“Billy, I didn’t expect to see you tonight,” Diana said, standing to face me.
“That’s obvious,” I said. “Look, I know we didn’t part on the best of terms. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. And that you should do whatever you think is right, not that you need my two cents’ worth.”
“Billy, I—”
“Never mind, you don’t need to make excuses. I was a bum, I know it, and you deserve someone better. Now enjoy your dinner, sorry I interrupted.” I watched her eyes for some signal, some evidence in them of desire or longing. All I saw was blue.
“Diana, I thought you said he was terribly smart,” the Brit said, his long legs crossed and one hand idly resting on a knee.
“Listen, bub, you butt out or—captain or not—I’ll bust you wide open,” I said in a low growl. This was hard enough without some aristocratic twit chiming in.
“Champagne, monsieur and mademoiselle,” announced a waiter carrying an ice bucket. This was too much.
“Champagne, what the hell are you celebrating, Diana? Couldn’t you have waited until I was out of town? It’s not like we have any claim on each other, but—”
“Would you like a chair, sir?” the oblivious waiter asked as he set down the champagne on ice.
Diana stood, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me. Not a glad-to-see-you kiss and not a goodbye kiss. A real kiss, a hungry kiss, a kiss full of passion, a lingering, come-on-upstairs kind of kiss. She finally let me go and a table of French officers applauded.
“I think I’d like that chair now,” I said to the waiter.
“Billy,” Diana said, taking me by the arm, her eyes twinkling. “I think it’s time the two of you met. Lieutenant Billy Boyle, this is Captain Peter Seaton.” I watched both of them suppressing grins. Of course. Diana’s brother, Peter. She and Daphne had both spoken of him; he was serving with the British 8th Army, now fighting in Italy. We shook hands.
“Glad to meet you,” I said. “And sorry for the scene.”
A chair and a third glass appeared. We sat as the waiter poured. I watched Diana, transfixed by her beauty, her presence, her scent, the taste of her still on my lips.
“What are we drinking to?”
“My engagement,” Peter said. “To a wonderful American girl on the embassy staff in Cairo. We met at a party, one of those incredibly boring duty events. We both fell head over heels. Audrey’s from New York City, somewhere in Manhattan. She’s been to Harlem, all the jazz clubs, can you believe it?”
“Congratulations,” I said. We clinked glasses and drank.
“Well, I promised some chaps I’d meet them at the hotel bar. Now that Billy’s here, I’ll leave you in his care.”
“Oh, Peter,” Diana said. “You don’t have to go.”
I didn’t say a thing.
“Catch up with me at the bar. You two finish the champers and . . . well, whatever.”
We watched him leave, a bit nervous at being left alone. I took another drink.
“Listen,” I said. At the same time she started to speak.
“No, you go first,” we both said at the same time. That was good for a laugh.
“Let me get this out, Billy. Kay told me about how exhausted you looked, and your long trip back here. Peter is only here for two days, then he goes to Tunis as part of the conference with the president and the prime minister. So I thought it best to let you sleep and see you in the morning. Or maybe later tonight.” That was promising.
“I don’t blame you for wanting to spend time with your brother, and I’m sorry I made a fool of myself. But when I thought he was your date, I wanted you to know how I felt.”
It occurred to me that Kay had set me up, withholding that final bit of information about who Diana was with. She was one smart cookie.
“I liked hearing it,” Diana said, reaching for my hand.
“I had no right to stand in your way about the SOE,” I said, lowering my voice instinctively. “If it’s important to you, I’m all for it.”
“What changed, Billy?”
“In Ireland, I began to understand. Then this afternoon, General Eisenhower said something to me. He said he was a changed man, that no one could go through what he had and not be. It’s as simple as that. I’ve changed. I’ve discovered what’s important, and that it’s more than simply living. It’s how you live. A long life filled with regrets and guilt is worse than a short life without them.”
“I’ve missed you, Billy. Terribly. I’ve wanted nothing more than for you to be here. For us to be together. Not forever, if that’s not in the cards, but for now. For each other. I want to be happy with you, to drink champagne, introduce you to my brother, talk to you, and listen to you. To wander the Casbah. To see you come safely back to me.”
“It took Ireland to show me I was almost throwing all that away.”
“What happened there, Billy?” Diana grasped my hand in both of hers.
I leaned in and kissed her softly, her full lips tender against mine.
“I love you,” I whispered, and heard the echo as it settled into my mind, the sight of her by candlelight, the smells of the Casbah, the taste of champagne all mingling and forming a memory I knew I’d carry with me always.
“What happened?” she said again.
I took Pig out of my pocket, rubbed his belly, placed him in the palm of her hand, and started to tell the story.
THE HISTORY OF contacts between the Irish Republican Army and the German intelligence service go back to the First World War, when the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement attempted to recruit Irish prisoners of war from German camps to fight against the English. He did secure the promise of twenty thousand German rifles and ammunition for the planned Easter Rising in 1916. As with efforts that would follow, his plan fired the imagination but resulted in disaster, his capture, and execution.
During the late 1930s, German-Irish contacts began again, the IRA looking for aid and arms in their fight against the British and the Irish state. The IRA took advantage of England’s predicament in 1939 and let loose a bombing campaign in major cities, hitting utilities and transportation centers. The killing of a number of civilians later that year in Coventry led to widespread revulsion in Great Britain and Ireland, and the bombing campaign effectively ended after three hundred explosions and seven deaths with little impact on the war effort. The briefing on that situation given by Major Cosgrove and Subaltern O’Brien in Chapter Three is factual, including how funds were raised in America and channeled to the IRA.
The German Abwehr sent a number of agents into neutral Ireland during the war, initially impressed by the Christmas Raid described in this book. The successful theft of the Irish Army’s ammunition caused the Germans to think the IRA was larger and better organized than it actually was. The implications of most of the ammunition being quickly recovered escaped them, and their subsequent attempts to work with the IRA were comical. One agent, still partially dressed in a German uniform, stopped at a police station to ask directions to the nearest IRA unit. None spoke English without a marked German accent.
The IRA Northern Command did engage in actions against the English in Northern Ireland, mounting what was known as the Northern Campaign in 1942. Down to about fifty active members, this so-called campaign accomplished little, and dwindled down to nothing more than escape attempts by captured IRA men.
This novel imagines a more robust Northern Campaign, one ably aided by the Germans and supported by an arms theft similar to the Dublin Christmas Raid of 1939. All the pieces were in place for this to happen, all the players were on the stage that was Ireland during the Second World War. Northern Ireland was a great way station for American troops heading first for the invasion beaches of North Africa and later Normandy. If the IRA and the Germans had managed to work together and strike at the Anglo-American forces, who knows what the repercussions might have been?
The little wooden pig is not my invention but an actual good luck charm as described in Rick Atkinson’s
The Day of Battle: The War in
Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
. Brought ashore at Salerno, it represented to me the mystical attachment to good luck charms that soldiers have always had, their faith invested in all sorts of strange objects.
An Irish-American like Billy, I began working on this story with much the same attitude he began with. The IRA, certainly in its early stages, seemed to me heroic in its fight against British dominion over Ireland. In conducting research for this book, I learned of the distinction between famine and blight, and of the oppressive laws used to keep the population of Ireland in subjection. But I also learned of the bitter infighting among the Irish rebels, how they would turn on each other, causing more of the same agonies as were visited upon the island by the English. The story of the lone policeman at Dublin Castle on the day of the Easter Rising is, sadly, true. Sad for him, for the loss of that great prize, and for the heedless sacrifice of life and opportunity.
The story of Michael Sullivan, Sláine O’Brien’s hero of the American Civil War, is taken from
The Irish Brigade
by Paul Jones. There were Irish on both sides of that conflict, and on several occasions they did fight each other. Michael Sullivan found himself in a complex web of competing and contradictory loyalties, much as Billy Boyle does in this story. How he stayed true to his cause and countrymen proves once again that if truth is not stranger than fiction, it is at least more revealing of the depth of courage in human nature.