“I will,” Sammy said. “I just hope nobody did.”
“Another wee thing.”
“What?”
“You’re getting out. You’ve my word on that…”
“I should fuckin’ well hope so.”
“After the Strabane raid.”
“What?” Sammy knew he sounded like one of the altar-boy trebles in his chapel on a Sunday at Mass. “After?”
“If you vanish before, do you not think your friends’ll suspect, call the whole thing off?”
“I suppose.”
“And we want your Active Service Unit, Sunshine. We know who they are.”
“You what? Away off and feel your head.” The policeman was bluffing, trying to trick Sammy. He wasn’t going to fall for it.
“We’ve known about the O’Byrnes for years. Their da was in the IRA. Cal and Erin went into the family business with him. We nearly got them when we nailed Eamon Maguire, but we’ve never been able to pin anything on them. Nothing that would stand up in court. We want them badly, so we have to get them committing such a serious crime that a hundred lawyers couldn’t get them acquitted. This raid’s our best shot. We can’t afford to scare them off.”
Sammy’s hands trembled, but to his surprise he felt a kind of relief. If what Spud said was true, that he already knew about the O’Byrnes, then Sammy wasn’t really grassing about them. Not really. And the bit about no lawyers getting them off? That meant an arrest for sure. Erin’s life would be spared.
“Get me the date and go on the raid with them. I’ll get you out.”
“Look”—Sammy scuffed his feet on the linoleum—“just say it is the O’Byrnes, and I’m not saying it is, so I’m not…”
“You don’t need to, Sammy. We know.” Sammy heard the absolute certainty in the man’s voice.
“Why not lift them as soon as they come here to pick up the stuff in the shed? Nobody’d get hurt.” And that included Sammy. Better Erin alive in jail than—
“It’s not what the higher-ups want. I’ve talked to my bosses since you phoned. Told them there was likely a big one coming. They’re embarrassed as hell about the breakout. They want to send a message. It’s not up to me.”
Sammy understood only too clearly what the E4A man was saying. Corpses didn’t need lawyers. He could see Erin, bloody, torn, dead. Had he the guts to confess what he’d been doing to the O’Byrnes so they’d cancel the raid and she’d be safe?
“Sunshine, I’ve taken a chance telling you this, and I’m telling you because we’re friends. I trust you, and I don’t think you’ll try to play the double agent and tip them off.”
Shite. Could the bloody peeler read Sammy’s mind? Friends. He’d come to rely on Spud’s friendship for the last six months, and now they were so far down this road that the E4A man was Sammy’s only hope of staying alive. Telling the O’Byrnes would be great for his conscience, but he’d be signing his own death warrant.
“I’d not be that fuckin’ stupid,” he said.
“And I’ll look after you, Sammy. All you’ll have to do is tell one of the officers you’re Sunshine.”
“How can I tell anyone anything when you buggers start shooting?”
“Have you a green scarf?”
“Aye.”
“Wear it. I’ll have my people well briefed.”
“You’d fuckin’ well better.”
Spud clapped Sammy’s shoulder. “I will.”
Sammy grunted.
“Right,” Spud said. “I’m off.” He grinned at Sammy. “I’ve a lot to do … and that includes getting a ticket to England for a friend of mine.”
Sammy barely heard the door close or the car pull away. England. He’d done it. He was going. As he waited for his breathing to slow, he savoured the thought. England. But, fuck it. At what price? He’d sold his soul. He’d sold Erin. He was a fuckin’ Judas.
But even if he had exaggerated his certainty about Strabane, he’d forced Spud to commit himself. And he had, by God, he had. Sammy was convinced he was going to have his suspicions confirmed tomorrow, and if he had guessed wrong, one phone call would soon set that right. What the policeman was interested in was a big raid and who was going to make it. The O’Byrnes.
He didn’t want to think about it now. At least he’d be alive to feel guilty if he survived. He’d hoped he could get out before the attack, hadn’t foreseen the one snag that Erin might cancel the thing if Sammy disappeared. Spud had been onto that like a flash. Sammy was going to have to go, knowing the Security Forces would be waiting.
He saw a long butt in an ashtray, lifted it, and struck a match, seeing how the flame shook as his whole body shuddered. He inhaled, took no pleasure from the smoke, but he was going to finish it before he went back in the shed to complete the job on the station wagon.
Was there no way to stop Erin from going? None at all? An idea began to form, but he couldn’t quite understand. It had something to do with him having to take part. He worried at the thought, but his mind refused to focus.
The cigarette was nothing but a tiny stump, the burning tobacco hot on his lips. He chucked the butt back in the ashtray, not bothering to crush it out. Fuck it, he’d go and see to that bloody wagon.
He let himself out to walk back to the shed, pausing to look round in a full circle to see if anyone was near. Anyone who could have been watching.
From above his head, he heard a plaintive “pee-wit, pee-wit” and looked up to see lapwings slowly straggling across an eggshell-blue sky. There was something dark higher than the flock, hovering, head to the wind, tail feathers fanned.
It was a kestrel waiting in ambush.
Sammy watched as the hunter closed its wings and stooped, plummeting down the sky. “Look out,” he called, as if his warning could do a damn bit of good. Sammy heard the “thump” and saw the burst of green feathers as the kestrel struck. Royal Ulster Constabulary uniforms were a darker shade of green. The poor bloody lapwing couldn’t have known what hit it. Locked together, hunter and prey fell into the next field, and from there he heard the falcon’s shrill, “kek-kek-kek,” the predator’s cry of triumph, and he pictured the victim, body broken, its blood already congealing on the warm ground.
CHAPTER 37
TYRONE. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1983
The blood where he’d nicked himself shaving had clotted hours ago. Davy touched the scab under his nose and peered in a mirror hanging from the back wall of the tumulus. He frowned at his reflection. Deep lines from the sides of his nostrils ran down to the outer corners of an upper lip, which seemed to be shorter now that his moustache was gone. He’d had the thing for thirty years. Taking it off this morning hadn’t seemed so difficult to do, but now he felt as if he’d lost an old friend.
“You look about ten years younger,” McGuinness said from where he sat on his cot.
Davy grunted and ignored the remark, although there was some truth to McGuinness’s words now that Davy’s thinning hair had been dyed auburn with Clairol. When he put on the plain-lens granny glasses to complete his disguise, he looked his forty-seven years again.
It didn’t matter a damn how old he looked as long as the photographs taken by a young man Eamon had brought from Newtownstewart at noon would do the trick. Davy’s forged passport and Canadian driver’s licence were to be delivered on Friday.
They’d better be here by then, because before he’d left with the photographer, Eamon had said that on Saturday they’d all be heading for Dublin and the shelter of the Provos based there. Davy’d be only a plane flight away from Fiona. He hoped he could phone her from Dublin. Hearing his voice would unsettle her, but not be as big a shock as turning up in person, clean-shaven, auburn-haired, and hardly looking at all like the man she’d known.
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
He wasn’t the man she’d known years ago. Back then, when they’d first met, he’d been sustained by his rigid faith in the Cause, embarrassed in her presence by his lack of schooling. Even
before he’d been jailed, that faith had faltered, tottered, and collapsed, leaving a vacuum in his soul that no religion could fill. He’d only had Fiona and her unshakeable belief that he could change to sustain him.
She’d been willing to understand why he’d fought and had never wrapped up her disapproval but didn’t keep harping on about it. She’d been able, at least at first, to forgive him. Had she forgiven him for insisting on the one, last raid at Ravernet? He believed with all his heart she had and would tell him when he saw her—soon, very soon.
From the mirror, his blue eyes stared back and told him, despite his repudiation of the violence, some of the old Davy lived on. Some of him would never be altered. He still believed in Irish freedom, but not at the cost the Provos wanted to exact; he believed in friendship, he believed in keeping his word, and he believed in his devotion to the only woman he’d ever loved.
She’d been certain he could change, and—he smiled at his bare lip and auburn hair—he had, and not just in his appearance. He had a skill, carpentry; he’d built on her early tutoring and had read just about every book in the Kesh library—novels, biographies, some philosophy, Irish history. One of those books had said that a man’s attitudes could only be altered by some shattering experience. Watching a little girl burn had torn at him and forced him to see the havoc he was creating, and not just for the victims of the bombings and shootings. He couldn’t be the only one of the hard men who was revolted by what they were doing, who carried their guilt like millstones.
There must be men who felt the way he did, but they didn’t include his friend Eamon or—Davy glanced over to where the man sat on his cot, arms folded, shoulders hunched one higher than the other, his good eye fixed on the stones of their sanctuary—Brendan McGuinness.
He must have seen Davy’s questioning look. He stood, arms still folded. “If you’ve finished admiring yourself, I’d like a word with you, McCutcheon.” The man’s voice had its usual harsh edge. He walked toward Davy.
Davy waited.
“You and me’s had our differences.”
“We still do, and no amount of you preaching at me’s going to change that. You and I are never going to agree.”
“We both agree Ireland should be free.”
Davy hesitated and then said slowly, “I’ll grant you that.”
“Whatever way you cut it, we’re both on the same side.”
Davy shook his head. “Not anymore. Not since you sent me out to blow up an army patrol and I killed a farmer and his family.”
McGuinness shrugged. “Accidents happen. If we’re going to get the Brits out, we have to hit them and keep hitting them.”
Davy wondered what, if anything, drove the man other than hatred and an overweening lust for revenge. He’d not rest until Northern Ireland was a heap of corpses, and even then he’d not be satisfied. Davy said, “Maybe you have to. I’ve had enough, and in case you’ve forgotten Sean Conlon trusted me. He gave me permission to quit after the Ravernet attack.”
“I didn’t want you to go out on that one. I didn’t think you were up to the job, and I was right. You let us down and got the pair of us arrested.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? I’ve had nine bloody years to think about it.” And, he thought, nine years to ask myself, why did I go to Ravernet when Fiona didn’t want me to, nine years to try to work out who I was then, who I am now? Some kind of Mr. Hyde becoming a gentler Doctor Jekyll? He hoped to God she would see the transformation when he got to Vancouver.
McGuinness snapped, “You’re not the only one that’s been stuck inside, but some of us have the guts to go on fighting now we’re out. You don’t.”
Davy tried to let the accusation that he was a coward pass and made to push by, but McGuinness stood in his way. “Fighting?” Davy said, his voice low, “do you want to fight with me?”
“Fuck it, no.” McGuinness took a pace back. “No. I want you to keep on fighting the Brits.”
“The Brits? In my day, we fought soldiers, the police, not little girls, not railway-ticket collectors. Fighting? Even if your ‘fighting,’ as you call it, brings a united Ireland, what the hell kind of a country do you think it’s going to be?”
“It’ll be ours again.”
“Filled with a legacy of death and bitterness, all the hatred of the centuries fueled by the slaughter of the last fourteen years. Some bloody country.”
“Do you see any other way to get what we want, the freedom Ireland has earned through the blood of her martyrs?”
Oh, Jesus, not the bloody martyrs again. In lieu of mother’s milk, Da had fed Davy the stories of the heroes who’d died, and look where that had got him. He shook his head. “No,” he said wearily, “no I don’t, but I want no more of killing for it. Ever.” He knew this was a fruitless debate and wondered why McGuinness had brought the subject up in the first place. “Why don’t we just drop it?”
He expected McGuinness to start ranting and was surprised when he said, “All right. It wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about anyway.”
Davy frowned. He’d detected a note of—it couldn’t be—conciliation in McGuinness’s voice. “I’ll listen,” he said.
McGuinness shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glanced at the floor, focused his good eye on Davy, and said, “I’ve no intention of kissing and making up, but the pair of us, and Eamon when he gets back, are stuck in this wee place for three more days. It’s like being cell mates back in the Kesh.”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”
“Just listen. I know you don’t like me.” I’ve never liked you, McGuinness, Davy thought as the man continued. “I don’t like you either, McCutcheon. I think you’ve let us down, and I know you’re wrong not wanting to fight on.”
Davy shrugged. This was pointless. They were heading off again down the old well-ploughed furrow. He’d not bother to argue.
McGuinness scratched the socket of his glass eye with one finger. “I could have been wrong about something else, too.” He stopped scratching. “I’m trying to say … och, fuck it … I’m trying…”
By the way McGuinness was fidgeting, whatever was on his mind was difficult for him to spit out. “Look, just say your piece and leave me alone. All right?”
“You done good back in the Kesh.”
“What?” Davy jerked back. “What did you say?”
“I said, you done good when you got that chisel for us, and if you hadn’t found the right switch in the Tally Lodge, we’d all’ve been fucked.”
Christ Almighty, it must have cost McGuinness dearly to say that. “Eamon asked me for a favour with the chisel,” Davy said. “And I wanted out as much as everybody in the lodge. I got lucky.”
“Maybe, but…”
“But what?”
“We’ve to put up with each other in here. We’ll have to work together getting to Dublin.”
“So?” Was the man trying to call for a truce, like the one the Provisionals had called with the British back in 1972? It had only lasted for a few months.
“I’ll let bygones be bygones if you will.” McGuinness folded his arms across his chest.
Davy was glad the man hadn’t offered to shake hands. He wasn’t sure he could have returned the shake, but he said, “Fair enough.”
“Good.” McGuinness spun, stared at the tunnel, and whispered, “What the fuck’s that?”
Davy heard scrabbling. He glanced at his watch. Four. Eamon wasn’t due for two hours. Christ, could the police have found the grave?
His hand slid under his pillow, grabbed the cold metal of the .25, and let it go. If there were a couple of peelers in the tunnel, there’d be a squad of the bastards outside. He couldn’t hope to shoot his way out. He slipped off the cot and stood waiting, fists clenched, feeling his pulse quicken.
A man appeared, crawling on his hands and knees, stood, and dusted off his pants. “Hiya, Father. Brendan,” Eamon said through his gap-toothed grin.
“Jesus, Eamon.” Davy’s heart rate slowed. “You’d me near petrified.”
“Sorry about that,” Eamon said, peering closely at Davy’s face. “My God, Father, I’d hardly recognize you.”
“Aye,” said Davy. “As long as the people in Canada don’t, I’ll do rightly.”
“Never you worry about that.” Eamon plumped himself down in one of the chairs. “Come over here and sit down, the pair of you. I said I’d explain what I was up to today. I’ve been sorting things out with Erin and Cal … I’ve had some bad news.”
“About us getting to the Republic?” Davy thought his heart would stop.
“No. That’s still on…”
Davy closed his eyes and muttered a silent thank-you.
“But I haven’t had a chance to tell you sooner…”
Davy couldn’t decide if Eamon sounded sad or angry.
“The Brits killed Fiach O’Byrne, the youngest brother last week.”
“Och, dear,” Davy said. “I’m sorry, Eamon.” He glanced at McGuinness. See what your fighting gets you? Another useless death.
“Erin and Cal want to do something about it before we get out of Tyrone.”
“I should bloody well hope so,” McGuinness growled. “Count me in whatever it is. British Bastards.”
“Fair enough.”
Davy was making no promises until he understood exactly what Eamon meant. Was he thinking about some kind of reprisal? That would be stupid when freedom was so close. Davy stood and tried to walk away. If Eamon wanted to coerce Davy into being part of whatever he was planning, he’d better think again. Hadn’t he just finished telling McGuinness he’d fight no more? Hadn’t he just finished convincing himself he was a changed man, a man Fiona could respect, could still love? She’d never forgive him. He’d promised her Ravernet would be his last raid, and by God it would be.
Eamon stood, laid a hand on Davy’s arm, and looked him in the eye. “I want to ask you a wee favour, Father.”
“Have you no chisels of your own here?” Davy glanced at McGuinness. He was the one who’d reminded Davy about the last favour he’d done for Eamon. It was because of it Eamon had arranged for Davy to join the escape. Maybe he still owed Eamon for it. “What is it?”
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