by Andy McNab
The young receptionist reappeared, shaking his head. 'He's not in the bar, sir. Can I take a message?'
I gave him the biggest grin I could manage. 'Tell him I was here, but I left early.'
I walked back to Basma's car.
96
Dom hadn't wasted his time. He'd wrapped a shemag round his head to hide his blond hair, and was studying the map spread out on his lap. He'd obviously done his stuff. 'Couldn't be easier, Nick. It's east on Jadayi Suhl, then a left when we hit Jadayi Awalimay. It's main road all the way to the Khyber Pass. A hundred miles, tops.'
I gunned the engine. 'It'll be a fucking sight less than a hundred if we've got a Predator overhead.'
I reversed down the alleyway and on to the street.
'How can we tell?'
'We can't. First we'll know about it is either ISAF putting in a flying roadblock up ahead, or a Hellfire missile up our arse.'
'Up the Khyber?' He grinned. 'Either way, nice knowing you, Nick. And I still haven't thanked you . . .'
'Later, mate, later.'
We passed Flower Street. It was packed.
We drove through the embassy area and past the compound protected by the sangar. I was tempted to stop and ask the big lads hitting the weights inside if they cared to come and ride shotgun.
A couple of Toyota flatbeds screamed past, with four or five police on the back of each, weapons pointing out. None of them gave a fuck about a battered red estate.
We passed the high walls and razor wire that surrounded the British embassy. The barrels of SA80s paraded back and forth behind the sandbags. Nine times out of ten this would have been a safe haven. We could have driven to the barrier, declared ourselves, and the ordeal would have been over. But right now some of the grey men behind those HESCOs wanted us dead. How many? I wondered. How far and how deep had this thing spread?
The estate lurched across a pothole and we bounced in our seats. We came to the main. I turned left, heading north.
Dom tapped the map. 'This parallels the airport road for a while, then veers north-east, then east.'
'About a hundred and sixty K max, right? You might as well get your head down, mate. Fuck knows, those scabs of yours could do with some beauty sleep. But a few things first. Assuming we get over the border, Islamabad's about the same distance the other side. We'll get flights from there. We'll go separately. You take British Airways, I'll take any other carrier I can. It'll make it harder for the Yes Man to lift us both. He has to do that to control the film, and it'll be easier and cleaner for him if he can do it this side of civilization.'
Dom started to settle. 'The Yes Man? The guy talking to me in the cell or the one with Finbar?'
'Both, mate. They're the same man. Listen, I know him. I knew the two Irish guys too. I don't know his name, never have, but I know he's dangerous, smart and doesn't give a shit about anyone.'
He sat up, ready to question me to death.
'Not now, mate. We've got too much real shit to deal with. Now . . .' I paused as he settled down again. 'Once in Dublin, we'll aim to be at Bertie's Pole at nine a.m. every day for three days. If neither of us turns up in that time, we have to assume the other's been lifted or something's gone wrong. You got that? I'm saying it now in case there's a roadblock round the next corner and we get separated. If we do, then, yeah, it was nice knowing you, too. Who shall I send my invoice to? You or Moira?'
He grinned. 'Moira, definitely. Then me, once she's rejected it.' His grin faded as a new thought came into his mind. 'Nick, there's a real complication to all this. The Yes Man and his team didn't ship their heroin into virgin territory. There's a turf war going on in Dublin, and it's him who sparked it.'
'PIRA won't be liking that one little bit.'
'Haven't you heard, Nick?' He raised an eyebrow. 'PIRA have been disbanded! They've handed in every single weapon they ever had and taken up landscape gardening . . .'
If his aching jaw had let him, he'd have laughed as hard as I did.
'A turf war is the best news I've had all week. It's going to help us get Finbar back. Now grab some kip. I'll wake you when we get to the border and I need your wallet. It's the most corrupt spot on earth. Last time I crossed here it cost a hundred bucks.'
I wasn't sure he'd heard the last bit. His shemag-draped head was banging against the window and he was snoring like a chain gun.
I checked the dash. The clock said it was midday. We had a full tank, and that was plenty for the distance we had to cover. We'd be going at a fuel-efficient pace anyway because I didn't want to be conspicuous or get involved in even the slightest accident.
There was nothing much else I could do now but resist the temptation to search for Predator-shaped specks on the horizon.
PART FOUR
97
Herbert Park, Dublin
Tuesday, 13 March
1017 hrs
Dom was standing at the kitchen island. He was on his fourth call and his third coffee since we'd arrived at the house an hour ago.
We'd met up that morning at Bertie's Pole, as arranged, then jumped into a cab and headed straight here to flush out the Yes Man.
We still had our coats on. We weren't staying long. I had a fake leather three-quarter-length number I'd bought in Islamabad, a really good pair of rip-off Levi's and a shirt. The whole lot had come to all of about twenty dollars.
'That's no excuse, David.' Dom was in short, sharp, aggressive, don't-bullshit-me-I'm-the- Polish-Jeremy-Paxman mode. He wanted results. 'He's still missing. You said you'd move heaven and earth. I've been a good friend to you and the police in the past, given you good coverage. Now you've got to start helping me.' He slammed his thumb on to the red button. Inspector David of the Gardai was a golf mate – or had been before this call.
Dom had called in another set of favours all over town. He and Siobhan had already hassled every man and his dog to find Finbar; they'd hit drug outreach programmes, fellow reporters, anybody with influence. Now he was calling them all over again. We wanted those ripples to spread. We wanted to spark up the Yes Man and bring him out into the open. The lines would still be monitored, and there'd probably been a trigger on the house from the moment he'd seen we were flying into town. That was just what we wanted. He knew where we were, and now he thought he knew what we were doing.
The only person Dom didn't call was Siobhan. He'd done that from a call box in the city. She was fine and well holed-up, although if she took more than one bath a day it was cold. She must have left the house as soon as I'd called her. There was half a plate of scrambled egg on the side. It was congealed and rancid, but the flies seemed to like it.
Dom put the phone back into the charger, put his cup under the espresso spout and threw in another capsule.
'Well done, mate. He'll have followed us since we took off for Islamabad. Now we're back together and searching for Finbar, he'll show his hand.'
The Yes Man would want us dead, but it wasn't going to happen in daylight on a residential street. Drive-by shootings of prominent newsmen or bundling people into vans without anyone noticing were the stuff of bad TV shows. This wasn't Kabul. He would pick his moment, and it would be soon.
'He's like a human Predator, all-seeing, all-hearing. Any time now he'll aim to take us out. But we'll be waiting.'
'Then what?'
'This story can only have one ending, mate. Even if the plan works and we find Finbar alive, he's never going to stop. You, me, your family, we're in the shit – big-time. So we've got to nail the Yes Man, and to do that, we have to bring him to us.'
I unrolled the first of the three twenty-metre extension leads I'd bought in O'Connell Street. I ran it out to the end of the reel, then cut it away so I was left with the plug at one end and three bare wires at the other. 'Where's your broom cupboard, mate?'
He showed me. I grabbed a mop and a couple of long-handled brushes.
I unscrewed the heads and took the sticks over to the roll of gaffer-tape and six forks waiting on
the island.
I scored the plastic sheath of the three-core cable with a pair of kitchen scissors, then peeled away about six inches of the plastic. I left the earth wire intact, but exposed about the same amount of the live and the neutral. I twisted each round a fork, and bound them with tape for good measure. By the time I'd repeated the whole procedure with the other two extension leads, each of the three twenty-metre lengths of cable had a pair of forks dangling from its end.
I grabbed a headless broom handle and taped a fork either side of one end, making sure the heads curved outwards. I didn't want current arcing between them; I wanted it zapping into a target and fucking him up big-time.
When all three poles were ready, I picked up my coffee and gulped it back in one. We had to get moving.
He'd watched me fuck about with broom handles and cutlery with a look of deepening gloom. I slapped him on the shoulder, trying to cheer him up a little. 'He might be like a fucking Predator, but we've got some tricks up our sleeves, you and me.' I grinned.
Although we'd have the PIRA weapons, I wouldn't want to risk using them immediately. If we killed the men who came after us, their information would die with them.
We'd have to be a bit careful with my homemade tasers for the same reason. The commercially manufactured ones contain a step-up transformer that produces a short burst of high voltage to catapult a small amount of current. The domestic electricity supply uses a much higher current, pushed by a lower voltage. Tasers aren't designed to kill, but ours easily could. We'd be wiring our targets into the mains.
'A two-second prod will be enough to drop anybody.' I headed for the door. 'Another two seconds and they won't get up. It'll fuck them up worse than a badly earthed fridge.'
Dom hesitated at the island. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the edge of the worktop.
'I know you're worried about Finbar, mate. But that ain't going to get him back. Come on. She's waiting.'
98
We sat in the lobby of Jury's Hotel with three nice frothy cappuccinos. We'd taken a cab back to Bertie's Pole, then continued on foot, doing anti-surveillance all the way. We'd wandered through a shopping precinct and bought two pay-as-you-go mobiles, circled a block, stopped in the middle of a couple of streets and doubled back on ourselves. We'd ended up in a florist's, bought a big bunch of red and white roses, then left by the rear exit. The Yes Man could get his eyes back on us later. For now, we didn't want anyone to see who we were meeting.
Kate was sitting next to Dom on the sofa. She was even more excited to be out of the office doing something secret for him than she had been with her flowers. This was her chance to prove she could make it.
She handed me a folder. 'The file is on Councillor Connor McNaughten. I called his office first thing, and told them about the new programme.'
'What's it called?'
'Dublin Let's Go. That's what I told him, anyway. His office phoned back within the hour saying yes, he'd be delighted to be interviewed. I said one thirty – is that OK?'
She looked at Dom, but I jumped in. 'Great job, Kate. When you get back to the office, could you ring them back and say there won't actually be any filming today? Dom just wants to come over and talk round the idea, get it fixed in everyone's heads. We'll probably bring the cameras along on Friday, at some city location. You know, dramatic backdrop, that sort of thing. Can you do that? I don't want them expecting men with furry microphones and all that shit.'
She nodded and drank the last of her cappuccino.
Dom handed her the flowers. 'Katarzyna, Moira doesn't need to know what's happening yet. It must stay completely secret until we have the foundations of the story. Once that's done, I'm going to make sure you're on my team and not sitting at her beck and call any more.'
She smiled her thanks to us both. The thought of not working for that bitch must have been the best news she'd had in weeks.
I stood and shook her hand. 'Thanks, Kate. You've been fantastic.'
She left and we sat down to finish our brews.
Dom's brow furrowed. 'What's the score if we didn't shake them off? Aren't we putting her in danger?'
'Even if they follow her back to the station, all they'll want to know is what she handed over. They're not going to compromise themselves by lifting and threatening newsroom staff. They're pond-life, mate. They'll want to keep all this down in the weed.'
He took another sip and wiped the froth from his scabby top lip. We still looked like a couple of crash victims but, fuck it, there was nothing we could do about that. And on the upside, it meant Dom wasn't getting recognized every time he turned round.
'What now?'
I flicked through the printouts in Kate's folder. Judging by the number of representatives they had on the city council, Sinn Fein must have pulled out as many stops down here as they had up north. Connor was thinner and greyer than he had been when I'd last seen him. His picture showed him in the classic shoulders-at-forty-five-degrees-to-the-camera pose. He was doing his best to look like everyone's favourite uncle, and his best wasn't good enough.
It was no surprise to me that he'd switched careers. Former terrorists were turning into statesmen everywhere on the planet. Israeli bombers killed British soldiers on the streets of Jerusalem and were rewarded with invitations to dinner in Downing Street. The ANC was a proscribed terrorist organization, then went on to run South Africa. Even Hamas was now the voters' friend. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before bin Laden became secretary general of the UN.
The Peace Process had produced the same result in Ireland, but that didn't mean everything in the garden was rosy. Even before 9/11, when the Americans had their first really big taste of the realities of terrorism, the IRA hadn't just raised funds in Boston and New York from tenth-generation Irishmen who thought that PIRA were freedom-fighters who played the fiddle in pubs in their spare time. They'd also made a fortune domestically from gambling, extortion, prostitution and bank robbery.
But their biggest earner had always been drugs. The police and the army were too busy getting shot at and bombed, so there had been no one around to stop it. The IRA kneecapped drug-dealers periodically as a public-relations exercise, but only as a punishment for going freelance.
Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley might now be having a kiss and a cuddle at Stormont, and Martin McGuinness might be the Minister of Education, but deep down in the belly of the island, old habits died hard. There was just too much money at stake and they didn't want anyone else muscling in. Drugs were their big thing. They'd been running the trade for the last thirty-odd years. And it was even easier to cross the border now the army checkpoints had gone.
I closed the folder. 'First you buy me some decent clothes, then we clean ourselves up here, bowl along to City Hall and ask Councillor McNaughten to help us find Finbar.'
'Easy as that? What are you going to ask him? Why don't you tell me, Nick?' Dom's frustration was plain to see. I hadn't told him what I was planning, and I didn't intend to.
I smiled. 'Connor and I go back a long way. He'll help us, believe me.'
'But how?'
I stood up, ready to go. 'Whichever way I want him to. Come on, let's get sorted out. It'll give whoever's following us time to pick us up again.'
99
We were being followed. The green Seat MPV was three behind us, but I couldn't tell Dom yet. If the driver of the cab taking us towards Donovan O'Rossa Bridge was the excitable sort, he'd either drive us off the road or pull up by the first cop he saw.
It was very shoddy surveillance. The two of them bobbed about non-stop, trying to see where we were. They buzzed in and out of our lane to check we were still ahead. They couldn't have been more obvious if they'd tried. In fact, they were so amateur I wondered if they were doing it to scare us. I didn't care: it was good news either way.