5

Dun Laoghaire, Republic of Ireland

It was an old whitewashed house on the outskirts of the resort town of Dun Laoghaire on the south shore of Dublin Bay and in the grey dawn it appeared translucent. The house was surrounded by walls and thick trees. The only means of entrance was through a set of large iron gates, behind which a small gatehouse stood. Usually the gatehouse was occupied by a man who kept a nine-millimetre Brazilian Taurus semi-automatic pistol in his waistband and an FN assault rifle propped against the wall. On this morning, however, the gatehouse was empty and the iron gates were unlocked.

A beige VW came to a halt outside the whitewashed house. As it did so, a man appeared in the doorway. He was called Finn. Although he was in his late fifties, he carried himself in the erect manner of one who has been a soldier in his time. He was imposing – even in the pale dawn one could see the long white hair that fell over his shoulders and the suggestion of strength in his eyes. He came down the steps to greet the driver of the Volkswagen and together both men went inside the house. The driver, the young man known as Jig, noticed the empty gatehouse. It was never occupied whenever he came to this house because Finn required that his visits here take place with the utmost confidentiality. The guard was always sent away at such times. Even within the Association of the Wolfe secrets were stratified. No one person, other than Finn, knew everything that was going on. It was his way of maintaining control.

The sitting room was filled with harps. Finn collected them assiduously. He never played because he was tone deaf, but there were strange little moments when, with all the windows open and the wind coming in off the Irish Sea, he could hear a random music created by nature as the air stirred the strings and made them vibrate. Many of the thirty or so harps were gorgeous gilt creations, inlaid with mother-of-pearl carved with extraordinary care. Sometimes, Finn would reach out and pluck a string, setting up tiny quivering cacophonies as he crossed the room.

Finn sat down. He wore a simple fisherman’s sweater and baggy cord pants and sneakers that looked as if they’d been chewed by a neurotic dog. He ran his fingers nervously through his long white hair, and for a moment Jig perceived Finn as a kind of aged hippie, an eccentric guru who’d been to the mountain and come back bearing a message – which, in one sense, was true enough. Today, though, Finn looked gaunt, almost hungry, his huge cheekbones prominent in the lean face.

He pulled a strand of hair from his head and held it up to the light at the window, examining it. ‘My bloody hair is beginning to fall out,’ he said. He had an actor’s voice. It came booming out of his chest.

He stood up, moving towards one of the harps. He angrily ran his fingers over all the strings and the room rippled with sound.

‘This bloody country!’ Finn shouted suddenly, as if the climate of Ireland were responsible for his hair loss. ‘This godforsaken island of good intentions, dried-up old nuns, and bloody gossips! I tell you, there are times when I want nothing more than to just turn my back on the whole bloody place and let it sink into the ocean and see if I care!’ Finn paused. ‘You know what the ocean would do? Eh? It would spit the bloody island back up again! And you know why, boy? Because it’s too much fucking trouble, that’s why! Besides, what ocean would want the taste of a man like Ivor McInnes in it?’

Ivor McInnes, a Protestant minister who until recently had had a parish in Belfast, was Finn’s bête noire. McInnes, who specialised in sermons that were critical of Catholicism in general and the IRA in particular, was symptomatic, in Finn’s mind, of the wrongs that plagued the island today. There were just too many hard core Protestants, with views that were sometimes to the far right of bigotry, wandering the land. Finn thought all extremists should be incarcerated and the key thrown away. He brought up the name of McInnes at every opportunity, rather in the way a man with congested lungs might bring up phlegm.

The young man watched as Finn wandered around the room, plucking strings until the whole room was humming and singing.

Over the endless vibrations, Finn was talking rapidly. He moved backwards and forwards, waving his arms in an erratic fashion. He was ranting about how he’d struggled for supreme control of the finances of the Irish Republican Army, how he’d formed the ultra-secret innermost cell called the Association of the Wolfe precisely for the purpose of handling income. How, since 1981, he’d taken great pains to make sure that the money that came from ‘the friends overseas’ was spread carefully and discreetly around, because he wanted to keep it out of the hands of the extremists. He wanted an end to the atrocious image the IRA had made for itself. What bloody good did it do to blow up a London bus, say? Wasn’t that a waste of explosives and terrible PR into the bargain? If there was to be killing, it had to be selective. If there were to be assassinations, only hostile political targets were to be picked. Nothing else could ever be justified.

Finn shook his head from side to side. ‘Aside from the almighty dent that buying arms puts in our budget, do you know where our money goes, Jig?’

Jig shook his head. Finn had never talked about the particulars of finance before.

‘I’ll tell you. It goes to the Catholic families in the North when the man of the house is stuck in some bloody British jail because he was stupid enough to try and set off a bomb in the Tower of London and get himself caught. Do you know what this maintenance money costs us every year? Have you any idea? What will those women and children do if we can’t get money to them?’

Santa Claus, Jig thought, dispensing banknotes from a sack.

‘I’ll tell you something else you didn’t know,’ Finn continued. ‘Money gets ploughed into keeping the Gaelic alive. It goes to finance teachers and students and the publication of works in Irish. How can we sit around and talk English if we’re supposed to be an independent country? English is a barbaric tongue, Jig, a mishmash. It doesn’t have the sweetness of the Gaelic. Have you ever imagined what it would have sounded like if Bill Shakespeare had written in the Gaelic? Imagine Hamlet in Irish.’

Finn smiled. The harps trembled and rattled. Jig stood very still. He’d never heard this kind of desperate note in Finn’s voice before. The news of the Connie O’Mara had clearly wounded the old man in a deep place.

Finn stood at the window now, his hands folded behind his back. ‘She was a fine ship run by fine men,’ he said, his voice a whisper suddenly. ‘Liam O’Reilly grew up with me down in Bantry. A good man. And now he’s dead and they’re all dead and the bloody money’s gone. Our money, boy. Our purse.’

Jig said nothing.

Finn rubbed him lightly on the shoulder. ‘You’re going to get it back for me, boy. Aren’t you?’

The young man looked into Finn’s eyes. What he saw there was a kind of madness, a needle-sharp single-mindedness. He imagined that the ancient saints who went out into the wilderness for months at a time had looked exactly like this. A manic light.

‘If there’s a way,’ Jig answered.

‘No ifs, Jig. There’s always a way.’ Finn moved back to the window. He stood looking out as if he anticipated enemies in the shrubbery. ‘The bloody Americans,’ he muttered.

‘You think they’re responsible?’

‘For many years now, we’ve had sympathetic songbirds inside the New York City Police Department because that place is still basically an Irish colony. And the information that reached me late last night is that the Connie’s crew was slaughtered by American weapons.’

‘American weapons are widely available,’ the young man said.

Finn spread his hands out. ‘There’s more. I’m not quite finished. The same source was kind enough to mention the contents of a ballistics report conducted by the gentlemen of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’

‘And?’

‘The ammunition used was something called the SS109, which is manufactured by an American company called the Olin Corporation. This kind of ammunition, they tell me, is used in the Colt M-16A2 automatic rifle, also American.’

Jig licked his lips, which were dry. ‘All right. Suppose the pirates were American. How do you narrow that down to specific individuals, Finn? The last time I heard, there were more than two hundred million people in the United States.’

‘Simple, simple,’ Finn answered. ‘Consider this. A group of men collects a large sum of money for the Cause. Imagine one of this group says to himself that the poor old Connie O’Mara is a sitting duck just waiting to be shot and plucked. This treacherous bastard sees gold in front of his eyes. He can taste it. He decides he’s going to make his own arrangements and to hell with the Cause! He’s going to make himself rich at our expense!’

There were little spots of saliva at the corners of Finn’s mouth. ‘Only this group of men knew the cargo and destination of the Connie. Only this group, boy. Nobody else. And one of them is our fucking Judas. One of them has to be. It could only have been an inside job. I’ll swear by that.’

Jig absorbed all this for a second. ‘Who are the members of this group?’ he asked. He knew what Finn’s answer would be.

‘Now right there you encounter your first obstacle,’ Finn said. ‘The lines of communication were established in such a way that the money always came from what we might call sources unknown. Even the telephone number I call in America is never the same one twice. All this was done in the sainted name of secrecy, of course, which we all know is a two-faced bastard that can easily work against you.’

The young man spread his hands in a perplexed manner. ‘Where do you expect me to start?’

Finn narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ll give you a name and that’s all I can give you.’

‘Who?’

‘A certain Father Tumulty in New York.’

‘What can a priest tell me?’

‘I never said the man was a priest, did I now?’ Finn looked faintly mischievous.

‘How do you want me to handle all this?’ Jig asked.

Finn studied the young man’s face. It was a good face, handsome and strong, with eyes that suggested layers of inner conviction. You chose this one well, Finn. There was steel in this boy, there was backbone and guts and, best of all, a chill dedication to the Cause. He placed one hand on Jig’s shoulder. ‘I’d be the happiest man in God’s earth if I could tell you the names of the men who call themselves the Fund-raisers, because if I knew that we could sit down the way we usually do and devise a blueprint of action for you. I can tell you the kind of men they are. I can tell you they’re the sort of men who’ve always been drawn to the Cause because it brings a small sense of danger into their otherwise drab lives. It gives them the illusion of purpose, boy. They send large sums of money over here then they sit back on their fat Yankee arses and feel very Irish. They’ve paid their dues. They think they belong. They think they understand. They think they’re part of the whole bloody struggle. But they’re not. They’re money men, and they don’t have any blood on their lovely white hands. They have silly little dreams in their head, but the only dream worth a damn is the one you’re prepared to die for. And these men aren’t ready to die for anything just yet, thank you very much. They’re not Irish. They’re Americans. They beat their chests and call themselves Irish-Americans, and they put on a big green production every St. Patrick’s Day, but they’re about as Irish as the Queen of England. Personally I long for the day when we won’t need such men …’ Finn, who had a moment of uneasiness, a sense of uncertainty, a sudden nagging doubt, glanced at the boy. ‘I know the kind of men they are, but I don’t know their names, and I don’t know how many of them are in the group. Three, four, six, I just don’t know. Consequently …’ and here he took a deep breath, ‘we don’t have a blueprint, boy. Only a burning bloody need for that money.’

The young man knew the kind of American Finn was talking about. He didn’t care for them any more than Finn did, but his private feelings were irrelevant to him right then. He said, ‘You still haven’t answered my question, Finn. How do you want me to handle this?’

Finn rubbed the tip of his long straight nose. ‘You have to keep several things in mind. One, the members of this group are going to be more than a little paranoid right now. The money’s gone. They’re going to be accusing one another and suspecting one another. They’re going to be nervous, boy. And a nervous man isn’t altogether a predictable one. Remember that. Two, when you find out who is involved in the Fund-raisers, you’ve got to proceed on the possibility that each and every one of them is the traitor. None of them is going to be happy to see you, because they’re going to think that you suspect each of them of this awful crime. None of them will want to be your friend.’ Finn looked suddenly exasperated. ‘Ah, Jesus, it’s a tricky situation.’

The young man blinked at the morning light climbing against the window. None of them will want to be your friend. He had no friends other than Finn, nor did he imagine ever needing any. He could have made friends if he’d wanted to, because he had an easy charm he was able to turn on and off and he had the kind of looks that others found attractive. But friendships were for other people. They were part of ordinary lives.

Finn put his hands in the pockets of his pants. ‘Approach them carefully. Try to take them off guard if you can. But expect them to lie to you. Expect them to shift suspicions onto other members. Expect them to deny they have anything to do with sending money to Ireland. And don’t be surprised if some of them treat you with outright animosity. As I said, these are nervous men. Push them a little if you feel you have to, but bear in mind this sorry fact – we’ll probably need the services of some of these men in the future.’

The young man said nothing. He hadn’t anticipated making a trip to America, and he found the prospect just a little unsettling. When he operated on the British mainland or in Northern Ireland, he always did so with a specific plan in mind, a detailed map of what he was supposed to do and how it was going to be achieved. Now, though, it seemed as if Finn expected him to go into America blind, which was an idea he didn’t like. When you didn’t have a plan, it was difficult to maintain control. And if one thing was anathema to him, it was the loss of control. He didn’t want to go to America, but if Finn commanded him, then he’d obey. It would never have occurred to him to question Finn’s orders.

The harp strings in the big room had all stilled now, and there was only a pale lingering echo of any noise.

Finn sat down, crossing his long legs and adjusting his baggy cord pants as if they had a razor-sharp crease that needed to be preserved. He was a man of small, endearing vanities. ‘You’ll need a gun, although I hope with all my heart you don’t have to use it. But it would be downright foolish to go into this without one. Tumulty can help you there. I don’t want you going into one of those bloody Irish bars in Queens and picking up what our American friends call a Saturday Night Special, Jig. I don’t want you making any kind of contact with the Irish rabble that collects money in tin cans and sends cheap handguns to post-office boxes in Belfast or Derry. They mean well, no doubt, but they drink too much and they talk too bloody much, and we don’t need any kind of gossip about you.’

Jig nodded. What he suddenly wished was that Finn was going to the United States with him. For a moment he felt a twinge of loneliness, but he put the sensation out of his mind. He had chosen this life. Nobody had selected it for him. Finn, certainly, had nudged him in the direction of this existence, but finally the choice had been entirely his own.

‘One other thing,’ Finn said, regretting his anger when he’d talked on the telephone with his anonymous American contact. He’d blurted out some threat about sending a man over, and now he was sorry about it. Quick to rage and say things he wished he hadn’t – would he never change? ‘They’ll be expecting you over there.’

‘Somebody’s always expecting me, Finn.’

The old man didn’t speak for a time. He reached for the bottle of peppermint schnapps that sat on a table against the wall, then changed his mind about drinking. He wanted to be cold sober. ‘You did a fine job with Whiteford,’ he said in a low voice.

Jig shrugged. The compliment was unexpected and quite uncharacteristic of Finn. He wasn’t sure how to take it. ‘It went off as we planned.’ It was all he could think of to say.

‘And you’ll do a fine job in America too, because I want you and our money back here in one piece. That money means a lot, boy. Without it …’

‘I understand,’ Jig said.

Finn clapped the palm of his hand against the young man’s shoulder. ‘Remember this. If it becomes unpleasant at any time in America – and you know what I mean by that – your life is more important to me than any one of the Fund-raisers.’ And then, as if this confession were something he regretted, he turned away from Jig.

‘Let’s talk about the cash you’ll need for this trip,’ he said, and once again set the harp strings dancing with flourishes of his hands.

Finn slept for thirty minutes after Jig had gone. It was troubled sleep and he woke with the feeling of having dreamed something disastrous that he couldn’t recall on waking. Something to do with Jig.

When he got up, he went into the bathroom to shave. He studied his face in the mirror awhile. It was a lean, chiselled face, crisscrossed by lines and filled with small hollows under the cheekbones. What Finn saw looking back at him from the mirror was a man who had a special sense of history at a special time.

The idea of founding the Association of the Wolfe had come to him when he perceived the general disunity of the Cause, when he had seen the need for strong hands on the financial reins. Secretive centralised planning was the answer to the outrages of the eedjit rabble. If you didn’t give the hotheads money, how could they buy weapons and explosives for their little sorties in Belfast and on the English mainland, when all they ever got was a damned bad press?

The ultimate goal of the Association was that old dream – to get the British out of the North and unite Ireland once and for all. Two separate Irelands was as much a travesty of history as two separate Germanies. An artificial border, created by the English and maintained by its soldiers, was a farce, a rupture inflicted by the politics of hatred. The Association was named after Wolfe Tone who in 1796 had attempted to land 12,000 French soldiers on Bantry Bay to help overthrow English supremacy. When the mission failed and Tone was captured, he asked for death before a firing squad, cutting his own throat when this request was denied.

Finn believed in selective assassination. He had a list of intended victims, which was composed mainly of British politicians who were against the prospect of a united Ireland. The list also included several Northern Irish diehards, those iron-skulled morons, like Ivor McInnes, who swore on their own lives that the Union Jack would always fly over Belfast, that Ulster would always belong to the Queen. If you systematically assassinated enough of these jackasses, sooner or later the cost in blood was going to prove too expensive to the English. They’d be happy to leave Ulster, which was something they should have done years ago if they’d had any decency – which they clearly did not have.

Finn turned away from the mirror. He had a sense of things slipping away from him. Without control of the purse, how could he control the extremists? But now the purse was gone, and the thought brought a bitter taste into his mouth. Liam O’Reilly was dead. So was the Courier. Finn closed his eyes and observed a quiet moment of mourning for old comrades, both members of the Association.

He went down the stairs. In his small office, a spartan room with a desk and a chair and bare white walls, he picked up the telephone. He began to dial a number but stopped halfway through and set the phone back. What was he going to say? What was he going to tell the Saint? He stood at the window, stroking his jaw. What in God’s name was he supposed to say? The Saint didn’t believe in credit. He was always in a hurry to deliver his goods and get paid.

Finn picked up the telephone a second time. He dialled nervously. It was a number in the port city of Rostock in East Germany. It rang only once before it was picked up. Finn spoke his name.

The voice at the other end was guttural New York City. ‘I got tired waiting, Finn.’

Finn said nothing a moment. The connection was poor. ‘There’s been a problem. A cash problem.’

‘Maybe for you, Finn. I ain’t got problems.’

Finn saw a blackbird fly past his window. Pack up all my cares and woe, he thought. ‘Listen to me. I need some time.’

‘Time’s run out, fella. You know how much it costs when you got a Greek boat to rent? When you got an Arab crew that sits round on its duff all day and they still gotta get paid? Then you add the fact I got harbour personnel to grease here. You know how much that runs, Finn?’

Finn’s throat was dry. ‘I need a week. Maybe more than a week.’

‘Tough titty,’ the guy said. ‘I’m trying to tell ya, Finn. You’re shit outta luck, man.’

‘What do you mean? What do you mean I’m out of luck?’

‘I got tired waiting. I already sold the cargo, Finn.’

‘You did what?’ Finn shouted. ‘You did what?’

‘Guy came up with a good offer. I said sure thing. What the hell. I wanna sit round in Rostock for the rest of my life, Finn? Wait for you?’

‘This is a joke,’ Finn said. His voice was very low, even. A nerve had begun to work at the side of his head.

‘No joke. I don’t joke about my cargo –’

‘You sold it! How could you do such a thing like that, in the name of Jesus!’

‘Hey, it ain’t like you and me had a written contract, pal. You wanna sue? Be my guest.’

Finn shut his eyes tightly. First the money. Now a whole boatload of arms and explosives. The very air he breathed seemed poisoned with treacheries.

‘You’re trying to tell me a buyer just came along? Out of the bloody blue?’

‘Right,’ the Saint said. ‘I’m a businessman, Finn. This is a business. I gotta sell. I gotta eat.’

‘Who was this buyer?’

‘I can’t answer a dumb question like that.’

‘Who was he?’ Finn trembled with rage.

‘Hey, Finn. I don’t ask questions. Guy paid, I delivered. Simple and clean. Now I just wanna get my ass outta this town, which I intend to do in the next few hours. This ain’t exactly a day at the beach, Finn. You ever been in Rostock?’

‘I’d like to know the name of this person.’

There was a crackling sound over the line. The Saint said, ‘Listen, Finn. I keep confidences. Understand? The guy who took delivery of the cargo, he was a South American. A Venezuelan or something. He waved cold cash and I took it. That’s all I’m saying.’

Finn said, ‘I’ll go elsewhere. I’ll find another supplier! Damn you –’

The line was already dead. Finn slammed down the receiver. He sat, dismayed, spreading his arms on his desk and laying his face against them.

The shipment was gone.

He raised his face. A bloody Venezuelan! A bloody Venezuelan had purchased the whole boatload of arms and high-tech explosives, for Christ’s sake! Probably to waste them in some fucking futile border skirmish that didn’t matter a damn in the scheme of things. An arms shipment like that took months to put together. If Jig recovered the missing money, Finn thought he could set up another deal, but not through the Saint, who, like most of his mercenary kind, didn’t have much in the way of honour and loyalty. But it would take time to make another deal, and Finn wasn’t very patient. God in heaven, he’d lived all his life with his dream of a free Ireland, from the time he was a small boy in Bantry and all through his years of service with the IRA, when he’d done everything a man could do. He’d planted bombs in England. He’d robbed mail trains. During the Second World War he’d gone into Northern Ireland to sabotage a British troop ship that was carrying soldiers to fight in Europe. A lot of blood had been spilled in pursuit of the dream. A lot of fine men had died.

But without weapons and explosives, you might as well hang a CLOSED sign on your door. If Jig didn’t recover the money, it was back to homemade hand grenades and other dubious devices that were absolutely undependable. Which meant he couldn’t keep up the pressure on the English to get out of Ulster. If Finn was truly afraid of anything, it was the idea of dying before he saw his dream come true.

He turned his thoughts to Jig.

There was a lot riding on that young man’s shoulders. Jig had never let him down in the past, no matter how difficult or complicated the task. But this was something altogether different. Apart from Tumulty, Jig would have no support in America. There was no network in place to assist him if he needed help over there. And there was no network for the simple reason that Finn had never imagined the need for Jig to operate in the USA. Scoundrels, he thought. All of them, from the Fundraisers to the Saint, a scurvy blackhearted bunch.

It was more than the lack of a network, though, that troubled Finn now. And it was more than the treachery of men. It was the fact that Jig, who had been highly trained to kill men, was going into a situation where his particular form of expertise wasn’t going to be of any damned use to him. He wasn’t going to be called upon to plant explosive devices or track some potential victim through the scope of a sniper’s rifle. He was being asked to do something in which he had utterly no experience. He was being asked to investigate a crime. To solve a specific problem. To sleuth.

Finn had a strange lurching sensation around his heart. You’re sending an assassin into a situation that calls for a detective’s talents. In the name of God, Finn, what have you done? Have you asked the impossible of that boy? Have you packed him off to be devoured by bloody Yankee vultures?

But there was nobody else to send. There was no other man Finn could trust. It was really that simple. He could have enlisted some young hothead who would have gone blundering into America, but what good would that have done? If anybody could get that money back, it was Jig. From the very start of their association Finn had seen a dark streak in the boy, an unrelenting determination in his heart. He was the stuff of an assassin. He had nerves of marble and a hawk’s fastidious eye for detail. He had required careful shaping, of course. He had needed the rough edges smoothed away. Some of his political notions had been naive and idealistic back when the young man had first been brought to Finn’s attention. Finn remembered now how Jig had hung around the fringes of political action groups in Dublin, acquiring a certain notoriety for his habit of espousing extremism and advocating grand gestures – such as the bombing of Buckingham Palace or the Houses of Parliament. For security reasons, Finn never attended such meetings himself. They were too easily infiltrated by plainclothes Garda and other enemies of the Cause, but the old man had a network of people who brought him reports – who was saying what, the kinds of schemes being plotted, anything that might intrigue Finn. In enthusiasms and energy, in the stark apocalyptic suggestions he carelessly made, Jig had put Finn in mind of his own younger self – the raw boy from Bantry who wanted to change the world with one grand stroke. Ah, the innocence of it all! The sheer unfettered naïvety! But the possibilities inherent in the young man – these were the things that had interested Finn most.

His first private meeting with the boy took place in an isolated bird sanctuary at Booterstown on Dublin Bay where, surrounded by squalls of gulls and anxiously watchful wading birds, Finn had talked of the need for patience and careful judgment when it came to the problem of getting the British out. He had deliberately circled his real purpose in interviewing the young man, which was his own need for a person who could become the kind of assassin required by the Association of the Wolfe. Was this boy the one? Or was his impulsive streak unharnessable? These were the early days of the Association and Finn, disgusted by the outbreak of IRA bombings and killings on the British mainland, spoke of the importance of selective assassination. There, at Booterstown, knocked by a harsh wind and the cuffs of his pants caked with soft mud, Finn made his distinction between an ordinary IRA gunman, a hothead, and the kind of dedicated assassin the Cause really needed.

The young man had listened, his mind seemingly elsewhere, his eyes distant and unresponsive. Each of Finn’s questions had been answered in short, unrevealing sentences. The boy’s background, his interests – these were dismissed, as if they had absolutely no relevance and Finn was impertinent to ask so many questions. Finn had the feeling that the young man thought his time was being unforgivably wasted. Dragged out in the first light of dawn to some bloody bird sanctuary and for what? So that a nosy old man could pose silly questions?

What’s the point of all this? the boy had asked.

Finn, a little irritated by the young man’s abrasive edge, had answered this question with one of his own. Why do you hate the English so much?

Does it matter? Jig asked.

Finn had watched a flock of seagulls rise up and go screaming towards the sea, which was barely visible in the muffled fog of the early morning. Answer my question, he’d said.

The young man had replied tersely, almost as if he were editing his own material in his head. He had been in the North about two years ago, he said, and in Belfast, that ruined city, he had come across the bagged bodies of two infant children on the sidewalk outside a house that had been ravaged by British soldiers because they suspected the place was filled with arms. Armoured cars and tanks and soldiers milled around in confusion. It transpired that the two children had been alone in the house when the British assault took place. But what Jig remembered most were the two bundles on the sidewalk and the way blood soaked through the material of the bags and the sounds of old women sobbing, like the sombre women of Greek tragedies, in the doorways of the street.

Finn had thought there was something unconvincing about this story. He didn’t doubt that it was true, but atrocities were alas commonplace in Belfast. Everybody and his uncle had at least one horror story to tell. By itself, it wasn’t enough to produce the kind of venom that was present in Jig whenever he spoke of the English. Was the young man simply trying to say that he was a humanitarian outraged by the casual and utterly useless deaths of small children? Finn didn’t buy that. It was too easy, facile. He had the strong feeling that Jig, for whatever reasons, was going through his memory on a highly selective basis. That something was being left out of the narrative. He flirted briefly with the notion that perhaps Jig was one of those psychopathic types that were unfortunately drawn to the Cause because it offered a justification for their violent tendencies, but he dismissed this because there was a certain authenticity in the way the boy had delivered his story. Just the same, Finn still felt dissatisfied. If he was going to find a use for this young man, he needed to be absolutely certain of him.

It’s not enough, boy, Finn said.

What more do you want? Jig asked.

Hatred doesn’t spring from one isolated incident.

Doesn’t it?

Finn shook his head. There’s got to be more.

The young man had smiled then, which was something he apparently didn’t do very often. His normal expression was one of grimness, an unrelaxed look that suggested a life of forever being tense. Wary, maybe that was the word Finn had wanted. It was a good quality in a killer. An assassin had to have an edge. But Finn needed more than what this young man had told him before he could recruit him.

Do you want a history lesson, Finn? Is that it? Do you want me to tell you how the British presence in this country sickens me?

You can’t tell me anything about bloody history, boy.

I didn’t think so.

Together, they had walked silently through the sanctuary, scaring birds out of the rushes and puddles and mudbanks. When they paused beneath some trees, Finn asked, Do you know your way around a gun?

Jig said he did.

Finn paused for a second. We’ll talk again, was what he had finally said, drifting under the trees and away from the boy, who watched sullenly.

When Finn had gone several yards the young man had called out. I’m tired of talk. Is that all anybody ever does in this country?

Finn had smiled to himself but hadn’t looked back.

Now, staring at the telephone on his desk, Finn felt despair. All the work, all the planning – and the Saint turns around and sells to the first fucking buyer that comes along with a stuffed wallet!

Dear God. He needed to get out of this house for a time. He wanted the sharp morning air on his face and the sea breezes blowing at him and the chance to get his thoughts straight. Maybe he’d go into Dublin. He always had a relaxing time there. Maybe he’d go and see Molly, who had a flat in the suburb of Palmerstown. Molly had ways of unwinding him and God! he needed that now.

He dressed himself slowly in his best suit, a three-piece black worsted with squared shoulders. It was an old-fashioned suit and it looked peculiarly Irish. He dabbed his underarms with deodorant. Then he piled his long hair up on top of his head and covered it with an old black felt hat. He put on a pair of sunglasses. Without these small precautions, his long hair would have drawn attention, and he believed in a low profile when he had to go out in public. He didn’t want to look eccentric on the streets, not even in these times when there were punk rockers on Grafton Street with their hair dyed pink and safety pins hanging from their nostrils.

He picked up the telephone and called a number. It was that of the man who usually sat armed out in the gatehouse and who lived nearby.

‘George,’ Finn said. ‘Will you bring the car around now?’

George said, ‘Certainly. Where are we headed?’

Finn hesitated a second. ‘Into town. I think a trip into town would be very nice.’

He stepped out of the house and walked down the driveway towards the gatehouse. The March morning was unusually sunny and the only clouds in the sky lay somewhere out in the middle of the Irish Sea – drifting, he hoped, over to England. He sat inside the gatehouse for five minutes, then he saw the old Daimler approach. He hoped America would be kind to Jig. If Jig couldn’t get that money back … Finn didn’t want to think the worst.

The tyres of the Daimler crunched on gravel. Finn opened the rear door, climbed inside.

‘Palmerstown,’ Finn said.

The driver nodded. He had driven the Old Man to Palmerstown many times before.

Dublin

‘No good-byes,’ Patrick Cairney told the girl.

‘I want to drive you to the airport. What’s wrong with that?’

‘I hate airports. I hate farewells. I get a lump in my throat. My eyes water. I fall to pieces.’

Rhiannon Canavan was dressed in her nurse’s uniform, over which she wore a green coat with the sleeves dangling empty. Cairney thought she looked particularly lovely.

‘Didn’t I slip away from the hospital just so I could take you to the airport?’

‘I’ll call you from the States,’ he said.

‘Oh, sure you will.’

‘Why do you doubt that?’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe there’s something just a wee bit thrust-and-run about you, Cairney. I don’t see you calling me at all.’

‘Cross my heart.’

‘I’ll drop you off. I won’t even come with you inside the blasted place!’

Cairney relented. ‘Promise?’

‘I give you my word.’

Cairney reached out to touch her face.

‘Will you come back to me when your father’s better?’

‘Or worse.’

Rhiannon put a fingertip against his mouth. ‘Don’t say that. I’m sure he’s going to be just fine.’

Cairney looked at the sky from the window. There was somewhere a weak suggestion of the sun that had been in the heavens earlier but that now lay behind a clutch of miserly clouds. He took Rhiannon Canavan in his arms and held her tightly.

She said, ‘Some people make complete recoveries from mild heart attacks, you know. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times.’

Cairney didn’t speak.

There was a dryness at the back of his throat. He played with the idea that it would be perfect to stay right here where he was. Just him and this lovely girl in this small apartment. Their own uninterrupted love nest. Silence and exhaustion and the sweetness of flesh. They could lie here and make love and die of malnutrition.

‘I’ve never been in America,’ the girl said. ‘Sure, I have millions of aunts and uncles and cousins I’ve never seen. I think most of them live in Union City, New Jersey. Is it pretty there?’

‘In New Jersey?’

‘Yeh. Is it pretty?’

‘It has its moments. I don’t think Union City is one of them, though.’

Rhiannon Canavan looked at her small wristwatch. ‘Are you packed?’ she asked, all at once practical. ‘You don’t have a lot of time, Patrick.’

‘I’m packed.’

‘We don’t even have time for a quickie, do we?’

‘How quick’s a quickie?’ he asked.

‘Now that depends entirely on you, doesn’t it?’

Patrick Cairney smiled. He wondered if he could lose himself a moment in sheer blind passion, if there was an oxygen bubble inside the vacuum he felt.

Rhiannon kissed him on the lips. It was a warm kiss and he was drawn down into it where he found himself in a well-lit place where there existed neither airplanes nor schedules nor long journeys to make. It was like drowning in tepid, scented water, peacefully and without panic, watching yourself circle and go down and circle and go down again, until there was no further place left to sink to and you were blissfully on the bottom. He slid his hands between the buttons of her uniform, feeling the small breasts under his palms. Her nipples were hard. He worked the uniform open, pushing it back from her shoulders. Her green coat fell to the floor. He traced a line with his fingertips from her breasts to her navel and then down across her smooth stomach, which had a lustrous silken texture.

Afterwards, Rhiannon said, ‘I hate heart attacks.’

George Scully, the driver of the Daimler that dropped Finn off in Palmerstown, parked the car on St. Stephen’s Green and walked until he came to the large covered marketplace known as the Powerscourt Townhouse, which he entered from South William Street. He passed stalls selling earrings and lace items and Celtic crosses carved in stone and recordings of the Clancy Brothers, and he rose to the upper tier where he entered a coffee shop. He bought a milky coffee, took it to a table, sat down, drummed his fingers impatiently. He knew he didn’t have much time before he would have to get back to the car and pick up the Old Man.

Presently, he heard the sound of somebody whistling tunelessly and a shadow fell across the table. The driver looked up and smiled. The newcomer wore a navy-blue seaman’s coat and a woollen hat drawn down over his ears.

‘I’ll be quick,’ George Scully said.

The other man nodded. He sat down, looking around the coffee shop.

The driver leaned across the table. ‘It’s just like we thought it would be. He’s sending Jig.’

‘Is he now?’

George Scully said, ‘I couldn’t hear this very well because the Old Man takes precautions like nobody’s business, but he’s definitely sending Jig.’ Scully paused and ran the tip of a finger round the rim of his cup. ‘Sometimes Jig uses a passport in the name of John Doyle. Sometimes not. I happened to be the one who picked up the passport for him, so what I’m telling you is reliable.’

The man in the seaman’s jacket nodded. ‘Jig,’ he said quietly. ‘Well now. Isn’t that something?’

Scully said, ‘The New York connection is a certain Father Tumulty. Your friends in Belfast will want to know that, I’m sure.’ Scully was silent a second. He bit uncertainly on his lower lip. ‘Come to Dun Laoghaire around ten. The Old Man’s with his fancy woman right now, and he’s going to be drunk when he gets home.’

‘We’ll be there.’

‘The gates will be unlocked. I won’t be in the gatehouse.’

‘Fine,’ the man in the seaman’s jacket said.

George Scully stared into his coffee. He said, ‘Ten years I’ve been with the Old Man. Ten years of guarding him, running his bloody errands. Long before he started getting all his grand ideas. He wasn’t always the way he is now, a bloody big shot. And what have I got to show for it? Sweet fuck all.’

The man in the seaman’s jacket took a brown envelope from inside his shirt and pressed it down on the table and George Scully picked it up quickly, hiding it under his coat.

‘It’s all there, Scully. Twenty-five thousand English pounds.’

George Scully looked unhappy. ‘I never thought I’d see this day,’ he remarked.

‘You’ve earned the cash,’ the other man said.

‘There’s a bad name for what I’m doing,’ Scully said solemnly.

‘Aye. But you could think of it another way. You’re making your own little contribution to ending the Troubles, aren’t you?’

Scully placed a hand around his coffee cup. ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’

The other man went back out through the Powerscourt Townhouse to the streets. He walked rapidly, pausing only at the Market Arcade to place a coin in the can of a blind penny-whistle player.

The blind man was playing The Minstrel Boy.

The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone,

In the ranks of death you’ll find him.

The ranks of death.

Jesus, there was going to be a lot of dying.

The man, whose name was Seamus Houlihan and who four nights ago had been employed as an ordinary seaman on the Connie O’Mara, found a taxi to take him to Connolly Station, where he’d be in time to meet Waddell coming off the train from Belfast.