Emerald Decision

'Your plan, right — it was all your idea, forty years ago?'

'I — don't think we'll discuss that now. Rather, the terms for your surrender.' The voice was cold. McBride felt flushed, excited. He wanted to raise his voice, shout down the telephone at the same time as he became suddenly more aware of his surroundings, the potential threat represented by the people around him, the waitresses, the cashier.

'I don't think I want to do that right now, Mr Walsingham.'

'Just think about Goessler and Lobke. You can be charged with their murders, and will be when we take you, unless you give yourself up voluntarily in the next twenty-four hours.'

'What's the deal?'

'I think we'll talk about that next time you call.'

The telephone went dead. McBride was bemused for a moment, and then he began shaking. They'd traced the call.

The lift doors opened and he waited, frozen. No policeman emerged. He took to the stairs, then made his way to the rear of the store, to the delicatessen. He heard the sirens while his sense of smell was still sifting the sausages and cheeses and smoked meats and fish. One Panda car arrived outside the exit from the delicatessen, and McBride moved through into the record and TV department, and left by the side street door. He walked down to the Promenade, saw the flashing lights of two police cars parked outside the front of Cavendish House, and turned in the opposite direction, taking cover in the crowds inside W. H. Smith.

He recovered his breath and his judgment there as he browsed through the cassette tapes. Squatting on his haunches, his eyes blind to Folk and TV Advertised, he turned over the conversation in his mind. Walsingham had left him the only one alive who knew about Smaragdenhahkette and the British response to it — the murder of Patrick Fitzgerald, Irish-American confidant of Roosevelt, and hundreds of British seamen. His story was worth maybe two million, and his life.

He smiled reluctantly to himself, as if saying farewell to a good friend. His life. Maybe he could have both, but the money definitely came second. He felt assailed by sadness as sharp as a stomach cramp as he squatted there, so that he stood up, lifted out an unrecognized name, turning the cassette in his left hand. Walsingham had killed Claire Drummond, and even fat Goessler, and none of them had wanted to kill him. Walsingham would, if he had the chance. A sure and certain silence, with the dirt rattling on the lid of the box—

Genesis? The name on the cassette cover became clear, and he put it down as if it burned him. The Lamb lies down on Broadway. Not this one—

He shuffled along the shelving, hands in his pockets. How could he turn the tables? A determination to exploit his circumstances was as evident as a metal plate at the back of his head, preventing the incursion of doubt, or fear. He was alone now, and his enemy was identified and a single man. The police at his disposal did not count, somehow. An excitement passed through him like an earth-tremor. He needed someone else to know.

He walked away from the record department, to stationery, and picked up a writing pad and a packet of envelopes. He'd meet Walsingham, but not without insurance. He saw a rack of typewriters, and replaced the paper.

Five minutes later, he left W. H. Smith with a portable typewriter and a packet of bond paper and a dozen sheets of carbon paper. He felt curiously lighthearted. Doubts and trepidations hammered against the metal plate at the back of his mind, but he knew it would hold. His mind was as shallow and clear as a pool in which, clearly visible, a pike circled a smaller fish. The small fish was grinning.

November 1940

Gilliatt stopped the car at the entrance to the drive of Crosswinds Farm. The house was in darkness, except for one curtained light in a downstairs window. Maureen, next to him, stared through the windscreen intently, unseeingly. Now they had obeyed her frenetic desire to return to find McBride — a consuming guilt for all the years of her marriage, Gilliatt regarded it, whether fair or unfair in its self-blame he could not say — she seemed drained of purpose and energy.

The minor roads and unsurfaced tracks by which they had returned to Kilbrittain had been empty of Germans. It was an experience on the edge of phantasmagoria, the empty dark roads, the silent countryside, the innocent slopes of the land, the clear moonlight. And the silent, hunched woman beside him. In the small cocoon of the Morris he could not even care very much for the fate of Michael McBride. Now, the farm looked as it always had done and McBride's lurid imagery of betrayal and treachery seemed inappropriate.

He cleared his throat.

'I'll go up to the house,' he said. She seemed not to hear him. 'You wait here. Get into the driving seat.' He opened the door and swung his long legs out of the car. 'If anything untoward happens — anything at all — start the car and drive away. Don't stop until you reach Cork. Understand?' She looked at him, and he took hold of her cold hand. The other was placed across her stomach as if to protect the fetus she could not possibly feel. He shook her hand, waking her. 'Understand?' Responsibility for her weighed on him as he stared into her white, strained features. McBride had run off to play heroic games, but someone always had to be left to tidy up after heroes. His part, dustpan-and-brush for the remnants of hacked armour and the tiny shards of swords. He was angry with McBride. The silent farmhouse belied his accusations, his silly daring.

'Yes?' she said, then again, 'Yes.'

'Good,change seats then.'

When she had done so, he stood looking at her, then simply nodded and headed up the track to the farmhouse on its knoll. The moonlight illuminated the path and the lawns and the white walls of Crosswinds Farm. He turned briefly and looked out to sea. Nothing. No activity. He closed his mind to all of that. It wasn't his concern.

No one challenged him, and he knocked loudly on the front door, the assumption of innocence done deliberately, with care. After a while he knocked again and heard footsteps in the hall. Drummond opened the door. He seemed perturbed, but Gilliatt excused his expression — he was a stranger to Drummond, after all.

'I'm Peter Gilliatt — sir. I was sent from London with Michael McBride.'

'Oh, God,' Drummond breathed in an appalled voice that could have been guilt or sadness. 'Come in — Lieutenant?' Gilliatt nodded. 'Of course. I— you didn't come that night, there was shooting, but I knew Michael had to be alive, probably on the run — the Germans — he's in here—'

Drummond opened the door to his study. McBride was lying comfortably and arranged and quite dead on the sofa in front of the fire. It was obvious that Drummond had been sitting opposite him, drinking. A bottle and a single glass stood on an occasional table next to the armchair. McBride's eyes were closed, his face seemed very peaceful. Gilliatt felt emotion churn in his stomach.

'What happened?'

'He — saved my life. He must have surprised the German unit hiding in the gardens—' Gilliatt looked at him narrowly. 'Some of the parachute troops who landed yesterday night, I imagine. He came on them, I suppose. I heard shooting, but by the time I got my own gun, after warning London, it was all over. I found him near the door, dead, and three Germans dead in the gardens. I've seen no one since.'

Gilliatt said, 'He came back to kill you.'

'I don't understand.'

'He thought you betrayed him — the other night, when we were ambushed. We saw you then—' He studied Drummond's face, but it was merely sorrowful, half-attentive. 'He was convinced you'd betrayed us, you were working with the IRA for the Germans.'

'Poor Michael. He ended up saving my life.' Drummond went forward into the room and stood over the body. Then he turned to Gilliatt. 'I know this has been a terrible shock to you, Lieutenant Gilliatt, but have you anything to report? London is in a flap about these troops landing — my scouts have seen a few signs of them, but nothing more. Why are they here?'

Gilliatt was staring at McBride's body, in valediction. The ultimate futility of courage, he could not help thinking. To die for an error, a stupid, bigoted mistake. He wondered what had possessed McBride—

He looked up. Drummond, a senior naval officer, required his report. He nodded.

'I think I'd better talk to London, sir. How much they're aware of I don't know, but it's urgent.'

'The radio's in the cellar— come.'

Both men paused at the door to look back once at McBride. Then Drummond closed the door on the body,