The South Lawn Plot

by Ray O'Hanlon

  “Go on,” said Manning. He was looking at his watch. Daylight was becoming an issue, and Burdin was on his own. There was no way he was getting near the house. His father would rise from his grave if a British agent came within reach of the garden gate.

  “Fitzhugh is with the other lot, MI5,” he said. “He's also on loan to the CIA. He works both corners and reports to both.”

  “I thought MI5 were confined to domestic operations,” said Manning.

  “Come on, Eamonn, you know you don't entirely believe that. And remember what they say about all news being local. Well, it's the same in the intelligence game. There are no barriers or borders anymore. Everybody is everywhere and works all over, tout le monde so to speak.”

  “So who's your man, or woman, at the embassy, Roger?”

  Burdin laughed.

  “Now Eamonn, there are things I can say and things I cannot say. But you know that. Suffice it to say Mr. Fitzhugh does nothing for us. Indeed, part of his job is to keep an eye on us. As you know there are times when there is a lot more between us than just a single digit. Cain and Abel and all that.”

  Manning was turning over and assimilating this information as quickly as he could. Several things came immediately to mind and began to make better sense. Like the time that the British embassy's first secretary had pumped him over lunch for his views on a long list of his colleagues at her majesty's embassy. He was trying to find out the identities of special friends who might be inclined towards talking loosely with “you Irish lot,” as he so indelicately put it.

  “I always did think that Mortimer was lacking in the kind of subtlety that I have come to expect from your side,” said Manning.

  Burdin was looking through his binoculars again. He had said all he was going to say about Fitzhugh and his secrets.

  “Good lord, but the light is fading fast. Time to be on my way,” he said.

  “You had better be quick about it and careful. The ground is wet, and you will have to move fast to get down the side you came up,” said Manning, with a measure of genuine concern in his voice.

  “Don't worry, Eamonn. I have one of those miner headlamps in my pack, and I once did a survival course. Marooned in the Scottish Highlands for a week. They called it a perk of the job, the buggers. And my car's at the bottom,” Burdin replied.

  “Let me guess; it's an Aston Martin.”

  “You've been watching too many films, Eamonn. Remember, we want to know what your friend Pender is up to. We'll be in touch once you are back in the States.”

  “He's not my friend,” said Manning. But Burdin was gone. With a nimble-footedness worthy of a goat he had started back along the scrape that passed for a path down the south side of the mountain. He was already almost out of sight.

  Manning took a moment to absorb what Burdin had imparted. Fitzhugh was a bloody spook. That was no surprise. But the identity of his dual employers was interesting news. Manning figured he now might have a bit of fun with the man, send him off on false trails with information that appeared loosely and casually dropped over Cabernet Sauvignon.

  But so much of what lay ahead, not to mention in the past, was anything but loose and casual. As he considered all this, Manning began to make his way back down the slope, feeling hungry and in need of shelter and warmth.

  As Manning closed in on his objective, Pender took his eye away from the zoom lens. He had been just able to make out the summit from his bedroom window by looking from a sideways angle. Despite the distance and poor light he picked out the two men at the top. One was gone, and the other was now only a few minutes away from the house.

  Pender sensed a presence and turned. The old man, Michael, was standing in the bedroom door. Pender smiled.

  “Great smell from the kitchen. Dinner must be ready. I'm starving,” he said.

  “It will be ready when Mr. Manning gets back,” the old man said. He lingered in the door for a few seconds.

  Pender thought that the old man was trying to read his mind. Certainly, he was no fool.

  “I reckon he's no more than two or three minutes away,” said Pender, eyes fixed on the old man. “Can I give you a hand serving it up?”

  The old man did not reply. He just turned and walked back to the kitchen.

  9

  BAILEY HAD BOTTLED UP HIS CURIOSITY long enough. Henderson had been in the newsroom for thirty minutes but had still not come over to his desk. Nor had he summoned Bailey to his.

  Bailey kept glancing over his shoulder. But all he could discern was Henderson on several phone calls, his head bent low over his desk and occasionally his free hand masking his mouth.

  What the hell was he up to, Bailey thought. Normally the first few minutes of a Henderson shift were loud and furious. The man wanted everyone to know that he had arrived, was on the job, and that what he described as the lazy hours of the day were over.

  A lot of people found it necessary to rush to the lavs or take smoke breaks during this initial assault. Henderson usually settled down after about twenty minutes, and the evening would fall into its less frenetic routine.

  But today is was different. And Bailey wasn't the only newsroom inhabitant to notice.

  Still, looking at a gift horse in the mouth and all that, Bailey said to himself. Perhaps Henderson had acquired a new girlfriend, or his first. Few in the newsroom had any appreciable knowledge of the man's private life. Old Percy was the best bet. He seemed to enjoy a charmed existence around Henderson, a bit like a pilot fish with a shark.

  Bailey made a mental note to quiz Percy later if nothing made itself plain. He resumed his rummaging through the Internet for information on a story he was half working on, a turgid tale about passport forgeries.

  Nick Bailey considered himself to be pretty sharp at his work, if sometimes reluctant. Newspaper reporting had not been his original career plan. It had started almost by accident with a summer job in a small newspaper down on the Kent coast. His father had known someone on the staff. He was the office Jack-of-all-Trades, which meant he made a lot of tea.

  But he had watched the handful of reporters at work. He would sit beside them trying not to be noticed. Some of them were rather tetchy, but slowly and surely he began to understand some of the mysteries of how a newspaper worked. It was remarkable how little he knew about how a story reached a page. Nevertheless, in time, he began to notice that he was sometimes several steps ahead of a couple of the reporters in seeing story angles, spotting lead lines and even dreaming up headlines.

  Yes, he had looked over a lot of shoulders as he lugged pots of tea. After a bit of pestering he had been given his chance. His first story had been about the mistreatment of a horse, and it had caused an absolute uproar. And here he was now, in one of the world's most famous city tabloids.

  Bailey had once fancied the idea of being a stockbroker. Real flash, money, good car and girls galore. The idea still occurred to him from time to time. But something always pulled him back to the news business. He could not quite explain it. Certainly Henderson was not the reason.

  Bailey's daydreaming was abruptly ended by a shout from the same man. It took him several seconds to comprehend the fact that he was being summoned the short distance to Henderson's desk.

  Henderson did not stay seated, however. He rose and walked towards the small office that was his own private preserve, rarely used, but occasionally pressed into service, usually to threaten an errant reporter's health or marriage prospects.

  Bailey allowed anyone who was looking to see his eyes roll to heaven. He was one of the few in the newsroom not intimidated by Henderson. Or so he liked to think. One of the young gossip page reporters was staring at him as if he was walking to the gallows. Bailey gave her a smile, a wink and the once over. She was dating material for sure.

  But all thought of such pleasures quickly evaporated when he entered Henderson's keep.

  “Sit down, grab that pen and notebook,” Henderson barked. “And write me a headline and first line for a sto
ry that links the death of two priests in the same order, and at the same time speculates that there might be more bodies littering this blessed isle.”

  “How many bodies?”

  “Pick a number.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Bailey.

  “He's not on the list,” Henderson said with a snort. “But he might end up being unique in that respect.”

  Bailey reached for a blank piece of paper and plucked a pencil from Henderson's pewter beer mug.

  He scribbled a headline and began to write the first line of a story that was based on suspicion.

  “Let me see,” Henderson demanded.

  “I haven't bloody finished,” Bailey said testily and without looking up. But Henderson grabbed the page anyway.

  “Good,” he said. “And do you know what's good about it?”

  “The alliteration?”

  Henderson leaned back in his swivel chair. “No,” he said. ‘Clergy Killer’ is okay, but frankly I prefer to be more specific. Vicar or priest, in this case priest, which is the better of the two anyway. The Catholics are more mysterious to our readers and downright threatening to some of them. ‘Priest Killer’ would have been better, but that's not it, Nick.”

  Bailey shrugged.

  “It's the question mark, you nitwit,” said Henderson.

  Bailey looked again at the page. He had indeed finished his headline with the symbol.

  “Think about it,” said Henderson. “We're still short of most of the facts, but we have a theory. There may be a nut job out there who likes popping off padres. Now there's a line, must remember that.”

  To Bailey, it seemed that Henderson was reasoning with himself and that he was only filling a seat.

  “Yeah, but we only have two of them, time and miles apart and both looking like suicides even if the coppers might be thinking different. Hardly a big line to hang the washing on,” Bailey said if for no other reason than to remind Henderson that he was only a few feet away, across a desk piled high with newspaper cuttings. Henderson's cubbyhole was the final nail in the coffin of the theory that computers would eliminate paper in the modern office.

  In fact, and as Bailey was taking note of yet again, this hole in the wall that passed for the chief news editor's command bunker didn't even possess a computer. It was rumored that there was manual typewriter buried under papers on the floor somewhere, but nobody had ever tried to find it.

  But there was one thing about Henderson, and all in the Post acknowledged it: the man had instinct. He was like an animal on the scent of raw meat. And more often than not he found his prize. Henderson, quite simply, was the best that the town had to offer. Even so, Bailey was less than convinced about this one.

  And he was suddenly conscious of a role reversal at very close quarters. Henderson was the reporter, and he had become the doubting editor. This odd state of affairs would not last for very much longer. Soon enough, Henderson would issue a specific direction to check this, or find that. And sure enough, it came.

  “I want to you call Plaice,” he said. “Ask for a meeting. You'll go to see him, not at the station because that will be noticed and who knows how many coppers down there have contacts with the Sun or the Mirror. He'll agree to meet. Suggest a pub, he doesn't mind a sup. He won't necessarily lay it out for you. You'll have to work for it, tease it out of him. But he's a good sort and really doesn't have hang-ups about the press like some of them.”

  “And I tease out precisely what?” said Bailey.

  “That some lunatic is popping padres.”

  As Henderson and Bailey were settling in for another evening of edgy proximity, Samantha Walsh was trying not to give into her dizzy spell. She had approached the edge of the bluff cautiously and with more than a little trepidation.

  She had never liked heights, nor lonely places. Now she was dealing with both. It was also a place of death, and to make matters worse, the daylight was dwindling. The only comfort was a mildness that bordered on warmth for the time of year and the cell phone she clutched in her right hand.

  She had been cautious in her approach to her mission in the village of Little Polden, about a mile away as the gulls flew. Her story for local consumption was that she was checking out property in the area, thinking about a small cottage close to the sea where she might find peace and quiet to write a book. It was perfect cover for asking not just about the area, but also coaxing the more talkative locals into discussing people and events, not just real estate.

  The sudden and shocking death of Father Jeffrey Dean had clearly been the biggest thing to happen around these parts in years, certainly the biggest since the German Heinkel had crashed in a field back in 1941. You could still see the rut in the ground that the doomed bomber had left, she was told by at least six villagers.

  But there were no Cornish voices now, and even the seabirds had settled in for the night. She had to walk to the edge nevertheless.

  10

  PENDER WIGGLED HIS TOES, flexed his fingers and tensed his back. The flight was number two for takeoff. The hop from Dublin to London would take about an hour. He thought of trying to sleep, but that would now be impossible. The Irish air had been a relief because Pender usually had difficulty staying more than four or five hours in a bed. He hadn't slept as well in years as he had the past few nights.

  But the present atmosphere was not the sharp and saturated stuff he had spent the past few days drawing gratefully into his lungs. This was the aircraft cabin recycled variety. Pender had traveled to every corner of the globe and was a connoisseur of air much in the same way that some were experts on wine. Ireland's air, he decided, was to be highly commended despite the tension evident in it as Manning bade final farewell to his father's lair.

  His host's obvious distraction had allowed Pender to observe without drawing too much attention. Manning did not appear to suspect a thing. He had clearly been simply doing his superior, the ambassador's, bidding.

  It had been clear that the Irishman was uncomfortable having the Englishman around, but he had done his best to disguise the fact. He would be equally reluctant but ultimately cooperative when Pender turned up in Washington.

  The aircraft turned at the end of the taxiway and faced down the runway. Somewhere in the distance there was a roar as the plane ahead lifted off. The pilot told Pender and his fellow passengers that they were now next in line and that the cabin crew should prepare for takeoff.

  Pender pressed his eyes shut. This he could never quite fathom. He was as cold as ice when required to assassinate a target. Yet he was a nervous flyer.

  The aircraft thundered down the runway and took off into a steep climb. It banked to its port side, and Pender pressed his eyes even more tightly shut. He concentrated his thoughts on Africa and the nights crouched around the rickety table with the hurricane lamp that was just about keeping at bay the pitch darkness inches beyond the rotting verandah.

  John, the dissonant priest, and Pender had spent many hours by the lamp discussing all manner of things. Sleep was impossible unaided. The dead air conditioner was a casualty of three civil wars. So they had sipped Johnny Walker from chipped china cups and matched the alcohol intake with an equally significant consumption of nicotine.

  John, whose priestly calling had been revealed to Pender after about a week spent at the old mission, had a taste for a strong French brand. He had laid responsibility for his habit on an old Belgian priest, a Father Jules. The man was a seer who had claimed that his chain smoking was merely a last ditch effort to counteract the legions of night insects. After forty years of defending himself, with a fair degree of success, Fr. Jules had succumbed to emphysema.

  “It was a fair enough deal,” said Father John. “Four decades of not being bitten to death for a few rather uncomfortable months at the end.”

  Pender, sucking on his American brand, had nodded in agreement at this weighing of relative agony.

  “Right now, I'm all for the ciggies,” he said and blew a smoke ring in the gen
eral direction of the ceiling fan which had quit, again.

  Pender had been wary of the priest when he had first answered the question as to his calling in life. Father John, whose surname he had never discovered, had evidently detected this because he had quickly qualified his answer with claims of coercion by his mother. Priests, he acknowledged, were not generally known for stating they had taken Holy Orders simply because they had been betrayed by a lover.

  Pender had replied that he had initially thought Father John was a civilian aid worker. He admitted to being unaware that his lodging, set up for him by a contact in the capital, had once been a mission. It bore none of the usual trappings, people being the most noticeable absence. But other things had been missing too: crucifixes, pictures of the pope, a saint or two; even Jesus.

  The civil war had been to blame, Father John explained. A priest was precious little protection against an assault rifle, especially an English priest with a less than convincing command of French and absolutely no words in the local tongue.

  The school and the clinic had been mothballed after customers had fled to the capital 150 miles away. Lacking any clear instruction from his order in England, Father John had decided to hang on in the hope of better times. An elderly local man, with some unpronounceable biblical name, who had lived at the mission since an orphan childhood, was the only other inhabitant. Pender's arrival, naturally, had been an event.

  And so the two men had settled into the routine of staying as cool as possible in the heat of the day and as sane as possible during the heat of the night.

  Pender's assignment had been to get to meet and photograph Jonas Sem, a rebel leader who had been steadily gaining ground against government troops. Because of this, he had been arousing a degree of western media interest, not least on the grounds that he had once attended the Sorbonne and had appeared to have a remote idea how a shell-shocked nation such as his might somehow settle down enough to give its children a chance of reaching twenty.

  But time had passed, and different stories had started to filter out of the bush where Sem was holed up with an army estimated at five to as many as ten thousand fighters.