Jig

by Campbell Armstrong

  Finn believed in selective assassination. He had a list of intended victims, which was composed mainly of British politicians who were against the prospect of a united Ireland. The list also included several Northern Irish diehards, those iron-skulled morons, like Ivor McInnes, who swore on their own lives that the Union Jack would always fly over Belfast, that Ulster would always belong to the Queen. If you systematically assassinated enough of these jackasses, sooner or later the cost in blood was going to prove too expensive to the English. They’d be happy to leave Ulster, which was something they should have done years ago if they’d had any decency – which they clearly did not have.

  Finn turned away from the mirror. He had a sense of things slipping away from him. Without control of the purse, how could he control the extremists? But now the purse was gone, and the thought brought a bitter taste into his mouth. Liam O’Reilly was dead. So was the Courier. Finn closed his eyes and observed a quiet moment of mourning for old comrades, both members of the Association.

  He went down the stairs. In his small office, a spartan room with a desk and a chair and bare white walls, he picked up the telephone. He began to dial a number but stopped halfway through and set the phone back. What was he going to say? What was he going to tell the Saint? He stood at the window, stroking his jaw. What in God’s name was he supposed to say? The Saint didn’t believe in credit. He was always in a hurry to deliver his goods and get paid.

  Finn picked up the telephone a second time. He dialled nervously. It was a number in the port city of Rostock in East Germany. It rang only once before it was picked up. Finn spoke his name.

  The voice at the other end was guttural New York City. ‘I got tired waiting, Finn.’

  Finn said nothing a moment. The connection was poor. ‘There’s been a problem. A cash problem.’

  ‘Maybe for you, Finn. I ain’t got problems.’

  Finn saw a blackbird fly past his window. Pack up all my cares and woe, he thought. ‘Listen to me. I need some time.’

  ‘Time’s run out, fella. You know how much it costs when you got a Greek boat to rent? When you got an Arab crew that sits round on its duff all day and they still gotta get paid? Then you add the fact I got harbour personnel to grease here. You know how much that runs, Finn?’

  Finn’s throat was dry. ‘I need a week. Maybe more than a week.’

  ‘Tough titty,’ the guy said. ‘I’m trying to tell ya, Finn. You’re shit outta luck, man.’

  ‘What do you mean? What do you mean I’m out of luck?’

  ‘I got tired waiting. I already sold the cargo, Finn.’

  ‘You did what?’ Finn shouted. ‘You did what?’

  ‘Guy came up with a good offer. I said sure thing. What the hell. I wanna sit round in Rostock for the rest of my life, Finn? Wait for you?’

  ‘This is a joke,’ Finn said. His voice was very low, even. A nerve had begun to work at the side of his head.

  ‘No joke. I don’t joke about my cargo –’

  ‘You sold it! How could you do such a thing like that, in the name of Jesus!’

  ‘Hey, it ain’t like you and me had a written contract, pal. You wanna sue? Be my guest.’

  Finn shut his eyes tightly. First the money. Now a whole boatload of arms and explosives. The very air he breathed seemed poisoned with treacheries.

  ‘You’re trying to tell me a buyer just came along? Out of the bloody blue?’

  ‘Right,’ the Saint said. ‘I’m a businessman, Finn. This is a business. I gotta sell. I gotta eat.’

  ‘Who was this buyer?’

  ‘I can’t answer a dumb question like that.’

  ‘Who was he?’ Finn trembled with rage.

  ‘Hey, Finn. I don’t ask questions. Guy paid, I delivered. Simple and clean. Now I just wanna get my ass outta this town, which I intend to do in the next few hours. This ain’t exactly a day at the beach, Finn. You ever been in Rostock?’

  ‘I’d like to know the name of this person.’

  There was a crackling sound over the line. The Saint said, ‘Listen, Finn. I keep confidences. Understand? The guy who took delivery of the cargo, he was a South American. A Venezuelan or something. He waved cold cash and I took it. That’s all I’m saying.’

  Finn said, ‘I’ll go elsewhere. I’ll find another supplier! Damn you –’

  The line was already dead. Finn slammed down the receiver. He sat, dismayed, spreading his arms on his desk and laying his face against them.

  The shipment was gone.

  He raised his face. A bloody Venezuelan! A bloody Venezuelan had purchased the whole boatload of arms and high-tech explosives, for Christ’s sake! Probably to waste them in some fucking futile border skirmish that didn’t matter a damn in the scheme of things. An arms shipment like that took months to put together. If Jig recovered the missing money, Finn thought he could set up another deal, but not through the Saint, who, like most of his mercenary kind, didn’t have much in the way of honour and loyalty. But it would take time to make another deal, and Finn wasn’t very patient. God in heaven, he’d lived all his life with his dream of a free Ireland, from the time he was a small boy in Bantry and all through his years of service with the IRA, when he’d done everything a man could do. He’d planted bombs in England. He’d robbed mail trains. During the Second World War he’d gone into Northern Ireland to sabotage a British troop ship that was carrying soldiers to fight in Europe. A lot of blood had been spilled in pursuit of the dream. A lot of fine men had died.

  But without weapons and explosives, you might as well hang a CLOSED sign on your door. If Jig didn’t recover the money, it was back to homemade hand grenades and other dubious devices that were absolutely undependable. Which meant he couldn’t keep up the pressure on the English to get out of Ulster. If Finn was truly afraid of anything, it was the idea of dying before he saw his dream come true.

  He turned his thoughts to Jig.

  There was a lot riding on that young man’s shoulders. Jig had never let him down in the past, no matter how difficult or complicated the task. But this was something altogether different. Apart from Tumulty, Jig would have no support in America. There was no network in place to assist him if he needed help over there. And there was no network for the simple reason that Finn had never imagined the need for Jig to operate in the USA. Scoundrels, he thought. All of them, from the Fundraisers to the Saint, a scurvy blackhearted bunch.

  It was more than the lack of a network, though, that troubled Finn now. And it was more than the treachery of men. It was the fact that Jig, who had been highly trained to kill men, was going into a situation where his particular form of expertise wasn’t going to be of any damned use to him. He wasn’t going to be called upon to plant explosive devices or track some potential victim through the scope of a sniper’s rifle. He was being asked to do something in which he had utterly no experience. He was being asked to investigate a crime. To solve a specific problem. To sleuth.

  Finn had a strange lurching sensation around his heart. You’re sending an assassin into a situation that calls for a detective’s talents. In the name of God, Finn, what have you done? Have you asked the impossible of that boy? Have you packed him off to be devoured by bloody Yankee vultures?

  But there was nobody else to send. There was no other man Finn could trust. It was really that simple. He could have enlisted some young hothead who would have gone blundering into America, but what good would that have done? If anybody could get that money back, it was Jig. From the very start of their association Finn had seen a dark streak in the boy, an unrelenting determination in his heart. He was the stuff of an assassin. He had nerves of marble and a hawk’s fastidious eye for detail. He had required careful shaping, of course. He had needed the rough edges smoothed away. Some of his political notions had been naive and idealistic back when the young man had first been brought to Finn’s attention. Finn remembered now how Jig had hung around the fringes of political action groups in Dublin, acquiring a certain notoriety f
or his habit of espousing extremism and advocating grand gestures – such as the bombing of Buckingham Palace or the Houses of Parliament. For security reasons, Finn never attended such meetings himself. They were too easily infiltrated by plainclothes Garda and other enemies of the Cause, but the old man had a network of people who brought him reports – who was saying what, the kinds of schemes being plotted, anything that might intrigue Finn. In enthusiasms and energy, in the stark apocalyptic suggestions he carelessly made, Jig had put Finn in mind of his own younger self – the raw boy from Bantry who wanted to change the world with one grand stroke. Ah, the innocence of it all! The sheer unfettered naïvety! But the possibilities inherent in the young man – these were the things that had interested Finn most.

  His first private meeting with the boy took place in an isolated bird sanctuary at Booterstown on Dublin Bay where, surrounded by squalls of gulls and anxiously watchful wading birds, Finn had talked of the need for patience and careful judgment when it came to the problem of getting the British out. He had deliberately circled his real purpose in interviewing the young man, which was his own need for a person who could become the kind of assassin required by the Association of the Wolfe. Was this boy the one? Or was his impulsive streak unharnessable? These were the early days of the Association and Finn, disgusted by the outbreak of IRA bombings and killings on the British mainland, spoke of the importance of selective assassination. There, at Booterstown, knocked by a harsh wind and the cuffs of his pants caked with soft mud, Finn made his distinction between an ordinary IRA gunman, a hothead, and the kind of dedicated assassin the Cause really needed.

  The young man had listened, his mind seemingly elsewhere, his eyes distant and unresponsive. Each of Finn’s questions had been answered in short, unrevealing sentences. The boy’s background, his interests – these were dismissed, as if they had absolutely no relevance and Finn was impertinent to ask so many questions. Finn had the feeling that the young man thought his time was being unforgivably wasted. Dragged out in the first light of dawn to some bloody bird sanctuary and for what? So that a nosy old man could pose silly questions?

  What’s the point of all this? the boy had asked.

  Finn, a little irritated by the young man’s abrasive edge, had answered this question with one of his own. Why do you hate the English so much?

  Does it matter? Jig asked.

  Finn had watched a flock of seagulls rise up and go screaming towards the sea, which was barely visible in the muffled fog of the early morning. Answer my question, he’d said.

  The young man had replied tersely, almost as if he were editing his own material in his head. He had been in the North about two years ago, he said, and in Belfast, that ruined city, he had come across the bagged bodies of two infant children on the sidewalk outside a house that had been ravaged by British soldiers because they suspected the place was filled with arms. Armoured cars and tanks and soldiers milled around in confusion. It transpired that the two children had been alone in the house when the British assault took place. But what Jig remembered most were the two bundles on the sidewalk and the way blood soaked through the material of the bags and the sounds of old women sobbing, like the sombre women of Greek tragedies, in the doorways of the street.

  Finn had thought there was something unconvincing about this story. He didn’t doubt that it was true, but atrocities were alas commonplace in Belfast. Everybody and his uncle had at least one horror story to tell. By itself, it wasn’t enough to produce the kind of venom that was present in Jig whenever he spoke of the English. Was the young man simply trying to say that he was a humanitarian outraged by the casual and utterly useless deaths of small children? Finn didn’t buy that. It was too easy, facile. He had the strong feeling that Jig, for whatever reasons, was going through his memory on a highly selective basis. That something was being left out of the narrative. He flirted briefly with the notion that perhaps Jig was one of those psychopathic types that were unfortunately drawn to the Cause because it offered a justification for their violent tendencies, but he dismissed this because there was a certain authenticity in the way the boy had delivered his story. Just the same, Finn still felt dissatisfied. If he was going to find a use for this young man, he needed to be absolutely certain of him.

  It’s not enough, boy, Finn said.

  What more do you want? Jig asked.

  Hatred doesn’t spring from one isolated incident.

  Doesn’t it?

  Finn shook his head. There’s got to be more.

  The young man had smiled then, which was something he apparently didn’t do very often. His normal expression was one of grimness, an unrelaxed look that suggested a life of forever being tense. Wary, maybe that was the word Finn had wanted. It was a good quality in a killer. An assassin had to have an edge. But Finn needed more than what this young man had told him before he could recruit him.

  Do you want a history lesson, Finn? Is that it? Do you want me to tell you how the British presence in this country sickens me?

  You can’t tell me anything about bloody history, boy.

  I didn’t think so.

  Together, they had walked silently through the sanctuary, scaring birds out of the rushes and puddles and mudbanks. When they paused beneath some trees, Finn asked, Do you know your way around a gun?

  Jig said he did.

  Finn paused for a second. We’ll talk again, was what he had finally said, drifting under the trees and away from the boy, who watched sullenly.

  When Finn had gone several yards the young man had called out. I’m tired of talk. Is that all anybody ever does in this country?

  Finn had smiled to himself but hadn’t looked back.

  Now, staring at the telephone on his desk, Finn felt despair. All the work, all the planning – and the Saint turns around and sells to the first fucking buyer that comes along with a stuffed wallet!

  Dear God. He needed to get out of this house for a time. He wanted the sharp morning air on his face and the sea breezes blowing at him and the chance to get his thoughts straight. Maybe he’d go into Dublin. He always had a relaxing time there. Maybe he’d go and see Molly, who had a flat in the suburb of Palmerstown. Molly had ways of unwinding him and God! he needed that now.

  He dressed himself slowly in his best suit, a three-piece black worsted with squared shoulders. It was an old-fashioned suit and it looked peculiarly Irish. He dabbed his underarms with deodorant. Then he piled his long hair up on top of his head and covered it with an old black felt hat. He put on a pair of sunglasses. Without these small precautions, his long hair would have drawn attention, and he believed in a low profile when he had to go out in public. He didn’t want to look eccentric on the streets, not even in these times when there were punk rockers on Grafton Street with their hair dyed pink and safety pins hanging from their nostrils.

  He picked up the telephone and called a number. It was that of the man who usually sat armed out in the gatehouse and who lived nearby.

  ‘George,’ Finn said. ‘Will you bring the car around now?’

  George said, ‘Certainly. Where are we headed?’

  Finn hesitated a second. ‘Into town. I think a trip into town would be very nice.’

  He stepped out of the house and walked down the driveway towards the gatehouse. The March morning was unusually sunny and the only clouds in the sky lay somewhere out in the middle of the Irish Sea – drifting, he hoped, over to England. He sat inside the gatehouse for five minutes, then he saw the old Daimler approach. He hoped America would be kind to Jig. If Jig couldn’t get that money back … Finn didn’t want to think the worst.

  The tyres of the Daimler crunched on gravel. Finn opened the rear door, climbed inside.

  ‘Palmerstown,’ Finn said.

  The driver nodded. He had driven the Old Man to Palmerstown many times before.

  Dublin

  ‘No good-byes,’ Patrick Cairney told the girl.

  ‘I want to drive you to the airport. What’s wrong w
ith that?’

  ‘I hate airports. I hate farewells. I get a lump in my throat. My eyes water. I fall to pieces.’

  Rhiannon Canavan was dressed in her nurse’s uniform, over which she wore a green coat with the sleeves dangling empty. Cairney thought she looked particularly lovely.

  ‘Didn’t I slip away from the hospital just so I could take you to the airport?’

  ‘I’ll call you from the States,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, sure you will.’

  ‘Why do you doubt that?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe there’s something just a wee bit thrust-and-run about you, Cairney. I don’t see you calling me at all.’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  ‘I’ll drop you off. I won’t even come with you inside the blasted place!’

  Cairney relented. ‘Promise?’

  ‘I give you my word.’

  Cairney reached out to touch her face.

  ‘Will you come back to me when your father’s better?’

  ‘Or worse.’

  Rhiannon put a fingertip against his mouth. ‘Don’t say that. I’m sure he’s going to be just fine.’

  Cairney looked at the sky from the window. There was somewhere a weak suggestion of the sun that had been in the heavens earlier but that now lay behind a clutch of miserly clouds. He took Rhiannon Canavan in his arms and held her tightly.

  She said, ‘Some people make complete recoveries from mild heart attacks, you know. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times.’

  Cairney didn’t speak.

  There was a dryness at the back of his throat. He played with the idea that it would be perfect to stay right here where he was. Just him and this lovely girl in this small apartment. Their own uninterrupted love nest. Silence and exhaustion and the sweetness of flesh. They could lie here and make love and die of malnutrition.

  ‘I’ve never been in America,’ the girl said. ‘Sure, I have millions of aunts and uncles and cousins I’ve never seen. I think most of them live in Union City, New Jersey. Is it pretty there?’