Once In, Never Out

by Dan Mahoney

  “I was hoping you’d see things that way, but I don’t think I’m gonna be sleeping too well.”

  “Then take a pill, but think about this. He’s an important man and there’s going to be a big fuss over his demise. You will be one of the last people to have seen him alive, so the Irish cops are gonna want to talk to you.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” McKenna admitted. “They’ll be very interested in the reasons for my visit to him and I’ve got nothing I want to tell them.”

  “Then make yourself unavailable. I need you here now and I don’t want you stuck on the spot over there. If you can’t come up with a story for them, get out of there and catch a New York flight out of Belfast tomorrow.”

  As usual, Brunette made sense to McKenna. But Belfast again? He hated that idea and searched his mind for a way to avoid going back to Belfast. “I’ll have to talk to them, sooner or later, and I see a problem. I’ve got reservations to leave from Dublin, but O’Bannion is killed and all of a sudden I’m leaving from Belfast? Wouldn’t that appear a little suspicious to any good cop looking to talk to me?”

  “We’ll have to talk to them, but later and on our home turf is better. We’ll put our heads together and come up with a story for them.”

  That was McKenna’s only shot and he saw there was no way out. “Okay, I’ll call you back as soon as I get my new flight information.”

  “Good. You know, there’s an upside to this situation you might not have thought of. With O’Bannion gone, your deal with the Brits is basically off. Their reason for that time limit you agreed to was that they really wanted him much more than they wanted Mulrooney.”

  “I thought of it, but we’ve still got our deal with the Icelanders,” McKenna pointed out. “When we get Mulrooney, we give him to them.”

  “Reluctantly agreed. Talk to you later.”

  McKenna’s next call was to Aer Lingus. He booked himself on the one o’clock flight out of Belfast the next day, but arranging transportation to Belfast proved to be a problem. He found that there were no more trains to Belfast from Dublin that evening, so he called Hertz to have a car dropped off at the Conrad Hilton. He completed his new travel arrangements by reserving a room at the Hotel Europa for late that evening and calling Brunette back to inform him of his new arrival time in New York.

  Next was a call to Thor to give him the latest developments.

  “New York? That’s a piece of luck, isn’t it?” Thor asked. “Frieda’s already there, so I guess she’s in for a surprise when I show up.”

  “I’m kind of surprised myself,” McKenna said. “What’s she doing there?”

  “Her bishop sent her on a mission to a church in Brooklyn. It’s nominally a Norwegian Lutheran church, but there are quite a few Icelanders in the congregation. Our bishop sends her about once a year to conduct a few services in Icelandic and show the flag.”

  “Is she there by herself?”

  “No. Her trip was reported in one of our newspapers, so Janus was kind enough to send one of our best men with her. She likes this particular constable and I’m sure she’ll be quite safe with him.”

  “Is he armed?”

  “Unofficially,” Thor admitted.

  “Give me some information and I’ll make it official, just in case. Where is she staying?”

  “In Brooklyn. The Harbor Lights Motel. You know it?”

  “Yes. Nice place and a good choice.”

  Thor gave McKenna the address and phone number of the church and the name of the constable. As McKenna expected, the church was in Bay Ridge, a middle-class Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Norwegian section.

  McKenna called Brunette again with his request. No problem. A pistol permit would be issued to Constable Haarold Sigmarsson.

  Then came the time for another decision: whether to keep his dinner appointment with Maggie Ferguson. He realized that his new schedule gave him the perfect excuse not to show, but his curiosity got the better of him. He wanted to know the details of the IRA’s plans for O’Bannion, and since they were practically co-conspirators, he figured she would tell him. But more important, to ease his conscience he wanted to know why she hated O’Bannion so much. McKenna didn’t hate him, but he hoped he could with a few good reasons from her. He figured that a little hatred would make the evening easier on his conscience.

  His last call was to Angelita. He told her that things were going well and that he would be coming home.

  “Great! Can’t wait to see you, and wait till you see this place. You’re gonna love our new home,” she said. “It’s so big and bright and Janine just loves it. She’s already made two new friends.”

  “Boys or girls?”

  “Girls, of course. Both her age. You know, she didn’t have a single good friend when we were living in the hotel. This is much better.”

  “Then that’s just another favor we owe Chipmunk,” McKenna said. He toyed for a moment with the idea of telling Angelita about his dinner engagement, but decided against it. She had always been a trifle jealous when it came to other women even talking to her man for whatever legitimate reason, so he figured that some things were better left unsaid in the interests of domestic tranquillity. He didn’t feel good about it, but he didn’t tell her.

  McKenna decided that ravishing was the only way to describe Maggie Ferguson that evening. She had changed into a short, sleeveless, high-necked emerald green dress that complimented her tall, model-thin figure, accentuated her green eyes, and perfectly contrasted with her long red hair. She met him in the lobby and McKenna, against his will, felt perversely proud to be seen with her when they entered the hotel’s crowded dining room. If she was with him for an alibi, she had dressed that way to make sure she would be remembered—and it worked. All eyes were on them as they were shown to their table.

  It wasn’t until they sat down that McKenna realized how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten a thing all day, but had been so busy that he hadn’t noticed until then. They ordered their meals, and then came the part of the procedure he dreaded whenever he ate with someone he didn’t really know. “Would you like to see the wine list, sir?”

  “Would you like some wine with dinner?” McKenna asked Ferguson.

  “How about you?”

  “I don’t drink, but feel free.”

  “I do, but I’ve already had a couple today,” she admitted. “Too much makes me crazy and I think I have to be careful when I’m with the famous Detective McKenna.”

  Crazier, McKenna thought, and ordered Cokes. After the waiter left, McKenna told her about O’Bannion’s message and she looked pleased. “Will it take you long to get Mulrooney?” she asked.

  “What makes you so sure we’ll get him? New York’s a big town and we’ve lost him there before.”

  “But the famous Detective McKenna wasn’t the one looking for him then,” she said, smiling and dismissing his concerns. “You’ll get him.”

  McKenna appreciated the compliments, but he was there to get background on her, not talk about himself. “Thanks. Now, are you going to tell me how you happen to be working for British Intelligence and the IRA at the same time?”

  She didn’t look surprised at his question and he wasn’t surprised at her answer. “Why should I? So you can tell your friend Inspector Rollins all about me?”

  “No, you’ll tell me because you trust me not to do that. If I were to tell Rollins anything, it would have to start with my meeting with McGuinn and your plans for your boss.”

  “And you didn’t do that?” she asked, but she didn’t look concerned.

  “It crossed my mind, but I didn’t. O’Bannion can be murdered right on schedule.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Yes, but I’m getting as bad as you people. In this case, murdering a murderer serves my best interests.”

  She feigned a pout, but McKenna just stared at her. Then she smiled and patted his hand. “Glad to be of service,” she said. “I know you’re not sympathetic to our mo
vement, but I do trust you with my story. What has Inspector Rollins told you about me?”

  “He told me exactly what I think you want him to believe. He said you’re a Catholic girl from the North whose sister was an innocent bystander killed during an IRA ambush of a British patrol. He thinks you hate the IRA, but that O’Bannion doesn’t know your true feelings. Said you’re not a British agent, but from time to time you give them some information. Some of your information has not proven entirely correct, but most of it is good.”

  “You’re right. Inspector Rollins believes exactly what we want him to believe about me. For you, I’m going to clear up some of his misconceptions. I come from a large, Republican Belfast family and we’ve never had an informer in our history. It’s true that my sister Kate was killed during one of our operations against the British, but she wasn’t an ‘innocent bystander.’ It was she who set off the bomb,” Ferguson said proudly.

  McKenna couldn’t help thinking of Forsythe’s term for such an event. The Paddy Factor at work. “Tell me about the ambush.”

  “Basic, really. Our people put a radio-detonated bomb in a curb-side sewer opening. Kate was standing on a corner with another comrade, about fifty meters away. She knew what she was doing and that should have been a safe distance. When the Brit patrol passed the sewer opening, she reached into her pocket and pressed the button on the radio detonator. The device went off, three of the enemy were killed, but Kate was hit in the chest with a lug nut from the Land Rover. Freak accident, really, but she was badly wounded. Her comrade removed the radio detonator from her pocket before the RUC and the ambulances arrived to take her to the hospital. By then she had lost a lot of blood and was unconscious.

  “Because of our family background, the Brits and the RUC looked very hard at Kate and had wanted to question her when she regained consciousness. At the time, we thought there was a chance that she would pull through and Lord knows what she would tell them in her condition if she woke up. To divert suspicion away from her, my father had me make some anti-IRA statements to the press. My interviews were widely covered in the Belfast papers and the London Times. I was only sixteen at the time, but I was really quite good. Naturally, I cried a lot while I deplored the senseless IRA violence that had so grievously injured my innocent sister. But then Kate died in the hospital without regaining consciousness.”

  “So you thought that you had branded yourself as a traitor for nothing?” McKenna guessed.

  “I’ll have to admit that I was made to feel a little uncomfortable in West Belfast, so my father decided to send me to England. He took some of the money the Brits gave him and—”

  “Wait a minute. Why did the British pay your father?” McKenna asked.

  “Compensatory damages,” Ferguson said, enjoying the joke. “The Brits pay the families of innocent victims of terrorist actions, so my father applied for the money. They gave him seventy-five hundred pounds. He used some of it to send me to secretarial school in London for a year. I had a knack for it and enjoyed myself there, spending their money. Graduated with honors and then I was approached by British Intelligence. They wanted me to do a little undercover work for them when I returned home.”

  “They recruited you as an informer?”

  “Yes, and offered to pay me as well.”

  “Was it Rollins who recruited you?”

  “No, he’s too big to be one of their recruiters,” she explained. “Actually, I’ve never met Inspector Rollins. I only found out later that my information goes to him.”

  “So you took the offer, or at least pretended to?”

  “No, not at first. I called my father and told him about it. He went to Kevin Hughes and Kevin went to Martin McGuinn. I was told to tell the Brits that I wouldn’t be comfortable working for them, but to save lives I’d be willing to pass along anything important I heard about. That was okay with them and they gave me a handler who taught me about codes and their reporting procedures and following people. Then, to make things easier for me, before I went home they arranged another press interview for me. I told the reporters that I had been wrong to denounce the IRA, that the reason for the killings was the British presence in Northern Ireland. I said that during my stay in London, I had come to like the British people—which was true—but I didn’t think they knew about the terrible things their government was doing in my country. That interview appeared only as a small article in the London papers, but it was a big one in the Belfast press. When I got home I got a job as a secretary in a linen factory, but I also began working for the movement.”

  “Doing what?” McKenna asked.

  “Little things, nothing very important. Visible things like passing out pamphlets and helping to organize demonstrations supporting our men in prison.”

  “So the Brits would know you were with the IRA?”

  “That was the idea, both the Brits’ and Martin’s. Then Martin decided that it was time for me to gain some credibility with the Brits. He had some of his men plant a bomb in a car on The Shankill Road, and then he told me to contact my handler and tell him about it. I did, so the Brits found the bomb and defused it. My handler was very happy with me, but he wanted to know who planted it. I told him that I would never give names, that I just wanted to save lives. I really think he didn’t know what to make of me, but that was Martin’s plan. Two years later we pulled the bomb trick on them again.”

  “What year was that?” McKenna asked.

  “Eighty-two, I think, but the payoff came in eighty-three. We were getting an arms shipment and Martin suspected that the Brits knew it was coming, but that they didn’t know where. He had me tell my handler that it was coming in at Pier Nine on the Belfast Lough, so their troops and all their customs people went over there while our arms shipment was unloaded at Pier Six on the other side of the Lough.”

  “That hurt your credibility with them, didn’t it?”

  “Not too much. My handler didn’t like it, but he knew that mistakes happen. Besides, as far as I know, the Brits never found out we got that shipment. But then I had some other problems. The factory I was working at closed down and the North was in pretty bad economic shape. Still is, for that matter. I couldn’t get another job and the Brits offered me money once again. I refused it again and moved to the South, looking for work. At the time, O’Bannion was heading the Council of Free Trade Unions and he gave me a job interview.”

  “Did you know him then?”

  “Knew of him, but no, I didn’t know him then. But Martin did. He told O’Bannion about how helpful I had been working for the movement and told him that I was a pretty good secretary besides. I showed up for the interview dressed very nicely and he gave me a position on his staff. I liked him at first and worked hard for him. Eventually we became very close.”

  “Lovers?”

  “Very secret lovers, for a while. He’s married and that sort of thing isn’t tolerated here. When he ran for the Chamber of Deputies, I helped run his campaign. When he was appointed minister for finance, I followed as his personal secretary. By then it was over between us, but I still worked hard for him.”

  “Why was it over?”

  “Because he’s a pig. He’s married, but I wasn’t the only other woman in his life. I found out that he’s nothing more than a self-serving man without scruples.”

  Ah, here comes the hatred. That’s what I’m here for, McKenna thought, but then the first course arrived.

  Ferguson had ordered only a salad, but McKenna had ordered both the soup and the salad for himself. It looked great to him. “I don’t want to miss a word of this, but I’m famished to the point where I can’t concentrate with this food in front of me. Do you mind?” he asked with his fork poised over his salad.

  “Not at all,” she said, then checked her watch. “We’ve got time.”

  Now what does that mean? McKenna wondered, but only for a second. In no time his salad was gone while she just picked at hers. By the time he was halfway through his soup, the edge was off
his hunger. Ferguson was looking at him, but she appeared to be daydreaming. “Thanks, I’m fine now,” he said, and she focused on him. “You were saying?”

  “What was I saying?” she asked.

  “That O’Bannion’s an unscrupulous pig.”

  “Oh, that he certainly is,” she stated, once again livening up to her subject. “Just one woman on the side was never enough for him and you wouldn’t believe the lies. I was a party to many of his fabrications over the years, backing up his lies to everyone. Quite often he lied when I saw no reason to, so I think that basically, he just enjoys deceit. Makes him feel grand to think he’s fooling everyone.”

  So he cheats on his wife, then he cheats on his girlfriend, and he’s no George Washington. Not my kind of guy, but I wouldn’t wish him dead over that, McKenna thought. There has to be more. “Why did the romance end?”

  “Because it had to. You may not believe this, but I have my morals. I think I first went with him because he can be quite charming and I was young and stupid, lonely and far from home. Besides he’s fairly well off and he was good to me, for a while. He owns an apartment building in Old Belvedere, very nice section, and I got a lovely flat out of it. After a while I couldn’t stand his lies and his philandering and I found somebody else.”

  “How did he take that?”

  “The flat was gone, of course, but quite well, considering. I think we were really sick of each other. He had me transferred to another section, but I didn’t mind. Then he found that he couldn’t do without me. I think it’s that nobody can lie for him like I can, so he asked me back and I agreed. Nothing romantic, just work.”

  “He knew about your connection to British Intelligence, didn’t he?” McKenna asked.

  “He delighted in it. He really hates the Brits and he enjoyed having me feed them information to confuse them. Some of it was true, of course, but most of it was lies right out of O’Bannion’s head. Believable lies, as always, but still lies.”

  “But nothing to do with the IRA?”