The Dutchman had aged well, the years since the war having been kind to him. His long nose and high cheekbones gave him an aristocratic appearance, as if wealth were his by birthright, not labour.
The money had been delivered to Rotterdam by an Arab courier who retrieved the funds from a bank in Switzerland in return for a five percent commission. Skorzeny had been told by more than one source that the Arab was actually an Algerian of Berber descent, but he had never been able to confirm the speculation. Regardless of origin, the Arab travelled with two bodyguards, both hulking dark-skinned men also of uncertain nationality. Only a very brave or very foolish man would think of robbing him.
The Arab always took his percentage in dollars. Skorzeny had heard that he spent most of it in Rotterdam’s brothels, but again, he had no proof of this claim.
Satisfied, Skorzeny peeled off one thousand Irish pounds and handed them to Menten. He transferred the rest to the safe mounted in the wall behind his desk, shielded the combination with his broad body as he locked the door. He returned the landscape painting to its hook.
Menten lifted the cloth-wrapped rectangle that sat at his feet. “A small token,” he said in English.
Skorzeny took the package, unwrapped the cloth, revealing a small simply framed portrait of a young woman dressed in black. A bird perched on her hand.
“By Hans Holbein the Younger,” Menten said. “Painted on his return to Basel circa 1530. Exquisite, don’t you think?”
“Quite beautiful,” Skorzeny said, taking his seat across the desk from Menten. “And very much appreciated, mein Kamerad. Is it from your own collection?”
Pieter Menten’s personal art collection had once been so large he had required his own private train in order to transport it.
“No, it is newly acquired. From an old Kamerad, Dominik Foerster. Do you remember him?”
Skorzeny thought back, remembered a thin bespectacled man he had met once in Berlin. “I believe so.”
“I chanced upon him while spending a weekend in Noordwijk, on the Dutch coast. He was staying in a small boarding house under an assumed name. He was in rather a state of distress, living in constant fear of discovery by some fanatic or another. I told him he might be able to find sanctuary in Ireland, and perhaps travel on to South America if he had sufficient funds. Wisely, most of his assets are tied up in art he liberated from the Jews.”
Skorzeny held the painting at arm’s length, admiring the detail in the girl’s clothing, the glistening of her eyes.
“Yes, very wise,” he said. “Tell him to contact Abbot Verlinden at Priorij Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Gent. I will send a letter of introduction on his behalf. Abbot Verlinden will in turn make introductions to the appropriate institutions in Ireland and help our Kamerad make travel arrangements. Whatever costs he cannot meet personally can be funded from our account in Zurich.”
Menten smiled. “Thank you. Dominik will be most relieved. I will contact him on my return to Rotterdam in a few days. Before that, I have property to view in Waterford.”
“Waterford?” Skorzeney asked. “It’s beautiful country there. Have the Irish authorities been accommodating?”
Menten nodded. “As much as one could hope for. But my contact in the Department of Justice has advised me to take another name.”
Skorzeny had been fortunate to be denazified by the German authorities. It had taken a considerable sum of money, but the ability to live in freedom under his own name had been worth the cost of the bribes.
“You would be wise to take his advice.”
“I intend to.” Menten gave a nod, a look of regret on his round face.
“Good. Frau Tiernan will serve dinner in an hour or so. You will stay, of course.”
“Yes, thank you.” Menten leaned forward. “What of the killings? I heard about Kamerad Krauss before I sailed from Rotterdam.”
“There has been another,” Skorzeny said.
“My God. Who?”
“A Breton. No one important. An Irishman also. They caused me a late night, but my friend the Minister for Justice has put his best man on it.”
Skorzeny did not blush at the lie. He did not consider the minister a friend. More a useful acquaintance. He knew full well that the likes of Haughey were drawn to his notoriety, desired his company so that they could bask in his reflected glamour.
Fools, all of them.
“I’m glad to hear this,” Menten said. “Helmut Krauss was a good man. He didn’t deserve such a fate.”
“Helmut Krauss was a drunkard and a womaniser. We each meet the fate that awaits us, whether we deserve it or not.”
Menten withered under his stare, visibly struggling with the desire to argue with Skorzeny’s opinion of his old friend. Eventually, he moistened his lips and said, “Naturally, they will suspect Jewish extremists. Or the Mossad, perhaps.”
He considered telling Menten the truth, but realised it would be easier to allow him the comfort of his hate. “Of course,” he said.
SKORZENY HAD SPENT the following day in the fields, watching as his farmhands herded the sheep from one paddock to another. He admired the dogs and the way their master, a long red-faced rope of a man called Tiernan, controlled them with whistles and yips.
Skorzeny had observed from the top of the slope as the dogs arced out across the grass, and he was reminded of fighter planes flying in attack formations. Tiernan’s whistle gave a short pip, and the dogs halted, crouched low to the ground, their concentration absolute. One was the sire to the other, Tiernan had said, and the youngster took hardly any training at all, he simply watched what his father did and copied him.
Another blast of the whistle and the dogs sprang forward, working in tandem, circling the flock, gathering the sheep up like hands scooping earth. Within minutes, the flock had streamed into the next field and one of the farmhands had swung the gate closed behind them.
Their task complete, the dogs ran to their master and lay at his feet. Tiernan reached down and scratched each of them behind the ears with his knotty hands.
Not for the first time, Otto Skorzeny wondered at the difference between what brought him happiness now and twenty years before. As a younger man, it had been the smell of cordite, air burned by gunpowder, the thunder and screech of battle. And boys, strong beautiful brave boys, charging into death’s maw, all at his command.
Now his belly had grown and his hips and knees sometimes rebelled; now the inclines of his fields often robbed his lungs of breath as his thighs ached with the climb. But age did not concern Skorzeny to any great degree. Despite the signals of his deterioration, he remained in good health. He could count on another ten or fifteen years of good living, maybe a further ten of tolerable existence, before his heart gave out.
He would fill that time as he had this day, walking in his fields, admiring the work of the men who tended them, watching the dogs perform their duties with the dedication only a simple mind can summon.
And of course that made for good soldiers. For Skorzeny, the best infantrymen came from the working classes. Men used to spending their days toiling in factories or fields, their minds concerned only with the tasks before them. Give such men rifles and an enemy to shoot at, and one could see the natural order of life played out in gunfire and blood.
A good commando was a different beast entirely. That required a higher mind, and more than a little cunning, an intelligence matched to a hardness of the heart.
Someone like Lieutenant Ryan.
Skorzeny had seen it on the Irishman when he first entered the suite at the Grand Hotel in Malahide. Ryan had not flinched when he saw the bodies at the cottage, even at the gaping hole in Groix’s temple, the burnt hair, the torn scalp. Ryan had that flint at his centre, the same kind Skorzeny himself had.
And Ryan was smart. Not like Haughey, whose intelligence and guile served only his greed. Ryan possessed an acumen earned in the barren and bloody places of the world. Skorzeny had no doubt that Ryan could find the traitor. But would th
e Irishman bring the traitor here to him? Ryan would surely know what awaited the informant. Would he have the mettle to knowingly deliver a prisoner to such a fate?
Skorzeny could not be sure.
When he returned to his house, he washed and changed, then went to his study. He had intended to summon Lainé but found him already waiting there, smoking one of those stinking cigarettes he rolled himself.
The thin Frenchman sat hunched in the chair, arms and legs crossed, making him appear crippled, malformed. Skorzeny sat opposite and took a cigarette from the case on his desk. He quietly wished Lainé had stolen one of these instead of filling the office with his own bitter smoke.
Lainé asked, “Qui est l’Irlandais?”
Skorzeny had spoken French fluently since a young age. “I told you. Lieutenant Albert Ryan, G2, Directorate of Intelligence.”
“I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.”
“You don’t have to trust him,” Skorzeny said. “Just let him do his job. I have faith in his ability. He’s a soldier. Like me.”
Lainé inclined his head to show he hadn’t missed Skorzeny’s veiled insult. “What was I, a washerwoman?”
Skorzeny chose not to answer the question. Instead, he said, “I would appreciate it if you stayed in your room this evening. I have important guests coming to dinner.”
Lainé’s tongue licked tobacco flakes from his lips. He spat them out, pfft. “What guests?”
Skorzeny looked at the damp flakes that landed on the leather of his desktop. “Political guests. Esteban will bring you a tray and a bottle from the cellar.”
Lainé’s eyes brightened. “You have a cellar?”
“Frau Tiernan is cooking lamb, so I suggest the ’55 Penfolds Grange Shiraz. It’s Australian, but excellent.”
Lainé’s lip curled at the wine’s origin, then he shrugged and nodded. “All right. But I tell you, I don’t like the Irishman. How do you know he won’t betray us?”
Skorzeny shook his head. “He is a soldier. A good one. He will follow orders. Besides, I have placed someone close to him. Someone to keep watch for us.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE LANDLADY SHOWED Ryan to the parlour with its stiff-cushioned chairs and dark wallpaper. Two young women had peeked down at him from the landing above when he entered the boarding house. They had ducked back beyond the banister, giggling, when he looked up at them.
Mrs. Highland left Ryan alone to fidget on the settee. She returned a few minutes later, said Celia would be down presently.
“What are your plans for the evening?” she asked, hovering by the door as if standing sentry, her hair pulled back hard into a bun, her smile polite and tight-lipped.
“The pictures,” Ryan said.
“Oh? What’s playing?”
“The James Bond film. Dr. No. It’s based on a book by Ian Fleming.”
Her smile turned to a scowl. “I hear those books are really quite vulgar.”
Sweat gathered at the small of Ryan’s back. “I haven’t read any of them.”
“Hmm. As I’m sure you can see, I run a respectable house. I regard my girls not just as lodgers, but as wards in my care. I know some of their parents personally. I won’t insist, but I would be grateful if you brought Miss Hume back before eleven o’clock.”
Ryan smiled and nodded.
The door opened, and Celia entered. Her red hair gathered loose above her shoulders, the short-sleeved green dress simple and snug, an emerald broach the only embellishment. Mrs. Highland stood back, frowning at the sight of Celia’s freckled skin. Celia ignored her.
“Albert,” she said.
Ryan stood. “Celia.”
They stood in silence save for the ticking of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece until Celia said, “Thank you, Mrs. Highland.”
The landlady looked at them each in turn, cleared her throat. “Well, I’ll leave you two to make your plans. Good evening, Mr. Ryan.”
He bowed his head. “Good evening.”
Mrs. Highland left them, closed the door behind her. Ryan heard her scold the girls on the stairs.
Celia’s green-eyed gaze caused Ryan’s mouth to dry and his lips to seal shut.
When he thought he could bear the silence no longer, she said, “Mrs. Highland does like to fuss over her girls.”
Ryan’s laugh burst from him like a greyhound from a trap. He blushed, and Celia smiled.
“Shall we go?” she asked.
THEY SAT IN the flickering dark, still and silent. Other couples leaned close, touched, the silhouettes of their heads sometimes joining together. Everyone in the room oohed in soft unison as Ursula Andress emerged tanned and shining from the sea.
The girl next to Celia looked up for a moment before turning her lips back to the boy whose hand had slipped inside her blouse. Ryan watched the shapes of the boy’s fingers move beneath the fabric. When he raised his eyes, he saw Celia looking back at him, a sly smile, her eyes glistening in the dimness.
THEY WALKED SOUTH along D’Olier Street towards the northerly buildings of Trinity College, Celia’s arm hooked in Ryan’s. A rain shower had slicked the pavement while they’d been in the cinema, street lights reflected in the sheen. The windows of the Irish Times building glowed across the way.
“He’s ever so handsome,” she said.
“Sean Connery?”
“Yes. I met him once, at a party in London. Well, I didn’t meet him exactly, he was in the room. It was last year, just before Dr. No came out in England. You could tell to look at him he’d be a star. He had a grace about him, like an animal, a tiger or a leopard, something dangerous and beautiful.”
She spoke the words as if they were the most savoury ingredients of an exotic recipe.
“I don’t suppose it’s really like that, is it? Being a secret agent.”
Ryan smiled. “I’m not a secret agent.”
“Well, you’re G2. It’s the nearest thing we have to a secret agent in our little country.”
“Maybe so, but it’s nothing like that film.”
“No?” She forced an exaggerated frown of disappointment. “No lithe beauties coming ashore and throwing themselves at you?”
They reached the end of the street, the elaborate facade of D’Olier Chambers rising above them. Celia indicated the pub tucked away on Fleet Street, opposite.
“Buy me a drink,” she said.
Inside, thick curtains of tobacco smoke hung in the air. Ryan went to the bar while Celia found a snug at the rear. The barman stared in confusion when he asked for lime in the gin and tonic, so lemon had to do.
Suited men, red faced with shirt collars unbuttoned, guffawed and shouted. Journalists, Ryan guessed, writers for the Irish Times, downing whiskeys and pints of stout, exchanging stories. They had watched Celia as she entered on Ryan’s arm, their eyes following the flow of her through the room. Ryan had felt no offence at their covetous stares. Instead he had felt pride, his vanity glowing like a filament in his chest.
Many would have thought it scandalous for a young woman to enter a pub like this, but that didn’t seem to bother Celia. But the lack of lime in her drink did.
“Rum and Coca Cola would be fine next time,” she said, her smile polite but scolding.
Ryan wondered if he should apologise. Instead, he sipped his half of Guinness. Celia’s gaze settled somewhere beneath his chin.
“Isn’t that the same tie you wore in Malahide?” she asked.
His fingers went to the silk before he could stop them. “Is it? I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to fashion.”
“Really? It’s a very nice suit. What is it?”
She reached across the table, lifted his lapel and read the label on the inside pocket.
“Canali. Italian. You dress well for a man who doesn’t follow fashion. Better than most of the men in Dublin, anyway. Have you ever been to Paris?”
“I’ve passed through,” he said.
She told him about her time there, stationed i
n the Irish embassy, a Third Secretary. How she walked around Montmartre, and how once, entirely out of the blue, a man came right up to her and asked her to model for him.
“And did you agree to it?” Ryan asked.
“Almost,” she said. She leaned close, shielded her mouth with her hand, and whispered, “Until he said it was to be a nude.”
She said her father was a High Court judge, now retired, a fussy old man, stiff with snobbery, but she loved him all the more for it. He told her about his father and his little grocery store where he had toiled for year upon year, just like his father before him, with little to show for it.
Celia told him about the garden party for President Kennedy that was scheduled for the Aras, President de Valera’s official residence. She had been promised an invitation, and confessed that the idea of being in the company of, perhaps even meeting, Kennedy and his beautiful wife made her giddy as the schoolgirl she had been at Mount Anville, the private convent where she had received her education.
They talked about the places they had been, each in the line of their work, he as a soldier, she as Third Secretary to one diplomatic mission or another. Ryan talked about the cold Dutch fields and the warm Sicilian streets, the days dug into gritty ditches in Egypt, the stifling wet heat of the Korean summer followed by the hard bite of its winter. Celia spoke of days typing letters, fetching coffee, collecting dry cleaning, the tedium made worthwhile by parties in hotel suites with cocktail bars and gilded furniture. Months spent in one city or another, weekends on yachts, banquets in palaces.
At twenty six she had seen more of life than almost any man, and certainly any woman, Ryan had ever known. So different from the girls he had shared coy exchanges with as a boy and a young man, so confident in her words and her gestures. Her hands did not lie curled in her lap. Instead they moved with her speech, bold and free. She did not wait her turn to speak in deference to his masculinity. She laughed from her belly, out loud, didn’t titter politely as if she sat in a church pew. She knew the world.
But not the barren places, the dark corners, the bleeding crevices. He measured his words, allowed her a glimpse of the harsh terrains he knew, but no more. Men came back damaged from such places, their souls scooped out of them. He did not wish her to think he was one of them, even if he sometimes feared he was.
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