by Joe Joyce
‘You’ve heard of it,’ Duggan said, making it a statement rather than a question. He had probably heard something about it on his visit north, Duggan thought, but hadn’t mentioned it in his report and wasn’t going to admit it now. ‘We’d like to know what it might look like, how big it might be, what it would weigh.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we believe there was one on board the Flying Fortress and it has gone missing. Somebody in this country probably has it.’
‘Fat lot of good it’ll do them.’
‘We’d like to find it.’
‘Why?’ Flood repeated. ‘What use would it be to us? We don’t want to bomb anyone.’ He waved his hand around the hangar, at all the bits and pieces of airframes and engines and other assorted equipment. ‘We’ve our hands full trying to put together a fighter or two from crashed planes.’
‘We have reason to believe the Germans are interested in getting their hands on it, sir.’
Comprehension dawned on Flood’s face and he nodded, turned and walked away. Duggan wasn’t sure whether the interview was over or not, but after a moment’s hesitation, he followed Flood. The commandant marched over to the other side of the hangar, to an area of shelving and workbenches, as one engine started up outside, followed by a second. They built to a roar and then throttled back to idle. Flood walked along the bench until he found what he was looking for: a dented, grey, irregular-shaped box with two big dials on its side. ‘Bombsight from a Heinkel,’ he said, pulling it forward to the edge of the bench.
It was about eighteen inches high and a foot across. Duggan lifted it up and reckoned it was three or four stone-weight: not something that would be carried about easily, but transportable. ‘The dials set the altitude and wind speed,’ Flood said, and pointed to an eyepiece on the top, ‘and the bombardier looks through there and the machine calculates when to release the bombs.’
‘Would the American one be about the same size?’
The commandant shrugged. ‘Can’t be much bigger. They have to take it to a special storage vault at the airfield every time they land, so the bombardier has to be able to carry it without too much difficulty.’ He paused. ‘They say there’s a thermite grenade built into it, so it’s destroyed if the aircraft crashes. Turns it into a lump of molten metal.’
‘Could that have happened in the Flying Fortress?’ Duggan asked, looking at him in surprise.
‘There was no bombsight in situ,’ Flood said with a hint of impatience. ‘There was no bombardier on board. And no lumps of molten metal found in the nose, for that matter.’
Duggan finished his examination of the German bombsight and thanked the commandant for his help, but Flood seemed more eager to talk now. ‘What makes you think there was a Norden on board?’ he asked.
‘Sorry, sir. I’m not sure I’m at liberty to say. I can ask Commandant McClure to . . . ’
Flood cut him short with a wave of his hand. ‘No need. The Americans treat the Norden as the ace up their sleeve if they get involved. The card that’d win the war for them.’
‘Really?’
‘So they say,’ the commandant said, nodding, without specifying who ‘they’ were. Duggan assumed ‘they’ were some RAF people with whom he’d had a drink or two. He had clearly had a chat with somebody who knew something about the Norden sight.
‘They haven’t given it to the British?’
‘I don’t think so. They could have been sending them one to have a look at,’ Flood said, pausing as the engine noise from outside grew into a crescendo again and then faded as the plane went down the runway. ‘In return for a look at the British radio-detection system. A trade of secret equipment.’
‘That’d make sense,’ Duggan agreed. But what made more sense to him now was why the Germans would want to see this war-winning piece of equipment that the Americans were taking such measures to keep out of their hands. Why they might seize on any chance to get one, even risking a dubious radio connection with a captured agent. And why a senior Abwehr officer would involve himself with what he thought was a low-level Irish republican.
‘I was wondering why the RAF showed you their secret radio-detection system,’ Duggan continued, seizing the opportunity of Flood’s talkativeness to satisfy his own curiosity.
‘I think they wanted to impress on us that they have things to counter the Germans’ superior manpower,’ the commandant said, indicating that he had pondered the same question. ‘That they have a secret weapon or two as well.’
Duggan thanked him again and turned to go.
‘I don’t need to remind you, Captain, of the sensitivity of all that information,’ the commandant said.
‘No, sir, of course not.’
‘We need to find it,’ Duggan said, concluding his report on his visit to the Air Corps. ‘Make sure it doesn’t get into the Germans’ hands. It’d upset the Americans if their secret bombsight got from here to Berlin.’
‘That doesn’t bear thinking about in the current climate,’ Commandant McClure agreed. ‘Of course, they haven’t asked for our help. Haven’t even told us that the thing was on this plane.’
‘Still.’
‘Exactly,’ McClure said.
They both knew that would be seen by the Americans as no excuse and would probably be taken by them as confirmation that Ireland was not just a base for German intelligence, but was in cahoots with them. The consequences would be serious.
‘Why do you think they haven’t asked for our help?’ McClure mused, indicating that he was in a thinking-aloud mood, ready to tease out the implications of what they knew. And what they didn’t know.
‘Because they don’t trust us,’ Duggan offered. ‘After Mr Aiken’s comments in Lisbon.’
‘Because they’re afraid that word would filter through to the Germans about the sight.’
‘But it already has.’
‘Which raises the big question,’ McClure concluded. ‘How did the Germans in Lisbon know about this cargo on a crashed plane in Ireland?’
They both fell silent, thinking about the options.
‘One,’ McClure raised a finger, ‘there’s a German agent at large about whom we know nothing. Two,’ he put up a second finger, ‘information somehow came from someone on the ground to the German legation and they passed it on through their transmitter. Or, three, the information came from abroad, probably from a German agent in the US itself.’
Duggan nodded his agreement.
‘I don’t think “one” is likely,’ McClure went on. ‘ “Two” does not seem likely either: for one thing, the British haven’t complained recently about any transmissions from the German legation, and we know how quick they are to do that. And if someone told the German legation about it, they’d probably know how to find it and wouldn’t be asking for Goertz’s help. The most likely is “three”, that some of their agents in the US heard about it.’
‘Do the Americans know that the Germans know about it?’ Duggan asked. ‘Maybe we should tell them. Build up some credit with them.’
McClure closed his eyes and a pained expression crossed his face as if he had a sudden headache. ‘Then we’d be under pressure to find it fast,’ he said, without opening his eyes. ‘It’d be better if we found it first, then told them and handed it back.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Duggan said, and told him of the plan he had worked out on his cycle back along the Naas road to the Red House.
‘Why do you want to bring Gifford with you?’ McClure asked when he had finished.
‘Because he can tap into the local guards and their information. And use his powers of arrest if need be.’
‘He knows all about the bombsight already?’
‘Not all.’
‘And he will keep the information to himself?’
‘He always has in the past,’ Duggan said. Much more than McClure realised.
‘OK,’ McClure said.
Bill Sullivan had a map of the north side of Dublin city laid
out on the table and was marking arrows in pencil on it when Duggan returned to their office. ‘You involved in this?’ he asked, scratching his head with the pencil and casting his hand over the map.
Manoeuvres involving the local defence forces were planned for the weekend, with the LDF acting as the Blue Army, defending the city from the regular army, which would act as the Red Army, attacking from the north. It was no secret who the Red Army was meant to be, a reminder to the British, and the Germans, that Ireland was ready to fight any invader.
‘Got to go down the country,’ Duggan smiled.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Sullivan said, scratching his head with renewed vigour. ‘Off on your holliers again.’
Duggan put a call through to Garda Peter Gifford at Dublin Castle. ‘I’ve been slapping myself on the wrist all morning,’ Gifford said, without any preliminaries. ‘The clue was staring us in the face. In the name.’
‘What clue?’
‘Easy Chair,’ Gifford said. ‘If you were a horse and your owner called you “Easy Chair”, what would you do?’
‘You have a point,’ Duggan said. He’d already forgotten about the previous day’s Derby and their loss of half a crown each.
‘Exactly,’ Gifford went on. ‘You’d lie back with your feet up and rest yourself. But there’s no need to give out to me. I’ve already had words with myself for failing to follow the proper procedure on how to find the guilty man. Chapter One of the policeman’s manual. Does his name fit the crime?’
‘And Easy Chair didn’t fit in the winner’s enclosure.’
‘You’re a quick learner today,’ Gifford said in Duggan’s ear, as Sullivan gave him a quizzical glance.
‘You busy for the next couple of days?’ Duggan asked.
‘Only doing penance for my failure to follow proper procedures.’
‘We want your help on something. Down the country.’
‘That sounds suitably penitential.’
‘A request for you to assist us is on its way to your superiors.’
‘Their sorrow to be without me for a few days will be a trauma to behold. Heart-rending.’
‘They’ll get over it.’
Duggan put down the phone, smiling to himself, and took up the suitcase he had brought back from Lisbon and placed it on his desk.
‘You’re bringing your boyfriend down the country with you,’ Sullivan said with exaggerated horror. ‘You know that’s illegal.’
‘Only if we go beyond looking into each other’s eyes.’
‘Jaysus.’ Sullivan shuddered. ‘You’re getting as bad as him.’
‘Speaking of boyfriends,’ Duggan said, pausing with his thumbs on the suitcase catches, ‘is Carmel’s friend Breda still seeing that fellow from the American legation? Max Linqvist?’
‘Seeing him?’ Sullivan snorted. ‘She’s practically devouring him. It’s disgusting the way she fawns over him. Wouldn’t surprise me if she was doing something illegal with him too.’
‘Tut tut,’ Duggan laughed.
‘You still sore at how she leapt on him instead of you?’
‘Not at all.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Sullivan said, pointing his pencil at Duggan as he remembered something, ‘he was asking about you recently.’
‘Linqvist?’
‘Said he hadn’t seen you around. Wondering if you’d been transferred.’
‘When was this?’
‘A couple of weeks after you went off on your cruise.’ Sullivan paused as a thought struck him.
After the Flying Fortress crash, Duggan thought. ‘Has he ever mentioned me before?’
‘No.’
I don’t like the sound of it, Duggan decided. Linqvist looking for me could only mean one thing. That he wants to call in a favour. Which probably means that he wants to know if we’ve got the Norden sight. To which there was an easy answer, if Linqvist left it at that. But he probably wouldn’t.
‘I didn’t know you were pals,’ Sullivan was saying.
‘We’re not,’ Duggan shrugged. ‘I’ve come across him once or twice. What exactly did he say?’
Sullivan closed his eyes and visualised the scene. ‘We were waiting for the girls to come back from the ladies’. And he just asked if you’d been transferred. Said he hadn’t seen you for a while. I thought he was just making conversation. That Breda had probably told him she was supposed to be on a blind date with you when she met him.’
McClure hasn’t shown him the contents of the message to Goertz and told him about the missing bombsight, Duggan realised. Otherwise Sullivan would have tied Linqvist’s query to the plane crash. McClure was like that: kept everything in separate compartments.
‘You should come out with us all some night,’ Sullivan said.
‘And watch Breda fawning over him?’ Duggan retorted. He had no wish to meet Linqvist, knowing what would follow. There was no such thing as simply doing someone a good turn in this world, he knew. And Linqvist had done him a good turn in helping Gerda go to America. For which he would expect payment sooner or later. And it looked like sooner. ‘No thanks.’
Sullivan glanced up with a triumphant smile. ‘So you’re still sore over missing your chance there.’
An orderly came in and handed Duggan a letter.
‘Maybe your American friend is a man after all,’ Sullivan said, noting the American stamps on the envelope. ‘What did you say his name was? Does your smart-arse friend in the Castle know about him?’
‘Enough of that.’ Duggan snapped open the suitcase he’d got in Lisbon and threw back the lid. ‘Do you want another packet of fags before I take this away?’
‘Yeah. Why not?’
‘Player’s or Gold Flake?’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Gold Flake’s not as strong.’
‘One of them then.’
Duggan slid open one of the cartons of Gold Flake and tossed a packet to him. ‘What are you going to do with the rest?’ Sullivan asked as he caught it.
‘Put them on the black market.’
‘Yeah, but really?’
‘Really,’ Duggan said, closing the suitcase, sitting down behind it and opening Gerda’s letter.
‘You are in your shite,’ Sullivan muttered, going back to his map.
Duggan read the letter slowly, smiling as she confirmed in a roundabout way that she’d received his postcard from Lisbon. She was going to Long Island with one of her work colleagues for a few days, she wrote, but didn’t have the time off, or the money, to travel to exotic places like some people she knew.
Nine
‘What’s that song about the west being asleep or something?’ Peter Gifford asked as they crossed the hump bridge over the River Shannon at Termonbarry and passed through the village.
‘You mean “The West’s Awake”.’ Duggan launched into the last verse for him:
And if, when all a vigil keep,
The West’s asleep! the West’s asleep!
Alas! and well may Erin weep
That Connacht lies in slumber deep.
But, hark! a voice like thunder spake,
The West’s awake! the West’s awake!
Sing, Oh! hurrah! let England quake,
We’ll watch till death for Erin’s sake.
‘Jaysus,’ Gifford said when Duggan had finished with a flourish. ‘I’m quaking, never mind England.’
The countryside was bright and green under a high blue sky dotted with puffs of cotton-wool clouds that barely interrupted the sunshine as they floated by with serene disregard. The road twisted and turned between opaque bushes, its high camber tilting the car to the left. There was no motor traffic to slow their progress as they sped past carts hauled by plodding horses and over-burdened donkeys. Everyone gave them an automatic salute, curiosity in their gazes after the two young men flying by in the Ford Prefect.
Gifford looked at the road map spread across his knees. ‘How long more?’
‘What are you?’ Duggan glanced at
him. ‘Ten years old?’
‘I’d no idea there was so much of it. Culchie land. It goes on and on forever.’
‘Good to broaden your horizons. Haven’t you been out of Dublin before?’
‘Course I have!’ Gifford said in an outraged tone. ‘I’ve been to Howth. And Bray.’
‘Seriously? Have you never been down the country before?’
‘Not this far out,’ Gifford said, like a swimmer who’d gone farther than ever before from the shore. ‘Or down. Or whatever you call it.’
‘Don’t worry. They won’t eat you.’
‘But what do they do out here? Down here?’
‘Same as they do in the city. Work and drink and chase women. Haven’t you ever asked Sinead what she does when she goes home?’
‘What?’ Gifford straightened himself in the seat as if he was shocked. ‘You think she chases women?’
‘You never know.’
‘She says she helps her mother milk the cow, collect eggs, catch up on all the local back-biting and avoid being mauled by old bachelor farmers with horny hands in the local dance hall. You think she’s trying to deceive me?’
Duggan shook his head. ‘Sounds accurate enough to me.’
‘No wonder you all run away to the city,’ Gifford sighed.
‘Ah, it’s not that bad,’ Duggan said as they swept down a hill and the countryside opened out before them like a quilt of irregular patches in shades of green, broken by the dull gold of fields of corn. ‘Look at that.’
‘What?’
‘The view.’
‘Where are all the people?’
‘They’re there. Keeping an eye on your every move.’
‘You mean we can’t see them but they’re watching us?’
‘Probably lining us up in their sights now,’ Duggan said.
‘You’re a bad bastard, trying to frighten an innocent city lad.’
‘Getting my own back for that half-crown you lost me on the Derby.’
‘Are all culchies such sore losers?’
‘We never forget a bad turn.’
As they came into Swinford, they passed a trotting pony and trap carrying a man and woman dressed up for a visit to town. The main street seemed to be in hiding from the sun: canopies darkened the shop windows and striped blinds protected hall doors. A large dog was curled up on the sunny side of the road, unconcerned by a donkey and cart that made its way around him and forced Duggan to come to a halt until it had finished its manoeuvre.
