23

New Rockford, Connecticut

‘What now?’ Frank Pagan asked, looking up at Jig who stood on the rim of the hollow.

Jig’s expression was grim. ‘I’m thinking of shooting you,’ was what he said in the voice Pagan had heard a thousand times on tape. The accent was not exactly Irish. Nor was it American. It came somewhere between the two. It was the accent of a man who was neither one thing nor the other, as if he’d spent much of his life wandering indecisively between two nations. And the face, which Pagan had tried to imagine so many times and which he’d glimpsed only briefly before at St. Finbar’s, was handsome and yet inflexible, almost as if all the muscles were locked in place. It was not the kind of face one could envisage smiling in a relaxed fashion, or in calm repose. The eyes were vigilant and guarded, the mouth defiant. Jig reminded Pagan right then of something wild, a creature forever conscious of traps and pitfalls, who sees enmities everywhere, who expects hostilities. But there was another quality, one so hidden it was difficult to detect at all, and Pagan had a problem defining it. In some other circumstances, he thought that this face – presently so hard and set – might be capable of showing sensitivity and concern. But not now. Certainly not now.

‘Let me know what you decide,’ Pagan said.

‘However, I’m not in the habit of shooting defenceless people, Pagan. Unless they’re guilty of crimes against Ireland.’

‘Am I included in that category?’ Pagan asked. He stared past Jig and up into the trees through which the afternoon sun created white flickers. He had to gather his thoughts, all his resources, and decide how he might turn this situation to his advantage. It was a possibility that seemed ludicrously, laughably, slim.

‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re just another English policeman. And that’s enough to make you guilty.’

‘What about two young Cambodian girls in a house in Bridgehampton? What crimes had they committed against Ireland?’

Jig was quiet a moment. ‘They were killed by a man called Linney.’

‘It’s not what the FBI believes, Jig.’

‘I don’t give a damn what the FBI believes. The same applies to you, Pagan. I’ve never been interested in what people say or believe about me.’ The wind, blowing down through the trees, stirred Jig’s tightly curled hair almost as if a hand had passed over his skull. Pagan thought he had never seen a person so tense as this one. You could almost see glowing wires just beneath the surface of his skin.

‘The FBI also believes you were responsible for the explosion in White Plains.’

‘What explosion?’

‘You’ve been out of touch, Jig. Somebody blew up a Presbyterian church in White Plains. They made a pretty thorough job of it. Then they called the FBI to claim it as an IRA score. And where the FBI is concerned, you’re the only IRA factor in the vicinity, ergo you’re the one responsible.’ Pagan looked to see what effect this information would have on Jig.

Jig’s expression didn’t change. ‘I’ve never been in White Plains,’ he said, without any emotion in his voice. ‘I’d have no reason to blow up a church, Presbyterian or otherwise.’

‘They also claimed you killed a man called Fitzjohn in Albany.’

‘I get around, don’t I?’

‘It would seem so.’

‘I haven’t been in Albany either.’

‘Tell that to Leonard Korn. I understand he’s a good listener.’

Jig stared at Pagan. ‘I don’t know of any authorised IRA activities in this country that would involve bombing. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘My feeling exactly,’ Pagan said. ‘What makes it even more interesting in the case of Fitzjohn is that he was a member of the Free Ulster Volunteers. But it gets better still.’

‘I’m listening.’

Pagan said, ‘Ivor McInnes is in New York City.’

‘And what is that holy man doing there?’

‘I’m not absolutely sure. But I have the feeling he could clear up some of the mystery if only he would talk. Ivor can be very close-mouthed when he wants to be. He knows a hell of a lot more than he’s prepared to say. Whatever’s going on, Ivor has a dirty finger in it somehow.’

Jig’s face changed slightly. The set of his mouth altered, but Pagan couldn’t tell what it meant. He even wondered if any of what he was talking about interested Jig remotely. The man’s mind was seemingly elsewhere, his manner distracted. It was the house below, Pagan realised. All Jig’s focus was fixed there.

Then Jig turned to look at Pagan. ‘I’m wondering why you’re here on your own, Pagan. I’m wondering if maybe there aren’t more of you up in these hills and you’re sitting here smugly waiting for them to turn up. Don’t you have a little gang of associates? On Canal Street, you said you had a score of men.’

‘I dumped the Bureau.’

‘Did you now?’

‘They want your balls nailed to Leonard Korn’s bulletin-board. Which made me a little unhappy. I have my own ideas about justice.’ Pagan paused a moment. ‘They’re turning over every stone they can find. It has all the makings of a massive manhunt. After all, you’re a killer. And you can’t hide under the umbrella of Irish romanticism, not after the barbarism in White Plains.’

‘Irish romanticism,’ Jig said disdainfully. ‘There’s no such thing, Pagan. Is Belfast romantic? Are checkpoints romantic? Do you find anything enchanting in the sight of a country that’s dying from schizophrenic hatred?’ He looked down at the guns he held in both hands, turning them over, examining them in a thoughtful way.

He said, ‘So the mighty FBI is looking for me, is it? I don’t know if I should feel proud or humbled by the notion.’

‘Nervous would be a more practical response,’ Pagan said. He was wondering how he could get the weapons away from Jig. Idle speculation. There was no way in the world Jig was going to be fooled by a surprise attack.

Jig pressed the barrel of one of the guns against the side of his face and scratched. ‘You could be telling me a complete fairy-tale, Pagan. You could be sitting here right now and making all this up. You could be thinking that some convoluted story about bombings and murder and an FBI manhunt might fluster me enough that I’ll call off my mission and go home quietly. You obviously know what I’m looking for in this country, and it would suit your purpose – and your Government’s – if I didn’t find it. No money, therefore no weapons. The Cause would be strapped for cash, which would delight Whitehall.’

Pagan shook his head. ‘The only way I want you to go home is handcuffed to me.’

Jig smiled for the first time. ‘How do you propose to accomplish that?’

Pagan stood up. ‘Let me put it another way, Jig. If you decide to go down to see Kevin Dawson, you’re dead. You’re finished. There’s absolutely no way in the world you’re going to get within a hundred feet of that house without somebody blowing your bloody head off. I know that for a fact. Your only real chance is with me, Jig. I’m the only person who believes you’re not the monster the FBI is itching to kill.’

‘And what makes you think so highly of me, Pagan?’

‘I know you. I’ve studied you. I know how you operate, and I know how you kill. I also know that you’re out of your depth in this country, Jig. Too much is stacked against you here. This isn’t your kind of operation. This isn’t the old one-two, the quick in-and-out that you’re used to.’ Pagan made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘This isn’t some future ambassador stepping out of his mews cottage and into his Jaguar. This is something else altogether.’

‘What exactly are you saying, Pagan? That I give myself up to you? I’m standing here with two guns in my possession and I’m supposed to give myself up to an unarmed man because he’s got some intriguing stories to tell? Back to Britain and a cosy berth in one of Her Majesty’s lodging-houses? I came here to recover some lost property, Pagan. I don’t intend to go home without it.’

‘It isn’t going to be a matter of just that, Jig. You’re looking at the prospect of going home inside a plain wooden box. Take another look down at that house, Jig. There are two Secret Servicemen with guns they’re just aching to fire. Be realistic.’

‘You call it realistic to listen to your story?’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘I’m never sure what it means when people say they’re telling the truth, Pagan. I’ve heard a lot of different truths lately.’

Frank Pagan was silent. If he were in Jig’s shoes, would he have believed the narrative? Probably not. Probably he’d have reacted in precisely the same way, with incredulity. In Jig’s profession, the only counsel you ever listened to was your own.

Pagan turned and looked down at the stretch of road which lay between the hills and Kevin Dawson’s estate. In the distance there was the sound of a car. He narrowed his eyes and looked off in the direction of the noise. He saw a car come into view at a place where the road ran between the folds of hills.

‘Give me the glasses a moment,’ he said.

Jig, slipping one of the guns inside the waistband of his pants, passed the binoculars to him. Pagan held them up to his eyes and saw the car approach the entrance to the Dawson estate where it was stopped, just as Pagan himself had been, by the Secret Servicemen. Pagan tightened his grip on the glasses. He saw two men get out of the car. One was Tyson Bruno. The other Artie Zuboric. Pagan thrust the binoculars back at Jig, who held them to his face and studied the scene below.

‘Surprise, surprise,’ Pagan said.

‘The tall one is a friend of yours,’ Jig said.

‘Zuboric. You saw him at St. Finbar’s Mission. The other is an FBI agent called Tyson Bruno.’

Jig lowered the glasses. He looked at Frank Pagan. His face was unrevealing. Pagan was suddenly aware of how close Jig stood to him. How very near the weapons were. One frantic grab, he thought. He rejected the idea immediately. One frantic grab was likely to be his last.

He said, ‘The only reason I can think of for that pair to come here is that somehow they know you’re in the vicinity. Which means we can expect even more men turning up pretty damn soon. Now do you see? There’s no way into that house. What makes it worse from your point of view is that they apparently know you’re around. So what happens when more men arrive and suddenly these hills are swarming with people who all want a piece of you? What happens when it’s open season on Jig?’

Jig said nothing. He sat down and frowned. Pagan was puzzled by the sudden appearance of Zuboric and Bruno. Did they really know Jig was in the vicinity? Or had they come here expecting to find only Frank Pagan? How could they have known that Pagan was here, though? Unless Dawson had made a phone call to somebody in authority, but the timetable was all wrong. If Dawson had called the FBI, there hadn’t been time for Zuboric and his sidekick to get here from New York City. Mysteries.

‘Even if I believed your story,’ Jig said, ‘what difference would it make? Even if everything you said is true, do you think it would make me roll over like some lame dog and let you take me back home for my own protection?’

‘You might find things a little different at home,’ Pagan said. ‘Especially now.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning simply that you might find yourself out in the cold with your own people. After all, you blew up a church and a whole bunch of innocent people along with it. You might find a change in the tide. Some people will go along with a hero only so far. They tend to dislike it when they find their hero is capable of the same scummy acts as any ordinary thug, no matter what side he happens to be on.’

‘You can’t goad me, Pagan.’

‘I wasn’t aware of trying.’

‘I had nothing to do with that church.’

‘I know that. But what does my opinion count for? People died in that explosion. Innocent kids as well as adults. People who had nothing on their minds except the usual Sunday rapport with God.’

Jig looked through the binoculars at the house. Pagan thought of a man calculating the movements of his own future, weighing this possibility against that one, trying to decide on a course of action.

‘It doesn’t matter a shit if I happen to believe you, Jig. The FBI has other ideas. Soon the public will have those ideas as well. And the public is notoriously fickle, my friend. You’re a hero one day, the next you stink. The great Jig is reduced to killing harmless people. The bold Irish assassin turns common gangster. It’s going to make nice reading. How does that make you feel?’

Pagan wondered what Jig’s reputation meant to the man. Did the newspaper articles and the songs sung in Irish bars and the reverence afforded Jig mean anything to him? Was his ego such that he couldn’t allow his reputation to be eroded by the actions of other people?

Pagan waited for his words to sink into Jig’s brain.

‘What do you really want, Pagan?’

‘Two things.’

‘What two things?’

‘First, I’d like to know who’s going round committing these acts you’re being blamed for. And I keep coming back to good old Ivor. It was courtesy of the Free Ulster Volunteers that I found out you were in America in the first place. And it’s a fair bet that Ivor was instrumental in making sure I received that bit of information. If he knew that much, maybe he knows why Fitzjohn was killed and why somebody bombed the church.’ Pagan paused. He had one more dart to shoot in Jig’s direction. ‘Maybe he even knows something about that lost property of yours.’

Jig passed his gun from one hand to the other. If this last remark of Pagan’s swayed him any, he certainly didn’t show it. ‘That’s a lot of ifs, Pagan.’

‘I agree. But what else is there?’

‘You think you can make him talk?’

‘Between us, I suspect we could get something out of him.’

‘Between us? You’re actually asking for my help?’

Pagan shrugged. ‘Don’t you want to know who’s been taking your name in vain? Don’t you want to know if McInnes has any information about your money?’

Jig affected to ignore this question. ‘What’s the second thing?’

‘You know what that is.’

‘Me,’ Jig said.

‘Correct.’

Jig stared off into the trees. ‘You’ve got to understand one thing, Pagan. I’ll never let you take me. No matter what.’

Pagan nodded. ‘You’re the man with the weapons. I make it a cardinal rule never to argue with guns.’

Jig looked back down the slopes towards the road. Pagan tried to imagine the inner workings of the man. Obviously Jig suspected a trap. But at the same time perhaps he was beginning to realise the hopelessness of getting access to Kevin Dawson. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t know the meaning of hopelessness, maybe he had such a supreme belief in his own capabilities that he didn’t think in terms of insuperable obstacles. But it didn’t work that way, not in the real world. Not when you were faced with determined people who wanted nothing but your death.

‘If I understand you, Pagan, you’re calling a truce,’ Jig said.

‘In a way.’

‘I don’t like truces. Especially when I have all the advantages.’

‘Take your pick.’ Pagan gestured towards the house.

Jig turned his face from the anxious wind that came fretting once again down the slopes.

‘Go down there,’ Pagan said. ‘See if you can get an interview with Kevin Dawson. Try it. I wish you all the luck in the world.’

Jig stared at Frank Pagan. ‘Do you really think it matters to me if I get the blame for things I didn’t do? Do you think I care about anything so bloody shallow as my reputation? If some group of IRA idiots has gone free-lance, that’s not my problem. Whatever blame attaches to my name is irrelevant in the long run. Personalities don’t enter into this.’

The old terrorist cant, Pagan thought, with some disappointment. The usual humbug of the fanatic. History is more important than people. Movements outweigh personalities. Pawns in the larger game. Etcetera and amen. He had expected something more out of Jig, although he wasn’t sure what exactly. In his experience of terrorists, they were mainly men and women who approached life without humour. They were emotional fuck-ups. And even when they experienced human feelings that weren’t related to their particular cause, they didn’t know what to do with them. Maybe Jig came into that category.

He said, ‘I misjudged you, then. I thought you’d see it as your problem, Jig.’

‘We don’t have matching objectives, Pagan. And we don’t come from the same perspective.’

Pagan sat down. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But what if the people who attacked the church are going to kill again? What if they already have? What if it’s something even more monstrous than the church this time? Whatever it is, Jig, it’s going to be attributed to you as surely as if you’d left your fucking fingerprints at the scene. And when Jig gets tainted by these actions, how does it reflect on the things he’s supposed to stand for? How does it rub off on his Cause? The plain fact is, Jig, somebody’s out there making a fucking asshole out of you and every bloody thing you stand for.’ Pagan was quiet for a time. ‘Okay. Go down there to Dawson’s house. Be a martyr. Isn’t that what the Cause expects of you anyhow? Doesn’t the Cause expect all its good soldiers to die totally fucking senseless deaths?’

Jig wandered to the edge of the hollow. For a second Pagan thought he was about to step down the slopes and between the trees and, as if it were a personal act of defiance, like a unicyclist setting out on a frayed wire, go immediately in the direction of the house. But then he stopped and stood motionless. Pagan wondered what was going on in his mind now. Had anything Pagan said made a dent? Was he going to agree to the truce? It was a desperate kind of proposal, Pagan realised. But he had no other cards to play. It was reasonable to assume that Jig wouldn’t be happy with any activities that sullied his precious Cause, but would he go as far as Pagan wanted him to? If he did, and if they went after Ivor the Terrible together – and the idea of nailing Ivor appealed greatly to Pagan, with or without Jig’s help – it would at least have the advantage of keeping Jig within Pagan’s reach. It wasn’t much, but it was something as far as Frank Pagan was concerned. And down the line somewhere he’d have to make his play, he’d have to get the weapons away from Jig. If an opportunity occurred it was going to be a small one and he’d have to be alert and act faster than he’d ever acted in his life. Jig wasn’t going to doze off, that was certain.

From somewhere down the road, like the cry of a wounded animal, there was a noise that echoed through the hills. Jig tilted his head, listening.

Frank Pagan stood up.

The noise was growing shriller, more urgent. Pagan looked off into the distance, where he saw red and blue flashing lights creating a small extravaganza against the backdrop of the dour hills.

‘Looks like more reinforcements,’ Pagan said, wondering about all this activity. ‘I suppose we can expect the cavalry next.’

There was a very thin smile on Jig’s face, but the eyes were deadly serious. He continued to look at Pagan and the look was one of scrutiny, uncertainty, like that of a man testing the ground beneath him for the presence of a mine.

He said, ‘The air around here is unhealthy.’

Pagan agreed. ‘And getting worse.’

‘Remember what I said, Pagan. You don’t take me. Under any circumstances.’

‘I’ve got that.’

‘Don’t let it slip your mind. You’re dead if you do.’

‘I like living,’ Pagan said.

Jig looked one last time back down at the estate. Then he sighed and asked, ‘You really think Ivor McInnes knows, do you?’

‘I’d bet on it.’

Jig was silent a second. Then, ‘What hotel is he staying at?’

Artie Zuboric didn’t like the Secret Service because he thought its agents had an overblown concept of their own importance. They guarded Presidents and visiting heads of state, admittedly, but Zuboric thought they had it easy when you got right down to it. He stood outside Kevin Dawson’s house in the company of Tyson Bruno and felt frustrated because the two SS characters who’d greeted him had told him in a rather airy fashion to keep himself occupied in the grounds. There was more than a little condescension in their manner. This was their little world, and they didn’t like intruders because they could look after Dawson damn well by themselves, and besides, they considered the FBI screw-ups in general.

Zuboric stood with his hands on his hips and gazed at the house. The two SS characters stood some distance away, smoking cigarettes and looking extremely proprietorial. They hadn’t even allowed Zuboric inside the house, and so far there hadn’t been any sign of Kevin Dawson.

Zuboric turned and examined the hills. Tyson Bruno cleared his throat and said, ‘I keep thinking about that fucker. The way he decked me. I should never have let that happen.’

Zuboric shook his head. He hadn’t thought of anything except Frank Pagan during the drive up here. He looked at Tyson Bruno and said, ‘Enjoy the countryside.’

‘I hate the fucking countryside,’ Bruno answered.

Zuboric looked back at the house. He felt he should have been invited inside and introduced to Dawson, which was what his position merited. Instead, he was being left out in the cold. All because the SS guys protected Kevin Dawson with the zealous tenacity of insecure lovers. ‘Let’s walk,’ he said. ‘Take a look around.’

They walked between the trees as far as the narrow road. Dawson’s estate was about eighty acres, most of it meadow but wooded here and there. It seemed to Zuboric that it was secure, given the vigilance of the Secret Service fatheads, which prompted the question of why he’d been sent up here in the first place. He felt like an underused extra in a movie, a body, something superfluous.

Tyson Bruno lit a cigarette. ‘I’d rather be back in the centre of things,’ he said. ‘Do you think this is Magoo’s way of punishing us?’

Zuboric didn’t answer. He was looking at the house. Smoke rolled down the roof, blown out of the chimney by a gust of wind. So far as pastoral prettiness was concerned, this whole area wasn’t exactly in the blue ribbon class. It was too forlorn, too uninviting. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his coat. He was thinking of Pagan again, and he’d resolved not to because it created a knot of sheer anger in the middle of his brain.

He tried to relax but Pagan came again, returning to his thoughts like a ghost you couldn’t exorcise. He would have liked to see Pagan one more time, just one more time, and give the man a dose of some very bad medicine. He’d never trusted Pagan from the beginning, never warmed to the guy, and now he was filled with a churning need for revenge that might have to go unsatisfied unless he happened to run into the limey again. After all, hadn’t Korn practically given the green light to the final solution of the Pagan problem?

‘Magoo thinks we screwed up, so he’s giving us a little taste of exile. Call it a warning,’ Bruno said.

Zuboric frowned. So far as he was concerned the assignment wasn’t such a bad one and certainly couldn’t be construed as a severe knuckle-rapping. After all, Kevin Dawson was the President’s brother, and Magoo wouldn’t take that fact lightly. On the other hand, the Director’s inscrutability was legend. You didn’t make it to the top if you were an easy guy to figure. Zuboric gazed up into the hills, then looked back at Tyson Bruno, who appeared quite uncomfortable.

‘Spooky landscape,’ Bruno said. ‘What makes a guy want to live way out here anyhow?’

Zuboric shrugged. ‘Privacy, I guess.’

Tyson Bruno made a snorting sound of derision. It was clear he didn’t think much of privacy. He tightened his drab plaid scarf at his neck and narrowed his eyes as he looked across Dawson’s estate. In Zuboric’s mind, Tyson Bruno was a perfect example of the old school, a graduate of the J. Edgar Hoover Academy for numbskulls. He was dependable up to a point, but not very inventive. Until Frank Pagan had come along, he’d been a rather reliable watchdog. Frank fucking Pagan. Ireland, fucking Ireland. He found himself wishing that the whole goddam island would sink under a tidal wave, drowning Frank Pagan with it and all the problems he’d laid, like so much crap, on Zuboric’s doorstep. Problems Artie most certainly didn’t need. He had a whole shitload of his own. Charity had started talking about some rich physician who was paying a lot of attention to her lately. How could Zuboric compete with that?

Zuboric walked between the trees. At his side, Tyson Bruno was scanning the landscape, his head swivelling on the thick stalk of his neck. He reminded Zuboric of a bullfrog in certain ways.

‘I could use a nip of gin,’ Bruno said. ‘This damn cold is getting to me.’

Zuboric stopped quite suddenly. In the distance he’d heard something, a sound that never failed to raise the level of his adrenalin. It was the shrill siren of a police car, and it was growing louder, sending scared birds whining out of branches. Zuboric turned his face towards the road. He could see flashing lights, two small points a couple of miles down the road.

He leaned against the trunk of a tree and watched. The cop car was still blasting its siren as it swung into the driveway and went towards the house, where the two SS agents were already taking up a defensive position behind their car, weapons drawn. The police vehicle came to a halt, the siren died. It was all very quick. Two uniformed cops jumped out of the car. The SS men, trusting nobody, especially callers in uniform – who could easily have been fakes – emerged with their guns ready.

‘What the fuck,’ Bruno said.

Zuboric, who knew the signs of trouble when he saw them, started to walk back towards the house. The cops and the agents, having apparently arrived at an understanding, had gone inside the house already. Even before Zuboric had reached the house, Kevin Dawson was hurrying out, the agents flapping behind him. All three got into the Secret Service car, which whipped past Zuboric at top speed and tore down the driveway, spewing dirt as it travelled.

Puzzled, Zuboric looked at the two uniformed cops. He flashed his ID and asked what was going on. The two state policemen appeared flustered and uncertain.

The older of the pair studied Zuboric’s ID a second. His hand trembled.

‘I can’t really describe it,’ was what he said, and his voice, like his hand, shook.

Patrick Cairney shaded his eyes against the harsh afternoon sun that burned against the windshield of the Dodge Colt. He glanced at Pagan, who was behind the wheel, then looked down at the gun in his lap. As he did so, he remembered something Finn had once said about how the Cause would one day wither because it lacked nobility. And it lacked nobility because it had no heroes any more. I’ll make my own bloody hero out of Jig, Finn said. My own bloody hero. What would Finn think of him now that he’d entered into this pact with Pagan? Would he call it an error of judgment, damned from the very beginning?

Finn’s advice might have been to withdraw from the vicinity of Dawson until the heat had gone out of the situation and an approach to Dawson involved less risk. Maybe. But Finn would also have been angry about somebody maligning the Cause by blowing up a church. And Finn’s outbursts of anger were fierce things to behold, as if the whole person were on the volcanic rim of exploding into lava. Finn might have done precisely the same thing as Jig was doing now. Let’s find out what bloody McInnes is up to and put a stop to that bastard once and for all.

Cairney turned the gun over in his hand. He was unsure of the decision he’d made. Thoughts crowded him, cramped him. His sick father. The missing money. The possibility that Ivor McInnes might know something about it. The notion that Pagan could be setting a trap.

And Celestine. The last thought he wanted or needed right then. But there was her face, her face floating through his mind, the remembered feel of her mouth, the vibrant warmth of the woman. There she was, a bright, enticing intruder on his thoughts. He closed his eyes for a second. The retreat into darkness. The calm centre of himself. It wouldn’t come. He couldn’t find it.

He opened his eyes, looked at Frank Pagan’s face as Pagan drove the winding road that led narrowly through the hills. He suspected Pagan was telling the truth about McInnes being in New York and the attack on the church, but he wasn’t certain if Ivor McInnes knew anything about the money. How the hell could he? And how could the FUV have informed Pagan about the American trip anyway – something only he and Finn knew about?

This last question buzzed in his head. The obvious answer – that there was a traitor within the ranks of The Association of the Wolfe – was disheartening. But Frank Pagan might have been lying from start to finish, fabricating everything he’d said. He’d have to be wary from here on in, supersharp, each one of his senses prepared for some sudden occurrence – a move from Pagan, a car following too close behind, anything. If Pagan was as tenacious as he thought, this truce was going to be as substantial as ice in springtime. And if it melted – if it melted he’d shoot Frank Pagan without any further thought.

What had Pagan said? Be a martyr? Isn’t that what the Cause expects of you anyhow? That remark had stung Cairney more than anything else, because Pagan had somehow managed to centre in on the one thing that was anathema to Jig – the idea of martyrdom, the notion that that was what the Cause was all about finally. To succeed you had to be dead. To win you had to have died a soldier’s death. A loser’s death. To win you had to have old women light penny candles to your memory in cold churches and old men drink Guinness over your sanctified name. The old Irish ways, your name immortalised in song and dredged up on every anniversary of your death, which was usually premature and always fruitless.

And something else Pagan had said had struck a chord inside him. You’re out of your depth in this country, Jig. Too much is stacked against you. Maybe. But it didn’t matter now. It was too late for it to matter. Finn had sent him into this, Finn with his hopes and ambitions, his conviction that Jig could do anything. He’d prove Finn right in the end. When he went back to Ireland with the money it would prove that Finn’s decision to send Jig to America had been the right one all along, that Finn’s faith in him was completely justified.

‘I wonder why Kevin Dawson left in such a hurry,’ Pagan said. He was turning the Dodge into a sharp bend, driving in a fashion that was a little cavalier. The squeal of tyres on pavement seemed to delight him.

Cairney said nothing. He’d been just as curious as Pagan at the sight of Dawson hurrying out of the house and racing off in a car with the two Secret Servicemen. Shortly after, the FBI agents and the two state cops had also departed. If Cairney had been indecisive about his next step, then the knowledge that Kevin Dawson had left the house made his mind up for him. What was the point of watching an empty house when you had no way of knowing if and when Dawson was coming back?

Pagan swung the Dodge into a hairpin turn and looked at Cairney as he did so. ‘Does my driving make you nervous?’

Cairney shook his head. He wouldn’t give the Englishman any small satisfaction. Pagan, as if Cairney’s refusal to be upset rattled him, put his foot harder on the gas pedal and the car went whining into the next turn. Pagan took his hands from the wheel for a second. The speedometer was approaching seventy-five and the small Dodge was quivering.

Cairney pressed his gun hard into Pagan’s ribs. ‘I see how it would suit you if we were pulled over by the highway patrol. But I don’t think I’d care for that personally. Anyway, guns behave unpredictably at high speeds, Pagan. Keep that in mind. Never play games with me.’

Pagan caught the wheel, braked gently, and the car slowed. ‘I’ll drive like a senile dowager,’ he said.

Cairney pulled the gun back from Pagan’s body. ‘So long as we have an understanding.’

Pagan nodded. ‘I’m sure we have,’ he said. He was concerned about the tension in Jig, the extreme wariness. He didn’t like the proximity of the gun either, the way Jig had it pointed directly at his side. He sighed, jabbed the radio, heard only static. Jig reached out and turned the radio off.

‘Let’s get some groundrules straight upfront, Pagan. No noise. No music. No conversation. If we get to New York and I find out all this is bullshit, you’re dead. On the other hand, if Ivor does know something, I decide the next step. Is that clear?’

‘Clear,’ Pagan said, thinking how he wasn’t cut out for this chauffeur business. He hated being in an inferior position.

On either side of the road now the hills were flattening, drifting down gently into meadows. Roadsigns appeared, indicating the thruway some miles ahead. Older signs pointed out backroads, cattle crossings, deer warnings. Everything was lit by the same filmy ivory sunlight, which had an illusory quality. Here and there an old farmhouse or barn was visible, framed by trees. There was a bucolic assurance about everything, a timelessness.

The road curved suddenly, a long sweeping turn that almost took Pagan by surprise. He braked lightly as he took the Dodge into the curve. And then, surprised by what he saw ahead of him, he slowed the speed of the car so abruptly that Jig was momentarily thrown forward. Not enough to make him careless with the gun, but enough to irritate him.

‘For God’s sake, Pagan –’

And then Jig saw what it was that had so surprised Frank Pagan, and his first thought was that if this were the trap, then it was elaborate and cunning, involving all kinds of incongruous vehicles – a shattered school bus, a sedan that issued a thin cloud of smoke, a couple of state police cruisers, two ambulances, and several other vehicles all parked carelessly around the pathetic relic of the yellow bus, whose windows had been broken and side panels blitzed. Then Jig became conscious of something else, the sight of bodies lying in a clearing between the trees, with men in white coats hovering over them. The realisation that many of these bodies were unmistakably children caused his heart to freeze. He put his hand involuntarily up to his mouth. Kids. And his mind was spinning back to a street-scene he’d once witnessed in the Shankill Road area of Belfast when two kids, both bloodied from random gunfire, had been stretched out on a sidewalk, small casualities of a conflict that was beyond their understanding – but that had only been two kids, now he was staring at about ten, a dozen, he wasn’t sure. He heard his own blood pound inside his skull, and ice laid a terrible film the length of his spine.

Pagan was travelling past the scene at about ten miles an hour. A cop came across the road and waved an arm impatiently at the Dodge, gesturing for it to pass and mind its own goddam business. Pagan’s nostrils filled with the stench of burning rubber and gasoline.

‘Keep moving,’ Cairney said. He poked the gun into Pagan’s hip, concealing the weapon under the folds of his overcoat.

Pagan winced. ‘I’ve got no bloody intention of stopping. Do you imagine I’m going to try and turn you over to some local cop? Take that fucking gun away from me.’

Pagan pressed his foot on the gas pedal as the car drew closer to the cop. Smoke drifted thickly across the road, obscuring the cop for a moment. When it cleared the policeman was about fifteen feet away, still waving his arm. Pagan stared past him at the clearing. What the hell had happened here? It looked as if the schoolbus had been used for target practice. It was an unreal scene, yet the air of authentic tragedy hung over it. Those small bodies under sheets. The ambulance lights flashing. The men sifting around the wreckage. Pagan’s eye was drawn quickly to an area at the rear of the clearing.

Artie Zuboric was standing there, ash-coloured, his usually upright body set in a slouch, as if the weight of whatever had happened in this place were too heavy for him. At the centre of the clearing, flanked by his Secret Servicemen and a group of cops, stood Kevin Dawson.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Pagan said, horrified by the scene, by the awful expression on Dawson’s face.

Jig, who had also recognised Dawson, asked, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ And his voice was hushed, his question phrased in a tone Pagan hadn’t heard from him before.

Pagan barely had time to absorb the whole situation before the scene dwindled in the rearview mirror and was finally lost beyond a curve in the road. But the look on Dawson’s face stayed with him. It was that of a man shattered, a man bewildered by events that defy description, someone who has seen his world tilted on its axis.

It was grief.

It was a look Frank Pagan had seen on his face, when reflections in mirrors threw back the countenance of a stranger undergoing an impossible trauma, an experience beyond the language of loss. It was an alien voice whispering in your brain over and over and over Roxanne is gone, gone, gone.

Dawson’s daughters, Pagan thought.

It struck Pagan then with the force of a hammer.

Somebody had ambushed that schoolbus which must have had the Dawson girls on board otherwise why would Kevin Dawson be there looking so utterly grief-stricken?

Somebody.

Dear God. He felt his stomach turn over.

Somebody, he thought again. It was violence as pointless and as brutal as that done to the church in White Plains. And what he heard suddenly was Ivor McInnes’s voice saying If it’s the IRA, it’s not going to stop with some church. Once those fellows get the taste of blood, they don’t know when to stop.

Pagan had a raw sensation in his heart.

There is going to be a telephone call. A man will speak in an Irish accent. He’ll say that the bus was attacked by members of the Irish Republican Army.

And Jig, who was still looking at Pagan, still waiting for an answer to the question he’d asked minutes before, was going to be blamed for this new monstrosity. It had all the texture of the completely inevitable. Jig would be blamed, then crucified.

Pagan thumped his foot down hard on the gas-pedal. Had Ivor McInnes known about this outrage? If he’d known, as Frank Pagan felt he did, about an IRA presence in the USA, had he also known that this was going to happen?

A small nerve began to work in Pagan’s cheek as he thought of McInnes, that smug, bloody man with his poisonous hatreds. And something moved through Pagan’s brain, an anger he hadn’t felt in years, a turmoil of rage, a searing emotion that he couldn’t bring entirely under control. He knew this much – he knew he was looking forward to tearing that mask away from Ivor’s face and getting down to the truth of things. It would be a slippery descent, because in McInnes’s world truth was never something you ascended to, it was a quality concealed in deep places, dank places, down at the fetid bottom of the man’s heart.

‘I asked you a question,’ Jig said. ‘What the hell do you think happened back there?’

‘I can only guess,’ Pagan said.

‘Let me hear it anyway.’

Frank Pagan told him.

Harrison, New York

Seamus Houlihan called the FBI from a phone booth at a shopping plaza at twenty minutes past five. The man he spoke with attempted unsuccessfully to keep Houlihan talking. But Houlihan delivered his terse message without hesitation, then hung up. He looked across the plaza to the place where the yellow Ryder truck was parked. It was strange, Houlihan thought, not to see John Waddell’s face staring out through the windshield. Waddy had deserved to die, it was as simple as that. Like Fitzjohn, he’d been weak when strength was needed.

Houlihan entertained no regrets at the act. There was hardly anything in his life he regretted. Since Waddell had been his friend, though, he felt it was his duty to give the man a decent burial. That was the very least he could do. He had, after all, his own sense of honour.

He paused, staring into the window of a Carvel ice-cream shop. He went inside, ordered a single scoop of vanilla. He had to repeat this order three times because the eedjit girl behind the counter didn’t understand his accent. He came out, licking the ice-cream, which was too soft for his taste. By the time he reached the Ryder truck the ice-cream was already melting, running down the sleeve of his jacket. He tossed the cone away in disgust.

He gazed a moment at the discarded confection. It created a bright white puddle on the concrete. He thought of McInnes’s instructions to discard all weapons at the time of getting rid of the truck. They were to be cleaned thoroughly of all fingerprints and then dumped in some isolated place, after which Houlihan and the others were to return to Canada, and from there back to Ireland. The part Houlihan didn’t like was throwing the weapons away, especially his own handgun, a Colt Mark V he’d become attached to. What did McInnes know anyway? The man wasn’t out here doing the fucking dirty work, was he? He wasn’t getting his hands grubby. He’d probably never even fired a gun in his whole bloody life, so how could he understand the personal relationship you could develop with a weapon? Besides, what would happen if the weapons were dumped and then a bad situation cropped up? You’d be totally naked, wouldn’t you!

Houlihan made up his mind to disobey McInnes. It made him feel good. It gave him a pleasing sense of his own authority. He’d keep the guns, all the guns, until he was good and ready to toss them. And he wouldn’t tell McInnes about this decision when he telephoned him next time. He looked at his watch. He had thirty minutes to kill before he was due to call The Reverend again.

He reached up and opened the door of the cab and slid in behind the wheel.

‘What’s next?’ Rorke asked.

‘Another phone call, then a good night’s sleep,’ was how Seamus Houlihan answered.