Frank Pagan was silent. If he were in Jig’s shoes, would he have believed the narrative? Probably not. Probably he’d have reacted in precisely the same way, with incredulity. In Jig’s profession, the only counsel you ever listened to was your own.
Pagan turned and looked down at the stretch of road which lay between the hills and Kevin Dawson’s estate. In the distance there was the sound of a car. He narrowed his eyes and looked off in the direction of the noise. He saw a car come into view at a place where the road ran between the folds of hills.
‘Give me the glasses a moment,’ he said.
Jig, slipping one of the guns inside the waistband of his pants, passed the binoculars to him. Pagan held them up to his eyes and saw the car approach the entrance to the Dawson estate where it was stopped, just as Pagan himself had been, by the Secret Servicemen. Pagan tightened his grip on the glasses. He saw two men get out of the car. One was Tyson Bruno. The other Artie Zuboric. Pagan thrust the binoculars back at Jig, who held them to his face and studied the scene below.
‘Surprise, surprise,’ Pagan said.
‘The tall one is a friend of yours,’ Jig said.
‘Zuboric. You saw him at St. Finbar’s Mission. The other is an FBI agent called Tyson Bruno.’
Jig lowered the glasses. He looked at Frank Pagan. His face was unrevealing. Pagan was suddenly aware of how close Jig stood to him. How very near the weapons were. One frantic grab, he thought. He rejected the idea immediately. One frantic grab was likely to be his last.
He said, ‘The only reason I can think of for that pair to come here is that somehow they know you’re in the vicinity. Which means we can expect even more men turning up pretty damn soon. Now do you see? There’s no way into that house. What makes it worse from your point of view is that they apparently know you’re around. So what happens when more men arrive and suddenly these hills are swarming with people who all want a piece of you? What happens when it’s open season on Jig?’
Jig said nothing. He sat down and frowned. Pagan was puzzled by the sudden appearance of Zuboric and Bruno. Did they really know Jig was in the vicinity? Or had they come here expecting to find only Frank Pagan? How could they have known that Pagan was here, though? Unless Dawson had made a phone call to somebody in authority, but the timetable was all wrong. If Dawson had called the FBI, there hadn’t been time for Zuboric and his sidekick to get here from New York City. Mysteries.
‘Even if I believed your story,’ Jig said, ‘what difference would it make? Even if everything you said is true, do you think it would make me roll over like some lame dog and let you take me back home for my own protection?’
‘You might find things a little different at home,’ Pagan said. ‘Especially now.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning simply that you might find yourself out in the cold with your own people. After all, you blew up a church and a whole bunch of innocent people along with it. You might find a change in the tide. Some people will go along with a hero only so far. They tend to dislike it when they find their hero is capable of the same scummy acts as any ordinary thug, no matter what side he happens to be on.’
‘You can’t goad me, Pagan.’
‘I wasn’t aware of trying.’
‘I had nothing to do with that church.’
‘I know that. But what does my opinion count for? People died in that explosion. Innocent kids as well as adults. People who had nothing on their minds except the usual Sunday rapport with God.’
Jig looked through the binoculars at the house. Pagan thought of a man calculating the movements of his own future, weighing this possibility against that one, trying to decide on a course of action.
‘It doesn’t matter a shit if I happen to believe you, Jig. The FBI has other ideas. Soon the public will have those ideas as well. And the public is notoriously fickle, my friend. You’re a hero one day, the next you stink. The great Jig is reduced to killing harmless people. The bold Irish assassin turns common gangster. It’s going to make nice reading. How does that make you feel?’
Pagan wondered what Jig’s reputation meant to the man. Did the newspaper articles and the songs sung in Irish bars and the reverence afforded Jig mean anything to him? Was his ego such that he couldn’t allow his reputation to be eroded by the actions of other people?
Pagan waited for his words to sink into Jig’s brain.
‘What do you really want, Pagan?’
‘Two things.’
‘What two things?’
‘First, I’d like to know who’s going round committing these acts you’re being blamed for. And I keep coming back to good old Ivor. It was courtesy of the Free Ulster Volunteers that I found out you were in America in the first place. And it’s a fair bet that Ivor was instrumental in making sure I received that bit of information. If he knew that much, maybe he knows why Fitzjohn was killed and why somebody bombed the church.’ Pagan paused. He had one more dart to shoot in Jig’s direction. ‘Maybe he even knows something about that lost property of yours.’
Jig passed his gun from one hand to the other. If this last remark of Pagan’s swayed him any, he certainly didn’t show it. ‘That’s a lot of ifs, Pagan.’
‘I agree. But what else is there?’
‘You think you can make him talk?’
‘Between us, I suspect we could get something out of him.’
‘Between us? You’re actually asking for my help?’
Pagan shrugged. ‘Don’t you want to know who’s been taking your name in vain? Don’t you want to know if McInnes has any information about your money?’
Jig affected to ignore this question. ‘What’s the second thing?’
‘You know what that is.’
‘Me,’ Jig said.
‘Correct.’
Jig stared off into the trees. ‘You’ve got to understand one thing, Pagan. I’ll never let you take me. No matter what.’
Pagan nodded. ‘You’re the man with the weapons. I make it a cardinal rule never to argue with guns.’
Jig looked back down the slopes towards the road. Pagan tried to imagine the inner workings of the man. Obviously Jig suspected a trap. But at the same time perhaps he was beginning to realise the hopelessness of getting access to Kevin Dawson. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t know the meaning of hopelessness, maybe he had such a supreme belief in his own capabilities that he didn’t think in terms of insuperable obstacles. But it didn’t work that way, not in the real world. Not when you were faced with determined people who wanted nothing but your death.
‘If I understand you, Pagan, you’re calling a truce,’ Jig said.
‘In a way.’
‘I don’t like truces. Especially when I have all the advantages.’
‘Take your pick.’ Pagan gestured towards the house.
Jig turned his face from the anxious wind that came fretting once again down the slopes.
‘Go down there,’ Pagan said. ‘See if you can get an interview with Kevin Dawson. Try it. I wish you all the luck in the world.’
Jig stared at Frank Pagan. ‘Do you really think it matters to me if I get the blame for things I didn’t do? Do you think I care about anything so bloody shallow as my reputation? If some group of IRA idiots has gone free-lance, that’s not my problem. Whatever blame attaches to my name is irrelevant in the long run. Personalities don’t enter into this.’
The old terrorist cant, Pagan thought, with some disappointment. The usual humbug of the fanatic. History is more important than people. Movements outweigh personalities. Pawns in the larger game. Etcetera and amen. He had expected something more out of Jig, although he wasn’t sure what exactly. In his experience of terrorists, they were mainly men and women who approached life without humour. They were emotional fuck-ups. And even when they experienced human feelings that weren’t related to their particular cause, they didn’t know what to do with them. Maybe Jig came into that category.
He said, ‘I misjudged you, then. I thought
you’d see it as your problem, Jig.’
‘We don’t have matching objectives, Pagan. And we don’t come from the same perspective.’
Pagan sat down. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But what if the people who attacked the church are going to kill again? What if they already have? What if it’s something even more monstrous than the church this time? Whatever it is, Jig, it’s going to be attributed to you as surely as if you’d left your fucking fingerprints at the scene. And when Jig gets tainted by these actions, how does it reflect on the things he’s supposed to stand for? How does it rub off on his Cause? The plain fact is, Jig, somebody’s out there making a fucking asshole out of you and every bloody thing you stand for.’ Pagan was quiet for a time. ‘Okay. Go down there to Dawson’s house. Be a martyr. Isn’t that what the Cause expects of you anyhow? Doesn’t the Cause expect all its good soldiers to die totally fucking senseless deaths?’
Jig wandered to the edge of the hollow. For a second Pagan thought he was about to step down the slopes and between the trees and, as if it were a personal act of defiance, like a unicyclist setting out on a frayed wire, go immediately in the direction of the house. But then he stopped and stood motionless. Pagan wondered what was going on in his mind now. Had anything Pagan said made a dent? Was he going to agree to the truce? It was a desperate kind of proposal, Pagan realised. But he had no other cards to play. It was reasonable to assume that Jig wouldn’t be happy with any activities that sullied his precious Cause, but would he go as far as Pagan wanted him to? If he did, and if they went after Ivor the Terrible together – and the idea of nailing Ivor appealed greatly to Pagan, with or without Jig’s help – it would at least have the advantage of keeping Jig within Pagan’s reach. It wasn’t much, but it was something as far as Frank Pagan was concerned. And down the line somewhere he’d have to make his play, he’d have to get the weapons away from Jig. If an opportunity occurred it was going to be a small one and he’d have to be alert and act faster than he’d ever acted in his life. Jig wasn’t going to doze off, that was certain.
From somewhere down the road, like the cry of a wounded animal, there was a noise that echoed through the hills. Jig tilted his head, listening.
Frank Pagan stood up.
The noise was growing shriller, more urgent. Pagan looked off into the distance, where he saw red and blue flashing lights creating a small extravaganza against the backdrop of the dour hills.
‘Looks like more reinforcements,’ Pagan said, wondering about all this activity. ‘I suppose we can expect the cavalry next.’
There was a very thin smile on Jig’s face, but the eyes were deadly serious. He continued to look at Pagan and the look was one of scrutiny, uncertainty, like that of a man testing the ground beneath him for the presence of a mine.
He said, ‘The air around here is unhealthy.’
Pagan agreed. ‘And getting worse.’
‘Remember what I said, Pagan. You don’t take me. Under any circumstances.’
‘I’ve got that.’
‘Don’t let it slip your mind. You’re dead if you do.’
‘I like living,’ Pagan said.
Jig looked one last time back down at the estate. Then he sighed and asked, ‘You really think Ivor McInnes knows, do you?’
‘I’d bet on it.’
Jig was silent a second. Then, ‘What hotel is he staying at?’
Artie Zuboric didn’t like the Secret Service because he thought its agents had an overblown concept of their own importance. They guarded Presidents and visiting heads of state, admittedly, but Zuboric thought they had it easy when you got right down to it. He stood outside Kevin Dawson’s house in the company of Tyson Bruno and felt frustrated because the two SS characters who’d greeted him had told him in a rather airy fashion to keep himself occupied in the grounds. There was more than a little condescension in their manner. This was their little world, and they didn’t like intruders because they could look after Dawson damn well by themselves, and besides, they considered the FBI screw-ups in general.
Zuboric stood with his hands on his hips and gazed at the house. The two SS characters stood some distance away, smoking cigarettes and looking extremely proprietorial. They hadn’t even allowed Zuboric inside the house, and so far there hadn’t been any sign of Kevin Dawson.
Zuboric turned and examined the hills. Tyson Bruno cleared his throat and said, ‘I keep thinking about that fucker. The way he decked me. I should never have let that happen.’
Zuboric shook his head. He hadn’t thought of anything except Frank Pagan during the drive up here. He looked at Tyson Bruno and said, ‘Enjoy the countryside.’
‘I hate the fucking countryside,’ Bruno answered.
Zuboric looked back at the house. He felt he should have been invited inside and introduced to Dawson, which was what his position merited. Instead, he was being left out in the cold. All because the SS guys protected Kevin Dawson with the zealous tenacity of insecure lovers. ‘Let’s walk,’ he said. ‘Take a look around.’
They walked between the trees as far as the narrow road. Dawson’s estate was about eighty acres, most of it meadow but wooded here and there. It seemed to Zuboric that it was secure, given the vigilance of the Secret Service fatheads, which prompted the question of why he’d been sent up here in the first place. He felt like an underused extra in a movie, a body, something superfluous.
Tyson Bruno lit a cigarette. ‘I’d rather be back in the centre of things,’ he said. ‘Do you think this is Magoo’s way of punishing us?’
Zuboric didn’t answer. He was looking at the house. Smoke rolled down the roof, blown out of the chimney by a gust of wind. So far as pastoral prettiness was concerned, this whole area wasn’t exactly in the blue ribbon class. It was too forlorn, too uninviting. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his coat. He was thinking of Pagan again, and he’d resolved not to because it created a knot of sheer anger in the middle of his brain.
He tried to relax but Pagan came again, returning to his thoughts like a ghost you couldn’t exorcise. He would have liked to see Pagan one more time, just one more time, and give the man a dose of some very bad medicine. He’d never trusted Pagan from the beginning, never warmed to the guy, and now he was filled with a churning need for revenge that might have to go unsatisfied unless he happened to run into the limey again. After all, hadn’t Korn practically given the green light to the final solution of the Pagan problem?
‘Magoo thinks we screwed up, so he’s giving us a little taste of exile. Call it a warning,’ Bruno said.
Zuboric frowned. So far as he was concerned the assignment wasn’t such a bad one and certainly couldn’t be construed as a severe knuckle-rapping. After all, Kevin Dawson was the President’s brother, and Magoo wouldn’t take that fact lightly. On the other hand, the Director’s inscrutability was legend. You didn’t make it to the top if you were an easy guy to figure. Zuboric gazed up into the hills, then looked back at Tyson Bruno, who appeared quite uncomfortable.
‘Spooky landscape,’ Bruno said. ‘What makes a guy want to live way out here anyhow?’
Zuboric shrugged. ‘Privacy, I guess.’
Tyson Bruno made a snorting sound of derision. It was clear he didn’t think much of privacy. He tightened his drab plaid scarf at his neck and narrowed his eyes as he looked across Dawson’s estate. In Zuboric’s mind, Tyson Bruno was a perfect example of the old school, a graduate of the J. Edgar Hoover Academy for numbskulls. He was dependable up to a point, but not very inventive. Until Frank Pagan had come along, he’d been a rather reliable watchdog. Frank fucking Pagan. Ireland, fucking Ireland. He found himself wishing that the whole goddam island would sink under a tidal wave, drowning Frank Pagan with it and all the problems he’d laid, like so much crap, on Zuboric’s doorstep. Problems Artie most certainly didn’t need. He had a whole shitload of his own. Charity had started talking about some rich physician who was paying a lot of attention to her lately. How could Zuboric compete with that?
Zuboric walked between the trees. At his side, Tyson Bruno was scanning the landscape, his head swivelling on the thick stalk of his neck. He reminded Zuboric of a bullfrog in certain ways.
‘I could use a nip of gin,’ Bruno said. ‘This damn cold is getting to me.’
Zuboric stopped quite suddenly. In the distance he’d heard something, a sound that never failed to raise the level of his adrenalin. It was the shrill siren of a police car, and it was growing louder, sending scared birds whining out of branches. Zuboric turned his face towards the road. He could see flashing lights, two small points a couple of miles down the road.
He leaned against the trunk of a tree and watched. The cop car was still blasting its siren as it swung into the driveway and went towards the house, where the two SS agents were already taking up a defensive position behind their car, weapons drawn. The police vehicle came to a halt, the siren died. It was all very quick. Two uniformed cops jumped out of the car. The SS men, trusting nobody, especially callers in uniform – who could easily have been fakes – emerged with their guns ready.
‘What the fuck,’ Bruno said.
Zuboric, who knew the signs of trouble when he saw them, started to walk back towards the house. The cops and the agents, having apparently arrived at an understanding, had gone inside the house already. Even before Zuboric had reached the house, Kevin Dawson was hurrying out, the agents flapping behind him. All three got into the Secret Service car, which whipped past Zuboric at top speed and tore down the driveway, spewing dirt as it travelled.
Puzzled, Zuboric looked at the two uniformed cops. He flashed his ID and asked what was going on. The two state policemen appeared flustered and uncertain.
The older of the pair studied Zuboric’s ID a second. His hand trembled.
‘I can’t really describe it,’ was what he said, and his voice, like his hand, shook.
Patrick Cairney shaded his eyes against the harsh afternoon sun that burned against the windshield of the Dodge Colt. He glanced at Pagan, who was behind the wheel, then looked down at the gun in his lap. As he did so, he remembered something Finn had once said about how the Cause would one day wither because it lacked nobility. And it lacked nobility because it had no heroes any more. I’ll make my own bloody hero out of Jig, Finn said. My own bloody hero. What would Finn think of him now that he’d entered into this pact with Pagan? Would he call it an error of judgment, damned from the very beginning?
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