by James R Benn
"Pathetic, really," Cosgrove said. "But it alerted us to increase security in sensitive military areas."
"So what are you worried about?" I asked.
"The IRA is more effective closer to home," O'Brien said. "During the S-Plan operations, they broke into Magazine Fort, the regular Irish Army ammunition storage depot in Dublin."
"The Christmas Raid," I said. I remembered a long night of celebrating and toasting the IRA at Kirby's, my dad and Uncle Dan slapping each other on the back while singing the old songs. It had sounded like Robin Hood and his merry men had pulled off a marvelous heist.
"December 1939," O'Brien acknowledged. "They broke in, disarmed the guards, and took over a million rounds of ammunition. No one killed or even hurt. It was a grand coup, except they hadn't planned for success. They took away so much, there was no place to hide it all. And the Irish Army was so red faced they tore the countryside apart looking for it. Most was quickly recovered."
I hadn't heard about that. Or if I had, there'd been no celebrating to help me remember.
"What worries us, Boyle," Cosgrove said, leaning forward as if to whisper a secret, "is that one of these IRA schemes might actually work. They've no shortage of imagination, I'll grant you. But we've been lucky so far that they have as much talent for mucking things up as they do for concocting grand schemes."
"Have you heard of Sean Russell?" O'Brien asked.
"Sure," I said, not seeing any reason to hide the fact. The former IRA chief of staff was a famous guy in certain parts of South Boston.
"In 1939 he toured America, speaking to Clan na Gael gatherings, raising funds for the bombing campaign. From there he went on to Italy, and then secretly to Germany. He met with the German foreign minister about recruiting Irish nationals captured fighting for the British Army into an Irish Brigade, to fight against the British in Northern Ireland. He underwent demolition training with the Abwehr, and after three months was outfitted with a radio, funds, and explosives, and sent off on a U-boat that would land him back in Ireland."
"But he died," I said, vaguely remembering reports of his death.
"Yes, on the U-boat. We believe from a burst gastric ulcer. The mission was scrapped."
"You're lucky he mucked that one up by dying," I said to Cosgrove.
"Indeed. But it gave us cause to watch the IRA even more closely. Both sides have tried to draw neutral Ireland into the war. Or all three sides, I should say." He counted them off on his fingers. "First, Churchill offered Dublin all of Ulster if the Republic of Ireland entered the war allied with England. Prime Minister de Valera turned him down. Second, the IRA sent an emissary to Berlin in 1940 with Plan Kathleen, their military plan for a German invasion of Ireland. If the German invasion succeeded, the IRA would assume control of the entire island and enter the war as an Axis partner."
I focused on item number one, unsure I'd heard correctly. "Churchill would've given up Northern Ireland?"
"Absolutely. He offered exactly what the Irish Republican movement had always wanted: a united Ireland, free of British control. But apparently there was little enthusiasm among the Irish for another war, and Eamon de Valera missed his chance."
"So what about the third side, the Germans?"
"We have come into possession of their plans for Operation Green, the invasion of Ireland, rumored to have been at the invitation of the Dublin government. Quite detailed. But I daresay the time has passed for its implementation. We are no longer spread so thin now that you Yanks have joined us."
"OK, so what's the problem? The IRA hasn't given the English a free pass because you're fighting a war. But except for Sean Russell, none of them have been able to exploit the situation. And he's dead. What do you need me for?"
O'Brien said, "Six weeks ago we intercepted a message from Tom Barry, the IRA intelligence director, to Joe McGarrity in America, head of Clan na Gael. Do you know of him?"
"I've heard the name." I didn't mention that I'd heard the name when Uncle Dan introduced me to him. Joe McGarrity had had Sunday supper at our home when he was in Boston a few years ago, along with an IRA man named Seamus Rafferty. Raising money for the Cause. I wanted to find out what this was about but I didn't think they'd keep me in their confidence if they knew the Boyle household was a regular gathering place for the Irish Republican movement. To us, Republican didn't mean Wendell Willkie, it meant a united Ireland. Free of the English. I did my best to make my replies neutral, free of politics, to keep them talking. At least listening to Subaltern O'Brien's voice was pleasant.
"The message was 'Ask Clan na Gael to rush supplies.'"
"Supplies for what?"
"Five days ago, a U.S. Army arms depot at Ballykinler in Northern Ireland was raided. They got away with fifty of the latest models of the Browning Automatic Rifle and over two hundred thousand rounds of ammunition. What do you think it's for, Lieutenant Boyle?"
"Are you certain it was the IRA? Not German saboteurs?"
"About four miles from the main gate, we found the body of Eddie Mahoney, a known IRA man. Shot twice in the back of the head and left with a pound note folded in the palm of his hand."
"The mark of the informer," I said automatically.
"You do seem to know something of the ways of the IRA, Boyle," Cosgrove said. "Do you have Republican leanings yourself?"
"It wouldn't matter if I did. General Eisenhower told me to cooperate, and that's what I plan to do."
"Excellent. We take this matter very seriously, especially given the involvement of this Tom Barry chap. He proposed an invasion of Northern Ireland by the IRA about ten years ago. He was overruled by IRA general staff then but he could be trying again. Money from America, arms from the U.S. Army, and perhaps involvement by the Abwehr. We will work on the German angle, and we want you to investigate the arms theft in Ireland."
"In Northern Ireland?"
"Of course. Ulster."
"Of course."
I had always wondered if I'd make it to the old sod someday. Now I would but it wasn't County Roscommon I'd be seeing. It was the northern counties, home of the Orangemen and the Red Hand of Ulster, where the Protestants still celebrated their victory over the Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne more than two hundred and fifty years ago. It had always seemed a dark, brutal, and bitter land of long, unforgiving memories. My childhood fear of the Orangeman welled up within me and I shivered. In my house, it wasn't the bogeyman who would come get you if you were bad, it was the Orangeman. My grandfather used to tell us about their parades every July celebrating the Battle of the Boyne, how they'd march through Catholic neighborhoods with their English flags and orange banners, thrashing any Catholic boys they found on the street.
It felt like I was being sent to hell itself.
It was a shock when Cosgrove informed me that I had to leave in fifteen minutes.
"Pack up your kit, Boyle. There will be a car out front waiting to drive you to the aerodrome at Lydda. Subaltern O'Brien will accompany you and provide further instructions. General Eisenhower will inform your Major Harding about this assignment but you are to discuss it with no one. You can expect spies and informers everywhere in Palestine with all the Arabs and Jews about. No time to waste, my boy. The RAF operates on a tight schedule."
With that, he shook my hand and heaved himself down the stairs to the main lobby. It was typical of the British to express dismay at so many of the local population in their occupied territories. It seemed to me the Brits never met a foreigner they liked or a foreign land they didn't.
CHAPTER * FOUR
I HAD FIFTEEN minutes to find Diana and tell her I was leaving. It wasn't the best timing, in view of the fight we'd had. A few minutes was not going to be long enough to convince her to give up the SOE while I went off on a mission, but I had to think of a way to get through to her. I went over what Kay had said as I hurried to Diana's room. Don't let your pride kill what the two of you have. Don't be a fool. But who was the fool here? Me, trying to keep Diana from
death and torture? Or Kay, driving Uncle Ike around and clasping his secret scribbles to her breast? Or maybe it was Diana, risking death again after all she had been through and all she had lost.
Diana had gone with the British Expeditionary Force to France in 1940 as a member of the FANY, working at headquarters as a switchboard operator. But the German Blitzkrieg had turned rear areas into front lines, and soon she was part of the retreat to Dunkirk and found herself caring for wounded soldiers crammed onto the deck of a British destroyer. When the Stukas came, dive-bombing and strafing the ship, she'd watched the stretcher cases slide into the cold channel waters as the destroyer capsized. Everywhere around her, men died, the waves cresting with corpses, while she survived, unhurt. She'd been rescued and made it back to England, visions of death haunting her dreams, driving the guilt deep inside her.
Then she lost her sister, Daphne. Daphne had befriended me when I first showed up at U.S. Army headquarters in London, and had been killed when she'd gotten too close to the murderer of a Norwegian official. After that, Diana was determined to go to war as an SOE agent, telling everyone she had to do her duty. But I knew there was more to it; she had to tempt death, and find out if she truly deserved to live. When she was finally sent on a mission, it was betrayed before it began, and she was picked up in Algiers by the Vichy French police. Fascist police. It hadn't been pretty. She'd been drugged, beaten, and raped. It wasn't the clean confrontation with death that she had sought. It was dirty, sordid, horrible, painful, and demeaning. I couldn't let her go through that again. I couldn't go through it again.
I knocked on her door. No answer. I called to her, rattled the door handle. Silence. I looked at my watch. Ten minutes. I ran to my room down the hall and threw my kit together, shaving gear, soap, and comb wrapped into a hotel towel and stuffed in my field bag with one good spare shirt and a few other articles of clothing. There was just enough room for a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey, half empty, and a paperback book I'd been reading, also about half done. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. It was a murder mystery about a detective working for a general. Seemed right up my alley.
I buckled on my web belt with the .45 automatic snug in its holster. I patted the pouches for the extra clips and did a quick check around the room. I had my razor, toothbrush, clean shirt, booze, book, automatic, and ammo. Everything I needed for a long trip to Belfast. Five minutes to go.
I began to write Diana a note, then realized I didn't know what to say. I wasn't sure about anything. Not her, myself, or where the war might take us. After seeing Kay's note from Uncle Ike, I wasn't sure whom I could trust or if trust even mattered anymore. Maybe I was a fool. I thought about saying I was sorry but I wasn't. I looked at my watch. Five minutes. I wrote fast.
Diana-- I've been called away. Ask the general for details. I can't say anything. May be gone for a while. Let's start over when I get back. Stay safe.
Billy
I'm no Raymond Chandler, that's for sure. I thought "stay safe" was good, though. It might mean stay safe at headquarters or it could mean be safe on your SOE mission. I slipped it under her door, and then wished I'd signed it Love, Billy. I was a fool. Too late for love--that summed up the day so far. I stood in the hallway, waiting for a sound to come from within the room. It was quiet, so at least she wasn't inside, ignoring me.
Two minutes. I had to go. Where had all my fine Irish words gone when I needed them? No wonder they called it the gift of gab; mine had deserted me. I could blather the whole day and into the night but when it came to putting a few words on paper for the woman I loved, I was lost, tongue-tied, reduced to a few trite lines.
I cursed myself as I ran through the lobby and out through the pink sandstone arches. Cypress trees shaded the walkway, lending swatches of green to the dusty pinks, beiges, and browns covering the landscape. I glanced back at the hotel, wondering if Diana had opened her door and found my note. Perhaps she was looking out a window and watching me leave, pack slung over my back. Part of me was glad to be going, I was ashamed to admit. It was a way out of my troubles. Not the best way but there was no denying it: I was off to another part of the world, and whatever was going to happen would happen without me. It might be the best thing for Diana and me, I told myself. Like I'd said in the note, when I got back, we could start over. And what if she wasn't around when I got back? Well, I had a long plane ride to figure that one out. I felt the same about Uncle Ike and Kay. Now that I knew something was going on between them, I was secretly relieved that Major Cosgrove had showed up to rescue me from these crosscurrents of passion and deception.
I didn't like the way things had turned out on this little side trip to the Holy Land. It was supposed to have been fun, a break from the routine of war: the paperwork, the waiting, the moments of terror, the lousy food, and more sudden terror. Instead, the people I loved were acting in ways I didn't understand, moving away from me, shifting and changing the few precious things I had counted on. Damned if it didn't feel good to leave that hotel behind me.
A British Army corporal gave me one of their backhanded salutes that always made me think they were slapping their foreheads. I gave him a snappy one in return and tossed him my pack. He opened the door of the staff car and I got in back, next to Subaltern O'Brien. She was fanning herself with a file folder marked SECRET in bold red letters.
"Am I in that file?" I asked.
"Not this one, Lieutenant Boyle," she said as the driver sped off, scattering pedestrians and the odd donkey with an utter disregard for civilians. As we turned onto the main road, I caught a last glimpse of the old walled city, the New Gate with its narrow archway into the Christian Quarter fading from view as we picked up speed.
"What are you doing here anyway?" I asked her.
"Finishing your briefing," she said as she thumbed through the papers in the file.
"No, I mean serving with the British. You're Irish."
"So are you," she said.
"It's not the same. My country is at war, yours isn't. And you're part of MI-5, the same people who go after the IRA in Northern Ireland."
"Which is exactly what you have been assigned to do, courtesy of General Eisenhower."
"You know what I mean," I said. "I don't think anyone ordered you to join the ATS, much less become part of MI-5." At that, she shrugged, silently granting the point, as she finally looked up from her file.
"Are you one of those Irish-Americans who romanticize the brave lads of the IRA, raising pints to them in your Boston bars and crying great rivers of tears when 'Danny Boy' plays? Do the pipes call to you, Billy Boyle, from glen to glen and down the mountainside? I think they must, even in Boston. But you never answer them, do you? You send your money and your guns, you sons of Eire, but not yourselves, so you never see the agony you cause as you keep open the great wounds of our nation. Well, now the pipes have called and you must answer. You must."
"It's not like that," I said, after I had recovered from the quiet force of her words. "It sounds like you don't like Irish-Americans very much."
"I'm sure there are some fine ones. One, I even admire very much. Now here's what we know about the theft--"
"Wait, who is it you admire?"
"Never mind, it's nothing to do with this. Now listen."
She went through the file, reviewing the details. The U.S. Army base at Ballykinler regularly received supplies from local farmers and shops. On the night of the raid, a truck loaded with cabbages and rutabagas had been admitted at the gate. Two men, the driver and a helper, had carried the food to the kitchen and then made an unscheduled stop at the arms depot. Fifty Browning Automatic Rifles, newly delivered, and more than two hundred thousand rounds were loaded onto the truck and driven out the main gate. The two men had not been escorted, and there was no search of the truck. Based on the time the truck was signed in and out and the estimated time it took for the food delivery, they broke into the arms depot and loaded up in under ten minutes. Eddie Mahoney's body was found at the side of t
he road less than half a mile from the base, hands bound behind his back.
"It must have been an inside job," she concluded. "Except for Mahoney."
"Was he an informer?" I asked when she closed the file.
"No. Our information tells us he was trusted by the IRA General Staff in Dublin."
"Would you tell me if he was an informer?"
"Yes," she said. "If it would help you, I would. There is one other IRA operative from Dublin you may run across. A man named Jack Taggart. He's called Red Jack because of his leftist political leanings. We know he lived in Dublin and that the IRA General Staff sent him north two years ago to help build up the IRA Northern Command. He fought in Spain against Franco with the Irish Brigade. He's experienced and very secretive. We lost track of him when he crossed the border. It's likely he moved his wife and children north also, since they're nowhere to be found in the Republic. They're probably living under assumed identities."
"Do you have any evidence this Red Jack character is involved?"
"No, simply a warning to watch out for him. If you do encounter him, you're to inform me and take no action."
"How do I do that--inform you, I mean?"
"I'll be in Belfast soon enough," she said. "I'd be more than impressed if you found Red Jack Taggart in your first few days. I've been hunting him for three years."
"But how will I get in touch with you then?"
"Don't worry, I'll find you."
I didn't like her attitude. I didn't like being told I was predictable, and not to worry. I didn't like her calling the shots. I wasn't used to being given orders by a woman, and the recent blowup with Diana was too fresh in my mind to allow me to take them with grace from this woman.
"What can you tell me about the truck?" I asked, changing the topic. I liked to ask the questions.
"It was found abandoned outside of Dundalk, in the Republic."
"When?"
"At exactly 6:10 a.m.," she said, consulting a sheet of paper in her file. "By a milkman, near Omeath in County Louth, perhaps twelve or so miles from Dundalk."
