Echowave (Echoland Book 3)

by Joe Joyce

  ‘You like machines,’ Commandant McClure said over his shoulder.

  Duggan looked up in surprise: he hadn’t heard him enter the office. ‘Up to a point. It’s a complicated business, dropping a bomb into a pickle barrel. Whatever that is.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ McClure said, with a distinct lack of interest.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure which is the secret part of the Norden,’ Duggan said, still wrapped up in what he had been reading. ‘We’ve got the optical unit but there’s also a stabiliser and an aircraft control part. They all have to work together, but which is the most important? The secret bit?’

  McClure shrugged. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  Duggan followed him down the stairs, intrigued. He had already told McClure about the raid on the barn and the first interrogation of the farmer, who said the underground store belonged to his nephew in the Central Detective Unit in Dublin Castle and he knew nothing about its contents. Which had left his interrogators at a loss for further questions.

  ‘You’ve certainly dropped some kind of bombshell into Dublin Castle,’ McClure said as they left the Red House and went by a saluting sentry on to Infirmary Road. ‘Left it in a right pickle. I got a call from a super wanting to know why they hadn’t been informed about missing machine guns.’

  Duggan waited for a reprimand as they crossed the street, went around the corner and headed into the Phoenix Park, McClure setting a fast pace as if they were on a route march. It was late afternoon but the sun was still high in the sky, holding the promise of another long, lazy summer evening. Over to their left some women sat on the massive steps of the Wellington Monument while a group of small boys chased a football in herd-like fashion, their excited voices carrying on the still air. A cyclist came out of the park whistling, both hands in his pockets, sitting upright as if unconcerned with where the bicycle was taking him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ McClure said. ‘I fudged it, said there were sensitive military issues involved with this plane, and they needn’t worry about machine guns being in anybody’s hands. And thanked them for raiding the barn, which had produced important intelligence.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Duggan said.

  ‘What they’re really concerned about of course is the black-

  market operation running under their noses. They can’t pretend they don’t know about it any more.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was that why you and your Branch friend set it up?’

  ‘No, no,’ Duggan said in surprise. ‘Not at all. We’d asked a black-marketeer who’d helped us before if anybody was offering American merchandise from the plane for sale.’

  ‘And he saw the chance of wiping out some of his competitors?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Duggan admitted, as if the idea was new, though it had already occurred to him that that was exactly what Benny Reilly had done. ‘But he did send us to the right place. There were things from the plane there.’

  ‘True enough,’ McClure said.

  They marched on in silence, turning towards the entrance to the zoo. Two street traders outside it were offering chocolate bars to a couple with four children as they emerged. One of the children tried to hang back but his mother dragged him along.

  ‘This bloody war,’ McClure sighed, impervious to his surroundings. ‘It doesn’t get any easier. Nearly two years of it now and it gets more and more complicated.’

  Duggan wasn’t sure what he was talking about but said nothing. Although he worked closely with McClure, they had no relationship outside of G2. He knew that the McClures had had their second child, a daughter, in recent months, and was aware in a general way that the commandant had been more tired than usual. Sleepless nights, he had presumed.

  ‘We’re getting dragged into it more and more, farther and farther away from strict neutrality,’ McClure continued. ‘Maybe that’s inevitable. And there may be good reasons for it. But it makes our situation increasingly precarious. The odds are still on a German victory and we’re playing a dangerous game getting more involved with the British. Albeit under cover.’

  McClure stopped at a bench facing down into the valley opposite the zoo and sat down. Duggan sat beside him and they lit cigarettes. Some couples were lying on the side of the hill and four young girls were putting on a private display of Irish dancing in the bandstand below them.

  ‘The British know all about your Lisbon operation,’ McClure said.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘We told them,’ McClure sighed. ‘We had to. They intercepted your radio message to the Germans about the American reward for the Norden. Were getting agitated about it.’

  ‘They broke the Goertz code?’

  ‘We’d given that to them last year when Dr Hayes broke it. So we’ve had to tell them what’s going on.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Duggan said, trying to catch up with all the implications of this information. ‘They know about the bank account I’ve set up? Everything?’

  ‘Yes, but not everything,’ McClure corrected him. ‘They don’t know we’ve got the Norden.’

  ‘But they know the Germans know about it.’

  McClure nodded.

  ‘And they’ll tell the Americans.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Everybody likes to keep something up their sleeve.’

  They smoked in silence for a moment. ‘Anyway, they’re very keen that we continue this link with the Germans,’ McClure continued.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For the same reasons we started it. To keep tabs on the Germans’ relations with the IRA. And also as a conduit for feeding information to the Germans.’

  ‘They want to use it for their own purposes?’

  McClure nodded.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. They probably don’t know. Don’t have anything specific in mind at the moment.’

  ‘And if the Germans find out we’re feeding them British disinformation . . . ’ Duggan let the thought hang like smoke in the still air.

  ‘Yes,’ McClure agreed with his unstated conclusion. ‘It’s risky,’ he continued after a moment, ‘but there’s also a positive side to it. Our close relations with MI5 are a useful balance to some of their politicians’ gut instincts. Given a free hand, Churchill would invade and grab the ports in the morning. It’s only the military and the security services who’re holding him back.’

  ‘He’d have the blessing of the Americans,’ Duggan nodded, thinking of his conversation with Linqvist.

  ‘Exactly.’ McClure inhaled deeply.

  ‘So we’re going to continue with the German operation.’

  McClure gave an affirmative grunt.

  ‘What’ll we tell the British about the bombsight?’

  ‘Nothing,’ McClure said. ‘None of their business. Anyway they’re not very interested in it. Even dismissive of it.’

  ‘They know about it?’

  ‘They’ve heard about the American reward but think it’s all a bit of a farce.’

  ‘They’ve got it already?’

  ‘Don’t know if they’ve actually got it or if they’ve just seen it. But they’re throwing cold water on its supposed accuracy. Which may be true, or may be sour grapes because it doesn’t fit in with their blanket-bombing strategy.’

  McClure dropped his cigarette butt on the grass in front of him and rubbed it into the ground with the toe of his shoe. ‘The other thing I want you to do is to cultivate your relationship with Max Linqvist,’ he said, still rubbing at the disintegrated end of the cigarette. ‘He’s obviously keen to open another channel of communications with us, and we should encourage it. For the same reason we keep open the channel with MI5. As a counterweight to the formal diplomatic channels.’

  ‘I presumed he was acting under his minister’s orders.’

  ‘Maybe, or maybe not. He works for the intelligence unit in the State Department and there’s every chance he’ll be moving to Colonel Donovan’s new outfit.’

  ‘What’s that?’

 
‘I don’t know if it’s got a name yet. But Donovan is being appointed coordinator of intelligence by Roosevelt and is setting up a central agency to coordinate all their different units. Probably including the likes of Linqvist.’

  ‘OK,’ Duggan said.

  ‘Let him think you’re sympathetic to the American position and that you’re even prepared to give him some information if necessary.’

  That would be even easier than McClure realised, Duggan thought, as Linqvist believes I owe him a big favour. ‘Tell him we have the Norden?’

  McClure nodded.

  ‘And that the Germans know about it?’

  McClure shook his head. He stood up and they continued on their round back to the Red House by the North Circular Road gate to the park. From the zoo came a series of high-pitched shrieks from some jungle animal. Duggan smiled to himself as they passed the Garda headquarters, imagining there was something similar going on in there as news of the raid on the barn went up the chain of command.

  ‘I passed on your message,’ Sullivan said when Duggan got back to his office.

  ‘What message?’

  Sullivan gave him a pitying look. ‘The message you wanted delivered to Max,’ he said, as if he was talking to someone on the edge of senility. ‘Told Carmel we’re very upset that he was holding back important information from us and then spreading it around among the culchies in Mayo.’

  ‘That,’ Duggan nodded. ‘Thanks.’ He’d already told Linqvist, but it was no harm letting him hear it again, and letting him think that he had another line into G2 through gossip from Carmel and Breda.

  He sat down and continued reading the bombardier information file, but his mind was elsewhere. McClure clearly wasn’t happy with the direction things were taking but was acting under orders. And I agree with him, he thought. It was dangerous to be collaborating too closely with the British. It did have its benefits, as McClure had said, but it would make the maintenance of neutrality much more difficult if the Germans found out. And there was every chance they would find out. How had they known about the Norden?

  That was the unanswered question at the centre of this bombsight business that niggled away at him. They must have an agent or informant in a very sensitive position, he thought. It has to be someone in, or close to, the American legation. They were the only ones who knew what was on the Flying Fortress. So it has to be someone with access to their information. Which could only mean someone who works in their legation in the Phoenix Park, or maybe in their consulate in Merrion Square. Or someone who is very close to them.

  One of David Gray’s Anglo-Irish friends perhaps? Even one of his handful of Irish political confidants? That was unlikely. One of his Anglo-Irish friends was a better bet. It was no secret that some of the British upper classes had a soft spot for Hitler and the order he’d brought to Germany out of the chaos left by the competing political factions in the Weimar Republic. It was unlikely there were any of them in Ireland. Still, it might be worth looking more closely at Gray’s associates. Though that was probably not an idea that would be welcomed upstairs.

  He scratched his head with both hands in an unconscious attempt to clear his brain, and put the information file in the bottom

  drawer of his desk.

  ‘When are you going dancing again?’ he asked Sullivan.

  ‘Oh, ho,’ Sullivan shot back. ‘You want another outing with Maura?’

  Duggan gave him an embarrassed grin.

  ‘A bird in the hand,’ Sullivan chortled. ‘Your American pen pal hasn’t written in a while.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Duggan shot back. ‘Can’t you answer a simple question?’

  He was acutely conscious that the gaps between Gerda’s letters had lengthened – as, to be fair, had the gaps between his. Perhaps their relationship wasn’t strong enough to survive their separation. He didn’t want it to be so but it might be inevitable. And it wasn’t helped by the censors and the knowledge that their words were going to be read by faceless bureaucrats. And the fact that he couldn’t tell her what he was really doing. Both of which had a dampening effect on any real communication.

  ‘OK, OK,’ Sullivan put his hands up in apology. ‘Friday night, probably. You want to make it a foursome?’

  ‘Thought it’d be a sixsome?’

  ‘You have a problem with that?’

  ‘No,’ Duggan said. ‘Not at all. That’s fine with me.’

  ‘I’ll tell them,’ Sullivan said, giving Duggan a shrewd look. ‘They’ll be delighted.’

  Thirteen

  Duggan parked the Ford Prefect on Bachelors Walk, just short of O’Connell Bridge and Gifford spotted him and heaved himself upright from the corner he had been lounging against. Duggan locked the car, joined him at the entrance to the laneway leading into North Lotts and looked him up and down.

  ‘No visible marks,’ he smiled.

  ‘It’s the invisible ones that hurt,’ Gifford muttered as they turned into the laneway.

  ‘They give you a hard time?’

  ‘Accused me of allowing myself be manipulated by G2. Imagine the pain of that.’

  ‘That’s clearly beyond my imagination,’ Duggan laughed.

  ‘Trying to find someone to blame. Like to put it on you fellas if they could.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Duggan retorted. ‘What about the fella who had all the black-market stuff?’

  ‘He’s been suspended. Pending the investigation.’

  ‘Good. They’re doing something about it at last.’

  ‘And there’s talk of a new super being moved into CDU to clean it up.’

  ‘They finished with you?’

  ‘Gave me a fool’s pardon,’ Gifford said, sounding affronted.

  ‘Saved you from a bollocking.’

  ‘What about my self-respect?’ Gifford shivered in the heavy atmosphere. The morning was cloudy and the air was dense with the stench from the low tide in the Liffey and a smell of smoke. ‘To be manipulated by military intelligence. What greater insult could there be?’

  ‘But you know you weren’t,’ Duggan smiled.

  Gifford gave a theatrical sigh. ‘My reward for trying to help you navigate the streets without tripping over your own feet.’

  They turned into North Lotts, and the smell of smoke deepened. ‘Jesus,’ Duggan said as they approached the burnt-out shell of Benny Reilly’s lock-up garage. The door was gone and the roof had fallen in, sheets of blackened galvanise lying lopsided on the burnt remains of a counter and on the floor. It smelled of burnt timber and petrol or oil and the amalgam of tobacco and tea and other things that had gone up in smoke.

  ‘Your lads know about this?’ Duggan asked as they stared at the ruin.

  Gifford shook his head, uncharacteristically silent. He turned around and saw someone watching them from the window of a small printworks on the other side of the lane. He went over and opened the wicket door and stepped inside. Duggan followed as Gifford asked the man what had happened.

  ‘There was a fire,’ the man said, as if he was giving them new information. He was standing beside a high Linotype machine and wiping his hands on a rag. An oilcan and a screwdriver lay on the concrete floor at his feet. ‘In the middle of the night,’ he added.

  ‘What caused it?’

  ‘They didn’t tell me. The blessing of God the whole row didn’t go up. And that it didn’t jump the lane.’

  A neat job, Duggan thought. ‘Was Benny here this morning?’

  ‘Who?’ The man finished wiping his hands and picked up his screwdriver and oilcan.

  ‘Benny Reilly,’ Gifford said.

  ‘I didn’t see him. He must’ve left a lamp lighting or something. A rat might’ve knocked it over.’

  ‘Is that what the firemen said?’ Duggan asked.

  ‘They didn’t tell me anything.’

  They walked away in silence and turned into the lane back towards Bachelors Walk. ‘I didn’t tell them,’ Gifford said in a quiet voice.

  ‘I kn
ow you didn’t,’ Duggan nodded, no doubt in his mind that Gifford hadn’t told his superiors that Benny was their informant. ‘It is possible that it was an accident, as the man said.’

  ‘Yeah, a rat,’ Gifford said in a bitter tone. ‘A whole squad of fucking rats.’

  They sat into the car. Duggan paused as he was about to start the engine. ‘We go and see if Benny’s at home?’

  ‘For what? To apologise to him?’

  ‘To see what he knows,’ Duggan said. ‘He must have known what he was doing when he called you. He knew that barn was a store for the lads in the Castle. It’s not like we forced his hand in any way.’

  Gifford grunted his agreement.

  ‘And they knew immediately it was him,’ Duggan continued as he started the car. ‘Didn’t waste any time retaliating. There must be something going on between them. Some kind of war.’

  ‘That’s just what we need. Another war to add to all the other ones.’

  ‘Benny might be in a more talkative mood now,’ Duggan suggested. ‘Offer some more information about his rivals, if nothing else.’

  ‘There’s that possibility,’ Gifford agreed. ‘Let’s go see.’

  He drove across O’Connell Street and past the cinemas on Eden Quay and around the corner at Liberty Hall, keeping pace for a moment with a train crossing the loop line over the Liffey before passing under it. As they approached the North Strand, there were workmen on the roofs of some houses, replacing slates dislodged in the bombing six weeks earlier.

  ‘Have you geniuses worked out what that was about?’ Gifford asked Duggan as he watched a glazier fitting a new pane to a broken window.

  ‘Probably an off-course bomber.’

  ‘Nothing to do with the Dublin fire brigade going to help Belfast after the bombs there?’

  ‘Anything’s possible,’ Duggan shrugged. He’d been at sea and in Lisbon while the bombing was investigated and didn’t know much of the ins and outs of the debate about the Germans’ motivation. Except that a factor in the Luftwaffe pilot’s decision may have been that one of the city’s anti-aircraft batteries had opened fire on the bomber. ‘But it was probably a mistake.’