relaxed.
The gas-shells pitched and rolled on the floor near her feet at the same moment that Moynihan stumbled through the doorway to the kitchen, blood smeared across his chest. One of the gas-shells rolled to his feet and he stared at it without recognition while the acid tear-gas enveloped him. His single cough racked him, then he slid down the door frame into an untidy heap, sitting with his legs splayed out like a bonfire Guy. The CS gas masked his frozen, distorted features.
She began to cough. The man outside still would not speak to her. Either they already had McBride, or they assumed he was safe upstairs in the cottage. Or they wanted him dead, too. Her eyes streamed with tears and she dragged air into her lungs, head lifted to the ceiling. She couldn't see to fire through the window, and felt her way along the wall to the door. She should not open the door, but she obeyed the imperative of her lungs and eyes. She plunged through the opening, feeling the air she drew in snatched away by the impact of the first and second bullets. She had no physical sense of falling—
Walsingham's throat was tickled and his tear-ducts irritated as he walked swiftly to the body of Claire Drummond and turned it over with his foot. He thought the woman attractive, but her still-open eyes were bolting in death, suggesting the fanaticism of life. He placed his handkerchief over his mouth and nose and entered the cottage. He virtually ignored Moynihan's body, and climbed the creaking stairs.
'McBride,' he called. 'McBride, are you here?'
It took him only seconds to check the two upstairs rooms and the bathroom. McBride was not in the cottage. He opened the bathroom window, not to call down to the police but to draw in clean air. He felt weakened and nauseous, a condition he could not ascribe to the tear-gas. McBride had either been taken elsewhere, which was unlikely, or had escaped while the woman was in Andoversford. The man's face downstairs looked beaten about—
Closer, he comforted himself, closer. Just one voice left. Very well — he was still thankful the man had opened fire so conveniently — he would frighten McBride into a parley, into his trade-off. He could already see the item in the afternoon newspapers, and the nationals the following day.
Nevertheless, he felt grateful for the sweet mid-morning air as the last of the CS gas dispersed.
Churchill stood before the mirror of the washroom, staring at his puffy, tired face, seeing his own question answered in the blue eyes. The convoy was perhaps less than an hour from the minefield, and he would allow it to sail on to its certain destruction.
He picked up the towel, and wiped his wet face. His features appeared round the edges of the towel as he dried himself, as if furtively seeking some mark that would indicate his guilt, reveal his decision to the mirror, to the world. No, he could manage to hide it.
Necessity is the mother of atrocity, he told himself with grim amusement. Fitzgerald would be lost, Roosevelt told that U-boats had sunk the convoy, and the Germans would sail into the minefield.
Churchill wished, almost futilely, that Japan would declare war on America and drag Roosevelt and his reluctant Congress into the war. The defeat of this minor German invasion plan was only a respite. Next summer they would attempt
Had to be — had to be done. He finished wiping his face, and put down the towel. He nodded in confirmation to his reflection. He had made his decision. Fitzgerald had to die. He was as much an enemy as the Germans they were trying to keep out of Ireland.
He put on his waistcoat and jacket and went back into the operations room beneath the Admiralty. He looked back fleetingly from the doorway at the darkened washroom, as if he had left something behind him or his reflection still gazed out at him in accusation. Then he shut the door firmly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Trade-off
McBride wriggled through the hedge to the west of the farmhouse, his jersey caught on sharp bare twigs, his hands and knees scraped on the stony earth as he forced his way underneath and through. He pushed the rifle ahead of him, clambered out after it and picked it up, fastidiously dusting its length with his hand as he began running again. The startled and confused Germans were pouring shots towards the point from where his fire had come while he was fifty yards closer to the house and approaching from another, unexpected direction. He skirted the fruit trees which now masked him from his opponents. He paused, knelt down and looked under the low branches of the trees. German soldiers, some without helmets or with uniform blouses and coats undone, were moving towards the hedge which had not returned their concentrated fire. The house was less than fifty yards away, but across a long open lawn which sloped only gently and provided no cover. There was an ornamental pool and a sundial.
He could hardly control his eagerness, the flood of energy that the joining of battle had released; his energies seemed uncontrolled and illogical. He got up into a crouch and moved towards the last of the small trees. His foot crunched wetly on a fallen apple left to rot. He paused, waiting for breath to settle, lungs to expand to meet the effort required, body to judge its own moment. Still nerves jittered in his hands and arms, and impatience crowded him, obscured judgment. Already, his eagerness protested, they would have discovered he had moved on, already it was becoming too late—
He began running, even as he saw a dark shape emerge from the side of the house and another from the fruit trees to his left, twenty yards away. He swerved sideways, barely halting, and fired the Lee Enfield twice from the hip. The figure ducked back into the trees, and McBride did not know whether or not he had been hit. The figure by the white wall of the farmhouse — moonlight leapt betrayingly across the lawn like a finger pointing out McBride and his opponent— was kneeling, taking aim. McBride rolled to one side, coming up onto his belly and elbows and squeezing off three shots simply to distract. He heard each one pluck against the wall, and then the shouts behind him, the pack with a fresh scent.
He drew the Mauser, aimed rapidly, and squeezed off two shots. The heavy old gun jumped in his hand so that he had to compensate by aiming low before firing twice more. Then he rolled again, feeling pinned to card by the moonlight whitening the lawn. The marksman by the wall was an unmoving bundle but there were others now, hardly visible against the fretwork of the fruit trees, and awareness of them dragged at him like clinging mud until he sat up on the lawn, on the edge of the pool where lily leaves still floated but the plants had turned to dry sedge and there was wire to keep herons from the fish. The shadow of the sundial sliced across the lawn, amputated one of his legs. He fired twice, swung the Mauser, held stiffly in both hands, and fired three more shots. He rolled over and got to his feet, running in a crouch until he was a fly against the white wall attracting their fire then a shadow then simply darkness as he slipped round the side of the house, out of the moonlight.
He leaned against the door for a moment, clutching his shoulder as the awareness of pain pushed through his quivering excitement, his elation, and his hand came away wet, very wet. He turned the door handle, sorry, so sorry for the mistake, for the sudden twitching aside of the cloud curtain and sorry for Maureen and the baby — and alive enough to finish Drummond.
There was a shadow in the hall, against the panelling, but the moon was gone again and he could not make it out.
Then, 'Michael?' and he fired into the centre of the shadow and it fell away to one side. Then the light came on and he saw the grey uniform and heard the voice again, this time behind him, and even as he turned to the sound of his name he felt the bullets enter, their force knocking him sideways, sending his feet from under him as a rug moved. He fell over, tried to raise the Mauser at Drummond who was at the foot of the stairs, but the effort was far beyond his draining strength. Drummond looked sorry, but it was almost too late to distinguish expressions. He just heard the door bang open and the first pair of jackboots before the light faded and he rested his head lightly on the wooden floor and closed his eyes.
