“You think SAS? MI5?” Skorzeny asked.
“I see no reason why British forces would target you. And if they wanted you dead, you would be.”
Skorzeny smiled, creasing his scar. “Perhaps. Then tell me, Lieutenant Ryan, who are these men, and what do they want?”
“I don’t know who they are. And only you can say what they want. One thing is clear, though.”
“What is this?”
“They must have an informant. If they know so much about you and your … friends, then someone must have passed this information to them. Maybe even working with them.”
Skorzeny went to the window, stared out into the darkness. “Then I will make enquiries. You will also. If you find this person before I do, you will notify me immediately.”
“And then?”
“Then you will bring him to me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Charles J. Haughey sat at his desk, a cup of coffee and a glass of fizzing Alka Seltzer in front of him. Ryan sat opposite.
“So what do you need?” Haughey asked.
“I need the names and locations of all the foreign nationals who were Nazis or collaborators and are now resident in Ireland.”
“No,” Haughey said.
“Minister, I need this information if I’m going to find whoever has been working with these men.”
Haughey took a swig of the Alka Seltzer, belched, and said, “There are currently well over a hundred such people resident in Ireland. That we know of. There are very likely others that have sneaked in through some back door. I can’t go handing that kind of information out, even if I had it to hand. Besides, how many of them do you think know Colonel Skorzeny?”
“All right,” Ryan said. “Compile a list of those who have direct contact with Skorzeny. I can start there.”
Haughey leaned forward, his forearms nudging the coffee cup, making it rattle in its saucer. “What am I, your fucking secretary?”
“Minister, it is vital I find the informant before Skorzeny does.”
“Why?” Haughey asked. “Why can’t you just let him deal with it?”
“Because if Skorzeny finds the informant, I believe he will torture him. Then I believe he will kill him.”
Haughey’s secretary smiled as Ryan passed through the outer office. He paused at the door, turned, came back to her.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Last night, I saw you speaking with a woman. Her name was Celia Hume.”
The secretary’s lips curled in a smirk. She let her gaze travel the length of Ryan, took her time about it. “Yes, I know Celia.”
Sweat chilled Ryan’s brow and back as his cheeks smouldered. “Do you know where I could contact her?”
The secretary’s smirk blossomed into a crooked grin. “And what would a nice man like you want with our Celia?”
A small but bright flash of anger at the girl’s intrusion. He quelled it, returned her smile. “Just to say hello.”
“I see.” She scribbled a telephone number on a pad, tore off the sheet, handed it to him. “If she doesn’t want to say hello back, you can always give me a try.”
Ryan took the paper from her fingers, held her gaze despite how it burned his skin.
Late in the afternoon, a messenger boy brought a thick manila envelope to Ryan’s hotel room. A note inside said: Here’s your list of names. Be careful with them and destroy it when you’re finished.
It was signed, C.J.H.
Ryan pulled three sheets of paper from the envelope and spread them out on the bed. A dozen typewritten names in total, addresses, some of them only townlands. Ryan pictured those places, low cottages or grand houses at the ends of single track lanes, roads without names, places known only to the postmen who delivered to them.
One name seemed familiar to Ryan: Luykx, who had made his fortune with restaurants and bars. Beside that name, a scribbled note.
Don’t go near Albert Luykx. He’s a personal friend of mine. I don’t want him bothered.
Haughey had written elsewhere on the paper. Nationalities, organisations, ranks, relationships, professions. Some were businessmen, one of them a writer, one a schoolmaster, two doctors, more of them wealthy than not.
Ryan paid attention to those who were not.
Catherine Beauchamp, a novelist, a Breton nationalist like Lainé. She worked for a charity, a normal salaried job. But a decent job, nonetheless. She made a living. Would she crave more? Enough to turn on her friends?
And here was Hakon Foss. A Norwegian nationalist who had found work as a gardener and handyman, much of that work for Skorzeny and his associates. He would be in a position to see much of their comings and goings, perhaps enough to foster jealousy and rage at what they possessed and he did not.
Ryan scanned the list once more. The businessmen had all prospered in Ireland. Property, hospitality, a printing business, one of them a breeder of racehorses.
All endeavours that required capital, money, and plenty of it. These men fled the Continent with enough cash, or access to it, to establish comfortable lives. Why would they risk what they’d built for themselves? He thought once more about Catherine Beauchamp and Hakon Foss.
He would start with them.
Ryan checked his watch. Almost six. He took the folded sheet of notepaper from his pocket. The name Celia written in a fluid script, and the numbers.
He sat on the edge of the bed, lifted the receiver, dialled an outside line, then turned the wheel of numbers, heard the whirr of the mechanism as it returned to zero after each one.
The dial tone repeated in his ear five times before a gravel-voiced woman answered.
“I’d like to speak with Celia Hume,” Ryan said.
“She’s not here,” the woman said. “If you want to leave a message, I’ll make sure she gets it.”
“Please tell her Albert Ryan called.” He gave the hotel’s number, and his room, and she promised to pass the message on.
Ryan sat silent and alone for thirty minutes before the telephone rang.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Otto Skorzeny counted the money as Pieter Menten sipped coffee. Five thousand in American dollars, ten thousand in British pounds, and a further thirty thousand in Irish currency laid out on the desk in Skorzeny’s study. Menten had travelled by ferry and train, carrying the suitcase of money from Rotterdam to Harwich in England, then from the Welsh port of Holyhead across to Dun Laoghaire where Skorzeny collected him in his Mercedes.
The Dutchman had aged well, the years since the war having been kind to him. His long nose and high cheekbones gave him an aristocratic appearance, as if wealth were his by birthright, not labour.
The money had been delivered to Rotterdam by an Arab courier who retrieved the funds from a bank in Switzerland in return for a five percent commission. Skorzeny had been told by more than one source that the Arab was actually an Algerian of Berber descent, but he had never been able to confirm the speculation. Regardless of origin, the Arab travelled with two bodyguards, both hulking dark-skinned men also of uncertain nationality. Only a very brave or very foolish man would think of robbing him.
The Arab always took his percentage in dollars. Skorzeny had heard that he spent most of it in Rotterdam’s brothels, but again, he had no proof of this claim.
Satisfied, Skorzeny peeled off one thousand Irish pounds and handed them to Menten. He transferred the rest to the safe mounted in the wall behind his desk, shielded the combination with his broad body as he locked the door. He returned the landscape painting to its hook.
Menten lifted the cloth-wrapped rectangle that sat at his feet. “A small token,” he said in English.