FORTY-FOUR

‘When you are old and gray …’

“Where am I?” he yelled. “What are you doing to me?”

He looked every bit an old man, struggling with the ropes that bound his hands. His hair was wild and blowing crazily in the stiff ocean breeze, his clothing (and we aren’t talking about the ornate robes of a high-ranking church official) was disheveled and shopworn, and an unkempt beard was sticking out in sprigs and bristles from his pale face.

I wondered, if only for an instant, about the toll that the ordeal must have taken on Caeli’s uncle, one of Ireland’s two reining archbishops and, from the looks of things, a kidnap victim who’d finally resurfaced.

That’s why those recorded voice messages were so strange … why so much time passed between the questions and the answers. Someone must have been queueing up a recording …

“… someone like Michael Corbin,” I muttered.

Seeing Uncle Jack in that condition, and in those surroundings, was a gut-punch.

I’d watched this man in church services, attended by priests and monsignors and bishops and by staff and parishioners alike, confident and personable and fully in charge, in the same way that he’d always appeared with Caeli and me. He’d seemed forever self-assured, poised, abundantly buoyant and energetic, with a boyish charm and enthusiasm and an elegance that you can’t teach or even train for.

But there was no sign of any of that in the haggard old man who struggled with his bindings and fought with his captor, wild-eyed and confused, a few dozen steps away from us. 

He pulled from Corbin’s grip and shook himself, like a dog that had been sprayed with water, angry and defiant.

Caeli started forward, ready to run to his rescue, but I grabbed her at the waist and pulled her back behind the safety of the stone walls that concealed us.

“No,” I whispered, tugging her close. “Not yet. It’s not safe.”

“He needs our help, Max,” she said, wrestling with her emotions at the appalling sight of such a pathetic figure.

Caeli wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“I demand my freedom,” the archbishop yelled, facing Corbin again, his chin jutted out in a cartoon caricature of insolence – like a stage actor playing to a full house, I thought. “Let me go this instant – all of ye. You’ve held me, tortured me, far too long. Enough with it now, and leave me be, for the love of god and all that’s holy.”

The blustering winds intensified, blowing in a driving rain from the north. Sane men would have scattered, desperately seeking any available shelter. But the events that played out before us were surreal, defying logic and reason, as confounding as they were hypnotic. And as I held firm to Caeli, we could do little else but watch them unfold.

Corbin responded to the archbishop’s demands by shoving him roughly to the rocks. Uncle Jack sprawled in a heap, his splayed hands scrabbling for purchase on the slick, hard granite.

“Keep your mouth shut, old man. Your god’s not listening,” Corbin yelled, as much for our benefit as for the archbishop’s.

Caeli’s grip tightened on her AK-47, and I pulled her close once more, hoping to avoid a firefight that would surely kill her uncle along with Michael Corbin – and god only knows who else, us included.

Corbin grinned in our direction, his face streaming water as the rain pelted him head-on, but he seemed oblivious to the weather. He looked past our position, out to the ocean, as though expecting the arrival of another ship, additional support. Then he shoved Uncle Jack once more, this time with a booted foot, pushing him hard into the rocks, and Corbin’s eyes were cold and hard, the color of granite. 

“Never mind this worn-out relic,” Corbin called. “We need to talk, Caeli Brown. Here you are again, after I warned you away – made it clear you needed to leave Ireland.”

“Caeli’s here?” Uncle Jack yelled. “Why, you bastard … bringing her here. Let me see her.”

He looked frantically around, his eyes searching for us, darting from the thick hedgerow to the crumbling walls around the lighthouse to the brambles that surrounded the site to the very spot where we’d secured ourselves and then back over his shoulder again, behind Corbin, where the deadly gunrunners were concealed among the rocks.

He rolled to his side, struggling to stand again, his arms grinding back and forth at the ropes that secured his hands.

“Caeli, darlin’,” he yelled, his head swiveling around, staring at Corbin. Then he struggled to his feet, facing the lighthouse, his eyes desperately searching.

“For the love of god, Caeli, get away from these men,” he shrieked. “Run while ye have the chance.”

It appeared as through she wanted to respond, to call out to him, to assure him that we were close and that everything would be all right in time. But she didn’t utter a sound nor give away our position with gesture or movement ... perhaps reasoning that Corbin would kill her uncle, perhaps because she was concerned that Corbin’s men would open up on us as well, or perhaps for reasons that only Caeli understood in that moment. To this day I don’t know, and I haven’t had the strength to ask her. I have my suspicions, just as I had them at the time, but some things are best left alone – especially when they concern family.

Corbin was an unamused witness to the unfolding scene.

“Shut it down, old man – final warning,” he bellowed.

His voice was like thunder in the whistling wind, and his attention shifted again, his eyes searching the lighthouse ruins.

“All right, let’s settle this,” he yelled. “First off, there’s the matter of my guns.”

Guns? I thought. Why in the hell is he worried about the damn guns?

Caeli was thinking the same thing, apparently, and her concern for her uncle got the better of her.

“What about them?” she called out.

Corbin zeroed in on her voice and began edging slowly toward our position behind the lighthouse, calculating distances, or perhaps looking for opportunities to take us out. 

“You know all about my rifles: where they are, what I plan to do with them. That’s a big problem,” he yelled.

“That ship’s sailed, Corbin,” I hollered. “You can’t stuff the genie back in the bottle – too late. And if you’re smart, you won’t take another step.”

“Fair enough, Professor Blake,” he called, halting his advance. “But it’s still a problem for me. I don’t want to kill you – or your fiancée or even your bodyguards. I will if I have to – understand that – but it seems so … pointless, especially now.”

I exchanged quick glances with Caeli, and we both were thinking the same thing.

What kind of revolutionary are we dealing with?

“It doesn’t make sense,” she whispered.

I shouted out some encouragement because the alternative was a firefight.

“Good,” I said. “We don’t want to kill you, either. Now what? How do we all walk away – the archbishop included?”

“Very good, professor,” he said as his eyes shifted between our position and Uncle Jack, who was listening to the exchange as though his life depended on it. “But something you said earlier to his lordship here – about spilling everything you know to the papers. We can’t abide that – not if we’re going to keep one another alive.”

He was the slick snakeoil salesman now, his voice tinged with danger, and I found myself growing annoyed with his blather. 

“How do you know that cat’s not already out of the bag?” I yelled.

He took it better than I expected.

“Because we’re here right now, with no military or police interference,” he called out. “Better yet, I haven’t heard it on the news or read it in the papers – and god knows the jackals would be all over it had you sent out word.”

I’d noticed that Uncle Jack was slowly drifting toward our position, moving ever so slightly in a deft shuffling of feet. But Corbin saw it, too, and he latched onto the archbishop’s arm and swept his legs out from under him, sending him sprawling back to the rocks.

“Stay down this time,” he barked.

“Leave him alone,” Caeli hollered, leveling the barrel of her AK-47 at Corbin’s chest.

Our adversary was undeterred.

“Easy now, Caeli Brown,” Corbin yelled. “Let’s not do something rash … something that will cost your sainted uncle his life.”

“You won’t live to see it happen,” she called.

“Maybe not. But then, nobody walks away – and I don’t fancy that, any more than you do. So here’s what I propose … before tempers get the better of us. You and your friends will keep your busy mouths shut about me and my business interests. You leave the island, leave Ireland, and stay away from the newspapers and the RTE,” he yelled.

“Sounds simple,” I yelled. “How do you know we’ll keep our word?”

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking that question?”

Yeah, I recall thinking. You should – proof again that our encounter with Corbin and his men was fishy – that none of it seemed to add up.

“But to provide an answer Miss Brown will understand,” he yelled, “I’ll keep his lordship with me, for insurance. If you leave and decide to spill what you know, well … the archbishop dies a slow and painful death, and I’ll make sure you hear all the details. I might even mail you his head.”

“And if we’re good to our word and the authorities figure it out anyway?” Caeli called.

“You’d better hope that doesn’t happen. Otherwise, this patron saint of lost causes” – he shoved Uncle Jack again with his boot – “will meet his maker a lot sooner than he planned.”

Uncle Jack hollered at Corbin, and Corbin hollered back, and the wind pushed the rain at a renewed clip, howling across the desolate landscape.

“Before I forget – before you leave Ireland,” Corbin yelled, his attention focused in our direction again, “I want my guns back. Turn them over now and I’ll let you live.”

My first reaction, and my second? Not a chance in hell. We turn over the AKs and we’re dead on the spot, despite the promise.

Hell, you’d have to be stupid to react otherwise.

Elmore and Leonard agreed.

“The only way you’ll see these rifles is barrel first and pointed at your eye, Corbin,” Leonard yelled.

“Don’t push your luck,” Corbin hollered.

“You’re the one with his ass hanging in the wind,” Leonard shouted. “Keep it there … see what happens.”

Corbin was annoyed, apparently – an unpleasant prospect. He could kill Caeli’s uncle before we could react – and the archbishop’s safe return was the only thing that mattered to us. But the more that I thought about Corbin’s demands, the less sense the situation seemed to make.

Why would he let us just walk away – why even promise that? I wondered.

And how could he think, for even a second, that we’d be dumb enough to hand over our only insurance – the AK-47s and our plentiful stash of ammo – and expect him to let us stroll back to the cove and hop into our inflatable raft and head back to the Mary Kate and then on to Quilty before catching a flight home? 

It didn’t make sense – certainly not at the time. I distinctly remember thinking that Corbin would be better off killing us on the spot. That’s what any true revolutionary would do.

But it sure as hell never occurred to me that he’d allow us to leave unharmed because Caeli’s Uncle Jack insisted on it – and yeah, you read that correctly.

That part of his plan didn’t become apparent until the next group of highly trained gunman showed up and an all-out firefight ensued, with the four of us – Caeli and me; Elmore and Leonard – fortunate enough to be sheltered behind the rickety stone walls of the lighthouse while the rest of them fought it out.

Here’s how it happened ... tell me that it makes any more sense to you than it did to us at the time. 

The first indication that something was truly amiss came when the incessant clatter of gunfire carried over the wind’s roar and raked the stone walls in front of us. Corbin instantly snapped his head around, then dropped to the rocks and began slithering back toward the hedgerow and crumbling ruins that surrounded the old lighthouse and tender’s keep, seeking shelter.

Uncle Jack also was surprised by the gunfire, and he began to frantically scramble toward the remnants of the rocky wall, following Corbin.

That’s odd, I recall thinking. Why isn’t he running this way? Why is he following Corbin? And why are the new arrivals shooting at Corbin? Didn’t he call them in?

Caeli also was confused, although her focus remained on her uncle.

“What’s he doing?” she said, though she wasn’t looking to me for an answer. She called out to him almost instantly.

“Over here, Uncle Jack,” she yelled. “We’re here. Hurry.”

But if the archbishop heard her voice carrying over the blustering winds and the steady thumping of multiple assault rifles on full-auto from two opposing forces, we had no way of knowing. All we could tell for certain was that he raced toward his supposed captor and not toward us.

Corbin called to one of his men on the opposite side of the rock wall and soon had an AK-47 in his hand, which he quickly checked. An additional Kalashnikov dropped over the wall, along with a heavy sack, and another of the mercenaries scrambled over a low point in the barrier while Corbin provided covering fire.

In a deft move, the newcomer produced a knife, opened it with a flick of his wrist, and slit the ropes that secured Uncle Jack’s hands.

“What the hell is this?” I muttered.

“We’re here, Uncle Jack,” Caeli shouted again. “Run … run.”

But Uncle Jack didn’t hesitate, or stop to consider the precarious situation that he was in, or even glance over his shoulder at his niece. He intuitively grabbed the second AK-47, checked the magazine, flicked off the safety, and began sweeping the area to the east, laying down bursts of automatic gunfire – clearly a man who was as comfortable with a Kalash in his hands as he was with a rosary or a hymnal.

“The no-good bastard’s been playing us,” I muttered. “All this time he’s been playing us.”

Elmore scrambled over to us with an update.

“We’ve got eyes on five men, probably more,” he said as he pulled up beside us. “Can’t say for sure, but they look like Mister F’s crew – the Italians, from the castle.”

“Penn and Teller? Sal and Sol?” I said.

“Yeah. Looks like,” Elmore said.

A stray round smacked into the lighthouse wall close to our position, and we all instinctively drew back.

“Don’t want to leave him alone for long – not with the arm,” Elmore said, sweeping his hand in Leonard’s direction. “What do you want us to do?”

It was a hell of a good question, and the answer would have been easier for us had Uncle Jack’s presence, and his apparent allegiance to Michael Corbin, not gummed up the works.

I waited to see if Caeli had any thoughts, but she seemed to be frozen in place, her eyes empty, no doubt trying to determine a logical explanation for what we’d just seen.

“We wait it out – stay out of it for now,” I said to Elmore. “Let us know if you confirm it’s the Italians.”

“Right,” he said and scrambled back toward Leonard, crouching low even though the lighthouse sheltered us from the firefight.

“Are you all right?” I asked Caeli a moment later.

She didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes were fastened on her uncle, who was busy spraying gunfire over the rock wall, and I figured that she hadn’t heard me and asked her the same question again.

“Hell no,” she said this time.

She glanced at me, pulling her eyes away from the horror.

“What do we do now?” she asked. “How do we save a man who doesn’t want to be saved?”

Hell of a good question, I thought, but I had no answers to give her.