Echobeat Read Free Page B

our German friends.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘We’re going to see them on Thursday,’ he came to the bottom ofhis pile of papers without finding what he was looking for and began again from the top, more slowly. ‘Put together a report on all the suspected agents.’
    ‘All of them?’ Duggan asked, thinking of the work involved and the lack of time. He was due to take the train west to his parents’ home the following day, Christmas Eve, and return on the first train the day after the holiday. On the other hand, he could do most of it off the top of his head. He didn’t need to consult too many files.
    McClure thought for a moment. ‘No. Just the confirmed ones.’
    ‘With Hermann Goertz at the top?’
    ‘As usual,’ McClure sighed. Goertz was an experienced German spy and had evaded capture since the previous summer when he parachuted into Ireland. He’d been in contact with the IRA and other pro-German groups and individuals, but always seemed to be one step ahead of the Irish authorities.
    McClure found what he was looking for. He fished out a single sheet of paper from his pile and handed it across the desk to Duggan. There was a name and address handwritten along the top of the page – ‘Gertie Maher, Iona Road, Drumcondra’ – and ‘Adelaide Agency’, with an address in O’Connell Street, underneath.
    ‘She could be the one we’re looking for,’ McClure said, changing the subject again. ‘The person to work in Mrs Lynch’s place.’
    Mrs Lynch’s café on Liffey Street was popular with German airmen and sailors who had been washed up in Ireland one way or another and interned in the Curragh military camp. They were allowed out on parole on day releases and tended to congregate in the café when they visited Dublin.
    ‘Real name Gerda Meier,’ McClure continued. ‘Aged twenty. From Vienna. Jewish. Her father wisely got his family out in 1935, seeing the way the wind was blowing. Came to Cork and set up some kind of textile factory.’
    ‘She speaks English?’
    ‘With a Cork accent,’ McClure smiled. ‘It mightn’t fool Corkmen but I doubt if our German friends will be able to detect the discrepancy. She’s a shorthand typist or receptionist with that flat-renting agency in O’Connell Street and is willing to give up her Saturday afternoons to be a waitress in Mrs Lynch’s and let us know what she hears.’
    ‘And it’s been cleared with Mrs Lynch?’
    McClure nodded. ‘But she won’t pay her. And on condition that Gertie, Gerda, doesn’t frighten the customers by talking politics.’
    ‘So are we paying her?’
    ‘She doesn’t want money. She’s happy to strike a blow at Herr Hitler any way she can. Go and meet her and see what you think. Make it clear to her that we only want her to keep her ears open. Listen to whatever they’re chatting about. Not to engage in any chat with them. And, obviously, not to let them know she understands German.’
     
    He was already stuck in Henry Street the next morning when he realised his mistake: he shouldn’t have come this way on Christmas Eve. The street was crowded with shoppers who had taken over the roadway as well, reducing traffic to less than their own walking pace. He abandoned his attempt to cycle through them and walked with the bike up past the raucous shouts from Moore Street. He was almost at the side of the GPO when the crowds thinned enough and he threw his leg over the saddle and pedalled up to the Pillar and turned left.
    The Adelaide Agency was close to the Carlton cinema, a shiny metal plate beside a narrow doorway leading straight onto stairs. He went up to the first floor where a sign on a door identified the agencyand said to knock and enter. Inside there was a cramped reception area with two bentwood chairs and a small square table between them and a desk with a young woman behind it. She was talking on the phone, running through the details of flats to let in Rathgar.
    Gertie Maher, he thought, Gerda Meier. She had