"Tell me, damn you, tell me!"
"No. I choose to remain in the conspiracy of silence. My motives are not important, and they would not be understood by someone as — crass as you. One of my daughters tried to ask me questions about your book, Gates of Hell." Menschler held up his hands, and closed them into claws. "I tore the book to pieces, Herr McBride. You have dirty hands, and you will never touch the necklace with them. I choose not to tell you — and there is nothing you can do about that!"
The Rt Hon. David Guthrie, MP, HM Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, had flown by helicopter from Stormont Castle to Aldergrove airport, then on an RAF flight to Northolt, and been driven into London by a Ministry driver. Now, in the office of Davidge the Home Secretary, preparing for an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister, Guthrie still looked at his ease, and to Davidge, as if he were appearing on television. Moving with the grace of an athlete or an actor, using his profile, marking off the room like his territory as he moved about it ot stood looking out over St James's Park in the autumnal mist that had persisted all morning. Though Davidge knew that the territory he really wished to appropriate was the office where they would lunch with the Premier.
The press considered almost everything Guthrie did and said as a piece of canvassing for some future election, some anticipated occupation of 10 Downing Street — but the press was usually kind, and more than normally impressed by his term of office at Stormont, and the progress that had been made towards some kind of stability in Ulster. Davidge, as he watched the man he could not be like and could not, therefore, like or admire, sensed the electricity running between the reports on his desk and the man at the window.
The Provisional IRA had detonated one hundred pounds of explosive at Aldershot, and a lot of soldiers and their families were dead and injured. And a second bomb had been defused at Catterick. In the wake of bombs in Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Southampton. A summer of mainland bombing had badly frightened people. Had threatened the Anglo-Irish Agreement almost as seriously as did the new government in Dublin. Yet Guthrie appeared at ease.
For Davidge, to whom the same school, the identical university and a parallel political career had not given the same ease before the cameras or the same overriding self-assuredness, Guthrie was habitually an irritant. He was still the man's fag, after all the years that had passed.
"What is the PM's feeling?" Guthrie asked finally, a look of frank distaste souring his features. As if he had spotted a weakness within himself which the words embodied.
"Distress — I think one may use the word unreservedly."
Guthrie turned to face Davidge as he sat at his desk.
"Two bombs in Dublin, another in Waterford," he snapped, as if he were the intended victim. "Fires all over Belfast and Derry. Those bastards are worried, Davidge — really worried!"
"But will they succeed, Guthrie — that is what you will be asked this afternoon — can they succeed?"
"In persuading the Dublin government to withdraw from the Anglo-Irish Agreement, you mean?"
"What else? That, I take it, is the object?"
"I should presume so." Guthrie rubbed his chin, and stared across the low mist shrouding the park. It looked cold out there; figures moved through the mist as little more than dancing spots tiredness might have brought to his eyes. He'd seen the growing apprehension on the faces of his PPS, and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary. Even the GOC's staff were apprehensive, and felt unfairly restrained in a low-profile response which Guthrie hoped might keep the Dublin government as signatories to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Hadn't that been the real object of the summer's bombing campaign on the mainland? And of Provisional Sinn Fein's hysterical propaganda war? The election in July had changed the Dublin government. Fianna Fail might be persuaded, if sufficient pressure could be applied, to renege on the Agreement and adopt its traditional cry for a united Ireland. Stop all cross-border co-operation on security, stop working for a political solution. Then the cycle of violence would begin once more in even greater earnest.
He could stop it — could still prevent it. If the meetings to which he had invited the Irish Prime Minister took place, and were successful, they could reaffirm the accord between London and Dublin. If, if, if…
Clearing his throat softly, Guthrie announced: "The Unionists — of most shades — have agreed to hold back. They're not prepared to be seen to be giving way, but their opposition has dwindled. They haven't been able to destroy the Agreement, and they know it…" More urgently, as if he sensed he had failed to convince even himself, he continued: "If I can persuade Dublin to honour the Agreement…" He turned to the Home Secretary, one hand before him in an upturned fist. "We can still do it, Roger — we can hold the middle ground. That's why the Proves are lashing out now, why this is their last, desperate effort. If Dublin stays with us now, with a Fianna Fail government, then they're in trouble. All the men of violence are in trouble." He moved closer to Davidge, his eyes clear, gleaming. More softly, but still with urgency, he said: "You have to begin making arrests, Roger. We have to have these bombers — now. To maintain our credibility. Ever since Brighton almost succeeded, we've been waiting for another campaign. I may not be able to convince Dublin that the Agreement's worth tuppence if we can't locate a bombing team in our own back yard!" Once more, his hand closed into a fist. "They're blowing the cement out of the brickwork, Roger. It mustn't happen — not now!"
It was raining, and there was a wind sweeping across Guernsey which spattered the hard drops against one side of his face. The left side, which was now almost dead to any feeling, ached with awakened blood vessels whenever he rubbed it. Minor discomfort. He was far more concerned with the duration of the shower. It was already after dark, and after curfew.
Yet there was the same elation, familiar rather than self-betraying. They had told him, years ago when Drummond had first recruited him, that a lot of the work was sheer and unadulterated boredom. A pain in the backside, one senior instructor had drawled, dismissing espionage much as he might have done other people's boils. Michael McBride — currently Lt Commander McBride, RN — had wondered at the virginal excitements of training, at the persistence of such feelings during early operations immediately prior to the war, and then grown accustomed and accepting. Apparently — he smiled even now as he formed the thought — he was made to be an agent. He had found his metier, his vocation.
He stopped, pumping his hands against his arms, flapping himself warm. He took out the pencil torch, flicked on the thin beam for a second, and nodded. He was half a mile outside St Peter Port, on the main road from St Sampson and the cove north of Clos-du-Valle where the submarine had landed him. The S-class submarine could not navigate between Herm and Guernsey in safety — could have brought him no further south and nearer St Peter Port. He was making reasonable time, but he was impatient to arrive in St Peter Port, as a lover would be for a rendezvous.
He could not be certain of the currency of his forged papers, which were designed to get him down to the main harbour itself — certainly through and past the patrols in the town. He had been ordered to go nowhere near any of the contacts among the occupied islanders — Admiralty Operational Intelligence Centre had made that the strictest parameter of his job. He was not to be known to be on Guernsey. Even at the risk of the papers he carried being days, even hours, out of date.