again by the Oberst. He merely dismissed them from his considerations and handed them over to Riordan and two other local IRA men — one of them Gilliatt was certain had been among their original pursuers, a short, red-headed man with a whey-coloured face that looked only half-shaped from its human clay.

Gilliatt dismissed the image of the wasp on the windscreen. It hadn't worked. It was too late for second thoughts, for reconsiderations. The plans were made, orders given, strategy rigidly defined. The parachute troops would hold the beaches for the seaborne landings early the following morning. Gilliatt had been unable to make their grasp on the situation loosen even a fraction.

Riordan seemed to take a pleasure in guarding McBride. He treated him warily, keeping a physical distance between them that admitted the danger McBride might represent, but satisfied with the docility, the unarmed innocuousness that Gilliatt knew McBride was deliberately presenting to his captors. Riordan's desultory, mindless baiting of McBride went unanswered.,McBride, to all appearances, was a beaten man.

They were given bread and cheese and beer for lunch, soon after the Germans left. As the afternoon wore on, Maureen seemed least able to accept her captivity. She paced the barn continually with jerky, caged-animal steps, wearing a path in the strewn hay. McBride showed no interest in her, but Gilliatt was concerned. Her behaviour was irritating Riordan and the others, making them more edgy and watchful when they might otherwise have been lulled into carelessness. If McBride tried to escape, then he and Maureen would also have to go. At the moment, they were prisoners of war. He had no desire to become a hostage.

McBride's suspicions of Drummond had become preposterous to Gilliatt. It was far easier to believe in bad luck, in accident, than in Drummond's treachery. But McBride was obsessed, almost doom-laden. He was set apart, not even concerned to involve Gilliatt and Maureen in any plan of escape.

'Sit down, woman!' Riordan snapped out eventually, his rifle moving indecisively but dangerously on his lap. Gilliatt, as if newly aroused, looked at his watch. Four-thirty. It was getting dark outside. 'For God's sake, sit down!'

Maureen appeared stung, slapped across the face by his anger. She stood in front of him, fists clenched, her body visibly quivering with anger and the released strain of her captivity. She simply would not accept, nor exploit her situation. Gilliatt got to his feet — McBride hadn't even looked up at the scene from where he sat, which had to mean he was dangerously near making some move — and moved swiftly to Maureen's side. She shrugged off his hands on her upper arms, but he pulled her back against him in an embrace. Riordan laughed.

'He's very friendly with your wife, McBride!' he roared, highly amused at Gilliatt's overacted concern and Maureen's reluctance to be mollified. 'Just take her away,' Riordan added to Gilliatt. 'She'd wear out the patience of a saint!'

'She doesn't like being, held prisoner,' Gilliatt offered affably. 'Come to that, neither do I.' His words had a studied lightness, lack of menace. Riordan smiled confidently, seated on a hay-bale, the woman between him and the man, and her face becoming more docile, bovine as her anger spent itself through her working hands and her clenched jaws. Gilliatt was leaning his head against hers in a parody of comfort.

'You'll just have to accept it, like he—'

His eyes were moving across to McBride, and widening slowly as they did so. His words cut off, and Gilliatt wondered whether McBride had left it too late. He pushed himself and Maureen forward, toppling their combined weight onto Riordan. The rifle was coming to a bead on McBride, then he lost sight of it under Maureen's body. It discharged as he fell on top of her, and she screamed. Gilliatt felt a blank emptiness as he rolled aside, striking out with his fist at Riordan's head, which bobbed into his view. His fist connected with Riordan's temple. Maureen went on screaming and screaming and Gilliatt moved slowly — too slowly it seemed — away from her body, clambering up her frame to fasten his hands on Riordan's rifle as the Irishman disentangled the Remington Mk. 1R from World War I from beneath Maureen and tried to bring it to bear on Gilliatt.

Gilliatt heard one shot, then the click of a bolt — the man Paddy's Lee Enfield Mk. - then a second shot and a third, punctuated by the noise of the bolt-action. He let Riordan pull the rifle towards him, and then pushed, smashing the stock into his face. Riordan howled, letting go of the rifle. Gilliatt hit him again, and whirled round, fumbling with the bolt.

McBride was standing very still, the Lee Enfield in his hands. Just in front of him, Paddy lay unconscious, while across the barn the whey-faced man with the half-formed features lay on his back, three holes in close grouping in his coat, an old Mauser C96 still in his hand, unfired. Maureen, unwounded but terrified and hysterical, went on screaming. McBride crossed the barn, turned her face to his and slapped her three times across the cheek. She subsided into sobbing which racked her body like unassuageable grief. McBride looked at the unconscious Riordan, then at Gilliatt.