Sixty-Four

Three police cars and half a dozen uniformed officers stood outside the church as Hollis and Finn walked toward it. It was the kind of commotion that’s never supposed to touch such a lovely place, Hollis thought, a little sadly. But someone had brought it here. Someone had killed Eamon in his own cottage, and to her mind, it had to be the fifth member of the group—unwilling to give up their share of the loot or to be blackmailed by Eamon.

As they reached the church, Hollis could see that Siobhan and Kieran were still there, separated but still handcuffed, and Siobhan was sobbing against a Garda car. Word about Eamon had obviously reached them.

“Stay here, and I’ll look for Peter,” Finn said. “But stay right where the guards are. Don’t move.” He walked several feet then returned. “Not that you can’t take care of yourself, because obviously you can.”

“I’ve got the manuscript, though. Too valuable to take any chances with it.” He kissed her cheek then moved his lips up to her ear. “I’m grateful for every moment with you, even the ones where you’re nagging me and I’m ignoring you.”

She wanted to grab him, hold tight, and never let go. But instead she moved her head so her lips grazed his. “When this is over, I promise I’m going to keeping nagging you.”

“And I’m going to keep ignoring you.”

It sounded like heaven. They kissed, and then Finn moved his head away. “Be safe,” he said as he walked away.

“You too,” she whispered as she watched him go.

Hollis was only a few steps away from the Garda car, but she decided to move closer. When she was about two feet from Siobhan, she caught her eye. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

Siobhan leaned toward her. “It’s my fault he’s dead. All he wanted was a quiet life … to be here … and I ruined it for him.”

Hollis could see that she was a slight woman. Her uncontrollable red hair seemed the biggest part of her. Years of drugs had made her eyes hollow and her skin drawn. On her arms there were little round scars. It seemed odd to Hollis until she realized what they were. “Someone burned cigarettes on your arms,” she said. “That’s a torture technique. Why would someone do that to you?”

Siobhan folded in on herself and kept crying.

“You were a drug mule,” Hollis said suddenly, realizing it couldn’t have been rehab money Eamon was after. And that the move to Australia wasn’t for a fresh start, but for a much darker reason. “Did you lose the drugs? Is that what your father needed the money for?”

Siobhan let out a wail. “They said they would pour petrol over me, burn me alive as an example,” she got out before the tears overtook her.

Hollis felt an urge to put her arm around the girl. “Your father was buying your freedom from some drug cartel?”

“It was my mess. He could have let me take the punishment for it. Instead he just got deeper and deeper into things trying to save me. And now look what’s happened.”

“How did you get out?”

“He put up some money, a down payment. He said he’d give them a hundred million dollars but they had to let me go first. They knew they could find me if he was cheating them. But I guess they got impatient and killed him first.”

“It wasn’t a drug cartel that killed him,” Hollis said. “It was someone from TCT. I’m sure of it.”

Siobhan stared at the churchyard where her mother was buried, and her father soon would be. “He made me promise I’d have a whiskey for him at Dun Aonghasa on the day he died, and I can’t even do that much for him.” She held up her handcuffed wrists. “Doubt I’ll be able to even attend his mass.”

“Maybe your brother will.”

“I don’t have a brother. It was just my parents and me.”

“But there was a photo in the shop, with a little boy behind your dad’s leg.”

She smiled. “That was Declan. He was a bit of a stray my da wanted to help. He was always wanting to help …” Her voice trailed off, replaced by tears. One of the guards touched Siobhan’s arm and suggested she sit in the car. She meekly followed his suggestion. Whatever got her on the path that led here, she couldn’t have imagined things would turn out like this. It was a feeling Hollis could relate to more than she wanted to admit.

Hollis swallowed her own desire to cry as she moved away from the Garda car. Another reason she wouldn’t have liked being a spy. Real people, good people, get killed and so often there’s nothing that can stop it.

“Look what you have there!” Lydia popped up, as had become her tiresome habit, and walked toward Hollis.

“Finn is looking for Peter,” Hollis wrapped her arms tightly around the envelope. “We’re giving this to him.”

Lydia inched closer. Hollis could feel her muscles tighten. She got ready to punch, or run, or scream for the police.

“Peter is a decent choice for help,” she said. “But he’s also very ambitious. If anyone gets in his way … You heard about Bangkok.”

Hollis clung to the envelope. “What exactly happened in Bangkok?”

“Brad Thomas, the officer who was killed, he was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? If I remember correctly, he trusted Peter too, which was a shame, obviously.”

“And you can’t trust anyone in your business.” It was all Hollis could think to say. But she wasn’t sure. And Finn had been gone a long time.

“No.” Lydia stared off at the water for a moment, then seemed to shake off whatever disappointment she felt.

Hollis looked at her and saw that Lydia Dempsey was the path not taken. Strong, sure of herself, full of skills and courage. “Do you regret being in intelligence?” she asked.

Lydia lifted one corner of her mouth into a kind of half smile. “Only sometimes. How about you? Regret giving up something you would have been good at?”

Hollis let the question sink in. “Only sometimes,” she answered.

“Now that we’ve bonded, can I have the manuscript?”

“I don’t think we’ve bonded that much. Maybe the manuscript outs you as TCT’s inside person at the CIA. Maybe you just want the money for yourself.”

“Maybe I can use the information in the manuscript to help national security, without having to share credit with Interpol, and I might be able to redeem myself at Langley in the bargain.”

Hollis shook her head.

“Why don’t I prove to you that Peter is a liar,” Lydia said.

Hollis saw Finn and Peter walking toward them. If Lydia knew something, there were only seconds before Peter would have the manuscript and it would be too late. “Prove it how?”

“Ask him how Thomas really died. Ask him what’s in that manuscript that complicates his life.”

“You’re saying he’s TCT’s inside man?”

Peter and Finn reached them before Lydia could answer. Hollis looked to her for something—some clue that she knew Peter was actually working for TCT—but there was nothing.

“Let me see it,” Peter said, his hand out to Hollis.

She looked at Finn. He nodded, but her hands still clung to the envelope.

“Give it up, Hollis,” Peter said. “Your husband says this proves your innocence. You want me to believe you, then give me the manuscript.”

Hollis looked over at the Garda standing just a few feet away. She could scream and the whole bunch of them would be taken into custody. What would happen then, she had no idea. Peter could still get the envelope, and she and Finn could still be mistaken for criminals. Or she could hand it over and hope that they’d picked the right person.

“Don’t give it to him,” Lydia said. “I’m CIA. You know that. I may have put your lives in danger a few times but my motives have been pure.”

“Don’t do it, Hols,” David walked up to them.

Hollis pivoted. “Where have you been?”

“About four steps behind you every step of the way. You really are a good spy. A good team of spies, actually.” He nodded toward Finn, who seemed disinclined to take any compliment from David.

“I suppose you want this too,” Hollis said.

“I know you don’t trust any of us at this point, nor should you.” David took a business card out of his pocket. “This is my boss’s address. Mail it to him.”

“How do we know that’s your boss’s address?” Finn asked.

“How do you know that either of these bozos aren’t TCT?” David snapped.

“That’s enough,” Peter said. “Just give me the envelope, Hollis, so I can be rid of the lot of you.”

The three intelligence agents starting bickering like children, each accusing the other of being the inside man. Hollis’s head was spinning, and her grasp on the envelope was causing it to bend in half. “I know,” she said.

The others all stopped, and looked to her.

“The manuscript is supposed to have clues to the person’s real identity. We all look together and between us, I’ll bet we can figure out who it is.” She looked at each of their faces one by one—Lydia, Peter, and David. They each had the same expression: annoyed. Finn put his arm around Hollis’s shoulder.

“Let’s do it here. Out in the open.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Peter said.

“I think it’s brilliant,” Lydia said.

“So do I,” David chimed in.

Peter threw up his hands. “Do what you want.”

Hollis opened the envelope and slowly pulled out a stack of paper. But it wasn’t what she was expecting. There wasn’t a typed manuscript of a fake unpublished play. There was just one paragraph printed on the top page. The rest of the paper was blank.

“‘I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society,’” she read, “‘except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.’”

“Brendan Behan,” Finn said. “And, I suspect, Declan Murphy’s personal mantra.”

“That’s what we’ve been chasing this whole time?” David asked.

Finn shook his head. “No. We saw the real manuscript. Declan went to get his aunt’s cane. He put on a jacket. He must have put that in an envelope and then switched it with the real one somehow.”

It stung to realize how easily she’d been fooled. “When I kicked him,” Hollis said. “He dropped the manuscript and fell to the ground in pain. Or so I thought. He was probably just keeping the real envelope out of sight until after we left.”

Peter ran to the Garda car and spoke to one of the officers, then he came back. “There’s a ferry in ten minutes. I’ve told the guards to ground any helicopters that try to leave the island. He could take a private boat, but let’s hope he doesn’t.” Then he pointed a long finger at Hollis. “You better not have switched the manuscript yourself.”

“If we had, why wouldn’t we have done a better job of faking a manuscript? Finn is an expert, remember. We could have written half a dozen fake Behan plays by now.”

Peter seemed to consider it. “You know what he looks like, this Declan Murphy? The only time I saw his face was when his friend stuck a needle in my neck, and my memory is a little fuzzy on the details.”

“We know him,” Hollis said.

“Good. Then you point him out to me and you might be able to survive this.”

“You do something for us first,” Hollis said. “Tell me what happened in Bangkok.”

He stared at her, then Finn. “What do you know about it?”

“I know that a friend of mine died when he was working with you.”

Peter took a step forward, then stopped. His eyes squinted until his pupils almost disappeared. Hollis could see his throat move as he swallowed hard. The veins in his neck seemed twice as large as they had just seconds before. He moved again, this time faster, getting almost to her face. She braced herself for an explosion.

“Someone chose not to listen to me and died as a result.” He spat each word out like a bullet. “Don’t make that mistake, Dr. Larsson.”

Finn stepped in front of Hollis. “We have less than ten minutes to find Declan,” he reminded Peter.

That seemed to snap Peter out of his rage. “When you find Declan Murphy, point him out to me, and I’ll take it from there.” He turned and walked away.

Finn grabbed Hollis’s elbow and pulled her back. “Why would you do that?”

“What if he’s TCT? Lydia said—”

“Lydia? You trust her?”

“You trust him?”

Finn let go of her arm. “We had a plan, and then you just do whatever you want …” He looked around. He had the same expression he’d had days before when the idea of going to Ireland had first been mentioned. She could feel the distance between what they each wanted growing by the second. Hollis reached out to him.

“We’re in this together, remember?” she asked.

He nodded. “Let’s get to the ferry with the rest of them. I want to know which of them is the real bad guy.”

“Finn,” she said. “Declan isn’t on the ferry. I think he has one stop to make before he leaves Inishmore.”