Bandit Country

by Andrew Turpin

  Wilson opened his mouth and looked as if he was about to launch into an explanation, but then he checked himself.

  “Okay, don’t worry about it,” Wilson said. “I’ll do it. I know who to call. What was the American’s name?”

  “I think he said Wilkinson. I can’t remember what his first name was. Oh, I think Philip,” Ryan said. He looked at his neighbor. “Old habits, eh?”

  Wilson nodded and raised his hand in acknowledgment. “Yep, old habits.” Then he turned and walked back to his house.

  Friday, January 4, 2013

  Boston

  The view across Boston Harbor from the top floor of the office block attached to the Shipright Global Logistics warehouse usually inspired Patrick McKinney. He could see right across the main channel to the stretch of blue-gray water beyond, with planes landing and taking off from Logan International Airport.

  Beyond that were Spectacle Island, Long Island, and out in the distance, the Atlantic Ocean.

  But most importantly, he could see the container shipping terminal. From there, the ubiquitous rectangular steel boxes holding his cargo, his sales, were dispatched to destinations all over North and South America, Europe, and the Far East.

  Today, though, he had already gone through almost half a pack of his favorite Camels, and it was only eleven o’clock in the morning. That was roughly triple his normal rate of consumption. Each cigarette involved a walk down to the ground floor and a lap around the warehouse. And it was cold outside.

  Cigarettes were big business. Each forty-foot container held about a thousand cases of smokes. And in each case there were fifty cartons, each holding ten packs of twenty cigarettes. Therefore, half a million packs, or ten million cigarettes, would normally be crammed into each container.

  The warehouse that Shipright operated in Boston’s Seaport District loaded and dispatched many such containers each day. All of them were filled with cigarettes from SRS Tobacco, the global manufacturer that had an exclusive distribution arrangement with Shipright.

  And it was McKinney’s job, as sales director, to find the customers, keep them happy, and ensure that his company’s revenues remained on an upward trend each year.

  Achieving that, at a time when tobacco consumption in many developed countries was falling due to steep increases in taxes imposed by federal and state governments—not least in the US—was difficult. The huge burden on health care budgets from tobacco-related diseases and the need to try and cut consumption was the driving force behind those increases.

  It meant that many tobacco manufacturers and distributors had to become increasingly inventive and innovative in finding new ways to boost their sales.

  And McKinney, a tall, fifty-two-year-old Irishman with the gift of the gab, considered himself to be nothing if not inventive.

  Now he was anxiously awaiting an email to confirm the delivery of one particular order. Hence the heavy smoking.

  He returned to his seat, hunched his slightly rounded shoulders even further, glanced across the harbor and then back to his computer screen. Was it there yet? He clicked away from a spreadsheet that detailed the contents of shipments to and from Boston and went back to his email inbox. He refreshed the screen, but still there was nothing.

  A week earlier, he had dispatched eight container loads of cigarettes, seven to destinations in the US, Spain, Canada, Singapore, and Brazil.

  The recipients would move their purchases on to warehouses, supermarkets, shops, and other outlets, ready for sale.

  The eighth container had gone to a customer based at a warehouse in the Colón Free Trade Zone, at the Atlantic, or northern, entrance to the Panama Canal in Central America.

  It was a duty-free zone, which meant there were no import customs duties to pay, either for McKinney’s company or for the customer, a business called Panama Tobacco Distribution.

  McKinney ran his fingers through his receding, mainly gray hair and checked the schedule. Once it had left Boston, the container ship normally took seven days to arrive in Colón. It should be there by now.

  Once there, the ship would be unloaded and the container of cigarettes taken to Panama Tobacco Distribution’s small warehouse, a nondescript gray steel structure, one of hundreds like it in the sprawling free trade zone area.

  He sipped a cup of coffee and pictured the scene. It wasn’t difficult, as he had been there several times, most recently just six months earlier.

  Right next to the Panama Tobacco Distribution unit was a similar warehouse belonging to a timber company, Pan-American Timber Products, which bought and sold hard and soft wooden beams, gateposts, fencing posts, panels, and other similar items for export, mainly to the US, the UK, and Continental Europe.

  There were no obvious synergies between the two companies.

  But they were owned by one man, also Irish, called James Caffrey. McKinney knew him from his junior school days in Forkhill, south Armagh. Along with Dessie Duggan, they had been the three live wires among a serious bunch of children.

  Since then, they had all steered a course through life that had never been easy.

  Indeed, McKinney had only felt safe to abandon his long-standing alias and resume using his real name in recent years, long after the 1998 Good Friday agreement. The subsequent amnesty for paramilitary republican prisoners meant there was no longer any danger of him being extradited to Northern Ireland and sent back to jail. But he never felt tempted to return—America was now home.

  McKinney sat on the board of Caffrey’s company as a non-executive director and often visited its sales warehouse in Boston.

  He decided he couldn’t wait any longer for the confirmatory email. He picked up his phone and called James instead. It was answered almost immediately.

  “Paddy, you sly old dog.”

  McKinney laughed, running a finger down the scar on the side of his face. “I thought you’d gone off to the pub and forgotten me. I’ve been sitting here like an idiot waiting for the email. What’s happening . . . has it arrived yet?”

  “Yeah, ship came in a couple of hours ago. We’re expecting the container soonish. Sorry, haven’t had time to send you the email. I’ve only just got back to my desk.”

  “Okay, nice one. I’m on my way to the airport shortly, so I’ll see you this evening.”

  It was part of the routine. Every time he sold a container load to PTD, McKinney would book himself on a plane down to Colón’s Enrique Adolfo Jiménez Airport, via Panama City, at his employer’s expense.

  I just need to keep the customer happy, he’d tell his chief executive; he’s a big buyer, I’ll take him out for dinner, sweet-talk him—you know the routine. And because Patrick delivered the goods, it would never be a problem.

  He might even combine the trip with a visit to meet a couple of genuine trade contacts who ran a cigarette import agency that operated in a number of South American countries.

  It usually involved a night or two in a hotel and a flight back a day or two later.

  He finished the call with Caffrey, turned off his computer, and put on his coat.

  It would be hot down in Panama, a jarring change from the freezing early January temperatures in Boston.

  That was another good reason to get out of town.

  But while he was there, McKinney knew that, as always, he would be working damn hard.

  And it wouldn’t be for the benefit of Shipright Global Logistics.

  Chapter Six

  Friday, January 4, 2013

  Belfast

  “Moira? Actually, we don’t give out personal information about our students, no. I’m sorry.” The woman sitting at the second-floor reception desk of Queen’s University Belfast’s Medical Biology Centre scrutinized Johnson from above her rimless spectacles.

  He tried to withhold his almost instinctive sigh. “I’m not asking for personal information. I’m just wondering where I might find—”

  “I said no,” she said. The stare was one of finality. She folded her arms.
r />   “Okay, no problem,” he said and turned to leave.

  He went around the corner, but instead of exiting the building, Johnson cut through some double doors and down a corridor past a large sign that read Lecture Theatre.

  After descending two flights of stairs to the ground floor, he found himself in a large, brightly lit student lounge area.

  At the far end of the room, at least one hundred students, most of them holding wine glasses, were gathered, facing toward two much older men and one woman. One of the men was giving what looked like an impromptu speech. The crowd frequently burst into laughter.

  Johnson quickly realized it was a farewell party for one of the lecturers.

  A girl carrying a tray of wine glasses stepped toward him and offered one. He accepted and made his way to the back of the group. This looked more promising. Maybe Moira was here.

  “The future of nursing in Northern Ireland will be in good hands, if you lot are anything to go by,” the man said. “And on a more serious note, judging by what happened yesterday down in Crossmaglen and events elsewhere, you’ll all be in high demand.”

  He paused. “But I can tell you I’ve had a great twenty-five years here at Queen’s, despite the political ups and downs and the turbulence going on around us. I hope you enjoy what time you have left as students, and who knows, maybe one or two of you will stay on and become lecturers yourselves. I’d like to thank all of you. Now, there’s free wine to be had and some snacks at the tables. Go carry on drinking, eat, enjoy, chat some more, and I’ll catch up with you all over the next couple of hours. We’ll be here until seven.”

  There was a loud round of applause.

  The crowd broke up. Most headed straight for the two tables at one side of the room, one with filled wine glasses and the other with a selection of canapés.

  It was Friday night, and Johnson assumed that most of the students saw the party as a chance to freeload before setting out for the city’s bars and nightclubs.

  He worked his way around the room, which was furnished with large red modern sofas and yellow chairs. Feeling conspicuously old among the twentysomethings in the room, he tried occasionally to chat to female students who were not part of larger groups.

  His first few attempts to inquire about the possible whereabouts of a Moira, on the pretext of being an old family friend who was meant to be meeting her there, met with blank stares and shakes of the head.

  Then, ten minutes later, one of the girls he had previously approached walked up to him with a friend who had a large grin on her face. “Excuse me, she knows a girl called Moira,” the girl said, nodding toward her friend.

  “Yes, we’ve only got one Moira here,” the friend said. “Moira McKittrick. Is that the one?”

  Johnson remembered the old man’s lack of certainty over whether the girl was Duggan’s daughter or stepdaughter.

  “Yes, that’s her.” He hoped it was.

  “Okay, she’s not here. She’ll be working tonight. She started at five,” the other girl said, brushing her long blond hair back over her shoulders. Then she looked at her friend and giggled.

  Johnson asked where she worked and whether he could speak to her there.

  “If you like seedy bars with even seedier clientele, I could tell you where she works,” the girl said. She winked at Johnson and took a long sip from her glass of wine.

  Johnson half-smiled. “Well, I’m not particularly seedy, but tell me anyway.”

  “If you’re a family friend . . . er, are you sure you want to go there?”

  “It’s fine,” Johnson said. “I’m not squeamish.”

  “It’s a bar called Akimbo. She serves drinks or works behind the bar. It’s basically a strip joint. Just to warn you.”

  Johnson nodded and asked for directions. It was on Union Street, a twenty-five-minute walk through the city center, the girl thought. “Good luck—with Moira, I mean, not with the walk,” she added as she turned and walked away.

  Despite a hint of drizzle and darkness that accompanied him as he walked down Lisburn Road toward the city center, Johnson was feeling more upbeat. He pulled up his coat collar, thought momentarily about hailing a cab, then decided to walk and get a feel for the place.

  The route took him past an array of shops, offices, restaurants, and bars, and finally the CastleCourt Shopping Centre.

  Outside a newsstand, a Belfast Telegraph billboard screamed in handwritten thick black felt-tip, “Sniper Fears after Top Cop Killed.”

  A hundred yards farther on, another one, this time for the Irish Times, read, “Police Step Up Chief Constable Death Inquiry.”

  Johnson walked on. The investigation teams must be all over it—police, MI5, probably MI6, even the army, all chipping in. Like an ants nest under an upturned stone. He struggled to see what value he was going to add.

  Union Street was a distinctly seedy-looking narrow road that smelled of lamb kebabs, engine oil, stale beer, and cannabis smoke. It had a tattoo parlor, an intricate array of graffiti on the closed steel shutters across shop windows, a couple of derelict buildings, and then a coffee bar and the Sunflower pub, which had a green steel wire security cage outside the front door. Johnson assumed the cage was a legacy of the Troubles.

  “No topless bathing, Ulster has suffered enough,” read a large sign on the pub’s outside wall.

  Halfway up the street, on the right, Johnson finally spotted the modest illuminated purple and black sign. Akimbo, it said, printed in a sprawling handwritten font. A logo, featuring the silhouette of a dancing girl with her right leg kicking high up to shoulder level, appeared at both ends of the sign.

  Below the sign, a black-painted double door, which was open, led down some steps from street level.

  Two fleshy bouncers, arms folded and dressed in black jackets, white shirts, and bow ties, watched Johnson as he approached but didn’t speak or smile as he walked between them and descended the stairs.

  The throb, throb, throb of electronic dance music rose from the basement to meet Johnson as he went down.

  He recognized the track that was playing, by some band whose name he couldn’t remember, because Carrie had played it incessantly, full blast, in her bedroom the previous year for two months solid. Then, thankfully, she had moved on to something else.

  Already he was feeling out of place, and he hadn’t even gotten through the door. The strobing lights—green, yellow, red, blue—came up the stairwell with the music to meet him.

  On the wall an Irish flag hung proud, next to a slogan embroidered into some cloth. United Ireland, Never Surrender, it read.

  What am I getting into here?

  By the time he’d reached the bottom of the stairs the music was drilling deep into his skull.

  A girl with short blond hair wearing a tight white sleeveless dress opened the door to the bar for him, and then he was inside.

  The colored lights splattered from revolving mirrored balls across a black dance floor. It was busy. Groups of men, some suited, some in jeans and T-shirts, drank around tables or sat on huge leather sofas.

  Girls dressed to match the music—all with clinging, shimmering black, red, or white dresses, with high heels and lipstick—hovered around the bar and the sofas. Three of them gyrated slowly on the dance floor.

  There were no strippers. Perhaps that happened later in the evening or in another room. Or maybe Moira’s friend at the university had exaggerated.

  Johnson wandered up to the bar, which was all shining chrome and black granite. Behind it a young man in a bow tie and a white shirt stood to attention and raised his eyebrows. “Evening, sir. What can I get you?”

  Johnson could hardly hear him above the music. He hesitated. “A beer, please. Make it a Stella.”

  The man turned, extricated a bottle from a fridge behind him, and theatrically poured it into a glass. That would be five pounds and ninety-nine pence, he informed Johnson.

  Johnson handed him a ten pound note. “I’m looking for someone,” he shouted
. “You know Moira? She works here.”

  “Moira? Did you say Moira?”

  Johnson nodded.

  The man handed Johnson some change, then turned and looked around the bar. He walked to the other end, dodging past colleagues who were pouring beers and mixing cocktails, and surveyed the other side, which was out of Johnson’s sight.

  He beckoned Johnson, who navigated around a kissing couple and moved to the corner of the L-shaped bar. The man pointed. “There,” he mouthed.

  A slim, statuesque woman, clad in a sparkly black cocktail dress that stretched at most halfway down her long thighs, was making her way toward a sofa in the corner, a tray of drinks in her hands.

  Her jet-black hair, which was tied back in a ribbon behind her head, fell neatly three-quarters of the way down her back. Dark, almost black lipstick and thick mascara stood out against her white skin and high, sculpted cheekbones.

  Johnson inhaled sharply and paused. Where to catch her? He moved toward a hatch at the far end of the bar, where the drinks girls were collecting orders.

  The music now seemed louder, the lyrics more grating.

  Johnson sipped his beer. She was coming back. She was young. Twenty? Twenty-one? And she must be five feet ten inches tall, at least.

  She didn’t look at him but put her tray down on the bar and stood there, waiting.

  “Excuse me . . . Moira?” he asked after a few moments.

  She turned her head. “Yes?” She was almost inaudible.

  He paused. Before coming in, he had decided not to give his Wilkinson cover name, given that he badly needed to forge some sort of link with this girl. Now he had momentary second thoughts but dismissed them.

  “I’m Joe Johnson. Sorry, could I—”

  “I just serve the drinks here, I don’t—” She stopped, then coughed, a thick rasping, phlegm-filled cough.

  “No. I know. I just wanted to have a chat. About your father. It’s Dessie, yes?”

  Moira jerked back and stood upright, unsmiling. “No, he’s not my father. My stepfather, you mean. What’s he done? Who are you?”