Ossian's Ride

“Whew! But how
...
?”

“About a year ago, one of our Intelligence people had a brain Storm, not a bad idea really. Instead of continuing to send our normal agents into Ireland, he got hold of a young chap from Cambridge, a clever fellow
—
science and mathematics and all that sort of stuff. Name of Thomas Sherwood, from a Devon farming family, good solid yeoman stock. I’ve had a very complete investigation of him carried out by Intelligence.”

From my school in Ashburton, Devon, I won a Major Scholarship in Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. I took my B.A. degree in June, 1969, specializing in my final Tripos in algebra, functional analysis and topology. This is relevant to what is to follow.

By the early summer of 1970 I was well started in research, on a problem in the theory of infinite groups. I was just turning over in my mind what I would like to do during the summer vacation when I received a curious letter from an address in Whitehall. The letter offered interesting employment for the months of July and August. The writer was wholly inexplicit, however, about the nature of the employment. No doubt I would have ignored this communication altogether had it not been for one slightly singular feature. I was informed that, if I were so minded as to accept the invitation, an appointment would be available at 1:15 P.M. sharp, on June 27. The signature was entirely illegible.

There were several things that I wanted to do in London, so I decided that nothing would be lost by finding out what manner of civil servant would fix an appointment during the lunch hour. Was a fat man on a slimming diet? So I wrote in return that I would present myself at the agreed time. I received a second letter describing the particular office I was to ask for, the signature being quite as illegible as before.

I was welcomed by a very nice-looking brunette. “Ah, Mr. Sherwood,” she said with a smile, “you are to come this way.”

We walked possibly three hundred yards along a multitude of corridors, and we climbed possibly two hundred feet up and down staircases before we reached a place that looked more like a private den than a public office. A very sunburned, rubbery, bald little man of perhaps sixty motioned me to a chair. His face was weather-beaten, his temples were creased by a multitude of wrinkles and his teeth were tightly clamped on a huge meerschaum.

He puffed away for perhaps a minute, staring hard at me the while. Then he broke into a chuckle.

“Well, well, Mr. Sherwood, so you fell for the old 1:15 trick after all!”

“I’m only too glad to hear that the trick wasn’t just a trivial oversight, Mr.—?”

“Parsonage, Percy Parsonage at your service.”

There was a knock and the brunette came in with a tray.

“Lunch for Mr. Sherwood,” she explained.

“That’s right, feed him,” nodded Parsonage. “I won’t eat myself—didn’t breakfast until eleven-thirty.”

I had just taken my first mouthful when he asked, “And how would you like to make a trip to Ireland?”

I swallowed carefully. “From all I hear of Ireland, a man might get himself killed a score of times a week—in your line of business, Mr. Parsonage!”

“And what would you know of my business?”

“Nothing at all. That’s why it would be foolish of me to agree to go to Ireland on your behalf.”

Papa Percy (as I soon learned he was called) picked up his great pipe and said, “I wouldn’t have put you down as the sort of young man to turn aside at a suggestion of danger.”

“That would depend on whether the danger were of my own making or not.”

Thoughtfully Parsonage moved to a wall on which a large map of Ireland was hung. Prodding it, he said, “Let me show you the cordon beyond which no ordinary visitor to Ireland may penetrate, beyond which even no Irishman may pass unless he has satisfied the most rigorous security check. See how it runs, from Tarbert in the north, to Athea, south to Kanturk, and beyond directly over the Boggeragh Mountains to Macroom and Dunmanway. See how it bends here to the sea in Dunmanus Bay.”

For a moment he puffed furiously on his monstrous pipe and then went on. “Within this tight wall incredible things are happening. The main activity seems to be confined in the central peninsula of Kerry immediately to the south of Caragh Lake—where Ossian is said to have once ridden over the western mountains to the Land of Youth.

“Now, Mr. Sherwood, I would like to send you on an absolutely individual mission. The last thing I want you to do is to get mixed up with the usual espionage work, ours or anyone else’s. Every nation on earth is directing ninety-five per cent of its undercover activity to Ireland. The place is simply crawling with agents. And the Irish themselves have naturally started an intense counterespionage drive.”

“I don’t see any niche in all this that seems specially designed for me,” I said between mouthfuls.

“I sincerely hope not. Ireland is a fantastic maelstrom of intelligently organized thuggery. If you’re unfortunate enough to get mixed up in it, you’ll be lucky to stay alive even for a couple of days.”

A chicken bone seemed to get stuck in my throat.

“Don’t get impatient,” said Papa Percy. “In my roundabout way I’m gradually coming to the point. Here, take a look at these.”

He took three documents from a small safe and flung them down on the table at my side. The first was concerned with a bacteriological topic; the second was a plan of something that looked superficially like a furnace. The third was mathematical in form, more in my line.

When I began reading it in detail, Parsonage roared, “Don’t bother. It’s arrant nonsense. Let me tell you something about this one.” He picked up the first document. “It was obtained in a most desperate operation. Two of my best men were killed. Yet it contains nothing but rubbish.” He strode about the room munching mightily on the meerschaum.

“You see all our ideas of intelligence work simply go by the board when we have to deal with this scientific stuff.” He flourished the papers. “Our men can’t tell whether this is genuine or not. All they can do is fight to get hold of it, and fight they do, often dying in the process.”

“So you want me to check things. I’m not really enough of a scientist you know.”

“I want much more than that! Suppose this junk were genuine. How much would it tell us? Just a little about what was going on in there.” He pointed to the wall map with his pipe.

“No, I want more than that, very much more. I’m going to give you a lecture. Don’t interrupt! How much do you know about I.C.E.? Only a little, I’ll warrant. None of us knows very much for that matter. I’ll tell you what
I
know.”

The little man made an odd sight as he marched around belching clouds of smoke, his hands behind his back.

“Pour me some coffee,” he bellowed. “I.C.E., the Industrial Corporation of Eire, came into being some twelve years ago. A small group of very able scientists approached the government of Eire with what seemed an entirely straightforward proposition. Their proposal was to establish an industry for the extraction of a range of chemicals from the organic material in peat—turf, as the Irish call it. Since their initial capital was rather small, it was requested that they be allowed to plow back all profit for a period of ten years, after which normal taxes would be paid, subject to a maximum payment of five million pounds in any one year. This seemed tolerably reasonable to the Irish government, and it was accordingly agreed to.