GAMES OF THE HANGMAN

  Fitzduane slept in and enjoyed a leisurely midafternoon breakfast. The storm had done its worst, but the rain continued as if determined to leave him in no doubt whatsoever that he was back in Ireland.

  Kilmara had gone hours before but had left behind a note detailing that day's security procedure. Getting in and out of Kilmara's home without setting off some part of the labyrinth of alarm systems was no easy task, and codes were changed at least daily at irregular times. Fitzduane wondered how Adeline put up with being married to a target. That made her, he supposed, a target herself—and then there were the children. What a life. Was he, Fitzduane, since his encounter with the Hangman, now a target, too? And would he stay at risk? What would that mean for his wife and his children? For the first time it came to Fitzduane that once you were involved with terrorism—on either side—there was really no end to it. It was a permanent state of war.

  He was digesting this unpleasant thought when he heard a faint noise coming from the front of the house—a house that was supposed to be empty. It sounded like a door opening and closing. The sound was not repeated.

  He was tempted to stay where he was, to ignore what he almost doubted he had heard. He checked the perimeter alarm board—there were monitors in every room—but all seemed secure.

  He took the Remington and chambered a round. Moving as silently as he could, he left the kitchen and edged along the corridor to the front hall. He had two doors to choose from. As he deliberated, the door of the living room opened. Fitzduane dropped into a crouch.

  Etan stood there.

  "Holy shit!" exclaimed Fitzduane.

  Etan smiled. "Shane's idea," she said. "The colonel as matchmaker." She looked at the gun. "He's told me quite a bit. Things make more sense now."

  Fitzduane realized he was still pointing the gun. He lowered it, replaced the safety catch, and laid it down gently. He felt weak and happy and scared stiff and more than a little stupid. His heart was pounding. He couldn't believe how glad he was to see her. He sat on the floor.

  "Hugo, are you all right?" she said anxiously. "For God's sake, say something. You're white as a sheet."

  Fitzduane looked up at her, and his pleasure was plain to see. He shook his head. "Cuckoo," he said.

  Etan was wearing jeans tucked into half boots and an Aran sweater. He could smell her perfume. She pushed the gun away with her boot and then knelt beside him. "Staying long?" she said. She peeled off her sweater and blouse. She wasn't wearing a bra. Her breasts were firm and full, the nipples pronounced. Her voice had gone husky. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed. He didn't argue. He lay back.

  "Soldier from the war returning. Where have you been? How has he been?" She undid his belt and unzipped him and encircled his organ with her hand. She squeezed hard. "I have a proprietary interest," she said. "My mother told me never to put anything in my mouth if I didn't know where it had been." She teased him with her tongue. "Where has this little man been?" She released her hand and looked. "On second thoughts," she said, "he's not so little." She shucked her boots and wriggled out of her jeans, then lay on her stomach on the carpet. "Do it this way," she said, "nice and slow and deep." She raised her buttocks suggestively and parted her legs. Fitzduane put his hand between them and stroked her where she liked. He ran his lips and tongue along her back and slowly moved down. It was only after she had been moaning and quivering for quite some time that he took her doggie fashion on the floor. Halfway through he turned her and entered her from above. She reached up and sucked his nipples, and he gasped. He drove into her again and again, and their loins became slick.

  When it was over, he took her in his arms and just held her. Then he kissed her gently on the forehead. "You know," he said, and there was laughter in his voice, "this has been a year of tough women."

  Etan bit his ear and then lay beside him, her head resting on one arm. Her free hand caressed his loins. "Tell me," she said, smiling sweetly, "about Erika."

  * * *

  Kilmara sat in his office examining yet again the plans of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin and the security arrangements. Every fresh examination made him feel unhappier.

  The embassy had been built in the days when a violent protest consisted of a rotten egg or two thrown at the ambassador's car. It seemed to have been designed to facilitate terrorist attacks.

  The three-story circular building—plus basements—had a facade consisting mainly of glass hung in a prestressed concrete frame. Offices were positioned around the perimeter of each floor. The core of the building was a floor-to-ceiling rotunda overlooked by the circular corridors. The embassy was located at the apex of a V-shaped junction of two roads, each lined with houses that overlooked the embassy building. Car access to the basement level was by way of a short driveway guarded by a striped pole.

  A terrorist was faced with a downright excess of viable choices. The place was so easy to attack that if you didn't know better—and Kilmara unfortunately did—you might think that there must be a snag, or else be put off the idea for reasons of sportsmanship because the target hadn't a chance. Even the sewers—though why any terrorist would choose the sewers when he had such a range of more hygienic options was beyond Kilmara—were not secure.

  Kilmara closed the file in disgust. Short of blocking off the access roads—impossible because one was vital for south Dublin traffic—and surrounding the place with a battalion of troops—too expensive considering the state of the nation's finances—full or even adequate security for the embassy was impossible to achieve against a small, well-armed terrorist unit. Against a force of seventy, his efforts would be derisory.

  Unless, of course, he got lucky. With a sigh he opened the file again. The saying was true. The harder he worked, the luckier he seemed to get. He wondered if the same principle applied to the other side, and he was not pleased with his conclusion.

  The bottom line in this situation meant: one, he had to obey orders; two, out of his full complement of sixty Rangers, roughly a third were assigned to full-time embassy duty, and given that there were three shifts per day, that meant that almost the full command was committed; three, they were operating in exactly the wrong way for a force of this type—tied down and waiting to be attacked rather than staying flexible and keeping the initiative; four, training time was being seriously eroded (to keep to their unusually high standard of marksmanship, Rangers shot for several hours a day at least three days a week and often more); five, his own time was being used up running this screw-up of an operation; six, God knows what else was happening while this was going on. It was a crock.

  Fitzduane stayed another night in Kilmara's house and left for home the following afternoon, his body satiated from a night of lovemaking and the long, deep sleep that had followed.

  Kilmara had called to say he wouldn't be back and the couple could have the house to themselves. "Couple?" Fitzduane had queried, stroking Etan's nipples with the tips of his fingers.

  "Lucky guess," said Kilmara dryly.

  Fitzduane laughed. "We're getting married."

  "About time," said Kilmara. "I've got to go." He phoned back about two minutes later. "Don't forget what I said," he added. "People in love are dangerous; they forget things."

  "I don't feel dangerous," said Fitzduane.

  "I'd feel a little better if you did. Check in by radio when you get home. The signal is automatically scrambled. You'll be able to talk freely."

  Fitzduane was thoughtful as he replaced the phone. Etan ran her tongue over his penis. "Pay attention," she said. He did.

  The Pillars of Hercules—better known in more recent times as the Strait of Gibraltar—are a classic naval choke point dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar.

  Gibraltar, if one forgets for a moment the slightly paranoid local population of some twenty-eight thousand crammed into a land area the size of a parking lot, consists of surveillance equipment, weaponry, hollowed-out rock, military personnel, and apes in roughly that order.

  Despite all this
concentration of spies, people, apes, and materiel, it was nonetheless scarcely surprising that the passing through the Strait of Gibraltar of an Italian cattle boat, the Sabine, en route from Libya to Ireland to pick up a fresh cargo of live meat for ritual slaughter on return to Tripoli, should be logged but attract no further attention.

  The Irish cattle trade with Libya was both known and established. The sight of the Sabine was routine. The only change that might have been commented on, but was not, was that the Sabine failed this time to refuel in Gibraltar. She had, apparently, braved the bureaucracy and chronic inefficiency of Qaddafi's Libya and bunkered in Tripoli (a practice the experienced ship's master learns not to repeat unless desperate).

  An inquirer—if there had been one—would have been told, with a shrug, that it was a matter of an arrangement, and the thumb and forefinger would have been rubbed together. Such an answer would have sufficed.

  The Sabine left the Pillars of Hercules behind and set a course for Ireland.

  Chapter 24

  In the old Land Rover, allowing for a stop in Galway to pick up supplies and eat, they took nearly seven hours to reach the island from Dublin. It rained solidly until early evening, and then they were treated by the weather to such a spectacular display of changing light and mood that Fitzduane forgave all and wondered why he had ever left. It was so bloody beautiful.

  His spirits lifted—and then the rain returned in full force as they were approaching the castle, as if to remind them to take nothing for granted.

  "This is a fickle fucking country," he muttered to himself while unloading the vehicle. He had been tempted to leave things where they were till morning, but the contents of the four long, heavy boxes and other containers Kilmara had given him were best placed under lock and key as soon as possible.

  During the drive he had told Etan much of what had happened. Now he gave Murrough, who was having a drink inside with Etan, a short summary. He had kept his reservations about the Hangman's demise to himself. He didn't want to be unnecessarily alarmist.

  Murrough and Oona had lit fires and aired the place, and the heating had been turned on earlier in the day. The castle was warm and comfortable. It felt good to be back.

  Murrough was quiet for a while after Fitzduane had finished. Fitzduane refilled their glasses. "You'll have a chance to meet some of these people in a couple of days," he said. "I guess I got carried away during my last week in Bern, when we had one long round of celebrations to see the Hangman off in style. Heini Raufman is still supposed to be convalescing, so I invited him to see how civilized people live, and then somehow Henssen got added to the list—and then young Andreas von Graffenlaub. Andreas needs some distraction. He's bearing up well, but this whole business has been rough on him. His father's death hit him particularly hard."

  "Poor lad," said Etan.

  "Heini Raufman is the one you call 'the Bear'?" said Murrough.

  "You'll see why when you meet him," said Fitzduane.

  "It will be nice to have this place full of people," said Etan. She had been eyeing the castle and its furnishings with a definite proprietorial air since they arrived. It was dawning on Fitzduane that there were going to be more changes in his life than he had anticipated. He had to admit that the present decor was overheavy on stuffed animal heads, wall hangings, and medieval weapons. Still,. what else would you expect in a castle? He was uneasy about the alternatives Etan might have in mind.

  Etan looked at him. "Lace curtains on the windows," she said, grinning, "and flowered wallpaper on the walls."

  "Over my dead body," said Fitzduane.

  "I think I'd better be leaving," said Murrough, not moving but anxious to bring the conversation back to more serious matters.

  Fitzduane knew his man. "What's on your mind, Murrough?" he said.

  Murrough took his time speaking. "Those kids from the college, reviving something best long forgotten. What's happened about them? You never said."

  "Not an entirely satisfactory outcome," said Fitzduane, "but understandable, I suppose, given the trauma in the college recently. Information on what was going on was supplied to the acting headmaster by the Rangers, working through the police. I gather he was shocked but after reflection chose to believe that it was little more than juvenile high spirits. Above all, he wanted no more scandal. He said he would deal with the matter in his own way at the end of the term, and he'd appreciate if the police would leave it at that, so the police did. It isn't a crime to dress up like the Wolfman and run around in the woods. Anyway, the best efforts of all concerned failed to identify the individuals involved."

  "And how about the small matter of our decapitated billy goat and the traces of sacrifice you found?" said Murrough indignantly.

  "Isn't that a little more than—what did he call it—juvenile high spirits?"

  Fitzduane drained his glass. "Indeed," he said, "but there is the matter of proof, and nobody wants to upset the college further. It brings money into the area, and it's had a rough time recently. I think the police felt they couldn't press things."

  Murrough digested what had been said. Etan had fallen asleep in front of the fire. He stood up to go. "So it's finished," he said.

  Fitzduane looked at the dying embers. His reservations and his conversation with Kilmara seemed remote at this distance. Anyway, May would soon be over. He decided he'd sleep on the problem. "I hope so," he said, "I really do."

  Ambassador Harrison Noble felt that things were going splendidly.

  He lay back in his bed and congratulated himself on finding such a comfortable and practical place to stay. It was on the island, it was near his son's school, the woman of the house was a splendid cook, and this man Murrough said he would gillie for him.

  Harrison Noble fell asleep within seconds of putting out the light. His sleep was that of a man contented and relaxed and at peace with the world.

  Despite taking their travel sickness pills as instructed, most of the passengers on board the cattle boat Sabine were thoroughly ill as they crossed the Bay of Biscay.

  The boat rolled unpleasantly without its normal cargo of fourteen hundred heavy cattle and the corresponding load of feed and water. The crew and more than seventy armed men, ammunition, explosives, surface-to-air missiles, and inflatable assault boats did not weigh enough to provide adequate ballast.

  The air-conditioning system coped admirably with the smell. The passengers were fully recovered as the boat approached the south of Ireland. They cleaned and recleaned their weapons and rehearsed the details of the plan.

  The U.S. cultural attaché headed the crisis team that coordinated security for the embassy when a specific threat was involved. A diplomat largely occupied in his official duties with cultural exchanges, visiting baseball teams, and the arcane queries of scholars and writers might seem an unlikely choice for such a counter-terrorist role, but the cultural attaché was also the senior CIA man on the spot and, even more to the point, had experience at the sharp end on several unpleasant occasions in Latin America.

  After the last experience, when his unarmored vehicle—a matter of budget cuts—had been sprayed with automatic-weapons fire in San Salvador and his driver killed, he had asked for a posting away from a high-risk zone. He had been sent to Ireland to get his nerve back and play some golf. Both his nerve and his golf had been doing fine until the attack warning had been received.

  Now he waited and sweated and drank too much to be good for either his liver or his career and hoped that the extra acoustic and visual monitoring equipment Kilmara had requested would turn up something—or, better still, nothing.

  He loathed the waiting, the sense of being a target on a weapons range. He knew too well what happens to targets. His driver in San Salvador had died holding his fingers against the hole in his neck, trying vainly to stop the gushing of arterial blood.

  The weather still looked menacing in the morning, but it wasn't actually raining, so Fitzduane and Etan saddled up the horses and ambled around the is
land.

  The sense of fatigue that had dogged Fitzduane since his return seemed to have gone, and the wind in his face as they rode was invigorating.

  It was as they were returning that Fitzduane began to experience a feeling of anticipation that was familiar but that at first he could not identify. They had been chatting easily about their future. Now, with the castle in sight again, he lapsed into silence, his mind sifting and sorting a jumble of thoughts and snatches of conversation, trying to identify the source of this unsettling feeling.

  He had been too tired, he knew, the last couple of days to think rationally and to listen to his intuition; he had relegated his doubts and feeling of foreboding to the back of his mind. Now he ran through everything that had been said and tried to relate it to what he had either experienced or discovered himself.

  The theorizing and the computer assessments aside, Fitzduane was one of the few people involved who actually knew the Hangman. Perhaps knew was too strong a word to describe his relationship with the man, but there was no doubt that the time spent in his company had given him some insight into the terrorist's complex character.

  The Hangman rarely did anything without a reason, even if his rationale seemed obscure by conventional standards. He was a player of games with a finely balanced tendency toward self-destruction. He was a planner of genius with a useful ability to anticipate the moves of his opponents. He enjoyed teasing the opposition, leaving enough clues to excite his pursuers while at the same time taking steps to see they would always put the pieces together too late. He was a master of feints and deception—a characteristic he shared with Kilmara. He had substantial resources, and he thought on a grandiose scale. Henssen's work with the Nose had suggested he was winding down many of his operations and working toward some final grand slam.

  Was it credible that the slaughter in Balac's studio was actually part of some intricate game devised by the man? If so, why? What was the Hangman's overall motivation apart from the satisfaction he seemed to obtain from beating the system? His motives weren't political. He was quite happy to use politically committed people for his own ends, but his constant, specific goal was money. Fitzduane doubted that he wanted money for itself, but rather as an impartial way of rating his performance—and it had the practical advantages of conferring power and freedom.