The officer did not object.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Hello, who is this?” a man answered with a thick eastern European accent.
“My name is Albert Ryan. I’d like to speak with the Rabbi of your congregation.”
Ryan sat on the edge of his bed in Buswells, the telephone to his ear. The skin on his throat stung from shaving. Morning sun warmed his back.
“Well, you are. I am Rabbi Joseph Hempel. How may I help you?”
It took less than fifteen minutes to drive south from the city centre to the synagogue on Rathfarnham Road. The building stood back from the street, separated by a high wall and hedge, with well tended gardens. It was a grey block of a structure, flat-roofed, with five windows in the shape of the Star of David above a row of square glass panes. Its sturdy bulk, and the walls around it, gave the synagogue the appearance of a compound under siege.
Ryan pulled into the driveway through the open gates. Rabbi Hempel stood waiting in the doorway. He was a middle-aged man with square-framed spectacles, casually dressed with a knitted vest over an open-collar shirt and a suede kippah on his crown. His beard almost reached the bottom of the V formed by his top button. He extended his hand as Ryan got out of the car and approached.
“Mr. Ryan?” he asked.
Ryan shook his hand. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.”
“Not at all. Come to my office.”
Stained glass windows refracted the morning light inside the synagogue, bathing the rows of seats in a warm peace. The rabbi led Ryan to a room to the rear of the building. It was a modestly appointed office, books lined upon shelves, a sparse desk.
“Please, sit down,” Rabbi Hempel said. Once they were seated, and Ryan had declined any refreshments, the rabbi asked, “Are you a policeman?”
“Not quite,” Ryan said. “I work for the Directorate of Intelligence.”
“But you want to talk to me about a crime?”
“Three crimes. Three murders, to be exact.”
The rabbi’s lips pursed with concern. “Oh, dear. I can promise you I know nothing of such crimes.”
Ryan smiled to reassure him. “I know. But if I explain the nature of the murders, you might understand why I’ve come to you.”
Rabbi Hempel sat back in his chair. “I’m listening.”
Ryan told him about Renders and Hambro, and Helmut Krauss, and the blood on the floor of the guest house in Salthill. He told the rabbi about the note addressed to Skorzeny.
Rabbi Hempel sat in silence for a few seconds, gazing at Ryan across the desk, before he said, “I am not sure what alarms me more: that these people are permitted to come and live in peace in Ireland, or that your first assumption is that only a Jew could do such a thing.”
“It is not my assumption,” Ryan said.
The rabbi leaned forward. “And yet here you are.”
“It’s a line of inquiry I was instructed to pursue by my superiors.”
“Orders.”
“Yes. Orders.”
Rabbi Hempel smiled. “So many men have simply followed orders. The men who shot my parents and my elder sister at the edge of a ditch they had just forced them to dig, they were following orders. Does that absolve them?”
“No,” Ryan said. “But nevertheless, you must see why I have been asked to follow this line.”
“I do indeed see the reason. It’s likely a different reason than you believe it to be, but please, go ahead.”
“Thank you. Are you aware of any groups within your community, perhaps younger men, who have strong feelings about the war?”
Ryan realised the stupidity of the question too late, felt heat spread on his face.
“I promise you, Mr. Ryan, all in my community have strong feelings about the war.”
“Of course,” Ryan said. “I apologise.”
The rabbi nodded his acceptance. “That aside, there are no organised groups that I’m aware of. There are less than two thousand Jewish people left on the whole island of Ireland now, possibly only fifteen hundred. I can barely gather enough for a congregation. Believe me, there are no groups of disaffected young men, hungry for blood.”
“To your knowledge,” Ryan said.
Rabbi Hempel shrugged. “Who would have the motive? We have suffered comparatively little persecution here. The ugly episode in Limerick at the start of the century, some call it a pogrom, but those who were driven out were in turn welcomed in Cork. The bureaucrats at the Department of Justice did their best to block Jewish refugees entering Ireland before and after the war, but the Department of External Affairs put pressure on de Valera to intervene. Ireland has not always been welcoming, but seldom has it been overtly hostile. These are not the conditions that put hate in young men’s hearts.”
Ryan almost laughed, but choked it back. “There’s no shortage of hatred in this country.”
“The Irish have long memories,” Rabbi Hempel said. “I have lived in Ireland for more than ten years, and this was my first understanding of its people. Were it not so, perhaps Britain might have had another ally against the Germans. Instead, Ireland sat on its hands and watched as Europe burned.”
Ryan thought about letting it go, almost did, but said, “Ireland had barely found its feet as a state. It had been through the First World War, the War of Independence and the Civil War, all in less than a decade. It couldn’t afford to go to war again. It didn’t have the strength. Even so, a hundred thousand of us fought.”
The rabbi raised his thick eyebrows. “You?”
“Yes.”
“And did your neighbours appreciate your fighting for the British?”
“No, not all of them.”
Rabbi Hempel nodded. “Like I said. Long memories.”
As Ryan eased out of the synagogue’s driveway, heading back towards town, he saw the black car parked further down the road. And its two occupants, both men, neither of them watching him.
In his rear view mirror, he saw the car pull out from the curb. It kept a distance of thirty yards or so. He glanced as he drove, trying to make out the men’s features. All he saw were shapes, shoulders and heads, the impressions of shirts and ties. One of them smoked a cigarette.
As he crossed Terenure Road, another car pulled between them, driven by an elderly lady, forcing the driver of the black car to brake. It edged to the centre of the road, allowing the man at the wheel to keep Ryan in sight.
It stayed there, maintaining its distance, until Ryan reached Harold’s Cross, where he pulled to the curb. He watched in the mirror as the black car slowed then turned off towards the cemetery.
Ryan might have worried about who followed him, which thin finger of the government crept after him, but he had other things on his mind as he pulled away.
He had a suit to collect.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Célestin Lainé downed another shot of whiskey, let it bite his throat. Barely seven o’clock, and Paddy Murtagh was already drunk. Before long, he would start to sing. Rebel songs, he called them. The Bold Fenian Men, The Wearing of the Green, Johnson’s Motor Car. He would raise his voice, hoarse and tuneless, and would not fall silent until he passed out.
At least Lainé would not have to endure it alone this evening. Elouan Groix, a fellow Breton patriot, also sat at the table in the small cottage. Murtagh’s father had given Lainé the use of the two-room dwelling in a remote corner of his farmland, thus the young Murtagh was made welcome out of a sense of obligation.
Lainé and other members of Bezen Perrot, the small but dedicated band that he had led in the fight against the Allies, had fled to Ireland in the aftermath of the war. They had held on longer than many of the Germans they had battled alongside, but in the end, there remained no other choice but to run.