Nucleus

by Rory Clements

  Wilde was too far away to hear a word the two men said, but he could tell that Hardiman was irritated. O’Gara was spreading his hands as though explaining something unpalatable. And then Hardiman’s mouth opened and clenched into the familiar syllables of a two-word expletive, his thin moustache seeming to slither over his mouth. He ran his fingers through his hair, then turned and stalked away.

  As Wilde watched, O’Gara didn’t move for a few moments, then he too began to walk away, heading in his direction. Stepping out from the doorway, Wilde set off with his head down. At the last moment, he looked up and his eyes widened as though he had only just seen O’Gara.

  ‘Henty?’

  O’Gara jerked to a halt. ‘Jesus, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Well, that’s a fine welcome! Watching the horse racing. Same as you, I imagine. Have you got horses running?’

  ‘We’ve got a couple.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me and my partners in Ireland. To tell the truth, I don’t own them. I’m just their agent . . .’

  ‘Let’s go for that drink, Henty. We didn’t get it before.’

  ‘Aah . . . aah, I don’t know, Tom. I’m a little busy at the moment.’

  ‘Are you with someone?’

  ‘No, but I need to be there for the trainers, you know. Our horses are lodged in Newmarket yards, so I’m the liaison man.’

  Wilde clapped a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. ‘Come along. One drink. You could join my party if you like.’ He cupped his hand to O’Gara’s ear. ‘Come and meet a famous Hollywood actress.’

  O’Gara sighed in resignation. ‘No, but I’ll have a pint with you at the bar. Let’s go through there.’ He nodded towards the cheaper silver ring where ordinary racegoers crowded the stands. ‘Too many fucking county snobs, dukes and earls around this neck of the woods.’

  CHAPTER 28

  The barroom was long and low and reeked of beer and smoke. The place was packed with racing men. All men. No women here. It took five minutes to order drinks and when they arrived, the tankards were slapped down carelessly, beer slopping all over the bar. It wasn’t worth complaining. Wilde paid, then slid O’Gara’s drink sideways across the soaking bar top. ‘There you go, cousin.’

  O’Gara grunted.

  Wilde watched him expectantly. O’Gara seemed to have something on his mind; he seemed to be weighing up the pros and cons of talking. Something told Wilde this wasn’t about horses.

  ‘What is it, Henty?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re preoccupied.’

  ‘Ah, hell, can I ask you a question, Tom?’

  ‘Of course. Fire away.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’

  The question should have taken him by surprise, but the truth was, it didn’t. Something was troubling Henty O’Gara. ‘How do you mean exactly?’ Wilde spoke calmly.

  ‘I mean, do you have politics? All this European stuff – Nazis, commies, fascists, Trots and anarchists – where do you stand? Is it all bullshit or am I missing something? Tyranny or nothing, is that the way it’s to be?’

  This was a strange turn of conversation for the races. Wilde might have laughed, but he could tell that his cousin was struggling, looking for answers.

  ‘Well, you know, I’m an American and I have a soft spot for democracy. Very old-fashioned and dull.’

  ‘But you’re Irish, too, Tom. Your mother’s Irish. You can’t escape that so easily.’

  ‘No, I can’t – and nor do I wish to. I’m very happy with my Irish blood. Very proud of it. But how do you get onto Ireland from talking about the far left and the far right? There’s no great dictator in Ireland, Henty.’

  A racegoer barged into O’Gara’s back. He turned on him as though bitten by a snake, fist raised. ‘Watch yourself, mister.’

  The clumsy Englishman puffed out his chest. ‘Fucking Mick.’

  Even as a boy, O’Gara had not been one to shy away from a fist fight. Wilde put his arms between them. ‘It was an accident, Henty. Let’s not go down this road.’ He tried smiling at the interloper. ‘There’s going to be no fighting, OK?’

  The Englishman spat on the floor, then shouldered past Wilde and disappeared into the crowd.

  ‘Thank you, Tom. I would have dusted the feller and ended up in clink on an assault charge.’

  ‘Back to what you were saying, Henty . . .’

  ‘Well, what I really want to talk about isn’t just Europe, you see. I’m thinking of Ireland. Others have interests in the old country, not always benign.’

  ‘Who exactly are we talking about?’

  ‘You know what I’m on about, Tom. The bombs, the S-plan – the sabotage plan. Seamus O’Donovan and his bombing campaign.’

  Wilde was assessing the situation fast. Henty O’Gara from the far west of Ireland turns up in Cambridge. An IRA bomb goes off in Cambridge. The dimmest constable on the beat would see a possible link, even if it turned out to be a false trail. ‘Is this something you’re involved in, Henty?’

  O’Gara didn’t answer directly. ‘What about Germany, Tom? Do you think Hitler might help the Irish win the Six Counties back from Britain? You know, there are Irishmen who believe he would – and some who would happily make a pact with the Nazis if it meant kicking the British out of Ireland.’

  ‘I imagine there are. But if you want my honest opinion, I’d say doing a deal with Hitler would be a bit like asking Satan into your house to chase out an old toothless dog. You might get rid of the dog, but you’ll be left with something far worse, with sharper teeth and razor claws. There are no spoon handles long enough to sup safely with the Nazi devil.’

  O’Gara took a long, deep draft of his beer, and then spat some of it back. ‘Jesus, what is this stuff? How do the English drink it?’

  ‘Do you want a whisky?’

  ‘No, not now. Ah, dear God, Tom, I’m in so deep I don’t know where to turn. I’m not made for this sort of thing. You know me – I like an honest fight the same as the next man. But deceit and all that, Jesus – it’s another world. And now I don’t have friends on any side. Can I trust you, Tom?’

  ‘That depends.’

  On what you’re dealing with, Henty. On who you’ve become.

  O’Gara stared into the unappetising beer, the glass still gripped in his right hand. The echoing din of the long barroom was almost drowned out by the brooding silence.

  ‘I’d like to think so,’ Wilde continued. ‘I’d like to think you can trust me. But I don’t really know what you’re talking about. Is this something to do with Milt Hardiman? I saw you with him.’

  O’Gara hesitated for a beat. Wilde remembered that look, more than a quarter of a century gone. They’d been out scrambling along the jagged edge of sea rocks on the cliffs near Doolin when O’Gara – who was ahead – got into trouble. He had panicked, but managed to haul himself up from the waves. Fortune had favoured him then, but for all his bluster, for all his readiness for a fist fight, Wilde knew he had never been the most confident of men. Nothing had changed, it seemed.

  It was the name Hardiman that did it. The Irishman’s hand tightened on the pint glass and crushed it. Glass fell in shards at his feet. He looked at his hand. Two or three slivers were embedded in his flesh. Blood and beer dripped to the floor. He plucked the pieces of glass out one by one. Then he took out a handkerchief and clutched it in his palm to staunch the bleeding.

  ‘There must be some sort of first aid here for the jockeys. Shall we go there, Henty?’

  ‘No, I’m all right. It’s only a bit of blood. What do you know of Hardiman, Tom?’

  ‘I’m here with his party. I know a bit about him. What do you know about him Henty? What are your dealings?’

  O’Gara shook his head grimly.

  ‘Should I be reporting you to the police? Does Thompson’s Lane mean anything to you?’

  O’Gara was clearly in some terrible torment.

  ‘Henty? Talk to me. You said you wanted to tru
st me.’

  ‘I do, I do.’ O’Gara looked around the great teeming barroom. ‘I need the help of a good man.’

  Wilde gripped his arm. Hard. ‘Do you want to get out of here, Henty? Find a quiet corner to talk?’

  ‘No. This is better. No one’ll hear us above this din.’

  ‘Then if you’ve got something to say, say it now.’

  ‘OK, feller, OK. There are no horses. Does that suit you? The horses were all bullshit, a cover story.’

  ‘Thompson’s Lane? The power station?’

  O’Gara snorted. ‘Maybe I need that whisky after all.’

  ‘You can talk to me, Henty. I don’t give a damn about the power station wall, and I’m not going to turn you in, because you’ll get caught soon enough anyway. But Hardiman . . . I would like very much to know about your dealings with Milton Hardiman. What’s your interest, Henty? Or rather, what’s his interest?’

  O’Gara tried to wrench his arm free, but Wilde’s grip was tight and he wouldn’t let go.

  ‘That hurts, Tom. You’re not the squirt any more, are you?’

  Wilde released his cousin’s arm. ‘Henty?’ Their voice were low. There was a crush of drinkers, but they wouldn’t hear a word of this above their own din.

  With his uninjured hand, O’Gara pulled out a cigarette and found his matches. Wilde took them from him and struck a light.

  ‘It might as well come out,’ said O’Gara, breathing deeply on the smoke. ‘Either way, I’m a dead man. I’ve been working for this lot, that’s what.’

  ‘This lot?’

  ‘The British. MI5. Working against my own people because I couldn’t stomach Seamus O’Donovan’s deals with the Nazis. And you know what? I’ve found stuff – but the British have hung me out to dry. I’ve lost my contact, so who do I talk to? Tell me that, Tom. I’ve discovered important stuff and I’ve no one to tell. Just a telephone number that rings and rings and rings . . .’

  *

  Four days earlier, when Captain Dorian Hyde arrived at the farmhouse along the coast from the town of Galway, Connell had not been alone. Now Hyde’s body lay deep in the sea, ten miles west of the Aran Islands, wrapped in chains and weighted with rocks.

  He shouldn’t have been in Ireland, because he was needed in England, in London, acting as sole contact for MI5’s most valuable property, an IRA man named Henty O’Gara who had turned on his comrades because, he said, they were dealing with the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence. The story was that he hated the British, but he hated the Nazis more.

  There was a problem, though: Captain Hyde of the British secret service – Military Intelligence, section Five – had not trusted O’Gara, and the feeling was mutual. O’Gara resented the Englishman’s public school accent and his disregard for Ireland. Hyde simply saw all Irishmen and Irishwomen as the enemy because he was Anglo-Irish gentry, from a family whose once fine Kildare estate had been burned to the ground during the Irish War of Independence.

  But O’Gara and Hyde were important to each other, and they had had to put aside their innate antipathy. They had a common enemy – the hardliners within the IRA who were willing to deal with Hitler.

  With Britain preparing for a full-scale European war, it could not afford the disruption caused by the IRA’s bombing campaign, with gelignite and potassium chlorate and Mills bombs exploding every day. Power stations, electricity pylons, water supplies, underground stations, shops, petrol stations, even Buckingham Palace were on the target list. At times, there were five attacks a day. And Germany’s Abwehr was backing the IRA campaign with weapons.

  O’Gara had offered to go to England and help break the bombing campaign. He said he had enough information to find the IRA’s chief of staff on the mainland, the Scavenger.

  Captain Hyde ran Henty O’Gara alone, his identity carefully guarded, for even MI5 had leaks. Yet still Hyde feared his own judgment; trust was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

  ‘Never turn your back on an Irishman,’ his father had once told him, long before the bastards burnt their fine house down, ‘or you’ll have a knife in it.’

  It had even occurred to Hyde that O’Gara might be the Scavenger himself. He had to check and double-check. Couldn’t afford not to.

  And so with O’Gara already in England, Captain Dorian Hyde ventured to County Galway in search of a defining clue to the true nature of the elusive Henty O’Gara. One man was sure to know the truth – a man named Connell, a senior IRA figure on the west coast.

  Hyde had recruited Connell in London five years earlier when he was up on a charge of armed robbery. ‘Work for me. Go home to Ireland and provide me with information on the IRA and we’ll let the charge lie.’ Connell had accepted the offer with apparent gratitude and relief. Hyde had sent him on his way with a warning: ‘Do the dirty on me, Connell, and I’ll feed you to the wolves.’

  In the event, it was Connell who was the wolf. He took his freedom courtesy of MI5; he even took their money. Sometimes he even fed them half-truths and disinformation. But he was an IRA volunteer through and through.

  Hyde’s journey to Galway was supposed to be an in-out operation. No more than two days. Speak to no one but Connell. Hand him some money. Use him to uncover the true heart and nature of Henty O’Gara, then back to his phone in England.

  Connell played with Captain Hyde like a cat with a mouse. He lured him to a remote farmhouse, not far from the sea, where his friends were waiting. They turned the MI5 officer into meat for the fishes. They did things to his body with knives and sticks that a medieval torturer would have been ashamed to admit to.

  When he was all but gone and there was no more information to be had, they shot him in the head, wrapped him in chains and took him out in a boat to drop him in the sea. His body would never be found and no one save his killers would ever know his fate.

  And in London, the telephone in the small service flat retained for his exclusive use – the number he had given to Henty O’Gara – continued to ring and ring and ring. And no one answered.

  *

  ‘What I need, Tom, is another contact. Something must have happened to my man Hyde.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone in MI5, Henty. But I know someone who will help. Foreign intelligence service.’

  ‘Do you trust him?’

  Did he trust Philip Eaton? In this case, yes. The truth was, he needed Eaton. O’Gara was linking the IRA to the Nazis and there was a connection to Milt Hardiman. Wilde nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘Then tell him I’m about to find the Scavenger,’ O’Gara said. ‘See if that means anything to him.’

  ‘Scavenger? What or who is the “Scavenger”?’

  ‘The Scavenger is the IRA’s chief in England, director of the bombing campaign.’

  ‘Do you mean Milt Hardiman?’

  O’Gara looked doubtful, then shook his head and dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ he said. ‘But he’s not Irish, is he?’

  ‘Then what are you talking about? What connection does Hardiman have to all this?’

  O’Gara hesitated again. He had a nervy glint in his eye.

  ‘If you want my help, Henty, you have to put some faith in me.’

  ‘OK, Tom. I was following a feller, you see. Someone I knew would lead me to the Scavenger. And I think he will. Maybe he already has – I’ll know this evening. This morning the feller brought me a message at my hotel saying I’d be met tonight. I wanted to know what I would be meeting, so I tailed the feller. He had a bike; I have a car. So I followed him – and the fucker rode here.’

  ‘And Hardiman?’

  O’Gara laughed. ‘I didn’t know who he was. I’d never seen him before, but I saw my feller talking to him briefly. I wanted to know the big guy’s name, so when the feller left, I stayed. And for what I did next you can call me a fool if you like, but I went up to the man and told him I had a message for him. Hand it over, he says. Could you confirm your name,
sir? says I. Hardiman, he says, Milton Hardiman. Oh, Jesus, says I, I’ve got the wrong man. I was looking for Mr Henry Redmond. That’s when he tells me to go fuck my mother’s dog.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting Hardiman is somehow linked to the IRA.’

  O’Gara shrugged. ‘I’m not sure what to make of him, Tom. In fact I’m not sure of anything anymore. Jesus, I should never have told you all this. Probably put you in danger, too. But I was desperate . . .’

  Wilde gripped his cousin’s uninjured hand between both his. ‘I’ll do what I can, Henty. My contact will know what to do. You’ll come around later?’

  O’Gara nodded slowly. ‘And I’ll have more, I’m sure of it. You can tell your secret service friend he’ll have it chapter and verse tonight.’

  *

  They parted in the bar. Wilde rejoined the Hardimans and Clarissa in the members’ dining hall just before the fourth race.

  ‘I thought you’d run away and deserted me, Professor Wilde,’ Clarissa said.

  ‘My first time at the races. I just wanted to wander. See the horses in the stables, mix with the people. Soak up the colour.’

  ‘Well done you with your winner. I am now your slave girl. What do you have in mind? Something very improper, I trust.’

  ‘Something outrageous.’

  ‘Will you come to Old Hall this evening?’

  ‘I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Hey, sure he’s coming,’ Hardiman said. ‘We have a men’s singles to play.’

  ‘It will have to wait,’ Wilde said. ‘I have things to do.’ Call Philip Eaton. Wait for Henty O’Gara to make contact. Welcome Lydia home.

  But he did want to go to Old Hall. There was something there. He felt it. There was the house itself, inadequately explored. Things unspoken and unseen, haunting him. Secrets that his good friend Jim Vanderberg wanted. There were those outbuildings, too – best part of half a mile away from the main house. He was missing something, wasn’t he?