Fitzduane 02 - Rules of The Hunt

by O'Reilly-Victor

  "The target is an Irishman called Hugo Fitzduane, Namaka-san," said the security chief. "He is of no significance. It is merely a matter of giri. Further action is being implemented."

  "Next item," said the chairman.

  8

  ConnemaraRegionalHospital

  February 1

  Kilmara surveyed Fitzduane's hospital room.

  Fitzduane, propped up into a sitting position by his bed, was wearing a T-shirt over his bandaged torso and actually did not look medical for a change. He was pale and had lost weight, but there was some color in his cheeks and his eyes were sharp and alert. The T-shirt had a picture of a group of skunks on the front and was printed with the word "SKUNKWORKS!"

  Fitzduane noticed his glance. "The Bear sent it over," he said.

  Kilmara grinned. "And while we're on that substantial subject, how is the Bear?"

  Police sergeant Heini Raufman, the Bear, was a large, overweight Bernese policeman with a heavy walrus moustache, a gruff manner, and a taste for large guns, which. like many Swiss, he shot exceedingly well. He and Fitzduane had become very close during the hunt for the Hangman in Bern, and they had fought together during the siege of Fitzduane's castle. Subsequently, the Bear, a widower, had remarried. Fitzduane had been the best man.

  Fitzduane smiled. "He's still officially with the Bernese Kriminalpolizei, but he's got some kind of liaison sweetheart deal with the Swiss federal authorities. He's not doing normal cop work anymore. He's not getting normal pay, either. He is into counterterrorist work and similar exotic territory."

  Kilmara was not surprised. The Bear was the kind of man that you might easily pigeonhole as no more than a solid street cop who had reached his level. But appearances were deceptive, though useful in his line of work. The Bear had a subtle brain. It wasn't surprising that it was being used at last.

  Mind you, he could be a little short on patience. When Fitzduane had first met the Bear, the detective had been in disgrace for thumping some German diplomat who had got out of line at a reception. Bern, being the Swiss capital, was full of diplomats with nothing to do except fornicate and drink and look at the bears. All the diplomatic action took place in Geneva and the financial in Zurich.

  Kilmara remembered Fitzduane's smile. He was still smiling — expectantly. "Am I missing something?" Kilmara inquired politely.

  "I need a gun permit," said Fitzduane.

  "You've got a gun permit," said Kilmara, "not that the lack of one has ever seemed to worry you." Fitzduane's extensive gun collection in his castle was not quite in conformity with the Irish legal system.

  "A rather large gun permit," continued Fitzduane. "Or perhaps I should say I need a permit for a rather large gun."

  Kilmara raised his eyebrows as the lightbulb blinked on. "For a rather large man," he said.

  "You're razor-sharp today," said Fitzduane agreeably. "The Swiss seem to think I may need some protection, so they are lending me the Bear."

  "More likely they smell blood and would prefer the bodies pile up in this jurisdiction than theirs," said Kilmara. "Can't say I blame them." He stood up and started looking in a cabinet that Fitzduane had had brought in for the wandering thirsty. A modest selection of bottles greeted him. There was a small fridge and ice-maker built into the lower half.

  "I thought this thing looked familiar," he said. "Want one?"

  "Not yet," said Fitzduane. He waited until Kilmara had mixed himself a large Irish whiskey. The General sipped it appreciatively and resumed his seat.

  "They tell me alcohol and getting shot don't mix," said Fitzduane. "I'm drinking fizzy water, though I'm not sure how long my resolution will last."

  Kilmara looked shocked at this statement of sobriety. He took another drink. There was nothing to beat good Irish whiskey, even if the major Irish distillers were now owned by the French.

  He looked back at Fitzduane, then gestured toward a three-inch pile of folders on the bedside table. "You've read the files, Hugo?"

  Fitzduane nodded. "At last," he said, with a grimace of impatience. "The medics have not allowed anything more stressful than Bugs Bunny until recently."

  "I'd like your perspective," said Kilmara — he smiled — "seeing as how you are intimately involved. There is nothing like being shot at to encourage tight focus."

  Fitzduane gave a very slight smile in response. "Very droll," he said. Then he looked down at a yellow legal pad. "Let me start with a summary. There is a lot of stuff here."

  "Summarize away," said Kilmara.

  "The actual hit," said Fitzduane, "was carried out by three members of a Japanese terrorist group called Yaibo, the Cutting Edge. They would be a run-of-the-mill bunch of extremist nuts except for their track record of viciousness and effectiveness. Whereas most terrorist groups are ninety-five percent talk, Yaibo focuses on action. The secret of their success seems to be their leader, a very smart lady in her mid-thirties called Reiko Oshima.

  "Yaibo's motive," continued Fitzduane, "seemed clear enough at first. A direct connection has been traced between Yaibo and the Hangman's group. And to make it more personal, it looks like Reiko Oshima and the Hangman were lovers for a while — though scarcely on an exclusive basis."

  "So far so good," said Kilmara. "And though a bunch of us were involved in the Hangman's demise, Yaibo picked on you because you did the actual deed. Hell, you killed their leader's lover with your very own hands. This isn't just business. She really does not like you."

  Fitzduane sipped some water. "Well, it all looked fairly straightforward," he said, "until I read on. Suddenly, a nice clean-cut terrorist revenge hit gets complicated. It turns out that Yaibo is not the freewheeling bunch of bloodthirsty fanatics they would like us to believe. Instead we find out that Yaibo had been involved with a series of killings that seems to have benefited a fast-rising Japanese group known as the Namaka Corporation. Your American friends in Tokyo have linked the Hangman to the Namakas. So what we have here is an outwardly respectable Japanese keiretsu which uses a bunch of terrorists for its dirty work. And a further implication is that the hit was ordered by the Namakas and is not Yaibo's little notion. It was, you might say, a corporate decision."

  "That's supposition," said Kilmara.

  Fitzduane shrugged. "The connection between Yaibo and the Namakas might not stand up in a court of law, but it will do for me. But I agree on the issue of who ordered the hit. It could have been the Namakas, but it could equally have been a lower-level initiative by Yaibo."

  "Do you have an opinion?" said Kilmara.

  "Not yet," said Fitzduane. "There is absolutely no hard evidence one way or another. But what does puzzle me is the orientation of much of this stuff against the Namakas. On the face of it Yaibo is the logical candidate, and yet the main thrust of these reports is that the Namakas should be taken out. Hell, the Namakas are nearly as big as Sony. This is heavy."

  Kilmara swirled his ice. "The main accusations against the Namakas," he said, "come from Langley's operation in Tokyo. You may care to know that it is currently headed by the unlovable Schwanberg."

  Fitzduane looked puzzled.

  "Let's flash back nearly twenty years," said Kilmara, "when you were rushing around South Vietnam with a camera trying to get yourself killed and on the front cover of Time."

  "And Schwanberg was racking up the body count under the Phoenix program, only the VC cadres he was having killed weren't VC," said Fitzduane. "I thought the CIA threw him out. Hell, he was an unpleasant piece of work."

  "He was connected," said Kilmara, "and ruthless fucks like Schwanberg can have their uses. He worked in Greece under the colonels and did a spell in Chile, then was posted to Japan as an old Asia hand. And the rest is history. The CIA have many good people, but scum floats to the top and does not always get skimmed off."

  Fitzduane rubbed his chin. He was suddenly looking very tired. His friend was definitely making progress, observed Kilmara, but there was a long way to go. "So Schwanberg has it in for the Namakas for so
me reason," said Fitzduane. "So where does that leave us?"

  "With you getting some rest," said Kilmara, "and me and my boys doing some more digging. Remember, Schwanberg may have his own agenda regarding the Namakas, but that does not mean he is wrong."

  "Watch Schwanberg," said Fitzduane. "I remember him cutting the tongue out of someone he claimed was a VC suspect. She was thirteen years of age. This is not a nice man."

  Kilmara stood up and drained his whiskey. "Get some sleep, Hugo," he said. "Don't overdo. We need you fit and well."

  Fitzduane smiled weakly. It was maddening how little stamina he had. But it was returning.

  He closed his eyes and within seconds was asleep.

  * * * * *

  The West of Ireland

  February 1

  Except for certain detective units, the Republic of Ireland's national police force, the Garda Siochana — literally, Guardians of the Peace — are unarmed. They strike many people, who do not know better, as being likable but somewhat traditional and, not to put too fine a point on it, slow.

  On the other hand, the gardai, many of whom come from rural backgrounds, have their own ways of doing things, and on the top of the list is knowing exactly who is who and what is what on their own patches.

  This is not always so easy in the cities. In rural Ireland, especially outside the tourist season, every stranger is noted and observed by someone. And sooner or later — if the sergeant is doing his job right and knows how to work with rather than against the local population — that information finds its way back to the local police station.

  In the case of a Northern Irish accent, which is quite distinctive to an inhabitant of the Republic, that information tends to find its way to the gardai very fast indeed. There are, of course, a few pockets of sympathizers — less than one percent of the population, if the voting rolls are to be believed — but there were no such pockets in the area around Connemara Regional.

  Routine radio communications were in the clear. Intelligence reports were treated more carefully and were communicated by secure fax to Garda Headquarters in Dublin and from there to the desk of General Shane Kilmara, commander of Ireland's antiterrorist force, the Rangers.

  As it happens, Kilmara was not there when the intelligence report arrived. He was in the West of Ireland.

  * * * * *

  Kathleen's father, Noel Fleming, had been a successful builder in Dublin for many years before retiring early to the West of Ireland during one of Ireland's all-too-frequent economic downturns.

  In his spare time he had liked to paint, and the light and scenery of the West presented a never-ending challenge. His wife, Mary, was from the area and loved horses, so their way of life was convivial and pleasant. They built a large bungalow some miles from the town, and when Kathleen's marriage broke up it seemed only natural that she would live at home for a while. She was an only child. Connemara Regional was nearby, and she applied for a job and was accepted.

  Kathleen had married a solicitor in Dublin. He was young and ambitious and did not want children. She had continued working, so when it became clear the marriage was not going to work it had been relatively easy to make a break.

  She had left Dublin without regret. The city had its merits, but it seemed to her that it was losing the human values that had made Ireland special without gaining proportionately material advantage. She had found her husband's friends — mostly lawyers, accountants, and bankers — to be narrowly focused yuppies. They lacked dimension and breadth of vision.

  She was no fan of modern Ireland. The country was the least socially mobile in Europe. She witnessed the injustice of the structures every day in her work. If you were born underprivileged, the chances were you would die that way. A rich and powerful element guarded the status quo. The majority had lived on the margin. One-fifth of the population was without work. Emigration was the norm for most of the young. And this is the fruit of our independence, she thought. For this we fought; for this so many died.

  Ireland's redeeming feature, in Kathleen's opinion, was its land. It had a beauty and a quality that was duplicated nowhere else in the world. And the most beautiful part of Ireland was the West. In the West there was magic. It wasn't just a matter of how the land looked. It was how it felt. It was a place of spirit, of romance, of sadness. It was a land of mystery and past heroes and great deeds and tragedy. It was a land that touched your soul.

  Night shift over, she drove her little Ford Fiesta along the narrow country road toward her parents' bungalow and thought about Fitzduane. Though security kept most of the staff from ever actually seeing him, he was something of a conversation piece in the hospital. Occasionally they had a criminal or a mental patient kept under guard while getting medical treatment, but this was the first time anyone could recall that an assault victim was being guarded for his own protection. Also, the security did not consist, as normal, of one rather bored unarmed garda whiling away the time with endless cups of tea.

  In this case, there were gardai on the perimeter all right, but there were also armed Rangers carrying weapons of a type she had never seen before.

  It was rather scary, but it was also exciting. It would also have seemed unreal, except for the grim evidence of Fitzduane's wounds. It was truly horrifying, the damage two little pieces of metal could inflict.

  She braked as she rounded a bend and saw a herd of cows up ahead. Behind them, a farmer and his dog followed. They were taking their cows from a stone-walled field to be milked in the yard half a mile up the road. While this was going on, the road was blocked. It was possible to pass from behind, but it tended to alarm the cattle and they were heavy with milk.

  The air was heavy with moisture, but the sun had broken through and droplets sparkled on the spiders' webs in the hedgerow. To the left there was a lake and in the distance the purple silhouettes of mountains. To her right, the hills were closer. Small rocky fields bordered with dry stone walls gave way to bog and heather and lichen-covered rock. Sheep grazed the higher land. Overhead, a kestrel soared.

  The tragedy of Ireland, she thought, is that with all this beauty in our laps we can't seem to find a way to make a living here. The Irish did well enough abroad. There were supposed to be over forty million of Irish descent in America. There were more first- and second-generation Irish in Britain than in Ireland. Meanwhile, back at home, lack of vision, corruption, begrudgery, an inadequate education system, horrendous taxation, poor communications, and straightforward bad government played havoc with the prospects of generation after generation of Irish men and women.

  She remembered the James Joyce quotation: "Ireland is an old sow that eats her own farrow." In her experience and observation, it was all too applicable.

  Her thoughts switched back to Fitzduane.

  He attracted her more than any many she had ever met. Unlike many Irish of their generation, her parents were tolerant and enlightened; she was not inexperienced sexually and had slept with several men before her marriage. She had met other men who had attracted her strongly and aroused her physically.

  What was different about Fitzduane was that he combined a strong physical presence and sex appeal with a keen intellect and an approach to life she found deliciously refreshing. The man was not constrained by the dead hand of custom and practice which seemed to stultify so much of Irish society. He had an open and inquiring mind, and he did not seem to care a damn for convention.

  Despite its reputation for great conversation and friendliness, Ireland was an indirect culture in which it was the custom to say what people wanted to hear rather than the truth. Accordingly, much of the friendliness was a surface patina rather than the manifestation of a relationship based on mutual understanding. In contrast, though his timing and manner belied any offense, Fitzduane tended to be direct and to cut to the heart of the matter. He was not glib or witty in the surface manner that tended to be a success in Irish pubs. He was kind and amusing, and he was so damn interesting.

  She wanted h
im, but she was not at all sure she was going to get him. Still, she had a window of opportunity, and that in itself was rather fun. Night shift didn't use to be like this.

  Ahead of her, the last cow raised its tail and deposited one of the less attractive aspects of rural life on the road before plodding into the yard. Washing a car in the country was something of a pointless exercise.

  Kathleen accelerated slowly and skidded through a succession of cow pats as the farmer closed the gate and raised a hand in salute. She took a hand off the steering wheel in a casual wave of reply. Everybody saluted everybody in this part of the world, which was pleasant enough, though not entirely conducive to safety.

  A car, a white Vauxhall Cavalier, had come up behind her when she had stopped for the cattle. She noticed idly that there were two — no, three — men in it and it did not look local. It drove behind her for the next two miles until she came to her parents' isolated bungalow, and as she turned into the tree-shaded drive it followed her.

  She parked and got out. She could smell wood smoke. Inside, her mother would be preparing breakfast. She felt tired, but it was very pleasant to chat with her parents over a cup of tea before heading off to get some sleep.

  She walked toward the Cavalier. The roads were not well sign-posted, so this was probably people lost again. The network of minor roads was quite confusing.

  As she approached the car, the two front doors opened and two men got out. The driver had crinkly reddish hair and pleasant open features. He was smiling. He put a hand inside his coat. When it reappeared, it was holding an automatic pistol.

  Kathleen looked at the gun in shock and a terrible, all-encompassing fear gripped her. She was about to scream when the smiling man kicked her very hard in the stomach. Roughly, he pulled her up and hit her again hard in the face. "Let's go inside, Kathleen," he said. "We'd like a wee word with your parents."

  * * * * *