Echowave (Echoland Book 3)

by Joe Joyce

  Duggan went behind the desk and looked at the open file lying on it. There was a sheet with blocks of letters on one side and the uncoded message in German on the other. An English translation was half hidden underneath, but Duggan read the German.

  ‘We’ve set up an auction,’ he said with a short laugh. The message told Hermann Goertz to get his friends to offer more than the Americans were willing to pay for the Norden bombsight. And to set up a bank account in the name of a trading company to pay whoever delivered it.

  ‘Seems so,’ McClure said.

  ‘You don’t think we should do it?’ Duggan said, picking up the lack of enthusiasm in McClure’s voice.

  ‘It’s dangerous,’ McClure said, leaning back against the wall at the side of the window. ‘We’re getting into uncharted waters. In danger of becoming too closely involved in the affairs of the belligerents.’

  ‘But the Americans aren’t belligerents.’

  ‘They are in all but name.’ McClure reached over to his desk for a cigarette, and lit it. ‘The real problem is we don’t know what we’re getting involved in.’

  ‘We’re setting up an IRA-German link so that we can monitor their activities,’ Duggan reminded him.

  ‘Yes. But we’re now setting up an auction over secret American military equipment.’

  ‘But we’re not going to give it to the Germans at the end of the day,’ Duggan protested, realising how disappointed he’d be if his visit to Lisbon turned out to have been a waste of time. ‘And this is a golden opportunity to set up a money route from the Germans to the IRA, which we can control. And which they’ll probably use to fund other activities here. Even other agents.’

  McClure gave a couple of nods of weary agreement. ‘What bothers me is how the Germans knew about the Norden bombsight in the first place. We didn’t know about it. The Americans obviously knew. The British probably did. And whoever found it in Mayo. And the black-marketeer who ended up with it. So how did the Germans get to hear about it before we did?’

  Duggan lit a Sweet Afton in the silence. McClure, as usual, had gone back to basics, to questions that he had pushed to the back of his mind as he was carried along by developments.

  ‘We can’t overlook the possibility that there is a well-placed German agent operating here,’ McClure continued. ‘Someone who has penetrated the American legation or the British representative’s office. Or even someone who has been more successful than Dr Goertz at infiltrating the IRA. And,’ he leaned forward to tap the tip of the cigarette into the ashtray, ‘not necessarily a German. Indeed, almost certainly not a German.’

  Jesus, Duggan thought. That could mean that his whole Lisbon operation was compromised from the word go, that the Germans were simply playing him along. And were still doing it with the latest coded message. ‘So we should close down the radio link?’ he asked.

  ‘Perhaps.’ McClure gave him a wan smile. ‘Or maybe I’m just in a paranoid mood today. Let’s review everything we know about all this. All that’s happened since you went to Lisbon.’

  ‘Write a report on it?’

  McClure shook his head. ‘Just take a fresh look at it. In light of what we know now, and didn’t know then.’

  ‘Max Linqvist has contacted me,’ Duggan said. ‘Asked to meet this afternoon.’

  ‘Good,’ McClure said, cheering up, as though that was the best news he’d heard all week.

  Duggan looked at his watch and slowed down, falling into position behind a woman on a bike whom he’d been about to overtake. There was no point getting to McDaid’s before half three, when the Holy Hour ended and the pubs reopened. He cycled automatically, one hand on the handlebars, the other in his pocket, his thoughts far from the sunny quays and the drays going by, their iron wheels grinding on the road.

  Why, he was wondering, did that Abwehr agent Wiedermeyer meet me in such a public place in Lisbon? Because he wanted me to be seen with him. But why? To let the British know that the Abwehr was dealing with the IRA. Why would they want the British to know that? Because they were not dealing with the IRA. Or, if Hermann Goertz was to be believed, because they had given up on the IRA as a waste of time, bogged down in internal rifts and incapable of doing anything useful for the German war effort. That was more likely. So why are they then going along with my IRA operation?

  He stopped at O’Connell Bridge with one foot on the ground as the stream of traffic was held up by the garda on point duty. Pedestrians passed in front of him, the women in a blur of colour brought out by the sunshine. A bus went by behind them, followed by an open-topped tram with an advertisement saying ‘I want Cadburys!’ separating its decks. Which reminded him of Hershey bars and distracted him from his train of thought for a moment.

  The traffic began to move again, and he took his left hand from his pocket to balance the bicycle. Then it struck him. The Germans wanted the British to know they were using the IRA, wanted them to think the relationship was more meaningful than it was. To be a thorn in the Brits’ side and, as an added bonus, to disrupt Ireland’s relations with Britain. Even to the point that it would become a factor in a British decision to reinvade Ireland. Which would bring the Wehrmacht to Ireland’s defence. And turn the country into a battlefield, a bloody sideshow.

  Maybe McClure’s right, he thought as he went round by Trinity College, we should be very careful of playing games with these people. Maybe we should shut down the radio link. Simply not reply to the latest message. Plant a short news report in the newspapers about a guard at Arbour Hill Prison being questioned about carrying messages to and from an unnamed internee.

  He went up Grafton Street, its shops shaded by their canopies. It wasn’t a day for window shopping or for brooding about the war, he thought as he navigated around the few parked cars. He turned into Harry Street and chained his bicycle to a lamp post. Across the road, a Guinness dray waited in front of another pub as a burly man rolled wooden barrels off the edge to a colleague waiting to take them as they bounced off a thick sack of straw. He checked his watch and a small man with a flat cap preceded him to the door of McDaid’s, stopped, hawked up some mucus, and spat it at the base of the wall.

  Max Linqvist was already inside, sitting against the back wall, a cigarette smoking in the ashtray in front of him. ‘What’ll you have?’ He made to get up.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Duggan said. ‘I’m on my feet.’

  ‘Glass of Guinness then,’ Linqvist said, sinking back.

  Duggan ordered two half-pints of Guinness and sat down on a stool opposite him.

  ‘Good night last night,’ Linqvist said.

  Duggan nodded. ‘I didn’t see any sign of your sports car outside.’

  ‘It’s becoming a liability,’ Linqvist groaned. ‘Breda says it’s too ostentatious. On the other hand, we’ve got to fly the flag. Live up to your expectations. You think we’re all millionaires.’

  ‘And film stars?’

  ‘That what Grace says?’

  ‘She doesn’t say. But I think she’s enjoying New York.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. You think she’ll come back?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Duggan said, though he knew she wouldn’t.

  ‘You ever think of going there?’

  ‘Maybe after the war.’ Why is everyone so interested in my love life? he wondered, tempted to ask Linqvist. But he refrained, not wanting to talk to him about Gerda and the circumstances under which she had gone to America.

  The barman called to Duggan and he went back to the counter to collect the two glasses, and pay. The man who had preceded him into the pub was on a stool beside a partition and staring at the array of bottles behind the bar with the fixed devotion of a contemplative monk before an altar.

  Linqvist raised the glass to Duggan with a ‘Thanks’ and took a sip. ‘I’m only developing a true appreciation of Guinness now.’ He put the glass back on the table between them. ‘It’s taken a while.’

  ‘Like developing a taste for Hershey chocolate.’

/>   ‘Like that,’ Linqvist nodded, with a knowing grin. ‘I thought we should have a talk.’ He leant forward and stubbed out the cigarette carefully, as if he was trying to choose his words with equal care. From the length of the ash on the cigarette, it was clear that he had smoked hardly any of it. ‘Our masters are on a collision course and it’s not going to do either of our countries any good if it comes to a bust-up.’

  Duggan took a drink of his stout, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

  ‘Your General Aiken did not make a favourable impression in Washington,’ Linqvist continued. ‘He couldn’t have been more successful at irritating President Roosevelt if that was what he set out to do. Which I don’t imagine it was.’

  ‘Hardly.’ Duggan offered his cigarette case, but Linqvist shook his head. Duggan lit a cigarette for himself.

  ‘But that was the upshot. And my minister was so worried about it that he put pressured on people to make some ships and other aid available. You’ll have noticed that that offer was not made to General Aiken but to the government here through the legation.’

  Duggan hadn’t been aware of the diplomatic niceties of the American offer of ships which had been elided with Aiken’s visit in newspaper reports and presented as proof of the success of his efforts. ‘I think some misunderstandings went to Washington ahead of Mr Aiken,’ Duggan said. ‘Made his visit more difficult even before he got there.’

  ‘You mean Wild Bill?’

  ‘Wild Bill?’

  ‘Colonel Donovan.’

  ‘Who exactly is he?’ Duggan asked.

  The newspapers sometimes referred to him as President Roosevelt’s ‘mystery man’, who had visited a number of European countries earlier in the year. He had come to Dublin for a few hours, met the Taoiseach and some ministers, and left as suddenly as he had come. No information about the visit had filtered down to Duggan or to the public. Asked about the visit by reporters, Donovan had breezed past, saying he had to catch a plane and had no time to talk.

  ‘President’s special representative,’ Linqvist said. He glanced from side to side and lowered his voice. ‘About to be appointed coordinator of all intelligence. You know he was in Lisbon when General Aiken was there?’

  Duggan shook his head. He hadn't known that.

  ‘And that they had a talk?’ Linqvist took another drink as Duggan shook his head again, making no attempt to cover the fact that this was news to him. So my enquiries about who reported Aiken’s comments in Lisbon were also a waste of time, he was thinking. And he wondered if McClure knew about this meeting between Aiken and Donovan.

  ‘I don’t think Wild Bill was very happy with General Aiken’s attitude,’ Linqvist said. ‘He made it clear to him that the only aggression Ireland was concerned about was British aggression. That it was the only country that had ever aggressed – if that’s a word – Ireland.’

  ‘That’s why the president accused him of wanting a German victory?’

  ‘There were other straws in the wind, too,’ Linqvist said. ‘All amounting to a big question mark over General Aiken’s attitude. And he’s Mr de Valera closest adviser, we’re told.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Duggan said. He knew from his uncle Timmy, a government backbencher and fan of Aiken’s, that he was not always enamoured by de Valera’s stance towards the British.

  ‘That’s not true?’

  ‘I wouldn’t take it as a fact. Just because they’re old comrades, I don’t think it would be wise to assume that Mr de Valera relies on his advice. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.’

  ‘That’s not the only thing that made the General’s visit to Washington more difficult, as you put it,’ Linqvist said, shaking a Lucky Strike from his packet and pausing to light it. ‘You know that the anti-interventionists are very strong in America, have public opinion on their side. So the president has to move very cautiously with his anti-Nazi efforts. And he’s not happy that the Irish-American section of his own party is on the anti-interventionist side because of Ireland’s neutrality. Even to the extent of cooperating with the German American Bund who, of course, are also in favour of American neutrality. General Aiken spent most of his three months in the US arguing for neutrality, even appearing on a platform with Colonel Lindbergh, the Bund’s greatest supporter.’ He paused to inhale some smoke. ‘Have you read Machiavelli?’

  ‘Never felt the need,’ Duggan said. ‘I’ve got an uncle who’s a politician.’

  Linqvist smiled. ‘‘‘He who is not your friend will demand your neutrality, whilst he who is your friend will entreat you to declare yourself with arms.” That sums it up. The Germans want us both to stay neutral. Our friends don’t. Your friends don’t.’

  ‘Our friends want us to commit suicide,’ Duggan said.

  ‘That’s crazy,’ Linqvist retorted. ‘Mr de Valera says it. But does he believe it? You don’t believe it. Nobody believes it.’

  ‘It would leave a lot of Irish people dead. For nothing that will make any difference to the outcome of the war.’

  ‘It would make a difference. Having the west-coast ports would make a big difference to the supply lines. Hasten the end to the war.’

  ‘It’d make a hell of a bigger difference if America declared war on Germany.’

  ‘You know there are reasons why we can’t.’

  ‘And you know there are reasons why we can’t. Not least that you won’t give us any weapons to defend ourselves.’

  ‘Touché,’ Linqvist said, spreading his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Time for another drink, I think.’

  Duggan finished his cigarette while Linqvist waited at the counter for the barman to pull two more half-pints. This wasn’t at all what he had expected. He’d assumed Linqvist was going to remind him that he, Duggan, owed him a favour over Gerda and put pressure on him to help find the Norden bombsight. Or, worse, demand some other favour that would be impossible to provide without betraying somebody’s trust or even his own oath of loyalty. So far, so good, at least on that front.

  Linqvist put down the two glasses and resumed his place and continued as if there had been no interruption. ‘We could argue our respective neutralities back and forth all night,’ he said, ‘and we’d both be right. But there’s another element as well as General Aiken’s activities in the US that is in danger of sending our relationship careering off the tracks. My minister, Mr Gray. Or rather your people’s attitude towards him.’

  Duggan had seen David Gray, the elderly American representative in Dublin, on a couple of occasions, social or ceremonial, but had never heard him speak. He knew, however, that Gray was seen as pro-British, too friendly with some of the landed families and some opposition figures, and too impatient with Ireland’s neutrality.

  ‘OK,’ Linqvist said, as if Duggan had made a point, ‘he’s not the most diplomatic of diplomats. But it’d be a big mistake to dismiss his views because you don’t like them. Or because you think he spends too much time with some West Britons. Or that he owes his position only to the fact that his wife and Mrs Roosevelt are family.

  ‘He and the president are completely at one in their view of what this war is about. It’s about the future of our democracies. It’s not an arm-wrestle between rival empires, as some people here seem to think. The president has no interest, none, in maintaining the British Empire, and if our side wins you’ll see that empire fade away. You can take anything Mr Gray says on these matters as if it came direct from the president’s mouth.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because I fear our bosses are not listening to each other any more. That they’re digging themselves into entrenched positions which won’t do either of our countries any good.’

  ‘I don’t see there’s much I can do.’

  ‘It’s important that there are people in the system who can talk to each other like this,’ Linqvist said, waving a hand to encompass their surroundings. ‘Without all the protocol of formal meetings, notes, memorandums, demarches and all
that diplomatic paraphernalia.’

  ‘As we’re speaking plainly,’ Duggan said, ‘you should know that our people are very upset at this reward you’re offering for the recovery of the Norden bombsight.’

  ‘That,’ Linqvist sighed and took a drink from his glass. ‘Yeah.’ He put the glass back on the table. ‘That was a fuck-up. Not our idea. An air-force general insisted on it.’

  Duggan gave him a sceptical look.

  ‘Yeah,’ Linqvist repeated. ‘I was down in Mayo with Mr Gray. We got a call from a Republican senator who’d been contacted by an air-force general from his state, complaining that we weren’t making any effort to recover this secret weapon. So he insisted that we offer a reward to get it back as fast as possible. I know,’ he held up a hand to stop Duggan saying what he thought he was thinking, ‘stupid idea. But Mr Gray agreed, mainly to get this guy off the phone and off his back. So I did it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about it in the first place?’

  ‘Because it was supposed to be a secret. The thing itself. And the fact that it was on that plane.’

  ‘Was it going to the North?’

  ‘No. To England. To show to someone there.’

  ‘What’s so secret about it?’

  ‘Its accuracy. It can drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from ten thousand feet. Nobody else has anything as accurate as that. The British have given up trying to develop something similar and gone in for blanket-bombing instead. The Germans are playing the same game now, just trying to blitz English cities. Being able to put bombs where you want them to go is a big advantage. Damn thing cost a fortune to develop, apparently. A couple of hundred million dollars.’

  ‘Have you got it back yet?’ Duggan asked, thinking of the box in McClure’s office: it didn’t look like a hundred million dollars.

  ‘What we’ve got is a switchboard going crazy. People telling us who might be hiding it and people wanting to know exactly how much the reward is before they say anything else.’