by Joe Joyce
Gifford interrupted his tuneless humming. ‘We’re upsetting the populace,’ he said, staring back at the man until he looked away. ‘Young pups flying round in luxury while respectable citizens have to travel in the open, exposed to all weathers. ’Tis unnatural. The world’s upside down.’
‘Just thinking that,’ Duggan said, accelerating past the sidecar as a tram from Howth glided by. ‘We won’t be able to use the car for any undercover work soon.’
‘Proper order. The soothing clip-clop of horses. It’ll be just like the old days.’ He inhaled a deep breath. ‘The smell of horseshit and turf smoke everywhere. The world like God meant it to be. Before cities started all this rushing and fussing about.’
‘You’ve the most sensitive nose I’ve ever come across,’ Duggan laughed as they went by Fairview.
‘An essential prerequisite for the superior detection agent. I fear you’d never cut the mustard.’
‘I could smell it though.’
‘There’s hope for you yet.’
‘Where do we go now?’ Duggan asked as they went under the railway bridge onto Clontarf Road.
Gifford gave a theatrical sniff. ‘I smell salt water. The sea.’
‘You should be a navigator in a bomber.’
‘Tut, tut.’ Gifford unfolded a map onto his knees. ‘No need for insults. I know perfectly well where I am.’
He guided them into a long avenue running inland from the bay and then into a succession of right turns until Duggan thought they were turning back on themselves. ‘Here,’ Gifford said as they turned into a short road of new semi-detached houses. Duggan slowed to get a better look and navigate the snow-covered road with care. A group of young boys were running and sliding along the ice they had created on the footpath with a bucket of water the night before. One fell on his backside and went careering off the path into the gutter. The others laughed and Duggan swore as he swerved to avoid him.
‘This one,’ Gifford looked to their right at a house like all the others, distinguished only by an old Austin van in the driveway. ‘Benny must be at home.’
‘What should we do?’ Duggan asked himself as much as Gifford.
‘Fuck all we can do,’ Gifford muttered. There was nowhere they could stop and keep an eye on the house without advertising who and what they were. The road was too short and too open, the young trees on the edge of the footpath offering no cover.
‘Where’s his stables?’ Duggan asked as he turned into another avenue.
Gifford unfolded his map again and plotted a route with his finger.
‘What should we do?’ Duggan repeated. ‘I don’t want to call on him in case Goertz is there. We can’t watch the house.’
‘Take the next right,’ Gifford said, looking up from his map. ‘Maybe have a chat with Benny when he leaves home.’
‘But how’ll we know when he leaves home?’
‘That would be a dilemma,’ Gifford offered and yawned, signalling another change of direction with a lazy finger.
They drove through Raheny village and a train went by ahead of them, its smoke interrupted by the bridge over the railway. The Belfast train, Duggan thought, and remembered his visit to Dundalk and the man in the pub telling him about the Americans in Derry. There had been some headline in the paper last night about President Roosevelt and Congress, but he hadn’t had time to read it in the chipper.
‘Jaysus,’ Gifford muttered to himself as the houses ended suddenly and they found themselves on a country road lined by skeletal trees etched against the billowy clouds. Two tracks were cut into the snow by cartwheels and Duggan kept the car on them, hoping that nothing would come in the opposite direction.
‘Make you nervous?’ Duggan smiled at Gifford.
‘There could be savages,’ Gifford said, watching the ditches as if he expected attackers to come from behind the tracery of the leafless bushes. ‘Do we have enough petrol to get back?’
Duggan laughed and asked him how much further it was. Gifford consulted the map again and directed him into a lane. The hedges closed in and the snow was still marked by cart tracks and an occasional tyre print where a car had edged out of the rut.
‘How are we going to turn back?’ Gifford demanded.
‘’Tis a long road that has no turning point.’ Duggan laughed, beginning to wonder if Gifford was really nervous about being in the open countryside.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Gifford muttered. ‘Don’t go all culchie cute on me now.’
‘That must be it ahead,’ Duggan said of a ramshackle-looking building near the top of an incline. Gifford consulted his map again and grunted his assent. Duggan let the car slow and dropped it into second gear and went up the incline, holding his breath and hoping that the tyres wouldn’t lose their grip on the compacted snow. He exhaled as they reached the building and he turned into its open gateway.
A woman was pushing the bolt closed on the shed door and stopped mid-action and turned to look at them in surprise. She was of indeterminate middle age with a knitted cap on her head and wearing a worn tweed coat that stretched down to the top of her black Wellington boots. By her side stood a metal bucket that she had put down to shut the door.
‘Interesting,’ Gifford muttered without moving his lips.
Duggan turned the engine off. He opened the door and stepped out, tasting the crisp air and noting the silence broken only by cattle lowing with hunger in the distance. He glanced around the yard and knew it was normally a sea of muck, now frozen. A cart was tipped up by a wire fence, snow icing its upper edges, its once-blue shafts pointing skywards back to the east like twin anti-aircraft guns.
‘Hello, ma’am,’ he said as he walked towards her, hoping his shoes wouldn’t break through the frozen crust.
She nodded to him and glanced back at the car, at Gifford who was still in the passenger seat.
‘We were hoping to find Mr Reilly,’ Duggan said.
‘He’s not here,’ the woman said.
‘We have a problem,’ Duggan scratched his head and furrowed his forehead. ‘We’re trying to get back down home but we’re running short of petrol. We have the coupons and all but they’ve cut the ration and now we don’t have enough to get us there. And someone said that Mr Reilly might be able to help us out.’
The bucket by her foot was half-full of horse manure, a faint column of steam rising from one side of it. From inside the shed the horse shifted on a straw bed. The woman glanced back at Gifford again and said nothing.
‘We had to bring the mother up to hospital for an operation,’ Duggan continued, falling deeper into his country accent, ‘and then they changed the petrol ration without warning yesterday and we have the coupons and all but they’re not enough to get us home now and we can’t leave the car in Dublin and get the train back.’
‘Where’re you from?’ the woman asked, caught up in his story.
‘Roscommon,’ he said. ‘A few miles from the town, out in the country. You can see the problem, like. We can’t just leave the car in the city, it’d never be there when we get back, would it? And we don’t want to set off without knowing we won’t be able to get home and have to abandon it in the middle of the country. That’d be nearly as bad. Maybe worse.’
The woman gave a half-nod.
Duggan picked up on it and moved to the point. ‘There was a man in the hospital, visiting his wife, in the same ward as the mother, and he said to contact Mr Reilly. That he might be able to help us out. That he’s a decent man. Do you a good turn.’
‘He’s not here.’
Duggan let his shoulders droop, defeated. ‘I can see that,’ he sighed. ‘Sorry for troubling you. We’ll have to go back into the city, I suppose, and try and find someone else. I don’t know.’
‘You’ll find him at his office.’
‘Mr Reilly?’
‘He has an office in the North Lotts.’
‘The North Lotts?’
‘I don’t know where it is exactly,’ the woman said. ‘Somewhere
near O’Connell Street.’
‘We can always stop and ask somebody. The North Lotts.’ Duggan repeated, memorising it.
‘He’s always there between four and five,’ the woman said. ‘In his office.’
‘Thanks very much for your help, ma’am.’ Duggan turned away, exultant, and then turned back to her again. ‘Can we give you a lift anywhere?’
‘No, I’m only going down the road.’
Just as well, Duggan thought as he got back in the Prefect. Don’t want the smell of horse shit in the car. Though it would get up Anderson’s nose next time he used it. Give him something to really complain about.
The woman went back to locking the stable door as he reversed out into the lane.
‘Well?’ Gifford demanded as they went down the incline.
‘Benny’s got an office in North Lotts. Where’s that?’
‘Of course,’ Gifford clicked his fingers and pointed his index finger at the road ahead. ‘That’s right.’
‘You knew that,’ Duggan shot him an angry glance.
‘In the deep recesses of my mind. It’s not an office, just a lock-up.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Duggan felt deflated. ‘I had to spin her a cock and bull story about our mother being in hospital to get that out of her. And you knew all along.’
‘Sorry,’ Gifford hung his head. ‘My brain’s addled. Must be love.’
‘Bollocks,’ Duggan shook his head.
‘What’s bollocks?’
‘It doesn’t addle your brain.’
‘What doesn’t?’
‘Love.’ Love, if that’s what it was, energised him, sharpened all his senses. The opposite to addling the brain. Duggan fumbled in his pockets for his cigarette case.
Gifford leaned against the door to get a better look at Duggan. ‘Tell me more, Casanova,’ he said.
Duggan clicked open the cigarette case, found his lighter and tried to hold the flame steady against the cigarette end. He had no intention of telling Gifford what he was thinking. The car slid sideways on a patch of ice and he cursed and gave up the attempt and concentrated on the road. The tyres gripped on the frozen grass verge and he guided the car back onto the centre.
‘Do I know her?’ Gifford took the lighter from his hand and held it to Duggan’s cigarette.
Duggan shook his head and took the cigarette from his mouth. ‘I thought we might all go out for a drink some night. With Sinead and her.’
‘Good idea. Stop Sinead asking about you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She still has a thing about you. Be good to show her you’ve moved on. Found another culchie.’
Duggan gave a short laugh. ‘Still worried about the competition?’
‘Course not,’ Gifford dismissed the idea. ‘Just don’t like to see people living in fantasy lands.’
Commandant McClure had his eyes closed and gave no sign that he had heard Duggan’s knock as he had tapped the door and opened it in one move. Duggan cleared his throat and McClure opened an eye and said, ‘Well?’
Duggan told him what had happened and concluded, ‘I don’t think we should raid Benny Reilly’s house until we’re sure Goertz is there. It’d only tip him off and he’d disappear again.’
McClure nodded and straightened himself behind his desk.
‘I suggest we put surveillance on Reilly,’ Duggan continued.
McClure gave him one of his disconcerting silent stares but Duggan was used to them by now and waited for him to speak. ‘Take too long to set up properly,’ he said at last. ‘From what you say about the house.’
‘We could detain him over his black-market activities. Question him then.’
McClure picked up his cigarette lighter and tossed it into the air a couple of times. ‘Better to talk to him,’ he said. ‘Hold the threat of arrest over his head. He’s a man who understands self-interest.’
Duggan turned towards the door but McClure interrupted him. ‘We may be running out of time. Our friend in External Affairs, Mr Ó Murchú, has been on to me. The Germans are pressing their request for landing details at Foynes, to bring in their extra staff. And this weather isn’t going to last forever.’
So we’ll find out soon if the German bombings were accidents or a message, Duggan thought. ‘How soon?’ he asked.
‘Who knows,’ McClure shrugged. ‘But Ó Murchú says he can’t keep stalling them indefinitely. Got to give them a yes or no soon. And he’d like to have something more on the table when he says no.’
Duggan remembered something Timmy had said to him about Goertz, that he saw himself as the German military attaché in Dublin as there wasn’t one in the legation. He mentioned it again to McClure.
‘Which suggests that Goertz knows about the legation’s demand for more staff,’ McClure nodded. ‘Which means he’s in touch with them. While conspiring at the same time with the IRA against our government. Which is not the activity of a supposedly friendly nation. Trying to involve us in a war in which they say they support our neutrality.’
‘I don’t see how catching Goertz can help with this,’ Duggan said. ‘Apart from anything he can tell us about the reasons for the bombing.’
‘Ó Murchú sees him as a counterweight,’ McClure lit himself a cigarette. ‘We can threaten to put him on public trial, expose his IRA activities and Germany’s hypocrisy towards our neutrality. Which could be an excuse for us to join the Allies. So,’ he gave a friendly grin, ‘please don’t do anything to upset the delicate balance of the applecart like insisting on your right to bring more spies into your embassy right now.’
Duggan lit a cigarette and sat down opposite him. ‘Will it work?’
‘Why not?’ McClure reached for a slim folder. ‘But that’s only one of Mr Ó Murchú’s current concerns. He has also become more interested in the Glenn document, the letter from Churchill to Roosevelt and where it came from. Mr Aiken is heading off to Lisbon on his way to Washington in a couple of days and wants to know more.’ He opened the folder which contained only a few documents: Duggan recognised the top one as his last report on Gerda’s meeting with Glenn. The postcard Glenn had given her was clipped to it and McClure slid it free.
To Duggan’s surprise, two postcards came away, both the same black and white view of O’Connell Street. McClure pushed them across the desk to him. Duggan picked one up and turned it over. The back was filled in, the message and address Glenn had given to Gerda written with a clear flowing hand: ‘Dear Aunt Agnes, I’m having such a nice time here I’m staying another week! Hope all the family are well. Love, Marjorie’.
Duggan picked up the other postcard and turned it over. The back was blank except along the top and left edge of the message area. Brown letters, crudely written, said, ‘contact made need more docs’.
Duggan gave a quiet whistle in surprise. ‘Invisible ink?’
McClure nodded. ‘Milk,’ he said.
‘Milk?’ Duggan laughed.
‘Very basic. But it works. Just heat it up and that’s what happens,’ he pointed towards the card still in Duggan’s hand.
‘And this one?’ Duggan pointed at the addressed card.
‘That’s the one we’re posting.’
Duggan picked it up and looked at the edges where the hidden message had been on the other one. There was nothing visible.
‘We’ve copied the message onto it,’ McClure said. ‘As similar as possible. Using the sharp end of a broken matchstick to write it. That’s what they think he used. Or something like it.’
McClure reached for the addressed card and put it to one side. He took the original from Duggan’s hand and slipped it back in the file under its paperclip. ‘No word from Glenn?’ he asked.
‘No. Gerda will contact me as soon as he calls.’
‘Good.’
‘He’s probably waiting to get more documents. So he won’t call for a while.’
McClure nodded. ‘We need to hurry things up.’
‘How? We can’t contact him
.’
McClure sighed with a stream of cigarette smoke. ‘Tell Gerda to seek an immediate meeting as soon as he contacts her. That’s all we can do.’
They smoked in silence for a moment. Duggan debated whether to voice an idea that had been coming back to him since Gerda’s meeting with Glenn. ‘Suppose she tells him that the Luftwaffe officer has agreed to meet him,’ he said. ‘Sets up a meeting and I go along as the German.’
McClure laughed and shook his head.
‘Why not?’ Duggan felt mildly affronted. ‘I can speak German and ask him all the questions we want answered.’
‘And put on a phony German accent while speaking English?’ McClure smiled.
‘Maybe he speaks German.’
‘Maybe he knows all about bombers and he asks you a question about the stall speed of a Heinkel with a full load of bombs.’
‘Okay,’ Duggan admitted. ‘A stupid idea.’
‘No,’ McClure replied. ‘Just too risky. Until we know more about him.’
‘He must be an amateur if he’s using milk as invisible ink.’
‘Or he wants everyone to think he’s an amateur.’
‘But he doesn’t know we’re on to him.’
‘No. But he may want the Germans to think he’s an amateur. The ideal informant: an innocent, well-meaning person who comes across information whose significance he doesn’t really understand. Every intelligence agency’s dream.’
‘But they’ll be suspicious. It’s too good to be true.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what’s the point?’
‘Depends,’ McClure leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. ‘If it’s a British operation they may be leaking true information in order to discredit the same information the Germans have got from another source. To undermine a really dangerous spy.’
‘Jesus,’ Duggan scratched the back of his neck. ‘That’s complicated.’
McClure found another file on his desk and stood up. ‘Spend too much time thinking about these things and you’ll end up in Grangegorman babbling about conspiracies and double and quadruple agents. Be dismissed as a harmless lunatic.’
‘So what about Mrs Agnes Smith in Chelsea?’ Duggan got to his feet too.
