Thomas Barry stood at the window of the eleventh-storey suite he had been sharing with Sheila Connelly for the previous three days and looked across Michigan Avenue to the immense pewter-tinted lake that ran out to the horizon. A few sailboats had ventured out beyond the harbour breakwater but the grey waters, the spume-edged chop and a stiff onshore breeze didn’t make the thought of a day on the lake very inviting. It was only three in the afternoon but the overcast skies and an intermittent gusting rain made it seem like dusk.
Barry turned away from the window and looked across to the couch where the Connelly woman was sitting reading Time, a cigarette in her other hand and a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of her. She was dressed in tweed slacks, a white blouse and a pair of soft leather slippers, all new since her arrival in the United States. Beyond her, on a broad shelf below a large mirror by the door, Barry could see the copy of The Mask of Dimitrios she’d been given by Ridder. The ammonia-induced writing had faded weeks ago but would come up again without any adverse effect; the FBI lab had made sure of that before they left New York.
It had taken the first week with Sheila Connelly to get her to even talk to him and another week after that to grant him the most limited kind of trust. By the third week they’d come to understand each other well enough but only for their own alienation from the rest of the world. Barry was a British policeman born and raised in Catholic Ireland, fated never to be fully accepted by either country, and Connelly was a woman who fought for a cause she’d long since lost her passion for and belief in. By standing apart from the world at large they stood together for themselves, at least in some small way, although even now Barry still saw himself as her minder as much as her companion. Compounding that was the shoulder rig and holster for the Smith and Wesson .38 Special Sam Foxworth had insisted that he wear while he was with her.
‘She’s bait,’ the FBI man had reminded him before they left New York. ‘Try to remember that, Barry. She’s not some heroic figure fighting for her beliefs no matter what she says or what you think. She’s a piece of tail we’re using to snare Sean Russell with.’
The woman dropped her copy of Time onto the coffee table, took a sip from her teacup and puffed on her cigarette. ‘All very domestic, aren’t we? The happily married couple on a visit to Chicago.’ Barry could feel himself blushing. They’d been living in close proximity for the better part of a month now and she was forever reminding him of it, just to see him squirm. She smiled up at him from the couch. ‘Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Except that you’re pacing up and down like an expectant father and you’ve got that great bloody gun hanging off you. Russell sees that and he’ll do a runner, you can be sure of that.’
‘You just do your part and I’ll do mine.’
‘You don’t have a part,’ she answered. ‘It’s been made up and that’s going to make him suspicious enough.’
‘Not if you calm him down.’ He pushed his hands into his pockets to keep from fidgeting. ‘You remember the story we agreed on?’
‘Your name’s Tom Sullivan and you’re from the New York City branch of Clan na Gael.’ Clan na Gael was a semi-secret society of American Irish who supported the IRA, Isolationism and the fascist America First organisation.
‘And what do I do for a living in New York?’
‘You’re a New York City policeman.’
‘Which should explain the revolver, especially since I’ve taken leave to act as your bodyguard while you’re in America.’
‘I told you and your FBI friends from the beginning: that was never part of the plan and for a man like Russell if it’s not part of the plan, it’s not to be trusted.’
‘That’s a chance we’ll have to take.’
‘I still don’t see the point of this.’
‘You know exactly what the point is. The contact name you were carrying lives in Detroit, this Dr Doyle, whoever he is. In a few days from now the royal train arrives in Windsor, Ontario, just across the Detroit River. If Russell is going to make an attempt either in Windsor or a few miles along the way at Niagara Falls, he has to be caught red-handed with bombs or bomb-making materials in his possession. According to Foxworth it’s the only way to make any charges stick.’
‘You really think he’ll be stupid enough to let us come along?’
‘He won’t know where to go at all until you give him the book, will he?’
‘I still think it’s all foolishness.’
‘Perhaps, but what do you have to lose?’
‘My life for one thing.’
‘That’s what I’m here for.’
‘No. You’re here to see that I keep my side of the bargain. I give you Sean Russell and I get a new life here in America.’ That was the bait Foxworth had dangled in front of her – a way out, a new life without the organisation. Freedom.
‘Seems a fair trade to me.’
She lit another cigarette and sat back against the cushions, making Barry uneasily aware of the roundness of her breasts against the fabric of her blouse. ‘Fair trade? You really think your friends are going to give me a new life in the Holy Land here? Don’t be daft, Thomas. Once they have what they want they’ll let the organisation take care of me and you know they’ll do just that. They’ll find me eventually and when they do they’ll put a bullet in my brain, just like they’ve done with all the other traitors who’ve gone before.’
‘A traitor being anyone who doesn’t believe in the Republican ideal – is that it?’
‘We’re arguing like a pair of Irishmen.’ She smiled.
‘That we are.’ He laughed, feeling the tension ease slightly in one direction and increase in another. He reached down to take a cigarette from the package on the coffee table and she sat forward, her hand wrapping around his wrist.
‘You’ve not much experience with women, have you? Political or otherwise.’
‘Experience enough.’ He eased out of her grip and lit the cigarette. He walked back towards the window and stood there, looking out at the squalling lake again.
‘You’re a liar, Thomas Barry. What would the monks say about a sin like that?’ He could feel her standing just behind him and to one side, the side away from the revolver in its holster.
‘Really,’ he said. ‘And how would you know that?’
‘A woman knows these things, Thomas.’ She put her hand up onto his shoulder and even though she wore no scent he could smell her faintly – soap and talc and something else beneath it all.
She was right, of course. For him women were a mystery – the brothers in Cork had seen to that. Later, in the army, the only recourse for unmarried men were prostitutes, a direction also tainted by graphic tales of horror from Brother Emmett and his brown-robed, rope-belted colleagues.
Living in a succession of police station section houses for bachelor coppers eventually turned circumstance into habit, and no matter how often his married friends at the Yard like Morris Black or Bob Fabian tried to set him up, nothing ever seemed to really take. The few times anything had gone much farther than a goodnight kiss had been fumbling, red-faced disasters.
The woman moved a little closer and now he could feel the firm curve of her breast pushing into his arm. He tried to move an inch or two away but she kept her hand on his shoulder, keeping him where he was.
‘What are you afraid of?’ she asked. ‘Some Jesuit bastard in a collar who caught you with your hands inside the blanket? Told you all women except your mother and the Holy Virgin were riddled with disease?’ It was close enough to the truth to make him blush again. He managed to pull himself away.
‘They were Dominicans and I was the bastard,’ he answered, keeping his eyes fixed on the great grey expanse of the lake. ‘They sent my mother to the laundries. I never knew who my father was.’
‘Jesus,’ she whispered. She came and stood in front of him, reached up and laid one hand flat against his chest. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I.’ She left her hand where it was, against his heart, and came up on her toes to kiss him softly on the lips. Her mouth tasted of smoke and of sugar from the tea. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked when she moved her mouth away.
‘It’s all a plot to convert you to the Cause.’ She smiled. ‘Or perhaps I’m seducing you to get my hands on that revolver of yours.’
‘No. Tell me.’
She kissed him again, her lips softer now, one hand remaining on his heart, the other coming up to brush against his cheek. ‘I’m lonely,’ she said softly. ‘And so are you.’
‘That’s reason enough?’
‘For people like us, I think so, yes.’
‘We’ve a rendezvous with Sean Russell in the park.’
‘Not for more than an hour yet. We have time.’
They lay in bed together when they were done, the Scotland Yard detective simultaneously embarrassed and excited by being nude in bed with a woman, bemused by it all, especially since even the nakedness of the locker room in a public swimming bath had always been cause for acute self-consciousness. At the orphanage in Cork, in the showers, Father Emmett had noted that he’d begun to develop hair on his body and had beaten him soundly for it on the off-chance he’d begun seriously to abuse himself.
Sheila Connelly appeared not to be even slightly disconcerted by the situation, lying on one hip, sharing a cigarette with him, rolling away from time to time, flicking the ash into her tea saucer on the bedside table and that was almost as exciting as the act itself, though not as dramatic in its consequences.
‘You probably think I’m some kind of slut, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know what to think.’
She smiled. ‘At least you’re honest about it.’
‘Most men aren’t?’
‘There haven’t been that many.’
‘I didn’t mean to suggest…’
She smiled again. ‘No offence taken. Not really.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Nothing to be sorry for. To answer your question, the men I’ve known have generally been more concerned with themselves than anything else and when they have wanted my opinion it’s generally been questions about the size of their organ and their virility.’
‘And what do you tell them?’ Barry asked, taking the cigarette from her again and drawing on it.
‘Always the same,’ she answered and this time the smile broadened. ‘You’re the biggest and the best I’ve ever had.’
‘I’ll wager that I’m neither.’
‘And I’ll wager that it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to me or to most.’ She reached down and touched him gently. ‘It’s not this thing of yours that matters so much as the man it’s attached to and most women would agree with me.’ She rolled away and butted the cigarette out. ‘I think it’s time we were on our way,’ she said, rolling back towards him.
He reached out and touched her. ‘In a minute.’
Shortly after four thirty they reached the stepped crescent ellipse of the granite platform holding the brooding statue of Abraham Lincoln at the far end of the long, narrow park. To the left was Michigan Avenue with its row of hotels and lofty office buildings, to the right, through the trees, were the ornate formal gardens of Grant Park and then the lake. The rain had stopped, at least for the moment, but it still dripped from the trees around the statue and wetly glazed the tall bronze figure standing eternally, head down in front of a huge bronze chair.
Russell was there before them, sitting on the granite bench jutting from the surrounding wall of the podium, his trousers protected by a folded newspaper. Sheila Connelly had the Eric Ambler book in her right hand, while Thomas Barry walked on her left. Seeing the book in the woman’s hand, Russell stood and stepped forward. There was no one else on the podium. Behind them the park was empty except for a small black dog in the distance, chasing a ball for its master.
To Barry he looked much rougher than the pictures he’d been shown by Holland back in London. In those photographs, taken surreptitiously from a car parked across the road from Kelly’s Hotel on Great George Street in Dublin, Russell had been bright-faced and cheerful, clean-shaven, his hair brushed back and bow tie straight at his neck. Now, rising from the bench, he looked less like a leader of men than one hunted, which of course was the truth.
The hair was red, rising in a widow’s peak off a broad forehead, the eyes small and black as sin. His white shirt was going grey and stood open at the collar. The coat he wore was a size too small, tight across the broad, powerful-looking chest and shoulders. He had the hands of a butcher.
He stopped on the top step of the podium as Connelly and Barry reached the first. ‘Enjoy the book then?’ Russell asked. Even with those few words the accent was there, thick and heavy as the hands. Brought up in the Phibsborough slums a short spit from Mountjoy Prison, poverty and anger his bread and butter.
‘Not so much as the one before,’ replied Sheila Connelly. According to her, this was the proper answer to his question.
‘Which would that be?’ The countersign.
‘Epitaph for a Spy.’
‘Right then, that’s you, love. Who’s the lag?’
‘A friend. His name is Thomas Sullivan.’
‘I’ve heard no mention of any friend.’
Barry interrupted. ‘Things have changed.’
‘I don’t like it when things change.’
‘Neither do we.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which means we’ve taken risks enough to have you here and we don’t like press conferences with you as the centre of attention.’
Russell’s face broke into a broad grin. ‘You’ve heard then.’
‘Who hasn’t?’ Barry answered. Which was true. The news report about Alfred Dinsley, British agent, filed by T. J. Devlin of the Los Angeles Times two weeks earlier had set people on their ear both in New York and in Washington. It had almost been enough to shut down the whole operation surrounding Russell, but Foxworth bucked the tide and convinced Hoover that it was worth pursuing.
‘There was too much talk going about,’ said Russell, still smiling. ‘The press conference was our German friend’s idea.’ Presumably the German in question was Fritz Weidemann, the playboy Nazi consul in San Francisco; the consulate was already being wiretapped by the Bureau and they’d picked up a conversation between Weidemann, Russell and a man named Hermann Schwinn, Gauleiter, or leader, of the West Coast American Nazi Bund.
‘It was your idea?’ Barry asked.
‘His and mine,’ Russell said. He came down a step closer. ‘We knew our man would be exposed and the whole thing would be put down as a hoax. Like letting air out of a tyre. Gets me off the hook, so to speak.’ Russell’s right hand slipped into the pocket of his overcoat and stayed there. He smiled in Barry’s direction but there was no mirth in his expression. ‘Now then, ‘friend,’ it’s time you told me just who you are.’
‘I’m an agent of your benefactors.’
‘Who would be?’
‘The Clan, as you well know.’
‘It’s not who I am, Mr Sullivan. It’s who you might be.’
‘I told you, a friend. I was sent along with Miss Connelly to see her safely home and you as well if needs be. Your face is on bulletin boards in half the precinct houses in the country.’
‘And how would you be knowing that?’ Russell said, his right hand still in his pocket.
‘Because I work in one.’
‘You’re a copper?’
‘A cop,’ Barry said, using the word carefully. ‘New York City Police.’
‘Now isn’t that grand? A copper to tend to the needs of a wanted fugitive such as myself. Will wonders never cease.’ Russell paused and Barry saw the hand clenching in his pocket. ‘That would go a long way towards explaining that gun you’re wearing under yon jacket.’
‘It would. And what good would I be to you if I didn’t have such a thing on my person?’
‘True enough.’ Russell paused again, the muscles in his thick jaw working, his eyes skipping around the park, looking for anything out of place. ‘With that shite culchie accent of yours you’re not long off the boat.’
‘Two years this July,’ Barry answered.
‘Left from Cork City then, did you?’
‘Cobh, yes,’ Barry answered, putting a Gaelic twist on the name to make it sound more like Cove.
‘Friends on the force to get you a job so quickly.’
‘Friends of yours as well,’ Barry answered.
‘Their names then.’
‘You’ll not get them from me.’
‘Good lad,’ Russell said, coming down a third step, standing directly over Barry now. ‘Never give a name other than your own, no matter who it is you’re talking to.’ The hand came out of his pocket and landed like a stone on Barry’s shoulder. ‘Would you be having some identification about, Mr Sullivan? Something I can see with my own eyes.’
Barry took out his wallet and handed Russell a New York driver’s licence and a New York City police identification card in the name of Thomas Sullivan. There really was such a man on the New York police force, his identification and administrative leave arranged for by Lewis Valentine himself, the New York police commissioner.
The IRA chief of staff examined the documents carefully then nodded. ‘Seems right enough.’ He handed the cards back and Barry replaced them in the wallet. ‘What I don’t understand is why the Clan didn’t contact me directly. They know where I am.’
‘Your New York contact’s telephone line is being tapped and he’s been under surveillance since you arrived on the Stavangerfjord,’ Barry answered, using the name of the ship to further establish his bona fides.
‘Fuck me for an idjit,’ Russell breathed, his accent rising. ‘They’re like fucking rats on fucking cheese.’ He shook his head. ‘We were sure the press conference would put them off.’
‘It did,’ said Barry. ‘But not enough.’ He tried to keep his face impassive. If Russell knew just how little attention was being given to him by the American authorities he’d be ecstatic. The only thing keeping any interest in him alive was Foxworth’s network of personal friendships within the Bureau’s far-flung offices and even that had its limitations. If word got out to Russell’s friends in the American Congress and Senate there’d be hell to pay. The Catholic vote was a large one and not to be provoked at almost any cost.
The big Irishman turned to Sheila Connelly, studying her carefully. ‘You don’t have much to say about all this.’
‘It’s not my place then, is it?’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘I’m just the messenger.’
‘Have you any idea what the message is?’
‘No,’ she answered. ‘Nor do I want to know.’
‘Good,’ he said, ‘since it’s none of your business.’ He nodded towards Barry. ‘You and your policeman getting a leg over, are you?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
Russell let out a booming laugh and a half dozen crows jerked nervously up out of the trees behind Lincoln. ‘True enough, dear. Just wanted to know if you were taken or if you’d give a man such as myself a tumble.’ Barry went up a step, putting himself level with Russell and shaking off Sheila Connelly’s warning hand on his arm. ‘I think you should apologise to Miss Connelly for your rudeness.’
Russell’s big hand went back into his pocket. ‘Your chivalry is noted, Officer Sullivan, but believe me, your lady friend knows her place within my organisation. It’s just as she said. She’s nothing more than a messenger and she’ll follow orders from a superior no matter what those orders are. You understand?’ He moved forward, close enough that Barry could smell whiskey on his sour breath. ‘I don’t give a shit if you’re fucking her ten times a day, man. She’s under my authority, not yours.’
Barry stared at him for a long moment, then turned away, went back down a step and took Sheila Connelly’s arm. ‘Come on. We’re leaving the bastard on his own.’ She shook him off. ‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s right. I’d whore for him if he ordered me to because that’s the way of it.’ She stared up at Russell. ‘But I’d not agree to enjoy it.’
‘And I’d not expect it.’ Russell laughed. He lumbered down the steps and took his empty hand out of the coat pocket. He poked a thick index finger into Barry’s chest. ‘You take life too seriously, Officer Sullivan. You should try and enjoy it, especially in the company of a woman as pretty as your Miss Connelly here.’
‘I thought we had serious business,’ Barry responded.
‘We do,’ Russell said, almost absently, ‘that’s true.’
‘Then shouldn’t we be getting on with it?’ Above everything else Barry was surprised at Russell’s lack of tension. If their information was correct Russell was going to be making an assassination attempt against the king and queen within the next few days and here he was with whiskey on his breath. ‘There can’t be much time left.’
Russell cocked a bushy eyebrow. ‘Less time than I’d hoped for, Officer Sullivan, but more than I need.’