Betrayal (2 page)

It was now Tuesday, 9 September. By 0410 hours last Sunday AST-X Bremen, who ran the Dublin agent, had received confirmation from Berlin and had sent Dublin its signal to proceed. And now here was the message that had awakened him:

Contact made. Heidi in motion.

Dönitz knew he had another even more pressing matter to attend to and that he would have to use Hydra and could not concern himself with what Berlin would offer the IRA in exchange for Kramer's escape. U-85, lying in wait some 96.5 kilometres to the south of Greenland's bleak Cape Farewell, had sighted a large and heavily laden convoy steaming slowly eastward before turning south into what had become known to the enemy as Torpedo Junction. All the convoys now used the northwestern approach to the British Isles, with a final passage to safety through the North Channel between Fair Head in Northern Ireland and the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland.

He'd taken to using a new tactic, stringing his boats in wide arcs across the convoy routes, raking them like a giant comb. He knew the loneliness, the tension, that keyed-up feeling Gregor and all the men aboard U-85 would be experiencing because, unlike so many in Berlin these days, he had done it all himself. He could even put himself into the boots of the merchant seamen from Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia and could sense the fear they must feel.

‘Signal the others of the Markgraf group to concentrate on U-85's convoy.'

There were seven boats in the group, U-85 being the most northerly. They'd begin the attack in the evening as darkness fell. In the interim, he'd see what the British did. If they directed the convoy northward towards the Greenland coast, the ships would have little room to manoeuvre and he'd know for certain that the enemy had decoded his wireless signal.

Or would he? Even with Huber's warning in hand, he still knew the British could well have some new means of detection. Perhaps Kramer would be able to shed some light on the matter, but what, really, would Berlin do about this Irish business? Would they offer the world so long as the IRA broke the Kapitänleutnant out of that castle?

Kramer … Begrudgingly Dönitz had to admit that Huber's choice had been wise. But the IRA? They were unreliable—governed by whim, totally involved with their own cause, and not to be trusted.

‘Ludi, send our friends in Berlin something they will have to pay attention to:
Most urgent. Hydra believed compromised. Initiate Triton
.'
⁴

Adding a fourth wheel to the Enigma encoding and decoding machine that every one of his boats carried would give the British something to think about.

‘And the IRA, Commander? Berlin will want an answer.'

‘Yes, of course.
Imperative agree IRA demands secure release and safe return Kramer
.'

‘Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser?'

‘Hello, Jimmy. What's on? Has someone escaped from the castle?'

‘Not bloody likely. No … no, it's nothing so easy to take care of as that. Some IRA bastard set off a bomb in the tube station at Charing Cross and killed a little girl.'

‘So all the borders in creation have to be closed while you …'

‘A little girl, Mrs. Fraser. A child of seven. She was finally on her way out of the city to an aunt in Staffordshire, the mother having refused to include her among the evacuees at the outbreak of hostilities.' In September 1939, with the invasion of Poland, though London's evacuations hadn't really begun in earnest until a year later.

‘Look I didn't mean to suggest it wasn't important.'

‘Of course you didn't.'

Water pouring from the peak of his cap, Allanby reached for her passport and held it just inside the window so as to shelter it from the rain, but as the backs of his fingers touched her, she stiffened in alarm and moved away a fraction.

‘Sorry,' was all he'd say, she staring straight ahead now but catching sight of the corporals with their Lee Enfield rifles and their bayonets.

‘Has something happened to your sergeant?' she asked tightly, not turning to look at him, for he'd lowered the passport.

‘Sergeant Stuart's inside the hut. Would you care to see him?'

‘Not really. Is it necessary? I've only been to …'

‘To Dublin and back. Look, I don't make the custom's rules, do I, Mrs. Fraser?'

‘And I'm not carrying contraband or IRA fugitives, am I?'

‘No one said you were.'

‘Stuart's not the one I should see then, is he?'

Jimmy opened the door for her and waited. The rain came down, the droplets breaking on the shiny black toes of his boots. Water ran from the creases in his khaki trousers. It clung to the Sam Brown belt, the pistol in its holster, the brass buttons of his tunic and the medals.

Allanby saw her defiantly swing one stockinged leg out of the car and then the other. Always neat as a pin, he'd be thinking. Good legs, nice ankles, that soft woollen frock coming well below her knees, he giving her a hand now, for one had to do that sort of thing, especially if one wanted to. …

She standing at last in the rain, no hat, just getting drenched because … why because it would be better that way.

A tall woman with dark reddish brown hair worn shoulder length, and greenish brown eyes, which were wide and searching, sad and distant but saw only the bayonets and the rain.

Jimmy let go of her and stooped to duck his head and shoulders inside the front seat of the car. Mary waited. She wouldn't run, wouldn't lower herself to that. Not yet. Not now.

He swept his hands and eyes over everything—looked under the seat, opened the glove compartment—rummaged about the side pockets, found nothing but the maps … Oh God, the maps.

Now it was the ashtray. ‘I didn't know you'd taken to using tobacco,' he said, wondering why she was still hanging about.

‘I don't,' she answered tensely.

‘Then whose are these? That husband of yours swears by his pipe.'

He dumped the ashes into a palm and closed his fist about the three cigarette butts that had been forgotten, she remembering them too late, remembering a lonely road in the South with the sound of the sea not far, some ruins, an old abbey, the wreck of a castle …

‘I … I don't know whose those are. You'll have to ask my husband.'

‘Inside, I think,' he said, taking her by the elbow. ‘Sergeant!'

‘Sir?'

‘See that Mrs. Fraser's bags are fetched and check the boot and spare tyre for contraband. Oh, and bring me those maps from the pocket of the right front door.'

Trapped, that's what she was. Trapped inside this bloody hut with the rain hammering on the tin roof and the water dripping off the hem and sleeves of her coat and from her nose and eyelashes. ‘Look, I can explain. Jimmy, I wasn't doing anything I shouldn't have been.'

He unsnapped his rain cape and hung it up. Then he walked around behind the counter on which the sergeant would all too soon have one of the corporals place her bags. Jimmy was a strong man—fit in the body now that the wounds of the flesh had healed. Square-shouldered, the ramrod stance made him only a little taller than herself. He was clean-shaven, too, with dark brown eyes, a hard-cleaved nose, hard wide brow, bony cheeks and a belligerent chin. What more could one have expected, but the slicked down, dark brown hair that was parted on the left and cut too short?

‘First these,' she heard him say, he tumbling the cigarette butts onto the counter while ignoring completely the constables and the custom's men who'd taken momentary shelter by the stove.

Mary looked at the cigarette butts that now lay on the polished brown linoleum of the counter, the scent of prewar lemon oil coming faintly to her on the stuffy, smoke-filled air. ‘I … I gave someone a lift into Dublin. He … he was a farmer. He used the ashtray, I guess. I can't remember.'

‘Going in to market, was he?'

‘Jimmy,
please
! You know how it is. A bit of company. I …'

Allanby found a blank sheet of typing paper on the nearby desk. Still ignoring the Ulstermen, he rolled the cigarette butts into a tidy packet and put them away in the left breast pocket of his tunic.

One of the corporals brought her two suitcases and slung them on to the counter. The sergeant brought the maps, Jimmy nodding to one of the custom's men and curtly saying, ‘You may do the necessary, Mr. O'Toole.'

That sandy-haired, portly individual flipped quickly through her things, ignoring the plain cotton step-ins as if they were poison but lingering lightly on a half-slip and the white flannel of her nightgown. She could almost hear him saying, ‘Was it cold in them parts, m'am?' ‘Them parts' being the South, along the coast road and not far from Kinsale late on Sunday before heading back to Dublin on Monday, but he wouldn't have known any of this.

The maps were being sorted. She signed the declaration papers—two bottles of Bushmills—it was so hard to get whiskey in the North even though the Bushmills distillery was there; and yes, silk stockings hadn't been seen in Dublin either since before the war.

Reluctantly Mary paid up the duty. ‘There's nothing else but the motorcar to settle, Mr. O'Toole. My husband has posted the bond on a more-or-less permanent basis, as you know.'

One third the cost of the Austin. Each time a person entered the North behind the wheel of a car, the bond was handed over in trust; the same when entering the South. You'd think they might have at least got together on this. You'd think that every car owner who had passed through here had been in the used-car business. You'd think that by now they'd know her well enough, but oh no. Every time it was the same.

Every time but this.

Jimmy ran a smoothing hand over one of the county maps. ‘Been down to Kinsale, have you, Mrs. Fraser?' he asked, suddenly looking up at her with nothing in those dark brown eyes of his but the emptiness of a military man in a time of war.

‘Kinsale?' he asked, reminding her of it.

‘Of course not,' she heard herself answering. ‘Hamish and I did want to take a little holiday this past summer, but …'

Again her shoulders lifted in that shrug of hers. ‘But what?' he asked.

He wasn't going to leave it. ‘But work at the castle didn't allow for it. That map's from summer. That's why the Old Head of Kinsale and Roaring Water Bay have been circled in pencil.'

She'd remembered it from summer—perhaps. She'd forgotten about the cigarette butts. Allanby thought then that he'd best let her forget about them. Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser was thirty-two. There were amber flecks in the large brown eyes with their touches of green—one noticed them when she was at one of the staff do's in the common room. One noticed her, one had to, but did lying make the amber come out? She had the blush of windburn about her, the cold of the rain against her cheeks, but was it also from the salt spray of some hidden little cove? She liked the sea, liked it a lot, liked being alone, too, the young wife of a Scottish country doctor—not a good one, not really. One who had messed up his life some place down the line and had been ditched by the first wife because of the drink only to find a niche in which to sit out the war. Bloody old Ireland and all that it entailed.

‘Are you done with me?' she asked tightly.

‘No, I'm not quite done with you.' She wasn't beautiful, but handsome. Yes, that's the word he wanted, but defiantly proud of what? Her body, her mind, her place in things, or what she'd been up to?

Something, by God. Something!

The rain had plastered the hair to her brow and made its thickness cling to the whiteness of a slender neck and the broad collar of her coat. Her chest rose and fell quite easily enough. Calm now, was it? he wondered, even with all the others stealing little glances at her. What the blazes had she been up to?

‘This farmer you gave a lift to. Describe him for me.'

So he'd decided to press on with it regardless. Yet again then, she would shrug, thought Mary, but this time would pull off her gloves as if they were soiled. ‘About seventy-five, I should think, and speaking Erse in spite of my telling him I couldn't understand a blessed word. Blue eyes—lots of the Irish have those, don't they, Jimmy? Wrinkles—he'd have had those too, wouldn't he, Captain? You see, I wouldn't really know, now would I, my eyes being on the road?'

Allanby waited. At some hidden thought her lips curved gently upwards in a faint and hesitant smile, then she said, ‘Sheep. He was into sheep and potatoes, this much I do know.'

‘And he was over seventy,' he muttered, exhaling the words and wondering why she had bothered to taunt him.

‘He also smoked cigarettes without a filter. Hand-rolled—I'm sure if you look, you'll find a few stray shreds of tobacco on the seat or the floor.'

‘Sergeant, have a look, will you?'

‘Sir.'

‘Check the odometer, too.'

‘Sir.'

‘Jimmy, I haven't done anything wrong. I didn't go to Kinsale and I didn't pick up this … this IRA bomber. How could I have?'

‘But you did do something, Mrs. Fraser.' He'd abruptly turn from her now. ‘Mr. O'Toole, what was the odometer reading of the motorcar when it left here three days ago on Saturday early?'

O'Toole found the form, but played magistrate with his eyeglasses and tone of voice. ‘The odometer read 7,263 miles, sir.'

He did lisp the
sir
but one had best ignore it for the moment, thought Allanby. It was near enough to twenty-one miles from the village and the castle to the border here. Another three and a half to Dundalk, then twenty-one to Drogheda and another twenty-five to Dublin. Close on seventy miles, then, and one hundred and forty on the round trip with another twenty thrown in to bugger about. That would make it one hundred and sixty, a goodly distance these days but petrol wasn't rationed in the South, not yet, just damned expensive.