“What?”
“I’ll drive you to Shannon. I’ll stay with you there, keep you out of sight until it’s time for your plane to leave. You’ll get on your flight to Berlin right on schedule.”
“But...”
“What could be simpler? While you’re in the air, I’ll return to Dingle. I’m sure I can contrive to have Clare arrested, at least detained for the time being. After all, I’m an Irish priest, and he’s a foreigner. I can invent some excuse, I’m sure. Say that he tried to pick my pocket. Accuse him of public blasphemy.” His eyes twinkled. “Almost any excuse will do, actually. It’s a far cry from the days when Priests were hunted for sport. The authorities are Irish now, and they listen when we speak. I won’t have to put Clare away for any great length of time. Just long enough so that you can get to Berlin before he gets in touch with his colleagues over there.”
“And then?”
“Then they’ll have no way to know that the plans are changed. They’ll snatch your passport one way or another, according to plan. They’ll open it up and take out the scrap of film and find a way to return the passport to you. You’ll do your part in the Berlin folk festival, receive a full measure of applause, no doubt, and then find your way back to New York.” His eyes narrowed. “I fear you’ll take bad memories of Ireland with you. But I hope they’ll fade in time and that you’ll remember the good things about our nation and forget the bad.”
She thought for a moment. “There’s one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I can’t really pass on the information, can I? I mean, I wouldn’t want to be a part of their spying. Don’t you see?”
“Of course I see. And you won’t.”
“But...”
From a pocket he drew forth a small scrap of film similar in appearance to the one she had found beneath her passport photograph. “Just ordinary film,” he announced. “But at first glance it looks quite like that devilish item from your passport. Of course, once they examine it through a viewer they’ll know a mistake’s been made, but even then they won’t expect you’ve had anything to do with it. And in the meantime I’ll forward the real microfilm to the American authorities. Anonymously, of course.” He chuckled. “When the men in Berlin realize they’ve been had, it won’t be you who comes in for their fire. They’ll suspect Clare has done them out of the goods, and they’ll probably come gunning for him. So you’ll be entirely in the clear, and no one will ever connect you with what has happened.”
“I see.”
“I think it’s a good plan, Ellen. Of course, I’ve not had much experience in this sort of thing, but I do think it might work.”
“Yes,” she said. “It might.”
“There’s no other way. You have to go to Berlin or you’ll arouse suspicion. And you have to stay away from Clare. And of course, if there’s nothing in your passport when you get to Berlin...”
“Yes. I understand.”
“I brought a tube of glue,” he said. “Let me have the passport and photo and all.” She gave them to him. “And the piece of film,” he added. “I’ll want to get that to the right people.”
She gave him the film, and he opened up the passport and went to work on it. “You might get the blanket from the building. And pick up any papers left behind.”
“I forgot all about that.”
She hurried back to the oratory, folded the blanket carefully, picked up the debris from last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast, stuffed everything into a paper bag, and carried the bag and blanket to the car. He opened the trunk and put everything inside, then handed her passport to her. “All set,” he said. “I have the other piece of film, I’ll take care of it. And I suspect it’s time the two of us got started for Shannon. We’ll take the northern route across the peninsula to Tralee. If he’s thought to set up a roadblock, he’ll have blocked the southern road. That’s the more usual route, the one your bus took coming to Dingle. From Tralee we’ll drive straight to Shannon.”
“You could leave me in Tralee. I could take a bus...”
He touched her hand. “No chance of that,” he said. “You’re in trouble, and I’m going to help you get out of it. I’m on vacation, remember. My time is my own.” His lips narrowed. “I can’t think of a better way to spend it.”
Thirteen
From Gallarus Oratory they drove almost all the way back to Dingle town before cutting off to the left. Then they were on a rough, narrow road heading northeast between two groups of mountains. He pointed out the Brandon Mountains to their left, the Central Dingle range to the right.
“This is one of the prettiest drives in all of County Kerry,” he told her. “There’s a rough beauty to this peninsula that can’t be surpassed anywhere in Ireland. They filmed Playboy of the Western World here, you know. In Inch, on the southern shore of Dingle peninsula. And the Blasket Islands are just offshore at the western tip of the peninsula. They’re uninhabited now. They ran into a couple of bad fishing seasons, and in nineteen fifty-three the government moved all the islanders over to the mainland. But some of the folk still talk of returning to the islands again. They’re a hardy people who only know a hard life. Long hours of work and little pleasure, and always the danger of shipwreck.”
He talked easily, and she relaxed in her seat beside him and thought that everything was going to be all right now. She was having a nice ride, watching lovely scenery, safe in the company of this gentle priest. And it would all be over soon. Shannon, then Berlin, then New York — and it would be over, like a bad dream, and she would be safe.
And someday, she thought, she would quite forget David Clare.
“Have you spent much time in this part of the country?”
“Some,” he said. “Family, you know. On my mother’s side. It was a grand place to come in the summer, for the swimming and fishing.”
“I suppose County Clare is very beautiful too.”
“Oh, indeed.”
“I suppose it takes a foreigner to appreciate an area, though. Don’t you think so? A native is apt to take anyplace for granted. I know I’m that way at home. America’s a grand country, and there are so many exciting places in it, and yet because I live there I rather take them for granted. I suppose you’d be that way yourself, in Ireland.”
“Perhaps. I was more the sightseer in Africa than I am in my own native land.”
“I guess everyone’s that way.” She looked out the window. The car had reached the summit of a hill, and she looked at the valley spread out below. Bare rocks, the lush green of the grass, the ribbons of piled stone fences, the stones arranged without mortar like the stones of Gallarus Oratory, though in a much less precise fashion.
“I suppose that’s why you never visited the oratory before,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Oh, I mean that it’s odd you never went to Gallarus Oratory before. If you weren’t from Ireland, you’d probably have made a great point of seeing it on your first visit to Dingle. But instead you came here often and never did get to the oratory until last night.”
“That’s an interesting thought.”
“And I’m the same way. I’ve lived in New York ever since graduation, and do you think I’ve ever been to the Statue of Liberty? No tourist would think of missing it, but I’ve never gone, and I probably never will get around to it. I keep meaning to, but I know I’ll always be in New York and the statue will always be there, and so it’s easy to put it off. Though I almost went a couple of years ago. Maybe you read about the time that some lunatics were going to blow it up? And the Washington Monument, and I forget what else?”