‘Take Bruno with you,’ Korn answered. ‘Presumably he needs a break from the city as much as you.’
Zuboric moved towards the door. He saw a flurry of white-shirted agents in the corridor. From somewhere came the clacking of a printer. Phones were ringing in offices. One Irish killer had created all this bedlam. One man. Zuboric turned, looked back once at Leonard Korn, then stepped out into the corridor. The countryside was suddenly very appealing to him.
‘Remember, Zuboric. Keep your profile so low your chin is scraping the ground. Understand?’
‘Understood,’ Zuboric said.
Leonard M. Korn watched the agent leave. When the door closed, The Director removed his jacket and hung it neatly over the back of the chair. He rolled his sleeves up, turning each cuff exactly four times. He looked at the blank TV, a small portable, which he’d had placed in the corner of the room. The White House was going to issue an official statement some time today. Not Thomas Dawson himself, but one of his faceless spokesmen. The subject would be the presence in America of the IRA terrorist known as Jig and the bombing of the church in White Plains. It would mention how the Federal Bureau of Investigation was presently pursuing every available lead. There might even be a confident hint that the capture of Jig was imminent.
The prospect of all this publicity satisfied Leonard M. Korn. But he gained even more satisfaction from the fact that Thomas Dawson had capitulated, that all the needless secrecy was at an end. There was still something else that made Korn feel very good about himself – Thomas Dawson had telephoned him not more than an hour ago with the request to supply, as quietly as possible, a little extra protection for brother Kevin. Korn, even as he wondered why Kevin might need extra muscle, had asked no questions. He knew The President had reasons of his own for not drawing on the Secret Service pool, and he suspected that they had to do with his nervousness about this whole Irish situation, but he wasn’t going to examine them. Later, if he thought it necessary, a little exploratory surgery into the life of brother Kevin might be useful. It would do no harm to know why Kevin needed added protection. But for the moment he’d agreed gladly, almost obsequiously, to the request, understanding that some kind of trade-off had been made with The President.
Thomas Dawson had given Korn his man-hunt.
And he’d quietly given Tommy Dawson, in the process of tit for tat, favour for favour, two FBI agents. It was called backscratching and it was how Washington worked. A handshake, a tacit agreement, a little discretion. And voilà! You had a system that functioned. Besides, it was always a pleasure to oblige the person in The White House, even if all you were doing was supplying two agents, both of whom were tired and hungry and no longer needed at the heart of things.
Roscommon, New York
Celestine Cairney picked up the telephone on the second ring. She was seated at the kitchen table, a phone book open in front of her and a cigarette burning down inside an ashtray. When she heard Patrick Cairney’s voice, she picked up the cigarette and tilted her chair back at the wall and held the receiver in a hand that had become moist.
‘You sound like you’re miles away.’ It was the first thing that came into her mind.
‘New York City isn’t so far,’ he answered.
She stared up at the ceiling where a wintry fly, black and glossy, circled the unlit fluorescent lightstrip. She tried to picture Patrick now, his surroundings, what he was wearing. But no images came to her.
‘You called yesterday, didn’t you? But you just hung up.’
Cairney said he hadn’t. There was a voice behind him, background noise, a man shouting something about eggs over easy. So he was in a restaurant, a café, somewhere. She shut her eyes tightly and sucked cigarette smoke deep inside her chest, then tried to relax as she exhaled, stretching her legs, letting one arm hang limply from her side. But there was turmoil within.
‘I wanted to talk to my father,’ Cairney said.
Celestine said nothing for a long time. That wasn’t why he’d really called. She wasn’t convinced by him. He’d called because he needed to hear her voice as much as she needed to hear his. She wanted to say this, but she didn’t. She wanted to say I want you, Patrick. Before it becomes impossible.
‘Are you still there?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it my father?’
Celestine made a pattern with the telephone cord, pressing it against her thigh, pushing it deep into the soft flesh in an absent-minded fashion. She felt a catch in her throat, like a small air-pocket, a vacuum lodged there. She opened her eyes and looked round the stainless-steel kitchen. Her heart beat was loud in the hollow of her chest.
In a very deliberate voice she heard herself say, ‘He had an attack last night.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘Tully said so. I had to call him in.’
‘How bad is serious?’
‘Bad enough. Tully says one of the lungs is completely collapsed and the other isn’t doing too well.’
‘He ought to be in a hospital.’
‘Tully doesn’t want him moved yet,’ Celestine said. She looked through the open kitchen doorway into the hall. The silences of the big house seemed ominous to her just then, shadows and still places and huge empty rooms. It was like a child’s idea of a haunted house, phantoms on stairways, apparitions in windows.
She said, ‘If he gets stronger, he can be moved. But not before.’ She raised her hand, slipped it beneath her blouse, pressed the palm flat against her stomach and made small circular strokes.
‘If he gets stronger?’ Cairney asked.
‘Patrick, this is touch and go. This is a bad situation. He can hardly breathe. Tully has him inside a portable oxygen tent.’
‘Is Tully still there? I’d like to talk to him.’
‘He left an hour ago.’
‘Is he coming back?’
‘He said later.’ She was quiet. She raised her legs, propped her feet up on the table so that her skirt slid back. She wore no underwear. She imagined Patrick Cairney touching her between the legs.
‘Can you come home?’ she asked.
Cairney sighed. ‘Maybe tomorrow. I’m not sure yet.’
‘It would mean a great deal to Harry if he could see you.’
‘I know.’
‘Your own father has to be more important than some goddam gathering of academics.’ She raised her voice. She hadn’t intended to. But she had to show him that she was unhappy and frayed and couldn’t handle this situation on her own.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said.
‘Of course you will.’
The voice of the operator came on the line, asking in a faintly metallic way for Cairney to insert more money. But then the line was dead and Cairney was gone. Celestine replaced the receiver, stood up, wandered round the kitchen. She paused by the window which had a view of the woodlands behind the house.
Then she stared down at the open telephone book on the table. All morning long she’d been calling different educational institutions, colleges and universities throughout the state. She’d even contacted a group that called itself The Archaeological Society of New York. One polite voice after another had told her what she needed to know.
There was no symposium anywhere at the time. Not in New York City, not in the suburbs, not in any of the large or small cities of the state, not even in any of the obscure colleges that proliferated in rural areas. There was no such thing as the event Patrick Cairney claimed to be attending. If she’d had doubts about him before, she had absolutely none now.
She lit another cigarette.
She stepped out of the kitchen and stood in the hallway, looking up the staircase, which ascended by stages into gloom. She felt extremely tense as she gazed upward. He would come home. Because he felt guilty about what had happened, because he wanted to see her again, and because of his father. Yes, he’d come back. He had good reasons. An
d what would she do then?
Only what she had to. There was no choice.
She put her foot on the first step. A small web of smoke drifted away from her lips. She raised her face when she heard a sound from the top of the stairs. Harry stood up there in his bathrobe, his bare flesh the colour of paper.
She smiled up at him. He was whistling quietly to himself. His white hair was wet from the shower, and the smell of his aftershave was strong enough to reach her at the foot of the stairs.
‘By God, I can smell spring this morning,’ he said. He’d been morose for most of last night, distant and preoccupied in a place where she couldn’t reach. But now, even if he was forcing it slightly, he seemed cheerful.
‘It’s in the air,’ she replied.
‘My stomach’s rumbling. There’s nothing quite like spring to stoke an old man’s appetite.’
She watched him descend. He seemed almost sprightly today. There was a slight lift to his step. When he was halfway down he spread his arms and rolled his eyes and in a fake Irish baritone sang, ‘I shall tell her all my love, all my soul’s adoration. And I think she will hear me and not say me nay.’
Celestine clapped and said it was a good impersonation of an Irish barroom singer. Harry put his arms around her and hugged her strongly as he finished his song.
‘It is this that gives my soul all its joyous elation. As I hear the sweet lark sing in the clear air of day.’
22
New Rockford, Connecticut
Frank Pagan drove through the business district of New Rockford, noticing banks and insurance offices and real estate brokers as well as the usual fastfood franchises with signs that created an ungodly jumble along the road. The sign that welcomed you said New Rockford had a population of some 57,540 souls.
Beyond the business district were suburbs of frame houses. Here and there a flagpole protruded from a house or stood unadorned in the middle of a lawn. There was a sense of neatness and quiet patriotism here, an orderly world well-preserved. But then appearances changed, and the grids of the streets yielded to pockmarked dead ends, alleys, abandoned warehouses, weeds, after which woodland stretched away for mile after mile.
Pagan parked the Cutlass outside an industrial park and studied the streetmap he’d bought in the town. He made a circle with a ballpoint pen, folded the map, drove the car on to the thruway and continued until he came to Leaf Road, which was the exit he wanted. It began promisingly enough, then dwindled to a one-vehicle thoroughfare with a barbed-wire fence running along one side. Beyond, punctuated by the occasional meadow, were tree-covered hills, which seemed to gather all the available sunlight and squander it, so that the prevalent impression was of shadows and dank places. It wasn’t an encouraging landscape.
When a house came in view, Pagan slowed the car. It was a large, ungainly house, set some way from the road at the end of a driveway. It was overlooked by a series of small hills. There was no number anywhere, no name. If this was the wrong house, then he would simply ask directions and leave.
He turned the car into the driveway.
Before he had gone twenty feet a man wearing a dark suit and black glasses emerged from a clump of shrubbery and waved him to stop. Pagan braked. He had an uncomfortable moment when it crossed his mind that the man might be associated with the FBI – but then he realised he was being paranoid. Zuboric couldn’t have traced him here. How could he?
Pagan rolled his window down and smiled. He was about to ask if somebody called Dawson lived here when he saw a gun in the man’s hand. A very large gun, trained directly on Pagan’s forehead.
The man, who was built like a weightlifter, reached for the car door and opened it and Pagan got out with absolutely no reluctance at all. A second figure, somewhat taller than the first but with exactly the same kind of shades, appeared at Pagan’s side. Pagan was expertly frisked, then pushed face first against the side of the Olds. Whoever they were, these characters had done a certain amount of frisking in their time. Pagan wondered how long it might take him to reach his own gun, if the situation called for it. His pistol was in the glove compartment and too far away. It was a maxim of his that a gun was only useful in direct proportion to its proximity. And his was presently redundant.
‘Get his ID,’ the taller man said.
The other, waving the gun near Pagan’s face, plunged his hand inside Pagan’s jacket and took out his wallet.
The taller man reached for the wallet and flipped it open. ‘He’s a long way from home,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ the other man said. ‘You ever seen ID like this before, Marco?’
Marco stepped so close Pagan could smell his aftershave. ‘Never did,’ he said.
‘Me neither.’ The wallet was flipped shut. ‘We got absolutely no way of knowing if it’s authentic.’
‘I came to see Dawson,’ Pagan said.
Marco laughed. ‘They all say that, don’t they, Chuckie?’
‘Mr. Dawson doesn’t just see people who wander in off the street, fella,’ Chuckie said.
‘Unhappily, I didn’t have time to make an appointment.’
‘Call the cops,’ Marco said.
‘Before you call anybody, you better tell Dawson I’m here, because he’s going to be damned unhappy with you if he doesn’t get to hear what I have to say.’
Marco came closer. He pushed his knee into the back of Pagan’s leg, pressing deep into the crook. Pagan was obliged to bend under the pressure. He loathed being shoved around, and if it had been Marco alone he might have taken a swing.
‘I don’t have the time nor the inclination for this kind of intimacy, Marco.’ Pagan spoke in his best accent, trying hard to sound the way Foxie did. He wasn’t very good with upper-class accents and he wouldn’t have convinced anyone in the gentlemen’s clubs along Pall Mall or Piccadilly, but neither Chuckie nor Marco could tell he was faking it. It was a strange thing about Americans. They had a kind of self-imposed sense of inferiority, possibly some old colonial hangover, that put them in awe of Oxford tones, as if the accent of a BBC newscaster were the way God talked. Pagan had noticed this phenomenon before. It worked now, at least to the extent of Marco removing the pressure from Pagan’s leg.
‘Buddy, you and a thousand other guys come here wanting to see Mister Dawson,’ Chuckie said. ‘Your fancy ID isn’t going to cut it here, bozo.’
Pagan turned around and faced the pair. ‘Look. Take my ID card. Show it to him. Tell him it has to do with certain Irish funds. Do that for me.’
‘Irish funds?’
‘You heard me.’
Marco reached out and took Pagan’s ID. He flexed the powder-blue plastic card between thumb and forefinger, as if he meant to snap it in half. Then he glanced at Chuckie, who shrugged. It was a bad moment for Pagan. If either of these characters took the trouble to run his name through a computer, and if he was already imprisoned in the complicated circuitry of the FBI’s electronic brain, then he was in deep trouble. The only thing to do was to be insistent with Marco and Chuckie. And authoritative, if he could summon the dignity for a decent performance.
‘If Dawson doesn’t want to see me, I’ll be happy to let you turn me over to any cops you like,’ he said. He sounded as if he had a plum in his throat. ‘But I know he’ll want to talk to me. It’s up to you.’
Marco hummed. He looked at Chuckie again. The black glasses glinted, four sombre discs.
‘I’ll take your card inside, fella,’ he said. ‘But Chuckie here is going to keep his gun pointed right at your brain, understand?’
Pagan nodded. Marco, who obviously didn’t want Pagan to think he was a softie just because he’d consented to something, performed his knee trick again, only this time he pressed so hard that Pagan had to go down on all fours.
‘Understand?’ Marco asked.
‘I understand,’ Pagan replied. He felt like a barnyard animal pawing earth.
‘If he moves shoot him, Chuckie.’
Chuckie said he’d be glad to. Pa
gan rose slowly, watching Marco go off in the direction of the house, which was very still, silent, the windows reflecting the glacial sun. He moved his feet in an uneasy manner. Marco could at this very moment be running his name across the telephone wires and into the ear of a computer operator. That would be the end of this solo performance, Pagan thought. He brushed little streaks of mud from his overcoat and waited.
Marco appeared in the doorway of the house. He waved an arm. Chuckie, who still had his gun trained on Pagan, jerked his head.
‘Move,’ Chuckie said.
Pagan moved. Chuckie walked behind him. When they reached the house Marco said, ‘He’ll see you.’
Pagan smiled. Marco ushered him inside and across the hallway with a great show of reluctance. Outside a closed door Marco paused and slipped off his black glasses and stared at Pagan with eyes that were almost the same colour as the lenses.
‘We’ll be right here, Pagan,’ he said. ‘Right on this spot.’
‘Of course,’ Pagan said.
‘Go in.’
Pagan pushed the door open and stepped inside a large sitting-room which was furnished in a fussy Victorian way, heavy furniture and belljars, and which was scented with violets. Children’s toys and books were scattered on the floor, as if there had been small untidy intruders in the museum. A blind was drawn halfway down on a window, tinting the room a faint yellow. The man who stood by the fireplace cleared his throat and looked at Pagan unsmilingly. Kevin Dawson was taller than his photographs suggested. He held Pagan’s ID card in one hand.
‘Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t know anything about any Irish funds,’ Dawson said.
The defence of ignorance. Kevin Dawson talked like a man conscious of a hidden tape-recorder, somebody who wanted to leave an exonerating cassette for posterity. He understood Dawson’s attitude – after all, the brother of the President of the United States couldn’t confess to a complete stranger that he had any involvement with the finances of the IRA. There were laws against the unreported export of huge sums of cash. And Kevin Dawson couldn’t be seen to break the law.
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