11

Roscommon, New York

It was seven o’clock before Celestine persuaded Harry Cairney he should retire. She escorted him upstairs, helped him undress. He was already sound asleep when she left the bedroom and went back down to the library, where Patrick Cairney sat in front of the log fire with a brandy glass in his hand. There was music playing on the stereo, Harry’s music, the old Irish stuff he loved. Celestine turned the record player off. She sat down in the chair facing her stepson and picked up her own brandy from the coffee table. She looked at Patrick, as if she were trying to see some resemblance to his father in the young man’s face.

‘Don’t tell your father,’ she said. ‘But I can only take Irish music in small doses. He’s been playing it all afternoon. Too much.’

Patrick Cairney smiled. He’d been pleased to see his father leave the room because Harry had been headed in the direction of garrulous reminiscence, induced no doubt by the music. The entire afternoon had been filled with Irish tunes, ranging from If You Ever Go Across the Sea to Ireland to the inevitable rebel song Kevin Barry. Too much indeed, Patrick Cairney thought. An onslaught that dulled the senses after a while. Only Harry himself had been animated by the music, tapping his feet, rapping his fingertips on his knees, sitting sometimes with eyes closed and mouth half open, an old man travelling in old realms.

Once or twice, Patrick Cairney had felt so irritated that he’d wanted to turn the music off and go grab his father and shake him, as if to impress upon the old man the fact that all the songs in the world couldn’t bring his private Ireland back to him. The same damn music, the same damn memories, and Patrick Cairney had heard them all a hundred times before. The brainwashed childhood, he thought. The childhood riddled through and rotted by Harry Cairney’s nostalgia, his fake dreams. If Harry loved Ireland the way he claimed, then why had he never done anything about the troubles there? Why had he never – not once in all his years in Washington – gone on record as condemning sectarian violence and supporting some kind of acceptable solution? The answer was simple – it was enough for Harry to sit with his eyes shut and his foot tapping and listen to the same old goddam songs. His dreams were safe things, retreats from a world where men and women and children died needlessly, and torture and terror were a part of every child’s vocabulary.

In the glow from the fire, which was the only source of light in the large panelled room, Celestine’s face was half hidden by rippling shadows. Cairney thought the firelight gave her beauty a mysterious quality. She sipped some brandy, then set the glass down and extended her long fingers in front of the flames. She continued to look at Cairney, her stare disarming.

‘You don’t understand this marriage, do you? You see a relatively young woman married to a man much older, and you wonder why.’

Cairney made a small sound of protest, but the truth was otherwise. He had been wondering.

‘Maybe you’re even thinking I married Harry for money and security,’ she said.

Again Cairney protested. ‘It never crossed my mind.’

‘I love him,’ she said. ‘It’s really that simple.’

Cairney finished his drink. ‘And he dotes on you.’

Celestine settled back in her armchair, crossing her legs. ‘I met your father quite by chance. I was doing PR work for one of those companies he lends his name to, a textile concern in Boston. They like to have Senator Harry Cairney on their stationery. He came to visit the company, and there was a luncheon in his honour, and we talked, and we met again the next day. He proposed to me within the week. I accepted.’

A whirlwind, Cairney thought. All during the afternoon he’d watched Celestine and Harry’s mutual adoration society, the little touches between them, the long looks of affection they shared. And still, somehow, it didn’t sit right with him except he wasn’t sure why. The age difference, that was all. The curious contrast between this obviously healthy young woman and Harry Cairney’s frailty. The other question that had gone through his mind was why a woman as vivacious as Celestine would want to lock herself away in the isolation of Roscommon. He had underestimated love, nothing more. It was an emotion he always underestimated.

Celestine stood up. ‘I wasn’t looking for anybody, Patrick. Marriage was the very last thing on my mind. I’d already been through one, and I wasn’t enchanted by the experience. And I’m not interested in Harry’s money. I want you to know that.’

Celestine’s shadow was large on the wall behind her. She stretched her arms, then ran her fingers through hair that settled back in place immediately, as if it hadn’t been disturbed at all.

‘He charmed the heart out of me, Patrick. He’s capable of that. He paid so much attention to me – he still does – that I felt like the centre of his universe. I was never in awe of him or his position. I didn’t even notice the difference in our ages. It was all perfectly natural. I don’t think anything in my entire life has ever been so natural.’ She was quiet a moment, staring at Cairney with a frank look on her face. ‘Why do I feel I have to explain myself to you?’

‘You don’t,’ Cairney said.

‘Maybe I want you to like me. Maybe I don’t want you to have any doubts about me. Maybe all I really need is for you to understand that I love your father and that I’ll take care of him. He’s a wonderful man, Patrick, and I want him to be really healthy again. It’s just such a heartache to see him sick.’ She smiled now and the expression of concern that had appeared on her lovely face dissolved. ‘Do you like to walk?’

‘Sure.’

‘I always take a stroll about this time,’ she said. ‘Want to keep me company?’

Cairney got up. He turned to look from the window. Roscommon was in darkness. The moon lay under thick clouds.

They went downstairs. Cairney put on his overcoat, and Celestine dressed in a fur jacket. Outside, they crossed the expanse of front lawn in silence until they reached the shore of Roscommon Lake, a dark disc stretching in front of them.

They walked the shoreline to a stand of bare trees. There, Celestine paused and looked out across the water. The lake made a soft knocking sound, a whisper of reeds. Cairney glanced back the way they’d come, seeing the black outline of the house. He had a brief image of his mother, Kathleen, a tall, round-faced woman with the kindest eyes he’d ever seen on any human being. Kathleen, who had never really been at home in Roscommon because she disliked its size and location, had presided over the big house like some unwilling empress whose emperor was constantly elsewhere. Cairney smiled to himself because the memory was warm and good. It had about it the tranquillity of recollected love.

The sound of a vehicle broke the stillness. Headlights appeared through the trees. It was the security jeep, which parked some yards away. A man came towards them, carrying a flashlight. He was the same man Cairney had seen that afternoon.

‘Cold enough for you, Mrs. Cairney?’ the man asked.

Celestine didn’t answer. In the beam of the flashlight she looked unhappy. The man stood very still, shining the beam towards the shore of the lake.

‘Just the routine check,’ the guard said.

Celestine turned away. When the man had returned to the jeep and the vehicle had moved off in a southerly direction, she said, ‘I hate them. They’re always nearby. Even when I can’t see them, I feel them.’

‘Why are they here?’ Cairney asked.

‘Harry’s idea. He mumbled something about protecting his valuables. He thinks somebody is going to rob this place. I pretend the security goons don’t bother me. But they’re a nuisance.’

She moved along the shore. Cairney followed. The moon broke free from clouds and showered the lake with silver. Celestine stopped, turned to him, laid a hand on his arm.

‘The trouble with your father is he thinks he’s a young man all over again,’ she said. ‘He thinks he can do all the things he used to do when he was in his twenties. I can’t get him to stay in bed. He won’t follow his physician’s orders.’ She sighed. She dropped her hand to her side. ‘I’m tired of telling him things for his own good.’

‘He’s a stubborn man,’ Cairney said.

‘Maybe he’d listen to you,’ she said.

‘I doubt it. The Senator’s never been much of a listener.’

‘Why do you call him that?’ she asked.

‘The Senator?’ Cairney shrugged. ‘I’m not absolutely sure. I guess I’ve always thought of him that way. The Senator from New York.’

‘It’s just the way you say it. It’s almost as if you resent the sound of the word. Or the man behind it.’

‘I don’t resent him,’ Cairney replied. ‘And I don’t mean to sound that way either.’ He paused now, listening to the rustle of some night creature foraging nearby. If you listened closely, as he always did, even the most superficially placid nights were alive with undercurrents of noise. Resentment, he thought. That was only a part of it. It was more, the sense of being locked constantly in a relationship that was composed of conflicting emotions. Pity and love. Annoyance and admiration. It was a deep conflict and there were times – especially in Ireland, where he felt as if he were stalked by the ghost of Harry Cairney’s younger self, a spectre who had the knowledgeable persistence of a tourist guide – when it twisted inside him with the certainty of a knife.

Celestine turned her face around to him just as the moon poked through cloud again. Staring at her, looking at the moonlight in her hair and the shadows under her cheekbones and the silvery flecks in her eyes, Cairney felt a little flicker of attraction that he pushed away almost as soon as it touched him. He moved back from Celestine. Your stepmother, for God’s sake. Your father’s wife. He wondered if she’d noticed, if his expression had betrayed anything. He was annoyed with himself. He didn’t like unwanted feelings coming up out of nowhere and startling him. They suggested hidden places inside himself that he didn’t know about, unmapped territory within his own psyche.

She went on talking about Harry’s health. How his bronchial condition had recently worsened. How sometimes in the night she’d sit listening to his breathing, actually waiting in dread for the sound to stop. Cairney was hardly listening. Her words swept past him. He wanted to go back indoors. Get out of this moonlight, which was affecting him in uncomfortable ways. He shivered and looked towards the house. He thought of his father asleep in the upstairs bedroom.

‘I don’t want anything to happen to him,’ she said.

‘He’s made of old shoe leather,’ Cairney said. ‘As a kid, I used to think he was indestructible.’

‘That’s the trouble, Patrick. He isn’t.’

Cairney was silent. He put his hands into the pockets of his coat. A wind rose off Roscommon Lake. Cairney started to move in the direction of the house. Celestine followed.

‘You’re tired,’ she said.

‘A little.’

They walked back. Celestine paused on the steps of the house. Cairney, who had reached the door, looked back down at her.

She said, ‘I don’t want to lose him, Patrick. But Tully says his lungs are badly congested. This last bronchial attack really hit him where it hurts.’

Cairney didn’t say anything. He gazed at the expression of concern on Celestine’s face. He wanted to reach out and comfort her. Instead, he ushered her inside the entrance room, where it was warm.

Celestine removed her fur jacket. ‘At least there’s one consolation, Patrick. His doctor says he has shad been a heart like an ox. That’s something.’

Cairney smiled. ‘What do you expect? It’s a good Irish heart. They don’t make them that way anymore.’

Celestine laughed. She pushed open the door that led to the sitting room. She hesitated in the doorway a moment, watching Cairney’s face. Then she said, ‘Let’s have a nightcap.’

The White House, Washington D.C.

Thomas Dawson, President of the United States, former senator from Connecticut, ate only yoghurt and raisins for his evening meal. He had a phobia about putting on weight, and he monitored his caloric intake carefully, using a small calculator he carried with him everywhere. He stuck his plastic spoon inside his yoghurt carton and sat back in his chair, punching the buttons of his calculator.

When he was through he looked up at his brother Kevin, who was standing on the other side of the desk. Kevin was pale and nervous and his voice a little higher than usual on this particular evening. With damn good reason, the President thought.

Thomas Dawson stood up. He fixed Kevin with the Dawson Grin, which had been patented years before during the first Senate campaign. It was a bright expression suggesting honesty and easy confidence. It appealed to women and it didn’t threaten men, and it was perhaps the most important expression any politician could be blessed with, attractive and unmenacing. It was the smile of a man from whom you would buy a used car and go home feeling good about it, and you’d never think to complain when it started to leak oil on the second day.

‘Kevin,’ he said, using the tone of one brother to another, reassuring and almost conspiratorial.

Kevin Dawson shifted his feet. Whenever he visited his brother in the Oval Office, he felt the weight of history pressing down on him, and he was overawed like a schoolboy. Jesus, this was his own brother! They’d been brought up together, played together, shared a bedroom – and he could hardly talk to the man! Even now, when he’d come here to speak about his fears and look for a little support, words hadn’t come easily. This meekness, which often took the form of a rather elaborate politeness, had long been the fatal flaw in his character. He was a man who found it easy to be overcome, whose arguments were always the first to be swept aside in any debate. Sometimes he wished he had the heart for confronting the world face on.

‘The Irish question’s a delicate one for me,’ Thomas Dawson said. ‘My general policy, at least in public, has been to ignore it. Leave it to the British. We pump in a few bucks to Belfast every now and then, and we do considerable trade with Dublin. But we don’t play favourites. Don’t take sides. Keep everybody happy. It’s a balancing act and it’s goddam tricky.’

Kevin Dawson watched his brother come around the large desk. He reflected on the fact that the politics of the presidency changed a man. Thomas Dawson had become sombre, more serious, and at the same time somewhat devious. Even the Dawson Grin seemed jaded, little more than a reflex.

‘Privately, it’s another matter. You know that as well as anyone, Kevin. God, it’s only been a hundred years since old Noel Dawson sailed from Killarney. How could I not feel some kind of attachment to the old country? How could I not take sides?’ The President smiled sadly. ‘The trouble is, I’m not a private person any more. It’s one of the first things you find out in this job. Every damn thing you do is public. Even my diet, Kevin. I had a publisher offer me a ridiculous sum of money for my goddam diet! Can you imagine that? Wanted to call it the White House Diet or some such thing.’

He spread his hands on the desk. Finely manicured nails glinted under the green lampshade. ‘Consider this, Kevin. There’s a large Irish vote out there. Right now, I have it in my pocket the way no American president outside of Kennedy ever had it. I can count on it and that’s a nice feeling in politics because usually the only thing you can take for granted is the electorate being fickle.’ The President sat up on the edge of his desk and played with the empty yoghurt carton. ‘I’d be pretty damn stupid to screw around with this support. It would be suicidal to alienate it.’

Kevin Dawson bit the inside of his cheek. What was his brother trying to tell him? He remembered Thomas Dawson when he’d been plain old Tommy, eighteen years of age and a halfway decent quarterback at Princeton. Simple unadulterated Tommy, without a devious bone in his body. He failed to make the connection between the President and that young man who had loved nothing more than football, beer, and cheerleaders, in any order you liked. Now Thomas Dawson watched his weight, didn’t drink beer, paid no attention to football, and – instead of dallying with cheerleaders – was married to a glacial woman called Eleanor, who was always travelling the country in her relentless and entirely manic crusade against the indiscriminate dumping of radioactive wastes. Mrs. Radioactivity, Kevin thought. Eleanor Dawson was an ice princess, a woman with all the sexual charm of cake frosting. Kevin could never imagine his brother in bed with her. With her high cheekbones and her fashionable demeanour and the calm way she handled herself with press and public, she was an absolutely perfect wife for a president.

Thomas Dawson examined his fingernails. ‘I’ve always turned a blind eye to your little gang of fundraisers, Kevin. I’ve always considered that side of you your own private business. Despite the potential embarrassment you represent, I’ve never told you what to do. Have I?’

Kevin Dawson shook his head.

‘I’ve let you run as you please,’ the President said. He reached out and clapped his brother on the shoulder and all at once Kevin Dawson was sixteen years old again, confiding to his big brother that he’d gotten a girl into trouble and what the hell should he do about it. He felt small.

The President sat down behind his desk. He had a red-covered folder in front of him. He flipped it open. ‘Maybe I should have kept a firmer hand on you,’ he said. He shrugged, stared at the several sheets of paper inside the folder. ‘And now you come here and tell me that some Irishman might be a menace to your life. Which wouldn’t have been the case if you’d quit hanging around with those Irish fanatics.’ The President was careful enough not to name them, even if he knew who they were. His was a life of sometimes pretending ignorance of things he knew. It was a way of thinking in which he became two distinct people, and then two more, splitting and multiplying his personalities like some primitive cell.

‘Yes,’ Kevin Dawson said quietly. His face assumed an expression of regret. His cheeks sagged and his lips turned down and his eyes seemed to shrink into his head.

The President said, ‘The problem is, he’s not just some Irishman, Kevin. The man who’s got you steamed up is none other than Jig. Ring a bell?’

‘Jig?’ Kevin’s throat constricted. ‘They sent Jig?’

The President nodded his head. ‘I’m told he entered the United States within the last forty-eight hours, give or take a few. He’s suspected to be in the New York City area. We’re not sure.’

Kevin Dawson sat down, something he didn’t usually do in this particular office. He felt something very cold settle on his heart. He stared at his brother, as if he were expecting the President to tell him that he’d been joking about Jig, but Thomas Dawson’s expression didn’t change and the seriousness in his eyes didn’t go away. Kevin realised that a small nerve had begun to beat in his throat and his hands were suddenly trembling. In a million years he could never have imagined Jig’s orbit touching his own. What the hell did his life have to do with that of the famous Irish assassin? They were worlds apart. But here was Thomas Dawson telling him otherwise. Kevin closed his eyes. ‘You’re not sure?’ he asked. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

The President was quiet for a long time. ‘I’ve been trying to explain something to you, Kevin. I’ve been trying to instruct you in the realities of my position.’

Realities, Kevin Dawson thought. The only reality that concerned him right then was the notion of Jig lurking out there in the shadows of his life. It had been bad enough to imagine a faceless Irishman, but now that this figure had been identified, it was much worse. For the first time since he’d become associated with the Fundraisers he felt a sense of fear. He tried to remember Jock Mulhaney’s reassurances about how this Irishman would never find them in any case, but how could the big man’s bluster console him now? Even Harry Cairney hadn’t seemed very convinced that the group’s anonymity was inviolate. Cairney had given the opposite impression, that the secrecy in which the group had always operated was goddam fragile. Kevin Dawson leaned forward in his chair, clenching his hands between his knees. ‘You must be doing something to catch this guy, Tom.’

Thomas Dawson closed the red-covered file. ‘You’re not listening to me. You’re not paying attention. Jig’s become something of a folk hero in every Irish bar from Boston to Philadelphia and back again. They sing songs about him. They adulate him. He’s the Irish Pimpernel, Kevin. And you know how the Irish love their heroes. The daring of the man. The mystery. He kills English politicians and disappears as if he doesn’t exist! They just adore all that. He’s been written up in Newsweek and Time. The guy’s a goddam saviour as far as the Irish are concerned.’

Kevin Dawson watched his brother stroll round the office. It dawned on him now. ‘You’re not going out of your way to catch him, is that it? You’re going to give this killer a free rein. Are you telling me that?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘I’m lost, Tommy. Enlighten me.’

‘The votes,’ Thomas Dawson said. ‘If I place myself firmly behind a massive effort to catch this man, how are the votes going to go? How are the Irish going to mark their ballots next time around? Are they going to pull their little levers for the man who approved of a massive manhunt to catch their hero?’ He looked at his younger brother seriously. ‘I have a number of promises to keep while I occupy this office. And the only currency a president has is the vote of the people. In my case, Kevin, the Irish–American community constitutes a sizeable proportion of that vote. It’s like having money in the bank. And I don’t want to squander it. I don’t want to take the risk of tossing it all away. Have you seen the opinion polls lately, Kevin? It seems like I’m having what the pros call an image problem. Some people out there perceive their President as a man who doesn’t make decisions quickly enough. I don’t like that.’

Kevin Dawson didn’t speak. He heard the sound of a door closing at the back of his brain.

‘I’m not going to give them a martyr, Kevin. I’m not going to be the one to take their folk hero away from them.’ Thomas Dawson looked up at the ceiling. When he spoke again his voice was low. ‘Besides, it’s my understanding he’s only looking for the men in your little group, Kevin. It’s not as if he’s a threat to the population at large, who don’t even know the man’s in the country. And I intend to keep it that way.’

Kevin Dawson shook his head. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’

‘Try,’ the President said. ‘Try a little harder.’

‘You’ll sit here and do absolutely nothing about him?’

‘I didn’t say that, Kevin. At this moment there’s an English agent called Frank Pagan in New York City who’s getting some assistance from the FBI.’

‘How much is “some”?’ Kevin asked.

The President shrugged. ‘Just enough.’

Kevin Dawson tried to see inside his brother’s head. There was a cynical balance sheet in that skull. The President was weighing four men, one of whom was his own brother, against his precious Irish–American vote. ‘Doesn’t it matter to you that my life might be in danger? Jig kills people, for Christ’s sake! It’s his profession. And they aren’t sending a professional assassin from Ireland for the good of his goddam health. If he doesn’t recover the money …’ He didn’t finish this sentence.

‘I don’t think for one moment that Jig is going to find you. I know how your little gang covers its tracks.’

‘Yeah, I keep hearing how good we are at secrecy,’ Kevin Dawson said. ‘Pardon me if I’m not convinced.’

Thomas Dawson laid a hand on his brother’s arm. ‘I’m prepared to put a couple of Secret Service agents at your disposal.’

Kevin Dawson looked at his brother. For a moment the touch of the President’s hand on his arm reminded him of the man he used to have as a brother, when life had been carefree and political ambition hadn’t taken total control of Tommy’s personality. ‘I’ve got a Secret Service agent already,’ he said.

‘One man who does nothing but escort your daughters to school,’ the President said. ‘You need your protection beefed up, Kevin. And you’ll have it before the end of the night.’

Kevin Dawson looked suitably grateful. ‘Suppose this Frank Pagan character gets lucky? Suppose he captures Jig? What will you do with the guy if you catch him?’

‘I don’t think I can answer that.’

‘A Jimmy Hoffa style disappearance? The Irish hero simply vanishes off the face of the earth and nobody knows where or why?’

The President didn’t answer his brother’s questions. He sat back down behind his desk and put the red file inside a drawer. ‘Let me ask you something, Kev. Who really took the money from that ship?’

‘I haven’t got a clue.’

‘No ideas?’

Kevin Dawson shrugged. It was a question he’d asked himself frequently. His immediate impulse was to suspect Mulhaney, but this was totally unfair, a suspicion motivated by a personal dislike for the man. It could have been Mulhaney. It could have been Linney. Even Harry Cairney. The problem was that all four men, himself included, would come under Jig’s suspicion. What if Jig somehow reached the conclusion that he, Kevin Dawson, was responsible for the affair? What if Jig got to Mulhaney, say, and Big Jock, to divert suspicion from himself, managed to convince the Irishman that the guilty party was Dawson? Kevin Dawson’s fear intensified. Suspicions created other suspicions. Possibilities led to other possibilities. He had the feeling of a man locked within a complex hall of mirrors, images reflecting themselves to an inscrutable infinity so that you could never find the true source of them. And there was no way out. He didn’t like thinking this way, didn’t like the panic rising in him.

The President placed his feet up on the desk and crumbled his empty yoghurt carton, flipping it towards a wastebasket. ‘If there’s a next time, Kevin, you ought to be a tad more careful.’

‘I don’t think there will be a next time,’ Kevin Dawson said.

He went towards the door. He thought of going out into the darkness of the city and the prospect didn’t appeal to him. Despite its floodlights, its illuminated tourist attractions, Washington was a city of too many dark places.

‘What about the others?’ he asked, turning in the doorway.

‘Others?’

‘My associates. I don’t imagine they can count on your protection as well.’

‘They’re not exactly my blood relations, are they?’

There was a small indifferent light in Thomas Dawson’s eyes. Callous, Kevin thought. Maybe that came with the territory. With the subterfuges of the office. The great numbers game the President played. The numbers justified anything. Everything.

Kevin Dawson opened the door.

The President said, ‘Two things, Kevin. The first, you don’t mention Jig to any of your … associates. So far as I’m concerned, Jig isn’t in this country. I don’t want anybody saying otherwise.’

‘What’s the second?’ Kevin Dawson asked.

‘We never had this conversation.’

St. Bernard des Bois, Quebec

The Ryder truck was parked in the forecourt of a gas station. Fitzjohn sat behind the wheel. The other men in the cab were Houlihan and Waddell. Rorke and McGrath travelled in the back with the cargo that had been unloaded from the DC-4. Houlihan squinted through the windshield at the unlit gasoline sign that hung like a small deflated moon over the pumps, then he glanced at his watch.

‘Am I right, Fitz? Is it seven-thirty in New York City?’

Fitzjohn looked at his Rolex and nodded.

‘All these bloody time zones confuse the hell out of a man,’ Houlihan said. He slumped back in his seat and closed his eyes. ‘Let’s hear about the route, Fitz.’

Fitzjohn stared at the sign in the gas-station window, which read FERMÉ/CLOSED. He was still thinking about what had happened at the airfield, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get rid of the images. The weird look on Houlihan’s face. The dead bodies of the pilots. In fucking cold blood, without even so much as a blink of an eye. Houlihan hadn’t mentioned the incident since they’d left the airstrip. It was over and done with. Already ancient history. Two dead airmen whose only crime, so far as Fitzjohn could tell, was that Houlihan hadn’t trusted them. Seamus Houlihan, judge and jury and executioner, all rolled into one.

‘There’s an old road twelve miles from here,’ he said without turning to Houlihan. He couldn’t look at the man. ‘It’s a dirt road that leads to a fishery. The fishery’s closed this time of the year because of the weather, which suits us fine. Nobody travels that way.’

‘And where does your road lead?’ Houlihan asked.

‘Beyond the fishery, it turns into a narrow path that goes between some trees, then it passes an abandoned farmhouse. There are fields after that.’

‘Open fields?’

Fitzjohn nodded. ‘We cross the fields for about two miles. On the other side there’s a track that comes out just north of Highway Twenty-seven.’

‘Highway Twenty-seven?’ Houlihan opened his eyes. ‘That doesn’t mean a thing to me, Fitz.’

‘It’s in the State of Maine.’

‘What about the Border Patrol?’ Waddell spoke for the first time since they’d left the airfield. He’d become pale and totally withdrawn, gazing speechlessly out of the window for mile after mile. He moved only when he lit cigarettes, chain-smoking them in silence. His brown-stained fingers trembled in his lap.

‘The nearest port of entry is at a place called Coburn-Gore. It’s about two miles away from the spot where we join Highway Twenty-seven. I don’t think we’re likely to encounter any Border Patrol.’ Fitzjohn paused. ‘It’s not as if we’re coming in from Mexico, after all. The Border Patrol down there are fanatics. Anyway, this truck has New Jersey plates, and that helps.’

Houlihan asked, ‘Can we get across the fields without getting stuck?’

Fitzjohn said, ‘I don’t see why not. The snow’s hard and there haven’t been any fresh falls in more than a week.’

‘And this Highway Twenty-seven, where does it lead us?’

‘All the way to Interstate Nine-five.’

Nobody spoke for a time. Fitzjohn could hardly wait to get inside the U.S., because it meant he would leave the truck to Houlihan and the others, then make his way back to New Jersey. Relief. An end to this damned business as far as he was concerned. He didn’t want to know what Houlihan planned to do in America. He didn’t need to have that kind of knowledge.

‘I’ve got a phone call to make,’ Houlihan said.

Houlihan climbed out of the cab. He moved across the forecourt of the gas station, then went inside the phone booth and picked up the receiver.

Fitzjohn watched him from the cab. He was about to say to Waddell that he thought Seamus Houlihan might benefit from being locked up in a padded room, but why bother? For one thing, Waddell might take it into his head to pass such a remark on to Houlihan, which wasn’t a marvellous prospect. For another, everybody involved in this escapade had to be a little mad, himself included. Except Houlihan was more than that. He was lethal.