by Joe Joyce
‘No,’ Duggan said, looking at him. ‘What happened?’
‘German bomber hit it bang on, amidships. Destroyed the bridge, killed most of the crew and some passengers. A few miles offshore.’
‘Which shore?’ Duggan asked, remembering how vulnerable he had felt when the patrolling Condor had passed over them.
‘This side. I don’t know all the details. I think it was on its way over from Ireland.’
They were already in the countryside, with hardly any traffic on the road. Hopkins drove fast with one languid hand on the steering wheel.
‘You away for long?’
‘A few weeks,’ Duggan said vaguely.
‘In Lisbon?’
‘Only there for a few days,’ Duggan said, aware that Hopkins was continuing the Special Branch men’s interrogation in a friendlier environment. ‘A couple of weeks coming and going.’
‘A quiet passage?’
‘Very quiet, especially on the way back. Hardly saw any signs of the war. A plane or two.’
‘Ours or theirs?’
‘One of each.’ Duggan wound down his window to toss out his cigarette. The countryside looked familiar, lush in its midsummer green, little different from that on the other side of the Irish Sea. Lots of crops in well-tended fields, not many cattle, he noted. ‘On separate occasions. On patrol.’
‘They left you alone?’
Duggan nodded. ‘Had a look at us. And continued about their business.’
They swept past a hay cart drawn by a horse and slowed through a small town of grey stone houses. Hopkins seemed to know where he was going, although there were no direction signs anywhere.
‘What’s happening in Russia?’ Duggan asked when they were back on the open road, passing through a valley between two verdant hills.
‘Another blitzkrieg. The Jerries are cutting through them like a knife through butter. They say they’ve advanced a couple of hundred miles already. It’ll be over in a couple of months.’
‘Jesus,’ Duggan sighed. A thousand-mile front, advancing hundreds of miles in a week or so. It was almost impossible to imagine the scale of that operation. And if the Germans could do that, what could they do to Ireland’s puny defences?
‘Indeed,’ Hopkins nodded. ‘But it’s given us breathing space. You know they were massing troops in Norway last month?’
Duggan shook his head. He hadn’t heard that.
‘It looked like they were preparing to invade the east coast. But it turned out to be a feint, to confuse Stalin about their intentions.’
‘But when they’re finished with the Russians . . . ’ Duggan let the thought hang. ‘What’ll Churchill do then?’
‘Pray,’ Hopkins said, flashing him a humourless grin. ‘Pray that the Americans come in.’
‘Make peace?’
‘Can’t see Winston doing that.’
‘Somebody else then?’
‘Possible,’ Hopkins nodded.
They came up behind a convoy of empty military trucks and remained silent as they leapfrogged them on short straights, the car accelerating fast and with no sound of engine strain. Shortly afterwards, they went down the narrow hill to the bridge over the River Teifi at Cardigan and veered left around the old castle and up the hill on the other side, through what looked to Duggan like the main street.
‘Would you explain your neutrality to me?’ Hopkins asked when they were clear of the town, sounding like he genuinely wanted to know. ‘Why you are persisting with it?’
Duggan did his best to explain it. It was proof of independence, a way of avoiding internal conflict between those who supported the Allies and the Axis, and the only practical way of protecting Ireland's citizens in the absence of a meaningful military force.
‘But we will give you protection,’ Hopkins said.
‘You have your hands full protecting your own people,’ Duggan offered diplomatically. ‘What can you spare for us?’
Hopkins conceded the point with a nod. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘if we go down, you’ll go down too.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Duggan agreed. There was no way Ireland could hold out on its own against a German invasion. Which wouldn’t even be necessary if Britain was overrun: Germany could simply dictate what it wanted to happen in Ireland under its ‘New Europe’ policies.
‘And the Nazis are not noted for their care of the citizens of conquered countries,’ Hopkins added.
Duggan almost smiled at the delicacy with which Hopkins put it, thinking of Gerda’s regular outbursts against their viciousness towards the Jews in Austria. And of Aiken’s speech in Lisbon, in which he might or might not have suggested that a German victory would not be an unthinkable outcome of the war.
‘You agree with this neutrality?’
‘I’m only a soldier,’ Duggan said, deflecting the probe, wondering if Hopkins was sounding him out as a possible agent. ‘Ours not to wonder why.’
Hopkins gave him a sympathetic nod.
They stopped in Aberystwyth at a three-storey hotel on the seafront and got out. ‘I’ll go and check if they have food for us,’ Hopkins said. Duggan stretched himself and looked across the road at the promenade. There were a few people strolling by or sitting on benches, faces raised to the sun. Beyond them, the sea in the half-moon bay looked very calm, and a gentle breeze blew inshore.
‘Turning into an old salt already,’ Hopkins said in an amused tone when he returned. ‘Wishing you were back on the ocean wave.’
‘No thanks,’ Duggan said. ‘I’ve had enough of that.’ So, he thought, the Special Branch detectives had reported to him on their interrogation.
A matronly woman gave him a disapproving look as he followed Hopkins into a low-ceilinged dining room and she showed them to a table by the window. The only other occupants were an elderly couple at another window table.
‘Scrambled eggs on toast,’ the woman said to Duggan. ‘Is that all right for you too?’
‘That would be lovely.’
Duggan excused himself and went in search of the toilet when she had gone. He realised why she had given him that look as soon as he caught his image in the mottled mirror. He was unshaven, his left eye was bloodshot, and the healthy looking tan he had acquired on board the ship seemed to have vanished. His shirt was rumpled and he looked like he had slept in his clothes. Quite a contrast with the nattily dressed Hopkins.
When he returned to the table, Hopkins was watching two young women swinging a small boy between them on the promenade.
The woman came with their plates and a pot of tea on a tray. She kept her distance from Duggan, as if he might be contagious, stretching to place his plate in front of him.
‘What was that about?’ Duggan asked when she left.
‘Probably thinks you’re a deserter,’ Hopkins said. ‘And I’m your long-suffering guardian bringing you back to your unit.’
Duggan laughed and tasted the egg: it was grainy and metallic, unlike any egg he had ever tasted before. Hopkins caught his grimace and pushed the salt across the table. ‘That’ll help,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ Duggan pointed at the egg.
‘Reconstituted egg powder. You still have fresh eggs in Ireland?’
‘I think so,’ Duggan nodded. He had never given the matter any thought. Food was good in the army.
‘Lot to be said for neutrality.’ Hopkins poured cups of tea for both of them. ‘You could add that to your arguments for neutrality. Real eggs.’
Duggan glanced at him but there was no edge to his voice or his demeanour. He didn’t seem to resent Ireland’s position, just accepted it as it was. Which was a surprise to Duggan, who had followed the often bitter attacks on Eire in the English papers. When they had finished their tea, Duggan lit a cigarette.
‘You running out of those in Eire?’ Hopkins asked.
‘Don’t think so,’ Duggan said, thinking of the packets of cigarettes that presumably were waiting for him, along with the wireless, in Dublin. ‘Not yet anyway.’<
br />
‘Going short here. Some shops won’t sell them to women any more.’
‘Why?’
‘Say they should be kept for men. Some will only sell them to men in the Services.’
Duggan wondered what G2 would do with the cigarettes, which had been a cover for his other activities, so that he could produce them if he had to persuade any of the other crewmen that he was just a small-time smuggler. Like their colleague whom he had replaced on the voyage.
‘What did you think of Fritz Wiedermeyer?’ Hopkins asked in the same casual tone.
‘Who?’
‘The man you were talking to in the Metropole Hotel,’ Hopkins said, and added, ‘in Lisbon,’ as though Duggan regularly met Germans in Metropole hotels in many cities.
‘That was his name?’ There was no point denying it, Duggan decided. So they were the ones who told Special Branch about me. Got the police to pick me up. But didn’t share all their information about my meetings in Lisbon. Interesting but not surprising, he thought. It was the same in Dublin between G2 and the Garda Special Branch.
Hopkins nodded. ‘What did he call himself?’
‘He didn’t. I even asked him his name, but he didn’t tell me. Said he was just a courier.’
Hopkins laughed without humour. ‘Good old Fritz. Long time since he was a messenger boy.’
‘You know him?’
‘Haven’t had the pleasure in person. But our paths have crossed.’
‘You’ve been in Lisbon?’
Hopkins confirmed, with a slow flick of his eyelids, that he had. ‘Fritz is a long-time Abwehr man. Probably second in command in Lisbon to von Karstorff.’
Duggan widened his own eyes in surprise. Why would such a high-up Abwehr man want to deliver a transmitter in person to the IRA? Hermann Goertz must be really important to them.
Hopkins nodded, confirming what he was thinking. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to share your conversation with him?’ he smiled.
Duggan widened his hands in a gesture of regret. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Not up to me.’
‘Ours not to reason why.’
‘And hope we don’t have to follow up with the next line.’
‘Do and die,’ Hopkins nodded. ‘Hopefully not.’
‘It was nothing to do with this side of the water,’ Duggan offered after a moment. ‘Internal matters.’
Hopkins nodded as if he understood. ‘I’ll send you Fritz’s file,’ he said. ‘If you’re going back again, I can fill you in on their other people as well.’
‘Doubt if I will be.’ Duggan paused, then decided to go ahead. Since they were trading information. ‘Did you ever come across one who calls himself “Strasser”. Don’t know his first name.’
‘Strasser?’ Hopkins repeated the name as if he was tasting it. He shook his head.
‘Or Maud Browne?’ Duggan enquired.
‘She’s one of theirs?’ Hopkins asked in surprise.
‘No, no,’ Duggan said. ‘I just wondered if you’d ever met her when you were there.’
Hopkins shook his head slowly, as if he was thinking.
‘She’s a presence on the diplomatic circuit, I think,’ Duggan added, watching his reactions.
‘English?’
‘Irish.’
‘I didn’t have the pleasure of mixing with the diplomatic set either,’ Hopkins said. ‘I was only a visiting fireman.’
Duggan decided it would be overstepping an invisible line to ask what fires he had been in Lisbon to extinguish. But he was reasonably sure that Hopkins had never heard of Maud Browne before. Which was not too surprising, even if she was acting as a British agent. In that event she’d be working with MI6, and they probably didn’t tell MI5 everything. If she had passed on information about Aiken’s comments, it was much more likely to have been through the diplomatic circuit: gossip over cocktails. And if she was indeed an MI6 agent, word might filter back through Hopkins that the Irish knew about her. And might stop her telling tales about Irish matters.
Daylight had faded into a midsummer half-dark by the time they had crossed the Menai Bridge into Anglesea and dipped down into Holyhead. The town was blacked out, but the outline of two funnels was visible in the harbour beyond the bulk of the embarkation shed. Smoke was rising almost straight up from one of them.
Hopkins circled down to the harbour, the Rover’s restricted headlights making little impact on the half-light, and parked behind the shed. Before they got out, Hopkins took a small notebook from an inside pocket, wrote a phone number on a page, tore it out and gave it to Duggan. ‘If you ever want to check anything in a hurry,’ he said. ‘Cut through the formal structures.’
Duggan looked at the London number, folded the sheet, and put it in his pocket. ‘You have to go back to London now?’ he asked.
‘In the morning.’
Duggan took his kitbag from the back seat and followed Hopkins to a door into the shed, away from the official entrance. Inside, Hopkins showed something to a policeman and they cut through corridors that bypassed the ticket and travel-permit checks and the customs hall. They came out on the quayside beside the Cambria.
Hopkins stopped beside the gangway, shook Duggan’s hand, and said: ‘One of your people will meet you on the other side. Safe journey.’
‘Thanks,’ Duggan said, and walked aboard the blacked-out ship.
He decided to stay on deck and found a bench on the port side near the stern and lay down on it, using his kitbag as a pillow. He opened his cigarette case and saw that he had only two left and debated whether to have one. He didn’t have any English money on him so couldn’t buy any more on board. I’ll have one when we get going, he thought.
He dozed for a while until the ship began to rumble as the engines picked up power and it moved away from the quay and steamed towards the mouth of the harbour. He stood up and leaned on the rails and listened to the swish of the water and felt a cool breeze break the balmy night air as the mailboat picked up speed. A few others had come on deck and also watched in silence as they slid out of the harbour and the dark coast of Wales passed by. With no lights visible, it looked like an uninhabited land.
He smoked his second-last cigarette and let his memory flick back and forth at random over everything that had happened. Lisbon already seemed like a long time ago. and the questions had mounted up.
Why did this Fritz Wiedermeyer get involved in what they thought was an IRA request for a radio? he thought. Was Maisie O’Gorman as simply flirtatious as she appeared? What had happened to the Rosslare mailboat? What did Aiken really say in Lisbon? Why did MI5 send Hopkins to act as my personal chauffeur? Couldn’t they have just let me go and left it to the High Commission in London to get me back to Ireland? Why did Wiedermeyer meet me in such a public place? Did the Germans want the Brits to pick me up? If so, why? Because they thought I was an IRA man? Or because they thought I was a plant?
The passing waves offered no answers to any of his questions, and he smoked the cigarette down as far as he could before flicking the butt overboard and watching the pinprick of fire being swept back and disappearing. He returned to his bench, lay down, and wasn’t aware of anything until he was woken by the sound of a bottle rolling down the wooden deck and banging into steel.
He sat up and saw that there was a group of men sitting in a half-circle on the deck nearby, bottles of Guinness in their hands, empties rolling around them in tune with the boat’s motion. He stood up, feeling groggy, stretched himself and leaned on the railing. The sky had lightened and the sun was about to break over the horizon, off to their left. He smoked his last cigarette and watched the sunshine settle on to the ship, washing over the funnels and then the bridge as the sun rose and the Irish coast came into view, a series of small humps. They passed by the Kish lightship and he let out a deep breath, relieved to be home.
Six
Captain Bill Sullivan was waiting, in uniform, on the quayside when the Cambria berthed at St Michael’s wharf in Dun Laoghaire harb
our. ‘Jaysus,’ he said when Duggan stepped off the gangway behind the group of navvies, ‘they gave you the third degree.’
‘Not really,’ Duggan yawned. ‘Haven’t slept much in the last
couple of nights.’
‘You look like shit.’
‘Sorry for getting you up so early.’
Duggan followed him into the disembarkation area and around the passport and travel-permit checkers after Sullivan flashed his identity card at them.
‘Not so fast,’ a middle-aged customs officer called as they went by a queue of people having their bags examined at a table.
Sullivan showed him his ID but the customs officer ignored him and told Duggan to put his kitbag on the table. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Sullivan muttered as the customs officer took his time rooting through the dirty clothes. When he’d finished, he chalked a mark on the bag and let Duggan take it back. ‘World’s full of little Hitlers these days,’ Sullivan said, loudly enough for the customs officer to hear him as they walked away.
They went by the waiting train, its idling engine chugging bursts of steam, out of the terminal, by a line of horse-drawn cabs and up to where Sullivan had parked the car. ‘You wouldn’t have any fags on you?’ Duggan asked as they sat into the unmarked Ford Prefect. Sullivan was an occasional smoker, usually of Duggan’s cigarettes.
Sullivan unbuttoned his tunic pocket and handed him a blue packet of Player’s.
‘Buying the strong ones now,’ Duggan said in surprise, as he helped himself to one and offered the open packet to Sullivan.
Sullivan shook his head. ‘That’s one of yours,’ he said. ‘The ones you were smuggling.’
Duggan inhaled a lungful of smoke and felt light-headed from the stronger hit of nicotine on an empty stomach as they drove up Marine Road and turned right into George’s Street at the church. There was no sign of life anywhere; all the shops were shuttered and there was no traffic on the road. The sun was up now, brightening everything with the fresh promise of a new day.
