Women of Courage (125 page)

‘That would be nice,’ she said.

Then she saw the soldiers.

Andrew raised his hands and stood quietly. A small part of his mind wondered what a genuine customer might think if he walked into Clancy’s Joiners and Decorators now and saw O’Reardan lounging against the wall with his Mauser in his hand, Daly ransacking Andrew’s pockets, and the secretary, unconcerned, feeding another sheet of paper into her typewriter behind the counter. Sorry sir, be with you in a moment.

Daly found the automatic in his coat pocket and took it out. ‘You won’t be needing that for negotiation, will you, Mr Hessel?’

‘I need it for protection,’ Andrew snapped. ‘If you remember, last time the police came. I do not wish to be arrested again!’

‘I’ll keep it for you.’ Daly slipped it into his own pocket and stood back. ‘All right. You can put your hands down now.’

Andrew did so, still looking aggrieved, hiding the sigh of satisfaction that might give him away. Just a search of the pockets and a quick pat under the arms - Daly had not thought to feel along the insides of his arms, under the sleeve of his jacket. Without the gun things would be a little harder, but not impossible. If he struck first he would always be invincible. Andrew felt his anger rise, the adrenalin begin to flow as it always did before combat. Time had begun to slow down for him. He noticed everything in great detail: the way Daly turned to the door beside the counter, the brief smile the secretary gave him, the shrug with which O’Reardan uncocked his pistol and pushed on the safety catch before putting it back into his pocket.

‘Through here, Mr Hessel. Mr Collins has an office upstairs.’

The soldiers were on Dorset Street, directly in between Catherine and Sean and Parnell Square. Two of them were searching some young men who had their hands raised high against a wall while other soldiers covered them with rifles. Passers-by glanced at the scene and hurried on, glad not to be troubled themselves.

Catherine took Sean’s arm and turned him gently round.

‘Not that way,’ she said. ‘The soldiers are bound to notice me like this, and then they’ll look at you.’

They hurried out of sight behind the school, where the children were just coming out to play, the boys in their knee-length trousers and little jackets, the girls in long dresses and petticoats. Catherine gripped Sean’s arm tightly. ‘Oh God, Sean, they won’t catch you again, will they?’

He patted his pocket. ‘Not this time, Caitlin, not alive.’

She remembered the gun Andrew had fired in the cellar. And the bombs at Ashtown and the policeman Sean had killed, half his face blown away by a bullet from a gun in that same pocket. ‘For God’s sake, it’s all violence and killing everywhere. Why can’t it stop?’

She saw him watching her quietly and thought: Such a lovely, boyish face. Why does it freeze like stone sometimes? Is this how he looked when he shot the policeman?

Sean said: ‘I thought you supported the movement, at least.’

‘I do. I did anyway, you know that. But I don’t want you caught by men like him. I’m sick of it - I want it to end now.’

‘Men like who?’

‘Butler. The man who chained me in the cellar.’

‘Chained you? Cathy, what do you mean?’

Catherine was dazed. She realized that things had happened so fast she had explained nothing to Sean yet. ‘He chained me in the cellar so I couldn’t get out. Oh, heavens, Sean, I should have told you. He’s gone out to kill Collins today.’

‘Cathy, I don’t understand a word.’ He gripped her shoulders, held her against the playground wall. ‘What is all this about? Tell me.’

She glanced quickly around the square, checking that they were out of sight of the soldiers. They were.

She told him.

To Sean it was as though the man he had seen in his dreams had become real and was stalking the city. The hangman, the man with the unseen face. He had nearly killed Catherine, he was out to murder Michael Collins. And he was posing as a German, von Hessel. He remembered the face, now, briefly. Outside the Lambert Hotel - the man he had lost. What had Kelly said this morning about the German? Collins was meeting him today, somewhere.

Where? Kelly had said a place, surely.

Clancy’s.

‘Come on.’ He took Catherine’s hand and began to run, away towards Dominick Street. ‘We’ve got to find a phone, quickly.’

Or, failing that, he realized, Clancy’s itself was only ten minutes’ walk. Less if they ran.

As he went through the door, Andrew noticed that O’Reardan stayed behind. O’Reardan would be a problem, then, if Andrew came down this way. But the man looked stolid, slow-thinking. When I come down I’ll be moving too fast for him, Andrew thought. Behind the door were two steps down into a short passageway, then a staircase and a corridor, leading out the back, no doubt, with two bicycles parked in it. He glanced along it swiftly before following Daly up the stairs.

Time was moving very slowly and everything was very clear in his mind. Collins would be in a room at the top of the stairs. If Daly stayed outside the room and Collins was alone he could kill him immediately, with a swift thrust of the knife to the throat. If Daly came in or Collins was not alone then it would take a minute or so longer. He would have to think about movements and distances and the positions of all the people in the room, and he would begin the negotiation about the machine guns. He had a specification of the Maxim gun in his pocket - details of its range, its weight, its cooling system, the tripod, the estimated penetration of bullets at various distances - all in diagrams, with the text in German. He would show it to Collins, and Collins would say he did not understand the German. Andrew would move to his side to translate, whip the knife from his sleeve, and plunge it into Collins’s throat. Swift. Easy. A jab in, a tearing slash on the way out, and the artery would be cut, death inevitable. He should be able to deal with Daly and anyone else in the room before they had moved from their chairs.

So Michael Collins had only a few more minutes to live.

At the top of the stairs there was a landing with banisters over the stairwell, and two doors. Daly knocked at one.

‘Come in!’

Daly opened the door for Andrew to walk past him into the room. He said: ‘Count von Hessel, Mick,’ and followed him in.

On his first stride into the room, Andrew noticed several things. A burly dark-haired man sat behind a desk in the middle of the room, facing the door. Surely that must be Collins - the round, beefy face, the air of confidence and command, marked him out. There was a window about six feet behind him, which meant his face was slightly in shadow, and to the right of the window a small man sat at a desk facing the wall. And there was a third man lounging against the mantelpiece on Andrew’s right. There was a fire burning in the grate behind him.

In his second stride Andrew noticed that the man by the fireplace had a Mauser pistol in his hand. And there was a revolver on top of a pile of papers on Collins’ desk. And Daly had come into the room behind him. Not so easy, then.

He stopped in front of the desk, bowed, clicked his heels, and held out his hand. He said: ‘A great honour, Mr Collins.’

To his surprise Collins did not stand up or shake his hand. Instead he drummed his fingers on the desk beside the revolver and said: ‘Good morning, Mr Butler.’

How the hell does Collins know my name?
Forget that, do something, this is all wrong, they know. Automatically, he said: ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Collins?’ And he would have moved then, snatched the revolver from Collins’ desk and blown his brains out with it, if he had not seen, over Collins’ shoulder, the eyes of the little man at the desk in the corner, watching him.

The eyes, behind the round pebble-lensed spectacles, were huge. Like the eyes of a scientist, peering at him like at a microbe under a microscope. Inhuman, compelling eyes. The eyes of the civil servant in Dublin Castle, Harrison.

Andrew’s brain froze. His hand stopped moving. His body didn’t know what to do.
Harrison?

He stood quite still while his brain failed to take it in. Then he realized that there was something horribly familiar about the third man standing in front of the fireplace, pointing the round black snout of the Mauser directly at Andrew’s heart. He had seen him before, too. Where? At Ardmore, that was it. He was the third man in the group who had come to Ardmore to demand money for the Loan; the man Andrew had expected to kill at the Blackwater Bridge along with Slaney and Rafferty. Davitt, he was called. The man whose place in the car had been taken by a young boy.

Ten seconds had passed and Andrew’s brain was still frozen. Collins’ hand closed on the butt of the revolver. He glanced at the man by the fireplace. He asked: ‘Is that him?’

‘That’s the fellow,’ the man said. ‘That’s the bastard who murdered my little brother.’

From behind Andrew, Daly said: ‘What’s happening, Mick?’

Collins leaned back in his chair, the revolver held casually in his right hand. ‘Keep your eyes on him, Paddy. This isn’t a German count. This is a British spy. Andrew Butler, from Ardmore. He murdered Slaney, Rafferty and Frank Davitt’s baby brother.’

Andrew said: ‘
Ich verstehe nichts. Wer sind Sie?’

Collins said: ‘Don’t trouble yourself with play-acting, Mr Butler. Here, perhaps you’d like to read this.’

He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and passed it over to Andrew. Andrew took it. At the bottom was the signature of Colonel Sir Jonathan O’Connell-Gort. Above that it said:

In my capacity as commanding officer of Military Intelligence Dublin, I confirm that a reward of £10,000 will be paid to Major Andrew Butler in the event that any action of his is the main or substantial cause of the arrest of Michael Collins, dead or alive.

It was the second copy of the contract that Sir Jonathan had signed in Dublin Castle. The one that was to be kept in Harrison’s safe, Andrew remembered. Even as he held it in his hand and read it, Andrew’s brain unfroze and his thoughts began to flow again. Any minute now they would kill him. But for the moment Collins held some more papers in his left hand and had the air of someone in control, who wanted to justify himself first. Collins held the revolver clumsily, not like a soldier. Daly was behind Andrew to the right. Harrison would be no problem. The first man to deal with was Davitt, who held the Mauser rock- steady, unwavering.

Collins said: ‘You recognize that, Mr Butler, I suppose? Clear proof that the British government employs murderers?’

Andrew looked up and saw Collins, Harrison and Davitt watching him closely. He realized suddenly how important the sheet of paper was to them. He scrumpled it into a ball and flung it past Davitt, into the fire.

Collins rose to his feet, and yelled: ‘Frank! Get it out!’ Davitt turned, looked behind him, and lowered the muzzle of the gun. Andrew drew the knife from his left sleeve, stepped forward, and stabbed it into Davitt’s throat.

As Davitt collapsed Andrew twisted the knife, turned and saw Collins two feet from him, raising the revolver. With his left hand Andrew grabbed Collins’ right wrist, pulling the hand with the revolver up and across Collins’s body, so that the gun was no longer pointing towards Andrew and Collins was pulled off balance and falling sideways towards him. With his right hand Andrew stabbed upwards with the knife, aiming to catch Collins under the ribs, below the heart.

As he stabbed, Davitt’s legs, jerking in the throes of death, kicked Andrew behind the knee.

Andrew fell with Collins on top of him. The knife snagged in the thick cloth of Collins’s jacket, and fell out of Andrew’s hand, on to the floor somewhere, out of reach. The revolver dropped out of Collins’ hand into the fire.

Collins was a big man, heavy. Andrew wrenched himself sideways and reached for Collins’ throat, but at the same time Collins punched him in the ribs and a boot landed in Andrew’s back and he thought: There’s no time, it takes minutes to strangle a man and Daly will shoot me long before that. So he jabbed his fist into Collins’ face and rolled clear, turning fast, to see Daly with a gun in his hand thumbing back the safety catch.

Andrew dived at him, catching him hard around the waist in a rugby tackle just as the gun fired above his head. He knocked Daly to the floor and grabbed his wrist before he could fire the gun again. For two or three seconds there was a tense, vicious struggle for the gun. Daly was a big strong man and wouldn’t let go, and Andrew was aware of Collins getting to his feet on the other side of the room. The little man Harrison was behind him, shaking, useless.

Andrew jerked Daly’s arm right back, over his shoulder, and butted him in the face. Daly loosened his grip. Andrew dragged the gun out of his hand, stumbled to his feet, lifted it, aimed it at Collins, pulled the trigger and …

The bloody thing misfired.

Collins was on his feet, running towards Andrew, and before Andrew could pull the trigger again Collins was on him and they lurched, punching and wrestling for the gun, against the wall near the door. Collins was very powerful and Andrew could get no advantage. He saw himself being held in a bearhug until Daly was up and then the two of them would have him for sure.

Collins reached behind him, dragged open the door and yelled: ‘O’Reardan!’ In the moment when Collins loosened his grip Andrew forced him back, heaving him out through the door on to the landing. They reeled against the banisters, Andrew drew his knee up into Collins’ stomach, and as the big man doubled up Andrew dragged his hand with the pistol free. Almost free. Collins grabbed for it again and the weight of his movement sent them both tumbling, off balance, down the stairs.

Collins hit his head on something and slumped across Andrew, stunned. The gun was gone, lost, fallen out of sight. As Andrew dragged himself to his feet, the door from the shop opened and O’Reardan came through it, his Mauser in his hand. He was about five yards away from Andrew, halfway down the two steps leading into the shop. He glanced wildly along the passage, trying to take the scene in. ‘What’s happening?’ he said.

Andrew lurched to his feet and stepped forward, holding out his hand and smiling. Davitt’s blood was dripping from his hand but he didn’t see it. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘We just fell down the stairs, that’s all.’