"Why are you afraid — they won't come back. Burglary isn't like that—"
"I suppose not. It's just that—" She seemed to scrutinize him, as if to check her impulse to spill the whole story into his hands, make him share its oppressive weight. "My father, last time I was here, when he wrote to you — was certain he was being watched — he said, under surveillance, and laughed, actually." The memory warmed her for a moment, then the tears stood at her eyes, making them glisten. She seemed determined to ignore them. "He claimed it was the most interesting time of his life, since the war—"
"Why did he write me?"
"He explained — didn't he?" She seemed to have little patience to talk about his concerns.
"He wrote me like a novelist — full of mystery—" He consciously employed his most disarming smile, and she responded slowly. He noticed her nose had reddened with the restrained tears. "He said he had a visitor — did he?"
"I wasn't here that week—" In the way she spoke, there was something that made him not envy her husband. He was vying with a worshipped father who would now be beatified by memory. He hoped her husband in Bristol had learned to cope. "But I believe my father. Someone came — he said from the government in his most mysterious tone—" A slight, almost luxurious smile. "Interested in you, and your work. But he didn't explain — the visitor, I mean — and made my father very angry that he'd been warned not to talk to you—"
"What did he want to say to me, Mrs—?"
"Forbes," she said simply, announcing something of minor significance. She talked of her father much as his own mother had talked of Michael McBride, and he wondered about two men so easily, casually capable of inspiring love.
"Mrs Forbes, your father's letter intrigued me, I have to admit. But it didn't tell me anything — do you know anything?"
As he asked, he was aware again of the break-in, and the fact that the jade and silver wasn't missing. She looked thoughtful.
"It was the work he and your father were involved in — in 1940, I think. He didn't talk much about the war, funnily enough — not until this happened."
McBride realized his mouth must be open, and his eyes furiously active. She seemed frightened, as she might have been of a harmless but retarded person in the street, suddenly encountered.
"Papers — what about his papers? Were any missing?"
"I can't say — there was a mess, and I tidied it all into cardboard boxes, but I didn't know what was there.
Nothing of any importance, I'm sure. My father didn't hoard things, never kept a scrapbook, or took a lot of pictures, even when my mother was alive. He was always clearing out cupboards and drawers, throwing things away. He had a very good memory — perhaps he was just careless about who and what he once had been—?" The thought seemed to have just struck her, and she evidently found it uncomfortable.
"So you wouldn't know?" She shook her head. McBride was beginning to believe the unimportance of the burglary; it retreated in his consciousness, though he knew, dimly, that he wasn't finished with it. "The man who came to see your father — was your father frightened in any way?" She laughed out loud, then clapped her hand to her mouth as if caught in an irreverence. But she was still smiling when she uncovered her mouth.
"Of course not. My father thought him stupid, and impudent."
"And he didn't threaten your father?"
"No, why should he? Official secrets? My father hadn't learned any for forty years, Mr McBride. Would you like coffee — some lunch?" He shook his head.
"No to the lunch, yes to coffee."
While he listened to her making coffee in the kitchen, he pondered Gilliatt's death, and the frustration of this minor part of his visit to England. But, 19407 It was too coincidental.
When he had taken the delicate china cup with the heavy rose-pattern in the deep pink saucer, sipped and complimented her, he said, "Your father didn't mention exactly what it was he wanted to talk about, I suppose?" He was resigned to it being idle speculation — her answer had a startling clarity.
"He was still laughing when he told me. He said that your connection with it was the best irony. It put the wind up the people in Whitehall, he was certain of that — the same name, you see, and the blood connection. The man from London told him that you were interested in the operation my father was part of in late 1940—"
"Emerald Necklace?" he asked in a hoarse voice, the cup tilting in his hand as his attention was forced from it.
"Careful," she warned. "I'm sorry — I don't know what you mean—"
"The operation was called Emerald Necklace."
"I don't know — was it? My father didn't refer to it by name. He simply said it was to do with a German plan to invade southern Ireland, late in 1940. Are you interested in something like that?"
Sean Moynihan handed over the papers he was required to carry under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, as Peter Morgan, visitor to the Republic. He'd filled a sheaf of forms at Heathrow, which attempted to stop people like himself from travelling freely in and out of Eire.
The passport official at Cork Airport accepted the papers and the Welsh accent that Moynihan had assumed, and the single suitcase and the false passport. Outside the tiny, almost empty terminal building, Donovan was waiting for him with his car.
When they were on the L42, driving back towards Cork, and Moynihan had maintained a deliberate silence in order to irritate Donovan, the driver said, "You had a satisfactory trip, I take it?" He wiped a hand over his thinning hair, as if nervous at having trodden on some private grief.
"I did, Rory, I did." But his face portrayed only the mirror of his angry frustration at the hands of Goessler. "Herr Goessler was his usual smiling, fat, bloody self."
"Well — what did you get from him? What can we use?"
"Nothing — nothing yet."
Donovan was emboldened by disappointment. "But you promised — look, Sean, I've got the Committee on fire for some startling piece of usable information, and you come back with nothing?"
"Shut your gob and drive, Rory — you do that best."
After a silence which seemed to mist the windscreen slightly, Donovan said, "I'm sorry, but the Committee is pressing. Dublin keeps reassuring us — but we don't trust them. Gerry thinks there's a real chance they'll go along with the Brits and keep that fucking Agreement. So, we need—"
"Fuck Provisional Sinn Fein, Rory!" Moynihan snapped.
Donovan flushed angrily. "You can't talk to me like—"
"I can, Rory."
"We want next week's meetings stopped as much as you do!"
"Then you'll have to be patient. I've nothing for you — not yet. Goessler has us by the balls, Donovan, you know that."
"What's going to happen, then?"
"Goessler's set his elaborate scheme in motion—"
"McBride?"
"Yes. He's in London now. Soon, he'll be coming here, following an old, old trail—"
"How long is this going to take?" Donovan's round eyes blinked behind his thick spectacles as he looked almost desperately at Moynihan.
"Watch the cart," Moynihan said, and when they had swerved to avoid it, added, "Not too long — damn you, Donovan, I can't help it, and I don't like it, either! So Dublin goes to these meetings — OK. Those meetings will take weeks to decide, one way or the other — it'll all be out in the open before then!"