Ratlines Page 6

  Haughey stood between them, seemed smaller than he had a few minutes ago, the hawk gone from his eyes.

  “Colonel, this is Lieutenant Albert Ryan, G2, Directorate of Intelligence.”

  Skorzeny stepped forward, extended a hand so large it swallowed Ryan’s whole. Ryan imagined the hard fingers could have crushed his own had the Austrian felt so inclined.

  “Lieutenant,” Skorzeny said, the accent sharp and angular, releasing his grip. “The minister tells me you’re the best he has. Is this so?”

  Ryan’s hand tingled deep between the bones. “I don’t think I can answer that, sir.”

  “No? Who knows you better than yourself?”

  While Ryan searched for a reply, Skorzeny filled two glasses with rich brown liquid from a decanter. He gave one to Haughey, sipped from the other, offered nothing to Ryan.

  “Please sit,” he said.

  Haughey took the other armchair, leaving Ryan the couch.

  “The minister tells me you fought for the British during the war.”

  Ryan cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.”

  “Why so?”

  “I wanted out of my home town,” Ryan said, opting for honesty. He sensed a lie would not be entertained. “I knew it was the only way I’d ever get out of Ireland. I didn’t want the life my father had. So I crossed the border into the North and joined up.”

  “Which regiment?”

  “The Royal Ulster Rifles.”

  “So you were part of Operation Mallard?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Skorzeny took a cigarette case from his pocket, white enamel with the Reichsadler, the Nazi eagle perched atop an oak-wreathed swastika, embossed in gold. He opened the case, extended it to Haughey. The minister declined. Skorzeny lit a cigarette for himself. Smoke plumed from his lips and nostrils as he sat down.

  “And Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein?” he asked.

  Haughey looked from one man to the other. “And what?”

  “Operation Watch on the Rhein,” Ryan said. “The Allies called it the Battle of the Bulge. I was involved to a lesser extent.”

  “And after the war?”

  “When I came home, I attended Trinity College, studying English.”

  Skorzeny smiled. “Ah, Trinity. So you fenced?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will come to my home so we can duel.”

  “Sir?”

  “To Martinstown House. I have fenced since my youth. I earned my Schmiss in a university match.” He indicated the scar, his eyes cold and glittery like marbles. “But I haven’t found a reasonable opponent in this country. Perhaps that is you. So tell me, how did you apply this education you received?”

  “I didn’t. I re-enlisted in the Ulster Rifles and served in Korea as part of the 29th Independent Infantry Brigade. I was selected for special training there.”

  “What was this training?”

  “Commando tactics,” Ryan said. “Your tactics.”

  Skorzeny gave a slight nod in thanks for the acknowledgement.

  “Under control of 3 Commando Brigade, I led small units in raids on enemy positions. We slept in the trenches during daylight and worked at night.”

  Skorzeny drew long and deep on his cigarette. “How many men did you kill?”

  Ryan returned the Austrian’s stare. “I don’t know,” he said. “How many did you kill?”

  Skorzeny smiled and stood. “We are soldiers. Only murderers keep count.”

  He lifted the decanter and poured a third glass, crossed the room, and placed the drink in Ryan’s hand.

  “So what do you know of these scoundrels who use dead men for messengers?”

  Ryan took a shallow sip of brandy, smoother on his tongue and in his throat than the drink he’d ordered at the bar. “Very little, sir.”

  Skorzeny retook his seat, crossed his long legs. “Well, a little is more than nothing. Go on.”

  “They are efficient, careful, skilled. They left no traces at the guesthouse in Salthill. I wasn’t able to visit the scenes of the previous killings, but I can only assume they were as clean.”

  Haughey spoke up. “I’ve seen the Garda reports. They found nothing useful.” He turned to Ryan. “What about the Jewish angle?”

  “There’s nothing to suggest involvement by any group from the Jewish community.”

  Haughey sat forward. “Nothing to suggest it? For Christ’s sake, man, there’s everything to suggest it.”

  “There are no known organised Jewish groups within Ireland,” Ryan said. “We have only a very small Jewish population. It’s extremely unlikely that such a group exists. Even if it did, it’s less likely that it would have the capability of carrying out such actions.”

  “Lieutenant Ryan is correct,” Skorzeny said. “These killings were done by professionals. Trained men.”

  “The Israelis, then,” Haughey said. “The Mossad. Or that Wiesenthal fella, the one who got your friend Eichmann executed last year.”

  Skorzeny looked hard at Haughey for a moment, then turned his eyes to Ryan. “Speculation aside, you are no closer to finding these men than you were forty-eight hours ago.”

  Ryan said, “No, sir.”

  “Then what do you suggest we do next? Simply wait for them to kill again? Or come for me?”

  “I suggest interviewing everyone who was present at the funeral in Galway. The notes said only the priest who gave the mass was spoken to by the Guards. He said he knew none of the people who attended, didn’t speak to any of them, apart from one local man who made the arrangements. And that man has yet to be located.”

  “You mean to interrogate the priest?”

  “No,” Ryan said. “I suspect that you know at least some of the people who attended the funeral. You and Johan Hambro must have had mutual acquaintances. Tell me where I can find them, and I will interview them.”

  Skorzeny shook his head. “Out of the question. My friends value their privacy. Even if I could tell you where to find these people, I cannot compel them to talk with you. They would simply refuse.”

  “They may have seen something, someone, that could help us,” Ryan said. “It’s the only route I can see.”

  “Then you will find another.”

  Ryan stood, placed the glass on the coffee table.

  “There is no other,” he said. “I’ll study the case notes, review my findings, and write up a report. Without your cooperation, that’s all I can do. Good evening.”

  Ryan left the suite, closed the door behind him, walked to the stairs. He was halfway down the first flight when Haughey called to him from above.

  “Wait there, big fella.”

  Ryan stopped, turned.

  Haughey descended the steps, thunder on his face.

  “Just who in the name of Christ do you think you are? You don’t talk to a man like Otto Skorzeny like that. Are you trying to make a cunt of me or what?”

  “No, minister.”

  Haughey came nose-to-nose with Ryan despite standing a step higher. “Then what are you trying to do?”

  “The job you assigned me, Minister. For that I need cooperation. Without it, you’ll get my report and that’s all.”

  “I put you in that nice suit, big fella. Now you repay me with back talk. The fucking cheek of you.”

  Ryan turned his back on the minister, left him huffing in the stairwell.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  OTTO SKORZENY CHECKED his wristwatch. Late enough, so he poured another glass of brandy.

  He found this Irishman Ryan interesting. A soldier who’d spent the majority of his career fighting for another nation, a nation most of his countrymen considered their enemy.

  Skorzeny sympathised with the G2 officer’s position. All his life he had felt a lack of nationhood. As a younger man, and an Austrian, he had sided with the Germans, supported their annexation of his own land. After the war, he had drifted from country to country, Spain to Argentina and back again, then here, to this rainy island.

&n
bsp; A nationalist without a nation.

  The idea struck Skorzeny as oddly romantic. It was true that many nationalist revolutionaries were not natives of the lands they fought for. Like the Egyptian militant, Yasser Arafat, who stoked the Palestinian flames, urging war against the Zionists. Or Ernesto Guevara, the Argentinean who helped steer the Cuban revolution. Or, indeed, Eamon de Valera, that most ardent Irish nationalist and republican who was in fact only half Irish by parentage, and had barely escaped being executed alongside his comrades of the 1916 uprising by virtue of being born in, and therefore a citizen of, the United States of America.

  Truth be told, Skorzeny would have preferred to be back in Madrid, enjoying his friend Francisco Franco’s hospitality. These killings might not have been quite so troubling had he been able simply to board a flight to Spain. But an Italian had brought an end to that. At least for the time being.

  It had been three months ago, a warm Tarragona evening, on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. Franco had invited a score of his closest friends to spend the weekend with him, enjoying the sea air of the Catalan coast, perhaps to take a walking tour of the city’s Roman ruins. Skorzeny had flown from Dublin to Paris, then on to Barcelona, before travelling south by train to join Franco at his hotel perched at the end of the Rambla Nova.

  A piano chimed inside the crowded hotel suite, mingling with the sound of the surf washing up on the rocks below, as Skorzeny enjoyed a white wine spritzer and a cigarette on the balcony.

  “Colonel Skorzeny,” a voice said.

  Skorzeny turned from the sea view, fading as the sun set, to see a well dressed man, blond-haired. For a moment, Skorzeny assumed him to be a former Kamerad, given his Aryan appearance, but somehow the accent didn’t fit.

  “Guten Abend,” Skorzeny said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  The man smiled, confessed in accented Spanish that his German was poor. Skorzeny switched tongues, he had always been talented in this regard, and repeated his greeting in Spanish.

  “We met once, briefly, almost twenty years ago.” The man extended his hand, his slender fingers cool in Skorzeny’s grasp. “My name is Luca Impelliteri. When we met, I was a sergeant in the carabinieri.”

  Skorzeny released his hand. “You’re Italian? I would have taken you for German.”

  “My parents were from Genoa.”

  “Ah. Northern Italians are of better blood than many of that country. The Sicilians, I believe, are the lowest. Am I correct?”

  Impelliteri gave a hard smile. “I judge a man’s worth by his actions, not by his birth.”

  “How noble,” Skorzeny said. “And how do you come to be in Spain?”

  “I am adviser to the head of the Generalissimo’s personal security team. Tonight, the Generalissimo has graciously allowed me to join his guests for a drink.”

  “He must be impressed with you,” Skorzeny said, allowing the slightest note of condescension to enter his voice.

  The Italian nodded in a gesture of humility that Skorzeny knew to be as insincere as his own compliment. He regarded the faintness of the lines around Impelliteri’s eyes, at the corners of his mouth.

  “You must have been a rather young officer when we met.”

  “Twenty one,” Impelliteri said. “That was in September, 1943.”

  Skorzeny took another look at the face, searched his memory. “Oh?”

  “To be precise, the twelfth of September.”

  Skorzeny lifted his glass from the ledge, took a sip of wine spritzer, waited.

  “On Gran Sasso,” the Italian said. “At Hotel Campo Imperatore.”

  “You were one of Mussolini’s guards?”

  “In truth, I had never set eyes on Il Duce until you brought him out from the hotel, cowering in that ridiculous coat and hat he wore.”

  “Did you surrender along with your fellow carabinieri?”

  “Of course.” Impelliteri smiled. “Why would I lay down my life to keep a man like Mussolini from the Germans? You were welcome to him.”

  Skorzeny returned the smile, raised his glass. “A wise choice for a young man. I would have crushed any resistance.”

  Impelliteri’s smile broadened. “Would you? From where I stood, the only thing in danger of being crushed was the poor officer whose back you stood on to climb that wall.”

  Skorzeny felt the smile freeze on his lips.

  “But you did very well out of it all, didn’t you?” Impelliteri continued. “They turned you into a hero, the propaganda men. What did they call you? Yes, that’s it: Commando Extraordinaire, the daring SS officer who almost single-handedly saved their ally Mussolini from his own traitorous people before they could hand him over to the Americans. It was quite a story they made out of the rescue. I saw that little film they made about it. It did make me laugh.”

  Skorzeny returned his glass to the ledge. “There was no story, only historical record. Do you call me a liar?”

  “A liar?” Impelliteri shook his head. “No. Self-aggrandising, yes. An opportunist, yes. A fraud?”

  He left the final question hanging in the warm Spanish air for a moment.

  “You know, the Generalissimo, he holds you in the highest regard. He believes every word of your mythology. That’s why he welcomes you to his kingdom. It would be a shame if he ever found out the truth of it all.”

  Impotent anger churned in Skorzeny’s belly. Had there not been a suite full of Franco’s guests just feet away, he would have grabbed the Italian by his throat and thrown him over the balcony ledge onto the rocks below. Instead, he held his silence as Impelliteri bade him goodnight and rejoined the party.

  In a matter of days, Skorzeny wished he had felt no such reservations and killed the Italian then and there.

  Now, he was marooned in Ireland, waiting in a hotel suite for that damned politician to return.

  Eventually, a knock on the door, and Haughey entered, breathless and red-faced.

  “Colonel,” he said, “I must apologise for Lieutenant Ryan’s behaviour.”

  He topped up Haughey’s glass. “Not at all, Minister.”

  “If you want me to kick him off the job, get someone else, I’ll understand.”

  Skorzeny handed the glass to the politician. “No, Minister. I like this Lieutenant Ryan. He has balls. Let’s see what he can do.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  RYAN STRODE ACROSS the foyer, heading for the exit. Music boomed and moaned from the function room. He paused, listened. Autumn Leaves, he thought, picturing the woman, her deep red hair, her slender freckled wrist, her pale skin.

  She’d said her name was Celia.

  Go or remain?

  He stood locked in quandary until he remembered the cold empty room back at Buswells Hotel, and the warmth of her breath on his ear. Ryan followed the tide of music back to the function room. He lingered in the doorway, seeking her among the swells of dance and laughter.

  There, taller than almost everyone, near the archway that led to the bar, listening with a polite expression as a pudgy man shouted above the music. Ryan kept her in his sight as he crossed the room. She saw him approach, held his gaze as he drew near, ignored the man who bellowed at her.

  “I saved your drink for you,” she said, lifting the glass from the table beside her.

  The man ceased shouting, went to admonish Ryan for the interruption, then thought better of it. The music swallowed up his curses as he walked away, head down.

  “Thank you,” Ryan said, taking the glass from her, his skin tingling where her fingers brushed his. He pulled a chair out from the table and she sat down. He joined her.

  “How was the Minister for Justice?” she asked.

  “Loud,” Ryan said. “Coarse. Angry.”

  She smiled. “Sounds like our Charlie. He’ll be Taoiseach one day, wait and see. Charles J. Haughey will lead this country. To what, I don’t know, but he’ll lead it. Some think he’s a great man.”

  “And what do you think?”

  As Ryan ask
ed the question, Haughey entered the function room alongside Otto Skorzeny. All eyes turned in their direction. Haughey basked in it while Skorzeny remained impassive. Young men raced to the bar to fetch drinks for them.

  Celia stared at the politician. “I think he’s a monster. He wouldn’t be the first to lead a nation. What did he whisk you away for? What devilish plans were you and he cooking up with the infamous Otto Skorzeny?”

  “No plans,” Ryan said. “Nothing I can discuss.”

  “I see,” she said. “How intriguing.”

  Haughey and Skorzeny advanced through the room, shaking hands, slapping backs. The minister noticed Ryan, his comradely smile freezing on his lips.

  Ryan did not look away until Celia tugged at his arm.

  “Dance with me,” she said.

  Dread and panic sucked the blood from his cheeks. “No, I don’t, I can’t, I mean I’m not a very good …”

  Her fingertips skimmed his jowls. “Such a saggy face,” she said, her smile crooked. “Come on. I’ll drag you up if I have to.”

  “Really, I’d embarrass us both.”

  “Nonsense. Don’t make me beg.”

  Celia grabbed Ryan’s hand and hauled. He got to his feet, allowed her to lead him to the dance floor. The band played a mid-tempo tune he did not recognise. She took his left hand in her right, raised it up, brought her body close to his. Her left hand climbed his shoulder, his right found the small of her back. He pressed his palm into the hollow there, felt the suggestion of her shape, the firm and the soft of her.

  They danced.

  She lent him her grace, her balance, allowed his clumsy feet to follow hers across the floor. The air between them seemed charged, like dark summer clouds, ready to flash and spark. He felt the pressure of her breasts against his torso, did not pull away. She turned within his arms, her hip grazing him. Blood flowed and warmed that part of him. He felt a heaviness there, weight and heat. She felt it also, he knew, they both did. Her lips parted, shining red and pink.

  Ryan opened his mouth to speak, but her expression shifted as she watched something over his shoulder. He turned his head to see what had taken her from him.