Ratlines (13 page)

Ryan offered her his arm, and they made their way through the smoke and the red-faced men. He watched for dark hair and a well-cut suit, knowing eyes set in a tanned face, and saw no one but the drunken newspapermen.

T
HE DRAWING ROOM
curtains twitched as they reached the doorstep. Celia rested her hand on his chest.

“I’d invite you in, but I’m afraid we’d have Mrs. Highland for company. Unless you want to watch her knitting, we’ll have to say goodnight here.”

“Here is fine,” Ryan said. Once more, he found himself short of words. He stood with his arms by his sides, the agony of silence between them. Celia broke it with a smile.

“I had a very nice time,” she said. “I hope you’ll call me again.”

“I will. Absolutely.”

“The restaurant at the Shelbourne isn’t too bad.”

“Then I’ll take you.”

Ryan couldn’t help feeling they were negotiating a contract, making promises, reaching accords. He didn’t care, as long as he would see her again.

“Good,” she said.

She leaned in, raised herself slightly on her toes, and kissed him. Warm, moist, fragrant lipstick. The tip of her tongue grazed his upper lip. When she moved away, he still felt her there, the heat of her.

“For God’s sake, Albert, don’t just stand there looking like you’ve seen the Blessed Virgin.”

He half coughed, half laughed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect … I didn’t know …”

She raised her fingertips to his cheek. “Such a saggy face. Goodnight, Albert.”

Ryan left her there and went to the car. The drive from Rathgar into town took less than fifteen minutes, and he spent it trying to think of the dark-haired man who bested him in the bathroom, and not the feeling of Celia’s lips against his.

He did not succeed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

S
KORZENY LEFT HIS
brandy and his guests in the drawing room. He followed Esteban to the darkened study and picked up the telephone receiver. The boy flicked on the lamp, casting a pool of soft light over the desk.

“Who is this?” Skorzeny asked.

“Celia Hume.”

Skorzeny took a cigarette from the case on the desk. “Well?”

“We had a very pleasant evening. We went to the pictures, then afterwards, a drink.”

Skorzeny noted the softness of the consonants, the way she enunciated the words with care so as to hide the effects of those drinks.

Esteban lifted the desk lighter, struck a flame, and held it out. Skorzeny tasted petrol and tobacco, carried to his throat by the heat. He waved Esteban away. The boy left the room, closed the door behind him.

“Were any sensitive matters discussed?” he asked.

“No. At least, none that concerned you or the work Lieutenant Ryan is doing for you.”

“And what were your impressions of him?”

The girl paused, then said, “He is very sweet. Like a child, in some ways. But there’s something else to him, something I can’t quite describe. I know he’s a soldier, but it’s more than that. Something in his eyes, in the way he holds himself, the way he speaks. But not what he says. Something that frightens me, just a little.”

Had he felt so inclined, Skorzeny could have put it into words for her. Ryan carried the souls of the dead with him, just as every killer does. However gentlemanly the exterior, no matter how kind the man might appear, those souls will watch from behind his eyes.

“When will you see him again?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Soon, I think. He promised to call.”

“Good. Bring him close to you. As close as he desires to be.”

Silence for a moment, then, “What do you mean?”

Skorzeny flicked the cigarette against the crystal ashtray. “Do I not pay you well for this service?”

“Colonel Skorzeny, I am not a prostitute.”

“Of course not,” he said. “Goodnight, Miss Hume.”

He hung up and returned to his guests, picking up the story he’d been telling. The one about rescuing Mussolini from the hotel on Gran Sasso that served as the dictator’s prison. Skorzeny’s political guests always enjoyed that one.

He had told the tale so many times, at so many parties and dinners and banquets, he sometimes struggled to separate truth from fiction. In moments of doubt, he would remind himself that he was not a historian. If the people he met desired to be enthralled by stories of his adventures, who was Otto Skorzeny to deny them their pleasure?

Luca Impelliteri would deny them, given the chance.

The morning after the Italian had goaded him on that balcony in Tarragona, he had a message delivered to Skorzeny’s room inviting him to coffee. At noon, Skorzeny found Impelliteri waiting at a table outside a cafe on the Rambla Nova. He wore an open-necked shirt and sunglasses. He clicked his fingers to attract a waiter as Skorzeny approached.

“Please sit,” he said.

Skorzeny obliged. “What do you want?”

“Just a chat,” Impelliteri said, keeping his demeanour friendly. The sunglasses hid his eyes. “Coffee?”

Skorzeny nodded.

Impelliteri addressed the waiter. “Two coffees, and bring us a plate of pastries, whatever you recommend.”

“Not for me,” Skorzeny said.

“Oh, please, you must. The pastries here are the best I’ve tasted outside of Italy.”

The waiter went to fetch the order.

“You wanted to talk,” Skorzeny said. “So get to it.”

“Colonel Skorzeny, you’re an impatient man.”

“Amongst other things. Do not test me.”

The Italian smiled. “Well, then let’s not keep you any longer than necessary. As we discussed last night, I was there on Gran Sasso when you snatched Il Duce. I watched you run around the hotel, trying to find a way in. I saw you scamper away from the guard dogs—lucky for you, they were chained up—and I watched when you couldn’t climb a wall no higher than a metre and a half. You had to use one of your men as a platform to stand on. It was almost comical.”

The waiter returned, placed a coffee in front of each man, and a plate of pastries at the centre of the table. The confections glistened in the sunlight, red jam and yellow custard set in pastry cases that looked like they might blow away on the breeze. Impelliteri lifted the plate, presented it to Skorzeny.

“No,” he said.

Impelliteri shrugged and took one for himself, mimed ecstasy as he ate.

Skorzeny knocked the table with a knuckle to regain the Italian’s attention. “So you dispute the historical record of Operation Oak, you claim I and many of my
Kameraden
are liars, that you know better. Why should I care what you believe?”

Impelliteri dabbed pastry crumbs from his lips with a napkin. “You shouldn’t care what I believe. After all, who am I? But I think you might care what the
Generalissimo
believes. After all, you are a guest in Spain at his indulgence. If he were to discover you to be a fraud, that you had taken his friendship by deceit, then perhaps his indulgence might not stretch so far. Perhaps you would not find this beautiful country so welcoming. Please do try one of these pastries, they’re quite lovely.”

He held the plate up once more, and Skorzeny pushed it away.

“My friend Francisco will not believe such fantasies. He will take the historical record for the truth it is.”

“Historical record,” Impelliteri echoed. “You keep saying these words as if repeating them will make them real. There is no historical record. There is only SS propaganda, and your own bluster.”

Skorzeny stood, his chair screeching on the pavement as it slid back. “I’ve heard enough of this. Do not bother me again.”

He marched towards the hotel, the Mediterranean blue and glassy beyond.

Impelliteri’s voice called after him. “Wait, Colonel Skorzeny. I haven’t told you what I want, yet.”

Skorzeny stopped and turned, already sure in his gut what the Italian wanted.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

R
YAN SLEPT LITTLE
,
the hotel bed feeling too narrow for his frame, too short for his legs. If he wasn’t thinking about Celia and the feel of her lips on his, he was brooding on the dark-haired man and his blade.

He played out scenarios in his mind.

In one, the man did not get the better of him, did not have him on his knees on the piss-soaked floor. Instead, Ryan outmanoeuvred the man, disarmed him, had him quaking and talking, telling Ryan everything he wanted to know.

In another, Celia brought Ryan to the parlour of her boarding house, dismissed Mrs. Highland as if she were a housemaid. And there, on the hard cushions of the settee, Celia kissed him again, this time letting her tongue linger, explore, quick and nimble. And she guided his hands over her body, finding the secret places, warm to his touch.

When he did sleep, he dreamed of her open mouth and the taste of her lipstick, the tobacco and alcohol on her breath. And as he moved against her, she became one of the whores the boys had brought him to visit in Sicily and Egypt, plump and eager, smelling of sweat and strong soap.

And the man watched from the corner, his knife held in his hand.

“She’s very pretty,” he said, the blade held out from his groin, shining and obscene.

Ryan awoke in the greyness of the dawn, the blankets twisted around his ankles. He freed himself and sat up on the edge of the bed, lifted his watch from the bedside locker. Just gone five. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, yawned, tasted the Guinness from the night before.

His stomach grumbled. An hour and a half before they served breakfast. Ninety minutes with nothing but his own thoughts. Exercise was the only answer.

Wearing just his underwear, he stood upright and stretched his arms towards the ceiling, feeling it work the muscles of his back. Then he bent forward, his legs straight, dropping his fingertips towards the floor, down, down, until they touched the carpet’s vulgar pattern.

Ryan lay on the floor, wedged his feet beneath the bed, twined his fingers behind his head, and started counting sit-ups.

The effort cleared the jumble from his mind.

He thought about Otto Skorzeny, once called the most dangerous man in Europe. Now a gentleman farmer. Had the eighteen years between now and the end of the war washed away his sins? True, the respect and admiration other soldiers held him in was deserved to an extent. He was a master tactician, a revolutionary of battle, had changed the way men thought about warfare. But he was also a Nazi. And not some poor man conscripted to that cause by accident of birth. No, he had been a member of the party long before the war, and had volunteered to fight for the Reich, had not been forced into service.

Whatever these killers wanted from Skorzeny, whatever fate awaited him, many would say he had it coming.

Many, but not all.

Ryan remembered the discussions in his father’s shop. As a boy, stacking shelves and sweeping floors for the odd penny his father would allow him, he listened to the men discuss the goings on in Europe. They talked about Chancellor Hitler. Would de Valera—still Taoiseach then, still riding on the back of the revolution—side with Chamberlain? If it came to it, would he ask his fellow Irishmen to fight alongside the British?

Unthinkable, some would say. Old Dev would never sell his people out to the Brits.

But that Hitler, others would say, he’s bad news. No good could come of his shouting and blustering. Someone needs to put some manners on him.

But he’s just a good nationalist, like us, looking out for his own people. Just like old Dev did, like Pearse and Connolly did in 1916.

Not the same, no, not at all. Dev and the rest fought for freedom. That Hitler’s a dictator, pure and simple, and he’s a fascist.

And so the arguments would go on as young Albert Ryan swept the floors and cleaned the windows, and Ryan’s father would keep his counter tidy and say little. Sure, it’s nothing to do with me, he’d say, let them fight it out if they want, just so long as they leave me and mine out of it.

In the end, Ryan’s father had been right. Ireland stayed out of it, after a fashion.

But Ryan did not. He saw what the Nazis had done, the charred remains of the continent they had raped and mutilated. The men, women and children, the human beings, left to wander the roads, everything they owned clutched in their hands or tied to their backs. They spoke of what they’d left behind. Not the possessions, but the bodies. The bodies of those they loved, abandoned to the dogs and the insects.

Ryan still dreamed of them. Not as often as he used to, but sometimes. He thanked God he had not entered the camps. The stories travelled across Europe’s wastelands, about the living skeletons, the mass graves, the bodies stacked high, half burned, half buried.

Men like Skorzeny had done that. Willingly.

And now Ryan was protecting them.

He stopped, his chest pressed to his knees, his breath held tight in his lungs. He had stopped counting, had no idea how many he’d done. No matter. He turned over, his body straight, his hands flat on the floor, and pushed.

Who were the predators who stalked Skorzeny? The man who had humiliated Ryan the night before, was he one of them? Or something other?

The floor rose and fell beneath Ryan, drops of sweat darkening the carpet’s fibres. He relished the sensation of the muscles of his shoulders and flanks taking the strain, the clarity of it. He worked until his body burned, his lungs straining, his mind flitting between a dark-haired man and a red-haired woman, uncertain of whom he feared more.

With his mind focused by the exertion, he returned to the file Haughey had supplied. He read and re-read the minister’s notes, and his own. The same two names snagged his suspicions however hard he tried to broaden his gaze.

Hakon Foss and Catherine Beauchamp.

He repeated the woman’s address in his mind and went to the map that lay on the desk.

R
YAN HAD WASHED
,
shaved and dressed in his old suit, and was about to go for breakfast when the telephone rang. The receptionist asked if he could put a call through. The caller had declined to identify himself. A foreign gentleman, the receptionist said.