14

New York City

In his room at the Essex House Ivor McInnes woke at seven-thirty A.M. as he usually did. He shaved and showered and had breakfast sent up by room service. He ate at the window, chewing on streaky pieces of what passed for bacon in America, pausing every now and then to look in the direction of Central Park. He perused The New York Times casually, then set it aside and continued to gaze out into the park. He drank several cups of coffee, then left his room and rode the elevator down into the lobby where he wandered towards the telephones.

Today, he thought, would have to be spent in the New York Public Library. Taking notes, reading, satisfying those morons at the State Department on the chance that he was being observed. He glanced across the crowded lobby before he dialled the number in White Plains. He punched in a handful of change at the operator’s request and after a moment he heard a voice saying, ‘Memorial Presbyterian Church. This is the Reverend Duncanson speaking.’

‘I would like to know the times of your Sunday services,’ McInnes said.

‘Seven A.M. and ten,’ Duncanson answered. He had a firm oratorial voice, a voice made for pulpits. ‘I can tell from your accent you’re a long way from home. Do you want to attend one of our services?’

‘I’d like to,’ McInnes answered.

‘We always welcome guests at Memorial. Especially those from overseas.’

A nice man, McInnes thought. A decent man. ‘Which is the more popular service?’ he asked.

Duncanson laughed quietly. ‘Oddly enough, my congregation prefers the sunrise service. They tell me my sermon is more mellow at that time of day. Can we expect you?’

‘You can.’

‘Introduce yourself to me after,’ Duncanson said. ‘I know your lovely country well.’ He paused a moment. ‘My text this coming Sunday is John, chapter one, verse nine.’

‘Ah,’ McInnes said. ‘“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”’

‘You know your Bible,’ Duncanson said.

‘Some of it,’ Ivor McInnes answered.

When he’d hung up he stood in the lobby for a time and rattled coins in the pockets of his pants. The Memorial Presbyterian Church, which he had visited during his last trip to the U.S.A. in 1983, was one of those picture-postcard American churches, white framed and steepled and looking as if it were a Norman Rockwell construct. Its congregation was rich and influential, consisting mainly of well-heeled commuters who held executive positions in New York City. It was a hive of the American WASP. Unlike his own church in the Shankill district of Belfast, Memorial Presbyterian would never have any difficulty raising funds for new pews or a stained-glass window or an elaborate organ.

He rode the elevator back up to the seventeenth floor, still caressing the coins in his pockets. He strolled along the corridor to his room. When he saw the two men framed against the window at the end of the corridor he didn’t break his stride. Instead, he took out his room key and inserted it into the lock of the door as the pair approached him. He turned to look at them. He had met Frank Pagan briefly once before, during an Irish peace conference in Westminster in the winter of 1984. Pagan had talked that day about the need for cooperation between the law enforcement agencies of both Irelands, if terrorism was ever to be destroyed. A touching little speech, McInnes had thought at the time. Liberal, fair-minded and totally impractical. He remembered now how the conference had broken down into a shambles, a slanging match between himself and the bishop of Dublin, who’d droned on for hours about the violation of Catholic civil rights in Ulster. McInnes had always regarded the bishop as a cousin of the Prince of Darkness anyway.

‘Frank Pagan! This is a surprise,’ McInnes said, suppressing the terrible temptation to ask Pagan if he’d had any luck in catching up with Jig. There were moments in McInnes’s life when he had to struggle fiercely with his sense of mischief, and this was one of them. He wondered if he looked suitably surprised by Pagan’s appearance.

Frank Pagan had the kind of face that was difficult to read. He’d be a hell of a man to play cards against, McInnes thought. He stared into Pagan’s grey eyes, which reminded him of cinders.

‘This is Arthur Zuboric,’ Pagan said. ‘FBI.’

The suntanned man with the drooping moustache nodded his head. McInnes looked at him a second, then back to Pagan.

‘What brings you to New York City?’ McInnes asked. He stepped into his room and the two men followed him.

‘Funny,’ Pagan said. ‘You took the words right out of my mouth, Ivor.’

McInnes sat in the armchair by the window. ‘You must know why I’m here,’ he said. ‘Your bloody people in London know just about everything.’

‘I understand you’re writing a book,’ Pagan said.

‘Correct.’ McInnes noticed a muscle working in the Englishman’s jaw.

Pagan smiled. ‘What’s the title?’

‘I haven’t made up my mind yet.’ McInnes saw the FBI man move to the window where he slid the curtain back and looked out, as if he suspected all manner of nefarious events to be taking place in Central Park.

Pagan picked up a Gideon Bible and flipped the pages for a time. McInnes drummed the tips of his fingers against the table. He was ready for anything Frank Pagan might ask.

‘You know, of course, that I’m looking for Jig.’

‘Now how would I know something like that?’ McInnes, like any good actor, had all kinds of facial expressions at his command. The one he chose to assume right then was innocence. His large eyelids rose and his eyes widened.

‘Because my information came from you, courtesy of that merry band of yours, the Free Ulster Volunteers.’

‘Because members of the FUV belonged to my former congregation, Frank, doesn’t mean I’m a card-carrying member myself,’ McInnes said. ‘I categorically deny any association with that organisation, and I challenge you to prove otherwise. I don’t deny knowing members of the FUV, Frank. It would be difficult not to. But as for myself, I’ve always steered clear of involvement.’

‘Ivor, Ivor.’ Pagan sighed. ‘I didn’t just come up the Thames on a water biscuit. I wasn’t exactly born yesterday. You, or a representative of yours called John Waddell, sent the Leprechaun to see me in London with the information that Jig had come to the U.S.A.’

‘The Leprechaun?’ McInnes stood up. He looked at Zuboric and said, ‘Your English friend here has a fanciful imagination. Next thing he’ll be telling me he converses with gnomes and counts elves among his dearest chums.’

‘You’re a droll fellow, Ivor,’ Pagan said.

McInnes laughed again, a big throaty sound. It was as if he had an untuned accordion lodged in his larynx. ‘As for John Waddell, well, you’ve lost me.’

‘How did you find out Jig was coming to America, Ivor?’

‘You’re barking up the wrong tree.’

‘I don’t really think so,’ Pagan said. ‘Every time the Free Ulster Volunteers move, it’s because you’re sitting backstage pulling their strings.’

‘You’re on shaky ground, Frank.’

McInnes gazed at the blank TV. For a moment he considered the complicated mosaic of this whole operation, and it filled him with a dizzy sense of achievement. It had taken three years to get this far, three years planning and scheming and infiltrating and carefully sliding each delicate part into its correct place. And now, even with Pagan and his American sidekick in his hotel room, he could almost taste the triumph in everything that had been assembled. In a life filled with strife and dissension and disappointment, victory was a new flavour for him and he enjoyed it. What he also enjoyed was playing a little game with Frank Pagan, who was labouring in a blind place indeed.

‘Did you come to my hotel just to harangue me, Frank?’ he asked. ‘Did you come here to make false accusations?’

Pagan rose from the bed. ‘I’ve got a problem, Ivor. Let me see if I can explain it to you. First, I get this snippet of information about Jig. No matter how hard you deny it, I know it comes from you. The horse’s mouth. I get on a plane. Voilà. New York. Second, as coincidence would have it, I find my old pal Ivor in the same city, researching a book. I don’t put a lot of faith in coincidence, Ivor, and since I’ve had the miserable fortune actually to struggle through some of your writing in pamphlet form, I don’t put much faith in your literary talents either. Do you see where I’m going?’

McInnes shook his head. ‘You’re still barking, Frank.’

‘Something’s going on. Something’s happening.’ Pagan’s eyes, which McInnes had thought cindery before, appeared to have caught fire.

Ivor McInnes looked out at Central Park. A watery sun, the colour of sulphur, hung over bare trees. He had a sudden image of the girl in the Hotel Strasbourg, and he felt a weird little outbreak of guilt at the memory. It was one of the drawbacks of Presbyterianism, this smothering guilt that sometimes attacked you unawares.

‘Check with my publisher if you want to know about my book, Frank,’ he said. ‘I’m sure he’d tell you the book’s no sham.’

Pagan glanced at his wristwatch, then looked in the direction of the FBI man, whose silence had been faintly disturbing to McInnes. After a lifetime of speechmaking and pulpit thumping, McInnes abhorred silences.

McInnes said, ‘I hope you find your man, Frank. Jig’s a bloody menace to peaceful people everywhere. Especially to the Loyalists in Ireland. If he keeps killing, the British are going to think very carefully about the cost of maintaining a presence in the province. And what would happen to the Loyalists then?’

‘What exactly are you loyal to?’ Pagan asked. ‘Enlighten me.’

‘Queen and country of course,’ McInnes replied.

Your patriotism’s touching. But you left something out, Ivor.’

‘What?’

‘Your forgot your overriding loyalty, didn’t you? The only one in your life. To yourself. To Ivor McInnes. That’s the only true allegiance you understand.’

‘Frank, Frank,’ McInnes said, his voice filled with the weariness of a man who is tired of being vilified unjustly. ‘You’re beginning to believe all the things you read about me in the newspapers. I credited you with more sense than that, my friend. Aren’t you being just a trifle hasty in your character assassination? Besides, you forget something. Something important.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We’re on the same side. We both want to see Jig behind bars, don’t we? We both want to see an end to IRA terrorism, don’t we? You forget, Frank, that I’m an ardent supporter of the government you work for. You shouldn’t let something that bloody important slip your mind. Whether you like it or not, we’re allies.’ And here McInnes placed one of his large hands on Pagan’s shoulder and squeezed it in a confidential way.

Frank Pagan stared at McInnes. His face was hard and cold again, and there was a distance in his eyes. McInnes wondered about the reservoirs of anger inside the man. He let his hand drop to his side.

‘You overlook a major difference,’ Pagan said, his voice flat, words clipped. ‘I don’t play on bigotry and fear, McInnes. I don’t incite people to meaningless acts of violence. And I don’t use scum like the Free Ulster Volunteers to do my dirty work for me.’

McInnes, who realised he’d struck a vibrant chord here, simply shrugged. ‘I’ve been accused of bigotry before, Frank, and I daresay I’ll be accused again. I challenge you to find anything in my speeches or my writing to support that charge. You’ll find that nowhere have I ever uttered or written a single word that could justifiably be construed as bigotry. What I have done, and what I’ll continue to do’ – and here McInnes flashed his widest smile – ‘is to criticise the policies of the Roman Catholic Church, which I consider an impediment to any kind of progress. You look at any poor country, you’ll find the Catholic Church somewhere in the picture. You look at any poor country racked by a runaway birthrate and you’ll find priests and nuns holding total dominion over the peasants. The Vatican doesn’t want adherents and converts, it wants prisoners. It wants people who are scared to ask questions. It wants numbers, and it dangles the threat of excommunication over anybody who has the guts to ask straightforward questions. Take something dead simple, Frank. Take your average parish priest. What in the name of God does he know about women and marriage and raising children? Nothing! He leads a celibate life, with his head stuck up his arse. And yet he’s the man who’s supposed to give guidance to people whose marriages are falling apart or husbands who are impotent? It’s this same church that has kept the Republic of Ireland in bondage for centuries, with its censorship and its damned laws of contraception and its attitude to divorce.’

McInnes paused now. His voice, which had been kept at a constant, restrained pitch, had filled the small hotel room like air blown into a balloon. ‘It’s the same church that has been behind the troubles in Ulster. Do you think Ulster would be in its present pitiful condition if the Catholic Church weren’t there? We’re an impoverished, backward society, Frank. We should be in the vanguard of European life, but instead what do we get? Bloody handouts from British politicians. A little charity from Westminster. And you can say what you like about the FUV, Frank, but it’s people like them that keep the Catholic IRA from turning Northern Ireland into a complete bloodbath.’

Pagan shook his head. There was something just a little mesmerising about McInnes when he was in full flight. He could make even the most irrational arguments sound forcibly convincing. What you had to do when you confronted Ivor was to keep in mind that his arguments appealed only to unanalytical audiences already predisposed to his point of view. If you didn’t, you ran the risk of having your head addled. He was annoyed with himself for having allowed Ivor to launch into a speech. He was also annoyed that his own composure was slipping. ‘You make the FUV sound like a peacekeeping force. What’s your big dream, McInnes? A Nobel Peace Prize?’

McInnes was determined not to be drawn by insults. He found it remarkable how blind Frank Pagan could be. Why didn’t the man accept the fact that they were both on the same side when you got right down to it? What was so difficult about that notion?

‘My aim’s simple,’ McInnes said. ‘I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again. I want an end to the IRA. Can you deny you want the same thing?’

‘The problem with talking to somebody like you is the feeling I get of hammering my head against a bloody great brick wall,’ Pagan said. ‘You have a bad habit, Ivor, of twisting things around so that they’ll fit your thesis.’

‘You didn’t answer my question, Frank.’

‘Okay. I don’t deny it. I want to see terrorism finished. But are you sure that’s what you really want?’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘It’s simple. Without having the Catholics and the IRA to rant about, what would you do with your time, Ivor? Just think how bloody bored you’d be.’

McInnes smiled. ‘Bored but at peace, Frank.’

Pagan looked at his wristwatch. ‘It’s been fun talking to you and I’m sorry we have to run. In the meantime, Ivor, keep out of trouble and try to have a nice day.’

‘I always have nice days,’ McInnes said.

He watched Pagan close the door quietly. Alone, he moved to the window and saw two brightly dressed joggers pounding through Central Park. He placed the palm of his hand upon the glass, leaving a print. Pagan, of course, was mistaken. Without the IRA, the Catholics in the North would have no real protection, which meant they would migrate to the South – that medieval, Church-choked country where they belonged – leaving Ulster in the hands of Protestants. And McInnes, whose vision encompassed an Ulster free of sectarian violence, would have a major role to play in the formation of this shining new society. It was really very simple. There would be a great many things to keep him occupied in the future.

He put on his overcoat. He’d spend the afternoon in the public library, leafing through old records and documents and making sure he took notes conscientiously. It would be difficult, though. He knew his mind would keep drifting to the Memorial Presbyterian Church in White Plains.

Sunday at seven. Two days from now. The first step. He felt suddenly excited and anxious. It had been a long road, and it had been filled with deprivation for him. But now at least, he could read the signs along the way. He put his hand on the telephone but then drew it away again quickly. This urge to speak, to make contact, to utter aloud the excitement he felt – he had to let it subside. To make any kind of contact now would be to break rules. And the rules had been observed stringently ever since the beginning. Even in times of the utmost difficulty.

He stepped out into the corridor just in time to see Frank Pagan and Zuboric get into the elevator. Pagan looked briefly in his direction, raised a hand in the air, then the elevator doors slid shut behind him.

Frank Pagan was depressed in the thrift shop. Old clothing had its own peculiar smell, reminiscent of locked attics and damp chests filled with mouldering papers. It wasn’t the sleazy ambience of the store that brought him down, though. It was the encounter with McInnes. To be drawn into an argument with Ivor was like trying to do a butterfly stroke in a small bathtub. You never got anywhere.

Pagan picked out a very old black overcoat and tried it on. He turned to Artie Zuboric. ‘How do I look?’

‘Sensational,’ Zuboric said. He found an enormous Hawaiian shirt, which might have housed the entire Barnum and Bailey Circus. He examined the pattern, a nightmare of pineapples and Venus flytraps.

Pagan took off the overcoat. It wasn’t grubby enough for St. Finbar’s. He found a more likely garment on the next rack, an old raincoat with tattered epaulettes and faded stains tattooing the sleeves.

Frank Pagan tried on the raincoat. He wandered towards a cracked wall mirror at the far end of the store and stared at his own reflection. ‘The trouble with Ivor is he shapes the world to suit himself. It’s a common trait among megalomaniacs.’

Zuboric lifted a red and black checked suit from a rack and held it up. He’d seen another side of Frank Pagan in the room at the Essex House. He’d caught the distinct vibrations of the man’s capacity for anger. It was enjoyable to see the fault lines in Pagan’s surface. ‘Are you on the same side, Frank?’

Frank Pagan turned away from his reflection and looked at Zuboric, wondering if the agent was trying to goad him. ‘The Irish problem turns up some strange companions,’ he said. ‘Maybe McInnes and I have a common enemy. And maybe our goals overlap. But what McInnes loves is strife. He feeds on it. If there wasn’t any trouble, he’d go out and manufacture some.’

‘He says he’s writing a book –’

Pagan snorted. ‘McInnes spews out pamphlets that make The Protocols of the Elders of Zion seem positively charitable. If you’ve ever got a few minutes to waste and you want some insight into Ivor’s mind, I suggest you read the one entitled The Roman Catholic Conspiracy in Northern Ireland. In that priceless work he actually advocates sterilisation for the Roman Catholic women of Ulster after they’ve had two babies. So the idea of him writing a book is fucking laughable. Unless he’s found a publisher who specialises in madness. Which isn’t altogether an impossibility.’

Zuboric said, ‘So what’s he doing here then?’

Pagan shrugged. ‘I wish I knew. The only thing I know for certain is I don’t trust him. And I don’t trust the coincidence of him being here. What you have to keep remembering about Ivor is that he’s clever and he’s cunning. You might disagree with the things he says, but you don’t underestimate him. And there are thousands of people in Ulster who agree with his every word. That kind of support shouldn’t be overlooked either.’

‘You said he was involved with the Free Ulster Volunteers. He denied that. What’s the score there?’

‘We’ve had him watched and we’ve had him followed, and we’ve never been able to pin that connection on him directly. The chances are that he’s behind the FUV, but he’s very careful. If he ever makes contact with them, we don’t know about it. I’ve got sources that say he meets with FUV members secretly, but when it comes down to documented proof, I can never get my hands on any. I work on the assumption that he’s the leader, but I can’t guarantee it.’ Pagan paused a second, casting an eye round the store. ‘Ulster’s filled with secrets. And Ivor knows a whole lot of them, but he isn’t telling.’

Zuboric watched Pagan plunge into a mountain of old shoes now. There was footwear of every variety. Sandals, battered slippers, two-tone horrors, beat-up climbing boots. A sweaty odour arose from the heap. There was no way in the world he’d try on any of the shoes himself, but Pagan, who’d already removed his own casual leather jobs, was plucking a dilapidated pair of brown brogues from the heap. He sat on the floor and placed one of the shoes on his left foot. He suddenly reminded Zuboric of a kid getting dressed up for Halloween. He had this quality of enthusiasm.

‘Fine, don’t you think?’ Pagan asked.

‘Yeah. Terrific.’

‘Now I need a shirt and a pair of trousers.’ Pagan wandered off to another pile of clothing and Zuboric followed. Pagan chose an antique flannel shirt that was missing several buttons. The cuffs were frayed. Pants next, a pair of crumpled old flannels with enormous fly buttons and broken belt loops. When he had his wardrobe assembled Pagan said, ‘It’s a pity about that suntan of yours.’

Zuboric was unhappy with the notion of Pagan infiltrating St. Finbar’s. At first, Artie had wanted to dress up the way Pagan was planning to do, and position himself inside the soup kitchen dressed as one of its clientele. But this notion had disintegrated as soon as he’d tried on an old tweed coat and looked at himself in the mirror. There was absolutely no way he could pass himself off as a derelict with a complexion as healthy as his. He looked too good to carry off a charade like the one Pagan was going to play. Instead, Zuboric planned to conceal himself in Tumulty’s office while Pagan mingled with the deadbeats downstairs. There was a certain ironic symbolism in this arrangement that Zuboric enjoyed.

‘You should stay out of spas,’ Pagan said. ‘And avoid suntan lamps in future. They’re unnatural.’

‘And look as white as you? No thanks.’

‘Didn’t I tell you, Artie? The way I look is all the rage in London this winter. Everybody’s trying it.’

Pagan took his purchases to the desk where a frail old man with a face that resembled a spider’s web operated an ancient cash register.

When they were outside on the street, Pagan said, ‘It’s time to release Father Joe.’

Zuboric looked across the street at Pagan’s big green Cadillac. There was a tiny knot in his stomach, a vague tension. He wanted a tidy conclusion to this whole murky business. He wanted to escort Frank Pagan to Kennedy Airport and watch him step aboard a flight to London, which would thankfully be the last of the guy. But first there was the uncertainty of Jig.

They crossed the street to the car. Pagan took the key out of his pocket, and as he was about to insert it into the door of the vehicle he saw a girl come out of a delicatessen half a block away, and his heart jumped as if electricity had coursed through his body.

Roxanne.

He dropped the bag of secondhand clothes. His lungs were tight in his chest and his hands trembled.

‘Something wrong?’ Zuboric asked.

Pagan said nothing. He watched the girl move along the sidewalk, her thick black hair floating behind her. The way she walked. The way her hair flew up from her neck and shoulders. He shut his eyes a moment, and when he opened them again the girl was already turning the corner at the end of the block. Fool. Deceived by resemblances. Misled by impressions. He felt weak. He had to lean against the side of the car.

‘Frank?’ Zuboric asked.

‘It’s nothing. I thought I saw somebody I used to know. That’s all.’

Zuboric picked up the bag of clothing from the pavement and gave it to Pagan, who clutched it in an absentminded way against his chest. Pagan looked along the empty sidewalk. He had the depressing realisation that if he lived a million years, if he lived long enough to see the sun shrivel in the sky and the earth freeze and wither and the planets plunge into eternal darkness, he’d never see Roxanne again. He’d see resemblances in a hundred places, but never again the real person. It was quite a thought.

He opened the car door, his hand still trembling. He got in behind the wheel. What he needed was something desperately simple. He needed to fuck the spectre of Roxanne out of existence. It came down to that. But what were you supposed to do if that particular appetite had died? If all the women you ever saw didn’t match the memory of a dead woman? If your heart was empty?

‘You’re sure you’re okay?’ Zuboric asked.

Pagan smiled. ‘I’m in great shape.’

Roscommon, New York

Celestine Cairney listened to Harry’s Irish music float out through the open door of his study. She paused on the threshold of the room, watching Harry and his son sit close together near the fire. A flask of brandy and two glasses stood on the coffee table. It was late afternoon and the sun had gone behind the trees, and the only light in the study was the glow of the log fire. Harry leaned towards his son and said something, and the young man laughed, perhaps a little too politely. It was the laughter of somebody who hadn’t quite learned the language of mirth. An artificial sound.

Celestine leaned against the door jamb. The Irish music made her uneasy at times because it was the music of ghosts, the music of Harry’s first marriage, with all its comfortable intimacies. She had mental pictures of Harry and his first wife sitting by the fire while this music wove through the air around them.

She moved very slightly. Neither man was aware of her presence. She liked the idea of observing people when they didn’t know she was watching. She studied Patrick. He was a good-looking man in an intense way. He had serious eyes and a certain strength about him, but there was an aura of privacy, almost a force field, that one couldn’t get through easily. She had the impression of somebody who lived in his own secret fortress. He wasn’t like Harry at all, outgoing and gregarious with that facile Irish charm he could trot out whenever it suited him. These were the gifts of a politician. The necessary equipment.

Come back, Paddy Reilly, to Ballyjamesduff,

Come home, Paddy Reilly, to me.

All Harry’s music was like this. It was all drenched with yearning. Now there was a break in the song and the thin notes of a fiddle filled the room.

Patrick Cairney had seen her. He rose from his chair. Harry smiled and stretched out a hand in her direction.

‘She’s been spying on us,’ he said.

Celestine moved into the room. ‘Why would I do that, Harry? You don’t have any secrets from me, love.’

Harry stood up now too. ‘Want a brandy?’ he asked.

‘I don’t want to interrupt this reunion,’ she said. ‘Besides, I was on my way to take a shower before dinner.’

She gazed at Patrick Cairney. She found his awkwardness in her presence a little touching. The way he’d reacted last night when she’d gone to his bedroom was amusing. He’d been like a kid who’d smuggled a girl inside his dormitory against all the school rules. He seemed now like a man who wished he were someplace else. She knew exactly what kind of effect she had on him. In her lifetime, she’d come to understand that her beauty often devastated people. Certain men didn’t know how to react to her. She had had her share of flowers and lovers’ poems and men who stuttered and fumbled around her. She considered her appearance a genetic accident, useful but finally transient. She never saw in the mirror what other people saw when they beheld her, almost as if her appearance were something apart from what she thought of as her inner self, her reality. Extreme good looks, such as her own, were often interpreted wrongly. Men looked at her and they couldn’t get beyond her appearance and down into the place where she really lived. They couldn’t begin to think their way beyond her surfaces.

Most men anyway.

‘You could never interrupt anything, my dear,’ Harry said.

He had that look on his face. Total devotion. Utter bliss. There were moments when her husband’s love made her feel uncomfortable. Harry gave it so wholeheartedly and without qualification that it was like a light he was forever shining into her eyes. Sometimes she felt blinded by it.

She warmed her hands in front of the fire. Patrick Cairney moved out of her way, but there was a second of contact between them, a tiny friction as her body touched his. She liked the connection. She liked the expression on Patrick’s face, the effort he made to conceal his discomfort.

‘I was riding and I’m grubby,’ she said. She spread her legs in front of the fire. ‘I can’t sit down to dinner in this condition.’

Harry reached for her hand. His skin had the feel of rice paper. She took his fingers in her palm. They were cold with that unfathomable coldness of age. She took her hand away and walked back across the room to the door. What she frequently longed for was warmth – another climate altogether, where she wouldn’t be confronted by the chills of a long winter. What was she doing in this big house located on this huge frozen estate? Why in the name of God had she ever agreed to come here to this place of isolation and snow and security guards who watched her lasciviously through their binoculars whenever she went outside?

She reached the doorway. She shivered slightly. ‘Dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes,’ she said. ‘I’ll meet you in the dining room.’

‘What are we having?’ Harry asked.

‘The speciality of the house. Corned beef and cabbage. What else?’ If there had been such a thing as Irish wine, a Cabernet Killarney or a Château Galway, say, she would have served that as well. She disliked the stodge of Irish food.

‘Ah,’ Harry said, delighted. He was showing off his wife for the benefit of his son. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Pat? Didn’t I tell you she knows how to warm an old man’s heart?’

Patrick nodded. He fiddled with the stopper of the crystal brandy flask. He wasn’t looking at Celestine. She left the room and moved along the landing. She paused outside the door of Patrick’s bedroom. What she remembered was how furtive he’d been last night about his canvas bag and the small wooden horse, which he’d practically seized from her hand and stuffed back inside the bag as if it were a souvenir too precious for anyone else to sully. Curious. She was tempted to sneak inside the room and explore it in his absence. Instead, she continued towards her own bedroom.

She went inside the bathroom and removed her clothes, catching glimpses of herself in the mirror. She had small breasts and a flat stomach. She thought her hips were probably a little too narrow, but otherwise it was a good body, firm and smooth and untouched as yet by age. She let her hair fall over her shoulders as she turned to the shower stall. The water was very hot, the way she liked it. Steam rose against her flesh, glistened in her hair, filled her nostrils. She took soap from the dish and made lather all over her body, smoothing the soap slowly over her breasts and across the surface of her stomach. She tilted her head back against the tiled wall, closing her eyes.

She slid the soap between her inner thighs to her pubic hair, as though it were a lover’s hand she was directing. She moved it back and forward slowly between her legs and then the bar slipped from her hand and now there was nothing between herself and her body. With the tips of her fingers she stroked herself gently, very gently, anticipating the pleasure. Her fantasies were always tropical. There were always exotic flowers and a suffocating humidity and a hint of danger, like an indistinct presence just beyond her field of vision. Her imaginary lover’s face kept changing, first one of the men she’d known in her life, then another and another coming at her in quick succession until she settled on the one who could please her fantasies best. But this time the face that finally came before her was that of a man who’d never been her lover, and this realisation excited her, this new perspective made her nerves tingle.

He remained stubbornly fixed in her mind.

Faster now. Faster. She had a sense of something warm flowing through her body, something molten that was located deep inside her. She heard herself moan. She bit the knuckles of her left hand and she gasped, and for a second her whole body was rigid before she fell apart inside, as if she were destroyed by the astonishing ferocity of pleasure. She slid down slowly against the tiled wall to a sitting position, her eyes still shut against the pounding water, her hand limp between her thighs.

She didn’t move for a long time.

She thought it weird she’d allowed Patrick Cairney to participate in her fantasy. Out of all the men she’d known in her life, she’d selected one who was off limits, who was forbidden by the fact of her marriage. She stood up, reached for a towel, started to dry herself carefully.

Patrick Cairney, she thought. My fantasy lover.

She rubbed condensation from the mirror, making a small space in which she could see her face. Her smile was enigmatic, even to herself.

New York City

Dressed in the clothes he’d purchased at the thrift shop, Frank Pagan put down the half-empty bowl and said, ‘It’s pretty bland, Joe. It needs a dash of something. Tarragon, Paprika. Something to spice it up. Some Worcester sauce would do it.’

Joseph X. Tumulty wore a crucifix about his neck, a small flash of gold against his black shirt. Every now and then his hand went to it, his ungainly fingers fumbling with the miniature Jesus. ‘The men here are better served by nutrition than haute cuisine, Mr. Pagan.’

‘You may have a point.’ Pagan stared into the bowl, which sat on Tumulty’s desk. ‘Have you got everything straight in your mind, Joe?’

Tumulty nodded. These men were playing with him, and he resented them for it. He laid his hands in front of him and saw how the skin glistened with sweat. He was beginning to discover that fear had various strata of intensity. The fear he’d felt before when Frank Pagan had burst into the room on Mulberry Street and shot Santacroce was nothing to what he was going through now at the prospect of facing Jig again.

Lying to him. Entrapping him. Setting him up. He felt very small and very weak. But a promise had been held out to him like a carrot to a donkey. If he did what was asked of him, he wouldn’t go to jail. It was that simple. Who would run this place if he was incarcerated? He couldn’t depend on volunteers to keep the whole thing going, and he couldn’t stand the idea of St. Finbar’s being shut down, his people having to go hungry. God knows, they had little enough in their lives as it was. They relied on him and how could he deprive them of that? And what would happen to people like McCune, people he had saved, if their mentor went to prison? Tumulty saw only sheer disaster. His night of solitude in a cell had convinced him that he could stand the strain of being locked up, but he couldn’t take the notion of being removed from Canal Street. He had prayed in the small cell. He had gone down on his knees and searched his mind for God. God, the great problem solver, the unlocker of puzzles, had responded only with a roaring silence, as if he had abdicated his place in the firmament. And Tumulty understood what the absences were saying to him. He was on his own in this situation.

‘When Jig comes into the kitchen,’ he told Pagan in a monotone, ‘I’ll say a specific blessing when we sit down to eat. “The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.” After we’ve eaten, I’ll signal for Jig to follow me up to my office. You’ll come up behind to block his retreat. Jig and I will come in here. Mr. Zuboric will be waiting.’

Pagan thought there was something incongruous about Psalm 126, verse 3, when you spoke it aloud inside a soup kitchen, but the choice of phrase had come from Arthur Zuboric who didn’t believe Tumulty could be trusted to devise his own code. Pagan suspected there was some spiteful part of Artie that wanted to see this whole scheme fall to pieces so he could quietly gloat. A gloating discontent was apparently built into Artie’s circuitry.

Tumulty asked, ‘Do you enjoy this, Mr. Pagan? Do you enjoy seeing me squirm?’

Pagan didn’t answer. He hardly heard the question. He was wondering about fear. He was wondering whether Joe Tumulty’s fear was going to be strong enough to lead him into betraying Jig. Or whether at the last moment the priest might experience some spasm of courage. He was sure that Tumulty had courage inside him – otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to the meeting with Santacroce in the first place. Pagan glanced at the attaché case that sat on the floor beside the desk. It contained the two customised weapons, but as a precaution all the ammunition had been removed.

Tumulty looked at Frank Pagan. ‘It’s a hell of a thing you’re asking me to do. You know that?’

‘You got yourself into it in the first place, Joe. I didn’t enroll you in the IRA, did I?’ Pagan asked. ‘Just remember this. Don’t fuck around with me when it comes to Jig. Don’t even think about it.’

Tumulty wandered in the direction of a painting of the Virgin Mary that hung at the back of the room. He looked up at it for a moment, drawn into the eyes. He was being asked to betray more than an individual called Jig. He was being asked to betray the Cause and himself along with it. He found a little consolation in the fact he hadn’t exactly told his captors very much. He hadn’t said anything about the deliveries in Maine, and he hadn’t mentioned Nicholas Linney, and his description of Jig had been vague at best. Small consolations. He turned away from the Virgin.

Something else occurred to him for the first time. The notion of reprisals. If he gave these men Jig, he might just as well be signing his own execution order, because a day would come when another gunman would be sent from Ireland to even the score. There was nothing more terrible than a traitor so far as the Cause was concerned. No crime was greater than treason.

A rock, Tumulty thought. And a very hard place. Somewhere, if only he could find it, there had to be a solution, a compromise. Guidance, he thought. But he knew that God wasn’t about to show him the way. Prayer, this time, was a dead connection.

He said, ‘I’ll do it. You don’t need to worry.’ Even as he committed himself, he was still frantically searching. How could he even think of betraying the Cause? He’d been raised with a belief in the sanctity of the Cause, just as he’d been brought up in the seminary to believe that God’s authority was the only one. Little divisions of the heart. Pangs. If he couldn’t get the weapons to Jig – and he was certain that that was out of the question now – then what small thing could he do to help the man? Think, Joseph. Think hard. There has to be a way.

‘I’m not worried,’ Pagan said. He managed to keep the tension out of his voice. But he was concerned. When you backed a man into a corner, any man, there were sometimes reserves of surprising defiance. Was Joe going to find that nerve of resistance?

Tumulty sat down. He experienced a moment of calm. What he realised was that Jig, who had seen Frank Pagan before, was going to recognise the man, no matter Pagan’s ridiculous old clothes and his unkempt hair. Jig was going to know.

Then what?