Echobeat (27 page)

‘He won’t expect to be followed,’ Duggan said, remembering how Glenn had hurried away from his last meeting with Gerda without a backward glance.

‘Why not? In my vast experience people up to no good are always twitchy about their surroundings.’

‘This guy isn’t. He’s just,’ Duggan searched for the right word, ‘an amateur. He’s not a criminal. Not a spy. Just someone out of his depth.’

‘Like yourself.’

‘Ha, ha.’ Duggan turned off the coast road.

‘Out of his depth in what?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out exactly.’

They fell silent as they turned into the road where Benny Reilly lived and Duggan slowed down. The road was wet, the children’s ice slide now a sheen of water. The trees dripped onto patches of dirty snow on their sheltered sides. Benny’s van was still parked in his driveway. There was no sign of life in the house, no smoke from the chimneys, but no telltale milk deliveries on the doorstep or letters hanging from the letter box either. It was difficult to tell through the shine off the ground floor window if the curtains were open or closed.

‘So he hasn’t taken off in the van,’ Gifford said as they turned into the next road and came to a halt, the engine idling.

‘What do we do now?’ Duggan mused.

‘Fucked if I know,’ Gifford smiled. ‘You’re the boss. I’m only riding shotgun.’

‘We could take a look at his barn.’

‘I can’t imagine Benny hiding out in the hay,’ Gifford said. ‘But if the horse is gone we’ll know he’s ridden off into the sunset. We might even hear Gene Autry singing a song.’

That’s about it, Duggan thought. Benny had taken the opportunity he’d given him to make a run for it. No doubt, he’ll turn up sooner or later and the guards will get him for black marketeering but that doesn’t matter to me. As far as catching Goertz is concerned, he’s just another dead end.

Duggan sat in the Prefect in the gloom of Sackville Place at the side door of Clerys department store, eager to get going. He looked at his watch: it was five minutes to half-seven, only three minutes since he’d last checked it. He’d had the whole afternoon to plan the meeting, go back over everything he knew about Glenn, and figure out what they wanted to know from him. Which wasn’t a lot now that they knew the source of the letter from Churchill to Roosevelt and about Tyler Kent and the Right Club. It was good to be going into a rendezvous knowing most of the answers, only needing to fill in more details. And, with luck, get some more documents.

A group of women came out the door of Clerys, silhouetted against the dim light of O’Connell Street, handbags hanging from elbows. One broke away and Gerda came towards him, waving back over her shoulder as one of them called something after her. She sat in and asked, ‘Am I late?’

‘Dead on time,’ he leaned over to kiss her but she held him back with a hand on his chest and then leaned forward to give him a peck on the cheek.

‘They told me how to treat you,’ she giggled. ‘How to reel you in. Like a big fish.’

He caught sight of the others still watching and then turning away and leaving the laneway. ‘Didn’t you tell them you’d already done that?’ he laughed at the image of himself flopping helplessly on a river bank.

She put an arm around his neck and pulled him to her and kissed him deeply. When they finished he held her face in his hands and rested his forehead against hers and looked into her deep eyes. ‘Ready?’

She nodded and he started the car and stopped at O’Connell Street to let a bus go by, its blue-lit interior giving it a ghostly presence. There was no sign of Gerda’s friends. ‘They’re going to the Adelphi,’ she said in answer to his query. ‘To the new Errol Flynn picture.’

He turned towards the bridge.

She leaned her head on his shoulder. ‘I bought another blanket for us today,’ she said. ‘It was the last day of the sale.’

He squeezed her knee with his spare hand and then took it back to change gear as he accelerated down Pearse Street. They were silent as they went by Westland Row and the gasworks and over the hump of the bridge at Grand Canal harbour, its dark warehouses and chemical works hulking in the added blackness of their own shadows. After the bridge at Ringsend he passed close to the anti-aircraft battery in the park: there were no signs of activity there but he knew they were on full alert tonight, the first clear night since the last bombing.

He took the coast road, following the map he had memorised in the office the previous evening, and the night brightened with a half-moon blotting out the stars. Its reflection glittered on the distant sea, barely visible beyond the stretch of sand, like something half seen, half imagined. She raised her head from his shoulder to watch the flashes of the lighthouses: from Poolbeg, beyond to the Bailey, out to the distant Kish lightship, and around the sweep of the bay to Dun Laoghaire.

‘You think they’ll come back tonight?’ she asked, still looking out to sea.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s a perfect night for it if they want to.’

She kept her face to the sea and he counted off the roads running inland until he approached the right one and slowed down.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

She nodded but he didn’t see her, looking the other way for the turn.

‘You can wait in the car,’ he took the turn. ‘If you want to change your mind.’

‘And how will you talk to him?’

‘I’ll speak English.’ He drove slowly along a tree-lined road, following its slow bend to where the house should be.

‘With a funny accent?’

He shrugged and let the car coast to the kerb just beyond where he thought the house was. There were no other cars on the narrow road and the houses were hidden behind hedges and walls. The street lights were off and no light came from any of the hidden houses. We could be in the middle of the country, Duggan thought, but for the regular gateways. He switched off the lights and the engine and turned to her.

‘I’m all right,’ she said.

‘Sure?’

She nodded.

‘I don’t think there’s any danger,’ he said. ‘He’s not dangerous.’

‘That’s not what you said before.’

‘We know a bit more about him now. He’s not working for anyone important.’

‘So his information’s not important?’ she asked, confused.

‘Yes, it is. Very important. But he’s not dangerous.’

She searched his eyes in the gloom.

‘Okay?’ he asked again.

She nodded.

They got out and closed the doors as quietly as they could, conscious
of the silence. Duggan glanced around, wondering if Gifford was in position. You could deploy a whole platoon here and nobody’d see them, he thought. The shadows were so many and so deep.

Gerda led him back to the house and opened one side of the double gate with a rasping click that sounded like a shot in the silence. A gravel path led directly to a garage at the side of a modern bungalow with two bow windows flanking the entrance. Duggan guided her off the gravel and onto the grass of a lawn enclosed by thick shrubs with random patches of grey snow still lining their bases. She led him to the glass-panelled hall door and opened it with her key.

The bone-chilling cold of an unoccupied building seeped into them as soon as they entered. She closed the door behind them and they stood in the hall for a moment, breathing the damp air, listening to the silence, feeling like intruders. Then Duggan moved down the hall, looking into the rooms. They were empty of furniture, diminished by its absence. Lumps of soot had fallen into the fireplaces and bounced onto the wooden floor in the sitting room.

Gerda waited in the hall for him to finish and he led her towards the back of the house to a half-conservatory with one wall of glass looking out to the back garden.

He took the keys from her and opened a side door and went into the garden. It was surrounded by evergreens and divided in two by a wooden trellis which probably hid a vegetable patch and trailed flowers in summer. Beyond the trellis, he saw the outline of two stumpy apple trees. He turned around in a full circle – the garden was not overlooked by any buildings.

‘We’ll talk to him here,’ he said when he came back in, locking the door behind him.

Gerda nodded. She stood in the middle of the floor, her arms folded tight under her breasts.

Duggan went to the door and flicked on the light switch, hoping
the electricity was still connected. A weak bulb came on, its saucer-like shade casting the ceiling into darkness. He opened the door to the hall to let the light show through to the front door and looked at his watch. It was five minutes to eight.

He took a deep breath, feeling his excitement rise. This was going to be okay. He’d get the information he wanted. And get Gerda out of all this.

He went over to her and she unfolded her arms and he took hold of both her hands and she squeezed his with tension. ‘Okay?’ he looked into her eyes.

She took a deep breath and nodded.

‘
Sehr gut
,’ he smiled.

They held each other’s hands and gazes and waited.

A tentative knock on the glass of the door came exactly on time. Duggan pulled Gerda closer for a moment and kissed her and then let her go.

Her heels clicked on the tile floor of the conservatory and then made a drumbeat on the wooden floor of the hall as she went. Duggan unbuttoned his overcoat and his jacket and checked his revolver was in position in the shoulder holster. He let the coats hang loose and stood at attention for a moment, listening to a murmur of voices. Then he joined his hands in front of him, altering the pose but not relaxing it.

The door opened and Gerda came in followed by Roddy Glenn. Up close, he was younger than Duggan expected, maybe eighteen or nineteen. His fair hair, light blue eyes, and creamy skin added to the impression, making him look younger than he probably was. Duggan wondered inconsequentially if he even needed to shave yet. Glenn’s eyes flicked from Duggan, around the empty room, at their reflections in the dark window, and back to Duggan.

‘
Guten Abend,
’ Duggan gave him a curt nod. ‘
Sie haben noch mehr Dokumente für uns?
’

Glenn glanced at Gerda as she translated for him, ‘Do you have more documents for us?’ Duggan gave an inward sigh of relief: he didn’t understand German.

‘Not yet,’ Glenn said to Duggan. ‘I hope to have some more in the next week. Did you get the one I sent you?’

Duggan waited for Gerda to translate, keeping his eyes on Glenn who watched her as she did it. His accent was unplaceable, definitely English but not very strong.

‘It was interesting but too late,’ Duggan said in German. ‘Roosevelt has been re-elected now.’

‘You can still use it in America. To expose his lies. And stop them sending arms to England.’

‘Why didn’t you give us this document before the election?’ Duggan demanded, playing out the dialogue in slow motion as Gerda translated back and forth.

‘We tried,’ Glenn said with an air of frustration. ‘But England is a police state now. We couldn’t get it to you.’

‘We’ve been here all the time,’ Duggan said.

‘We sent information to the Italian embassy before they joined the war and then we tried some other embassies in London but they were no help.’

‘You could have come to us here.’

‘We tried but England’s a police state. They wouldn’t let us travel here. Even before they started their arrests. They’ve even put members of parliament in jail. Without trials or anything.’

‘Why did they let you come?’

‘Because they don’t know about me. I wasn’t a member of the group.’

‘Because you are a British spy,’ Duggan said, spitting the German word ‘
spion’. ‘Ein Provokateur.
’

Glenn was shaking his head, recognising the word even before Gerda translated. ‘No, no,’ he pleaded. ‘Please believe me. My uncle is a member of the peace movement and he’s been put in jail. He asked me to deliver this document to you.’

‘What is this peace movement?’

‘People who want peace. Important people who want to end this needless war.’

‘The British Union of Fascists?’

‘No. We are a separate organisation.’

‘Does it have a name?’

‘The Right Club.’

‘Ah, an English club,’ Duggan said with a hint of derision. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Because they’ve been suppressed by the warmongers. Locked up without trial. Harassed and intimidated.’

Duggan gave a dismissive shrug.

‘They’re good people,’ Glenn blurted. ‘They want to stop all the bombing. Of your cities and our cities. There’s no need for it. England and Germany shouldn’t be fighting each other. There’s no reason for it.’

‘You seem to forget that England declared war on us.’

Glenn nodded as Gerda translated. ‘That was a mistake. Caused by the Jews and their conspirators setting natural friends at each other’s throats. It should never have happened. And it’s only got worse since the Zionist Churchill got in.’

Duggan glanced at Gerda and saw a flash of anger in her eyes but her tone remained neutral as she translated.

‘Where do you get these documents?’ Duggan changed the subject.

‘From a patriotic American. Who was disgusted by Roosevelt’s lies, telling the American people he wouldn’t drag them into the war while conspiring with Churchill and other Jew-lovers to do just that.’

‘Who’s this patriotic American?’

‘He’s been put in jail by the English. With the help of Roosevelt.’

‘So you have no more documents?’

‘We hope to get more. There are more patriotic Americans who can see what is happening.’

‘Where are they? Do you know them?’

‘Our people are looking for them.’

‘Your people?’ Duggan sounded sceptical. ‘I thought they were all in jail in the English police state.’

‘We’re rebuilding our organisation. There are a lot of patriots who believe as we do. Who see through the conspiracies that have caused this war.’

‘Do you have many supporters here? In Ireland?’

Glenn looked confused by the question. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We are not looking for supporters here. But there must be people here who want peace too.’

That’s enough, Duggan thought. He’s got nothing more of use to us. ‘You will keep us informed of your progress?’ he said in German.

Glenn nodded. ‘And you will be able to use our information in America?’

‘Yes. It is very useful.’

‘It’s the key to peace now,’ Glenn said, sounding now like he wanted to talk more. ‘If America doesn’t help England then we will have to make peace with Germany. It’s the only way to stop all the unnecessary bombing and killing now. England can’t stand up by itself. It’s been undermined by all the Jew bankers and so-called refugees we’ve let in over the centuries who’ve wormed their way into society in their usual way and destroyed it from within.’

Gerda cut him off by beginning to translate in an angry voice and then saying to Duggan in German, ‘I’m not going to listen to this shit.’ Duggan nodded to her.

Glenn mistook the anger in her tone for approval of what he was saying and went on: ‘The Führer is right about the causes of the war. He sees through this conspiracy and we should be standing with him and not fighting each other like they want us to do. The main thing stopping us from doing that is the Jew lobby in America who want to
keep it going, making their fortunes, and laughing while we kill each other.’

Gerda stepped in front of Duggan and gave him an angry look. ‘
Geduld
,’ he said to her under his breath. Patience. He watched Glenn over her shoulder as his eyes brightened with zeal and his voice grew more strident.

‘They’re all around Roosevelt, all his advisers. And he’s a secret Jew himself. Real name is Rosenfeld. Which explains everything. The American people will not allow him to help the warmonger Churchill once they know what his real aim is and why he’s surrounded himself with Jew advisers.’

Gerda reached inside Duggan coats and pulled out his revolver and stepped away from him and turned to Glenn. She pulled back the heavy hammer with her left hand as Duggan said, ‘Jesus Christ. Stop.’ Glenn stopped in mid-sentence, a look of shock on his face at the gun, compounded by Duggan’s sudden outburst in English. Duggan threw his arms around Gerda and reached for the gun. It went off with a deafening bang.

The heavy bullet threw Glenn back against the wall and he slipped down into a sitting position. His eyes blinked several times and his limbs twitched as they tried to hold onto life. Blood oozed from this chest, a spot steadily spreading and darkening his light tweed coat. His eyes went still and sightless.

Gerda dropped her gun hand and her body shuddered and tears flowed down her face. She turned and buried her face in Duggan’s chest.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he said, feeling the sobs wracking her body as he reached down and took the gun from her hand. He stepped back from her. ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ he demanded.

‘Nazi,’ she said through her tears. ‘He won’t tell any more lies now.’

He stepped over to Glenn and looked down at him and slapped
the wall hard with the palm of his free hand, his mind racing. Fuck. What do I do now? Fuck.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he looked at her. She was standing where he had left her, her head down, her arms loose by her sides, looking shrunken. Self-defence, one part of his mind suggested, clicking through the problems and options. I can say he lunged at me, I had no choice.

He bent down beside Glenn, and felt the pockets of his overcoat. He ran his hands down Glenn’s sides, moving one of his still warm hands out of the way, avoiding his sightless eyes and the dark blood. Nothing. No weapon. Fuck.

He straightened up and put his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. ‘What’d you do that for?’ he repeated.

‘You heard what he said,’ she didn’t raise her head.

‘He was just a stupid fucking messenger,’ he looked at her. ‘Talking shit.’

‘He wanted the Nazis to win,’ she looked up at him. ‘To kill us all.’

‘The British have locked up all this Right Club,’ he said. ‘They know who they all are.’

She looked up. ‘You knew that?’

Oh, Christ, he groaned to himself.

A movement caught the corner of his eye and he turned as the door opened slowly with a creak, expecting to see Gifford, or, worse, Anderson. The man who entered slowly was neither. He was tall and blonde and had a pistol hanging from his right hand. Duggan raised his revolver, thumbing back the hammer in one move, thinking ‘five rounds left’ as he put the first pressure on the trigger.

‘No, Paul,’ Gerda shouted, ‘Don’t shoot.’

Thoughts raced through his mind. New Year’s Eve. Dinner dance. Breda dancing. American cultural attaché. Max something. Spy.

The man at the door spread his hands, pointing the pistol away to the side, at the floor, and then relaxed his grip and took it into his
palm. He glanced at Gerda and then at Duggan. Duggan lowered his Webley, easing the hammer down, his thoughts in turmoil. Max Linqivst dropped his pistol into his coat pocket and stepped into the room and bent down to put a finger on a vein in Glenn’s neck.

He straightened up and said, ‘I’m—’

‘I know,’ Duggan cut him short and turned back to Gerda, feeling sick, unconsciously raising the gun and pointing it at her. ‘You’ve been working for them all along.’

‘No, no, no,’ she shook her head with each denial.

‘So what the fuck’s he doing here?’

‘I can explain,’ Linqvist said.

‘This was your idea?’ Duggan nodded down at Glenn.

‘Christ, no,’ Linqvist said in surprise. ‘I presume you had to do it.’

‘She did it,’ Duggan spat back, swinging the revolver back towards Gerda. ‘Not me.’

Linqvist took in a deep breath and puffed his cheeks and let them deflate slowly, trying to figure out what was going on. Gerda crossed her arms and closed her eyes and rocked herself back and forth on her heels.

‘You should be proud of her,’ Duggan added, the viciousness of his tone trying to overcome the sickness in his stomach. ‘There’s nothing she won’t do for you.’

He stepped over to the window and looked out but only saw the scene behind him. He gulped in some air, finding it hard to breathe, and tried to think of what to do. A man shot with my gun. By a woman I thought I loved. Who was just using me all the time. Oh, fuck.

But he couldn’t think straight.

All he could think of was how she had used him. His mind wouldn’t go beyond that, wouldn’t focus on what would happen next, on the inevitable inquiries, the probable court martial. A picture of them making love on the office floor came into his mind. He felt like throwing up and gulped some more air.

He saw her reflection move towards him and tensed as she came up behind him. ‘
Komm mit mir,
’ she whispered. ‘
Bitte. Ich liebe dich
.’

He resisted an immediate urge to turn and push her away, torn between the sense of betrayal and the longing created by her closeness, and confused by her declaration of love.

She rested her head on his shoulder and put her arms around his chest. He wanted to shake her off but couldn’t. He watched her hands clasp each other in the window and saw her forehead resting on his shoulder. She tightened her grip and then eased it again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

They stood like that for a while. His breathing calmed but his thoughts were all over the place, bouncing from betrayal to love, from having to call the guards to finding another way out of this mess. He saw the door opening and a short man come in and Linqvist whisper something to him. How many American spies can there be here? he wondered. Or maybe this one was a Brit. Jesus, what a mess.

He went to turn around and she released him but remained close.

‘How could you?’ he asked in an anguished voice.

‘I wasn’t working for them,’ she said in German, searching his eyes. ‘I only told them about this meeting because you said his information was important for America too.’

‘And they told you to shoot him?’

She shook her head. ‘No, no. They said they’d follow him afterwards. Just wanted to know who he was. Same things you wanted to know.’

He shook his head in disbelief.

She lowered her eyes. ‘I want to go to America.’

‘You did a deal with them?’

She nodded.

‘That’s why you killed him?’ Over her shoulder he could see Linqvist and the other man kneeling on either side of Glenn, going through his pockets.

‘No, no,’ she shook her head with emphasis. ‘I couldn’t listen to any more of that shit. I’ve heard too much of it.’

‘That’s all it was,’ he protested. ‘Shit. You can hear it every week on
Germany Calling.’

She gave a deep sigh. ‘You don’t understand what these people are like. It’s not just shit to them. They believe it. They want to kill us all. All the Jews. We’ll never be safe here. And they will kill you too if you resist.’

He shook his head, about to remonstrate, but she cut him off. ‘You’re a good man and I know you believe you can stop them here but you can’t. I hear people talking about how you beat the British and the Black and Tans and you’re great at guerrilla war but you don’t know these people. They’ll put a stop to your guerrilla war very quickly. They will line up and execute twenty or fifty Irishmen every time one of your resistance fighters even shoots at a German. Every single time. How long will your guerrilla war last then? And they will do to us what they’re doing to the Jews everywhere else.’