Nothing But Trouble

by Michael McGarrity

  “Jesus,” Kerney said, taking her hand.

  “I asked to resign my commission or be allowed to retire,” Sara said, reading the anger in Kerney’s eyes, “but my requests were disallowed. They’ve got me for the duration, Kerney, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I could be court-martialed for telling you all of this.”

  His jaw tight, Kerney lapsed into silence. Finally he said, “This is ludicrous.”

  “I know.”

  “These guys deserve to be brought down.”

  “There’s still a slight chance that could happen,” Sara said.

  “How?” Kerney asked.

  Sara thought about Hugh Fitzmaurice. Although she’d been able to pass him a copy of the Spalding file, there was no guarantee he’d be able to use it to expose the cover-up. “It’s best if you don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve told you too much already.” Sara leaned close to Kerney and stroked his cheek. “Let it go. I’m not going to slink around with my tail between my legs. I fell apart yesterday, but except for wanting to inflict great bodily harm on a few people, I’m okay now. I’ll pull my tour of duty, come back home, and you can get me pregnant again.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Sara nodded. “I’ve been dreaming about a daughter. She’s a sweet, lovely little girl.”

  Patrick’s arrival in the kitchen ended the conversation, but from the grin on Kerney’s face Sara could tell that her suggestion of adding to the family had been met with enthusiastic approval.

  By the end of the weekend they’d made decisions to sell the house, move what Sara wanted to keep to the Santa Fe ranch, donate everything else to a local charity, and dispose of her vehicle. During the week that followed, Sara and Kerney did their best to keep the family rituals intact. After reporting to Fort Belvoir, Sara had been granted permission to commute, so during the day Kerney took care of Patrick, did the household chores, and made all the necessary arrangements.

  Not surprisingly, the pending changes did not sit well with Patrick, in spite of their repeated attempts to reassure him that while Mommy had to go away again, they would all be together soon. As the days passed, he became more grumpy, bossy, and whiny, and one night after dinner he refused to take his bath. When Kerney picked him up to carry him off to the tub, Patrick hit him with his fist and burst into tears.

  That night they talked about Patrick, and Sara suggested it might be best to send him to stay with her brother and his wife on the ranch in Montana until she returned from Iraq.

  “He’d have his older cousins to play with, and his grandparents nearby,” she said.

  “What kind of father would I be if I let that happen?” Kerney replied hotly. “I’ve shortchanged him enough as it is. Up to now our ranch has been a place where he comes to visit Daddy, ride horses, and take family vacations.” He stabbed his finger at the floor. “This has been his only true home, here with you. Now that’s about to permanently change. I won’t have him shunted off to relatives.”

  Sara took in the raw look of self-recrimination on Kerney’s face. For some reason he’d put himself under a microscope and come up sorely lacking as a parent. “What happened in Santa Fe, Kerney?”

  “Patrick got pushed around by a bully at the preschool. When I got there, the worst of it was over, but all he wanted was you, his real home, and his real friends.”

  “Oh, Kerney, of course he would want his mother,” Sara said. “He’s only three.”

  Kerney shook his head. “It can’t be that easily rationalized, and I can’t stand the thought of you in Iraq and Patrick in Montana. I’d feel terrible. He stays with me. I’ll call Johnny Jordan in the morning and tell him I won’t be going to the Bootheel to work on the movie.”

  “Maybe the two of you should go,” Sara said.

  Kerney looked away and stared stubbornly out the living room window.

  “It might help the both of you keep your minds off things,” she added.

  “Not possible. Besides, who’d care for him while I’m working?”

  “I’m sure the film company provides tutors for the child actors and nannies for the children of the stars. I’d be a lot happier knowing the two of you were off having some fun. Do it for me.”

  He switched his gaze from the window to Sara. “You can’t be serious.”

  She met his stubborn blue eyes with a smile. “I am. And when you get back from the Bootheel, buy Patrick his pony.”

  Kerney’s eyes softened. “Are those my orders?”

  “If you please.”

  The week ended in a rush. Movers came to pack and box, the realtor showed the house to prospective buyers, and a charity sent a truck for the donations. Kerney sold Sara’s SUV to a dealer and rented a car for their last two days together. On Friday morning they got up early and Kerney drove her to Fort Belvoir, where he and Patrick spent a hour with her at the hospitality center before she had to leave for her final block of instruction and then a flight to Baghdad.

  He watched her crisply walk away, smile over her shoulder, throw a kiss, and wave. He threw a kiss back, smiling as brightly as he could, holding on tightly to Patrick’s hand to keep him from running after her. He thought about roadside bombs, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, snipers, and shrapnel, and prayed that no harm would come to her.

  Patrick cried and tugged to free himself from Kerney’s grasp. He picked him up, wiped the tears away, and hugged him tightly. “It’s just you and me again, sport,” he whispered in his son’s ear as Sara disappeared from view.

  Patrick sniffled and wrapped his arms tightly around Kerney’s neck.

  Chapter Eleven

  The morning after his interrogation of George Spalding, Hugh Fitzmaurice prepared his reports and submitted them to the district court. At the proceeding later in the day the judge denied Spalding bail and remanded him, at the request of the prosecution, to Cloverhill Prison.

  Feeling pleased about it all, Fitzmaurice took the afternoon off and spent the remainder of the day on the putting green at the Rathfarnham golf course near his house, until it was time for Edna to come home from work.

  After a lovely weekend capped by a leisurely Sunday motor trip to visit his sister and her family in the town of Trim, Fitzmaurice returned to work on Monday to find that the Spalding case had been turned upside down. Someone had retained a top-flight Dublin solicitor to represent Spalding. The solicitor had visited with the attorney general on his client’s behalf and asked that the charges be dropped, arguing that Spalding’s confession had been coerced and subterfuge had been used to compel him to make false accusations against Thomas Carrier.

  Fitzmaurice also found out that other cunning machinations were afoot. The Americans and the Canadians had joined forces and proposed to the minister of justice that if the extraditions were expedited, Spalding would be allowed to plead guilty to desertion from the U.S. Army, sentenced to thirty days incarceration in a military stockade, and then immediately handed over to Canadian authorities.

  But the crowning bit of news came when Noel Clancy told him that a petition to the judge would be made that very Monday morning asking for the proceedings to be closed, which, under Irish law, effectively barred any written publication or public broadcast of the particulars surrounding the case.

  “It seems we’ve been dealt a cold deck of cards,” Clancy had said.

  “Or the Americans have sweetened the pot by offering to outsource a thousand or more jobs to a wholly owned Irish subsidiary to keep the Celtic Tiger roaring,” Fitzmaurice replied.

  “You have a very pessimistic view of the world.”

  “No,” Fitzmaurice said, “it’s just politics I don’t like.”

  “Well, let it go, Hugh. You’ve done your job and now it’s in the hands of the politicians, whether you like it or not. Don’t go off and dig yourself a pit to fall into.”

  At his office that morning Fitzmaurice placed a call to Sara Brannon to inform her of the situation, only to be
told that she’d been reassigned and was no longer at the Pentagon. After completing a summary report on the Spalding case he faxed the official notification of Spalding’s capture to Interpol, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Pentagon, before leaving to visit Cloverhill Prison.

  Located in Clondalkin, five miles south of the city on the bank of River Camac, Cloverhill was a modern facility that housed over four hundred inmates. Inside he met with the assistant governor of the institution and asked to see Spalding’s visitor records. According to the sign-in roster the solicitor representing Spalding had visited him last Saturday, accompanied by another man, one Major Stedman, a United States Marine Corps officer attached to the American embassy.

  When Fitzmaurice asked if there might be any surveillance video of the solicitor and the Marine officer, he was escorted to a closed-circuit monitoring station and shown a clip of the two men registering at the visitors reception area. Major Stedman was one of the men who’d bustled Sara Brannon off to the airport.

  He left the prison feeling both angry and dispirited, and the next day he went about his job trying to sort out what, if anything, he could do on his own to stop the cover-up. All of his reports and supplemental information had been sealed by the court, and he was obligated to let the matter drop. But surely there had to be a way to get around it. He had DVD copies of Spalding’s and Paquette’s interrogations, but he needed to hit upon a scheme that would allow him to put them to use without making a target of himself.

  On Wednesday he had an idea that took him to Spalding’s motor yacht. He searched it, and the following morning he took a page from Spalding’s book of tricks and, using an alias, bought an inexpensive mobile phone with prepaid minutes. On St. Stephen’s Green he stood across the street from Paquette’s hotel, slipped one of the forged documents he’d found hidden on the motor yacht into an envelope, addressed it to Paquette, sought out a young lad passing by, and asked him to deliver it to the hotel bellman.

  “What’s in for me, then?” the lad asked in a distinct Irish brogue that left no doubt of his Dublin roots.

  “Ten euros,” Fitzmaurice replied. “Here are five for you now. Tell the bellman to delivery it straightaway and give him this fiver for his trouble. You’ll have your second five when you report back to me that it’s done.”

  The young boy took the envelope, stuffed the bills in his pocket, and gazed up at Fitzmaurice with mischief in his eyes. Before he could dart away ten euros richer, his job left undone, Fitzmaurice grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, opened his jacket, and let him take a good long look at his holstered handgun.

  “You do not want to be skipping off without doing your little task, now, do you, my lad?” he asked pleasantly.

  The wide-eyed boy gulped, shook his head, ran across the street clutching the envelope, and disappeared into the hotel. Within a few minutes he came back into view, returned for his fiver, and took off down the sidewalk toward Grafton Street.

  Fitzmaurice waited a decent interval before dialing Paquette’s mobile number. “Did you get the document?” he asked when she answered.

  “Who is this?” Paquette replied.

  “That’s not important. Did you get it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have all of the remaining forged papers George Spalding used to convince you to help him. If the Garda comes calling again, I’m sure you could make use of them.”

  “How much do you want?” Paquette asked.

  “Money isn’t at issue. A favor would suffice.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “Simply tell all that you know about George Spalding’s recent adventures in Ireland to a journalist. He will call you later in the day on your mobile and arrange to meet you.”

  “Why should I trust you?” Paquette asked.

  “Would you rather I destroy the papers?”

  “No, don’t do that.”

  “Very well, then,” Fitzmaurice said. “If you handle this as I ask, you’ll have sufficient proof of your innocence to avoid having any charges being put forth.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “It serves a larger purpose,” Fitzmaurice replied. “Are we agreed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You’ll receive the remaining documents from the journalist after he’s met with you.”

  At noon Fitzmaurice stood outside Davy O’Donoghue’s Pub on Duke Street and waited for John Ryan, an investigative reporter for the largest newspaper in Ireland, to make his appearance. An eccentric by nature, Ryan was hard to miss as he came strolling down the street with his full beard and shock of thick, curly hair badly in need of a trim. He wore a double-breasted suit and carried the ever-present, prized walking stick his grandfather had won in a game of cards from the famous Irish dramatist Sean O’Casey some eighty or more years ago.

  “Why are you loitering about in front of O’Donoghue’s,” Ryan asked as he drew near, “when you should be inside with a pint in your hand waiting for me?”

  “To resist temptation,” Fitzmaurice answered. “You know I can’t drink while on duty.”

  “ ’Tis an insufferable rule you are forced to live by. What scandalous information do you have for me today?”

  “A story to match your considerable journalistic talents.”

  Ryan laughed and waved the walking stick at the entrance. “Well, in we go, then. There’s not a moment to lose.”

  Davy O’Donoghue’s didn’t cater to the tourists or the up-market types who worked in the city center, but to the true working-class denizens of Irish pubs who ate their lunches at the bar or at the small tables jammed together at the back of the narrow room that would forever smell like stale cigarette smoke, even though such unhealthy behavior had now been banned in all drinking premises throughout the Republic. In defiance of the law O’Donoghue occasionally lit up a cigar while standing behind the bar, much to the delight of his clientele, who would quickly follow suit. The pub was one of the few city-centre drinking establishments that had escaped becoming a tourist stop on the famous Dublin pub crawl.

  Amid the clamor and the clatter, with their elbows knocking against those of nearby diners, Ryan listened and ate lunch while Fitzmaurice talked. After he put aside his plate and drained his pint, Ryan said, “ ’Tis a very interesting story, but certainly not front-page news without proof that this Spalding fellow pointed the finger at Carrier as a member of his smuggling gang. Is there nothing Paquette can tell me about this Carrier chap?”

  “She has no knowledge of him,” Fitzmaurice replied. “But she’s a starting point that would allow you to ask questions about the highly unusual way in which this case has unfolded.”

  Ryan held up his empty glass for a refill, and the bartender gave him a nod in return. “Which would be greeted in return by nothing more than official denials, protestations of ignorance, invocations of court orders barring disclosure of information, and the like. I don’t doubt what you’ve told me, Hugh, but I see no way to pursue it without more evidence in hand.”

  Ryan paused to accept his fresh pint from the bartender. “Using only Paquette as the gambit to expose all the diplomatic maneuvering and skullduggery you’ve told me about simply won’t work. What you’ve given me will result in nothing more than a wee story buried in the back pages of the front section of the Sunday edition.”

  Fitzmaurice put his hands palms down on the table. “You won’t do it, then?”

  Ryan saluted Fitzmaurice with his pint and took a swallow. “You know there’s not a peeler or a judge in the Free State who could make me reveal an anonymous source of information. Not even you could do it when you tried, and we go back to the days when we were lads playing football in the alleys on the north side of the Liffey.”

  Fitzmaurice laughed. He knew it to be so. The only possible way to get John Ryan to reveal his sources would be to take away his drink and lock him up in a hospital detoxification ward. “You’ve not answered my question.”

  Ryan set his pint dow
n and leaned forward. “Did you record Spalding’s confession that implicated Carrier and make a copy for yourself?”

  Fitzmaurice nodded. “You know me well, John Ryan.”

  “Did you use a video camcorder or a tape recorder?”

  “A camcorder, of course.”

  Ryan held out his hand. “Let me have the disk with the video file on it.”

  “I can’t just give it to you. Noel Chancy would know in a instant that I am your source.”

  “Is the confession on the Garda server?”

  “Yes.”

  Ryan smiled, took out a business card, wrote on it, and pushed it toward Fitzmaurice. “Take the DVD to a city branch library where no one knows you, use one of the computers, and send it to the Web address on the back of the card.”

  Fitzmaurice picked up the card and waved it at Ryan. “This is all well and good, but how does one explain the sudden appearance of a Garda interrogation video on the World Wide Web?”

  “Are the Garda computers harder to crack than the Pentagon’s? A sixteen-year-old-boy in Norway ran riot in the U.S. military computers earlier this year, and from what the newspaper’s technology reporter tells me, the U.S. government still doesn’t know how deep the boy penetrated. So I should think we have more than adequate cover and deniability. In this particular instance I would imagine that some college student viewed the video while probing the Garda computers during a cyber visit, decided it was a worthy and interesting example of his technical wizardry, and put it on the Web for all to see.”

  “Hackers often get caught.”

  Ryan nodded. “Many do, but not all. I’ve made use of a few of them in the past with excellent results. Are you game?”

  “You’ll start with Paquette?”

  “Of course. She’s the entrée to the story. If the video shows what you say it does, my exposé in the Sunday edition will be picked up by every television newsreader in Europe and North America within the day.”