Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I can’t say. He might. He might not.”

  Charlie smiled. “He will,” he said.

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  Charlie glanced at her. “Then I tell them,” he said, “everything.”

  “Who?”

  “Dermot. Those fierce neighbours of yours. The boyos.”

  “About us? This?”

  Charlie nodded, sucking on the wine gum, saying nothing. Mairead stared ahead, through the windscreen, the countryside a green blur in the rain. Liam, she thought, the kids.

  “You’re as bad as they are,” she said softly.

  The car stopped at a main road. The signpost said Belfast. Charlie shook his head. The pony tail. The soft Irish brogue.

  “No,” he said grimly, “we’re worse.”

  Scullen met the Chief in the bus station at Dundalk. There was a small café beside the waiting room. Scullen ordered the teas. The Chief paid.

  They sat at a table next to the window. Mid-afternoon, the light was already fading, a grey premature dusk falling on the half-acre of oil-stained tarmac outside the window. One of the buses was going to Dublin. Another was headed for Belfast. One day, thought Scullen, there’ll be no border in between. Just a single country. And a single people.

  The Chief leaned in, across the table, beckoning Scullen towards him. The rendezvous had been at his invitation. Scullen had been driven down from Sligo, where he was currently headquartered. There’d been a big shipment of arms come in. The Quartermaster was working day and night, supervising the dumps out in the country, keeping them all busy. He’d begun to tell the Chief about it, but the Chief – unusually – wasn’t interested. He was less cheerful than usual. He had something else on his mind. He looked Scullen in the eye.

  “I want to know about Qualitech,” he said.

  Scullen nodded. “Aye?”

  “I’m told it wasn’t one of ours.”

  Scullen nodded again. “That’s right,” he said, “I got a call.”

  “Who from?”

  “O’Mahoney.” Scullen frowned, remembering the half-minute of conversation on the phone at Buncrana. O’Mahoney was the point man on one of the ASUs. He’d recognized the voice. “He said they’d nothing to do with it,” he told the Chief, “he was quite categorical.”

  “So why the headlines? Why our name on the fucking bomb?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The Chief nodded. “Neither does O’Mahoney,” he said.

  Scullen stared at him for a moment. “You’ve seen him?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Where?”

  “Belfast.”

  “What’s he doing back?”

  “He wanted to talk to me.”

  “Why you?”

  The Chief recognized the tone in Scullen’s voice, the wounded pride, the anger, O’Mahoney stepping out of line, going behind his back. He reached across and put a gloved hand on Scullen’s arm.

  “Padraig,” he said, “the boy’s worried. That’s why.”

  Scullen nodded, unconvinced. “What did he say?”

  The Chief spooned sugar into his tea and stirred it, thoughtful. Scullen began to understand why they’d met, the urgency of it.

  “He got to talk to somebody who knew a journalist. Brit journalist. This fella had gone to the press conference. They had the device there. The fella knows a thing or two about our stuff, the way we do it – ” he looked at Scullen – “the way you do it.”

  Scullen nodded. Every bomb had its trademarks, its special features, its clever little short cuts. They told an expert where the device had come from, even who’d made it. If you knew what you were looking for, they were as good as fingerprints. Scullen looked up.

  “So?” he said.

  “So …” the Chief shrugged, “the thing was definitely ours. The fella swears by it.”

  “He’s winding us up.”

  “Maybe.” He paused. “But O’Mahoney believed him. That’s the importance of it. O’Mahoney believed him and he wants to know what the fuck’s going on.”

  “So he talked to you.”

  “Yes. He thought I might know.”

  “And do you?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Scullen leaned back in his chair, and pulled his coat around him, gazing out of the window. Currently, he had two ASUs on duty on the mainland. One was O’Mahoney’s. The other was based in the West Midlands. He’d checked the Qualitech job with them, using a courier on the Birmingham service out of Dublin Airport. She’d reported back that they, too, had no knowledge of the hit. On the contrary, they’d assumed that it had been O’Mahoney’s work. Nice stroke, they’d said. Shame it hadn’t worked. Scullen glanced back at the Chief and bent to his own tea.

  “I don’t know …” he shrugged, “the thing’s a mystery.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “No.” He stirred the tea. “Should it?”

  There was a long silence. Then the Chief leaned forward across the table again, one elbow in a puddle of spilled tea.

  “There’s another thing about O’Mahoney,” he said.

  “There is?”

  “Yes,” he nodded, “he did a head job for you. Quick in and out. He didn’t tell me all the details but he wasn’t very happy.”

  Scullen glanced up. He’d sent a courier to O’Mahoney with orders to kill Leeson. He’d supplied the address and told him the job was priority. Under the circumstances, there’d been no choice. Apart from Connolly, Leeson was the only Brit who might spoil the plans he was laying for the Portsmouth job. Supplying the germ of the idea in the first place didn’t protect him from the operational consequences. O’Mahoney’s hit, though, had clearly been less than simple. Scullen looked at the Chief.

  “Why?” he said mildly. “Why is the man upset?”

  “The target was under surveillance. And you never told him.” He paused. “Luckily, he went in through the back. Otherwise it might have been nasty.”

  “Maybe I didn’t know,” Scullen paused, “and maybe he should have checked.”

  “Yeah. Maybe you didn’t. And maybe he should. But these fellas get jumpy. You know that. They need support …” He paused, making the point, then his hand disappeared beneath the table. “Here,” he said, “it’s a present. From yer man.”

  “Who?”

  “O’Mahoney.”

  Scullen nodded, taking the plastic shopping bag. It was heavy. He could guess what was inside.

  “OK,” he said.

  A silence settled between them. Then the Chief leaned across again, driving home his point.

  “Support, Padraig. Not my job. Yours.”

  “Mine,” Scullen agreed.

  The Chief nodded. “Secrecy’s a fine thing,” he said. “But people get nervous. They need talking to sometimes. You should remember that.”

  “I will.”

  Scullen looked at him a moment, and then ducked his head, a stiff gesture of submission, accepting the reprimand, recognizing the conversation for what it was, a formal warning. He stirred his tea slowly.

  “About Qualitech,” he said, “that bomb.”

  The Chief looked up. “Yes?”

  “There are two possibilities.” He paused, frowning. “The first is obvious.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There never was a bomb.”

  “Then what did they show? At the press conference?”

  “A mock-up. They could do it in their sleep. They’ve got enough examples. They know what they’re up to.”

  The Chief nodded. “And the rest of it?” he said. “Your other theory?”

  Scullen sipped at his tea. Then patted his mouth with a small white handkerchief.

  “They might have planted it themselves,” he said.

  The Chief frowned.

  “Who might?”

  “The Brits.”

  “Yes, but who? Which Brits?”

  T
here was a long silence. A bus coughed, out in the semi-darkness. Then, for the first time, Scullen smiled.

  “Exactly,” he said, “which Brits?”

  Buddy Little flew back from Aberdeen two days later. He’d spent the best part of a week knocking on doors, meeting old contacts, sounding out prospects, enquiring about work. The start of the North Sea season was still a couple of months away, but with a full sat medical clearance he could have been out on a plane already, any number of destinations, Middle East, Caribbean, even Australia. Any of the jobs would have given him a fat wodge of money, swopping a month on the seabed for at least a partial solution to his problem. As it was, though, his licence ruled him out. No one would touch him. He was just too old.

  In desperation, towards the end of the week, he began to listen to the offers of shore-based work, a white collar job, something supervisory, something that would put him behind a desk and make the best of his experience, but the more interviews he had, the more hands he shook, the more he realized that this simply wasn’t his world. They were nice enough people, and the money was tempting but the work was high pressure, incessant, governed by the kind of impossible performance targets he’d always fought against as a professional diver. Looking through the other end of the telescope, putting on the company tie, it wasn’t hard to see the rationale – lower costs, bigger profits – but he knew too much about the realities of diving, about the million silly things that could go wrong and kill a man, to simply join the bosses. No, if they wanted a gamekeeper, then they’d have to look elsewhere. Even for Jude, he wouldn’t screw his mates.

  And so he came home, empty handed, unlocking the back door of the cottage and stepping into the tiny kitchen. The place was getting a little shabby now, he knew. He was doing his best to give things a wipe or two every week, but huge chunks of his time were swallowed up by trips to the hospital, and bids to find work, and if he was honest, his heart was no longer in it. The cottage had been home with Jude around. With Jude gone, it was simply a pile of bricks, a collection of rooms, and with the heating off to save on the bills, the place beginning to smell of damp.

  There was a letter on the mat for him. He recognized the writing on the envelope, stooping to pick it up, wandering into the kitchen to read it. The letter was from Gus, his mucker on the rigs. It said that near Easter he was due a spot of leave. That Marge and the kids would be away at her mum’s place in South Wales. That he might drop by for a day or two to catch up on the news, share a pint or two, take them both out. Buddy read the letter quickly. He’d never told Gus about the accident. He’d thought about it once or twice. He’d even tried to start a letter of his own. But in the end he’d screwed it up and thrown it away. Gus, he knew, would be on the next chopper out, the next plane down. He was that kind of bloke. He’d be very upset, and very supportive, and very sensible, and he’d drive Buddy mad within hours. Just now, he could do without all that. Better, he thought, to leave Gus in the dark just a little while longer. He folded the letter and stuffed the envelope into his back pocket, forgetting it.

  He took a chocolate biscuit from the tin beside the fridge and wandered through to the living room. The answerphone lay on the table under the window. There were half a dozen messages on the tape. He spooled quickly through them. Four were enquiries about the riding school, and he made a note of names and addresses to call back. The fifth was an American voice, someone from Pascale’s clinic, someone he’d never met before, wanting him to call about dates and availability. Evidently there’d been a phone conference with Bishop. The English doctor thought Jude would be discharged in March. Buddy listened to the voice, noting the details, wondering if it wasn’t already too late.

  The tape stopped at the last message. He pushed the cue button. There was a burst of static, then a female voice he couldn’t quite place. The voice asked him to phone as soon as he could. There was a ten-digit number and a name. Sheila Rogers. The voice rang off.

  Buddy looked at the number, recognizing the hospital’s STD code. Then he looked at the name again, at last putting a face to the voice. Sheila Rogers. The pretty young nurse in Jude’s ward.

  He dialled the number. The number answered. He asked for the nurse. There was a silence, then the nurse came on. Buddy said who he was, and there was a brief pause. He could hear a door closing in the background. Then the nurse came back. She sounded slightly out of breath.

  “It’s your wife, Mr Little,” she said.

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  There was another pause, the length of a heartbeat. Then the nurse again. “I’m afraid she’s tried to kill herself,” she said, “you ought to come up.”

  Buddy got to the hospital in a fraction under the hour. He pulled the Jaguar into one of the consultants’ parking bays, and ran the length of the main corridor. He found the nurse in the small office at the head of the ward. She told him to sit down. She closed the door. He stared up at her.

  “What happened?” he said.

  She told him the bare facts. How she’d been on duty the previous evening, midnight to eight. How she’d checked the ward every half-hour or so, keeping an eye on the patients throughout the night. And how she’d found Jude, three in the morning, lying on her back, blood everywhere, choking. Somehow she’d managed to hide the small vanity mirror inside the top of her pyjamas. The nurse gone, she’d retrieved it with her mouth, broken it with her teeth, and tried to swallow it. Fortunately, the pieces had been too big, and the muscles of her gullet too weak, for her to swallow properly. She’d begun to choke, cutting herself badly, the noise unmistakable. The nurse had been at her bedside in seconds, retrieving the shards of broken glass with her fingers. Buddy listened, sick at heart, believing every word of it, only surprised that it hadn’t happened before.

  “How is she?” he said.

  “Furious.”

  “I meant inside.”

  The nurse shrugged. “She was bleeding. They had to suture. But it was nothing too serious. She’ll live.”

  “Yeah.” Buddy nodded. “After a fashion.”

  He left the office, thanking her, and walked the length of the ward. Jude saw him coming, and Buddy knew from her expression that she’d have turned over, her face to the wall, had she been able.

  He sat at the bedside and kissed her on the forehead.

  “My bloody mirror,” he said softly, “cost me a fortune.”

  She looked up at him, still angry. There was a cut at the corner of her mouth, and she was obviously finding it difficult to swallow. Her voice, when she talked, was very low, the words coming out slowly, through God knows how many stitches.

  “At least I tried,” she said.

  He looked at her for a while, fingers through her hair.

  “So how do you feel?” he said.

  “Lousy.”

  “I meant about Boston?”

  She said nothing, just blinked, and he bent very low, to her ear, and said he loved her. Her hair smelled of shampoo. The nurse again. An act of simple charity. Some small consolation.

  Buddy withdrew slightly, gladder than he could say that she was still alive, that circumstances – for once – had frustrated her. He repeated the question. Pascale, he said, Boston? She smiled up at him, for the first time, a small, wan smile, the faintest curl of the lips.

  “OK, Buddy,” she whispered, “we’ll do it your way.”

  BOOK THREE

  FIFTEEN

  Six weeks later, eight and a half thousand miles away, four British scientists set out on a routine field trip from the British Antarctic Survey base at Grytviken, on the island of South Georgia. They carried with them a radio, binoculars, an assortment of scientific apparatus, and enough food and fuel to keep them alive for a week.

  They made their way up the rocky north coast, and established camp at the deserted settlement of Leith, once a prosperous whaling station. Amongst the gaunt, abandoned sheds, and the litter of old steam winches, they settled into a daily routine. They recorded the wildli
fe. They took soil and ice samples. They monitored the notoriously treacherous weather.

  On March 19th, they awoke to find an Argentinian warship anchored in the harbour. They watched, as about fifty men began to unload supplies. Some of the men wore paramilitary uniforms. A small party left the whaling station, and soon the scientists could hear the crack of high-powered rifles echoing amongst the surrounding mountains. Hours later, the men were back again, dragging behind them the corpses of slaughtered reindeer. By this time, a blue and white flag was fluttering over the abandoned town. The flag belonged to Argentina.

  The scientists did what they could. They told the captain of the warship that no one could land on South Georgia without British permission. They pointed out that it was illegal to shoot reindeer. And they said that the men had no right to fly a foreign flag on British territory. The captain shrugged off their protests. It had all, he said, been taken care of.

  Returning to their camp, the scientists passed a notice, recently pasted on the wall of one of the whaling sheds, warning intruders against unauthorized landings. Across the posters, in Spanish, someone had scrawled “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”. Only one of the scientists spoke Spanish. The others looked at him. He shrugged.

  “It’s the Falklands next,” he said. “The buggers think it belongs to them.”

  Scullen, in Dublin for a couple of days, read the news over his second cup of coffee in a small café near Heuston Station. He’d bought a copy of The Times at the airport, inbound from Galway. He read the paper every day now, Leeson’s parting recommendation after the lunch they’d shared way back in January.

  The report was on page six. It was headed “Argentinians hoist a flag on South Georgia”. The intruders, it said, had been asked to comply with immigration procedures, or leave. Since they’d done neither, the Foreign Office had responded by dispatching the survey ship HMS Endurance. The ship carried a detachment of twelve Royal Marines. The island was British sovereign territory. If all else failed, the Argentinians were to be thrown off.

  Scullen read the reports twice. Then he folded the paper carefully and laid it on the table beside his empty cup. Leeson had mentioned South Georgia during their lunch in Dublin. He’d said there was a chance it might start there. Not the invasion itself, but the sequence of events that would lead to the invasion. Diplomacy, he’d said, is like chess. You make your opening gambit on one side of the board. And win the game on the other.