Secret Asset

8

The water in the Old Harbour of Rotterdam was sea green, and slopped against the sides of the canal boats and small tugs moored at one end. It was twilight in mid-May, the air was mild, and the light rain felt soft on her face. Liz looked out across the small body of water, relic of the age when it had been the city’s main port. Levelled by bombing in the War, Rotterdam was almost entirely modern; its inhabitants had decided not to reconstruct the city as it had been before 1939 but instead to start from scratch. The results were architecturally renowned but bleak to look at; this genuinely old sector of the city was a small sanctuary from the relentlessly new.

The café across the harbour was on the ground floor of an old building of dark brick, and lit inside by wall lamps which cast a rich orange glow; at the tables on the veranda candles in bowls provided the sole illumination. Although she had only mug shots from which to identify him, Liz was confident he was not among the café’s few customers. But as the dark now moved in as if by stealth, she suddenly saw him. A tall figure, lean to the point of gauntness, walking slowly along the far edge of the harbour towards the café. He wore khaki trousers and a long raincoat that hung loosely from its padded shoulders, and he carried a newspaper rolled up under one arm.

Liz gave him five minutes to settle, then moved quickly around the perimeter of the harbour, and into the café. She spotted him at a corner table and, as the man looked up and nodded, Liz sat down across from him, putting her own coat on an empty chair. She said, “Hello, Mr. Maguire. I’m Jane Falconer.”

The man called Maguire didn’t say hello, only remarking curtly, “I hope you were careful coming here.”

She had certainly been careful. Liz had flown to Amsterdam rather than direct to Rotterdam’s small airport, then pursued a standard tourist agenda—a taxi straight to the Rijksmuseum, a tour of the Anne Frank house, and lunch outdoors at a canal-side bistro near Dam Square. Then a train to Rotterdam and—Liz had been particularly careful at that point—an unaccompanied walk to the Old Harbour. She sighed inwardly at the time-consuming nature of it all.

Liz felt at some disadvantage, with her limited experience of the Province. Maguire was used to dealing with old Northern Ireland hands—like Ricky Perrins and Michael Binding. All men and all veterans of the insular yet vastly complicated world of that conflict. Liz couldn’t even pretend to follow all its ins and outs.

But then I don’t have to, she told herself, deciding she could use her comparative ignorance to advantage. She was not operating in the traditional framework of the place, because all had changed. She was going to have to appeal to Maguire on personal grounds. The question was whether he could respond to that, or whether he would regard his involvement as over, now that peace of a kind held in Northern Ireland.

“I was careful,” she assured him.

He looked unappeased. “I thought I’d made it clear I told everything I know to your colleague Rob Petch,” he said, using Ricky Perrins’s working alias.

“I’m sure you did,” said Liz, “but Rob’s dead.” You know that, thought Liz. She had told him when she’d rung him, trying to arrange this meeting.

“I’m sure he reported what I’d said,” said Maguire, giving no ground.

Liz nodded in acknowledgement of this, but then said firmly, “I wanted to hear the story from you direct. Just in case Rob left something out that could help.”

“Help with what? I told him, Keaney’s secret asset, whoever they were, was never activated. I really don’t see what you want from me.” His voice was starting to rise. Liz looked anxiously around for a waiter, and one came over—a tall, moustachioed man in a white apron.

“Kaffe?” asked Liz, trying to recall her ten words of Dutch.

The waiter looked down at her with ill-disguised amusement. “White or black, madam?” he said in flawless English. They might have been at the Savoy.

“White please,” she said with a smile. She had forgotten the essential bilingualism of the Dutch. They listened to the Today programme and watched the ITN news, and read more English-language novels than all the inhabitants of London. One of Liz’s friends from university had lived for six months in Amsterdam and never felt the need to learn a word of Dutch, such was the natives’ aptitude for English.

Maguire still looked angry. Liz decided to use the waiter’s intervention to change the subject. “Is Rotterdam a favourite place of yours?”

Maguire shrugged to show his indifference, but then grudgingly started to talk. “It’s where I would have wanted to relocate if I ever got blown. Though Rob always said it would have to be further away. Assuming they didn’t catch me first, of course.” He looked at Liz; they both knew what he meant. In the pre-peace years, without exception every informer the IRA had unearthed and managed to get hold of had been murdered.

“Why Holland?” asked Liz, keen to keep the man talking.

“I look a bit Dutch, I suppose,” he said. “I feel I blend in here.” Viewing his features—ruddy cheeks, the thinning sandy hair, blue eyes—Liz saw the truth in this. Maguire could pass for a senior lecturer at the local university. All he needed was a pipe.

“Is that why you wanted to meet here?”

“Only partly.” He stared out at the harbour with a hard look in his eyes. “I hope they wouldn’t kill me now, if they knew we were talking—or knew that for years I talked to your colleagues. But it seemed safer on the whole to meet outside Ireland.”

Liz wanted to keep him away from talk of danger. She needed to engage his curiosity instead of his fear. Make him think, Liz thought, get him interested. “Tell me,” she said, “what do you think happened to the person Keaney recruited?”

“What you mean is, do I think they’re still there?” said Maguire almost contemptuously.

“Among other things, I suppose,” Liz said with a diffidence she didn’t feel. Don’t let him take over the interview, she told herself. “Assuming Keaney’s story is true.”

“Why does it matter?” asked Maguire irritably. “There couldn’t have been any damage done, could there? If there really was a mole in place, it’s pretty hard to see what good it did Keaney and his pals.”

He stopped when he noticed that Liz was shaking her head. He looked at her, curiosity subduing contempt, and Liz said sharply, “You’re missing the point.” There was no reason to try to appease this man, she decided. “Keaney probably never expected his plant to help the IRA directly—after all, he couldn’t be sure they’d ever do work on Northern Ireland, could he?

“It was subtler than that. Keaney probably found an entry-level person. Someone flagged as a high-flier, with the potential to rise within the organisation. An Oxford graduate, presumably, who might in the course of time be able to do a lot of damage. I don’t suppose the aim was to help the IRA directly; the objective was to screw up the Brits in some way or another.”

Maguire looked intrigued by this, but equally clearly wasn’t going to say so. Instead he argued, “I can’t believe Ireland is top of the agenda these days. The war is over. So what does it matter. I’d have thought it was imams you were after, not Irish.”

Liz shrugged. “That’s the worry of course. That it all gets ignored in a post-9/11 age. Then it starts up again. It’s done that often enough before.”

“You think this mole might be active? Even today?” Maguire sounded interested now despite himself.

It was Liz’s turn to shrug. “There’s no reason to think a person like that would want a cease-fire, is there?”

The waiter brought Liz’s coffee over, and as they waited for him to go, Maguire seemed to check himself. “I don’t believe it,” he declared. The look he gave Liz was unfriendly. “And, in any case, it’s your problem. I’ve passed on Keaney’s message as he asked. And that’s it, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t care what you do with it.”

Liz said quietly, “I was hoping you might be able to help,” then concentrated on stirring her coffee, which was hot despite the layer of rich cream at the top of the cup.

“What could I possibly do?” demanded Maguire indignantly. “Even if I wanted to.”

“Help us find out who Keaney recruited.”

“What makes you think I can do that?”

“Maybe you can’t,” Liz admitted. “But you’re better placed than we are to find out. You say Keaney said the mole was recruited at Oxford. There must have been some link between Keaney and the University, but it’s not exactly an obvious one to us.”

“Keaney hated my guts.”

“Yes, but you knew him. We couldn’t get close. At least you can try.”

“Why don’t you use another of your touts?” he added caustically, “I’m sure you’ve got plenty to choose from. Use someone Keaney trusted.”

“We couldn’t do that without telling the person about the mole. Too big a risk. You must see that.”

Maguire ignored her. Suddenly he demanded, “What’s in it for me?”

She didn’t even bother to reply. He had never asked for money, and she didn’t think he wanted to be paid now. It was just a way of deflecting her request.

Maguire went on. “What would I be helping, can you tell me that? The situation’s changed completely. Whoever this person was, there’s nothing they could do to hurt you—or help the IRA. The world’s moved on. The war’s over. So why do you need me? Other than to help you close the file?”

Liz took a deep breath. Instinct told her that her only chance of winning Maguire’s support was to level with him.

“You know as well as I do, Mr. Maguire,” she said, “the war’s not over. It’s just reached a different stage. I don’t need to give you a lecture on the history of the IRA. Or on the nature of treachery,” she added. She saw Maguire flinch. “Everyone has their reasons, and treachery is nearly always also loyalty. But what matters is the nature of the cause we’re loyal to. That’s why we need to find this person. Their cause, whatever it is now, is not ours. Nor yours either, Mr. Maguire. This is unfinished business. And I’m not talking about the file.”

Again the shrug, superficially uninterested, but this time Liz could see Maguire was thinking. Finally he spoke, and for the first time there was pathos instead of anger in his voice. “But don’t you see, I’m finished business? I just want to be left alone.”

And before Liz could reply, he stood up. Without saying a word, he threw some euros on the table and walked away. Liz took another sip of her coffee; it was cooler now. She looked with near despair at the money Maguire had left on the table. And to think she had believed she was getting somewhere.