by Joe Joyce
‘What things?’
‘Whiskey, cigars, exotic food.’
Reilly inhaled deeply and screwed up his face as if the smoke was painful. ‘No,’ he shook his head several times. ‘No.’
‘Is there usually American drink and so on around?’
‘There wouldn’t be much of that these days.’
‘None around at the moment?’
‘Not that I’ve heard.’
‘Any American office equipment? Typewriters? Ribbons?’
Reilly shook his head again.
‘Optical equipment?’
‘Optical equipment?’ Reilly repeated in a surprised tone. ‘Like what?’
‘Things with lenses in them,’ Duggan said vaguely, not knowing what a bombsight looked like. ‘Like microscopes or something.’
‘Microscopes?’ Reilly gave him a look that questioned his sanity.
‘That sort of thing.’
‘Who’d buy that?’ Reilly asked himself, wondering whether there was a market he’d overlooked. ‘Where would American stuff come from?’
‘Same place as the films,’ Gifford interjected.
‘Just following up on some rumours I heard,’ Duggan said.
‘Ask his friends in the Castle,’ Reilly said, inclining his head towards Gifford while still looking at Duggan.
‘Now, now,’ Gifford said. ‘Don’t be cheeky.’
‘They’re the fellows who could tell you all about the black market. I don’t know why you’re asking me.’
‘Because you’re a man who keeps his ear to the ground.’ Duggan gave him a wan smile. ‘Thanks anyway.’
As they left, Duggan said: ‘Sounds like Benny might even have gone legit.’
‘Driven out by the competition,’ Gifford said, with a touch of bitterness. ‘If he has.’
‘From the detective branch? Is nobody doing anything about that?’
‘They’re going to have to clean it up. It’s getting out of hand.’
Gifford stopped when they got back to Bachelors Walk and put his hand out. ‘Gimme a shilling,’ he said. ‘And we’ll go each way on Easy Chair. That had to be a sign back there.’
‘What?’ Duggan laughed. ‘Benny putting easy chairs on his cart?’
‘Too many coincidences,’ Gifford said. ‘Got to be an omen. Third time lucky.’
Duggan leaned against the crossbar of his bicycle as he rooted in his pockets and found a shilling.
‘Make it a half-crown,’ Gifford said.
‘It wasn’t that big a sign.’
‘A sign’s a sign. Can’t be ignored.’
Duggan took out a handful of change and handed him another shilling and a sixpenny piece.
‘See you back in the Dolphin later for a juicy steak with the winnings,’ Gifford said, giving him a wink and a one-fingered salute, and heading towards O’Connell Street.
Duggan cycled back along the quays between the unused tramlines, taking his time but still arriving at the Red House in a sweat from the humid air. Sullivan was picking at his typewriter in their office. ‘How’s Herr Dr Goertz today?’ Duggan asked, as he draped his jacket over the back of his own chair. Sullivan had been to see Goertz around the corner in Arbour Hill Prison earlier.
‘Chatty as usual,’ Sullivan said. ‘But I don’t know if it solves our problem.’ He held up a sheaf of photocopies from beside his typewriter. ‘The full transcript of the Germans’ message to him. It looks like there’s a confirmation code in there.’
‘Fuck,’ Duggan said with feeling, as he took the pages and scanned the clean copy of the decoded message. He noted in passing that the missing bombsight was called a ‘Norden’, but his attention quickly leapt to the last line. ‘Alles ist gut in Mannheim.’
‘Bollocks,’ Duggan said, slapping the papers back down on the table. The trip to Lisbon had been a waste of time, the whole operation a failure. ‘All’s well in Mannheim’ was clearly an identity phrase to which they did not have the required response. And without it, the Germans would know that Duggan was not in touch with Goertz at all, that the radio they had given him was compromised, and that the Sean McCarthy they’d met was probably an enemy agent.
‘All’s not lost, the boss says.’
‘Why not?’ Duggan threw his hands in the air. ‘They’ll know it’s not from Goertz as soon as we send them the return message.’
‘He thinks they might be bluffing.’
‘Why would they be bluffing?’
‘He didn’t explain his thinking to me,’ Sullivan said, shrugging. ‘Just told me to ask Goertz a couple of questions, like ‘Do you miss Mannheim?’ and note his demeanour as well as the answers.’
‘And?’ Duggan prompted.
‘And,’ Sullivan pointed at what he had just typed and read from it, ‘he replied, “I’ve never been in Mannheim.” Subject seemed surprised by the question. I said, “I thought you had friends or relations there.” Subject replied, “No. Where did you get that idea?”’
Duggan sat back against the side of the table and folded his arms. ‘How did he seemed surprised? Surprised that you knew about Mannheim? Or surprised because he doesn’t know Mannheim or anyone there?’
‘Surprised at why I mentioned Mannheim,’ Sullivan said. ‘My first reaction was that he doesn’t know about any password system using Mannheim.’
Duggan gave that a moment’s thought. ‘Maybe the commandant’s right,’ he said. ‘Is he upstairs?’
‘Far as I know.’
Duggan took the stairs two at a time. ‘The very man,’ McClure said, looking up from something he was writing. ‘Take a look at this.’
Duggan took the proffered sheet and read carefully through McClure’s neat German script. It said the message had been received and understood. Their Irish friends would investigate and report back, but the communication channels could be slow. It ended with ‘Alles ist gut hier.’
‘You think their code is a bluff?’
‘Better than a fifty-fifty chance,’ McClure said, picking up his cigarette from the ashtray. ‘Look at it this way. By his own admission, Goertz hasn’t been able to communicate directly with them since he lost his radio when he arrived here. They probably had a time-limited recognition confirmation, but it was never used, and that time is long past. And if they really had a confirmation sequence, wouldn’t they have used it first to establish contact, without mentioning anything about the bombsight? And Sullivan says Goertz seemed genuinely surprised at why anyone would mention Mannheim to him.’
‘He just told me.’
‘But you’re not convinced?’
‘There’s a lot of presumptions there.’
‘What do you suggest we do?’
Duggan shrugged, on the spot. ‘Send word to them that the operation was aborted by Sean McCarthy’s arrest in Pembroke. And that the British seized the radio equipment. And try to set up another meeting in Lisbon.’
McClure gave him one of his long stares and slowly broke into a crooked smile. ‘That might be a good fallback position. Let’s play it my way for the moment. And if it appears that they don’t believe they’re communicating with Goertz, we can switch to your story. Let them think it was the British who were trying to fool them.’
‘Could be a dangerous game.’
‘Aren’t they all these days?’ McClure said, taking back his written message. ‘We’ll get this coded and you can take it out to Greystones this evening and have it transmitted. Getting anywhere with the missing bombsight?’
‘Nowhere yet. Other than wondering if it really exists. That plane seemed to be full of food and drink.’
McClure pulled another file out of the teetering pile on the left of his desk. ‘Have a word with Commandant Flood in the Air Corps. He might know something about this bombsight. The RAF invited him up to Aldergrove recently. Showed him some of their secret equipment, some radio-detection thing that can see planes long before they come into view. His report,’ McClure handed over the file, ‘doesn’t say anythi
ng about bombsights, but he might have heard some casual chat in the mess about the Flying Fortress.’
Duggan stopped at the door as he was about to leave. ‘I see Mr Aiken is on his way home. I hope he doesn’t do the rounds in Lisbon again.’
McClure took a moment to interpret what he had heard. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘He can’t wait to get home, apparently.’
Duggan went down the stairs, half reassured, but knowing that it would only take a moment’s conversation between Aiken and one of the people he had met to land him back in the infantry. At best.
Shops were winding up their canopies and offices were emptying as Duggan made his way across South King Street, on to Stephen’s Green and on up Harcourt Street to the station. He tied up his bicycle, bought an Evening Herald from a newsboy, went up the steps into the station and queued to buy a return ticket to Greystones.
He made it to the platform just in time and found a seat across the aisle from four businessmen, who had already resumed their twice-daily poker game. The headlines had the Minister for Supplies warning that the worst was yet to come, that people had to prepare themselves for greater shortages and the danger of a breakdown of order. The government might not be able to maintain control, he had said.
There were the usual conflicting claims by the Germans and Russians of breakthroughs and successful counter-attacks, and the Press Association’s unnamed military correspondent suggested that it might take the Germans longer than the predicted month to defeat the Soviet Union. It could take between six weeks and two months.
Only a respite, Duggan thought as the train stopped at Milltown and then built up steam to cross the Nine Arches Viaduct and sped through open fields to Dundrum. That’s why the government was making such warnings. Trying to shake people out of their complacency. In spite of the bombing of the North Strand and some other incidents, the war seemed to be moving further away. And all the false alarms of the previous years had created a dangerous sense of security that neutrality was enough to protect them. If the German blitzkrieg worked again in the east, that would change very fast.
The pot of silver coins in the poker game opposite Duggan grew as two players raised each other and the tension somehow spread across the aisle. Everyone in the vicinity watched in silence as one man studied his cards again, then pushed two shilling pieces into the pot and said, ‘See you. And raise you another shilling.’
The man opposite him flicked a two-shilling piece forward without bothering to look at his cards. ‘Another bob,’ he said.
The first man took a deep breath in through his nose and examined his cards again as if he might find something different. He sighed and pushed forward another two-shilling piece. ‘Up again,’ he said.
The train stopped at Dundrum station and one of the men opposite Duggan waited until the last moment to see the outcome before having to hurry off without knowing who had won. As the train shuddered and began to move again, the second man gave a confident smile and said, ‘Why stop now?’ as he flicked another two-shilling piece into the pot.
‘Ah,’ the first man said, ‘I don’t want to bankrupt you. See you.’
The second man turned up his cards. ‘Ace-high straight,’ he said.
‘Four tens,’ the first man said with an apologetic smile.
‘Jaysus,’ one of the other players breathed as the first man scooped his winnings towards himself with a cupped hand.
Nicely played, Duggan thought, going back to his paper. The winner had raised the stakes by appearing uncertain, confirming the other man's belief in the strength of his own hand. It was a salutary reminder of how you could lose while thinking you held all the right cards. Thinking of winning and losing, he remembered the bet on the Derby as the train slowed into Foxrock station and passed the siding for Leopardstown racecourse and the deserted stand beyond. The ‘Stop Press’ box on the back page of the Herald had the result of the 3.25 and the 3.55 Derby from the Curragh. Easy Chair wasn’t in the first three.
So much for signs and omens, Duggan thought.
The businessmen were still playing their cards when the train reached Greystones and they packed up and got off without a word. Duggan followed them across the footbridge and out of the station, where the two who had played for the big pot headed together across the road into the Burnaby. The other two turned right towards the town.
‘That’s one hand Harry won’t be telling Mabel about,’ one said to the other.
‘He can afford it,’ the other said. ‘You know he made a killing on the market last week?’
Duggan veered off to the right, crossed the railway line and knocked on the door of a terraced house. It was opened by a man in his thirties in an open shirt and trousers. Duggan identified himself and the man said he was Sergeant O’Neill.
‘All set?’
‘All set, sir.’
Duggan followed O’Neill up the bare stairs, their footsteps reverberating through the empty house, and into a bedroom at the back. The transmitter was on a trestle table, with a chair in front of it, and an aerial was strung across the room. Its dial and valves were already lit up.
‘Anything from them?’
‘Not a peep,’ O’Neill said.
Duggan gave him the page of code and checked his watch. It was almost the time slot he’d been given for transmission. ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he said.
O’Neill unfolded the chair, sat down, put on the headphones and began tapping the call sign. Duggan stood back against the wall beside the small window and watched. O’Neill finished and waited, then repeated the call sign. After several tries, he shifted one of the earphones off his right ear and said, ‘No response so far.’
‘Is it a good evening for transmitting?’
O’Neill nodded while sending his call sign again. ‘Pretty good. Not too much interference yet. It’ll get worse as the night draws in.’
‘Will they be able to tell where the signal’s coming from?’
‘The British?’
‘The Germans.’
‘Depends how badly they want to know. How much effort they put into triangulating it.’
‘And they’ll be able to tell it’s from here? Greystones?’
‘In theory, but in practice – I doubt it.’ His fingers tapped away as if they had a mind of their own. ‘The British keep complaining about radio signals from Ireland but they can’t tell us exactly where they’re coming from, and they’re a lot closer to us. North of Dublin is all they can say.’
‘But the Germans would be able to tell it’s from Ireland?’
‘If they really wanted to know.’ He raised a finger, put the earphone back in place, and then raised a thumb. ‘You want me to send?’
Duggan nodded and O’Neill straightened the page of code with his left hand and began transmitting the stream of letters with his right. The play, as McClure called it, was on.
Eight
Duggan felt the wind in his hair and heard an unbroken chorus of birdsong as he freewheeled down the hill after leaving the main road to Naas. Around him, the bushes, heavy with foliage, nearly enclosed the narrow road, revealing only glimpses of fields of wheat and corn as he sped by. He caught a sweet whiff of newly mown hay before he saw the shorn meadow, a rare enough sight these days. He slowed down, swung his leg over the saddle and coasted up to the sentry at the Air Corps’ headquarters.
‘Captain Duggan from headquarters to see Commandant Flood.’
‘He said to send you around to the hangar, sir,’ the sentry said, pointing around to the side. ‘The one on the left.’
Duggan followed the roadway up a line of Nissen huts and past an anti-aircraft unit, its Bofors 50-millimetre cannon pointed at the sky to the east. Two Gloster Gladiator biplane fighters were parked in front of one of the hangers, facing the grass runway sloping up to the south-west towards Saggart. A twin-engined Avro Anson patrol aircraft was being refuelled by a tanker in front of the other hangar. Another anti-aircraft gun pointed up from an emplaceme
nt in the centre of the field, and he could see concrete machine-gun positions around the perimeter of the field.
Duggan parked his bicycle and went into the hangar on the left and followed the whine of a mechanical saw cutting through metal towards the back. A group of men in fatigues were gathered around a Hurricane fighter with one wing, no cowling and a blackened gap where the engine should have been. The RAF markings were clear along its muddied and scorched side. A man in full uniform was standing a little apart, watching the mechanics with his arms folded and a scowl.
Duggan approached, saluted formally and identified himself.
Commandant Flood glanced at him and then turned back to continue scowling at the mechanics grappling with the engine on the floor.
‘You read my report?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘There’s nothing more to tell you. I told Commandant McClure you were wasting your time coming out here.’
‘We were hoping, sir, that you might have heard something about the American Flying Fortress crash.’
‘There was nothing to hear about it. They thanked me for our help in having it returned across the border. That was all.’
‘Was there any mention of a missing bombsight?’
‘I just told you, Captain,’ Flood said, turning the full force of his glare on Duggan, ‘there was no mention of anything to do with the plane. Besides,’ he seemed to remember something, ‘that aircraft was not fitted out as a military plane.’
‘The bombsight was part of the cargo, sir.’
‘Why would it be carrying a bombsight as cargo?’
‘We understand it was a newly developed bombsight. Something called a Norden.’
Flood turned his attention back to the mechanics working on the Hurricane.
‘And we were hoping you might be able to tell us something about it,’ Duggan ventured, not sure whether he had been dismissed or not.
‘Tell you what about it?’ Commandant Flood turned back to him. ‘It’s a secret bombsight developed by the Americans. How would I know anything about it?’
