Free Blackest of Lies by Bill Aitken Page A

fast enough to put some distance between himself and the last mortal remains of young Riordan, lying in the toilet with a crushed windpipe.  Sweets from a baby.  They’d find him soon, of course, but he was unidentifiable – Gallagher had been careful.  There would be nothing to trace him back to the IRB.   ‘Just another senseless murder.’  As for the Mauser, it was wiped clean and lying at the bottom of the Irish Sea.  He smiled to himself.  Whoever was trying to fit him up for the Kitchener operation would be spitting blood when he found out.  No witness and, now, no evidence.  He turned up his collar against the chill, damp wind and headed off for the railway station. 
    He was back.
    **********
    Beitzen looked at Stolz as though he was out of his mind.  Stolz was a good man and a steady hand in a crisis.  If he thought the steamer was on top of them, then it probably was.  He called down to the engine room.
    “Both engines half speed ahead!”
    The boat moved forward in a jerking movement and then came to an abrupt halt.
    “Both engines half speed astern!”
    Again, it moved a short distance and was brought up short by some unseen obstruction.  Beitzen smiled down at Stolz. “Looks like it, Karl,” he said, “but let's not put the wind up everyone just yet.”  He winked to reassure the younger man and called down once more, this time to the control station, “Chief Engineer to the tower!”
    Without haste or apparent concern, Chief Petty Officer Roman Bader made his ponderous way up from a lair deep inside the U-boat.  Countless years of experience, coupled with a propensity for suspecting the worst in everything had already led him to guess the problem.
    **********
    “This is beyond belief.  Surely not, Chris,” said Farmer, almost in supplication. “Surely not.  The Irish are with us at the Front.  They’re dying alongside our own lads.  I have several, even, in this hospital right now with appalling wounds.  Their kind couldn’t be responsible for killing off a man like Kitchener.  I can’t believe it!”
    “Well, I’m not sure myself but it’s the perceived wisdom right now and the assumption we’re working on.”
    “What will we do now?”
    Hubert saw his opening.  “Funnily enough, that’s just what I’m here to sort out.”
    “Anything.  How can we help?”
    “We want you to impersonate Kitchener.”
    Farmer stared at him, as though he thought Hubert was mad.  “You,” he said, choosing his words with care, “have gone completely bonkers!”  He stood up and leaned against the fireplace.  “That’s a technical term we doctors have for total lunatics.  How on earth do you expect me to convince anyone that I’m the Secretary of State for War, boy?”
    “Keep your voice down Henry and have a coffee.  As for convincing anyone you can be Kitchener – I’ve seen you do it.”
    Farmer looked at him in puzzlement.  As the memories trudged their weary way across his face, Hubert stepped in.  “That’s right, the revues.”
    Farmer threw his hands in the air and then clasped them behind his head.  “Are you seriously telling me that that’s where you got this reprehensible idea?  Good God, man, it was just a lark.  I only did it for a few minutes and it was bloody awful.  Even the patients said so.  When I tried it in the second performance, I was booed on!   There’s no way I could do something monumental like this.”  He sat down again, breathing heavily.
    “Are you quite finished?  Fine.  Don’t get your shirt tails in a flap.  I’m going put it all into perspective.  Firstly, it’s not just me involved in this idea.  It goes right to the top.  To the top, do you follow me?”  Farmer nodded.  “Now, I know that you have only ever ‘performed’, if that’s the right word, for a few minutes at a time and we would want a good deal longer than that but it wouldn’t be forever .  The problem is that we expect the IRB, or one of