MICKEY GAVE TWO short raps on the hotel-room door, opened it, and gestured to me to enter. I wondered what he knew about nighttime whispers and things left unsaid. What he knew would never pass his lips; he was as loyal as they came. He patted me on the back and shut the door behind me, leaving me in a narrow hallway, face to face with Uncle Ike. I felt as if an accusation was written across my face.
“William,” he said, his face lighting up with his trademark grin as he put a hand on my shoulder. “Come in, come in. Are you all right? You looked flushed. Too much sun today?”
“No, no, sir,” I said. “I’m fine. Really.” He stared at me oddly for a second, searching for some hint of trouble. I put on my cop face and the look vanished.
“Good. I’m glad you were able to come along with me on this trip. I haven’t felt so relaxed since we came over from the States. I slept ten hours last night; can you believe it?”
“Yes, sir, I can. You look good.”
He did. The bags under his eyes didn’t look as dark as they had back in Algiers, where he had been running a war while organizing a visit by a president and a prime minister. I craned my neck to find out who was in the room but couldn’t see around the corner. I never called him Uncle Ike in front of anyone else, and I didn’t think we were alone now, so I held back. He seemed to read my thoughts as he lowered his voice.
“Thanks, William. You deserve more rest yourself, but something’s come up.” He dug a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket and lit up, glancing toward the room as he did so. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to cut this trip short. Do you remember Major Cosgrove?”
I remembered. Major Charles Cosgrove, supposedly a representative of the British Imperial General Staff. In reality, he worked for MI-5, their counterintelligence and security division. We’d met when I first came to England, and he tried to use me in his intelligence games. I hadn’t liked him then, and he didn’t take to me. I doubted he’d changed much. I had—plenty—but it only served to make me more suspicious of him than I had been before.
“Sure, General. Swell guy.”
“I know you two didn’t get along during that affair with the Norwegians, William. But this time he’s come to ask you for a favor, and it might be one you won’t mind doing.”
“It sounds like I’m going to be working for him, General.”
“William, don’t make it sound like a prison sentence. Remember, we’re all on the same side, even though at times it may seem more trouble than it’s worth.”
He smiled, letting me know he understood and that he had his own English cross to bear. General Bernard Law Montgomery had been a constant source of irritation to Uncle Ike—and most Americans, for that matter—with his condescending remarks about U.S. troops and his overblown opinion of his own military genius. But Uncle Ike never said a single negative thing about him, in public anyway, for the sake of Allied unity. He rested his hand on my arm, raised his eyebrows, and waited for me to let him know I had gotten the message.
“I understand, sir. I’ll be on my best behavior, I promise.”
“Good, William. I knew I could count on you. Have you written to your mother lately?”
Uncle Ike walked me down the corridor, lecturing me on the virtues of writing to loved ones at home. I thought of Aunt Mamie looking forward to his letters, and of the brief but passionate postcard he’d written Kay. Did Mamie know all the things he could say but didn’t? I tried to shake off the thought before I blurted out anything stupid, assuring Uncle Ike I would write soon.
“My young American friend! Good of you to drop in for a chat,” Major Charles Cosgrove said. Sinking his cane into the carpet like a bayonet, he lifted his well-tailored bulk up out of a comfortable chair, teetered a bit as he got his balance, huffed as he took a few steps over to me, and shook my hand. “You’re looking well, young Billy.”
“You too, Major,” I said, hoping the lie wasn’t too apparent. There was more gray in the thinning hair than there had been, and in his waxed mustache too. He was still elegant, if you didn’t count the sweat beading his brow or his immense girth held together by a spit-shined Sam Browne belt. Somebody else’s spit, not his.
“Lieutenant Boyle, I’d like you to meet Subaltern O’Brien,” Cosgrove said, stepping to one side as he took me by the arm. I hadn’t been able to see anyone behind him as he stood but when he moved, a woman rose from another chair and held out her hand. A young woman. A young, pretty woman. And, judging by the sprinkling of freckles decorating her nose, as well as her name, a young, pretty Irish woman.
“Subaltern Sláine O’Brien, Lieutenant Boyle. Pleased to meet you.” She was a bit on the short side, her eyes angling up to meet mine. They were green, her skin white, and her hair the color of honey, a mass of curls pulled back in a vain attempt to contain them.
“Same here,” I said, enjoying the lilt in her voice. She both looked and sounded Irish, so her being with Major Cosgrove, wearing a British uniform, seemed damn odd to me.
“I’ll leave you together to talk about this investigation,” Uncle Ike said. “William understands the situation and will give you his full cooperation.”
“Excellent, General Eisenhower, thank you so much for lending us the lieutenant,” Cosgrove said, lifting his mustache in a broad smile.
“It was an honor to meet you, sir,” O’Brien said, folding her hands like a schoolgirl as she faced the general.
“How do you spell your first name, Subaltern? I’m afraid that bit of Gaelic confused my midwestern ear,” Uncle Ike said, all smiles for her after a sharp glance at Cosgrove, who seemed to be dismissing him.
“Slah-nah,” she said slowly, the accent on the first syllable, “is spelled S-l-á-i-n-e.”
“Sláine,” Uncle Ike repeated, doing his best. He smiled, obviously enjoying her beauty, and then snapped out of it. He slapped me on the shoulder and assured me it wouldn’t be long before I was back. I didn’t even know where the hell I was going.
The three of us settled down into chairs grouped around a small table, where a carafe of water sweated, surrounded by cut-crystal glasses. I poured and gulped down the cool liquid, watching O’Brien and Cosgrove exchanging glances. I wondered which one was going to break the bad news. I decided to get to know this Irish lass a bit before letting them sentence me to whatever scheme they didn’t want to waste an Englishman on.
“What exactly is a subaltern, Miss O’Brien? It is Miss O’Brien, isn’t it?”
“It’s Subaltern O’Brien,” she said, stiffening. “Subaltern is an Auxiliary Territorial Service rank, equivalent to lieutenant. That’s a step up from second lieutenant, by the way.”
“Thanks for the reminder, sir.”
“Ma’am,” she said.
“What?”
“‘Thanks for the reminder,
ma’am
,’” she said. “That is the proper way to address an officer in the ATS. A superior officer.”
I wished Uncle Ike would return. She’d seemed nice when he was around. Now she was acting like an officer, a real officer, even though she was ATS, which was an auxiliary organization the British had put together to allow women to make their contribution to the war effort. Kay had come from the ATS, and I knew they worked as antiaircraft gunners, military police, and everything else short of carrying a rifle at the front.
Subaltern O’Brien’s tropical-weight khaki uniform was neat and pressed, a remarkable feat in the heat and dust of the Holy Land. Her ATS insignia, those three letters enclosed by a laurel with a crown at the top, was shiny and bright, the brass gleaming above her breast pocket. Her buttons were polished, their golden color jumping out at me.
She caught my eye wandering over her and turned to Cosgrove, with a brief expression of disdain. I wanted to say I was only admiring her buttons but had the good sense to take another drink of water instead. I smoothed out the wrinkles in my uniform as I tried to remember the last time I’d polished my own buttons. I’d paid some kid in Algiers to do it a while ago, but he’d gotten more Brasso on the jacket than on the buttons.
“Would you like to start the briefing, Major Cosgrove?” She was all business.
“Certainly. Now, Boyle, how much do you know about the Irish Republican Army?”
“I’ve heard of it,” I said, suspicious as any good Irish boy would be of an Englishman asking such a question. I stared at O’Brien again, overlooking her buttons this time but still wondering why she wore a British uniform.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Cosgrove said. “You know the IRA came out of the Irish Volunteers and other groups involved in the rebellion and the subsequent Anglo-Irish War—”
“You mean the Irish War of Independence,” I said.
“As you wish. All water under the dam now, Boyle. The treaty between Great Britain and Ireland was signed in 1921—”
“Leaving Northern Ireland in the hands of the British.”
“Precisely. The Irish Republican Army split, those who supported the treaty forming the new Irish National Army and those who opposed it fighting on, against the Irish government, Great Britain, and often each other.”
“What’s the point of the history lesson?” I asked, steamed at having to listen to Cosgrove’s version of recent Irish struggles.
“To be certain you understand the importance of what we are about to tell you. I assume you’ve been raised on tales of valiant IRA lads fighting against English tyranny. With your American distance from the actual events, I daresay you have a rather romantic notion of this conflict, one that has little basis in reality.”
I didn’t like how this was going. I got up and walked away from Cosgrove, cramming my hands in my pockets to keep from making a fist.
I stared out a window in the direction of the Golden Gate, the gate through which the Jews believed the Messiah would enter Jerusalem. A few hundred years ago, the Turks had sealed it up, and it was still sealed up tight this morning with the English running the place. That was how empires worked, no matter if it was the Turks or the Brits. Grind the dreams of the people into nothing. Brick up the wall. Sneer at the stuff of legends.
“Are you still with us, Lieutenant Boyle?” O’Brien asked.
“I am,” I said with an effort.
“Now, as I was saying,” Cosgrove huffed, “the IRA has continued its operations, even though it was declared illegal by the Dublin government in 1936. It has been able to do so in large part due to contributions from America. Were you aware of that?”
I shrugged.
“You lived and worked in Boston, Massachusetts,” O’Brien said, her green eyes scanning the contents of a folder. “You, your father, and his brother all serve on the Boston police force. With a lot of other Irish-Americans.”
“And no Englishmen,” I said, answering what sounded like an accusation with another.
“Exactly, my dear boy,” Cosgrove said. “Why, you have probably tossed some coins into a can at whatever pub you frequent in Boston. Irish relief, or something like that.”
“Taverns,” I said. “We call them taverns, or bars.”
“I don’t care what you call them, Boyle, all I want to do is be sure you understand the larger picture. You’re no stranger to the IRA and Clan na Gael, surely!”
Clan na Gael. The Family of the Gaels, the fund-raising organization in the States for the cause of a free Ireland. It had been around since the last century, and when the Dublin government approved the treaty, some members agreed. Others didn’t, and they kept up the flow of money and guns to the IRA. Dad and Uncle Dan were on the anti-treaty side. Nothing less than a free and united Ireland was how the cause was defined around our kitchen table.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, thinking about the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake tickets my dad used to bring home from Clan na Gael meetings. He’d tell me it would be worth $150,000 if one of them won, and we’d treat them as if they were gold. I always believed each one he brought home was a winner; it meant a week of dreams.
“You must not have been much of a police officer,” O’Brien said. “I suspect Clan na Gael was all over the Irish neighborhoods in Boston. I’d also guess that within the Boston Police Department, there would be an IRA group. A secret group, to the extent the IRA can keep a secret.”
“You sound as if you’re a cop yourself,” I said. “What exactly do you do in the ATS?”
“Subaltern O’Brien is MI-5’s country desk officer for Ireland,” Cosgrove said. “Quite an achievement for a woman. Wartime contingencies and all that to be sure, but still remarkable.”
“So you admit you’re MI-5?” I asked Cosgrove.
“Of course. We have no secrets from our American cousins.”
“Anymore, that is. You lied the last time we met.”
“That was then, my boy. Now we have a bigger job to do.”
“OK, spill.”
“Pardon me?”
“Tell me everything. Pretend I never heard of the IRA and lay it all out.”
Cosgrove nodded to O’Brien, who gave him a cold response. I wondered if she was miffed at his qualified endorsement of her accomplishment. And I wondered even more what an O’Brien, man or woman, was doing working for MI-5 on Irish counterintelligence. It wasn’t an Anglo-Irish name or one to be found among Ulster Protestants, those residents of the northern counties who had fought to maintain union with Great Britain. She looked and sounded Irish, which to me meant the Republic of Ireland, the entire island, united. That it meant Catholic was understood. I have plenty of Protestant friends back in Boston and in the army, so don’t misunderstand. There’s not anything wrong with being a Protestant. It’s the pro-British, Catholic-hating Ulstermen I don’t like, and they just happen to be Protestants.
“There have been a number of contacts between the IRA and the Abwehr, the German intelligence service, that commenced well before the war,” she said, her hands clasped together above her knees, which were aligned perfectly. Had the nuns taught her to sit like that, ladylike and demure, all the sinful parts protected?
“Tom Barry, the IRA’s director of intelligence, visited Germany and met with the Abwehr in 1936, after the IRA was declared an illegal organization,” she went on. “This was followed by a visit in 1939 by Jim O’Donovan, their director of chemical warfare.”