‘So why did you agree to see me?’ Pagan asked.
‘Your ID made me curious,’ Dawson said. ‘But if you’ve come here to question me, I think you’re going to be very frustrated.’
‘I’m not the one who’s going to be frustrated,’ Pagan said. He moved to the window and looked out beyond the trees at the surrounding hills. It was a view he found depressing and somehow fascinating in a melancholic way. He rapped his fingertips on the pane of glass. ‘I don’t give a damn one way or another about IRA money or the misguided people who collect the stuff. I’m only interested in Jig, who is either going to come here looking for you, or else is on his way to a place called Roscommon to see Harry Cairney. I’m guessing here, but I may be completely wrong. If he does come here, I want to be somewhere nearby. I don’t want your buffoons out there getting him first.’
‘Hold on, Pagan. You’re losing me. I don’t know anything about the IRA. I don’t know who Jig is. The only connection I have with Ireland is that I’m third-generation American–Irish. That and the fact I’ve visited the place a couple of times. Nothing more.’
Pagan smiled. Dawson’s deadpan expression wasn’t very successful. The man was palpably uneasy. If he was in control of himself, it was only with a great effort. There was sweat on his upper lip.
‘Regardless of what you say, Jig’s going to get here sooner or later. He wants his money back, and he’s not going to be in the most pleasant frame of mind by this time,’ Pagan said.
Kevin Dawson made a small gesture with one hand, a flutter. ‘I don’t know anything about any money.’
‘That’s what you say. But Jig isn’t going to believe that one.’ Pagan glanced through the window again. This whole side of the house was exposed to the hills. And something about those hills kept drawing him. The shaded pockets in the landscape, the sunlight. They had a certain mysterious quality, similar to the landscape of the English Lake District which Pagan had always found brooding and hostile. A landscape for poets and manic depressives.
But it wasn’t just those qualities that made him keep looking up there. He was thinking about something else. He placed an index-finger on the glass and drew a tiny circle, which he peered through as if it were the sight of a gun.
‘Good view,’ he said.
‘Some people think it’s too severe,’ Dawson remarked.
Dawson moved to the mantelpiece and adjusted a photograph. Pagan saw that it was of two girls, presumably Dawson’s daughters. Dawson turned around, faced Pagan. ‘This Jig,’ he said, then paused a moment. ‘Do you have any hard evidence he’s in this vicinity? Or is it only guesswork?’
‘Nicholas Linney wouldn’t think it was guesswork,’ Pagan said.
‘Who?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Pagan glanced back up into the hills. Sunlight turned to deep shadow in the high hollows. Dawson was a very poor liar. He didn’t have the flair for it. Therefore he had no future in politics, Pagan thought. ‘How did you get into it in the first place?’
‘Into what?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. How did you get into the patriot game?’
‘When did I stop beating my wife?’ Dawson said. ‘It’s that kind of a question.’
Pagan felt a small flare of anger. People like Dawson played at being Irish. They bought their way into it from the safety of their big houses in America. They sent money as if they were investing in offshore developments. Well, their houses just weren’t so safe any more. ‘Do you have any idea of the sheer human misery your money can buy in Ireland? Do you know what explosive devices can do to a person? Have you ever seen the victim of a machine-gun? Or did you just get caught up in the romance of it all?’ And Pagan made the word ‘romance’ sound obscene. ‘If people like you didn’t send money there in the first place, maybe there wouldn’t be weapons, and maybe we’d be moving in the direction of some kind of peace. Who knows?’
‘There are always going to be weapons,’ Dawson said.
Pagan shrugged. ‘Here’s the funny consequence of it all, Dawson. If you run into Jig, you’ll be looking directly down the barrel of a gun that you probably paid for yourself. How does that thought grab you?’
‘Is your lecture over?’ Dawson asked.
‘It’s over,’ Pagan replied. Ease off, he told himself. You’re here looking for Jig, not to moralise on terror in Ireland. He felt a cord of tension at the side of his head. There was stress in him, and fatigue, and he felt like a traveller who wasn’t sure he’d come to the right place anyway. No, he couldn’t afford to go off at tangents like that. He’d come too far and he had the feeling, that astonishing lightbulb of intuition, that he was on the right track.
‘I’m sorry if I can’t help you,’ Dawson said. ‘Maybe you’ll have better luck at the other place you mentioned.’
‘You mean Roscommon?’ Pagan asked.
‘I believe that’s what you said. Roscommon.’
‘Where Harry Cairney lives. But you don’t know that name either, do you?’
Dawson shook his head. ‘I know it in a political context. That’s all.’
‘And I suppose Jock Mulhaney means nothing to you?’
‘He’s some kind of union figure,’ Dawson said.
‘You might say that.’
Dawson stepped towards the door. He pulled it open, looked at Pagan with a smile that was almost all desperation. He couldn’t be honest, couldn’t admit his connections. Denials were vouchers for limited amounts, valid for limited durations. And no matter how hard Dawson denied his involvement, it wasn’t going to make a damn bit of difference to Jig. If Jig came here and somehow sneaked past Mannie and Moe outside, if he got into the house and confronted Dawson, he wasn’t going to be even remotely convinced by Dawson’s squeaky claims of innocence.
‘Good luck, Pagan,’ Kevin Dawson said.
‘I wish you the same, only more of it.’
Pagan stepped out into the hallway where the two bodyguards were waiting for him. Behind him, the door of the room closed, and Kevin Dawson was gone.
‘We’ll see you out,’ Marco said.
‘No need.’ Pagan headed to the door. Chuckie and Marco tailed him anyhow.
Outside in the thin light Pagan studied the view of the hills again. They seemed to him the most interesting aspect of his visit to this place.
From the place where he lay concealed in the hills, Patrick Cairney stared down at the house below. He saw Frank Pagan walk to his car.
Frank Pagan. Always Frank Pagan. Always one step behind him. He wondered where Pagan’s information came from. Maybe Mulhaney had talked. Maybe Mulhaney had told Pagan the same thing as he’d told Cairney. Kevin Dawson took the money. Dawson is the one.
Ten minutes ago he’d seen Pagan arrive. There had been a confrontation with the two men who guarded the house, then Pagan had gone indoors. Had he come to warn Kevin Dawson about Jig? Was that it?
Now he saw Pagan get inside the car, then drive along the narrow road. Cairney followed him with the binoculars until he was out of sight. He swung the glasses back towards the house and tried to concentrate on how he was going to get inside. He had to get past the two guards. How, though? And how long was it until nightfall now? His body was cold, and he felt cramped. He lowered the binoculars and looked along the ridge, his eye sweeping the wintry trees and the dead grass that swayed limply in the wind. He couldn’t concentrate. His mind kept slipping away from him and the wind made him shiver.
There were spectral images. His father trapped under an oxygen tent like something immersed in ectoplasm. He couldn’t shake this one loose. Harry Cairney, close to the end of his life, propped up inside an oxygen tent with tubes attached like tendrils to his body. There was a terrifying sadness inside Patrick Cairney, and a sense of loss – it came from the thought that he might never see Harry again. It didn’t matter whether he loved his father or not. It didn’t matter whether he even respected the man. Like any son facing the imminent death of his father, he felt he w
as about to lose some essential part of himself.
One of the men below stood against the hood of the car and smoked a cigarette. The other wandered round the side of the house, then returned. They stood together, both now leaning against the car, and they presented an impenetrable obstacle between Cairney and the house. Cairney rubbed his eyes. He focused on the house, the two men, but still the landscape wouldn’t yield up an easy way to get inside that place down there.
Think. Think hard. The money might be inside that house and you’re lying up here wondering about your father and your thoughts won’t make a damn bit of difference whether he lives or dies.
His truant attention strayed again, and he was thinking about Roscommon once more, seeing Celestine sit by the sick bed of his father. Maybe she spoke softly to the old man. Maybe she was reading to him. Or perhaps she just sat there watching him motionlessly, her hands in her lap and her lovely face expressionless and her hair pulled back so that she looked gaunt and distressed and prepared for the ultimate grief.
Cairney focused on the men below. His head pounded now, and his hands, when he lowered the binoculars, shook visibly. He sat back against the side of the hollow, wondering at the responses of his own body. It was as if strange blood flowed in his veins and the heart that pumped so loudly in his chest were not his own. He was seized with the feeling that he shouldn’t be here in this place at all, that he should never have been sent from Ireland unless it was to kill a specific target, a certain individual. Unless it was to do the very thing he did best, better than anyone else.
Why didn’t you send somebody else, Finn? Was your precious Jig the only candidate?
He crawled to the lip of the hollow. From where he stood he could see almost the whole length of the hills. Slopes swooped down into shadows where the sun didn’t go. These shadowy places, like sudden pools of unexpected water, troubled him. He wasn’t quite sure why.
And then, because he understood how to read landscapes, how to tell human movement from the motion of the wind, how to feel when a landscape had been subtly altered, he knew.
New York City
At ten minutes past two, the Reverend Ivor McInnes entered the office of a car rental company on East 38th Street. He spoke to the clerk at the desk, a young man with red hair arranged around his skull like a corona. McInnes reserved a 1986 Continental because he liked the idea of travelling in some comfort. He looked at the desk-clock as the clerk filled out the various papers. He was glad it was one of those digital affairs. He didn’t think he could tolerate the idea of watching the agonising movements of a second hand. It was twenty past two by the time the young man completed the copious paperwork. McInnes said he’d pick the car up around six. He had to return to his hotel first and pack.
He left the agency at approximately two-thirty. He thought of Seamus Houlihan and the others as he stepped out on the street. They’d be taking up their positions by this time.
He walked slowly along the street, looking now and then in the windows of stores. He felt the way he had done before White Plains, except it was heightened somehow.
In about twenty minutes, if the information he had received was correct – and he had absolutely no reason to doubt it, because of its reliable source – the vehicle would be making a turn into the isolated stretch of road where Houlihan and his men were waiting.
Twenty minutes.
Twenty long minutes.
McInnes reached the intersection of Thirty-Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. He looked in the window of a jewellery store. Rings, necklaces, bracelets. It would take his mind off it all if he went inside and lost himself in browsing through the glittering array. Nineteen minutes. He wandered between the glass cases, tracked by a sales clerk who insisted on pointing out the merits of this or that stone.
McInnes stopped in front of an emerald ring. He asked the clerk to bring it out and show it to him. The clerk said it was an excellent piece and any woman would be delirious to have it. Ivor McInnes held the stone up to the light. Its greenness was stunning and deep. McInnes closed his hand over the ring. The stone felt very cool against his skin.
‘I’ll have it,’ he said. Eighteen minutes.
‘Excellent choice,’ the clerk said. ‘Cash or credit card?’
‘Cash.’
The clerk, who was a small man with eyes that themselves resembled gems, smiled. ‘Is it a gift, sir? Shall I gift-wrap it?’
‘Why don’t you,’ McInnes said. As he watched the clerk cut gift-paper with long scissors, he stared across the floor to where there was a clock display. All kinds of timepieces hung on the wall, every last one of them showing a different time. The effect was of stepping outside the real world and into one where the passage of seconds and minutes and hours couldn’t be measured with any semblance of accuracy. McInnes had to look away. Real time was important to him now.
Seventeen minutes.
He tried not to think about time. He tried to put it out of his mind. But it kept returning to him and his nervousness increased. Sixteen minutes.
Sixteen minutes and it would all be over. And by tomorrow, if everything went as planned, he’d be out of the country entirely.
New Rockford, Connecticut
John Waddell crouched in the shrubbery. He held an M-16 against his side. He glanced out across the clearing at the place where Rorke and McGrath were concealed, but he couldn’t see them. He felt Houlihan tap him lightly on the shoulder and he turned. The big man was offering him something, and it took Waddell a moment to realise it was a stick of chewing gum. Waddell shook his head.
‘Helps you relax,’ Houlihan said.
Waddell looked through the barren trees. He had the odd feeling that he wasn’t here, that some other entity had been substituted for him and that the real John Waddell was back in Belfast, strolling across Donegal Square and wondering where he’d stop for a pint of Smithy’s. But Houlihan nudged him, and the illusion disintegrated.
‘Are you all right, Waddy?’ the big man asked.
‘Fine,’ John Waddell said.
‘Gun loaded?’
Waddell nodded. He looked down at the M-16 in his hands.
Seamus Houlihan, who also held an M-16, tapped his fingers against the stock. This drumming increased Waddell’s anxiety. He looked up at the sky. Clouds drifted in the region of the sun.
Houlihan looked at his wristwatch. ‘Two forty,’ he said. ‘Ten minutes.’
Waddell tightened his grip on his gun. What he hoped for was that something unexpected might happen and that the exercise would have to be postponed. A freak storm, for example. Or the appearance of other people. But this was such a damned lonely place he couldn’t imagine anybody coming here by choice. And what kind of vehicle could it possibly be that made a stop here anyhow? He tried to slacken his grip on the gun but his fingers remained tight and stiff.
Houlihan made a sniffing sound. He wiped the back of his sleeve over the tip of his nose and cleared his throat. Waddell thought for a moment that he detected a certain jumpiness in Seamus, but he decided he was wrong. The big man never showed any unease at times like this. He was always cool. Always in control. Chewing gum, looking composed – Jesus, Seamus might be contemplating a stroll on a Sunday afternoon. Waddell felt a branch brush his face, and he was startled.
‘You’re a twitchy wee fucker,’ Houlihan said.
‘I’m okay,’ Waddell replied.
‘Look, there’s nothing to be nervous about. Point the bloody gun when I tell you, and fire. That’s all. Nothing to it.’
Ten minutes, Houlihan had said.
Waddell wondered how long ten minutes could be. He glanced at Seamus, then he looked through the trees. ‘I wish to God we were out of here,’ he said. ‘Out of this whole bloody country.’
‘Soon.’ Houlihan removed his chewing-gum and flicked it away.
‘How soon?’
Seamus Houlihan, keeper of secrets, didn’t answer. He checked his gun, traced a finger along the barrel. What did it take to
be that relaxed? Waddell wondered. What kind of ice-water ran in Seamus’s veins?
‘Five more minutes,’ Houlihan said.
Eternity. Waddell wanted to urinate. He concentrated on his weapon, wishing it was lighter, less of a burden. The weight of the thing made it all the more menacing.
‘Four,’ Houlihan said.
By Jesus, he was going to count the bloody minutes down! Waddell tried not to listen. Houlihan could keep his countdown to himself. Waddell preferred to hear nothing.
‘Three.’
Waddell saw McGrath’s face briefly across the clearing. Then it was gone. Momentarily a cloud masked the sun.
Two.
In the distance there was the sound of a vehicle.
‘It’s early,’ Houlihan said, swinging his weapon into a firing position. ‘Get ready.’
The sound grew. Waddell held his gun at his side and waited. The vehicle seemed to strain, gears clanking and grinding, as it came closer. Waddell stared beyond the clearing but he couldn’t see the vehicle yet because there was a bend in the road. As the motor laboured and whined, the noise grew. Waddell gripped his gun tightly.
‘Ready,’ Houlihan said.
Waddell shook his head. No, he thought.
No.
‘Ready,’ Houlihan said again.
Waddell – baffled by the sense of unreality he suddenly felt, almost as if time and motion had ceased to exist and the whole world had frozen in its flight-path and he was the only person left alive – stared at the vehicle as it appeared in front of him. It was a big yellow schoolbus, and it was coming to a dead stop in the clearing, and the faces pressed to the windows were those of children, and they were smiling even as Houlihan stood up in the shrubbery and levelled his weapon at them.
Frank Pagan drove two miles from the house of Kevin Dawson, then turned the Oldsmobile off the road and down a dirt track that led between the wooded hills. When the car would go no further, when the track had become too narrow and rutted and overgrown with weeds, he got out, taking his gun from the glove compartment. It had been a long time since he’d climbed any hills and he wasn’t sure his physical condition was terrific, but he was going up anyway. He went between the trees, straining over fallen logs and mounds of wet, dead leaves that had been buried under snow since fall. Here and there patches of old snow, hard as clay, still clung to the ground.
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