Authors: David Downing
A couple of trains rattled by in quick succession, their lighted windows reflecting on the water. As McColl watched the second one pass through the illuminated station, two figures walked across the tracks and promptly disappeared from view. Half a minute later, he picked them up again, passing in front of a lighted cottage. They were just walking down the road.
Turning back to the river, he saw a small boat appear around the bend. It was about two hundred yards away, and there seemed to be two people in it. He had been right about their getting off at another station, but the thought of their stealing a boat and approaching the bridge by river had never crossed his mind. How dense could he be?
He pointed the boat out to the constable beside him, who breathed in sharply and gave him a nervous glance. “Don’t
move,” McColl told him, a message he repeated after slipping down the bank and walking across beneath the girders. “Just keep quiet,” he whispered. “And whatever you do,” he added to the soldier, “don’t open fire until I give the order.” The soldier gave him a
Who the hell do you think you are?
look but didn’t argue.
McColl went back under the bridge and slithered painfully back up the bank to avoid being seen. The boat was now about a hundred yards away. Would the two men come ashore or fix their charges to the piers of the bridge? If the latter, they’d have to be offered the choice of surrender and shot out of the boat if they refused. If the former, the twosome would be at their mercy.
Over the next minute, it became apparent that they were indeed coming ashore, and on his side of the river. McColl couldn’t see why, but then he knew no more about bridge demolition than did the average automobile salesman.
The boat inched into the shore below them, some ten yards short of the bridge. McColl recognized Colm in the bow and was fairly sure that the other was Tiernan. He had hoped for Brady, but life was rarely that neat.
Colm stepped out into the shallow water, slipped a rope around the nearest piling, and stepped up onto the bank. Tiernan followed suit, and for a moment both men stood looking up at the bridge, as if picturing its ruin. As far as McColl could see, neither had a gun.
He rose to his feet, shouting “Stay where you are!” as he did so.
Both men seemed to cower for a second and might have surrendered if left to think things through. But they weren’t. The young constable on the far side of the tracks was charging down the bank toward them, as if only seconds remained to stake a claim on glory.
McColl didn’t see Tiernan reach for a gun, but he saw the flash from the barrel, saw the constable stagger on and topple into the
water. He heard the crack of the rifle, saw Tiernan thrown backward against the pilings.
Colm just stood there for a second, desperately looking this way and that, as if inviting a similar fate.
As McColl walked down, he noticed that the boat had drifted out into the river, still holding one of the canvas bags. For a single dreadful moment, he thought it might hit one of the piers and blow the bridge up anyway, but it just sailed through the gap and on toward the distant sea.
Colm was staring straight at him, calmer now, as if he’d come to some sort of decision.
“It’s over,” McColl told him, not that there was any doubt. Tiernan was dead, half his head blown away, and so was the young constable. Up above, he could hear the other three running across the bridge.
“I thought you were dead,” Colm said, almost plaintively.
McColl thought quickly and by the time his group was gathered had a passable plan worked out. “You get to the station,” he told the sergeant, “and let someone know that there’s a boat full of dynamite heading downriver.”
“Who?” the sergeant asked stupidly.
“Your superiors, the army, someone. Use your initiative. And hurry.”
The sergeant labored up the bank and hastened off along the tracks.
“Right,” McColl told the two soldiers. “One of you should go back across and tell the signalman that the emergency’s over. And then both of you can carry him”—he indicated Tiernan—“back to the station. You two can carry your colleague,” he told the pair of constables. “I’ll take charge of the prisoner.”
He hustled Colm up the bank and urged him into motion. The sergeant was at least two hundred yards ahead, the constables still fully engaged in heaving the dead boy up the bank. How was he going to explain it? McColl wondered. A lucky blow to
one of his wounds? Cumming would see through the charade, but he realized he didn’t care.
“Okay,” he told Colm. “This is your chance. Disappear.”
“What?”
“Go.”
“So you can shoot me in the back?”
“Why would I do that, when I can deliver you up to the hangman?”
“Then why?”
“Because your sister asked me to.”
Colm looked like he’d been slapped in the face. “When?” he demanded.
“This morning. Now go.”
Colm just stood there, staring at him.
Caitlin’s little brother, McColl thought. He felt pity and anger in equal measure. “They
will
hang you, you know.”
“ ‘Rise up, O dead of Ireland! / And rouse our living men,’ ” Colm quoted, in an almost singsong voice.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” McColl exploded. “You’re not even Irish!”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Colm just stood there, eyes brimming with hatred, limbs locked in obstinacy, like a five-year-old boy.
McColl sighed. If the boy chose martyrdom over freedom, there was nothing he could do.
The last he saw of Caitlin’s brother, he was being bundled into a guard’s compartment, on his way to the cells at Chichester. He was sharing the ride with Tiernan’s corpse, but not the body of the young policeman, which was still in the station office, waiting for transport to Arundel.
McColl took the train back to London, two hours of darkness in more ways than one. It was almost midnight when he reached Whitehall Court, but Cumming was still awake at his desk, both hands cradling a glass of port.
He already knew what had happened at Ford and gave McColl the rest of the evening’s story along with a glass of the ruby nectar. The bridges across the Wey at Godalming and the Itchen north of Eastleigh had both been saved, the latter without loss, the former at the cost of three lives. One of the saboteurs—the American named Brady from all accounts—had shot two constables dead before escaping into the night. His partner had been killed by police fire.
A bridge over the Test outside Romsey had been brought down and would probably take weeks to repair. “But if we had to lose one, that was the one to lose,” Cumming said. “And both men were caught an hour or so later.”
“But not Brady.” It wasn’t really a question.
“Not so far. Look, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but the quieter we keep this business, the better. The newspapers won’t be allowed to print anything, of course, but let’s try to keep the rumors to a minimum. Losing a bridge in Hampshire doesn’t reflect too well on the state of our defenses, and I have the feeling morale will be under enough strain as it is. And neither,” he added, almost as an aside, “do we want an anti-Irish witch-hunt, not when Irishmen are enlisting in droves.”
McColl shook his head, as much in wonder as in agreement.
“Another?” Cumming asked, offering the bottle.
“No, I think I’ll be off,” McColl decided. He got wearily to his feet, shook Cumming’s hand, and headed for the lift.
His automobile was still waiting, but on impulse he told the driver to call it a day and walked slowly down to the Thames. The Embankment was empty of traffic, a tug leading a line of barges along the center of the stream. Away to his right, Big Ben was silhouetted against the clear night sky.
Leaning his head and shoulders over the parapet to stare at the water below, he remembered the night in Dublin and how lucky he had been to survive.
And thanks to that good fortune, he had helped to … to what?
To save the empire? It remained in peril. The Germans might still win the war, and it would all have been for nothing. Or they might have lost it anyway, in which case the same applied. Or maybe, just maybe, saving three bridges would make all the difference in France.
There was no way to know, now or ever.
He turned away from the river and started for home. There were lights still burning on Whitehall and more policemen than usual loitering in the shadows of the gray-stone monoliths. Trafalgar Square was occupied by a small group of drunken soldiers, one gaily pissing off the back of a lion. They were probably leaving for France in the morning, across the bridges he had helped to preserve.
He walked on up Charing Cross Road, passing the theater where he and Evelyn had agreed to divorce between acts of
Major Barbara
. There was a phrenology booth outside—closed, of course, but plastered with diagrams of well-measured skulls and descriptions of what each configuration implied.
Closer to Cambridge Circus, a faint tinkling of ragtime piano suddenly grew louder as doors parted to expel two young revelers. The man was in tails and holding a red balloon, the woman wearing a shining silver dress; they stopped in mid-pavement to share a lingering kiss. As McColl swerved around them, they offered apologetic glances, as if well aware of how unbearably happy they seemed.
He strode on toward Tottenham Court Road, wanting to weep, wanting to scream. Whatever he’d done for his country and career, there was no disputing the cost. His gut and shoulder were aching, but not half as much as his heart. He had lost the woman he loved.