J. Janes: Betrayal

‘Prime Minister …’

‘Yes, yes, what is it?’

‘MI5’s Listeners have reported renewed clandestine wireless transmission from Dublin.’

Unfortunately only snatches of an earlier message, sent on Sunday, had been intercepted. ‘Well, where is it?’ he demanded.

Detective Inspector Franklin handed Mr. Churchill the thin brown envelope on which had been stamped, ULTRA, the Prime Minister ripping it open.

Silently those lips with their clenched cigar moved as the blessed thing was read:

0417 hours 9 September 1941 signal from VV-77 Dublin reads: Contact made. Heidi in motion.

Involuntarily Churchill closed a fist about the thing, crumpling it and the envelope before letting sentiment return. ‘Ireland,’ he said, though Franklin could not know precisely what he was on about. ‘Dear old Ireland again. Find this IRA bomber for us, Inspector. Stop him before he gets across the Irish Sea, and if you cannot manage that, then get him afterwards.’

Again he returned to the damage, to a mass of splintered wood and the scattered possessions of a nation whose people had been forced to be constantly on the move.

Running from the Blitz was one thing; from the IRA another. Southern Ireland had steadfastly remained neutral. Britain had been denied naval and air bases it desperately needed, especially in the battle for the Atlantic. Always there had been talk of the Nazis opening a second front in the Republic; always he had tried to preach caution lest too swift and injudicious an intervention set the Irish aflame.

They’d never succeed in taming them, of course, but there were those in Whitehall and the War Office who would be only too willing to bomb the daylights out of Dublin.

Contact made. Heidi in motion -what were they up to now? ‘Confound it, Inspector, must we stand like ruminants before the ashes of our haystack while they play elsewhere at fire? See to this, and see that the child’s mother-I gather the father is abroad with our forces so she must bear the pain alone-see that she has both the best of comfort and support in her hour of need.’

With the recovery, on 7 May 1941, of codebooks from the trawler Munchen and then on the ninth of that same month, the capture of U-110’s Enigma machine and its codebooks, the decoders at Bletchley Park had been hard at work deciphering the wireless traffic of the German Navy. Not every attempt was successful. There were delays-changes in the Enigma settings. None of it was easy.

The codes of the Abwehr, the counterintelligence service of the German military, had also been broken, and sometimes Abwehr Hamburg’s listening post would re-encode a message using an Enigma cipher machine before transmitting it to Berlin.

Perhaps a double dose of salts in this case. In any event, a tiny break that could well mean much. From an IRA bomb attack in Charing Cross Station to a second front in Southern Ireland was not impossible, given the nature of some of the Irish, but since the darkest days of 1940, de Valera, their prime minister, had taken the hint, never officially stated, and had all but wiped out the IRA in the South. It could be that the rebels wished a last-ditch attempt or that the Nazis wished to embarrass the British government and force the Americans into a firmer neutrality should dear old Ireland fall under the bombs of the RAF.

It could be the Nazis and the IRA had something planned for Northern Ireland whose air and naval bases in Londonderry and Belfast were crucial to the U-boat war.

It could be anything.

Striking a match, feeling security paramount and things hastily tucked into a pocket subject to loss, he held it to the Ultra signal and waited as it burned until thumb and forefinger could wait no longer. ‘They are insidious, Inspector. Insidious! Get them before it’s too late!’

Get this Heidi for us.

It was on the 6.00 p.m. news. Mary heard it clearly from the foyer, a repeat notice. The bomb had gone off at 11.00 a.m. killing Nora Fergus and maiming thirteen others. Scotland Yard were asking members of the public to come forward of their own volition if they had any knowledge of this tragic event.

To attack the tube stations was horrid-the Blitz was still on; well, the bombing anyway. It had been terrible in May of this year, five hundred bombers in one night alone, waves of them. People used those stations during the raids. They slept in them, made tea, had singsongs to cheer themselves on.

‘Sure and it’s a terrible thing, Mrs. Fraser. Now you mark my words, m’am, there’ll be no good come of it. None at all.’

‘Now, Mrs. Haney, please don’t get yourself upset.’

‘Upset is it, and me wrung dry already? I had to send Bridget home again today, I did. But you’ll be taking some tea. Dublin to your satisfaction, was it?’

‘Yes. Yes, Dublin was fine.’

‘But there was a delay at the frontier?’

‘Yes. Yes, there was. This …’

‘This anarchist! Sadist! Hitler himself could be no worse.’

‘Mrs. Haney …’

‘I’ll bring it, m’am. A good cup of tea will set you to rights, that and a change of clothing, I’m thinking. There was no news of this terrible trouble in Dublin, was there then?’

‘I … I didn’t see the papers. I …’

Ria O’Shane O’Hoolihan Haney gave her the look she reserved for wanton harlots who sold their bodies in the streets of that fair city. She tossed her head knowingly and clucked, ‘Dentist, was it?’ beneath her breath before departing to her kitchen.

By himself, Dr. Fraser was a saint, a prince of a man. With that young wife of his, the poor soul didn’t know what to do, and that was the God’s truth, it was.

Leaving her suitcases in the foyer, Mary found the will to climb the stairs. Exhausted by the border crossing, she dragged herself up to her room knowing Mrs. Haney would be listening for her, knowing too, that in all this Georgian loveliness-and it was lovely-the echoes sounded and the sounds of them ran straight to the kitchen.

‘How could I have forgotten those cigarette butts and the maps?’ she asked herself. Had there been anything else? Dear God, she hoped there hadn’t. Jimmy … Jimmy was on to her.

Dressed in a robe, she hurried along the corridor to the bathroom but in passing the head of the stairs, thought to call down to say she’d be taking a bath, but then thought better of it. For one thing, there was the boiler and its firing up-an hour at least-for another, there was Mrs. Haney.

Instead, she found a towel and went back along the corridor drying her hair and wishing the house was warm, not damp and cold. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Mrs. Haney or want at least to tolerate the woman, it was simply that given a measure of fairness and tact, they might well have got on, but that could never be. Not now.

Mrs. Haney didn’t knock. The woman had the tray with the silver service and all, and very nearly dropped it.

‘Mrs. Fraser … Well, I never! I …’

No chance to cross herself, and speechless for once, but Mary could hear her saying to all and sundry, ‘As naked as a jackdaw plucked of its feathers, she was, and that’s the God’s truth, the brazen hussy!’

‘You can put it on the table over there by the window, Mrs. Haney. I was just trying to dry my hair at the electric fire.’

‘And the rest of you,’ muttered the woman, clucking her tongue loudly enough for the sound to be heard in the kitchen.

‘Perhaps, then, the next time you’ll knock?’

And her not covering herself at all, at all, swore Ria silently. Just standing there with the towel in hand, her backside to the electricity and that zebra-striped robe of hers down around her ankles, everything she owned just hanging out for all the world to see. Like fruit they was. Like young melons or overripe Bartlett pears! ‘I’ll let the doctor know you’re home when he comes in.’