‘No,’ Jig said, and his voice was hollow.
McInnes said, ‘I know where these killers are. Their leader is somebody called Houlihan. There are four in this group, so far as I know. They travel in a rented Ryder truck. And they’re presently staying at a place called The River View Motel near Hastings.’ McInnes paused. He could see that Jig was absorbing this information quietly, but Frank Pagan – ah, always the sceptic – was looking incredulous, a big frown distorting his features.
McInnes thought a moment about Houlihan and the others. It was perfect. If there was a confrontation in the course of which Houlihan and his pals were killed, it would be splendid. What did it matter if they were later discovered, after fingerprints were run through computers, to be Free Ulster Volunteers and not IRA? He’d simply say he was mistaken, if Pagan asked. He’d simply say he’d received the wrong information and had passed it along in good faith, that he’d believed the men in The River View Motel were IRA. Pagan couldn’t prove otherwise. He could interrogate until doomsday, but he couldn’t prove a damn thing. There was just no way. And, since Houlihan had dumped the guns and the remote-control devices that triggered the explosives, there was absolutely nothing to tie some dead FUV men into the barbarism in New Rockford or the bombing in White Plains. All anybody would ever know was that four men from Ulster, their purpose in America mysterious, had been killed in a motel in Hastings, New York.
The weakness in this scheme was the possibility of Pagan taking prisoners – the slight chance that Houlihan or one of the others might talk. But it was such an unlikely possibility that McInnes dismissed it. For one thing, Houlihan and the others would never talk. Houlihan’s strange moral code precluded betrayal, no matter the circumstances. He’d never give anything away. He was a miser when it came to revealing information. He’d never say anything about his reason for being in the U.S.A. Even if he wanted to talk, was he likely to admit that he’d gunned a schoolbus and bombed a church?
But it would never come to that, because McInnes knew Houlihan well enough to guess that Seamus, even though he’d dumped the incriminating automatic weapons, wasn’t going to discard his beloved handgun quite so promptly – he’d never go anywhere without his pistol. Which was fine. The handgun had played no part in the attack on the schoolbus. And if the pistol was all he had, Seamus would gladly go into battle. He’d never turn his back on a good fight, especially if he still had his precious handgun. And Seamus would never be captured because he’d rather blow out his own brains than go back to jail again. Anyhow, if the expression on Jig’s face meant anything, the possibility of prisoners being taken was remote, a courtesy that Jig in his present mood wouldn’t entertain. The young man had a desperate killing look. He was ready to do violence. He was ready to kill. The battle was inevitable and, to McInnes’s way of thinking, a neat solution to his problems with Seamus Houlihan and the FUV. But it would be the last one. After this, he thought, there would be no more violence.
Jig picked up the telephone. McInnes watched him. The hand that held the receiver was tense, skin drawn, knuckles bleached. McInnes heard the young man ask for a phone number in Ireland.
After about thirty seconds Jig hung up.
‘No answer?’ McInnes asked. He thought Dead men don’t answer telephones.
Jig appeared not to have heard the question. He once more picked up the telephone and asked for the number of the River View Motel.
McInnes smiled. ‘You don’t think Houlihan registered under his own name, do you?’
Jig said, ‘It’s easy to find out if a party of men arrived in a Ryder truck.’ His voice was clipped, shorn of intonation, like that of a deaf person who has never learned the nuances of speech.
McInnes stretched out one hand. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘You’ll find out I’ve been telling the truth.’
Frank Pagan stared at Jig. ‘You can’t be giving serious consideration to any of this shit,’ he said in dismay.
Jig said nothing. He dialled the number.
McInnes smiled at Pagan, who had the look of a man chewing on fragments of an electric lightbulb, a trick he’d never master no matter how long and hard he worked at it.
New Rockford, Connecticut
Artie Zuboric had very little experience of handling grief, his own or anyone else’s. Now, as he stood in the living room of Kevin Dawson’s house in the company of Tyson Bruno and the two Secret Servicemen, he was conscious of a tide of grief flowing throughout this large house.
Upstairs, in a darkened bedroom, Kevin Dawson was standing at the bedside of his sedated wife, Martha, holding her hand and muttering something unintelligible over and over. Earlier, Zuboric had looked inside the bedroom through the open door, but his awareness of pain was too much for him.
In the hallway outside the living room people came and went. Physicians. Family members. Employees in one or other of the Dawson industries. There was word that Thomas Dawson himself was on his way here. Zuboric went over to the fireplace and looked at the framed photographs of the two Dawson girls on the mantelpiece, but he couldn’t bring himself to look for long. He stepped out into the hallway and stood at the foot of the stairs. Tyson Bruno came out to join him.
Neither man spoke for a very long time. Grief, Zuboric noticed, imposed silences, made you speak only when you had to and then in hushed whispers. Grief was like sitting in the reading-room of a large library. He glanced up the long staircase a moment. He was anxious to be out of this place, out in the cold night air, but instructions had come directly from Korn that he was to stay where he was until The Director himself had arrived. Already, the site of the attack was being combed thoroughly by a dozen FBI agents and a score of State cops, all feverishly working under floodlights. Forensic experts were going over the bus in punctilious detail. But what could that tell them except what they already knew – that twelve children out of a total of eighteen on the wretched bus had been murdered, including the daughters of Kevin and Martha Dawson?
‘It’s a fucking nightmare,’ Tyson Bruno said.
Zuboric wandered to the front door of the house. He pushed it open. It was a nightmare all right, and it made him horribly impatient. Somewhere in the darkness was the man responsible for it all. Somewhere there was Jig. Zuboric wondered what kind of man was capable of an act like the massacre of school-kids. He knew terrorists courted indecency with a passion. He knew they understood no limits. But this. This was something else.
Tyson Bruno came and stood beside him. ‘I’m thinking,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m thinking Korn’s going to be a very angry man, Artie. He sends us up here to keep an eye on Dawson, and what happens?’ Bruno made a sweeping gesture with one plump hand.
‘He can hardly blame us for this,’ Zuboric answered. ‘Christ, we weren’t responsible for looking after that school bus. That wasn’t our brief, Ty.’
‘Tell that to Korn,’ Bruno said. ‘He’s going to be looking for heads to roll. And we’re the most convenient ones.’
Zuboric drew a fingertip through his moustache. He felt most uneasy. It was more than the grief that eddied through this house. It was more than the wall-to-wall misery of this place. There was an element of truth in what Tyson Bruno said. The Director, who took every dent in the FBI armour personally. It didn’t matter in the long run that guarding a school bus hadn’t even been mentioned. The Director had one of those selective memories that could reach back and revise any conversation. The Director could say that he’d told Zuboric to protect the bus. Zuboric wouldn’t put that kind of thing beyond the man. The Bureau was everything. People didn’t matter. They were nothing more than fuses that burned out and could be replaced.
Zuboric stepped out of the house. He scanned the bleak darkness and the cars parked outside. ‘It’s the wrong time to start thinking about our own skins,’ he said.
‘It’s never the wrong time for that,’ Tyson Bruno replied.
Zuboric made an impatient gesture with his hand. That was something else about grief. It preclude
d all other matters and feelings, regardless of their importance. You went into a state of suspended animation. Everything was put on hold. You couldn’t act. Couldn’t think.
A sound by the living room door made him turn around. He saw the two Secret Servicemen coming out of the room. They moved almost in unison, like a married couple who have become attuned to one another’s vibrations over the years. They carried with them a scent of cologne, somewhat stale, as if it had been trapped in their suits for a very long time. Without their dark glasses, their faces looked strange and blank, a pair of unfinished masks.
The one called Marco stepped outside the house and lit a cigarette. Zuboric had to move aside to let him pass. The other, Chuckie, remained just inside the door, drawing the night air deeply into his lungs.
‘It’s a hell of a thing,’ Marco said.
There was a muted murmur of agreement among the four men.
Then silence. Marco pulled on his cigarette and said, ‘They were the prettiest kids. Given the fact they were Dawsons and got a lot of attention, they were damned nice. Jesus.’ He dropped his cigarette and crushed it with unrestrained energy. ‘I’d like to get the guy that did this.’
Zuboric looked away. There was a half moon over the hills.
Marco said, ‘It’s sickening. That’s what it is. It’s like somebody kicked me in the gut. I can’t get over the feeling.’ He blinked out at the sky. ‘Some motherfucker comes here and shoots up a bus. I keep thinking, what the fuck has Ireland got to do with those two kids, huh? What did they know from Ireland, for fuck’s sake? And not just those two. A whole gang of kids.’
Chuckie blew his nose into a big white handkerchief. Zuboric thought the moon was the saddest he’d ever seen.
‘Poor Jack Martyns,’ Chuckie said, referring to his dead Secret Service colleague. ‘He thought he had it easy. Went to school every day. Came home at three every afternoon. What a schedule. Nothing to do but look after a couple of kids.’
Marco furrowed his brow and sighed. ‘Jack was a good man.’
Zuboric now caught another scent on the air. It was that of cognac, and it came over strongly on Chuckie’s breath. This pair had been drinking on the sly. That’s why they were suddenly loose and communicative and open.
Marco smoked a second cigarette. Two people came down the stairs and went silently out in the direction of their car. Zuboric recognised the woman as Kevin Dawson’s younger sister, Elaine, who was always in the newspapers because of her celebrated boy-friends. He didn’t recognise the guy who went with her, though. Tinted glasses, silver hair, prosperous. He looked just like all of Elaine’s other boy-friends.
Zuboric watched the beige Rolls Royce slide softly down the driveway. Marco was still puffing furiously on his cigarette and Chuckie was studying the center of his large handkerchief. They put Zuboric in mind of two uncles at the funeral of nieces they’d never known very well. They had been drinking to accelerate their feelings and open their pores up in general.
Marco said, ‘Yeah, it’s a kick in the gut okay.’
Chuckie agreed. He folded his handkerchief. ‘I was wondering about that guy who came this afternoon.’
Marco made a loose little gesture with his shoulders. ‘What about him?’
‘Well, it was kinda coincidental,’ Chuckie said. ‘He comes here, talks to Kevin Dawson. Next thing we know, the bus is attacked. Who the hell was he? I mean, what the hell did he want anyhow?’
‘Okay, I’m with you,’ Marco said in the unfocused way of a man who has drunk one small glass too many. ‘The Englishman.’
‘Englishman?’ Zuboric asked. He had a strange feeling, almost as if a hat-pin had been pushed into his heart. ‘What Englishman?’
Both Chuckie and Marco surveyed Zuboric coolly. They appeared to have forgotten his existence and now, forcibly reminded of it, weren’t altogether pleased by the fact.
Marco stubbed his half-smoked cigarette underfoot. ‘Okay. An English guy comes here. Shows us some fancy ID. Wants to see Mr. Dawson on urgent business. Mr. Dawson says it’s fine. They talk in private for a while. Then the limey leaves.’
‘What Englishman?’ Zuboric asked.
‘The name was Pagan,’ Chuckie said.
‘Pagan?’ Zuboric asked. ‘Frank Pagan?’
‘Friend of yours?’ Chuckie asked.
‘What did he talk about with Dawson?’
‘Don’t know,’ Chuckie said. ‘It was behind closed doors. Seemed like it was urgent, though.’
Zuboric looked at Tyson Bruno. Then he studied the flight of stairs that led up to the other rooms of the house.
Bruno shook his head. ‘I don’t think you should, Artie. Bad timing.’
Zuboric barely listened to his colleague. He was already moving quickly towards the stairs, wondering how he could approach Kevin Dawson, how he could get to a man who was totally lost in grief, how he could find out what Frank Pagan had been doing here only a few hours ago and whether there was any kind of information on the face of the whole planet that might redeem him in the thunderous eyes of Leonard M. Korn.
Grief or no grief, it was worth a shot.
New York City
Ivor McInnes stood in the lobby of the Essex House and dialled the telehone number of the River View Motel in Hastings-on-the-Hudson.
A man’s surly voice came on the line. ‘River View.’
‘Connect me with Mr. Houlihan please.’
“Momento.”
McInnes waited. When he heard Houlihan’s harsh accent he said, ‘This is the last call I’ll make until we meet in Canada, Seamus. I have to be absolutely sure you’ve followed all my instructions to the letter.’
‘Don’t I always follow your bloody instructions?’ Houlihan asked.
‘Not always.’ McInnes saw a lovely girl in a knee-length fur coat wander down the lobby. He watched the loose motion of her body under the folds of the coat. He imagined the bareness of her back and the way her spine would fall in diminishing ridges to her buttocks. She smiled at him in an absent fashion. He was reminded of another smile, another face.
‘This is important, Seamus,’ he said.
Houlihan sighed but said nothing.
‘You’ve dumped everything I told you to dump?’
‘We got rid of the remote control devices yesterday. Nobody’s ever going to find them. Nobody’s ever going to pin that church on us.’
‘I’m talking about the guns, Seamus.’
Houlihan paused before answering. ‘They’re gone,’ he said.
‘Every gun?’
‘Every last one.’
‘Are you absolutely positive?’
‘Is there a point to this conversation?’ Houlihan asked.
‘Did you toss your handgun as well?’
‘I did. With great regret.’
McInnes caught it then. The lie in the big man’s voice. Seamus still had his pistol. Therefore he’d fight. ‘You’re clean then.’
‘As a fucking penny-whistle.’
‘There’s absolutely nothing left that can connect you with any of your recent activities?’
‘Not a damn thing,’ Houlihan said.
McInnes was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘You did a wonderful job, Seamus. See you in Canada.’
He hung up, smiling. The girl had gone now. The lobby was empty. McInnes felt a deep glow of anticipation. He had almost reached the end of it all now. Only the final pieces remained to be put in place.
In the rear seat of the helicopter Thomas Dawson sat huddled inside his overcoat. Below, there was one of those staggering views of Manhattan, all lights, like a huge cathedral of electricity. He closed his eyes and sat with his head tipped back. He wasn’t looking forward to an encounter with his brother’s anguish. He patted his gloved hands against his knees and sighed and gazed out of the window again as the chopper banked abruptly, swinging away from the canyons of the city.
There had been a great deal of sorrow in the Dawson family history. His older brother Jose
ph, to take one example, had shot himself through the head with a revolver at the age of twenty-three because he’d been depressed over some affair of the heart that hadn’t worked out. And his youngest sister, Sarah, had died in a sanatorium from an overdose of heroin. But there had never been anything quite like this, the deaths of two small children in the most violent way imaginable. Sarah and Joseph had been neurotic, highly strung, the kind of people who perceived every slight in the most magnified fashion and perhaps their self-inflicted deaths were not so terribly surprising.
But the two girls –
Dear Christ, they’d been nothing but innocent children! What had they ever done to deserve such deaths? Dawson, not unnaturally, searched his mind for somebody he might blame for this tragedy. It was easy to say that he might have done more personally, could have been more persistent in forcing Kevin to take his family out of the country. He might also have acted more decisively in dealing with the presence of Jig. By the same token, the FBI could have been more vigilant, worked a little harder at bringing Jig to justice. When you started down the blame trail, it was hard to stop. Kevin himself – for God’s sake, he should have seen the danger in his involvement with the Irish. Now, if he understood that at all, it was just too damned late. Goddammit. You could lay blame all over the place with thick brushstrokes, but nothing would ever restore those two small girls to life.
Thomas Dawson took out a cigarette and lit it. He exhaled the smoke slowly in the direction of his fellow passenger, Leonard M. Korn, who’d come aboard in Manhattan.
‘We could have done more,’ Dawson said. He couldn’t keep a certain quiver out of his voice. ‘God, we should have done more.’
Korn said nothing. He nodded his shaven head. He wasn’t a man who felt the kind of pity most human beings do, but in the presence of Thomas Dawson’s obvious grief, he was touched a little. It wasn’t his main concern at this moment, however. He was also thinking of ways in which he might perform some damage control. Admittedly, the Secret Service had been directly responsible for the two children, but there had been an FBI presence in the vicinity, and that was bad. He’d have the scalps of the two agents, of course. He’d nail them to a wall in public. But this kind of blood-letting would only go so far to protect the Bureau from charges of negligence. There was really only one thing that might turn the situation around somewhat.
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