Echobeat Read Online Free Page A

and it is really urgent ask for him.’ He leaned down and added Commandant McClure’s name under the number.
    ‘You can’t come here every time.’ She took the sheet of paper and folded it over and over until it was as small as she could make it.
    ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Just this Monday. Then we’ll make another arrangement.’
    ‘Okay,’ she stood up and held out her hand. She was about five feet ten, a couple of inches shorter than him. ‘I will see you then.’
    ‘And thank you very much for doing this,’ he repeated as he shook her hand. ‘We really appreciate your help.’
    As he went down the stairs, Duggan felt slightly uneasy. She insisted she was Gertie Maher, not Gerda Meier, but she seemed keen to speak German. Would she do what they wanted? Or did she just want an opportunity to hurl abuse at some Germans?

Two
    ‘Good Christmas?’ Commandant McClure asked as Duggan drove along the northern quays. It was getting dark and the streets were empty, in the last hours of their holiday torpor before public social life began again.
    ‘The usual,’ Duggan passed a couple of cyclists. ‘At my uncle’s for Christmas Day.’
    ‘How is he?’
    Duggan glanced at him, unsure whether that was just a polite inquiry or something more. His uncle was Timmy Monaghan, a Fianna Fáil backbench TD , with whom he now had an uneasy relationship since Duggan had managed to assert his independence earlier in the year. A constant manipulator, Timmy had been responsible for Duggan’s move to G2 from an infantry battalion and had since tried to use him in various ways.
    ‘Still his old self,’ Duggan sighed. He hadn’t wanted to meet him after their previous disagreements but Duggan’s mother had insisted on the annual ritual of going to Timmy’s country house for Christmas dinner. Timmy had carried on as if nothing had happened between them, his usual bluff self. For which Duggan was grateful in one way: it removed the apprehension with which he had gone home for Christmas. ‘How was it for you?’
    ‘Exhausting,’ McClure said. ‘Children up in the middle of the night with Santa Claus. Got back to sleep again after a couple of hours but this double summer time makes you feel like you’ve been up for three days with only one night’s sleep.’
    Duggan laughed, not sure what he meant, and turned into Merrion Square at the traffic light on Clare Street. He drove by the National Gallery and Leinster Lawn and let the car coast across the street to the kerb outside Government Buildings. All the offices along the street were shut, their windows dark.
    ‘Unusual time for a meeting, isn’t it?’ Duggan offered, looking for a sign of life in the building. There was none.
    ‘Unusual times, full stop,’ McClure replied as he went up the steps and pressed a large round bell. They waited in silence, McClure tapping the file with Duggan’s report on the known German agents against his thigh. The street was deserted, the cowled street lights at the corners throwing down pools of feeble light. The cold air smelled of turf smoke tinged with a noxious edge of coke from the gasworks down by the river when the cold northern breeze shifted a few degrees.
    The door swung open and a young uniformed garda looked at them.
    ‘Commandant McClure and Captain Duggan for an appointment with the Secretary of External Affairs,’ McClure flashed an identity card at him while Duggan held out his.
    The garda nodded and let them into the small lobby. ‘Hang on a second till the porter comes back and he’ll bring you up.’
    The porter took them along a spacious corridor with little lighting, mimicking the partial blackout in the streets, and up a stairs and down another dimly lit corridor and knocked on a door. There was a sound from within and he opened it and stood back to let McClure and Duggan enter.
    It was a perfunctory office, an upright hat stand with a dark hat and heavy coat on it inside the door, and a couple of chairs in front