Echobeat

The pounding on the door woke him. Even before he came to full consciousness he knew what was happening and was telling himself, No, no, it’s not possible. The woman beside him sat up with a start and said something in Russian.

‘No,’ he said in the same language, more to himself than to her. ‘It can’t be.’

The pounding continued and he got out of bed, pulling on his pyjama bottoms, his anger rising. They had no right. He went into the hallway and saw that they weren’t knocking: the wood around the lock was splintering. They were breaking down the door.

‘Hey!’ he roared with all the authority of his status. ‘Stop that.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then a voice shouted, ‘Police. Open up.’

‘You can’t come in here.’

‘Yes, we can. Open the door.’

‘You have no right,’ he shouted back.

The door shook and a crack in the jamb by the lock widened.

‘Stop that!’ he roared again and opened the door, thinking it was going to cost the government to repair the lock.

There was a huddle of men outside, all in plain clothes. The one in front was middle-aged, sour-faced. He held up a sheet of paper.

‘Warrant for your arrest,’ he said. ‘Defence of the Realm Act.’

The young man shook his head, emphatic. ‘You know who I am?’ he demanded with an air of incredulity. ‘I’m a diplomat. Diplomatic immunity.’

‘Not anymore.’ The policeman gave him a humourless grin, pushing forward.

‘Stop,’ the man ordered, putting his hands up to try and halt the wedge of heavy men coming at him. ‘You hear what I said? You can’t come in here.’

‘Did you hear what I said?’ the policeman shot back. ‘Your diplomatic immunity’s been waived. Ambassador Kennedy said to lock you up. Throw away the key.’

He stepped back, stunned, and they flowed past him into the flat. A younger detective, his own age, grabbed him by the bare arm and pushed him towards the bedroom. ‘Get dressed,’ he snapped.

In the bedroom, the woman had put on his pyjama top and she stared at them, her eyes round with horror. This was what happened under the Bolsheviks, not in England. The detective ignored her. The sour-faced policeman came in and started opening drawers, taking a sheaf of documents from one.

‘Put those back,’ the young man ordered. ‘They’re confidential. The property of the United States government.’

The detective who had brought him in laughed, enjoying the rare experience of seeing someone caught red-handed. ‘You like to bring work home?’

‘He can’t stop working,’ the sour-faced one smirked, heading for the door. ‘Office day never long enough for him. Reading all these secrets.’ He raised the documents in his hands like a farewell.

From the other rooms came the noise of doors opening and closing and furniture being moved. The young man dressed himself slowly, his face hot with indignation. He couldn’t believe his own government
would go this far, do this to him. All he had ever tried to do was tell the American people the truth.

An older man with a hooked nose came in carrying a leather-bound notebook. He held it upright in one hand as if it was a bible and he was about to ask the young man to swear an oath. He said nothing, just smiled.

The young man closed his eyes and bit his lip, his stomach suddenly hollow. They had trusted him with that. Given it to him for safe keeping. When they were being rounded up, one by one. It’ll be safe with me, he had assured them. I’ve got diplomatic immunity.

When he opened his eyes the older man was gone. The detective who had brought him in took his arm again and said, ‘Come on.’ At the door, he turned back to the woman. ‘You can get dressed now, Irina,’ he said with dismissive familiarity. ‘Go on home. We’ll be looking at things here for a long time.’

The detective closed the door behind them and pulled the man downstairs, bumping against each other as the man resisted the pressure to move faster.

The street was empty of people though the dawn was late. The gritty light blended the yellows and browns of the old bricks and the acrid smell of burning from the night’s bombings hung in the still air and tainted every breath.

The detective opened the back door of a black Rover at the kerb and pushed him in. He still couldn’t believe it as he fell sideways onto the back seat. That they’d do this to him. That the ambassador would’ve allowed it. But he knew who was to blame. Rosenfeld and his Jew friends.

Paul Duggan pressed the bar and pulled down the window and had his hand on the outside door handle as the train slid into Dundalk station with glacial slowness. He glanced at his watch and cursed again under his breath. Fifty-five minutes late, which meant that he was more than forty minutes late for the meeting.

He turned the handle and the door swung out and he waited a moment for the moving platform to slow a little more before he jumped. He swerved around an elderly porter who said something he didn’t catch about young fellas in a hurry and he ran up the ramp as the coal smoke settled on the station.

He ran across the bridge over the down line from Belfast and out into the cold, clear air and jogged into Anne Street, the mental map of where he was going clear in his mind. The town was in a mid-morning torpor, frost still in the gutters and on the footpath on the shaded side of the street. As he neared the town centre there were sprigs of holly in shop windows and Christmas trees in front parlours.

He counted off the side streets on Clanbrassil Street and swung around a muffled woman carrying a shopping bag and found the pub. He hesitated a moment at the door to catch his breath, hoping the contact hadn’t left. He pushed the door open.

The front of the pub was a grocery shop. It was empty as he went
past the counter and around a partition of brown wooden slats and into the bar. There was only one customer, a man sitting on a bench in the far corner, his features barely distinguishable in the gloom. He had a half-full pint of stout on the table before him.

‘Mr Murphy?’ Duggan asked.

The man moved his head to one side, neither confirming nor denying his identity. He was in his late thirties, strongly built, and his grey face was marked by lines of tiredness.

Duggan told him his name, dropping his voice although there seemed to be nobody else within earshot. ‘Captain Anderson asked me to come and meet you. He’s sick, couldn’t get word to you in time.’

The man shifted on the bench and took a packet of Gold Flake from his overcoat pocket and placed it on the table.

‘Sorry I’m late.’ Duggan sat on a wooden stool across from him. ‘The train stopped a long time in Drogheda.’

‘You work with Liam?’ Murphy took the last cigarette from the packet and slid it closed.

Duggan nodded, not bothering to explain that they normally worked in different sections of G2, the army intelligence unit. Anderson was on the British desk, he on the German desk. But things were very busy right now, especially for the British desk, and distinctions were sometimes blurred as they tried to keep up with the growing threats from both sides.

‘Got a bad dose of flu,’ Duggan said. ‘He thought he’d be able to make it but he took a turn for the worse last night.’

Murphy nodded and straightened up on the bench, taking a drink from his pint as if he was now satisfied that Duggan was who he said he was. Duggan wondered idly what his real name was. Call him Murphy, Captain Anderson had told him, and he’ll know I sent you.

‘You want a drink?’ Murphy asked, inclining his head to one side to indicate a side door off the bar. ‘Knock on the door there.’

‘No thanks, too early for me.’

‘And too late for me.’ Murphy sniffed and had another drink of stout.

‘You’re still on the night shift,’ Duggan said, a statement. ‘You must want to get to bed.’

‘I don’t have much for you,’ Murphy took a deep breath of cigarette smoke and blew it out slowly. ‘We’re run off our feet, can’t keep up with the repair work. Every convoy that arrives is in a terrible state. And that’s only the ships that survived the crossing, the ones that weren’t sunk. They’re losing so many ships.’ He shook his head. ‘So many men.’

Duggan nodded, in sympathy and encouragement. All he knew about Murphy was that he was a welder, working in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, and that he came home to Dundalk once a week.

‘The latest convoy lost seven ships,’ Murphy continued. ‘Another half-dozen damaged, some barely afloat. They had no protection at all. Not a single warship.’

‘None at all?’

‘Not one. So they say. The few survivors from the ones that were sunk were in a terrible state.’

‘You saw them?’

Murphy shook his head. ‘Canteen talk. One of the lads saw some of them being brought ashore. Terrible burns.’

‘Things are looking bad for them? For the British?’

‘The U-boats are picking them off like fish in a barrel. They don’t seem able to protect them at all.’

Murphy flicked his empty cigarette packet across the table with his index finger. ‘The list of ships in dock at the moment for repairs.’

Duggan put the packet in his pocket.

‘Some other bits of gossip,’ Murphy stubbed out his cigarette in the tin ashtray. ‘A new battalion has landed at Larne.’

‘Oh?’ That could be very significant, Duggan thought. ‘Were they rotating? Replacing another one?’

‘I didn’t hear tell of any soldiers leaving.’

‘Any idea which regiment?’

Murphy shook his head.

‘Infantry?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Any idea of the insignia on their uniforms?’

Murphy gave him a hard look. ‘The man I heard it from didn’t say. And I couldn’t very well ask him for a detailed description.’

‘Sure,’ Duggan backed off. ‘I understand.’

‘There’s also a rumour about some Yanks turning up in Derry.’

‘What kind of Yanks?’ Duggan asked in surprise. The US was neutral too, though supplying Britain through the Atlantic convoys.

‘Military types.’

‘In uniform?’

‘No. But they say you could tell anyway.’

‘What are they doing there?’

‘No idea.’ Murphy finished off his stout. ‘They were in the docks area. With some Brit naval officers. A couple of the fellows from Derry were codding each other about it, saying the Yanks are coming. You better lock up your wives and daughters.’

A thought struck Duggan. ‘Could they be Canadians?’

‘Canadians been there a while,’ Murphy shook his head and hinted at a grin. ‘The Yanks were in civvies. All very hush-hush. Which is why people were talking about them.’

‘Any sign of them in Belfast?’

Murphy shook his head. ‘That’s it. Only tea-break gossip,’ he stood up. ‘I’m off to the bed.’

‘Thanks,’ Duggan said. ‘And sorry for delaying you.’

‘Tell Liam I hope he’s better for the Christmas.’ Murphy picked up
a holdall from under the table and went out the side door he had said to knock on earlier.

Duggan stayed where he was and smoked a cigarette, listening to the creaks in the building and the ticking of a clock somewhere.

The Dublin train stopped with a grinding of metal and vented a cloud of steam across the platform. Duggan got up from the bench and waited as a couple of passengers got off and headed for the customs men behind their makeshift counter. He was just about to get on when he caught sight of a man hurrying through the dissipating steam and boarding the next carriage. Henning Thomsen. The first secretary at the German legation in Dublin and widely believed to be the Nazi party man there.

What’s he doing in Dundalk? Duggan wondered. He climbed onto the train and walked down the corridor away from the carriage Thomsen had boarded. It was unlikely that Thomsen would recognise him but he didn’t want to take any chances. Their paths had crossed only once before: Duggan had been in the back of a car watching the comings and goings at a party at the German Minister’s residence, unofficially celebrating the fall of France. He had had a good look at Thomsen but it was unlikely that Thomsen had seen much of him. Still. He went down the corridor, looking into compartments for an empty seat. The train was full, mainly of groups of middle-aged women and a scattering of boisterous young men his own age. Soldiers, too, he thought, though they were all in civvies as well. And they had all come from across the border. Southerners in the British forces, on Christmas leave.

He spotted a spare seat in a compartment with five middle-aged women who gave him dirty looks as he entered, making it clear he wasn’t welcome. The women resumed their chatter as the train finally
began to move and pick up a little speed. Duggan ignored them, mentally putting together his report on Murphy’s information, and keeping an eye on the corridor to see if Thomsen passed by.

The most significant thing, he thought, was the arrival of more British troops at Larne. Fears of a British invasion had increased ever since Churchill’s threatening comments a month earlier about Ireland’s continued neutrality. A most heavy and grievous burden, he had called it. The fact that the convoys from North America were suffering such losses increased the prospects of a British invasion to secure western Irish ports. If they were deploying more men in the North, that was an ominous sign. But, then again, they may only be rotating regiments, and the landings might mean nothing.

The door opened and a ticket collector checked their tickets. As soon as he was gone the women began to pull out brown paper parcels from under the seats. The woman beside him elbowed him hard in the ribs. ‘Listen, son,’ she said. ‘You better get out of here or you might see something you shouldn’t.’ The woman opposite him cackled and they all began tearing open their parcels and pulling out a variety of clothes. One was already taking off her coat and cardigan and unbuttoning her blouse.

Duggan left and the blind on the door’s window was pulled down behind him. He stood in the corridor and looked out at the passing fields. The sun was blinding, already low though it was only the middle of the afternoon, glaring across the half-frozen landscape and casting long shadows from the hedges. A handful of cattle gathered around a pile of hay, munching steadily, their breaths rising in the cold. The train thundered across the Boyne viaduct and he looked upriver, a pewter ribbon between its darkening banks. Might be another battle here, he thought, aware from overheard talk at headquarters that the river would be the defensive line for Dublin once again if the British came over the border.

He thought about going to the bar, to see if any of the British soldiers were there and try and pump them for information. Not a good idea, he decided. Anderson and his colleagues probably had lots of sources of information among them. Anyway, he was more intrigued by Thomsen’s presence on the train. What could he have been doing in Dundalk? The same as myself. Meeting someone with information about what was going on across the border. That was most likely. He couldn’t go into the North himself. Far too risky for him. So he must have a source or sources in Dundalk. Just like us. Which would hardly be surprising. There’d always been a strong IRA presence in Dundalk and they were very happy to help the Germans.

He moved along the corridor, towards the carriage Thomsen had boarded, and walked past all its compartments. Thomsen was in the third one, sitting by the window, reading a newspaper. Duggan glanced quickly at all the other occupants. A priest reading a book. Two women and two middle-aged men. They all appeared to be by themselves, each minding his and her own business. He passed by without pausing and meandered down to the back of the train and found another seat.

It was dark by the time the train reached Dublin. Duggan took his time alighting, wanting to make sure that Thomsen was ahead of him. He caught sight of him walking fast towards the exit on his own and began to follow quickly. The women whose compartment he had shared were being stopped by customs men behind the wooden tables half-blocking the platform. They all carried light shopping bags now and there were no signs of their parcels. But they were well wrapped up in bulky clothes.

‘It’s just a few sweets for the children from Santa Claus,’ one of them said to a customs man, opening her shopping bag as wide as it would go as if it was an insult.

‘Don’t ye have anything better to be doing?’ another sighed as the
regular cat-and-mouse game played out. ‘We were only up there for a day’s outing.’

Duggan passed by quickly, keeping an eye on Thomsen’s back. Beyond the ticket check Thomsen headed for the ramp leading down to street level. Whatever he’d been doing, he’d done it in Dundalk, Duggan decided, veering off to the stairs. He took them two at a time down to Amiens Street and unlocked the chain on his bicycle and walked it across the road.

The street lights were on but making less impression on the gloom than the glow from shop fronts. He cycled up Talbot Street, slotting into a convoy of other cyclists and weaving around the shoppers overflowing from the narrow footpath outside Guiney’s clothes shop. Unplucked turkeys hung neck-down in the window of a butcher’s and boxes of cigarettes in festive wrappers were lined up in a tobacconist’s, topped with a pyramid of cigars. Passing faces were tense with the urgency of the fast-approaching Christmas deadline.

He turned into O’Connell Street at the Nelson Pillar, balancing the bike with brakes and pedals as a bus went by, its interior blue lights casting its passengers into spectral relief. A group of carol singers belted out ‘Adeste Fidelis’ outside Clerys and a tram clanged its way through the traffic on the other side of the central median, now an air-raid shelter, its grey concrete wall broken by posters for the Christmas Eve sweepstake to raise money for the Red Cross. The ads on the buildings around O’Connell Bridge were dark, no longer flashing their messages for Players cigarettes and Bendigo tobacco and, beyond, Bovril. He threaded his way across another line of cyclists and in front of a plodding dray into Bachelors Walk. He cycled fast down the quays by the darkening river, speeding up as the traffic eased and had worked up a slight sweat by the time he reached the Red House, the offices of G2, in army headquarters on Infirmary Road.

‘Enjoy your mystery tour?’ Captain Bill Sullivan greeted him as he came into their shared office and slumped into his chair.

‘Long day for very little,’ Duggan said, placing a carbon paper between two sheets of flimsy white paper and winding them into the typewriter.

‘Boss wanted to see you when you got back.’

‘Urgently?’