On the evening of the second day the call came and I took a cab to the Royal Hospital where I was picked up by a bread van which dropped me outside a small terraced house in a mean side street off the Falls Road five minutes later. Inside, I was searched with considerable expertise by two hard and dangerous-looking young men, before being allowed to step into the tiny living room.
The man who had called himself Liam Devlin was sitting at the window in shirtsleeves, writing in an exercise book. He wore reading glasses and there was a Smith & Wesson.38 revolver on the table close to his hand. He put down his pen, took off his-glasses and turned. I looked into that face, ravaged by the years, to see some sign of that other man, and it was there in the bright blue eyes, the ironic quirk.
'You'll know me next time.'
'I will so,' I told him.
'I read that book of yours. Not bad for an Orange boy off the Albertbridge Road. I can't see why you don't take the oath and join the movement. It was good enough for Wolfe Tone and he was a damned Prod too.' He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and put a match to it. 'Now, what's all this about? You said it was urgent, so if it's an interview you're after, I'll have your balls for wasting my time.'
I produced the photo Molly had given me and put it on the desk. 'Your son,' I said. 'Molly thought you'd like to have it.'
He reeled as from a physical blow, his face turned very pale. He sat staring at the photo for a very long time. Finally he said, 'You'd better tell me what it's all about.'
Which I did, and during the telling he constantly interrupted me, correcting the odd fact here, inserting one there. When I came to the final act and Steiner on the terrace at Meltham House he jumped from his seat and got a bottle of Bushmills and two glasses from a cupboard. 'He came that close, did he? By God, he was a man, that one.' He splashed whiskey into the glasses. 'We'll drink to him.'
Which we did. I said. 'I hear you tried teaching in the States for a few years after the war?' 'There was little enough to do here, God knows.'
'And the Churchill affair?' I said. 'Didn't it ever occur to you to let the facts be known?'
'From me?' he said. 'One of the most wanted men in the IRA? Now who in the hell would ever have believed in a story like that coming from me?'
Which was fair enough. 'Tell me,' I said. 'How does a man who told Max Radl in October 1947 that he disapproved of soft target bombing come to be one of the prime architects of the Provisional IRA's present campaign, where the bomb, after all, has been your main weapon?'
There was pain in his eyes and his smile was more savage than anything else. 'As the times change, all men change with them. Some idiot said that, I forget who.'
'Has it been worth it?' I said. 'All these years? The violence, the killings?'
'The cause I represent is a just one,' he said. 'I fight for an ideal of freedom...' Quite suddenly, he broke down and sagged into a chair, his shoulders shaking.
At first I thought that he was crying, but then he looked up and I saw that he was laughing his head off. 'God save us, but all of a sudden I was standing six feet away and listening to myself. I tell you, son, you should try it some time. It's a salutory experience.' He poured himself another whiskey. 'Steiner was right. It's just a bloody senseless game after all and when it gets you by the ballocks it won't let go.'
'Have you any message for Molly?'
'After all these years? From a walking corpse like me? Be your age, son, and now get out of this. 'I've work to do.'
There was the rattle of small arms fire in the distance, the crump of an explosion. I paused at the door. 'Sorry, I almost forgot, Molly sent you a message.'
He looked up, face expressionless. 'Did she?'
'Yes, she said she hoped you finally find those Plains of Mayo.'
He smiled a smile of infinite and terrible sadness and I swear there were tears in his eyes. 'If you see her,' he said simply, 'give her my love. She had it then, she has it now.' He reached for his glasses. 'Now get to hell out of here.'
.
It was almost a year to the day since I had made that astonishing discovery in the churchyard at St Mary and All the Saints when I returned to Studley Constable, this time by direct invitation of Father Philip Vereker. I was admitted by a young priest with an Irish accent.
Vereker was sitting in a wing-back chair in front of a huge fire in the study, a rug about his knees, a dying man if ever I've seen one. The skin seemed to have shrunk on his face, exposing every bone and the eyes were full of pain. 'It was good of you to come.'
'I'm sorry to see you so ill,' I said.
'I have a cancer of the stomach. Nothing to be done. The Bishop has been very good in allowing me to end it here, arranging for Father Damian to assist with parish duties, but that isn't why I sent for you. I hear you've had a busy year.'
'I don't understand,' I said. 'When I was here before you wouldn't say a word. Drove me out, in fact.'
'It's really very simple. For years I've only known half the story myself. I suddenly discover that I have an insatiable curiosity to know the rest before it is too late.'
So I told him because there didn't really seem any reason why I shouldn't. By the time I had finished, the shadows were falling across the grass outside and the room was half in darkness.
'Remarkable,' he said. 'How on earth did you find it all out?'
'Not from any official source, believe me. Just from talking to people, those who are still alive and who were willing to talk. The biggest stroke of luck was in being privileged to read a very comprehensive diary kept by the man responsible for the organization of the whole thing, Colonel Max Radl. His widow is still alive in Bavaria. What I'd like to know now is what happened here afterwards.'
'There was a complete security clampdown. Every single villager involved was interviewed by the intelligence and security people. The Official Secrets Act invoked. Not that it was really necessary. These are a peculiar people. Drawing together in adversity, hostile to strangers, as you have seen. They looked upon it as their business and no one else's.'
'And there was Seymour.'
'Exactly. Did you know that he was killed last February?'
'No.'
'Driving back from Holt one night drunk. He ran his van off the coast road into the marsh and was drowned.'
'What happened to him after the other business?'
'He was quietly certified. Spent eighteen years in an institution before he managed to obtain his release when the mental health laws were relaxed.'
'But how could people stand having him around?'
'He was related by blood to at least half the families in the district. George Wilde's wife, Betty, was his sister.'
'Good God,' I said. 'I didn't realize.'
'In a sense, the silence of the years was also a kind of protection for Seymour.'
'There is another possibility,' I said. 'That the terrible thing he did that night was seen as a reflection on all of them. Something to hide rather than reveal.'
'That, too.'
'And the tombstone?'
'The military engineers who were sent here to clean up the village, repair damage and so on, placed all the bodied in a mass grave in the churchyard. Unmarked, of course and we were told it was to remain so.'
'But you thought differently?'
'Not just me. All of us. Wartime propaganda was a pernicious thing then, however necessary. Every war picture we saw at the cinema, every book we read, every newspaper, portrayed the average German soldier as a ruthless and savage barbarian, but these men were not like that. Graham Wilde is alive today, Susan Turner married with three children because one of Steiner's men gave his life to save them. And at the church, remember, he let the people go.'
'So, a secret monument was decided on?'
That's right. It was easy enough to arrange. Old Ted Turner was a retired monumental mason. It was laid, dedicated by me at a private service, then concealed from the casual observer as you know. The man Preston is down there, too. but w
as not included on the monument.'
'And you all agreed with this?'
He managed one of his rare, wintry smiles. 'As some kind of personal penance if you like. Dancing on his grave was the term Steiner used and he was right. I hated him that day. Could have killed him myself.'
'Why?' I said. 'Because it was a German bullet that crippled you?'
'So I pretended until the day I got down on my knees and asked God to help me face the truth.'
'Joanna Grey?' I said gently.
His face was completely in shadow. I found it impossible to see his expression. 'I am more used to hearing confessions than making them, but yes, you are right. I worshipped Joanna Grey. Oh, not in any silly superficial sexual way. To me she was the most wonderful woman I'd ever known. I can't even begin to describe the shock I experienced on discovering her true role.'
'So in a sense, you blamed Steiner?'
'I think that was the psychology of it.' He sighed. 'So long ago. How old were you in nineteen-forty-three? Twelve, thirteen? Can you remember what it was like?'
'Not really - not in the way you mean.'
'People were tired because the war seemed to have gone on for ever. Can you possibly imagine the terrible blow to national morale if the story of Steiner and his men and what took place here, had got out? That German paratroopers could land in England and come within an ace of snatching the Prime Minister himself?'
'Could come as close as the pull of a finger on the trigger to blowing his head off.'
He nodded. 'Do you still intend to publish?'
'I don't see why not.'
'It didn't happen, you know. No stone any more and who is to say it ever existed? And have you found one single official document to substantiate any of it?'
'Not really,' I said cheerfully. 'But I've spoken to a lot of people and together they've told me what adds up to a pretty convincing story.'
'It could have been,' He smiled faintly. 'If you hadn't missed out on one very important point.'
'And what would that be?'
'Look up any one of two dozen history books on the last war and check what Winston Churchill was doing during the weekend in question. But perhaps that was too simple, too obvious.'
'All right, 'I said. 'You tell me.'
'Getting ready to leave in HMS Renown for the Teheran conference. Called at Algiers on the way, where he invested Generals Eisenhower and Alexander with special versions of the North Africa ribbon and arrived at Malta, as I remember, on the seventeenth November.'
It was suddenly very quiet. I said, 'Who was he?'
'His name was George Howard Foster, known in the profession as the Great Foster.'
'The profession?'
'The stage, Mr Higgins. Foster was a music hall act, an impressionist. The war was his salvation.'
'How was that?'
'He not only did a more than passable imitation of the Prime Minister. He even looked like him. After Dunkirk, he started doing a special act, a kind of grand finale to the show. I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat and tears. We will fight them on the beaches. The audiences loved it.'
'And Intelligence pulled him in?'
'On special occasions. If you intend to send the Prime Minister to sea at the height of the U-boat peril, it's useful to have him publicly appearing elsewhere.' He smiled. 'He gave the performance of his life that night. They all believed it was him, of course. Only Corcoran knew the truth.'
'All right,' I said. 'Where's Foster now?'
'Killed, along with a hundred and eight other people when a flying bomb hit a little theatre in Islington in nineteen-forty-four. So you see, it's all been for nothing. It never happened. Much better for all concerned.'
He went into a bout of coughing that racked his entire body. The door opened and the nun entered. She leaned over him and whispered. He said, 'I'm sorry, it's been a long afternoon. I think I should rest. Thank you for coming and filling in the gaps.'
He started to cough again so I left as quickly as I could and was ushered politely to the door by young Father Damian. On the step I gave him my card. 'If he gets worse.' I hesitated. 'You know what I mean? I'd appreciate hearing from you.'
.
I lit a cigarette and leaned on the flint wall of the churchyard. beside the lychgate. I would checks the facts, of course, but Vereker was telling the truth, I knew that beyond any shadow of a doubt and did it really change anything? I looked towards the porch where Steiner had stood that evening so long ago in confrontation with Harry Kane, thought of him on the terrace at Meltham House, the final, and for him, fatal hesitation. And even if he had pulled that trigger it would still all have been for nothing.
There's irony for you. as Devlin would have said. I could almost hear his laughter. Ah, well, in the final analysis there was nothing I could find to say that would be any improvement on the words of a man who had played his own part so well on that fatal night.
Whatever else may be said, he was a fine soldier and a brave man. Let it end there. I turned and walked away through the rain.
Also by Jack Higgins
Storm Warning
The Savage Day
The Last Place God Made
Day of Judgement
Solo
A Prayer For The Dying
Luciano's Luck
The End
Jack Higgins - Eagle Has Landed Page 43
