Betrayal (50 page)

Warily she began to pick herself up. Against the steady throb of diesels, there were the sounds of breaking waves and those of the wind.

‘Hamish … Hamish, where are you?'

The firing started up. Streams of tracers jerked and jumped and cut their swaths, only to suddenly cease, Mary scrambling towards the fog station. ‘Hamish … Darling, where are you?'

Had he gone down the hill to kill as many as he could? Had she forced him into such a thing?

The motor torpedo boats continued to circle the island. The steady throb of their engines was always there in the darkness but well offshore. They were taking no chances, must be biding their time and waiting for the aircraft to return. The boats would use their sonar and radar to locate the sub. Besides their torpedoes, they would carry depth charges of their own.

The fog station wasn't far now, and when she got there, her foot struck something on the floor. ‘Hamish!' she cried out and gingerly felt for him only to find the harpoon and take it up.

Making her way along the corridor, she went deeper into the building, would have to have the firebox door open, would need its light in order to reset the bomb, but would Kevin really come back for it?

Light flickered from gaps in the firebox door, making the dusty, open throats of the burlap sacks of coal seem as if standing sentinel while the pipes threw their shadows. Setting the harpoon down, she dragged the suitcase into the light. She would have to do it but could she really?

Putting the scarf back, Mary closed the compartment and the suitcase. It wasn't Kevin who came. It was Dermid Galway and as he fired that thing in his hands, it shattered the silence, ripped apart the walls of the corridor, splintered the boards and made her shriek in terror and try to hide.

As she backed away, she heard him reloading. Sacks of coal were now in front of her, the suitcase and the boiler's firebox door to her right, the armature for the foghorns to the left. Even as she got hesitantly to her feet and waited for him to kill her, Mary knew it would be best this way for there would be no questions to answer, no excuses to make, no thoughts of ever being brought to trial and made a spectacle of.

As a single shot rang out, a stab of pain gripped her middle. There was a curse, another burst of firing. ‘Hamish!' she cried as she snatched up the harpoon and Galway came at her out of the shadows but he'd been hit. Hamish had been waiting for him. Hamish …

The Thompson gun was being dragged along the wall and, as the Irishman rose up to steady himself, he said, ‘God's curse upon you, woman!' his voice breaking all about her now as blood trickled from a corner of his mouth and he fell to his knees before her. ‘DO IT!' he yelled. ‘DON'T KEEP ME WAITING!'

Coughing blood, he tried to drag the Thompson gun into position. The point of the harpoon was levelled at his chest. ‘Do it, damn you,' he muttered.

‘Mary, step away from him.'

Galway tried to reach the gun that had fallen from him as Hamish placed the muzzle of the rifle to his back and fired.

U-397 had surfaced but was still some distance to the north of the island. The brief flashing of Aldis signals gave their position; Huber signalling back from the ruins of the cottage nearest the pier. Against the deeper darkness of the waves and that of the night, the silhouette of the submarine momentarily appeared, only to vanish just as suddenly.

Its crew would be racing to uncover the deck guns. Mary knew there'd be a battle and that the sub could well be sunk, for the motor torpedo boats hovered somewhere off in the darkness, the throb of their engines coming and going against the deeper pulse of U-397's diesel.

When a flare, lingering long in the sky, arced through the night to hang floating brightly above the submarine, men swung the eighty-eight-millimetre gun on her forward deck while others raced to help them and a deafening explosion was followed by the whip crack of the gun. Again and again the sub fired. Tracers were now pouring from one of the torpedo boats, the sound of its engines increasing steadily as it closed the gap between them, becoming louder and louder until she caught a glimpse of the boat's silhouette as it leapt across the waves pouring its hail of bullets at the sub. The boat would hit the submarine with its torpedoes. They'd sink it.

There was firing from the northeast and from the east, another flare, another crash of the eighty-eight-millimetre gun, the
pom-pom
thudding of its antiaircraft guns.

Instinctively Hamish pulled her down as the torpedoes came on and she knew they'd hit the sub that she and Hamish would have to fight Kevin and the others.

In rapid sequence, two thunderous explosions rocked the shore as the torpedoes struck the island. ‘The other boat must have missed the sub too,' shouted Hamish. Uncertain still, he got to his feet and reached to help her up. ‘They'll retreat and wait for the RAF now, lass. Huber and the others will try to get off before they come back.'

The motor torpedo boats had lost themselves in the darkness. The submarine was out there some place too. An Aldis lamp flashed from its conning tower, rapidly winking in the night. Huber answered from the ruins.

‘They'll want the wireless set, Hamish.'

Fraser caught the sadness in her voice but before he could say anything, Mary had started down the hill with it. Carrying the rifle at the ready, he followed at a distance.

Mary knew that Hamish could not know that for them things could never be the same again, and when Kevin met her on the road halfway to the cove, he was carrying a Lee Enfield, and she knew that he had come alone and that he hadn't expected to find her here at all.

‘Where's Dermid?' he asked as if he still couldn't believe it was her with the suitcase.

‘He's dead, Kevin.'

The emptiness in her voice told him she still thought him worthy of more than lying.

‘Just put the rifle down on the road,' shouted Hamish from behind her.

‘All right, I will,' said O'Bannion, no doubt reminding her of Liam but knowing, too, that the bloody Thompson guns were good at times and a curse at others because they were always needing a bit of oil and sand grains could do things to them even then.

Out to sea, the firing had started up again.

‘The Nazis will only cheat you, Kevin. It will all have been for nothing.'

The wind tugged at her hair, blowing it about. Having set the suitcase down, her hands were now in the pockets of her anorak. ‘We should have known each other in better times,' he said.

Though he'd not see it, she would shrug at this.

‘Ireland will be free some day, Mary.'

‘The border should never have been put there in the first place.'

‘And we'll never stop fighting until it's gone.'

‘Do you think I don't know that? I can't condone the killing, the things you people did to Caithleen, Kevin, any more than I can this war. It's all so stupid. Life's the greatest gift we have. We shouldn't take it from others, nor should others force us into situations where we have to.'

‘You're still too soft. The Brits will never leave until we've driven them out.'

‘I agree they have to leave, but the trouble is they won't until you people stop, and by then the whole of Ireland will be empty. It'll lift up its silence on the altar of its ruins just as this island has. No God will be listening, Kevin, because there will be no one to speak to Him.'

‘What's to prevent the two of you from trying to stop us from getting off the island?'

‘Only our word. There's been enough killing. We're done with it unless you come after us.'

Fraser, who had remained all but out of sight behind her, had said so little it had to make one wonder if he wasn't in awe of her himself. ‘Then it's good-bye to you, and I'm off.'

She would say nothing further, Mary told herself, would simply let him walk away into the night because it had to be left this way. In his heart of hearts Kevin had always known it would all be for nothing and that for him the cause was over, yet she could not help but remember the ruins by the school and knew that he had been the only thing that had stood between Fay Darcy, Liam Nolan and herself.

‘You've no harsh words?' asked Hamish.

‘The time for them has passed.'

They didn't retreat to the hill. Taking him by the hand, she led him well out into the fields to stand alone, he no longer questioning her reasons, simply letting her lean back against him as he held her.

The RAF came back. Curtains of fire streamed from each of the motor torpedo boats, the sub answering them as parachute flares lazily drifted down, lighting up everything with a brilliance that frightened. The curragh was in the water. Kevin and the young man called Kenneth McGrath were at the oars, Huber in the stern, Mrs. Tulford near the bow. Cockleshell to the waves, it rose and fell as the two sets of oars rhythmically skimmed the water. They still had too far to go, would never reach the sub, would be shot to pieces.

With a deafening crash, the sub's eighty-eight-millimetre cannon hit one of the torpedo boats. There was a flash of burning diesel fuel. Parts of the boat—whole sections of it—flew into the air, disintegrating as they tumbled over and over.

One of the planes dropped its depth charges. Detonation after detonation threw fountains into the air around U-397. Kevin and the others had now left the cove. They were pulling strongly at the oars. The sub had seen them and was giving covering fire. More flares were dropping. Now the sea was illuminated and everywhere there was a ghostly light and more and more firing. They would never get away, never do it.

Another plane began to drop its depth charges. As the drums pitched out, the sub fired up at them with its antiaircraft guns. The eighty-eight-millimetre cannon flashed fire at the pinpoint of the streams of tracer shells that were pouring from the last of the torpedo boats. Again there was a tremendous detonation, shreds of debris spinning through flashes of fire to hit the waves and disintegrate. There'd be bodies, men blown to pieces …

In tears, Mary wanted to tell them to stop, but the planes came over again, this time one after the other to rake the sea with cannon fire. The curragh hadn't a chance. It was lifted up on a wave, only to drop away to nothing yet Kevin kept rowing. Again the little boat lifted, again the oars dipped. Splash points raced across the water as the boat hit the side of the submarine. The flares were still falling, men rushing now to throw ropes and secure the curragh. Mrs. Tulford tried to scramble up the side of the sub but slipped and fell into the water. The curragh was thrown towards her—Huber was leaning over, trying to reach out to the woman as Kevin … Kevin slung the suitcase up and it was taken and passed from hand to hand to disappear inside the conning tower.

The RAF, having given them all they had, were heading back to Derry as fast as they could.

‘Darling …'

‘Hush, lass. Let's just hope and pray we've seen the last of them.'

Mrs. Tulford had been dragged from the water. Kevin was climbing the ladder of the conning tower. Reaching back, he caught the woman by the arm. Huber was helping her, too. Kenneth McGrath had clambered aboard …

The bomb went off. It flashed so brilliantly, Mary ducked and buried her face against Hamish.

‘That suitcase … ' he began. ‘Their scuttling charges have detonated. Lass, what the hell have you done?'

He made her turn, made her look at it. A huge hole had been ripped in the sub; the eighty-eight-millimetre cannon had been knocked askew. Men hung limply over the gun mounts and the top of the shattered conning tower. Men …

They began to slip and fall away into the sea. The sub dipped down into the waves, was filling with water, was sinking. There was now no sign of the curragh, not even a bit of its wreckage. No sign of Kevin, nor of Huber or of either of the other two.

As the last of the flares went out, great geysers of water lifted but there was no longer any sight of the submarine. Then in one final detonation, its bow rose up suddenly as if to come back at them before the jagged teeth if its net cutter slid silently beneath the waves.

At dawn they walked among the bodies. Some of the men were very young, others not even of middle age.

There was no sign of Kevin, nor of Mrs. Tulford. Alone among the Nazi dead, the body of Kenneth McGraw lay with strands of kelp across his broken chest. Thousands of one- and five-pound notes floated about or clung to the oil-slicked rocks and the bodies.

‘Come away, lass. There is nothing you or anyone else can do for them.'

Did Hamish despise her for what she'd done and become, a woman who could kill with a vengeance—had there ever been vengeance?

Crouching, she picked up one of the notes. The face of King George VI was very clear and sharp.

Sodden, the bill fell from her fingers to cling to the rocks.

‘Lass, I'm sorry it had to end this way.
Och
, you know I'll stand by you.'

There would be an inquest, a trial and then a hanging, and nothing she or Hamish could ever say or do would stop them.

The man who sat across the desk from her in the bunker below 10 Downing Street was angry.

Winston Spencer Churchill thumbed through the dossier and the signed statement of thirty pages she had given at the inquest. Everything that had happened in what was now being dubbed ‘The Tralane Affair' had been documented in the neatest and most precise of handwritings. The damnable inquest had gone on for weeks and it hadn't entirely been hushed up.

‘Just what the devil am I to do with you?' he asked, chewing on his cigar. ‘The Royal Navy and the RAF, in spite of repeated attempts,
fail
to sink this Nazi submarine but you … you, Mrs. … Oh damn it, what was it?'

‘Fraser … Mrs. Mary Ellen Fraser.'

‘Scottish! The Scots have always been trouble!'

He hunkered forward to fix her with a piercing gaze. ‘Do you know what's happened? The Irish press has had the unmitigated gall to release stories of this sordid affair. Fleet Street was never cosy with them but by God, the
Times
and the
Daily Mail
are suggesting I step down!'