Echowave (Echoland Book 3)

by Joe Joyce

  He found Anderson in his office listening to a joke, and waited for the punchline to ask if he could have a word with him.

  ‘What are you fellows doing these days?’ Anderson retorted in his strong northern accent. ‘Nothing for you to do since the Germans turned their attention to Russia.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you about the Flying Fortress crash in Mayo.’

  Anderson gave him a suspicious eye. ‘You trying to muscle in on our area?’

  ‘There might be a German angle to it.’

  ‘What?’ Anderson said, making no secret of his scepticism.

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

  ‘I didn’t see any Germans there. Unless they were very well disguised as Americans.’

  ‘Were there Americans there? Among the people from the North?’

  Anderson tipped his chair on to its back legs and looked up at Duggan. ‘Just what the fuck are you up to?’

  ‘I’m not sure. We’ve come across a hint that the Germans might be interested in this plane and we’re trying to figure out why that might be.’

  ‘Just want to see how it works,’ Anderson said with dismissive certainty.

  ‘Could be,’ Duggan agreed. ‘But they know they’re not in a position to send a military expert down there to look at it. And they probably know it’s not there any more.’

  ‘How would they know that?’

  ‘People talk to their legation all the time,’ Duggan shrugged. ‘Tell them things.’

  Anderson turned to his colleague. ‘They’re just chasing gossip,’ Anderson said of Duggan and the German desk. ‘Nothing better to be doing.’

  ‘Tell me about what was on board,’ Duggan persisted.

  ‘Ah,’ Anderson laughed. ‘You just want a cigar. Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘If you’re giving them away.’

  ‘Ah, I only got the one. I was much too late getting there. But from what I heard, all of Mayo’s smoking the finest Cuban cigars. After having caviar for breakfast, dinner and tea. And sipping Jim Beam instead of poteen.’

  ‘There was a lot of that on board?’

  ‘Tons of it. Stuff that had never been seen in Mayo before. They didn’t know whether to eat it raw, boil it, bake it or stuff it in a chicken. The Americans know how to look after their legations. Place in London must be a gourmet’s paradise.’

  ‘And it was all gone by the time you got there?’

  Anderson nodded. ‘That bog is an out-of-the-way place. And the locals weren’t in any hurry to notify anyone.’

  ‘What about the crew?’

  ‘They looked after them all right. The co-pilot was dead when they found him, and they took the other two to hospital by horse and cart. But it was a good twelve hours before the guards got there, next morning by the time the LDF was mobilised to protect the site.’

  ‘And there was nothing left by then.’

  ‘No caviar anyway.’

  ‘What about equipment? Was it carrying any?’

  ‘What do you mean, equipment?’

  ‘Was it carrying anything else apart from food and drink?’

  ‘Some office stuff. There were bits of that lying around.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing else I heard of.’

  ‘No weapons?’

  Anderson shook his head. ‘Not even a pistol. The turrets were all empty and I don’t think anyone around there could have removed and disappeared seven heavy-calibre machine guns that fast. Have you ever seen one of those? A Flying Fortress?’

  Duggan shook his head.

  ‘One big bastard of a plane.’

  ‘No mention of documents on board?’ Duggan asked, to throw him off the scent. ‘A diplomatic bag? Anything like that?’

  ‘No. There were a couple of Americans there from the legation when they started the salvage job. That tall fellow with the Swedish name, the intelligence guy . . . ’

  ‘Max Linqvist.’

  Anderson nodded. ‘And the first secretary.’

  ‘You talk to them?’

  ‘Had a word with Linqvist. Asked him if they were as well fed in the Dublin legation as in London. He denied it, said he was only there to see what he could pick up too.’

  ‘Did he stick around for long?’

  ‘A couple of hours.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Duggan couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. If the Germans’ information was correct, surely Linqvist would have been trying to find out what had happened to a missing secret bombsight. ‘He was only there for a few hours altogether?’

  ‘Far as I know.’ Anderson gave him a sharp look again. ‘He didn’t seem half as concerned about it as you. First secretary thanked us for our help with the crew and getting the plane away.’

  ‘Who took it away?’

  ‘An RAF team from Castle Archdale,’ Anderson said, referring to the flying-boat base just across the border on Lough Erne, which sent Catalina patrols out into the Atlantic by the Donegal corridor.

  ‘Any Americans among them?’

  ‘You’re very interested in Americans all of a sudden,’ Anderson noted.

  ‘Just trying to figure out what was going on there.’

  ‘Obvious,’ Anderson said. ‘They were delivering one of these planes to the Brits. Part of the lend-lease thing. And took the opportunity to supply their London legation with goodies at the same time.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Duggan conceded. ‘You know what rumours and gossip are like these days.’

  ‘Of course the Jerries’d like to have a look inside it if they could.’

  Duggan nodded. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said, and headed for the door.

  ‘Keep me in the loop,’ Anderson called after him.

  ‘Sure thing,’ Duggan lied.

  Seven

  Duggan picked up the phone and asked the switchboard to put him through to Dublin Castle. While he waited, he glanced at the front-page headlines in the Irish Times. The US was promising aid to Russia; the Germans and Russians were making contradictory claims of success on the battlefields; the Trade Union Bill banning strikes had been denounced as ‘dictatorship’ in the Dáil; a stockbroker was being questioned about missing money in Cork Bankruptcy Court. A small headline down the page caught his eye as the switchboard in Dublin Castle answered.

  He asked for Garda Peter Gifford in the Special Detective Unit and read the report as he waited. Mr Frank Aiken, it said, was on his way home from America and expected to arrive at the weekend or early the following week, via Lisbon.

  ‘My prayers are answered,’ Gifford said in his ear. ‘They’ve released you from the stockade. The general’s batman changed his story.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Duggan laughed. ‘Can we meet?’

  ‘The batman’s gone back to his first story?’

  ‘Much worse than that.’

  ‘I can’t wait. The Dolphin in half an hour?’

  Duggan replaced the receiver and read the two-sentence story about Aiken’s return again. What if he stops off in Lisbon for a few days, he wondered, and meets the women or priest I talked to? They’d be sure to mention the man from Dublin who’d been asking about his previous visit. Which would put the cat among the pigeons. It wouldn’t take Aiken long to find out who Sean McCarthy really was.

  He shrugged as he left the office. There was no point worrying about it. He didn’t doubt that Commandant McClure would stand by him if necessary. But he had no idea where the original idea of checking on Aiken had come from. From External Affairs, if he had to guess. Not from anyone in the defence forces. But he had no illusions about what would happen if Aiken made a stink about it. That’s what soldiers were for. To make themselves a target in order to find the enemy.

  The day was clammy and overcast. The tide was out and the Liffey had been reduced to little more than a dribble by weeks of drought. The stink from the grey ooze enveloped the quays as he cycled along, trying not to breathe through his nose. He crossed ov
er Father Mathew Bridge in the hope that the smell might be less on the south side, but the windless air was just as bad on Merchant’s Quay as he went by Adam and Eve’s church. The bells from one of the churches in the area pealed out eleven times as he turned into Parliament Street and swung left into Essex Street.

  There was a line of cars parked outside the Dolphin Hotel and a queue of horse-drawn cabs at the back of the Clarence Hotel opposite. Duggan found a lamp post, chained his bicycle to it and walked back to the hotel. The entrance hall was busy with men and women dressed up for a day at the Curragh races, the men with soft hats and binoculars hanging from their shoulders, the women with furs draped around theirs.

  ‘It’ll be a bit of a squeeze,’ one man was saying to another as Duggan tried to make his way behind them, ‘but we’ll fit you in.’

  ‘I can get the special from Kingsbridge at a quarter to one,’ the other protested.

  ‘No you won’t,’ the first man said. ‘You’re not going on the train. You’ll come in the car with us.’

  Duggan checked the bars off to the left, but most were busy too with people drinking and talking with a slightly manic edge. He found Gifford at the end of the curved counter of the lunch bar. It was silent and empty, apart from a couple of men intently examining the racing pages of newspapers. Gifford had two glasses of red lemonade in front of him on the marble counter. He pushed one in front of Duggan as he sat on the stool next to him.

  ‘Not the smartest place to meet on the day that’s in it,’ Gifford said.

  ‘You pick up any tips on the way in?’

  ‘There was a fellow whispering “Easy Chair” to another in the jacks.’

  ‘Worth a shilling each way?’

  ‘For all I know he was talking about furniture, not the Derby.’

  ‘Back to square one then.’

  ‘Or it could be the tide that leads on to fortune.’ Gifford dropped his voice although there was no one near them. ‘You were away?’

  Duggan gave him a slight nod of confirmation and took a sip of the lemonade.

  ‘Moscow?’

  ‘What?’ Duggan laughed in surprise.

  ‘Trouble follows wherever you go,’ Gifford said. ‘So I reckoned Herr Hitler heard you were in Moscow talking to Comrade Stalin and decided, “Enough of this pact, I can’t trust that Bolshie bastard any more. Look at the company he’s keeping now.”’

  Duggan said under his breath, ‘Lisbon.’

  ‘Really?’ Gifford gave a low whistle. ‘And was your mission a

  success?’

  Duggan twisted one hand from side to side in a yes-and-no

  gesture. ‘Time will tell.’

  ‘You can tell me. So what is it? The secret of Fatima? That’s obviously what you were after.’

  Duggan took out a cigarette and lit it, taking his time inhaling. ‘The Irish will inherit the earth.’

  ‘Tell us something we didn’t know.’

  ‘But only when everyone else is finished with it,’ Duggan exhaled.

  Gifford nodded his head in mock seriousness. ‘We truly are a most unfortunate country.’

  ‘What’s new with you?’ Duggan asked, knowing that Gifford wouldn’t press him to say anything about his mission in Lisbon and trusting him to keep the fact of it to himself. Gifford already knew enough secrets about him to land him in serious trouble several times over.

  ‘Nothing much,’ Gifford said. ‘I proposed to Sinead.’

  ‘That’s nothing?’ Duggan said in surprise. Gifford and Sinead had been going out for a year and surreptitiously living together for half that time at weekends, when she pretended to go down the country to her family. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘She turned me down.’

  ‘What? I don’t believe you.’

  ‘“Don’t be daft,” she said in that lovely culchie accent. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”’

  ‘You’re pulling my leg,’ Duggan said, although he could hear Sinead saying exactly that.

  ‘Seems she took to heart some of your incoherent ramblings in which you mentioned something about the Germans executing all secret policemen when they take over here. Said she didn’t want to be a widow.’

  ‘It’s all off?’

  ‘Not so fast, you,’ Gifford smiled at him. ‘Nothing has changed. I’ve just saved myself a lot of trouble over a wedding. And I can go on getting some sleep during the week when she goes back to her digs.’

  ‘You knew she’d say no,’ Duggan realised, with a touch of admiration.

  Gifford gave him a mock bow with a hand on his chest. ‘You have to be up early in the morning to keep a step ahead of these women. You meet any señoritas or whatever they call them in Portugal?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Still in touch with what-you-may-call-her?’

  ‘Grace. Yes.’

  ‘It’s not going to work,’ Gifford said in a sad tone. ‘Absence is one thing. Distance is another kettle of fish, as they say.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘So it’s not woman trouble this time,’ Gifford said, switching to cheerful. ‘You had me worried for a minute that it was some Portuguese señorita on her way over here with a tommy gun in one hand and a message from the Blessed Virgin in the other.’

  ‘No, it’s more mundane,’ Duggan said, stabbing the butt of his cigarette at the ashtray. ‘The black market.’

  ‘The black market?’ Gifford switched to his version of a country accent. ‘And what would you be wanting with the likes of that when you’re guaranteed three square meals a day and have all the petrol you’d be needing for swanning around the country?’

  ‘Your lads haven’t come across an upsurge of American stuff for sale by any chance?’

  ‘Our lads have no more interest in the black market than your average housewife,’ Gifford said, with deliberate ambiguity, of his Special Branch colleagues. ‘But the detective branch is another matter entirely. Some of them have too close an interest in it. If you follow my drift.’

  Duggan nodded. He had come across hints before that some detectives were involved in the city’s thriving black market. ‘Could you keep an eye out for an increase in American cigarettes, booze, food?’

  ‘And why would we be interested in another neutral’s spare produce?’

  Duggan told him about the crash of the Flying Fortress and its cargo. ‘I’d like to find out who’s selling this stuff. Have a word with them.’

  ‘You want to buy some?’

  Duggan checked over his shoulder. There was only one man left in the bar, his pencil poised over the paper in indecision, and no sign of a barman. He told Gifford about the possible missing bombsight but not of how G2 had heard of it. ‘Somebody must have it, even if they don’t know what it is. There’s a chance it’s been offered to the black-marketeers.’

  ‘If it’s not in a bog hole in Mayo.’

  ‘That’s possible.’

  ‘I doubt if any of that stuff has reached the city’s black market,’ Gifford offered. ‘The culchies have probably drunk and smoked it all themselves.’

  ‘That’s possible, too.’ Duggan drained his lemonade. ‘Remember our black-market friend Benny Reilly? Is he still about?’

  ‘Saw him a week or two ago. On a horse and cart in Dawson Street. Gave me a dirty look as if it was my fault he was reduced to that.’

  ‘Is he still at it?’

  ‘Is the Pope still saying his prayers?’

  ‘He hasn’t been pulled in again?’ Duggan had used Reilly for information before, effectively promising him immunity from arrest if he provided it. Which he had.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘I thought they were cracking down on the black market.’

  ‘They blow hot and cold about it,’ Gifford shrugged. ‘All those cars outside aren’t doctors on calls, are they? The powers that be have to make noises about the evils of the black market to reassure those that can’t afford to use it. But they’re afraid of a revolution if they try
and stop those who can afford it from getting their tea and petrol.’

  ‘Has Reilly still got that place in North Lotts?’

  ‘Want to go see?’

  Some of the cars were moving off, packed, as Gifford and Duggan left the hotel and walked along Essex Street and Temple Bar and under Merchant’s Arch. Duggan wheeled his bicycle up and down the steps and over the hump of the Ha’penny Bridge while Gifford held his nose. The tide was beginning to creep up the river, smoothing over the mud, and everybody on the streets seemed to move lethargically under the dirty white sky.

  They turned into a laneway before they reached O’Connell Bridge and then into North Lotts, a stretch of lock-up workshops and stores. ‘I think we’re in luck,’ Gifford said. Halfway down, there was a horse and cart outside an open door.

  Benny Reilly, a wiry middle-aged man, was carrying out a small armchair and putting it alongside other bits of furniture on the dray as they approached. He saw them as he turned back to the shed, and stopped, his shoulders drooping in an unconscious gesture of dismay.

  ‘Mr Reilly,’ Gifford said, with an air of bonhomie. ‘Good to see you engaged in honest toil.’

  ‘Lads,’ Reilly said without enthusiasm, his eyes on Duggan.

  ‘Could we pick your brains about something?’ Duggan asked.

  Reilly glanced up and down the lane. There was nobody about: sounds of hammering and sawing came from a nearby workshop. He indicated with his head and they followed him inside. In the centre of the stone floor was a matching armchair, some kitchen chairs on top of a scrubbed deal table, a coal scuttle, and a fireside set and brass fender.

  ‘Moving house?’ Gifford enquired.

  ‘Not myself.’ Reilly took a half-smoked cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. ‘Haulage job.’

  ‘I appreciate your help in the past,’ Duggan said. ‘And no pressure this time. Just wondering if there’s been an increase of American things on the market recently.’