MI6s team of enhanced individuals have been sent on an urgent, undercover mission to the west coast of Ireland. They are tasked with neutralising a traitor and his German contact, and recovering the stolen information. The team consists of Mademoiselle Mimi Dubois, La Résistance fighter and mistress of skills; Miss Madeline Forsyth, SOE operative and a living shadow; Sven Hyse, Norwegian Resistance soldier and shapeshifter; and Doctor Jackal, timid physician with his less than timid friend Mister Hades.

Part One:
When I remember our time in Ireland it always brings a smile to my face. We searched the village of Clifden thoroughly and we couldn’t find the hidden radio set that we assumed would be used by the German agent, the answer to our frustration was very surprising when we eventually discovered it.

Clifden, County Galway, Ireland, October 1942
Madeline slips her shadowy form through a small crack in the frame of the window on the first floor of the guest house. She finds herself in and empty, but clearly occupied room. Carrying out a quick search she discovers the clothing of a working class male but no obvious identification papers. Trying to move swiftly she slides under the doorway and into the corridor outside, she can hear the noise of dinner being prepared in the kitchen downstairs and so moves quickly to the next door along. It turns out to be a bathroom, with the next door along being an unoccupied guest room.

In the third guest room Madeline discovers more working class male clothes, she quickly checks the labels and discovers that they were made in London. With stairs running both down and up to the attic, Madeline heads up to search the attic room. She discovers what appears to be the quarters of the guest house’s owner. With a quick search she finds paperwork relating to the running of the guest house in the name of Mrs Driscoll, she also picks the lock on a strong box and finds the deeds to the house and several cheques made out to Mrs Driscoll. With everything looking legitimate Madeline heads back towards the inn, narrowly avoiding a women coming upstairs from the ground floor and heading into the bathroom. As she passes back through the first room that she searched she checks the labels in those clothes, they were made in London too.

While Madeline was carrying out her through search of the guest house, Doctor Jackal was sketching the walls of the castle and Sven was chasing his tail. After about an hour of this fun we also head back to the inn. As we walk through the inn door we see a man in his fifties stocking the bar, he turns as we enter and warmly greets us. He introduces himself as Robert Carney the landlord of the Clifden Arms Inn. We pass a couple of minutes in pleasant conversation and again use the story borrowed from the couple that we met at the monument.

We regroup back at our room and discuss all that we have discovered so far. We all agree that the agent that is based in Clifden must have access to a radio set in order for them to be able to communicate with the Germans, and that a set that large must have a significant aerial. So we decide to search for that as well as our investigations into any newcomers in the village. We agree that the most obvious places for a radio are the lifeboat station, which must have its own radio set and the church.

Sven transforms into a seagull and flaps out of our rooms open window. He heads straight to the lifeboat station and finds that it is occupied by a single individual and that there is a car parked outside of it. He flaps down and has a look through the windows on the upper level, which seems to contain the main watch point for the lifeboatman. Sven spots that the station does have its own radio set as well as a telephone line. He moves on to the church and lands within the belfry. There is no sign of anything that could possibly be considered a radio aerial. From his lofty perch he does spot that there is a telephone line running into the village hall and so he transforms into a thrush and investigates.

The village hall is quiet and all closed up so Sven moves onto the village shop which also has a phone line running to it. He discovers what he assumes to be a couple of locals, one of which is the shopkeeper, gossiping about what is happening in Europe and how it such a horrible thing. Sven moves on once again, this time heading for the market. He arrives just as the fishing boats are landing their catches of the day and the fish is being prepared for sale. Seizing such a glorious opportunity, Sven fights the other seagulls for scraps.

While Sven is out the remaining team members continue the best way to reduce the number of residences that we need to search for Maulwurf. Madeline suggests that as Maulwurf originally contacted Falltur via the telephone, that was how the message was intercepted, then Falltur must have a private telephone. We know that there is one in the inn, but as it is in the bar we decide that it is to public for it to be used for secure conversations. Doctor Jackal and Myself decide to go for a walk around the village and make a note of all of the houses that have telephone lines going to them.

Madeline decides to make sure of the inn and check the loft for an aerial, and also look through the rooms in the half of the inn used as the Carney’s residence. The loft contains what most lofts do, a lot of old and used items that are little used and after a cursory look Madeline moves down into the rear first floor of the building. She discovers what appears to be the Carney’s bedroom but there is no sign of any identification papers, she finds a bathroom in the next room and a large linen cupboard further down the hall. The final room at the back of the building is empty but occupied by a young man based on the clothing in the wardrobe. Again, Madeline can find no trace of any paperwork but assumes that it will all be in the inn’s office.

When Henry and I return from our walk we find that two of the tables are occupied for dinner, one by professor Parker. The other table has a middle aged man sat at it closely inspecting his glass. He holds it up to the light and then calls to Robert behind the bar for a clean one. As soon as he notices us he stands up and introduces himself as Sean Hennessy. I greet him in Gaelic and he responds instantly in flawless Gaelic, I groan inside because I believe that this man is not Maulwurf.

Doctor Jackal and I sit down to dinner and as we are finishing we overhear Mr Hennessy say that he is going to go for an after dinner stroll. Despite my belief that he is not our man I still run up stairs and ask Sven to follow him just in case. Sven flaps out of our room window in time to see Hennessy walking across the bridge into the village. Hennessy does just go for a walk, he walks through the village and cuts back around off of the beaten path but to all appearances it is just an after dinner walk.

Once again we regroup in our room and pool the information gathered. Between us we have ascertained that the only telephone lines in the village are at the inn, the lifeboat station, the pub, the village hall, the guest house, the store, and a dozen residential premises. That narrows down our search to eighteen locations. Just after midnight we start. Sven agrees to fly out around the bay to see if there is any sign of the U Boat while Madeline and I turn into shadows and head for the guest house. Finding himself all alone in the room, Doctor Jackal decides to slip out and visit the graveyard, we still to this day have no idea why.

Madeline and I slip underneath the back door of the guest house and find ourselves in the kitchen, we slide through and into a hallway that leads through to the front door. There is the sound of two men talking in a room off of the corridor and so Madeline slides towards the open doorway to see if she can overhear what they are discussing. I slide across the ceiling towards the front door and the guest book that I can see beside it, I quickly scan the open page to see how many people have signed in over the last four days. There have only been two people signed in during that time, a Mr Thomas Williams and a Mr Gerald Townly. Madeline manages to hear that the two men talking both have London east end accents, one of the men is saying how hard working on the fishing boats seems to be. The other man replies;

Bloody should’a stayed in London dodging the coppers! Would’a been easier!

I gesture to Madeline and we both head back out via the back door and up onto the roof. We are convinced that the two men are draft dodgers, Madeline makes a mental note to inform the authorities when we get the chance.

With Madeline leading the way we sneak across to the village hall, sliding in under the locked doors we find it unsurprisingly deserted. We take the opportunity to search it thoroughly. We find nothing out of the ordinary but do manage to ascertain that the local priest has been here for years and is called Father O’Malley. By the time we had finished our search it was oh two thirty hours and we hadn’t discovered much. Trying to remain positive we slipped across the dark and empty road into the church, again finding all quiet we carried out a full search. And again our efforts revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

We agree to search Lowry’s pub next, despite the feeling that we are not going to find anything. Knowing that time is not on our side, as soon as we have gained access we split up. Madeline heads down into the cellar to look for a radio set while I check out the rooms on the first floor. In the small lounge I discover the paperwork for the running of the pub, it details that the owner is a Mr Kevin Brannigan. Madeline and I meet up outside of the bedroom door and we both slide in. Madeline takes up a position to watch the sleeping form of the man in the bed while I look through the wallet that is on the bedside table. It confirms that the man in the bed, snoring loudly, is indeed Mr Kevin Brannigan. Finding no sign of anyone else at Lowry’s we head out of the village.

As soon as we are outside of the village limits we transform back into ourselves and run to the lifeboat station, we sneak in the last hundred feet and discover the lifeboat station dark and locked. We realise that it must only be manned during the hours that the fishing boats are out at sea. We gain access and again carry out a full search, everything is as you would expect and it does have a telephone line and a radio set. But we can find no evidence that it is the location used by the German agent Falltur. Tired and a little frustrated we return to the inn.

After a couple of hours of exhausted sleep we are awoken, as agreed, by Doctor Jackal at oh six hundred hours. Yet again both Madeline and I don the shadow form and wait in the corridor for the other occupants to wake. Professor Parker is the first to do so, he leaves his room with a tired yawn and heads for the bathroom at the end of the corridor. As soon as he is moving away from us Madeline slips under his door and searches his room swiftly. She finds his identification papers and his travel documents and examines them closely. When she joins me again she says that she is positive that the documents are genuine.

Madeline carries out the procedure once again when Mr Hennessy goes to the bathroom, and once again she is convinced that his documents are not forgeries. Yet again we seem to hit another dead end. Doctor Jackal suggests that we need to know more about the local villagers, that we should question someone who will know everyone and will know of anyone new in the village. And so, Mr and Mrs Shipman pay Father O’Malley a morning visit.

We find him in the church and Doctor Jackal quickly engages him in the history of the village, he is more than happy to talk at length about the area and it’s, frankly, quiet place in the history of Ireland. When ask him to point out some of the places that he is talking about and he leads us outside and starts to point and regale. As he is talking, I gently rest my hand against the back of his hand and ‘borrow’ his knowledge of the local area. I give Henry the nod and he quickly leads the conversation towards a close. As we walk back towards the inn I sift through all of the information that I have acquired. And then it suddenly strikes me. There is no recent knowledge of a third person working at the inn.

We head straight up to our room and inform the others. Right under our nose! How? There is no sign of a radio set. Slightly angry that we have missed something, Madeline and I turn into shadows and slide through the inn’s attic towards his room. Madeline confirms that it is empty and we slide in under the door. We carry out a thorough search of the room, and it is what we do not find that is intriguing. As before, there is no sign of any identification. Madeline checks the clothes and the labels show that they were made in London.

There are no signs of the missing man in any of the public areas of the inn and so Henry, dog Sven, and I head out to the back garden which looks onto the private half of the inn under the pretence of Doctor Jackal doing a sketch of the house. Madeline decides to search the loft once more in the hunt for the radio set that we all know must exist. Thirty minutes after we have sat down in the back garden Mrs Carney steps out of the back door and wanders over to have a look at what we are up to. Henry shows her his sketch and she is very impressed with his artistic ability.

As she is heading back in, Sven spots a figure stood watching us from a window on the ground floor. There is a net curtain and so he does not get a clear view of who it is. And so dog Sven runs around the garden a couple of times chasing his tail and then runs straight up to the window and stands up on his back legs and looks through. Inside he can see a man sat in a small sitting room reading a book. The man puts down his book and looks at dog Sven. Sven lolls his tongue and then runs around the garden once more.

As dog Sven is chasing his tail around the back garden of the Clifden Arms, Doctor Jackal is staring at a small detail that he has captured unconsciously in his sketch. As the telephone line goes into the building it splits in two. The inn must have a second telephone and based on where the line runs, it must be in the lower rear corner of the building. Another detail that we initially missed. Dog Sven sits back down at my feet and keeps looking towards the entrance to the inn, I suggest to Henry that we return to our room.

I don’t know if it was the beauty of Ireland, or the fact that we were finally in a country that wasn’t at war, but my usual paranoia had subsided over the last few days. That changed as we walked back towards the inn, and I stopped on the threshold and pushed out with my senses to see if there were any enhanced within. To my surprise I picked up four responses. Three of them I could explain away as my teammates. But who was the fourth? I knew that two of the responses were beside me, one was on the ground floor of the inn and the other on the first floor. I let both dog Sven and Doctor Jackal know what I had sensed.

We enter the bar area of the inn and can see Mr Carney behind the bar chatting to what look like three locals and sat eating some lunch at a table on his own is Mr Hennessy. I pause and push out with my senses again and locate the fourth enhanced individual. To my complete surprise it is Mr Robert Carney.

We wait out the rest of the day and just after midnight Madeline and I once again slide out of our room in our shadowy forms and head downstairs into the private half of the inn. In the corner of the building where the extra phone line runs in to we discover a small office. We spend a couple of hours searching the office from top to bottom, initially we find documentation relating to the running of the inn and those that live here. There is no mention anywhere of anyone other than Mr and Mrs Carney. As we are searching through the books on a bookshelf in the corner of the room we find a small pamphlet slipped between the pages of a large natural history book.

I quickly rush the pamphlet up to Doctor Jackal who leafs through it commiting each page to his incredible memory. Two minutes later I return the pamphlet to Madeline and we make sure that the office is left looking undisturbed and then return to our room. Henry has had time to consider the information that he had memorised from the pamphlet and confirms that it was a list of dates, times, and radio frequencies. The most recent had been ten o’clock that evening and the next was due at ten o’clock tomorrow evening. The list of dates and times went back almost a year and forwards for another six months.

By three o’clock in the morning Madeline and I are in the third man’s room staring down at his sleeping form, by this stage we are sure that he is Maulwurf. While Madeline keeps watch on him I search through his clothes that are hung over the back of a chair, but again I find no personal items or identification papers. I gaze across at the bed and notice that the mans underpants are hanging on the bedpost, almost in desperation I take a quick look at them and find that they have a small, hard cylindrical object sewn into their lining. I gesture to Madeline that I have found something and we retreat back to our room, pants in hand.

As soon as we are back in the room Madeline whips out her sewing kit and begins to carefully unpick the stitching of the lining. I rummage through Madeline’s camera kit and pull out a film canister, which happens to be about the same weight and size as the object hidden in Maulwurf’s underwear. Madeline switches them and then restiches the lining, as soon as she has finished we return the underwear and retreat. Once we have returned Madeline creates darkness around herself and unscrews the lid of the canister, it does indeed contain a roll of film. She replaces it and reseals the canister.

While Madeline is doing that I head for the Carney’s bedroom. I position myself on the ceiling outside of their bedroom and once again push out with my senses, there is definitely an enhanced individual within the room. I push deeper and try to discover what the enhanced powers are.

A smile of realisation crosses my face when I discover that Mr Robert Carney’s major power is the ability to broadcast radio signals.