Ratlines (22 page)

“What I’m trying to tell you is, I thought this would be the same. We’d have a nice time, we’d talk, and I’d tell Skorzeny what you’d said. I never thought there would be anything more to it than that. Anything … bad.”

Ryan was certain he should be angry at her. He couldn’t be sure if it was the fatigue or the low heat in his belly that prevented it. His mind should have seized on the betrayal, but instead it dwelled on the pressure of her fingers against his arm.

“Who asked you to do the job?” he asked.

“Charlie Haughey by way of Mr. Waugh.”

“You should contact this Mr. Waugh as soon as you can. Tell him you can’t continue this assignment. It’s too dangerous.”

Her eyes hardened, told him not to lie. “How dangerous?”

“Dangerous,” Ryan said. “Six men died tonight.”

S
KORZENY HAD BARRELLED
into the trees, his voice torn up by anger. Ryan had followed, leaving Lainé in the harsh glow of the halogen lamp.

The curses in the dark made waypoints for Ryan to navigate by, roots snagging his toes, bushes grabbing at his thighs.

“Here!”

Skorzeny’s voice cut through the night. Ryan headed towards it.

He found the Austrian in a clearing, crouched, his cigarette lighter in one hand, the other cupping the flame. A man lay dead in the moss and rotten leaves, an AK-47 at his side. The flickering of the lighter seemed to animate his face, the expression turning from surprise to terror and back again.

Skorzeny hauled himself to his feet and set off again. Ryan tailed him, following the sounds of his crashing through the trees. They rounded the house, walked circles around clearings and thickets. Time stretched, the sound of Skorzeny’s breath a metronome, a rhythm to trace in the dark.

Ryan tripped on something heavy and pliant. He landed on the moist cold earth, his feet tangling in something he knew to be human.

“Over here,” he called.

The answer from a dozen yards away. “Where? Talk. I’ll find you.”

Ryan spoke to the darkness, words of no meaning, sounds to guide Skorzeny in.

He knelt down beside Ryan and flicked the lighter. The flame stuttered and caught. The dead man stared at the sky, a piece of his cheek gone.

They stumbled down towards the gateway that opened on to the road. A few minutes’ searching found the bodies, dragged from the driveway to the black places behind the wall.

Skorzeny stood panting like a beaten dog, smaller than he’d been before.

“What do they want?” he asked.

Ryan knew the question was not for him. He answered it anyway. “You.”

Skorzeny grabbed Ryan’s shirt front. The fabric stung him where the sword’s tip had pierced his skin. “Then why don’t they come for me? Why this?”

“Because they want you afraid.”

Skorzeny released his grip. “Never.”

Ryan thought of Weiss and his mission. Only one logical thought would stay in his mind, and he knew Weiss would kill him for it.

“You should leave,” Ryan said.

“What?”

“Get out of here. You have friends in Spain. You’ll be safe there.”

Skorzeny’s laugh echoed through the trees. “Run?”

“I don’t see any other choice.”

“Never.” Skorzeny pushed Ryan hard, sending him sprawling in the weeds. “I have never run from anyone. Do you take me for a coward?”

Ryan got to his feet, dusted off his trousers, careful of the wound on his thigh. “No, I don’t.”

Skorzeny came close. Ryan smelled brandy on his breath. “Would
you
run? Would you show them your tail as you fled?”

Ryan stepped back. “I don’t know.”

“Are you a coward?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why do you talk like one? You talk of running. Like a woman. Like a child. Where are your balls?”

“Sir, I—”

“And why haven’t you fucked that redheaded girl?”

Ryan turned his back on Skorzeny, walked towards the gravel of the driveway, ignored the taunts.

“Why not? She’s there for you, a gift. And you haven’t the balls to take her. What kind of man are you?”

Ryan left him ranting in the darkness.

C
ELIA
’
S FINGERTIP BRUSHED
the graze on Ryan’s neck, already dry and scabbing.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

She rested her chin on his shoulder. Her breath on his skin.

“You’re a strange man, Albert Ryan.” She touched his cheek, skimmed his jowl with the backs of her fingers. “Such a saggy face. If I saw you on the street, I’d think, there’s a nice man. A quiet man. He’s got a job in a bank, or maybe a department store, and he’s going home to kiss his wife and play with his children.”

Her words caught like splinters.

“And here you are, bleeding, telling me about all the dead men and how they died.”

Ryan turned his face to her, every intention to speak, but she silenced him with her lips.

Soft and warm on his, her fingers woven in his hair, her body pressed against his shoulder. No air, he pushed her away, gasped, fell on her, hands hungry and seeking.

She guided them away from her breasts, said, “No,” and he obeyed. The bed seemed too small for them both. Her body moved beneath his, her thigh between his legs, shying from the hardness it found there, her teeth grazing his lips.

“God,” she said. “Sweet Jesus.”

She pushed him away.

Ryan leaned back on his knees, breathless, confused.

She shook her head. “I want to. But I won’t. I’m …”

He understood. “I know.”

Celia took his hand, brought him down to her. She turned on her side, her back to him, and he nestled there, his mouth against the heat of her neck, his chest against her bare shoulder blades, his arm wrapped around her.

She did not pull away from the hardness of him now, allowed him to press against her. Her foot hooked around his ankle.

They lay there, knotted and breathless. Ryan felt her ribcage expand and contract, the rhythm steadying, her body loosening. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, it was light, and she was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

L
AINÉ DID NOT
sleep. When Ryan and Skorzeny had disappeared into the trees, he had gone back to the house, taken another bottle from the cellar, and climbed the stairs to his room.

He listened to the hoarse shouting in the distance, then the sound of Ryan’s car starting and pulling away, and finally Skorzeny entering the house and barking orders into the telephone downstairs. An hour later, perhaps more, two engines approached and stopped outside. Big, coarse engines, like Land Rovers, farmers’ vehicles, built for carrying their loads across fields and streams. The voices of men, instructions issued, commands accepted.

IRA men, probably, tasked with cleaning up whatever mess had been left among the trees surrounding Skorzeny’s property.

Lainé lay on his bed, taking the last swallows from the bottle, the puppy dozing at his feet. He pictured the dead being ferried away into the night, buried in the corner of some barren field, or in the dark channels of a forest, or weighed down in the deepest part of a cold lake.

Among them Hakon Foss, poor innocent idiot, now to be fed upon by foxes or fish.

The wine turned sour like vinegar in Lainé’s mouth, but he finished it anyway, dropped the empty bottle on the carpet. The puppy woke, stirred by the noise, and came up to nestle in the V between Lainé’s body and arm.

He thought of Catherine Beauchamp. Had anyone gone to a telephone box, placed a call to the police, told them she waited on the floor of her cottage? Had anyone come to investigate the distressed whinnying of her horse, alone, hungry and afraid in its stable?

Ryan had lied about what she’d said, putting the blame on Foss, and Lainé knew why: to take his trust, to thieve it by deception, to let him think Ryan was on his side. Lainé was smarter than that, and he believed Ryan knew it, but he would play the Irishman’s game. He had no other choice.

No, that was untrue. Had never been true. Back when he had taken up arms alongside the occupying Nazis, he had a choice, just as he did now, and he chose to follow Ryan’s path.

If he had dared to wonder why, his conscience would have told him it was because he had grown to hate Skorzeny. His greed for money and power and influence. His vanity, his desire to be admired and feared. At one time, Lainé had seen the Nazis’ ideals as being in line with his own: the assertion of nationhood. But ideals wither in the glare of money and power, until greed is all that survives.

And why shouldn’t he, Célestin Lainé, share in that greed?

So when those men came to him, pressed that thick, greasy paper into his hand in return for his tongue, he offered it gladly. They had promised more, a fortune he’d never thought he could possess, and he had believed them.

But when he had told them all he knew, the money ceased to fill his palm, and he knew they had used him, just like the Nazis had. Made him a traitor to himself with no reward but the guilt that lay rotting in his breast.

Yes, they had made Célestin Lainé a traitor, and a traitor he would be.

He lay silent and still as the hours to daylight passed, only leaving his room to bring the puppy outside for its toilet. Later still, as the morning lengthened, he heard the noise of the big Mercedes engine coughing into life and roaring as Skorzeny sped away.

Lainé went downstairs, quiet and secret, and took his bicycle from under the tarpaulin at the back of the house. He rode the few miles to the tiny village of Cut Bush. There a telephone box stood outside a small public house. Breathless, he propped the bicycle against the wall and went inside for a whiskey while he recovered from the effort. When his chest and his heart stopped their heaving and battering, he finished the drink and went to the bar to ask for change.

A light drizzle made dark spots on the road outside. Lainé stepped inside the telephone box. He asked the operator for Buswells Hotel, Dublin, inserted coins, pushed the button when instructed, and waited. The hotel’s receptionist asked him to hold, and he listened to clicks and a hiss.

“Yes?”

“Ryan. It is me. Célestin.”

A pause, then, “Tell me about Captain John Carter.”

Lainé talked.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

W
ITHIN THIRTY MINUTES
of Ryan leaving a copy of the
Irish Times
on the dashboard of the Vauxhall, the telephone in his hotel room jangled.

“The University Church, southern end of St. Stephen’s Green,” Weiss said. “I’ll wait inside.”

Ten minutes later, Ryan approached the church’s ornate facade, red brick and short stone columns, a belfry above, seemingly suspended in mid air. It stood sandwiched between taller buildings, creating the illusion of a chapel in miniature, but stepping through its double doors revealed the truth. A small porch opened into the atrium beyond. A tall vaulted ceiling, high white walls decorated by granite plaques dedicated to scholars and philanthropists. The chill on the air crept beneath Ryan’s clothing. A short flight of stone steps lead down to the floor where Goren Weiss waited, smartly dressed as before.

“What’s the news, Albert?” His voice echoed between the walls.

Ryan looked to the gap between the double doors leading to the church itself, the glowing light from within. He saw no one inside.

“Six men died last night,” he said.

Weiss emptied his lungs, a despairing exhalation. “Go on.”

Ryan told him about the body in the outbuilding, about the killing of Foss, about the dead guards in the trees. He did not mention Lainé’s tattling or Skorzeny’s shoving and baiting.

“Fuck,” Weiss said. “Audacious, wouldn’t you say?”

“Or stupid.”

“Maybe. What confuses me, and I imagine Colonel Skorzeny more so, is why they didn’t come for him while they were at it. They’ve proved they can get to him if they want to. They’ve got the noose around his neck, so why not kick the chair from under him?”

The doors leading to the porch and the street beyond opened, and an elderly man entered the atrium. He went to one of the fonts that were mounted on each wall. He dipped his fingers in the holy water and made the sign of the cross before descending the steps. He nodded at Ryan and Weiss as he passed on his way to the church.

When the doors closed behind the old man, Weiss asked, “How come you didn’t do that? The water and the cross thing.”

“I’m not Catholic,” Ryan said.

“I see. Then I guess neither of us belongs here, do we?”

Ryan wondered for a moment if Weiss meant the church or something other. “This isn’t a good place to meet,” he said. “It’s too close to Merrion Street.”

“The government buildings? What, you think Mr. Haughey’s going to swing by to say a prayer for Skorzeny? Does he strike you as a man who likes to get his knees dirty?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

For the first time, if only for an instant, Weiss’s smile reached his eyes. “So, why didn’t Carter and his men kill Skorzeny last night?”

“Because they want him scared,” Ryan said.

“And is he?”

“Not on the surface, but underneath, yes, I think he is.”

“Scared enough to go running to Franco?”

“No, he won’t run. He’s got too much pride.”

“Good. But that doesn’t answer the question. They’ve got him nervous, but that’s not their goal. What is it they really want? Figure that out and we might be closer to tracking the sons of bitches down.”

“I have a lead,” Ryan said. “A solid one.”

Weiss tilted his head, looked hard at him. “What?”

“You’ll know if it works out.”

“I’ll know it now.” Weiss leaned in, his face darkening. “Don’t hold anything back from me, Albert. That would make me very unhappy.”

“I want to follow it up, but I can’t have you breathing down my neck. Call off any tails you’ve got on me. When I need to talk, my car will be at the hotel along with the newspaper on the dashboard. I’ll be in touch if I’ve got something.”

Weiss chewed his lip. “Damn it, Albert, you’re putting me in a difficult position.”