by Joe Joyce
The darkness settled unnoticed around them, leavened by the glow on the ceiling from the bright lights of the city down below. Muted sounds travelled up as well, a mumble of traffic and faint clangs of tram bells interspersed with dog barks and occasional closer sounds, shouts in nearby streets, doors banging. The building itself remained quiet, no sound of any other inhabitants, although Duggan now knew there were others there.
‘You upset Chuck yesterday,’ Gerda said during one of their interludes. ‘With that trick on him at the church.’
‘It wasn’t deliberate,’ Duggan admitted.
‘I wouldn’t say that if I were you. Forcing him on to a tram going the wrong way was brilliant.’
‘Of course it was all planned,’ Duggan added with a laugh. ‘I had figured it all out. That the wrong tram would arrive the exact moment he caught sight of me.’
‘He was mortified,’ she giggled. ‘He’s just out of training. A big brainbox. Got a string of degrees from Harvard. And you trapped him into exposing himself on his first job. He’s afraid they’ll send him back to a desk job now.’
‘Maybe he’d be better off.’
‘He wants to be in the action. Live up to his father, who won medals in the last war.’
‘And you?’ Duggan asked, shifting his weight on to his left elbow so he could look down at her. ‘You want to be in the action too.’
‘I have no choice,’ she said.
He nodded, knowing better than to argue with her about her need to fight the Nazis. ‘I wish you weren’t.’
‘I know,’ she said, pulling his head down to kiss him. ‘But you know I have to.’
He kissed her again and held her tightly. ‘You’re going back to Vienna, aren’t you?’ he whispered into her ear.
She said nothing but he felt her head nod beside his.
‘That’s very dangerous,’ he whispered, still holding her. ‘Suppose someone recognises you?’
‘They won’t,’ she whispered back. ‘I was only a schoolgirl when I left.’
‘It’s still a big risk. You haven’t changed that much.’
‘How do you know? You didn’t know me then.’
‘People don’t change that much in five or six years.’
‘I have,’ she said. ‘Anyway, that’s the reason I’m going. To contact people I know. Who’ll trust me.’
‘What if they’ve changed?’ he said. ‘Gone over to the Nazis since you knew them before. That’s not impossible.’
‘That’s a risk I have to take.’
He shook his head in disagreement and tightened his hold.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I can’t breathe.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, releasing her and moving back to look into her eyes. ‘Someone could recognise you on the street, inform the Gestapo. You wouldn’t even know about it until they picked you up.’
‘I’m an American,’ she said. ‘We’re not at war with them.’
‘That’s no protection,’ he said. ‘You’re an Austrian Jew.’
‘Nobody knows that.’
‘People you were at school with in Vienna know that. Having an American passport won’t protect you. If they catch you they’ll shoot you. Or worse.’
‘Shhh.’ She tried to rock him back and forth as though she was soothing a child troubled by a bad dream, but he refused to let himself be moved. ‘I love you and I love it that you love me enough to be so worried, but this is something I have to do,’ she said. ‘You know that. You know I don’t have a choice.’
They lapsed into silence, entwined in each other’s arms and legs. Yes, he thought, I know from everything she’s ever said and done that she has no choice. He thought too about Strasser and Wiedermeyer: there was no doubt about the steel behind their usually urbane exteriors. Nor, for that matter, of the willingness of Linqvist or Hopkins to do whatever they or their masters decided had to be done.
‘Thanks,’ he repeated, ‘for telling me about the trap.’
‘Can you escape it?’
‘I think so.’ He hesitated, not wanting to involve her in his plots, but unable to resist the temptation to find out more. ‘Do you know whose idea it was?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Someone was briefing Chuck on why he was to follow you, what he was to look out for.’
‘Do they know about us?’
‘Probably.’ She stifled a yawn. ‘They’ve never said anything. But I don’t mind. It won’t change anything between us.’
Later he woke with a start, moulded to her back. He reached an arm over her, not sure whether she was awake or asleep, and cupped her breast. Her hand came up and moved along his arm with a light touch that barely ruffled the hairs on it.
‘What time is it?’
‘Late,’ she replied. ‘Or early.’
The light in the room had dulled and the sounds of the city had died. The night air was cooler and she had pulled a sheet over them. ‘Was I asleep for long?’
‘Not too long.’
‘You should’ve woken me. I don’t want the night to pass in sleep.’
She turned over to face him and huddled into his shoulder and he ran his hand down her back and over the hump of her hip.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Back to Ireland.’
She planted a series of kisses around his neck and said nothing. But he knew the answer anyway.
She pulled herself up a little to face him and searched his eyes. ‘Come to America,’ she said.
He kissed her on the lips and then said, ‘I can’t be a deserter.’
‘You wouldn’t be. You could get involved properly. Really fighting the Nazis. The OSS will take you. They’re looking for anybody with experience.’
He closed his eyes, knowing that he couldn’t do it, couldn’t desert the country whose independence his father had fought for. Couldn’t stomach the hurt he knew his father would feel even if he never said a word. Which he probably wouldn’t.
‘There’s a liner in the port now,’ she said.
‘Where’s it going?’ he asked, playing for time, every sense in his body telling him to do it. Not to be trapped by the past. To look to the future in America with her.
‘Rio de Janeiro. Then on to Philadelphia.’
‘I can’t take the place of some refugee,’ he stalled.
‘Then on the PanAm Clipper,’ she beseeched him with her eyes. ‘It can be done.’
He looked into the pleading depth of her eyes. ‘If you come with me.’
She shook her head with a hint of irritation. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘Don’t make it a test.’
‘I’m not doing that,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go to America if you’re not there.’
‘I’ll be there when I’m finished.’
‘When will that be?’
She paused. ‘I don’t know.’
‘When the war’s over,’ he sighed, as if that was a distant possibility, as distant as being old.
‘It’ll end sometime.’
‘You told me before that it’d never end.’
‘I know now it will. The Americans will fight. They’re just looking for an excuse. And we’ll beat the Nazi bastards.’
‘I want to be where you are,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ll go to Vienna with you.’
She shook her head with a loving smile. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s too dangerous.’
‘We’re not at war with them either.’
‘It’d be too dangerous for me,’ she amended. ‘Having to mind you.’
‘You think I can’t mind myself?’
‘Yes, but you know what I mean. I’d be more worried about you.’
Which would make it more dangerous for her, he knew. It wasn’t the past or the future that was the problem, he thought. It was the present. The war. And all the lives that it had taken and the millions more it had disrupted. In that context it seemed the height of selfishness to complain of the difficulties they had in being together.
They stayed awake, talking little, as the mu
rky predawn light gave way to the first tentative rays of the rising sun and the sky outside went from purple through shades of brighter and brighter blue. They made love one last time, more an emotional act than a physical one. Then they got up and dressed in silence. Duggan ate the last crust of bread with a slice of cold meat on it while he watched her brush her hair in front of a handheld mirror. She caught his eye in the mirror and gave him a slow wink.
‘You leave first,’ she said when she had finished.
He put his arms around her and they held each other tight for a moment, then parted.
‘Write to me,’ she added. ‘At the same address. I’ll let you know as soon as I’m back.’
‘The moment you are,’ he said, knowing that the coming weeks, even months, were going to be an agony of uncertainty. ‘Be careful.’
‘You too.’
He stopped at the door for a last look at her, silhouetted against the brightening window, her hair curling up just short of her shoulders, her face in shadow.
Twenty-One
He walked down the hill towards the port, his long strides speeded by the steep incline, feeling happy and desolate at the same time.
The city was waking up, the air still fresh from the cool of the night, early risers moving with purpose and the promise of the new day. The port was back in full swing, trucks and carts lined up by vessels, cranes swinging back and forth, hauling cargos in and out of holds. There was no activity at his ship but a steady plume of smoke came from its funnel and a crewman pulled in the gangway behind him as he came on board.
‘Just in time,’ the captain said when he climbed up to the bridge.
‘Did I delay you?’
‘Another few minutes and you would have.’ The captain turned away to give an instruction to the engine room.
Duggan left him to it and went down to the galley as the steel plates of the ship began to vibrate with the growing rumble of the engine. ‘The cure?’ the cook offered with a pale grin.
‘Just a cup of tea, please.’
Duggan took the mug of strong tea back on deck and leaned against the bridge as the ship edged away from the quay and a couple of crewmen winched in the mooring ropes. The ship began a turn around the stern of another coaster anchored in midstream. It already had steam up and he could see its anchor chain being hauled in as it prepared to take the berth they had vacated.
He lit a cigarette and watched the city glide away, the tiers of roofs bright and peaceful under the growing sun, and thought about Gerda, feeling her body against his, the tickle of her hair against his face, the touch of her cool palm on his shoulder, and seeing the slow dreamy smile grow and fill her dark eyes as if it came from the depths of her being.
The crewmen who had coiled the mooring ropes came by him, one singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’. He nodded back at the other and said to Duggan, ‘He’s in love. Can’t wait to get back, though she won’t even remember him.’
‘Fuck off,’ his colleague said. ‘You couldn’t even get pissed in a brewery.’
Duggan gave them a benign smile. ‘I know how he feels,’ he said to the first man.
‘I didn’t see you last night. Where’d you go?’
‘Somewhere else.’ Duggan left it vague.
‘You got lucky too,’ the second crewman said.
‘I did,’ Duggan agreed.
‘He’s just jealous,’ the second crewman nodded towards his colleague.
They sailed slowly passed the Serpa Pinto, a thin column of grey smoke rising from its black funnel, and he could see some people strolling along its upper deck beneath a line of lifeboats. No point in regrets, he thought. I couldn’t have done it.
The ship glided by the explorers’ monument and the tower at Belém, picking up speed with the ebbing tide as the engines settled into their cruising rhythm. They were passing by Estoril and Cascais when his cabin-mate Jenkins joined him and lit a cigarette. ‘Your friend was looking for you in Antonio’s last night,’ he said as he inhaled the smoke.
‘Yeah?’ Duggan was mildly surprised that Strasser would have turned up again.
‘He gave me a bag of stuff for you.’
‘What?’ Duggan felt his blood go cold.
‘The usual stuff, he said,’ Jenkins added, giving him a sharp look, taken aback at his tone.
‘What kind of bag?’
‘Suitcase.’
‘Did he say what was in it?’
‘Usual stuff,’ Jenkins repeated.
‘Did he show it to you?’
‘The suitcase?’
‘What was in it.’
‘No.’
‘Fuck,’ Duggan said to himself, thinking, I didn’t fool them at all. They’ve just planted a bomb on the ship.
‘What is it?’ Jenkins asked.
‘Where is it?’ Duggan asked. ‘In the cabin?’
‘No. I put it in a safe place. Assumed you wouldn’t want it found if anyone was to look around.’
‘You better get it back,’ Duggan said.
‘Now?’
Duggan nodded. ‘And be careful. It could be dangerous.’
Jenkins gave a half-laugh and stared at him but the look on Duggan’s face told him it was no joke. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘It’s a bomb?’
‘Maybe,’ Duggan said, trying to figure out what to do. If it was a bomb it was probably designed to go off when they were at sea, to sink the ship far from land. Which meant it had to be on a long timer: a day or even more. It couldn’t be too sensitive to movement or it could’ve gone off before it even got to the ship. And there’d be no point in that. ‘But probably not that dangerous at the moment.’
‘You want me to get it?’ Jenkins sounded unenthusiastic.
‘No.’ Duggan took a deep breath. ‘Tell me where it is. I’ll get it.’
‘You’ll never find it. I’ll show you.’
‘I better talk to the captain first.’
‘Christ almighty!’ the captain exploded when Duggan told him of his suspicions. ‘How often have I told them not to bring stuff on board unless they know what it is?’
‘It’s entirely my fault,’ Duggan said. ‘To do with my mission here. And whether or not I’ve been compromised. It’s all my fault.’
They were standing on the platform outside the bridge, feeling the wind rise as they came to the mouth of the Tagus and the river rolled out into the open Atlantic before them, the horizon as clear as an inked line.
‘What do you think we should do?’ the captain asked.
Duggan explained his thinking, that if it was a bomb it wasn’t set to go off any time soon. ‘We could just toss it overboard when we get away from land,’ he suggested.
‘We’d have to sink it,’ the captain said. ‘Otherwise it could just drift ashore and injure someone else. We’d have to weight it down, make sure it sank.’
‘You have a rifle on board?’
‘A .303. You a good shot?’
‘I could hit a suitcase at a hundred yards.’ And a bullet might explode it. Which would answer the question of whether it was a bomb or not. I need to know that, he thought. I need to know whether my cover has been exposed. Whether the Germans know we’re double-crossing them. We can’t go on communicating with them unless we know that.
Jenkins led him down into the ship, down below the waterline, near the engine room where the noise and the heavy air seemed to vibrate along with the metal floor and walls. He stopped at an alcove with a fire extinguisher on the wall and Duggan waited as he removed it and unscrewed a metal panel behind it, feeling sweat break out on his body and the first nauseous hints of seasickness. Please God, not now, he thought, trying to relax and go with the movement of the ship as it rose and fell and wallowed from side to side.
Jenkins lifted out a grey suitcase with both hands, careful not to knock it against anything. Duggan took it by the handle, his other hand against a wall to steady himself, while Jenkins sealed up the hiding place again and went ahead of him back up towards the deck. Duggan t
ook his time, trying not to let the suitcase bang off the wall as the ship tilted and shifted with every step. He was covered in a sickly sweat and holding back nausea by the time he got back on deck and gulped in lungfuls of cold air.
There was no sign of Jenkins but the captain looked down at him from the edge of the bridge. Duggan shivered as the wind cooled his sodden shirt, and he looked back at the coastline, still close enough behind them that he could make out details of buildings and the marker buoys on the river channel. He made his way up towards the bow of the ship, which they had decided was the safest place to leave the suitcase until they had moved further away from land. If it was a bomb, its blast would dissipate in the open air and it would be too high up to hole the ship’s sides. He tied it to a ring meant for lashing down cargo, making sure it didn’t hit anything as it swung from side to side with the motion of the ship.
He stood up and made his way back to the bridge, examining the sea. It wasn’t rough but the swell was increasing, leaving trails of bubbles here and there on the heaving water. He had no doubt he could hit a suitcase at a hundred yards if it was static and he was too. But this wouldn’t be an easy shot, hitting a moving grey target on the blue-grey water from the shifting base of the ship. And there wouldn’t be much time to get it right. To let the suitcase go far enough away that it wouldn’t damage the ship if it exploded. And to keep it in sight long enough to hit it.
‘Is it heavy?’ the captain enquired.
‘Not particularly,’ Duggan said. ‘May be a false alarm.’
‘Better safe than sorry.’
The captain led him down to his cabin and unlocked a narrow cabinet beside his bookshelf. There were two Lee Enfield rifles in it and an unopened box of ammunition. Duggan picked one and worked the bolt. It felt a bit stiff and he tried the other one. It moved more smoothly. But he was thinking that his plan wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t necessarily answer the question.
If they’ve seen through our deception it’s not just me who’s a target, he realised. It’s this ship and everyone on it. They may well look on it as a belligerent act. And make the ship a legitimate target for their U-boats and planes if the bomb doesn’t sink it.
