The City in Darkness

by Michael Russell

  Kerney waited as the waiter poured his coffee. He looked at Stefan, too surprised for a show of indignation. When he spoke it was in Irish too.

  ‘Who the hell would be following me?’

  ‘A British Intelligence officer, a Mr Chillingham.’

  ‘And how do you know all this, Inspector.’

  ‘I saw a lot of Mr Chillingham yesterday. I saw him waiting for you outside the São Domingos church. I saw him watch you leave here in a taxi. I saw him ask the concierge where you’d gone. I saw him by the Tavares when you were eating there. He’s not that good at his job, but he’s good enough to know you were with a German Military Intelligence officer.’

  ‘I see, so you were following me too.’

  ‘I thought it was something you ought to know about, sir.’

  Kerney felt both irritated and embarrassed. Stefan’s calm tone was calculated not to make him feel foolish, but it wasn’t entirely successful.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll see Chillingham again.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘He knows he was spotted. I had a drink with him last night.’

  ‘And what the feck was that for, Gillespie?’

  The waiter put down a plate of eggs and a rack of toast.

  ‘I thought I’d ask him if it was a good for the British Embassy to be trailing an Irish diplomat. He took the point, but he did wonder if an Irish diplomat having dinner with an Abwehr colonel was altogether in the spirit of neutrality, as His Majesty’s Government saw it.’ Stefan smiled. ‘His words, sir. And I assumed you’d want to know why he was following you.’

  ‘And did you find out?’

  ‘Proinséas Riáin.’

  There was no one listening to the conversation, but if anybody had been, a language that was incomprehensible in most hotels in Dublin was certainly unintelligible in Lisbon. And Stefan bore in mind Lisbon as it had been described to him the previous night; a name a surprising number of people seemed interested in was best, even on its own, unrecognized.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘They have a whiff of what’s happening. This arrangement with the Germans to get Frank Ryan out of prison and out of Spain, I mean. They’d like to know what it’s about. I doubt it amounts to more than that. He was an IRA leader and the English are still clearing up the IRA bombing campaign.’

  ‘If he was still an IRA leader there wouldn’t have been a bombing campaign. I know it made him as sick to the stomach as the rest of us.’

  ‘Whatever about that, they’ve put you and Ryan and the Abwehr together, sir. Why wouldn’t British Intelligence want to know more?’

  Leopold Kerney nodded and finally produced an awkward smile.

  ‘The Department thought I was getting out of my depth, is that it?’

  Stefan understood but looked as if he didn’t.

  ‘You, I mean,’ said the ambassador.

  ‘I don’t think they anticipated a British Intelligence tail, Mr Kerney.’

  ‘Well, they did suggest diplomacy isn’t an ideal training for all this. So are you here to protect me from myself or Irish diplomacy from me?’

  Stefan still looked as if he didn’t quite understand, but Kerney was now under no illusions that he understood perfectly. He sat and ate, looking out at the Avenida da Liberdade. When he spoke again it was in English.

  ‘Since you haven’t got that hat, I’ll come to Fonseca’s with you. If they do follow, they can watch. I underestimated you. Let us start again.’

  Leopold Kerney took Stefan to the hat shop in the Rossio, then crossed the square to meet the honorary consul for coffee in the Café Nicola. They continued to the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Stefan was satisfied the ambassador was no longer being followed, but since Kerney’s movements in Spain were already known it wasn’t necessarily the end of the game. That evening the two Irishmen would take the night train that would split along the way for Madrid and the French border. It was the train that would take Stefan to Salamanca and to the Colegio de los Irlandeses.

  It was early evening when they left the Avenida Palace for the Central Station. The luggage had gone ahead to the train. As they walked along the crowded platform to the sleeping car the ambassador talked about Salamanca and its churches. It was a city he clearly loved but Stefan had learned that conversing about interesting things, interesting places, was an artful way of saying nothing, and was a part of who Leopold Kerney was. It was probably a part of what any halfway decent diplomat needed to be. There had been similar conversations through the day since the ambassador had decided he was now a help rather than a hindrance. Although Kerney now accepted him, he showed no sign of taking Stefan into his confidence.

  When they reached the sleeping car, Agostinho, the Avenida’s concierge, was waiting. He had brought the bags himself. Kerney thanked him, slipped some escudos into his hand, and stepped up into the carriage. He was unaware of the concierge’s nervousness. Stefan could see it immediately. Agostinho had attempted to hand the money back to Kerney, though Kerney had not noticed. It wasn’t every day a concierge did that.

  ‘Thank you, Agostinho,’ said Stefan.

  The concierge spoke in a low voice, glancing furtively around.

  ‘You have heard, senhor? The Englishman?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Senhor Chillingham. His body is found in the Tagus.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  The concierge crossed himself and nodded; Jesus was the word.

  ‘Do they know what happened?’

  Agostinho shrugged and drew his finger across his throat.

  ‘Os alemães; the Germans.’

  He grabbed Stefan’s hand and pushed into it the dollars from the previous day, along with the ambassador’s escudos. Then he was gone. Stefan watched him disappear into the crowd. He turned back to the train.

  ‘Mr Gillespie, could you kindly take my easel and paints?’

  He looked round at the smiling face of Mrs Surtees.

  ‘I’m bad with steps. I lost a canvas under a train in Nuremberg once.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Surtees.’ He took the easel and the paint box.

  ‘I managed to get the cathedral here in an unusual pinkish light.’

  Inside the sleeping car Stefan offered her back the easel and the paints, but Mrs Surtees was busy leafing through a battered sketchbook.

  ‘It’s a Latin cross, you know.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘But the façade is like a boy’s drawing of a fort.’

  She thrust her picture in front him.

  ‘It’s very simple. I like that, don’t you?’

  Stefan sat in the sleeper he would be occupying for the night, looking out at the darkness that had abruptly replaced the countryside beyond Lisbon. The way Simon Chillingham’s surveillance had closed wasn’t easy to understand. He had to assume the concierge was right about the Englishman’s death; the fear on the man’s face left no room for doubt. He also had to assume German Intelligence were responsible. It wasn’t information he could hold on to. Kerney had to know. He had felt a growing sense through the day that the ambassador, having accepted that he did have a use for a Special Branch detective after all, had still managed to soften any real concerns that might be emerging about the conflicting interests of German and British Intelligence in Frank Ryan’s release. Stefan imagined that Leopold Kerney probably saw the intelligence services as the adjuncts of diplomacy they often pretended to be; diplomacy pursued, as it were, by less gentlemanly means. It might be the job of a diplomat to believe all that, but what Kerney had stepped into now was not diplomacy; what was on his shoes was blood, not bullshit.

  ‘My God, but how?’ The ambassador shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘I don’t know how, Mr Kerney. The question is why.’

  ‘The concierge couldn’t be sure the Germans were involved.’

  ‘I think he could have a very good idea, sir.’

  This wasn’t what the ambassador wanted to hear.

 
‘For God’s sake, surely no one’s going to kill a man for knowing I ate a meal in a restaurant with someone. I was exercising discretion, but no more. A level of secrecy is important, mostly in respect of the Spanish response to Ryan’s release. They don’t want this to appear as anything but an escape. The reasons are not significant. It’s about saving face, no more than that.’

  ‘I doubt Mr Chillingham is dead so that Spain can save face.’

  ‘All right, Gillespie, you’ve made that point. I know what Lisbon is. German spies, British spies, and the rest, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, American. I don’t suppose the Germans and the British have trouble finding reasons to attack one another’s agents. You can’t assume it’s about Ryan.’

  ‘I’m a great believer in Occam’s razor, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘With competing theses choose the one with the fewest assumptions.’

  ‘Yes, I do know what it is.’

  ‘I prefer the explanation I can see to the ones I can’t.’

  ‘You do understand why I am helping Ryan in the way I am?’

  ‘Because there’s no other way.’

  ‘There isn’t. I can’t get to the bottom of why Franco slams the door on releasing him. I’ve spent months with lawyers, politicians, people close to Franco, trying to negotiate. Our government has tried other avenues. It always ends the same. This is the only chance. Frank won’t survive another winter in Burgos. Helmut Clissmann and some of Frank’s friends started this. They have contacts in German Intelligence and the German and Spanish Intelligence services have done a deal. When he gets out, he leaves Spain. That’s it.’

  ‘Except that it probably isn’t it, with all due respect, sir.’

  ‘So let’s say you’re right, Gillespie. What is it then?’

  ‘If it’s about what’s staring us in the face, the Germans helping get Ryan back to Ireland, or to America, or wherever it is he’s going to end up, that doesn’t seem worth killing anybody for. There has to be something more, something the Abwehr doesn’t want British Intelligence to know.’

  ‘So I’m being played for a fool now, am I?’

  ‘You know what you’re trying to achieve, sir.’ Stefan’s reply didn’t deny the possibility that Kerney, if not being played for a fool, was at least being played. ‘That may not be what your man Melsbach is trying to achieve. People kill each other for some half-arsed reasons when it comes to politics, let alone war. We do it at home. The IRA shoots a policeman to make a point – maybe the only point is, they can. And I won’t pretend it’s beyond Special Branch to do the same thing, for the same reason – because they can. But the posturing has to start somewhere, even with the IRA.’

  Leopold Kerney was uncomfortable. Like most Irish politicians and civil servants, he was a man with close connections to the IRA, at least to the Old IRA of the days before the Civil War. Twenty years ago people who had later come to despise each other, even kill each other, judicially as well as extra-judicially, were all on the same side, fighting England. That they were no longer was something most of them, in their heart of hearts, did not believe was much more than a superficial disagreement. As long as they could all sing a Rebel Song, the great gulf between them wasn’t a polite conversation to have.

  ‘Inspector, I don’t understand what’s happened. I respect your judgement as a policeman but this is more complicated. You can’t dismiss the fact that this man Chillingham’s death is about two sides in a war fighting each other wherever they meet. That’s glaringly obvious to me. Ryan has nothing to do with that. My task is simply about getting him out of Burgos. It’s what the government wants and I intend to make it happen.’

  Stefan could see Kerney had just put this argument together. He did not intend to believe there was anything untoward in German help or that it had any bearing on a British Intelligence officer’s death. He had moved on.

  ‘What do you know about this Abwehr man, Melsbach, sir?’

  ‘I don’t even know he is that. He’s a soldier, a colonel.’

  ‘In the Brandenburg Regiment.’

  ‘I have no idea, quite possibly.’

  ‘It’s an intelligence regiment.’ Stefan gave no explanation for why he knew. ‘They might have uniforms on but they do the same job as British Intelligence or G2. And Frank Ryan’s friend, Herr Clissmann, who seems to have started all this, a grand feller I’m sure, with a lot of friends in Ireland, I know, is also a German Intelligence officer, and in the same regiment.’

  ‘Is it odd that the man’s joined his country’s forces?’

  ‘No, sir, but everywhere you turn there’s an intelligence officer, German or otherwise. And when we get to Salamanca, you’ll be talking to German Intelligence at the Irish College. That’s the Abwehr base in Spain, isn’t it? They’ll be the people getting Frank Ryan out of Franco’s gaol.’

  ‘That speaks for itself, doesn’t it, Gillespie?’

  ‘I think the thing to say, sir, is that in Salamanca you know nothing about British Intelligence. You know nothing about being followed in Lisbon. You definitely know nothing about Mr Chillingham or bodies in the Tagus. It really is as simple as you’ve said. The Germans will know I’ve spoken to Chillingham, but to be honest they won’t think there’s anything strange about me not involving you. They live in a police state. They’ll assume I’m here to do two things. To keep you safe and to spy on you.’

  ‘Which is probably not far from the truth,’ smiled Kerney.

  Stefan made no comment; it would do no harm for the ambassador to think that now. His only concern was to make sure Kerney listened to him.

  ‘You don’t speak German, do you, sir?

  ‘Hardly anything.’

  ‘I am here to protect you. You need to let me do that. And you need to keep as far away as possible from anything that looks underhand. The British are watching. They will be somewhere. And if everyone’s watching everyone, you can step out of the circle. I do speak German, and you’re going to have to trust me to deal with some of this. Getting close to German Intelligence isn’t what you should be doing at all. You know that better than I do, sir. You need to use me. The Abwehr will trust you more with a secret policeman to do your dirty work. That’s how it works in Germany.’

  ‘You weren’t idly sent were you, Gillespie?’

  ‘No, in a number of ways, I’m not here idly.’

  What was in Stefan Gillespie’s mind was not what was in Kerney’s. He had a job to do for the ambassador but the more independence he had, the more freedom there would be to pursue the other job he needed to do.

  ‘A little distance would be no bad thing, sir, between you and Ryan, and between you and me. The more distance, the more you can deny too.’

  However gently, Stefan was already telling Leopold Kerney what to do.

  Stefan stood at the bar on the night train, nursing a large brandy. In front of him Mrs Surtees was arguing with the barman with calm, stolid persistence.

  ‘I’m sure you can make me some tea.’

  ‘The chef is asleep. There is coffee, no tea.’

  ‘It’s been stewing since Lisbon. I wouldn’t ask a camel to drink it!’

  ‘Um camelo?’ The barman was puzzled.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Boiling a kettle is not my job, senhora. I am the barman.’

  ‘Well, if there is no tea I’d better have a large brandy.’

  The barman smiled; it was a small victory. Mrs Surtees turned.

  ‘Are you going to Madrid, Mr Gillespie?’

  ‘Salamanca.’

  ‘A beautiful city. I have the Plaza Mayor here.’ She took her sketchbook from under her arm. ‘You see, quite enormous. Of course, it was fortunate to be out of the way of the conflict. Two cathedrals. The Romanesque is glorious! Wonderful simplicity. I’m doing cathedrals. Burgos is my next. Vast and Gothic, not simple at all. Burgos is more intimidating than Salamanca and rather overrated. I don’t know why Franco wanted it as his capital in the Civil War. Salaman
ca is much pleasanter. Still, I don’t suppose pleasantness featured very much in his calculations.’

  ‘The Plaza Mayor,’ said Stefan handing back the sketchbook.

  ‘Yes, don’t miss it.’ Mr Surtees sipped the brandy.

  ‘A bit on the rough side,’ said Stefan.

  ‘Spanish, not French,’ she replied. ‘I prefer it.’ She held out the glass. ‘Another one in there, dear. I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’

  ‘A sheep, senhora?’

  ‘Por uma ovelha como um cordeiro.’

  He took her money, looking at her blankly, and didn’t pursue it.

  ‘You wonder sometimes if there’s any point speaking anything other than English, Mr Gillespie. I know we should all make the effort, but is anyone any better off?’

  When Mrs Surtees had gone Stefan sat for some time looking out at the night through the carriage window. Occasionally there were lights, but very few. They were in Spain, heading for the central plateau. The line was through dense woodland on either side of the train. He had been given little time to think about events in Lisbon. His first concern was to make sure Leopold Kerney waded no further out of his depth. But the ambassador wasn’t alone. It had all seemed light-hearted, the walk along the Rua da Misericórdia and the Vinho Verde in the Praça do Comércio, but the lights of Lisbon, like Dublin’s, were at the edge of the darkness descending over the darkling plain of the continent beyond. Simon Chillingham was like him, just another kind of policeman. Kerney had never seen him, of course, but after the proper expression of shock the Englishman had been filed where diplomacy and war pursued common ends in terms of necessity, expediency, gain. It wasn’t his business. Perhaps it wasn’t Stefan’s either. But he felt less satisfied than he had at breakfast in the Avenida Palace Hotel. It was hard not to think that if he had not made the man in the linen suit his business, he might be alive.

  19

  El Colegio de los Irlandeses

  When the train reached Salamanca the city was waking. A taxi took Stefan Gillespie and Leopold Kerney to the Colegio de los Irlandeses. The ambassador was silent. The subject on both their minds was exhausted. Kerney had accepted that there were things it was better for Stefan to deal with. He didn’t like it. He liked even less the idea of what the Special Branch man would report to Dublin. But for now there was no more to say.