Eamonn Mahoney was concerned. No, he thought, pissed-off, more accurately summed up his feelings. With everything in place for the Easter heists, he received an urgent message the day prior of the operation’s cancellation.
Weeks of planning wasted. No reason given. Ferry tickets and travel expenses already distributed, the cost of which he knew would be impossible to recoup. Probably half of it spent at the pub already. Perfectly good money, literally, pissed away.
Eamonn, having been around the block a time or two, knew not everything always went to plan. But this operation would’ve been the ninth to date and not once had even the most minor of details caused any concern.
Though, for some reason, the unease tugged mightily on his conscience. Why a phone call and not an in-person meet with Clancy, as was the norm? And why was a deputy placing the call, not the man himself? The answer was as obvious as a young child’s lies.
Clancy was distancing himself, but why?
Eamonn stopped his pacing and stared through the bay window of his front room. Kavanagh’s Pub, on the far side of the grass verge, was barely visible in the misty gloom. The quiet verge; cobbled together with patches of grass, a few scraggly trees and a liberal sprinkling of animal droppings, turned the end of his street into an oversized roundabout.
His brick two-up two-down just one of a dozen in a row on Prospect Square faced the 19th-century pub and the little-used gates to Glasnevin Cemetery. He was born in this house and would most probably die here. That was fine by him; he just didn’t want it to be anytime soon.
Eamon de Valera, his namesake, rested across the way. He thought it a shame the nurse spelt his first name wrong on the birth certificate. His mother never noticed the difference. Also buried at Glasnevin was the great man, Michael Collins, a true hero in the fight for Irish independence. Along with the founder of Sinn Fein, Arthur Griffith. The memory of Griffith and Sinn Fein brought him back to the present.
Why would Clancy need to distance himself? Had someone within the operation become compromised? He tried to recall if anything was different about this mission than any of the others. He checked each step off on his fingers:
Five banks, or less, targeted in a new city each time.
Two men per bank from various regions of the country hand-picked by Clancy.
Half mature veterans of the cause.
Half younger soldiers with limited exposure to the inner-workings of the mission.
All men anonymous to one another.
All new to…
It was then it hit him.
He should’ve noticed it when reviewing the list of men Clancy gave him the week previous.
Eamonn slammed his hand down on top of the television, the remote tumbling to the floor. Worry now mixed with agitation. The kind of worry which loosened the bowels just a touch.
Clancy included in the original group one man from a previous mission. The big man missed the duplication, and worst of all, so had Eamonn. He wasn’t sure if this was the reason for his stomach doing Olympics-worthy backflips, but it was an excellent place to start.
Eamonn grabbed the keys to his 2000 Opel Astra, the pad from the kitchen counter on which he kept his planning notes and hurried out the front door. He needed answers, and it started with a man he knew as Sam Coogan down in Bray.
***
Across the verge, parked in front of Kavanagh’s, a blue late-model Ford with a Europcar sticker on the back window sat idling. At regular intervals, the windscreen wipers flicked across the glass clearing the accumulated precipitation. The two occupants within the warm interior sipped coffee from Styrofoam cups.
The two men were as close as brothers. Former regulars with the British Army, both receiving dishonourable discharges after an unfortunate episode in Afghanistan.
The incident occurred in a small village in Zabul province, the same insignificant smudge on the landscape where days earlier their regiment lost a third brother. It should’ve been a routine patrol for their Rifle Battalion; Taliban activity in the area minimal to non-existent for well over a month. Winning the hearts and minds of the local villagers now taking precedence, right up until the moment a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the jagged cliffs above the village tore into their armoured vehicle.
At their court martial their lawyer argued the deaths of the eight villagers were the result of extensive questioning in search of information about the attack. The army disagreed and called it cold-blooded murder. The legal teams on both sides eventually agreed upon a dishonourable discharge rather than a lengthy prison sentence and unwanted media attention. In the fog of war, some things were best swept under the rug.
The two men then drifted in and out of mercenary work for the next 18 months, before the opportunity to work for their current employer fortuitously arrived. The private investigation firm, based in the Channel Islands, rewarded them handsomely for their sporadic assignments. They’d never visited the head office; all communications went through encrypted email. Nor did they care. So long as the money appeared in their accounts on schedule, putting a face to the name of Howarth Investigations was of little concern.
The man in the passenger seat straightened.
The Opel Astra backed out of the driveway and accelerated away along Prospect Square. The driver, the taller of the two men, placed his Styrofoam cup into the cup holder by his side and shifted into drive.
Time to earn their pay.