It was five o’clock when he saw it. Far out to sea, moving gracefully south towards Wicklow, was a large yacht. It was so much bigger than the ones he had seen earlier in the day. Tiny
dots of sailors could be seen through the glasses moving about their business. He couldn’t see a name. Maybe it had been removed. The visitor did not even move in towards the shore as it
passed. It sailed serenely on as if it had a rendezvous in some other harbour far far away. But Powerscourt was sure. He was certain. This yacht would turn round when it was dark. It would come
back to anchor some way from the harbour. A small boat would be lowered from the side. Packages and people would follow. The rendezvous between the German paymasters and quartermasters and their
Irish clients was about to begin.
He ate a hearty supper. He ordered with some amusement a main course described as Powerscourt lamb. His father, he remembered, incarcerated with his account books in the corner of the great
house, would often remark that at least the lamb sold well. He checked the horse he had rented from the hotel stables, thick sacking wrapped round its hooves to ease the noise it might make on the
roads or tracks of Wicklow. As the sun set behind the mountains in a mass of pinks and reds that promised a fine tomorrow, he settled in his observation post on the top floor.
He made a regular orbit with the binoculars. Harbour. Nothing there. North towards Dublin, nothing moved. South towards Wicklow and the mountains inland. Nothing there. The streets of Greystones
itself, hosts already perhaps to Irish insurrectionaries who could have come south from the capital to collect their booty. Nothing moved. The moon was full now, weak at first but growing stronger
as night settled over Ireland. There were a few clouds that caused a deeper darkness. Moonlight was a mixed blessing. It could show you where your unknown adversaries were going. It could show them
they were being followed, a lone agent perhaps of the intelligence networks directed with such deadly precision from Dublin Castle on their trail. A couple of dogs were on manoeuvres, sniffing
hopefully around the rocks and the cottages. Far out to sea nothing stirred. There was a slight wind, enough to fill a sail. The waters, sometimes grey, sometimes black, seemed to mock Powerscourt
at his lookout post on the top floor of the Imperial Hotel.
It was a dog that gave the first clue. Far off in the distance, probably on the road from Bray, came sounds of barking. Ten minutes later a horse and cart trotted carelessly into the village and
stopped outside a shop just fifty yards from the harbour. There was a quantity of hay and what looked like tarpaulin sheets in the back. Nobody stirred. No inhabitants of Greystones peered sleepily
from their windows at this strange apparition of the night. Turn your faces to the wall, While the gentlemen go by. There were two men with the cart. Both were wearing dark clothes. Powerscourt
checked his watch. It was a quarter to two. He wondered if even on secret and dangerous missions the Germans had a timetable. The boat will come at two o’clock in the morning. Loading will be
complete by two fifteen. The mother ship will depart at two thirty. Thank you, gentlemen.
He swung his binoculars out to sea again. He could see nothing at all. The clouds had obscured the moon. Perhaps the timetable even extends to periods of cloud cover. Wait. Check the focus
again. What was that, out there on the right? There was a smudge, a blob on the sea. The blob appeared to be moving. Moving towards Greystones. At five to two the weather turned against the
invaders. The clouds passed on. In the moonlight Powerscourt saw the yacht, moving gracefully towards him, a couple of miles out to sea. Shortly after two it veered sharply in towards the coast and
stopped about eight hundred yards from the harbour.
Powerscourt checked the reception committee by the shop. Nothing stirred. Perhaps the timetable said two thirty or even three. He could see the yacht more clearly now. A boat was being lowered
from the deck. Three men in dark jerseys settled into it. Then followed a series of heavy-looking packages. Powerscourt couldn’t see what they were. He thought suddenly of British sailors on
cutting-out expeditions in naval wars of the past, dangerous nocturnal missions to capture a fort or blow up some enemy vessels while the soldiers or the sailors slept. But this was no friendly
mission. Her Majesty’s enemies from overseas had come to give aid and assistance to some more of Her Majesty’s enemies at home. The boat set off. Powerscourt thought they must have
muffled oars. He could catch no noise at all as two men rowed steadily towards the quays.
At twenty past two the cart trotted slowly forward towards the harbour. There was just room to turn it round to face back towards the shore. The two men got out and waited by the steps that led
down to the water. One of them was smoking a pipe as if he spent every evening like this, waiting for guns to come out of the sea.
As the boat drew up there was a brief greeting. Then the dark jerseys unloaded the packages from their little boat. One thick oilskin packet went into the inside pocket of the man with the pipe.
Powerscourt thought that was probably money. Then came the heavy ones. Powerscourt saw to his astonishment that two wooden coffins with brass handles were being placed in the back of the cart. Two
more followed. Hay and the tarpaulins were quickly strewn on top of them. Coffins. What on earth were they doing with coffins? Surely the Germans weren’t exporting dead bodies to Ireland for
some final Celtic cremation up in the black hills of Wicklow? The Irish might want to put their enemies into wooden boxes but they were perfectly capable of making their own. Then it struck him. As
the rowing boat set off back to the yacht, the Germans pausing only to give a solemn salute when they left the steps, Powerscourt thought he had the answer. He swore violently to himself as the
cart trotted gently along the bay and passed the Imperial Hotel, unaware of the tall figure hiding behind his curtains to watch their passing.
Powerscourt couldn’t decide about the horse. Should a mounted Powerscourt set off in pursuit of the coffin-laden cart? Or should it be a single infantryman running along
the country roads? He had a very thick coat for the night was cold. He had stout boots in case the going got rough. He had heavy leather gloves. He took another look at his quarry. The cart, little
clouds of pipe smoke drifting up into the moonlight, had reached the end of the village and was heading south on the coast road. He sped down the stairs and led his horse in pursuit. The binoculars
were his only weapon. He didn’t like to think what might happen if the enemy found out they were being pursued. He smiled grimly to himself as he remembered that they had the coffins ready
for him, an unknown body to be buried in an unknown grave. He wondered for the tenth time since he first saw them what was inside the coffins that arrived from the sea so secretly, now trotting
serenely along the lanes of Wicklow.
The hearse was going quite slowly, no more than five or six miles per hour. Occasional bursts of conversation or laughter drifted back towards Powerscourt trotting very slowly on his horse. It
was called Paddy, not a name that would have found favour with Old Mr Harrison and his collection of classical heroes. Hercules, Powerscourt thought, that’s what you would want your horse to
be called on a night like this.
The road was still skirting the coast, the moonlight bright on a silver sea. Owls were calling from the woods ahead. They were passing the walls that surrounded a great estate. Powerscourt
remembered playing there as a child. Just beyond the main entrance, a proud and elaborate pair of gates topped by a couple of stone lions, there was a church, flanked by a handsome vicarage and a
row of empty houses. My God, that’s clever, Powerscourt thought to himself. They’re going to bury the coffins in a Protestant cemetery. Nobody in authority would think of looking there.
Catholic ones, of course, but the dead of the Church of Ireland would never be suspected of harbouring German coffins with their unknown cargo.
He left Paddy tied to a tree some hundred yards from the church and tiptoed forward to get a better view. These were grave robbers in reverse, he said to himself, come to leave rather than take,
their mission unknown, the coffins to stay with their dead companions until Judgement Day was closer. The Irishmen had their spades out and were digging fast but quietly. The first layer of turf
was carefully removed and laid in neat piles beside the headstone. Then the dark Wicklow earth was thrown as quickly as they could into a mound. Powerscourt could hear the dull thud as the spade
hit the coffin.
Like figures in a dance the men moved automatically towards the two ends. Powerscourt wondered if they were undertakers by profession. After a couple of grunts the old coffin was hauled out of
the hole. A further period of digging followed. The hole was being made deeper. They’re superstitious, Powerscourt thought. They’re going to leave the body in its grave. They’re
just going to put a couple of German coffins in underneath. Neither man spoke. Some bird or animal howled in the distance, a protest at the desecration of the dead. They stopped digging. Two of the
coffins were lowered into the open grave. The original coffin was put in on top. The earth was replaced. Powerscourt was getting pins and needles in his leg. He hoped the horse was all right,
waiting by its tree. Only two of the seaborne coffins were interred. There must be two left. Powerscourt wondered if another grave was going to be opened up, or if they were destined for a
different resting place.
Powerscourt had to know what was inside those dark boxes. He searched desperately in his pockets. He didn’t have a penknife. He didn’t even have a screwdriver. He doubted if he could
open one of those coffins with his bare hands and the stones that lay around the paths. He swore to himself. If only Johnny Fitzgerald was here. He always carried a strange miscellany around in his
pockets.
It seemed the burial party was about to move on. Powerscourt drew back into the shadows as the two men mounted the cart once more. There was a certain amount of business with matches being
struck to relight the pipe. No smoking in church or cemetery, he thought. Take off your hats when you go in and make the sign the of the cross.
As he strained forward from his tree, Powerscourt’s prayers were answered. The gravediggers were having a conversation. The words floated back to Powerscourt across the cemetery.
‘Do you think those rifles will be safe in there, Michael?’ asked the first gravedigger. The man called Michael laughed. ‘Oh yes, they will. But not as safe as where
we’re going to take the others.’
So that was it. Rifles, German rifles, the latest German rifles were in the coffins. Deadly rifles, Mausers or Schneiders, with the very newest sights, no doubt, capable of killing a man at
eight hundred yards or more. Snipers’ rifles. He remembered his dream. With one of these an accurate marksman, perched on top of Admiralty Arch, could pick off somebody in a carriage leaving
Buckingham Palace before they were half-way down the Mall.
The deadly cortege moved off away from Greystones towards the mountains. Powerscourt crept quietly into the churchyard. The grass on the top had been perfectly replaced. Two bunches of withered
flowers had also been left to conceal the disturbance. They must have brought those with them, he thought, hidden on the back of the cart. He felt renewed respect for his adversaries. George Thomas
Carew, the tombstone said, of Ballygoran, 1830–1887. Powerscourt had eaten his strawberries as a child. The Carews said they were the finest strawberries in Ireland, eaten with lashings of
home-grown cream on the Carews’ immaculate lawn, Carew children playing happily on the grass, George Thomas Carew presiding happily at the head of his table. Powerscourt remembered the smell
that followed Mr Carew wherever he went. He smoked a pipe. His children used to joke that he smoked it in his sleep. May he rest in peace, he said to himself, tiptoeing back towards his horse. One
of the Carew daughters had been very pretty, he remembered. She must be married now with a family of her own. Pray to God she never hears what has been done to her father’s grave.
Distant smoke signals told him the way to go. The road was rising now, going away from the sea into the dark of the mountains. Clouds had obscured the moon once more, Paddy’s muffled feet
sounding very soft on the grass verge. He remembered McKenzie, the tracker he had worked with in India who could follow anybody anywhere, telling him about the American Indians and the smoke
signals they could send hundreds of miles across the plains. Much more efficient than that bloody telegraph, McKenzie had said.
Quite soon there was a crossroads, he recalled. The left-hand fork led down into a valley and a little village at the bottom. The right-hand turn took you up into the heart of the mountains
through a bare and bleak landscape where the wind howled across the empty scrub. The cart was about two hundred yards ahead of him, he thought. He paused regularly in case he got too close.
Suddenly he remembered the date. This was 1897. In one year’s time it would be the hundredth anniversary of the rebellion of 1798, a terrible, doomed uprising that left thousands of Irish
dead, slaughtered on the battlefield or hanged in reprisal for revolt. Powerscourt shuddered as he remembered the atrocities done to innocent Catholics, the punishment triangles set up in the
squares of the little towns of Wexford forty miles south of here, fathers forced to kneel while their sons were lashed until the blood dripped down on to their parent beneath them. Then the roles
were reversed, the bleeding sons forced to kneel while the fathers were lashed until a father’s blood ran down to mix with the son’s. This is my blood. He recalled the flights of
oratory as the Irish protested in vain at the reign of terror imposed on them: ‘Merciful God what is the state of Ireland, and where shall you find the wretched inhabitants of this land? You
may find him, perhaps, in jail, the only place of security – I had almost said of ordinary habitation! If you do not find him there, you may see him flying with his family from the flames of
his own dwelling – lighted to his dungeon by the conflagration of his hovel; or you may find his bones bleaching on the green fields of his country; or you may find him tossing on the surface
of the ocean, and mingling his groans with those tempests, less savage than his persecutors, that drift him to a returnless distance from his family and his home without charge, or trial or
sentence.’