Echobeat (11 page)

‘I love snow,’ she said. ‘There should always be snow in the winter.’

‘Remind you of home?’

‘Of being a child,’ she corrected him. ‘I hope it snows for days.’

‘I hope not,’ Duggan laughed. ‘Makes everything harder. Harder to walk, to cycle, get around.’

She gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Everybody here talks like this is real snow and they go into a panic.’

‘You should tell them what real snow is like.’

‘I can’t,’ she said, as they stepped into the doorway of her office opposite the bus stop and faced each other. ‘I’m Gertie from Cork. What would I know about real snow?’

He looked into her eyes and put his arms around her and they kissed. She slid her arms inside his overcoat and they held each other. ‘You’re the only one who knows who I am,’ she said into his chest and he held her tighter for a moment and then tipped her head back to kiss her again and saw the moistness in her eyes.

‘It’s hard having to pretend all the time,’ she said in answer to his unasked question. ‘To always be careful and not betray myself.’

‘You don’t have to pretend with me,’ he said.

She nodded and tried to smile.

‘Or with your family.’

She shook her head.

‘What?’ he asked, pulling back a little.

‘My parents want me to stay away from them.’

‘What?’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘For my own good,’ she added quickly. ‘My own protection. It’s better that I be Gertie Maher than be the daughter of Herr and Frau Meier. That’s how everyone knows them in Cork. They can’t hide.’

She saw the shock in his face and tried to lighten it. ‘And not be drinking and kissing in pubs. Like … I don’t know what. Not a good Catholic girl from Cork anyway.’

‘But what do your parents tell people? Everyone must’ve known about their children too.’

‘They say we’ve gone to England. To work. Like everyone else.’

He went to say something but she cut it off with another kiss. ‘You Irish,’ she said with a sad smile, ‘you think you’re the only ones with history.’

They held each other in silence until her bus came up the street, moving slowly, and they crossed to the stop and its indicator flicked out. She gave him a last kiss and stepped onto the platform at the back and the conductor hit the bell twice.

He cycled slowly through the pristine snow, alert for hidden tram tracks and potholes. The flakes still came down in languorous flurries, some heavy, some light, teasing. The streets were empty except for a few boys pelting each other with snowballs on Arran Quay. They turned their attention to him as he passed and he ducked and sped up and felt a couple of snowballs on his back. He shook a fist above his shoulder and they shouted in delight and another snowball went by his ear. He laughed, still cocooned in the warmth of the pub and Gerda’s embraces.

He stopped on the steps of the Red House to brush the snow from his shoulders and shrugged off the coat as he went up the stairs to his office. Sullivan was slouched at his desk, his eyes half closed. ‘The commandant was asking where you were,’ he said.

‘What’s happening?’

‘Nothing,’ Sullivan said, straightening himself. ‘I told him you were skiving off as usual. He said a week’s detention would put a stop to your gallop.’

Duggan laughed as he sat down and took out the envelope Gerda had given him and smoothed it on the desk.

‘And there’s a message for you for from your so-called cousin Peter,’ Sullivan added. ‘I don’t know why that smart-arse Special Branch friend of yours bothers with his bullshit.’

‘What?’ Duggan opened the envelope carefully and took out the contents.

‘You’re to pick him up at home in the morning, in time for ten o’clock mass at the Church of the Three Patrons.’

There were twenty pages of Photostat paper inside, streaked with vertical lines and the type already beginning to fade to sepia. It was a letter, beginning ‘My dear Mr President’ and he scanned through the pages, catching phrases, his heart racing faster, until he got to the signature at the end.

Winston S. Churchill.

‘Holy fuck,’ he exclaimed.

‘What?’ Sullivan demanded.

‘Is the commandant in his office?’ Duggan was already on his feet and heading for the door before Sullivan nodded.

He knocked on McClure’s door and went in and handed him the Photostats and explained quickly how he got them. McClure glanced through them and swore softly.

‘Can it be real?’ Duggan asked.

‘Looks real,’ McClure started reading it again with greater care. ‘Sounds real.’

‘But how could—’ McClure raised a finger to stop Duggan’s questions while he continued reading.

‘Yes,’ McClure said when he finished and reached for the cigarette smouldering in his ashtray. ‘How could this young English artist get a copy of a letter from Churchill to Roosevelt?’

‘And why is he trying to give it to the Germans? I mean, Captain Anderson thought he was trying to feed them disinformation or propaganda.’

‘The best lie is often the one closest to the truth,’ McClure stood up and came around his desk. ‘There’s all sorts of implications to this. I better show it to the colonel.’ He stopped at the door. ‘Don’t go away.’

‘No, sir.’

Duggan wandered back to his office, thinking it couldn’t be what it appeared to be. How could a young English painter – if that’s what he really was – end up in Dublin trying to give such a letter to Luftwaffe internees? Who was Roddy Glenn? Was he really a painter? He had pictures that he wanted Mrs Lynch to put on her walls and sell. But that didn’t mean anything. He had to be an agent of some kind. But for whom?

He carried a typewriter over to his desk, sat down and lit a cigarette, lost in his thoughts.

‘Penny for them,’ Sullivan said.

Duggan held out a hand, palm up.

‘Ah, they’re not even worth that.’

‘What was the name of that church again?’

‘Church of the Three Patrons,’ Sullivan said. ‘In Rathgar.’

‘Who are the three patrons?’

‘Fucked if I know,’ Sullivan stood up and stretched himself. ‘De Valera, Aiken and Lemass, I suppose.’

Duggan laughed and Sullivan went over to the window and squinted through a crack in the shutters. ‘Still snowing out there,’ he reported. ‘We could go home to our beds and have a decent night’s sleep. There won’t be any bombers about tonight.’

‘You should tell the commandant that.’

‘What’d he say to you?’

‘He said I was to stay here.’

‘Really?’ Sullivan laughed. ‘Confined to barracks?’

‘Yeah,’ Duggan tipped his chair back and threw his feet onto the desk beside the typewriter. ‘You were right.’

‘About time too,’ Sullivan said.

‘Gifford say anything else?’

‘Some shite about your mother being worried you were neglecting
your religious duties. Why do you listen to all his bullshit?’

‘He’s all right,’ Duggan said, remembering how much help Gifford had given him in the past. ‘A free spirit.’

‘My arse,’ Sullivan snorted.

Duggan stretched out an arm and pulled the phone towards him by its cord. He asked for the Dublin Castle number and then for Garda Gifford when he got through. ‘Who wants to know?’ the Branch man who answered the phone demanded.

‘A confidential source,’ Duggan said.

‘Call back tomorrow,’ the voice said and hung up.

‘It’s catching,’ Sullivan wagged a warning finger. ‘You’ll end up as bad as him if you’re not careful.’

Gifford must have something for me, Duggan thought. Nothing to do with going to Mass. Hopefully something to do with Mrs O’Shea and Goertz.

He dropped his feet from the table and settled at the typewriter to record everything Gerda had told him about Roddy Glenn and the German internees and about their plans to pass on to Henning Thomsen their information about tanks and aircraft being made in Luton. He hadn’t finished when his phone rang and the switchboard told him he was to go to the colonel’s office. On the stairs he met Anderson who gave him a quizzical look. ‘You know what this is about?’ Duggan asked.

‘Just been hearing about it,’ Anderson said. ‘That fellow you were telling me about?’

‘Roddy Glenn,’ Duggan confirmed.

They reached the colonel’s office and Anderson knocked and they went in. The colonel was standing in front of his desk, talking to Commandant McClure and Commandant Egan, the head of the British section. ‘Okay, gentlemen,’ the colonel said, waving them towards a table. He took his place at the head of it with McClure on
his right and Egan on his left. Duggan sat beside McClure, facing Anderson beside Egan.

‘Let’s go through this,’ the colonel said, placing the Photostat of the letter in front of him, a vertical palm on either side of it as if to contain it. ‘What we have here is a copy of a letter purporting to be from Mr Churchill to President Roosevelt setting out some of Britain’s plans for 1941, primarily its needs for more American supplies of aircraft and munitions, and the vital importance of keeping the north Atlantic route open. There is also highly valuable information about its naval forces, convoy losses in recent months, the tonnage of supplies that Britain needs, and the shortfall at the moment. And there is a somewhat desperate appeal to the Americans to lend Britain some of its surplus naval ships and new materiel because it is running out of dollars with which to pay for them.’

The colonel looked up from the page. ‘There is a lot of information clearly of military value to an enemy and, also, by implication, a lot of political information about the behind-the-scenes contacts between Mr Churchill and President Roosevelt. Some of which, I imagine, would be damaging to the president if it were to be revealed publicly, especially after his pre-election promises that he wouldn’t involve America in any foreign wars. But, in the way of politics, I suppose it is not as damaging now as it would have been before the election.

‘And then,’ the colonel sighed and turned over the pages until he got to it, ‘there is section twelve. About us. He’s asking the US to either lease our western ports for itself or to use its influence to persuade us to make them available to Britain. In the first instance, he says, trade between America and Ireland would be trade between two neutral countries and the Americans would be entitled to protect it with their navy without the Germans claiming that to be an act of war. And, in any event, he says the Germans won’t make the mistake they made the last time of declaring war on America.

‘In the second instance,’ he continued, paraphrasing the letter, ‘if the Americans persuade us to give southern or western ports and airfields to the British, he promises that Britain would defend Ireland if Germany saw that as a hostile act. And he suggests an all-Ireland defence council from which’ – he paused and read the phrase – ‘the unity of Ireland would probably emerge in some form or other after the war.’

He placed the pages back on top of each other. Nobody said anything for a moment as they tried to absorb the implications. ‘It obviously requires more considered study,’ the colonel broke the silence. He looked from McClure to Egan and back to McClure, ‘But what are our initial thoughts? Is this genuine or is it a forgery?’

‘The content suggests that it is genuine,’ McClure said. ‘But the source raises doubts.’

The colonel turned to Egan. ‘I agree,’ Egan said. ‘We know that the convoys from America are Churchill’s main preoccupation at the moment. It ties into that, and into the other information we’ve received about their plans to pressure us over the ports. It raises the question of whether the source is the same for all these documents,’ he glanced across at Duggan, a question in the statement.

Shit, Duggan thought. That hadn’t occurred to him. But how could Timmy and this Roddy Glenn be connected? He cleared his throat to say something but the colonel interrupted him. ‘Leave that to one side for a moment,’ he said. ‘Let’s just consider first whether this is genuine or whether it is disinformation.’ He scanned through the pages again. ‘It says the British have lost 420,300 tons of shipping in just five weeks,’ he looked up to allow that to sink in and then looked down again. ‘They need forty-three million tonnes of supplies a year to survive and the shortfall is running at about five million tonnes. And then there are the naval details, the fact that the German battleships
Bismark
and
Tippitz
put them on a par with the Royal Navy and even give them an advantage. Can this be disinformation?’

‘It could be exaggerating their losses, sir,’ Anderson offered.

‘Or minimising them,’ Egan suggested.

‘Either way,’ the colonel said, ‘I don’t see the point if this is intended to mislead an enemy.’

‘Lull them into a false sense of superiority?’ Anderson said.

‘Surely this information would be more likely to boost German morale and encourage them to greater effort,’ McClure said. ‘Whether it’s minimising or exaggerating Britain’s dilemma.’

‘Indeed,’ the colonel nodded. ‘It doesn’t appear to make any sense as an attempt to mislead the Germans.’ He took out a tobacco pouch and began to fill his pipe. ‘So, let’s consider another option. That this document is not intended for their eyes at all. But for our eyes.’

‘That’s possible,’ Egan nodded. ‘It ties in with the other documents we’ve received and with their campaign to pressure us to hand over the ports. That would explain the concentration on the losses and the importance of the convoys. And it could also be a warning to us that they’ll get the Americans on their side to pressure us on the ports as well.’

The colonel nodded through a cloud of smoke as he got the tobacco burning. He shook out his match and dropped it in an ashtray. ‘That could make sense of almost everything. But it then raises the question of their method of giving us this document. Let’s look at the source.’

Everyone looked at Duggan who gave a résumé of what little he knew about Roddy Glenn. Young English painter, initially asking to sell his works in the café, then hanging around and trying to talk to the German internees who frequented it on their parole days, culminating in the spitting incident today and Mrs Lynch barring him from the café.

‘That’s all we know about him?’ the colonel asked.