Asa made a masterly landing on the calm surface several hundred yards from the shore, dropping his tail at the last moment. They skidded to a halt and rested there and then water started to come in. He got the cupola up and heaved the dinghy package out. It inflated at once.
‘How deep is it here?’ he asked Devlin.
‘Two hundred feet.’
‘That should take care of her then. Poor lovely bitch. Let’s get moving.’
He was into the dinghy in a moment followed by Steiner and Devlin. They paddled away and then paused to look back. The Lysander’s nose went under. For a moment there was only the tailplane showing with the Luftwaffe swastika and then that, too, disappeared below the surface.
‘That’s it I guess,’ Asa said.
They started to paddle towards the darkening shore. Steiner said, ‘What now, Mr Devlin?’
‘A long walk before us, but the whole night to do it in. My great-aunt Eileen O’Brien has an old farmhouse above Killala Bay. Nothing but friends there.’
‘And then what?’ Asa demanded.
‘God knows, my old son, we’ll have to see,’ Liam Devlin told him.
The dinghy drifted into a small beach. Devlin went first, knee deep, and pulled them in to shore.
‘Cead mile failte,’ he said, putting out a hand to Kurt Steiner.
‘And what’s that?’ the German demanded.
‘Irish.’ Liam Devlin smiled. The language of kings. It means a hundred thousand welcomes.’
Belfast 1975
Chapter SIXTEEN
IT was almost four in the morning. Devlin stood up and opened the sacristy door. The city was quiet now, but there was the acrid smell of smoke. It started to rain and he shivered and lit a cigarette.
‘Nothing quite like a bad night in Belfast.’
I said, ‘Tell me something. Did you ever have dealings with Dougal Munro again?’
‘Oh yes.’ He nodded. ‘Several times over the years. He liked his fishing, did old Dougal.’
As usual I found it difficult to take him seriously and tried again. ‘All right, what happened afterwards? How did Dougal Munro manage to keep it all under wraps?’
‘Well, you must remember that only Munro and Carter knew who Steiner really was. To poor old Lieutenant Benson, Sister Maria Palmer and Father Martin he was just a prisoner of war. A Luftwaffe officer.’
‘But Michael Ryan and his niece? The Shaws?’
‘The Luftwaffe started on London again at the beginning of that year. The Little Blitz, it was called and that was very convenient for British Intelligence.’
‘Why?’
‘Because people died in the bombing raids, people like Sir Maxwell Shaw and his sister, Lavinia, killed in London during a Luftwaffe raid in January nineteen forty-four. Look up The Times for that month. You’ll find an obituary.’
‘And Michael Ryan and Mary? Jack and Eric Carver?’
They didn’t rate The Times, but they ended up in the same place, a crematorium in North London. Five pounds of grey ash and no need for an autopsy. All listed as victims of the bombing.’
‘Nothing changes,’ I said. ‘And the others?’
‘Canaris didn’t last much longer. Fell out of favour later that year, then in July the attempt to kill Hitler failed. Canaris was arrested amongst others. They killed him in the last week of the war. Whether Rommel was involved or not has always been a matter of speculation, but the Fuhrer thought he was. Couldn’t bear to have the people’s hero revealed as a traitor to the Nazi cause so Rommel was allowed to commit suicide with the promise that his family would be spared.’
‘What bastards they all were,’ I said.
‘We all know what happened to the Fuhrer holed up in his bunker at the end. Himmler tried to make a run for it. Shaved off his moustache, even wore an eye patch. Didn’t do him any good. Took cyanide when they caught him.’
‘And Schellenberg?’
‘Now there was a man, old Walter. He fooled Himmler when he got back. Said we’d overpowered him. The wound helped, of course. He became head of the Combined Secret Services before the end of the war. Outlasted the lot of them. When it came to the war crimes trials, the only thing they could get him for was being a member of an illegal organization, the SS. All sorts of witnesses came forward to speak for him at the trial, Jews amongst them. He only served a couple of years in gaol and they let him out. He died in Italy in fifty-one – cancer.’