“This is John McEvoy,” Mulryan told her. McEvoy was a large man, with a pugilistic face and hair that almost leaped to attention when he took off his cloth cap. “Can we buy you another?” Mulryan asked.
She declined the drink but agreed to stay for “a little chat between friends.”
The two men ordered beer with whiskey chasers. “The last time we met,” Mulryan began after taking exploratory sips from both glasses, “you were planning a paean to your brother and the other brave lads who took the fight across to England.”
“I don’t think I used the word ‘paean.’”
“Ah, perhaps not. But something worthy of their memory. As I remember, we arranged for you to meet all the relatives.”
“And I did.”
Mulryan nodded. “But unless we’ve missed something, nothing has been printed.”
“I haven’t finished it,” Caitlin said waspishly. Mulryan was as outwardly friendly as he had been the last time, but there was something about him she didn’t like.
He gave her a hurt look. “Might I guess that some were less happy than others about the choice their boys had made?”
“You could say that. But I just haven’t gotten round to writing it yet. I’ve been too busy.”
He looked unconvinced. “So it’s not that you’d rather say nothing than—how shall I put it—gild the lily?”
“No.”
Mulryan nodded again, as if he quite understood. He let his eyes roam round the bar, pausing to stare at the large painting of the Delhi Durbar that hung on one of the walls. “We hear that you met Roger Casement in Berlin,” he said, turning back to Caitlin.
“You are well informed.”
“He asked you to write a piece about the brigade he’s putting together, one that would encourage American volunteers.”
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t written that either.”
He sounded like a disappointed uncle, Caitlin thought. He sounded, in fact, the way her father often had with Colm. Which made her angry. “Casement didn’t impress me,” she said.
“And rather than say so, you said nothing.”
Mulryan was beginning to annoy her. “For which you should be grateful,” she snapped back. “Look, I believe Ireland should have its independence, and I want to support those who are campaigning for it. But I’m not your Lord Kitchener. If you want someone to shout, ‘Your country needs you!’ then find an old man with a big mustache.”
“Of course,” Mulryan said. “But we did think, in view of your brother’s sacrifice, that you might be more energetic in publicizing a cause we know you believe in. It seems we were mistaken.”
Caitlin felt the emotional tug, but it wasn’t as strong as it had been. She sighed. “I’ve spent the last two weeks researching a piece on Cumann na mBan, which I assure you I will write. And I shall say that Cumann na mBan is at the forefront of the struggles against both the war and the English occupation of Ireland, not to mention the struggle for women’s equality. That they are an inspiration to the world. I shall be restating the Irish case against England while praising those who fight for it in the strongest terms I can. Won’t that help your cause? Or don’t you think the women’s struggle is important? I think the level of women’s involvement makes your struggle special, and something my fellow Americans will appreciate.”
That shut Mulryan up for all of fifteen seconds. “You make a grand case,” he admitted eventually.
“Perhaps it’s time we got to the point,” his companion said, reminding Caitlin of his presence.
“Which is?” she asked Mulryan.
“Well, Caitlin—can I call you that?—we’re not here to talk to you about your writings—after our last meeting I was just satisfying my curiosity. You see, there’s one thing you can do for us—and your brother’s memory—something that only you can do.” He took a sip of whiskey. “I believe you know a man named Jack McColl.”
She tried to hide her surprise. “I knew a man named Jack McColl,” she corrected him. Was that brittle voice her own?
“And no doubt you knew he was an English agent.”
“Eventually.” There was no need to fake the hurt in her voice.
“He’s here in Dublin.”
This time she didn’t even try to conceal her . . . what? Shock? Alarm? What did she have to be alarmed about?
“We think there’s people in London who’re worried we might spoil their war, and he’s been sent to find out whether they’ve cause for their concern.”
She held his gaze. “And?”
“We’d like you to tell him that there won’t be any rising. Or at least not unless they introduce conscription here, and our sources over there tell us that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.”
Caitlin now knew where the phrase “heart in mouth” came from. What was fate dishing up for her? Ever since the conversation with Kollontai, she’d been mentally flirting with the idea of meeting him again, knowing full well that she’d never, ever seek him out. And now here he was, served up on a republican plate.
Too many feelings, too many thoughts—she retreated into practicalities. “I can only think of one reason you’d want the British believing that a rising’s not in prospect.”
Mulryan just smiled at her.
Caitlin shook her head, as if that might restore some order to her thoughts. “Why would he believe me, for heaven’s sake? If you know I know him, you know why we fell out. Am I supposed to have had some Damascene conversion and suddenly realized how wonderful his wretched empire is? He’s not a fool. If I tell him what you want me to, he’ll see through it in an instant and assume that the opposite is true. I can’t see how that would help you.” Even as she spoke, the thought of seeing him again was inducing a silent paroxysm of contradictory emotions. “I will have that drink,” she decided. “A whiskey, please.”
Mulryan ordered three.
“Give us some credit,” Mulryan said once the drink had arrived. “We’re hoping you can convince the man that you’ve forgiven him and are willing to give him another try.”
Her eyes widened. “You want me to sleep with the bastard who put my brother in front of a firing squad?” She didn’t know whether to slap the man’s face or applaud him for his gall.
“Lovers tell each other secrets,” McEvoy muttered behind her, as if revealing some great philosophical truth.
“Perhaps we’re asking too much,” Mulryan said more diplomatically. “Only you could say how much you would do in your brother’s memory. But I can tell you this—you will have your revenge. There are men in Dublin who want nothing more than to see this McColl dead. Friends and brothers of those who died with Colm. Whatever you say to us now, he won’t leave Dublin alive.”
That shocked her anew, and so did the feeling of panic it induced. “Killing him won’t bring Colm back,” she said briskly, for want of anything better. “And it was the British government that killed my brother, not Jack McColl.” With more than a little help from Colm himself, she reflected bitterly.
Mulryan shrugged. “The enemy’s the enemy. Will you at least give the matter some thought?”
“I will,” she said, surprising herself. But then why not see him again? What did she have to lose? If he was still crazy about her, she wouldn’t have to sleep with him, just give him hope that she might. And there was a certain poetry to rewarding deception with deception. She could do what Mulryan asked and discharge her debt to Colm, then give McColl the same chance of escape that he had given her brother and pay off that debt, too. And be free of them both.
Never kid a kidder, her father had used to say.
She knocked back the rest of her whiskey. “So where is he staying?”
Mulryan gave her the name of McColl’s hotel. “Then you’ll do it?”
“I told you I’d think about it,” she said, more to an
noy him than because there was any real doubt in her mind. On the walk back to Maeve’s house, she asked herself why she wanted to do this. And the simple answer was that if Kollontai was right and he was unfinished business, then surely this would finish it. Since she’d met him, Jack McColl had conjured up just about every emotion there was in her heart, with the possible exception of indifference. And all of them seemed to come and go, to rise and fall, pursuing a logic completely their own. She’d tried to convince herself that it didn’t matter, because love was one thing, life another, and whether or not he’d betrayed their love, sooner or later the lives they’d chosen would have set them apart. But he had betrayed her, and she wanted him to know how wrong he’d been.
She wanted to hear his explanation—the one she’d been too angry to listen to that day in his London flat—and tear it asunder line by line.
As for assuring him that there wouldn’t be a rising, she would find some way to convince him that she was acting in good faith. She had no qualms at all about lulling the English into a false sense of security—if a thousand years of Irish tears and anger hadn’t taught them to keep looking over their shoulders, they had only themselves to blame. Which didn’t mean an armed insurrection was a good idea. Surely one couldn’t succeed? And if that were true, then what was the point? To show that Ireland still bridled at English rule? There were dozens of newspapers and organizations providing constant reminders of that. Did people have to die?
As she crossed Liffey Street, the thought passed through her mind that the number of dead would hardly compare with the carnage in the trenches. But what did that matter? She remembered the families of Colm’s comrades, all still coping with grief long after the deaths.
Kollontai had half convinced her that people would have to die for real change to come, but would even a successful rising bring real change to Ireland? If Connolly was in charge, perhaps. But the Volunteers? All they wanted was a change of flag.
Caitlin let herself into Maeve’s house, put on the kettle for tea, and stood by the stove examining her own position. She had believed—or wanted to believe—that a line could be drawn between political activism and journalism. A blurry line, but a line nevertheless. Now she wasn’t so sure. Whether or not she reported that a rising was imminent, she would be playing a part in the way events unfolded. If all she did in print was analyze how popular or successful a rising might be, she would, at least potentially, be influencing those involved in deciding whether or not to rise.
Her certainties seemed to have vanished, and she found herself envying Kollontai, who accepted that very few judgments were wholly right or wrong but still insisted on acting as if they were. There were two political responsibilities, she had told Caitlin: one was finding out all you could about any particular issue, and the other was refusing to be immobilized by the complexity of what you discovered.
Maeve’s key was turning in the lock, so Caitlin put the kettle back on. Up until this moment, as far as she knew, the two women had told each other everything, but her conversation with Mulryan had put an end to that.
When McColl arrived back at his hotel on Saturday evening—he had taken the Ford for what he hoped would be a thought-clearing ride in the Wicklow Mountains—the receptionist called him over. “A Miss Hanley telephoned,” the man said, scrambling any thoughts that might have been cleared. “If it’s convenient for you, she would like to meet at eleven tomorrow morning. In the cafeteria at Kingsbridge Station.”
McColl was struck dumb for several seconds. “And if it isn’t convenient?” he eventually asked. “Did she leave a number?”
“No, sir, she didn’t. In the event that you couldn’t be there, she asked that you send word to eleven Mary Street.”
“Thank you,” McColl said automatically, and almost sleepwalked his way up the stairs. This had to be more than coincidence. How did she know he was in Dublin? Unless she’d seen him on the street—which was somewhat unlikely—someone else must have told her. Which raised all sorts of disturbing possibilities, because the only people likely to know were colleagues from the Castle and Irishmen who wanted him dead.
At least she had spared him the task of arranging a meeting. He called Dunwood to pass on the news, stopped off in the empty hotel bar for a couple of sleep-assisting doubles, and finally went to bed, where his wildest hopes and direst fears took turns keeping him awake.
After spending more time than usual in front of the bathroom mirror—had India actually aged him?—McColl left the hotel at half past nine. The sun was shining for the first time in days, and he decided to walk the two miles. He was carrying a revolver in his coat pocket but couldn’t believe he would need it—if she was the bait in a republican trap, why suggest such a public space?
Walking west along the Liffey, he passed a series of families in their Sunday best, but the square outside Kingsbridge Station held only a few hopeful cabs. He passed through onto the concourse, where a very ragged queue was waiting to board a Limerick train. The cafeteria was off to his right.
He was early, but she was earlier, sitting on the far side of the room nursing a cup in both hands. He stood there for a moment, looking at her. She was wearing the same dark coat and skirt but had unbuttoned the former to reveal a pale lilac blouse. As he started across the room, she turned her face toward him, and the merest ghost of a smile crossed her lips, only to be swiftly suppressed. He looked much the same, Caitlin thought, his deep tan even more eye-catching among the pale Irish complexions. He wasn’t a big man, but there was strength in the way he moved, in who he was—she had felt that since their very first meeting in the Peking embassy. He arrived at the table, wondering whether to offer his hand or even risk a kiss on the cheek. As both seemed equally absurd, he just sat down in the opposite chair.
“Hello, Jack,” she said, with what felt like admirable control. God, she thought, this is going to be hard.
“It’s good to see you,” he replied. So good that he was finding it hard not to smile at how lovely she was. “I was surprised to get your message,” he added. Was he imagining it, or was her Irish accent more pronounced?
The waitress arrived to take their order, one coffee for him and a second for her. Out on the platform, a whistle shrilled, presumably announcing the departure for Limerick.
“I heard you were in Dublin,” Caitlin said. “And I decided I wanted—needed—to talk to you. So I rang round the hotels until I found out where you were staying.” Her voice sounded false to herself, but then she didn’t deceive people for a living.
“I’m glad you did,” he said, adding two spoons of sugar to his coffee and wondering whom she’d heard it from. He deemed it wiser not to ask.
Now for the hardest bit, she told herself. “The day before he died, Colm told me that you offered to let him escape.”
So her brother had told her. “I did, but he refused.” She was avoiding his eyes, and he guessed that she was finding it hard to keep her composure. Or to keep from slapping his face.
“Well, thank you for trying,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry I didn’t succeed.”
“Yes, well . . .”
He wanted to lift her eyes from the table. “I hear you met Jed in France.”
The smile that briefly lit her face was the one he remembered. “Yes. It was good to see him again. I wanted to talk to someone I knew,” she added, as if he’d asked for an explanation. “Someone who might tell me the truth about the trenches.”
“I read your piece.”
“Did you?” She sighed. “It’s hell on earth. He said you look at someone you thought you knew and all you see is a bag of blood.”
“Yes,” McColl murmured, as much to himself as to her. The smell of blood always took him back to the night he’d spent on Spion Kop, badly wounded and pinned to the ground by the weight of a dying man. “At least he’s still alive,” he said, before he realized how crass that
sounded. “I’m sorry . . . I wasn’t thinking.”
She placed a hand on top of her head, as if that might keep it from flying off, and looked him straight in the eye. “Why did you deceive me? I know you tried to say something when I came to your apartment, but I was far too angry to listen.”
He took a deep breath. Was he being offered a second chance? “I . . . I was going to tell you I had no choice . . .” He sighed. “But of course I did. When I met you, when we . . . when I fell in love with you, well . . . secret agents are supposed to be secret—they’re not supposed to tell each passing girlfriend who they are. And you made me believe—you were very clear about it—that we would have our affair and then part with no regrets.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“When I met you, I was just a part-time spy—I was a businessman who did odd jobs for my government, partly out of patriotism, mostly because it helped pay the bills and I enjoyed it. The thrill, I suppose. Boys’ games and all that.”
She gave him a strange look, as if surprised, but didn’t say anything.
He plowed on. “In San Francisco I was supposed to investigate links between the German embassy, the local Irish republicans, and Indian exiles. That led to me Father Meagher and your family . . .”
“That’s when you should have told me.” And if only you had, she thought.
He nodded. “I know. Either that or tell my boss that I wasn’t prepared to spy on you or your family.”
“But you didn’t do either.”
“I told myself I wouldn’t have to choose between you and the job, that since no one in your family would be involved in the plot I was investigating, I could carry on doing my job without losing you.”
Caitlin took a deep breath. She didn’t feel ready for forgiveness. “And when did you learn that Colm was involved?” she asked, staring into her empty cup.
“Not until I got back to England. No, that’s not completely true. I found that Seán Tiernan was involved in some sort of plot while I was still in New York, and I guessed that Colm must be, too. But then I was taken off the investigation and sent to Mexico. It was only when I got back to England that I found out they were both in Ireland.”
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