Blackest of Lies (7 page)

Chesney grinned quietly at Devlin until MacNeill leaned forward once more, lowering the front legs of his chair on to the floor.  The faint light filtering through the torn blinds glittered in his dead eyes.  “But Padhraig,” he said, “be right.”

**********

In the end, Hubert drove down the following morning.  The events of the previous day and his fragile, early-convalescent health had proved more than he was yet able to bear.  Kell, uncharacteristically, insisted Hubert got himself a good night’s rest before setting off.  The situation at Broome was well-enough in hand now and there was nothing to be gained from Hubert collapsing before sorting out this Farmer idea.

Arriving at Farnham House, Hubert had the driver stop the car at the foot of the long gravel sweep.  It was early Sunday morning and he had slept most of the journey up from Kent.  He got out and walked forward to speak to him.  “OK, Tom, make yourself scarce for a couple of hours.  Back here at eleven o’ clock.”

“Right-o, sir.”

The car puttered away and Hubert turned towards the house that sat among the trees a little way up the hill.  The long path stretched before him, leading under the huge cedar tree in front of the rather fussy colonnaded entrance.  He walked slowly up the drive, fighting off gathering memories of the terrors he suffered in these same grounds while his wounds healed.  The constant fear of asphyxiation from damaged lungs was a perpetual nightmare.  It would never completely go – he knew that.  Even now, he would still wake in a sweat some nights, drowning in his mind. 
Some wounds never heal.
  He smiled at the cliché and strode forward, shaking off the misery of those early days back at Netley.

As he drew level with the cedar, he left the path and walked across the grass towards it.  He saw himself, once again, reading below those massive branches.  He had picked a tattered book up from the tiny library, just off the hall and had paced carefully outside for a breath of air.  Even sitting down on one of these massive roots had demanded more of him than he could give in those early days and he had slid abrasively down the mossy trunk, scoring the leather of his Sam Browne.  Reaching behind his back, he absent-mindedly fingered the mark on the shoulder belt – still there, like his wounds, a permanent scar.

He exhaled tentatively, having learned not to take his lungs by surprise.  He had all but forgotten those early days of recovery and yet, now that the trenches were a thing of distant but eternally crushing memory, the duplicity of the whole thing, the vested interests, the flagrant profiteering of men like Zaharoff disgusted him all the more.  It seared the altruism out of good men at the Front, turning them into husks of weary cynicism and it confused the hell out of new replacements into thinking they’d volunteered for a different war.  And then there was the culture of lies and barely-concealed propaganda.  Far from being a support for fragile minds, it was perversely depressing – particularly those jingoistic, ‘morale-boosting’ journals.  Inevitably you’d find them, soon after publication, hanging from nails in the trench latrines.  He snorted at the memory of one wag in his platoon referring to the toilets as the ‘trench library’.  Poor Carel – he got his in the push that gave Hubert his Blighty.

  He leaned his head back against the rough trunk, feeling the warmth of the living wood in the early morning sun, percolating through layers of deep shadow above him.  God!  What he would do for a cigarette, right now! 
Off-limits.  For ever
.

The crunch of the gravel brought him back to the moment and he looked across to see a nurse approaching.  As she came closer, her smile grew into one of recognition.  “Lieutenant Hubert,” she said, “How lovely to see you again!”  The smile faltered a little at the edges, “You’re well, I hope?”

“Peak of condition, Shaw, and ready to give you a demonstration, by numbers, on command.”  He stood up and passed an arm affectionately around her shoulders, turning her back towards the building.

She gave him an old-fashioned look, gently disengaging herself.  “I see nothing has changed.”

“I was hoping
you
had.  I’m a slave eternally to your charms.  You
know
that.”

“And I’ve always said you should really be on the Music Halls.  I’d pay good money to come and see you in your loud check suit and brown Derby.  On second thoughts,” she said, fending him off again, “stick with the clichés.  I don’t want you having a relapse on the front door.  I’m just about to go off duty, so mind your blood pressure.  What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Shaw, I’m devastated.  Is this all I mean to you, then – just starch, catheters and bed pans?  You’re a cold, uncaring fish but if I can’t have you, I’ll have to satisfy myself with a glimpse of the Great Man.  I warn you, he doesn’t have your figure, and my general health may suffer as a result.  Is he fit to be seen by decent people or is he still drenched in blood from another vile experiment on humanity?”

“You’re disgusting,” she said, poking him in the ribs and suppressing a giggle.  She passed her hand through his arm and led him towards the house.  “If you mean Colonel Farmer, he should be finishing rounds soon.  I’ll take you up to his office and you can wait there, if you behave yourself.”  They climbed the few steps to the entrance but, as he placed a hand on the glazed doors, she stopped him.  “Seriously, Chris, how
have
you been?”

He turned to look at her and rocked his hand, palm down.  “W-e-e-l-l, you know.  Ups and downs, downs and ups.”  He grinned.  “I get by.” 

Briefly, each held the other’s gaze.  Then, the door being narrow, he pushed ahead of her to hold it open.  As she walked past, he saw in her eyes the realisation that his life would not be a long one.  He caressed her arm as he watched another little piece of her die quietly inside.

**********

Riordan was never at his best at that time in the morning. He stumbled half asleep on to the Stranraer-Larne ferry.  Gallagher followed close behind in the stream of passengers boarding the vessel. The idea was to keep away from each other until the ship docked in Ireland and then they could make their way together down to Dublin.  Both men stayed on deck, hidden behind different bulkheads – as much for shelter as for secrecy.  At that hour, they were unlikely to be noticed by other passengers.

As the ferry left port, Gallagher thought about the gun.  If he could get it from Riordan without raising his suspicions, so much the better.  If not – too bad.  It all depended on whether Riordan was what he was supposed to seem.  It had always smelled funny when MacNeill made such an issue of taking Riordan along.  “He needs the experience, Sean, and he’s a good man to have at your back.”  Gallagher had no need for strangers at his back, and had said so, but there was no going against MacNeill.  Gallagher was well-known for working alone, so MacNeill’s insistence on taking along someone like Riordan was a bad sign, whichever way you looked at it.  A lot of young bloods were just dying to stand in his shoes.  Perhaps one of them had been smart enough to persuade MacNeill to let Gallagher kill Kitchener and then betray him to the Brits. It would force a high-profile trial and bring a monumental publicity coup for the Cause.  No – the gun had to go – one way or the other.  He’d worry about MacNeill later.

**********

Henry Farmer had known better days.  Weighing in at sixty-seven years old, he should have been retired from Farnham House long ago.  It struck Hubert as he waited in Farmer’s office that he
had
, in fact, retired three years ago, only to be recalled when many doctors, including his successor, joined up and left for France.  It was the big joke at the time that he only came back in order to leave again with another farewell present.  But he knew that Farmer found compensations – many of them – for these broken lads needed a man like Dr Henry Farmer.  They came to him as shattered fragments of humanity and left him as close to complete as he could make them, despite the Kaiser’s best efforts to the contrary.  Hubert knew this all too well.

The door bumped open and Farmer stumbled in, wrestling dyspraxically with his white coat and steadily losing the fight.  Pills, stethoscope and thermometer spilled out on to the threshold as he tumbled into the room, one arm locked in a sleeve determined not to give him up without a struggle.

Hubert, reclining in a deep Chesterfield, sipping a coffee, gave a chuckle at the sight.  “Graceful as ever, Colonel.”

“Hubert!  My dear chap, you should have let me know you were coming over!  What a pleasure!”

Hubert stood up and they shook hands cordially. There was no mistaking Farmer’s genuine joy at seeing him once again.

“Sit down, sit down.  It’s a bit early for a proper drink, I know, but can I get you a coff ... Ah, you’ve got one already.  Of course!  You know where everything is.”

“Colonel, for God’s sake, take it easy. 
You
sit down.  We need to chat a little.”

“And drop the ‘Colonel’ thing, for goodness sake.  In the privacy of this office, we can both admit that I display all the bumbling charm of your elderly country practitioner.  I know my place.”

“And what about the scary stuff you did at Gallipoli?  And, even long before that, in South Africa?  You didn’t get full Colonel by attending to coughs and sniffles.”

“I say, old man,
you’re
not ill, are you?  This isn’t a professional visit, I hope?”

“Well, it is and it isn’t.  But it’s
my
profession we’re talking about.”

“Lost me, old fellow.”

“Never mind that.  Let me get you out of that coat before it strangles you.  I have a question to ask.”

Farmer had turned round with his back to the other man as he allowed himself to be divested of the maniacal garment.  “What’s that?”

“How do you fancy being promoted to Field Marshal?”

**********

The voyage to Dublin brought over the usual mix of business people and servicemen returning home from leave. It was a simple matter to hide among them.  The old tub was like a big, smoking bucket that spewed soot and oil everywhere.  In bad weather, you were lucky not to get to the other side looking like a bloody sweep.  Liverpool had better boats but it was too dangerous – the ‘Specials’ there were more likely to be on the lookout for them and none of them would think in a million years the two of them would waste time going all the way up to Scotland.  Even Riordan had to admit that Gallagher knew his onions – an arrogant bastard, sure enough – but he knew what was what.  Still, Riordan had his orders and it would give him no end of joy to see Gallagher birling at the end of a rope.  The Brits wouldn’t mess around – he’d be lucky if they didn’t lynch him in the bloody streets!

Chuckling to himself at the thought, he suddenly realised that he hadn’t seen our Sean in a while.  Now, even
he
knew there was no way Gallagher would be getting off the boat in mid-channel but he just might find himself a nice little hole to hide in and head back to the mainland.  Riordan had to make sure he got him back to Brigade HQ.  This would make his name and maybe end up in him running his own group so he wasn’t about to balls it up.  He pushed himself off the bulkhead and went to look for his ‘associate’.

In the grey light, as the port smeared into view, Riordan drew the gun, walked over to the companionway and went below to the bogs.  The toilet door creaked open as he pushed against its spring and the usual acrid smells hit him.

"Sean?  Sean, are you in there, son?"

**********

The main periscope of U-75, the
Bruder Walther
, caressed the glassy surface of the early morning English Channel, a little north-east of the Pas de Calais.  A creamy wake sprang up behind, a tell-tale effect well-known to the commander, Kapitän-Leutnant Kurt Beitzen.  He’d keep the scope up just long enough to make his move – one that had been forced upon him by the attentions of the British Royal Navy.  He had other, more pressing, matters to attend to and would have preferred to have stayed submerged but he wasn’t being given a choice.

His eyes firmly fixed on the target, he issued depth commands to the helmsman, Karl Stolz, cramped into the conning tower with him.  “Up a bit, Karl ... now down ... hold it there.”  The head of the periscope was now only inches above the surface, offering very little to give them away.

Beitzen stood back from the periscope and called down below, “Willi, bring up the bearing kit.”  He resumed his watch on the target and was soon joined in the tower by Leutnant Willi Grassl, the Navigation Officer.  The boat was now gliding along at a depth of 10.5 metres - perfect for this sort of work.

Things were coming together.  “Clear first and third tubes!” shouted Beitzen, automatically registering the expected reply of ‘First and third tubes clear!’ from the torpedo gunner’s mate down below.

“Torpedo depth 4.5 metres!”

.”.. 4.5 metres it is!”

“Twenty degrees more to port, Karl.”

The minutes dragged by as Beitzen aimed the boat towards the steamer in his sights.  A faint column of smoke from escorting destroyers smudged the sky behind.  Things could get hot if he missed and had to put in a repeat performance.  “Give me 10 degrees more.”

“Five men ready to dress the boat!” he called.  When the torpedoes were loosed, the change in trim could easily cause the nose of the boat to lunge above the surface, gift-wrapped for the Royal Navy, as it were.  The five man team would rush through the open bulkheads from one end of the boat to the other until balance was achieved.  Afterwards, they could make things permanent by re-distributing stores.