by Jim Hougan
Dunphy thought about it. For a second. Then he shook his head and said, “There’s already a million crazy sites on the Internet. Flying saucers, chupa cabras, Satanic sexual abuse—everyone from the Abominable Snowman to Zorro has got a home page. So who’s gonna notice our little complaint—or care that we’ve got evidence? Files. Everyone’s got files.”
The flight attendant brought Clementine her water and asked if they’d prefer veal or linguine for dinner. Clem chose the pasta, and Dunphy opted for the veal. When the attendant left, Clem turned to him with an accusing look and asked, “How can you do that?”
Dunphy didn’t get it. “What?” he asked.
She looked away.
“How could I do what a?” Dunphy repeated.
She reached into the seat pocket in front of her and pulled out a tattered in-flight magazine. “Eat veal!” she said. Turning away from him, she opened the magazine and began to read, ignoring Dunphy as she twirled a tendril of hair around her forefinger.
Baby cows a?
“I’m gonna stretch my legs,” Dunphy said, and getting to his feet, walked slowly aft, feeling the plane tremble beneath him. Stopping at the galley, he caught the flight attendant’s attention and changed his order. “I think I’ll have the linguine,” he said. She smiled her okay.
Passing from business class to economy, he caught a whiff of cigarette smoke emanating from the back of the plane, where a knot of people were lounging in front of the lavatories. Looking around, he saw that the plane wasn’t as crowded as he’d thought it would be. Still, it was a diverse lot. There were mothers with little children, businessmen and college kids, backpackers and Arabs. A tour group of sixty-something Brits was having a grand time, drinking with enormous enthusiasm, and playing cards. About a third of them were wearing identical red cardigans with a sort of coat of arms emblazoned on the breast. Edging past them in the aisle, Dunphy saw that he was sharing the plane with the Sacred Order of the Gorse. Sensing his perplexity, one of the men looked up from his cards and smiled. “Golfers,” he explained.
Continuing down the aisle, Dunphy paused beside an emergency exit, crouched, and looked out through the little window. Far below, the ocean glittered in every direction, its azure surface flecked with whitecaps and crisscrossed by freighters. He watched the panorama for a minute or so, half wondering if Clem was still upset with him.
Then he straightened up and, turning from the window, headed back the way he’d come. He’d almost reached the little curtain that separates business class from coach when he felt something on the back of his neck—the weight and tingle of another person’s stare. Turning, his eyes met those of a middle-aged man with platinum hair and bad skin.
Blondie.
And, over there, by the bulkhead, asleep in his seat: the Jock.
Fuck all, Dunphy thought. I’ve had it. He could feel the adrenaline surging through his heart like a spring tide, then draining away, then surging again.
He wasn’t sure what to do. Or how they’d found him. Or what might be waiting for him when the plane touched down at the airport on Tenerife. And then, to his surprise, he found himself walking toward the older man.
“Is this seat taken?” Without waiting for an answer, Dunphy stepped over his surveillant’s legs and dropped into the seat next to him.
“You speak English?” Dunphy asked, raising the armrest that separated them.
The man nodded. Gulped.
“Good,” Dunphy said, “because it’s important you get this right. If you don’t tell me the truth, I’m going to break your fucking neck—right here. You understand neck, right? Le cou a?”
The man looked wildly around, as if searching for help, then reached for his seat belt, fumbling to unfasten the buckle. “No trouble, please,” he warned, speaking in a thick, Alsatian accent. “Or I call la hôtesse a.” Abandoning the seat belt, he reached overhead for the flight attendant’s call button, then froze and fell back as Dunphy’s left hand seized him by the balls. And squeezed. Hard.
The man’s eyes bulged, then threatened to explode as Dunphy’s grip tightened.
“Please!”
And tightened some more.
In the seat across the aisle, a little boy began tugging at his mother’s sleeve and pointing at them. Dunphy smiled at him, as if it were all a big joke. Finally, he opened his hand, and the Alsatian gasped with relief.
“How’d you find me?” Dunphy asked.
The other man squeezed his eyes shut, blinked, and shook his head, as if to clear it. Then he took a deep breath and said, “The girl.”
“What girl?”
“English. When she comes to Zürich, I recognize her from Jersey.”
“So you were on me—”
“From St. Helier to Zürich. Then you lose us at the hotel. But . . . she comes there, so we follow her. a” The way he said it made it sound like a rebuke, as if he were criticizing Dunphy’s tradecraft.
“I didn’t know you’d seen her on Jersey,” Dunphy explained.
“Yes. We see her. And hard to forget.”
“So . . .”
“We follow her to bank. Then to airport. Then Zug.”
“And Madrid.”
“Yes, of course,” the man replied, unbuttoning the collar of his shirt. “Madrid.”
“Now what?” Dunphy asked.
The Alsatian shrugged. “I think, maybe you speak with Roger. Because, now . . . he kills you.”
“Does he?” Dunphy asked rhetorically. “And is he waiting for me on Tenerife?”
When the man didn’t answer, Dunphy turned toward him, but the Alsatian raised his hands in a calming gesture. “I cannot say. You understand, he has legal problems—in Kraków. When you are in St. Helier, the Poles are holding his passport. If not, you would have seen him in Zürich, I promise you.”
“And now?”
A little moue. “I think, maybe he gets his passport back.”
Dunphy rested his hand on the man’s forearm. “You think a?”
A wary look crossed the Alsatian’s face. “Yes, I think now he has it.”
Dunphy nodded, then spoke in a low voice. “So you’re gonna see him real soon—which is good. Because I want you to tell him something. Tell him I can get him half the money right away—and the rest . . . a little later. But not if I see him on Tenerife. If I see him on Tenerife . . .” He left the sentence hanging, hoping his uncertainty would seem like a threat.
The Alsatian turned to him, all po’-faced innocence, bemusement dancing past the fear in his eyes. “Yes?” he asked. “If you see him on Tenerife? What should I tell him?”
Are you fucking with me? Dunphy wondered. Because if you are . . . there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it. Not on the plane. Finally he said, “Tell him it will be a surprise.” Then he got up and walked back to his seat.
The ride from Reina Sofia Airport to Playa de las Americas was like passing through a diorama built by road warriors in collusion with an angry volcano god. The setting was an ocher barren of cactus, rock, and hardpan cleft in two by a seemingly permanent traffic jam. After forty-five minutes of stop-and-go traffic, this desert wasteland gave way to its urban counterpart—las Americas. This was a sprawling tourist enclave overrun by packaged tours, kitschy pubs, throbbing discotheques and shops selling T-shirts and souvenirs. A sign outside the Banco Santander recorded the temperature as ninety-seven degrees.
“Welcome to hell,” Dunphy said.
The taxi came to a stop outside an ALL ADULT! a nightclub in the Veronicas neighborhood. “Abajo allí,” the driver said, pointing toward a pedestrian byway that meandered along a gentle hillside past palm trees and flower gardens, switching back and forth on its way down to the sea.
Dunphy gave him a thousand pesetas. “We have to walk the rest of the way,” he explained to Clem.
It took them half an hour to find the Broken Tiller, which Dunphy hadn’t visited for nearly three years. During that time, buildings had gone up on either side and i
n the back, so that Frank Boylan’s watering hole now sat in the lee of a whitewashed, six-story “apart-hotel” called the Miramar. On either side: a German bierstube and a discotheque (Studio 666). Otherwise, nothing much had changed.
Bolted into the side of a green and well-watered hill, the Tiller was a simple, almost elegant, seafood restaurant-cum-bar that looked out to sea over a nude beach. The sunsets, Dunphy remembered, were often spectacular, especially in the rainy season. And this evening was no exception.
A plump red sun lolled on the horizon at the bottom of a mackerel sky, oscillating with peach and butter colors. Setting their carry-on bags next to a pale blue couch, Dunphy and Clem sat down at a small table with white wicker chairs. A handsome, young Tenerifeño came out from behind the bar with a smile.
“What can I get for you?” he asked.
“Beer for me,” Dunphy replied, “and . . . what?” He looked at Clem.
“I’ll have a gin and tonic, please.”
Before the bartender had a chance to leave, Dunphy told him, “I’m looking for a friend of mine.”
“Oh? Yes?”
“Yeah. His name’s Tommy Davis. I thought, maybe you’d seen him.”
The kid—he couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old—blinked, then made a show of thinking about it. Finally, he shook his head and shrugged. “Lo siento.”
Dumb question, Dunphy thought. Tommy didn’t want to be found, so the answer would have been the same whether he’d seen him or not. “And Frank Boylan? What about him? Does he still own the place?”
Big smile. “Oh, sure. He’ll never sell. You know Mr. Boylan?”
Dunphy nodded. “We’re old friends. Can you get him on the phone for me?”
“Yes, I think so,” the kid said. “If he’s not drinking. Sometimes, when he drinks—”
“I know.”
“—he turns off his cell phone. Says he doesn’t want to be bothered.”
“Yeah, well—see if you can reach him. Tell him Merry Kerry’s at the bar.”
“Mary Kelly?”
“Merry . . . Kerry,” Dunphy corrected. “Like Happy Kerry, except with different letters. And while you’re at it—check behind the bar. I think there’s a package for me.”
It was half past eight when Tommy sailed in with the diminutive, but burly, Francis Boylan at his side. “If it isn’t himself!” Tommy cried, his brogue even thicker for all the months he’d been in Spain. “I tried to reach ya time and again,” he crowed, “but all I got for my trouble was a lot of funny noises on the phone. I thought you were tits up, f’sure!”
Big abrazo, then Dunphy disengaged to shake hands with Boylan. “The night’s still young,” he replied. “I could go at any second.” Finally, he introduced Clementine.
“Pleased to meet ya,” Tommy said, embracing her with a bit more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary.
“And this is our host,” Dunphy announced, taking Clem by the elbow and introducing her to “the great Francis Boylan.”
The Irishman shook hands and turned to Dunphy with a look of approval. “Good job.”
Soon, they were seated around a platter of tapas, drinking, with Tommy complaining about the “hard life” on Tenerife.
“It’s killin’ the two of us,” he claimed. “Francis, here, is a ghost of the man he was. Just look at him, wastin’ away, with the bags under his eyes—”
“He looks rather fit to me,” Clem said.
“Thank you,” Boylan remarked.
“It’s the sex and the sun and the booze,” Tommy insisted. “I mean, when you think of it, there’s a thousand women a day flyin’ in, and every one of them’s charged up for a good time. So, if you’re livin’ here full-time and know your way around—well, it’s a wonder there isn’t a medical study bein’ done.”
In the hours that followed, they tested the kitchen at the Broken Tiller and found the chef in good form. Between mouthfuls of swordfish and new potatoes, french beans and Riesling, Dunphy told his companions about Blémont, and his encounter on the flight from Madrid.
“So you nobbled the man’s money,” Boylan said. “And now he’s after gettin’ it back.”
“He is,” Dunphy replied.
“Well, who can blame him?” Tommy asked. “I’d do the same.”
“Of course you would,” Dunphy explained, “anyone would. But let’s keep it in perspective. This is a very bad man. It’s not like I robbed the Poor Clares.”
“Still . . .”
“He’s an anti-Semite!” Dunphy insisted. “And it wasn’t even his money in the first place.”
“Then let the Jews rob him!” Tommy suggested.
Before Dunphy could reply, Boylan offered a suggestion. “I could have a word with him, if you’d like. Send a couple of lads around. Ask for a bit of patience.”
Dunphy thought about it, then shook his head. “It’s my problem. I’ll handle it.”
“In that case . . .” Boylan reached around to the small of his back and came up with a sleek little handgun. Sliding it into the pages of a folded copy of the local newspaper, Canarias7, he pushed it across the table to Dunphy. “It’s a P7,” Boylan said. “Heckler & Koch. Eight rounds in the clip.”
Clem rolled her eyes, sat back, and looked away.
“Thank you, Jesus!” Dunphy exclaimed, jamming the gun into the space between his belt and his shirt. “I’ll get it back to you before we leave.”
Boylan nodded. “I’d be grateful. It cost a grand.”
“So where are you staying?” Tommy asked.
“I don’t know,” Dunphy said. “We just got in a couple of hours ago.”
“Then you may as well stay at Nicky Slade’s,” Boylan suggested. “You remember Nicky, don’t you?”
“The merc,” Dunphy said.
“The very one,” Tommy agreed.
“It’s a nice place,” Boylan remarked, “and Nicky won’t be needin’ it for a while.”
“Why not?” Dunphy asked.
Boylan glanced at Tommy, then back to Dunphy. “Well, he’s traveling, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know. Is he?” Dunphy asked.
“He is,” Tommy replied. “In fact, he’s traveling for the foreseeable future.”
“So it’s an extended trip,” Dunphy suggested.
“It is.”
“And why is that?” Dunphy inquired.
“Well,” Boylan explained, “because the man’s in bad odor, isn’t he?”
“With who?”
“Certain parties.”
“Which parties?”
“NATO,” Tommy replied. “You’re very insistent—y’know that, don’t ya?”
Clem giggled, and Dunphy frowned. “How do you get in ‘bad odor’ with NATO, for Christ’s sake?”
“In fact, there was a small typo on one of his end-user certificates,” Boylan said.
“Was there?” Dunphy asked.
“Indeed, there was,” Tommy replied. “And wouldn’t ya know, the bureaucrats are makin’ a federal case of it.”
“What was the typo?” Dunphy asked.
“From what I’ve been told, he typed chardonnay in one of the tiny spaces on the form when, strictly speaking, the appropriate answer would have been closer to grenades. a”
They got to Nicky Slade’s place a little after midnight. It was one of a dozen small condos on a quiet street in Las Galletas, just down the coast from las Americas, and not far from the beach. A trio of flight attendants were renting the house on the left, Tommy said, while an elderly Scotswoman occupied the one on the right. “You’ll be fine here,” Tommy told them.
A musty smell greeted them as they entered. “Must be NATO,” Tommy joked. The place had apparently been unoccupied for weeks. But that was easy to fix. With the windows opened and the drapes pulled back, a fresh breeze soon cleared the air. Dunphy switched on the lights in the living room.
“I’ll bring the Pearlcorder with me in the morning,” Tommy said. “So you can listen to the
tape.” He meant the tape recording that Dunphy had sent to himself in care of the Broken Tiller.
“Just give me a call before you come over,” Dunphy replied. “I don’t want to shoot you through the door.”
“I’ll make a point of it,” Tommy promised, backing out with a little wave. “Cheers.”
Dunphy locked the door behind him and went into the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, he found half a case of Budweiser, two kinds of mustard, and not much else. Reflecting that a case of Bud must have cost a fortune in the Canaries, Dunphy snapped one open and returned to the living room.
“I think your friends are nice,” Clem said, looking through a pile of CDs. “Though . . .”
“What?”
“A bit rough.”
Dunphy nodded. “Well, yeah,” he said. “It’s what they do.” Removing the handgun from his waistband, he laid it on the coffee table next to a vase of dusty silk carnations. Then he walked over to the windows and took in a lungful of warm sea air.
“Do you think they’ll find us?” Clem asked.
“I don’t know,” Dunphy said, wondering which pursuers she had in mind—Blémont or the Agency. “I don’t think we were followed from the airport, but then, I didn’t think we were followed from Jersey, either. So what do I know?”
She put a CD in the tray, and soon, a soulful voice filled the room with the complaint that “Easy’s gettin’ harder every day.” a “Iris Dement,” Clem said, swaying to it.
Dunphy leaned against the windowsill and sipped his beer. He was looking out across a little garden (who would have guessed that someone like Slade would be a gardener?), gazing at a string of lights on the dark horizon. Freighters and passenger liners, sailboats and tankers. It was a beautiful, even romantic, scene, but he couldn’t get into it. He was thinking about the men on the plane—Blondie and the Jock. And how they’d disappeared, once they’d landed on Tenerife.
Which should have been comforting.
With no bags to fetch, Dunphy and Clem had soared through Customs and then through the airport, taking the first cab they’d found into town. If his pursuers had been anywhere near, Dunphy would have seen them. But they weren’t. Which made him wonder if . . .