"Illuminate, you mean? Each one of the Fallen, every invasion up to and including Barbarossa." McBride returned the unblinking stare, the slightly fixed smile. Then Goessler nodded, as if releasing him from an hypnotic control.
"Very well, but I warn you, the bones have been well-picked by the Soviet Historical Academy."
"But for their purposes, not mine."
"Ah, true — they weren't writing for the American mass-market." Goessler laughed disarmingly, and McBride felt it impossible to be nettled by the implied slight. "Anything in particular, my friend?"
McBride had weighed the moment in advance, while showering. He could get nowhere without Goessler — Goessler might know people, as well as documents. He had decided to tell him.
"A little-known invasion plan without a Fall designation — called Smaragdenhalskette? He turned the remark to a question on the last word. Goessler crinkled his shiny forehead, then shook his head. The grey wings of hair loosened their grip on the sides of his head. He brushed them back again.
"The name means nothing to me — but, we can put some of my postgraduate students to work with you, Professor, to save you time." He clapped his hands together, possibly at the arrival of the coffee and brandy. "Yes — we shall do that for you, certainly. Your own little research team — and we will see what turns up, mm?"
David Guthrie sat in one of the beige PVC chairs with a tubular steel frame common to many current affairs programmes. Opposite him sat a renownedly belligerent interviewer, a low glass table between them. Guthrie always insisted on this staged informality when he was interviewed on television, rather than become a talking head and trunk behind a desk. He was never pedagogic in his manner, eschewing all suggestion of lecturing or hectoring that a formal setting might convey.
Red light — a camera moving in on him, the interviewer aware of the director shouting in his earphone and the link-man's voice across the studio. Guthrie felt the slightest pluck of tension; adrenalin sidled through him. He smiled in the general direction of the interviewer, half-profile to the oncoming camera. Behind the cameras, beyond the meagre area of carpet, the bareness of the studio suddenly impressed itself upon him — he kept the smile, but deepened it as if prior to serious thought. His little circle of bright light, himself spotlit — and the rest of it nothing more than a facade.
"Secretary of State, we've heard on the news tonight of a further spate of fire-bombs in Belfast, of two bombs being defused in Birmingham, and an explosion in Glasgow. What do you say to those people who tonight are concerned for their safety?"
Guthrie did not clear his throat, but leaned slightly forward, talking to the interviewer but at points of emphasis turning to the camera.
"I wish there was better news — I can only tell you that the Government, in co-operation with the police, the Special Branch and the security forces in Ulster, is committed to hunting down and removing into custody the people guilty of these hideous crimes—" His eyes glittered, and the interviewer, who knew Guthrie as well as anyone in television, suffered the familiar moment of doubt as Guthrie seemed to shift into a higher gear of response, of emotion. He could not decide — ever — whether it was a political or a human response. "I saw the film of those people being carried out of the wreckage of that supermarket in Belfast — just as your viewers did. We want this business finished."
"But, Mr Guthrie, many people may well consider you to be one of those guilty men. Is it not your forthcoming meeting with the Irish Republic's Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues that has provoked this latest round of outrages?" The interviewer disturbed his papers, as if checking his own question.
"I would understand that, except that I'm sure that the people of this country — of the United Kingdom — understand by now that our attempt to preserve the Anglo-Irish Agreement is the only answer, immediately and in the longer term, to the bombings, the killings and the violence. It is not the cause—" He smiled at the camera soberly, with gravitas. "It is my belief, firmly held, that all the parties here, in Ulster, and in the Irish Republic, with the. sole exception of the IRA, really do want the Agreement to continue to be the basis of our approach to the problems of the Province. What we must not do is to lose resolution. We can win — we will win—"
"Mr Guthrie, you say that we can win. You hold out a degree of optimism. But is it not a fact that the Irish Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues are interested in ending the Anglo-Irish Agreement?"
Guthrie was silent for no more than a moment. He smiled gravely and shook his head almost delicately. "No," he said. "My meetings with him and his colleagues next week are occasions I approach with a deal of cautious optimism." He looked directly into the camera. "The Dublin government is not interested in chaos in Ulster. The Prime Minister of the Republic feels the grave responsibility of the hour as much as I do myself. I am firmly convinced that he will not be persuaded by acts of terrorism to withdraw his support for the Agreement. If the Provisional IRA believe that either government will compromise on its determination to defeat the men of violence, then I must tell them that they are wrong."
"What other subjects — apart from the maintenance of the Agreement — will be on your conference agenda, Minister?"
Guthrie smiled. Authority and confidence, he told himself. Would they come…? How many more bombs would it take to make Dublin give in— cancel Ulster's future…? He felt perspiration begin at his hairline. His smile did not waver. A close-run thing…
"I am not prepared to prejudice our meetings by announcing specific objectives. We will, I am certain, reaffirm our joint resolve to overcome violence. Next week will not be the end of an accord, but the beginning of a new understanding. A point from which we will go forward. The Provisional IRA are desperate. Why are they so afraid of my meeting with the Irish Prime Minister if he intends to renege on our Agreement—?"
"Just one moment, Minister—" The interviewer touched his earphone, listened, and his face became grave, pressing into its most belligerent lines. He nodded, then said bluntly: "We've just received news of an explosion in a restaurant off the Charing Cross Road— there may be as many as thirty dead and wounded."
Guthrie looked appalled, as if some direct and violent attack had been made upon him. The studio appeared no longer bare; more it was insulated, safe.
"We'll go to the newsroom for more details—" the interviewer added, almost unnecessarily. Guthrie appeared unable to speak.
Not one arrest — not a single arrest. People would be frightened, would contemplate drawing back. He knew he was poised upon a critical moment, yet he was unable to speak, to reassure, to offer solutions. His initiative, his career, lay with the bodies and the broken glass and the walls stained and scorched. The Proves had brought their war to him, and they could yet win. The red light winked off on his camera, and he rubbed his face as if trying to remould flesh grown suddenly loose, shapeless.