In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  The one vulnerable spot in his life was Kate for he loved his sister and was extremely protective of her. He had been alarmed when she took up with Patrick Riordan, and even more so when it became clear that she loved the man in no small fashion. He had reconciled himself with it, however. Pat Riordan was on his way to becoming a lawyer and hadn’t taken up the republican sword in any fashion that would bring harm to Kate. He had made it clear to Patrick he would kill him slowly and painfully should anything happen to his sister. Pat hadn’t so much as blinked and had said he’d shoot himself, thank you kindly, if any harm came to Kate on his watch. Noah believed him, and appreciated the fact that the man didn’t seem to fear him in the least.

  Noah took this little war in his country seriously, and he trained his men accordingly. They were crack troops that he would put up against any military in the world—if the numbers were near even, or even if they weren’t. He had trained in Libya and had become an expert in arms and explosives. He believed in this war but he didn’t feel a great loyalty to the Belfast command. They were moving in a direction with their speeches and philosophies that he didn’t think would do much more than throw an aura of glamor over the organization.

  There were many in the Belfast wing of the army, he knew, who would not be sorry to see him dead. He understood that. Noah was a threat and he didn’t vote along popular lines unless he absolutely believed in the resolutions put forward. He was not part of any inner circle or conclave and had no wish to be so. Noah knew this worried the regular command, but he did not care. He was a man who had always known his own mind. He also knew how to put and keep the fear of God into most men who crossed his path.

  That was where he found Pamela Riordan such a surprise too, a wee bit of a woman who didn’t shake in terror of him. Noah considered what the woman had asked of him. He had told her he would help and he would, for he believed in certain human decencies, and helping a woman who looked like a breath would crack her fragile composure was a basic decency in his opinion. He had been somewhat surprised when she had requested a meeting with him; it took a rare courage and a rare desperation to approach him in such a manner, with little to offer in return. He wouldn’t have seen her had Kate not vouched for her. Women were used by both sides quite often in this war he was involved in. A woman who looked as Pamela Riordan did could make a man take risks he couldn’t afford, could make a man lose his wits and flap his tongue. He would have to be certain that any of the men she put up knew the penalty should they feel the need to unburden themselves to that fair face. It would be as dangerous for her as it was for them.

  He had met her husband a time or two, first at a meeting long ago with the Belfast brigade. He had respected him, for he had a natural air of command and a clear vision of the future, one that wasn’t terribly rosy, but had the smack of realism about it. Once he had run into him at the Emerald Pub, and they had exchanged curt nods and nothing else. The man had been wary of him, and wisely so. Casey Riordan, despite having left the IRA behind—as much as a man ever could—was a threat to a man who had no intention of sharing his power with anyone. At first, Noah couldn’t believe the tale he was told—that the man had left the Army because he valued his marriage more than his own history. There was a word for that, and it wasn’t polite. Then one day he had seen the Riordans in the village, doing their shopping with their wee boy in a pram. The man’s arm had been around his wife and they had been laughing together at some shared joke. It had been clear to him, unromantic as he was, that they had something rare.

  Since her request, he had done some digging and put out a few feelers into the dark corners of the paramilitary world. He had twisted a few arms and put pressure where he felt it was best used. He did have some information for her, not as to what had actually happened to her husband but a hint as to why it might have happened.

  Noah turned from the mountain view and made his way back to his truck. He had chosen to go to the top of this mountain today for some much-needed time to think, and for the perspective it always gave him. His real destination though lay further down the mountainside, hidden away where there were no tracks, no pathways, and little traffic other than that of badger and fox. He drove part of the way, down the rough road that was barely passable even after weeks of hard frost. He parked the truck about a half-mile from his destination. The rest of the journey would have to be made on foot. The truck was hidden from any stray soul who might chance by, though it wasn’t likely anyone would be about on this side of the mountain. The terrain was rough, to say the least, and there were no public footpaths.

  It was a tough slog in to reach his objective but that was by design. The cave was well hidden in a small glade of ivy-wrapped trees and low, thick shrubbery. He took a pathway known only to him, stopping where the land abruptly changed to put on a pair of wellies. He had to wade through marsh grass and bog to reach the cave. There was a lacy skim of ice on the boggy ground, though the day was fine for January. He counted out his steps; the cave was so well hidden that it almost seemed to exist in another dimension, as if the entrance to it shifted from one visit to the next. When he was near the mouth of the cave, a cloud scudded across the face of the sun, lending the tiny glade a supernatural chill for a moment. Noah frowned and continued on to the screen of willow that hid the entrance.

  Noah stood still for a moment after he had crawled in over the stony lip, pulling out his torch and turning it on. He checked the floor for any traces of trespass. His purpose for being here lay ahead of him, for there were eighteen crates of guns hidden in the depths of the cave, far back where there was neither light nor damp. He walked carefully, torch in hand, always aware that an animal might take refuge here. He had no desire to run into a disgruntled badger in the dark.

  The cave stayed dry even during the wettest weather, which made it ideal for the storage of guns. In this country, weapons were both a form of wealth and a hard currency.

  This cave was a personal sanctuary and he considered the finding of it a turning point in his life, much as a monk might consider an ecstatic vision, or a prophet a term of forty nights on a wild and isolated mountaintop. For it had been exactly that to him. Long ago, a boy of fifteen had run from his home, in fear and grief, and hidden here. A month later the man had emerged, still fifteen, but no longer vulnerable and no longer afraid. This cave held his memories, his fears and his eventual emergence from the boy he had been into the man he had forged from the ruins of that sensitive adolescent who had loved the beautiful things of the world. He had spent much of the nights inside the cave, and his days roaming the mountain like a wild thing—eating berries and trapping hares and stealing from farms in the gloaming when he got desperate for a bit more food than what the mountain could provide. For the first time in his life, he’d been free and happy. He thought it was the only time he had ever been so. He had returned home someone changed entirely and the look of it was in his eyes, for his father never raised a hand to him again.

  His father had died shortly after that. His time in the cave had created something tough in Noah that allowed him to do what he needed to in order to keep him and Kate alive and keep the farm running. It hadn’t been easy; he had to face down men twice his age and find a way to pay the mortgage on the farm each month. Which had been substantial for his father hadn’t been the best manager, nor the best farmer come to that.

  During Noah’s own time, he had managed to pay out the mortgage and improve the function and form of the farm in great measure. The smuggling had come about because of his association with Mickey Devine. In fact the location of the farm—straddling the border between the North and the Republic—had been what had caused Mickey to approach him in the first place. Noah had understood at once that it could be either an opportunity or a road to disaster. He chose to make it into an opportunity, standing firm about what he would allow on his farm and what he would not. He was smart enough to know, even then, that he wanted something kept sacrosanct in the place where he lived. No bombs made
in his byre, no weapons stored upon his land, he had stood firm on that until Mickey had laughed and said, “All right, lad, I know when I’ve met my match.” At the time, Mickey Devine had been the acknowledged head of the South Armagh brigade, a position Noah would one day inherit from him.

  He had known even at the tender age of sixteen that smuggling had the potential to make him enough money to have lifelong security provided he was smart and careful about it. Mickey had given him his start there and Noah had built it up piece by piece until he was running what amounted to an illegal empire. He had enough money never to have to farm another day in his life. The money was simply a means to an end and it funded his true passion, which was the autonomy of his county, if not his country. No small part of that were the weapons in this cave. This was his space, an enchanted portal that none but him could find. It was why he had hidden the crates here, and a long night of hauling each crate from the back of a truck to the cave it had been. It was his personal storehouse and the weapons were good ones, not hand-me-downs the Libyans had found rattling around in one of their cupboards, which was the source of much of the PIRA’s weaponry. He had a pipeline out of Irish America, and most of the weapons were American-made, and had been smuggled over at no little cost and no little trouble. They were worth a small fortune—M16s, AR-18s, AR-15 Armalites, M60s, Smith and Wesson revolvers, Browning pistols and a consignment of Mauser rifles from Germany, all funneled through his American connections.

  An odd prickling ran up his body as he went deeper into the dark, and he had a sudden sense that someone else had been here. It was a chill shimmer in his spine, putting up the hair on his nape. He would swear the cave was empty now, but someone had definitely trod upon his territory; intruders left an unmistakable energy behind. He played his torch slowly over the crates, tucked neatly under their oiled canvas sheets. Though it wasn’t apparent to a casual glance, he could see one of the crates had, indeed, been disturbed. He pulled back the canvas that covered it and saw that, while the lid had been put back and even fastened properly, it was clear someone had been in it, for the nails were not as neat in their beds as he had left them. He pulled a small crowbar from his bag and prised off the lid. It was immediately apparent to his eye that there were guns missing. Two of them. He shone the torch on the rest of the crates. They appeared undisturbed, the canvas still arranged over them just as he had left it. He would check each and every one before he left just to be certain. Not that it mattered, not now that someone had violated his sanctuary.

  Who the hell had been in his cave and then had the temerity to steal two guns? And why only two? Unless the person or people planned to come back with a truck and take them all. He was going to have to move them, even if he wasn’t certain to where exactly. His farm was off limits. The only weapons he kept there were those he needed for personal use.

  He thought as he checked the rest of the crates, going over the mental inventory he kept in his head, clearing his mind of the anger, knowing he needed to move the guns as soon as possible. He pondered several possibilities and rejected them each in turn as unsuitable for a variety of reasons: too much traffic near the location, too damp, too far away from his farm and base of operations, too close to a British Army base, making movement in and out too risky.

  There was an abandoned workhouse he knew of, long buried in the woods roughly halfway between his farm and Pamela Riordan’s land. None had passed that way for years, and local legends that remembered the place claimed it was haunted by the ghosts of the many who had died there. It had a decent cellar, dry and cool, and would do for the guns until he could come up with a more permanent plan. He played the torch over the walls of the cave one more time. He couldn’t rid himself of the strange cool shimmer in his spine, the feeling that somehow the thief who had been here still lingered in some strange way, as though there was an imprint on the air that could touch him if he stayed in the cave much longer.

  Noah shivered, and walked back toward the entrance, wanting the warmth of the sun and the light of day to banish this strange feeling. By the time he crawled out through the screen of willows to find a light snow drifting down from the sky, he had found his anger again. He put it to the side where it would simmer over a cold flame until he needed it. But when he found him, God help the man who had violated this sanctuary, because Noah Murray had learned long ago that a man always paid retribution in full.

  If he had one code of conduct, one family motto that had long ago been scored into his soul it was this—Nulla misericordia. It was the only bit of Latin his father had known, but he had taught it to his son in full measure—no mercy.

  Chapter Six

  New Friends

  THE LATE AFTERNOON SUN was gilding the big kitchen a deep and dusty gold when Pamela arrived at Jamie’s house, children in tow and files in hand. The files were, she hoped, the last of the paperwork she needed to wrap up before giving things back into his entirely capable hands.

  There was only one person in the kitchen, and that was Shura whom she had met briefly the night after Jamie’s return. She smiled and said hello, and received a broad grin in return that crinkled his black eyes up at the corners and lit his homely face into something irresistible.

  “Yasha is out with the horses,” he said. He was grinding herbs in a mortar. The scent was thick and green and soothing.

  “Feverfew, lemon balm and peppermint?” she said, sniffing the air.

  “So, not just a beautiful face,” Shura said, eyeing her with interest. She watched as he placed handfuls of herbs into a large jar and then poured a very good make of vodka over top of them, until they were completely immersed.

  “Are you making a tincture for migraines?” she asked.

  “Da,” he said and then repeated, “Yes, I am. You have the knowledge of plants?”

  “A bit,” she replied, leaning over the big stone bowl and breathing in the residue of the ground herbs. “Jamie’s grandmother has been teaching me over these last months.”

  “Da—yes, Yasha has mentioned her.”

  From the lift of Shura’s thick and expressive eyebrows, Pamela thought Jamie’s description of Finola might have been less than flattering. She didn’t quite know what the relationship between Jamie and his grandmother was, but she had no doubt that the woman loved him, and that alone would have made her quite fond of Finola. That she had also helped Pamela, in no small measure, save Jamie’s home and company for him had endeared the woman to her quite a bit more.

  Shura capped the bottle, and then set it to the side. Pamela knew the concoction needed to steep somewhere cool and dark for a few weeks. She thought the cask room below the house would probably serve quite well for the purpose. However, there were other things in the warren of rooms beneath the house that Jamie might not want his guests to know about, so she kept the information to herself.

  He rinsed his hands in the big stone sink, dried them on a towel he had draped over his shoulder and then stepped down from the stool he had been using. He walked to Isabelle’s basket and leaned down, and looked at the baby who was sleeping the righteous and deep sleep of a tired five and a half month old. There was a fleeting sadness that touched his face, gone as swiftly as it had appeared.

  “Do you have children?” she asked.

  “Da— yes, and no too,” he said, and now there was no mistaking the sorrow in his face. She thought his answer, considering that he had recently escaped from a gulag inside the Soviet Union, made perfect and tragic sense.

  Conor was peeking out from behind her leg, and Shura smiled at him and coaxed him to come out by use of a small carved toy he pulled from his pocket. Conor, always curious, stepped forward, though he still kept a good grip on her pant leg. It was a yo-yo, painted bright red and spinning down from the man’s broad hand.

  With another child she might worry that Shura would pose a puzzle because of his size, and that something would be said which could make things awkward. With Conor, she didn’t fret for he had his father’s easy a
cceptance of differences in people. Shura’s height would not seem odd to him, he would simply see him as an adult of less intimidating proportions. Conor stepped closer to Shura, letting go of her leg, his face rapt with interest.

  Shura wrapped the string around the small wooden circle and handed it to Conor, rolling the loop gently over his finger. He then put his hand lightly over Conor’s and showed him how to flick the yo-yo so that it rolled straight out and furled back with a distinct snap. Conor laughed with delight, and it made her heart a little lighter to hear the sound.

  She realized suddenly that Shura was looking at her, not Conor, and brought her head up from watching the scarlet flash of the yo-yo, to meet his gaze. The dark eyes looked at her steadily, but it had the feeling of a shaman’s assessment of his client’s needs, rather than a man looking at a woman. He narrowed his eyes and took a deep breath, and she could almost see the diagnosis being formulated in his head.

  “I make you tea, something just for you, something for the,” he made a fluttering motion with his hands, “in your chest.”

  She stepped back, startled that he had somehow felt her anxiety. He merely got back up on the stool and started pulling jars from the shelf, muttering to himself. She recognized a medical man when she saw one, and left him to his herbs. She was still astounded that he had won Maggie around enough already to have such free use of her kitchen. She began to gather up Isabelle’s basket, only to have him pause in his muttering and turn toward her.