Minogue stroked his chin. Forgot to shave this morning. Saturday senility.
"But sure the crunch is we have no way of ascertaining whether the stuff from this notebook is true at all. The business that happened to him after the war and so on. There's no mileage in that for us. But the Costello racket-and that fella in the embassy, God rest him. I'm sure it's ninety-nine percent true. They must have been mad entirely. All grist for the mill here, though, I needn't tell you. Couldn't have happened at a better time, hah?"
"Costello," Minogue murmured.
"Ah, but this poor Combs divil overplayed his hand with that ultimatum. And he was right to be wary of that Ball character; I mean to say, look what Ball seems to have gone and done to Combs in the end. I'm not for a minute saying that Combs wasn't hard done by in Britain, mind you."
"Wasn't the only one hard done by," said Minogue.
"War's war, Matt. Are you thinking of that fella they sold down the river just to keep Combs looking clean wherever he was then, Berlin? That would have sold a lot of Sunday papers if that had come out."
"Urn. Vogel. Means bird. Yes…"
"I didn't get through the full bit about them throwing Vogel to the wolves," Kilmartin prodded.
Minogue ignored the hint. He was thinking of the hour he had spent earlier this Saturday morning, sitting in his car at Sandymount. A lone horse and rider had been cantering back and forth, far out on the strand.
"This Vogel back in the war, Matt? That trickery?" Kilmartin said again.
"Combs said that he didn't realise what had happened to Vogel until after he got out of Berlin himself. He doesn't go into specifics, but he says that Vogel was betrayed in such a way as to have the credit for uncovering an Allied spy reflected on Combs himself. All he knew was that the Germans weren't so suspicious of him after they got their maulers on Vogel. He says he was sure that he was about to be arrested. He was warned that some people suspected him of being a double agent. That bit. That was in 1943 and very few of his pals were around to look after him in Berlin."
"That was a real eye-opener about how Combs got his info back to the Allies. The codes," Kilmartin said.
"He used to use specific words in his broadcasts, he says," said Minogue. "The words being codes for different cities where he had found out that, say, troop trains were being assembled or that they were working on new armaments."
"Then the Allies would bomb those cities and get the most for their money," Minogue added.
"I have no knowledge of that sort of stuff, the history and the moves during the war," Kilmartin reflected aloud.
"Apparently those bombings drove a lot of armaments production underground or at least dispersed it and gave the Allies time to set up something else during the delays."
"Anyway, they gave Vogel away to keep Combs looking good," said Kilmartin. "Yes. When Combs got to Lisbon and asked what had happened to Vogel, he heard that he had been picked up. He didn't know anything except what he had heard from the Nazis about a big coup, finding an agent and knowing his code-name and all. The officer who he talked to in Lisbon-he's the one who went on to be head of their MI5-told Combs that they had hoped to get more mileage out of Vogel but that Combs had chickened out early. 'A poor return on our investment,' he said to Combs, if I remember reading it right."
"God that was a terrible thing to say to him. Dirt and treachery," Kilmartin murmured.
"And then they wouldn't touch him with a forty-foot pole after the war."
"Indeed," said Minogue. "While they sorted out what they wanted to do with him. They tried to slot him into the Russian zone to do spying for them again; he turned them down flat. That might have been Combs' biggest mistake. And the thing is, who's to say the Russians would have welcomed him with open arms anyway, even if he passed on info to them as well as back to London?"
"Um," said Kilmartin. "They'd be just as suspicious as the Brits and the Yanks, I suppose. They'd be thinking the same as the Brits were thinking, that
Combs was being planted as a double by the other side. Jases. Allies, it it? The ins and outs of it all. The man was left with no ground to stand on."
"They kept on putting him off over the years," Minogue continued. "When he asked to be allowed to live back in England, I mean. Then they wanted some innocuous gaffer to look in on some goings-on here. Quid pro quo, I suppose. He doesn't talk about details of what they offered him, but they must have promised him that he would be, what's the word… rehabilitated. After he did a bit of work for them in Ireland. The rest you have to guess at," Minogue said.
"Then Ball gave him the chop?"
"Looks very like it to me. Combs miscalculated."
"While he was thinking and bellyaching about what they did to him years ago, they thought he was going to do the dirty on them in their efforts here."
"Now you have it," Minogue concluded. "He said that Ball was continually boasting about Costello being looked after. Not alone that, but Ball dropped heavy hints that suggested he was present at the Costello murder. There was some torture and mutilation carried on, if you remember. Maybe it was just to let Combs know that he was a tough nut, so not to be getting ideas himself…"
Minogue lost the thread of the conversation when Kilmartin started talking again. Minutes later, he became aware that Jimmy had finally stopped talking. Now he, too, was staring out the window.
"I want me dinner," Kilmartin said solemnly. "And I'm not going to sit here in the bed waiting for them to plonk some muck in front of me, stuff you could drink out of a shagging straw. I want me meat and me two veg. Will you come down to the cafeteria with me?"
Kilmartin shuffled down the hallways, eying the nurses and avoiding the doctors.
"God but that was a wicked dinner. Healthy, I suppose," Kilmartin said, shaking his head. "Ah, but you should have seen the two of them, Matt. Tynan and Himself. Himself sticks his big snoot in the door and tiptoes into the room first. 'Matty Minogue isn't here is he, Jimmy?' says he. Putting it on, of course. But there was something to it. And do you know what I said to myself when I saw that?"
"I don't."
"I says to myself, well I wish that I could inspire such fear as Matt Minogue, such as would cause him to do that."
Kilmartin paused in the hallway to stare at a nurse. Minogue took in the compound smells of the hospital, struck again at how powerful a sense the nose housed. Time to take a swipe at that Proust chap again, maybe.
"Oh yes. He was much as told me you were a pain in the neck about it all. His neck like, too."
"I hope I was," Minogue observed. "He has plenty of it to pain, let me tell you."
"Didn't he explain the ramifications to you?"
"The ones he thought were important, I suppose. After he reminded me of the Garda oath to keep my trap shut."
"Tough enough job for a Clareman."
"He spent a lot of time telling me that I could never expect the British secret service to fork over one of their, what did he call them, some antiseptic name… operatives, yes. That Murray fella. I couldn't expect them to hand me one. He wasn't overly excited about the conspiracy to murder charge I wanted issued."
Kilmartin laughed light-heartedly and slowed his promenade to peep into the rooms they passed.
Minogue remembered God Almighty starting with the flattery, soothing. He had made a great show of welcoming him into his office. It was the greater,
Minogue knew, because the Minister's Secretary was waiting there, too. Minogue instantly read Lally's gesture as a territorial display for the civil servant.
"Heard a great account of you, Matt, as did Mr O'Reilly here and indeed the Minister," the Commissioner began.