by James R Benn
He sat up, crossing his arms behind his head. It was his usual position for conjecture. "Perhaps Taggart's men thought he was going to double-cross them, so they sent a security detail. They were expecting gold, weren't they?"
"Maybe. But it's more likely that only Taggart and Simms knew about the gold."
"Now what exactly was their plan, Billy boy? I understand Taggart was out for revenge and all-"
"I think Taggart and Simms were close, closer than half brothers divided by religion might be expected to be. They both lost their mother to sectarian violence, and both lived on, damaged. Simms never fit in up north, and Taggart lost his ideals in Spain, then his whole family here. He'd given everything for the cause, and all he got out of it, at the end, was pain and grief. By now, most of the Irish are content with things the way they are. Exhausted, if content isn't the right word. Either way, they've settled into neutrality in the south and accommodation in the north."
"I see what you mean. It would be a powerful disillusionment for a man who'd given everything to the cause. So they set up a scheme to steal from all sides-the army, the IRA, the Germans, whoever they could-and leave Ireland behind them."
"Yeah. Simms planned to take his wife along, and that was his big mistake. No beach in Rio for her. But Taggart wanted something more. He wanted the money but with him, I think, there was a desire to strike at the people who failed him."
"The Irish people."
"I think so. It's exactly what I was sent here to investigate. A plan that involved the IRA and the Germans, an uprising in the north that might draw the Republic into the war. That's what the fifty BARs were for."
"At least it's down to forty-four now. We recovered six at the bridge. Three lads dropped them and skedaddled, two died with their boots on, and one was shot through the lungs. He was alive an hour ago but barely."
"How's Slaine?"
"Still in surgery. The head doc said he'd stop by once they were done. Said she had a chance, a fair one. Can't say I think much of an Irish lass working for the Brits like that but still, that's quite a woman. If anyone can survive, she will. Are you two, ah…" He waved his hand back and forth, a motion that meant anything from holding hands to a romp in the hay.
"Strictly business, and none of it yours."
"Whoa, Billy, can't you tell your old uncle what you're up to?"
"You'd never believe it. Tell me, did Carrick know any of the IRA men?"
"No," he said, serious again. "He said they didn't seem to be from around here. No identification, not even a wallet or a watch. Probably brought in from cells in other counties."
"Did you hear about the Germans?"
"Aye, the Germans and the gold. They sent a party up to recover the bodies. Hugh and I searched them thoroughly, the Germans and the IRA boys. No evidence. Nothing except this." He drew a gold coin from his coat pocket. One of the Kaiser Bills.
"Jesus! Does Carrick know you took that?"
"Now, Billy, it's not like I stole it. That dead German had it in his pocket. Maybe he wanted a little insurance or maybe it was his own souvenir, I don't know. But since it had become his personal property, I see no reason why it shouldn't be mine. Booty of war, it is. It'll make a nice present for your mother. She doesn't always look kindly upon me, to tell you the truth."
They said philosophers split hairs. "OK, OK. Keep it out of sight. And when did DI Carrick become Hugh? Are you guys pals now?"
"Don't get your knickers in a twist, Billy. He's not a bad sort for a Scots-Irishman. Not that they're my favorite bunch but he's a fair cop, I'll give him that."
"Is he around?"
"No, he left about an hour ago. Said he had to get into his fancy dress for some lodge meeting tonight. He's got roadblocks set up everywhere, and they're checking IDs at train stations, buses, that sort of thing, still looking for those other two Germans who came ashore."
"And forty-four IRA men carrying BARs."
"Them too, but with Taggart dead they've no leader. And they'll be hard to miss, especially if any of them stop off in a pub. I've had a close association with that group, you might say, and they're not the most close-lipped bunch. I'll bet you we'll hear something soon."
"Odd we haven't, isn't it?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, obviously MI-5 and the RUC have informers."
"All cops have informants. So?"
"But no one has reported a thing about the BARs. And you haven't heard either, even with your connections."
"Right," Uncle Dan said.
"And Taggart himself was the flamboyant type, not the type to plan something quietly, keeping it under his hat. Remember, he already had openly used a BAR."
"You think maybe there's someone else? The quiet brains behind the operation?"
"It makes sense, doesn't it?"
"In a crazy sort of way, I get your point. But what is the operation? And how do we find out who's really behind it?"
"You sure there was nothing on the bodies that might give us a clue? Or anything that happened during the fight? Could you tell if they had a leader?"
"All I knew was that they were shooting at me. Taggart sounded off a few times but as you said, he was half mad. No one else stood out."
The door opened and a doctor in an operating gown came in, faint sprays of blood across his chest. "Lieutenant Boyle? We just finished with Miss O'Brien. She's come through the worst. She's lost a lot of blood but if she remains stable for the next twenty-four hours, she should fully recover."
"Should?"
"There was a lot of damage, a good deal of internal bleeding. The next day or two will tell."
"Can I see her?"
"Later. Right now she needs to rest. She wouldn't know you were in the room anyway."
The doctor left. I was glad I didn't have to see her right away. I'd visited enough wounded cops half dead in hospital beds already, and I preferred to see her semi-upright and talking.
"Let's get out of here," I said. "Where are my clothes?"
"Oh, I almost forgot. Bob Masters, that lieutenant you took up the mountain, he came by earlier with some things for you. Everything you had was muddy and bloodstained so he brought what you'd need. I took your lieutenant's bars off your old clothes and put them on the new duds. And I got your boots and automatic when they brought you in. Didn't want some orderly walking off with your armament."
"Thanks. Is Masters still around?"
"No. He went back up Slieve Donard with a Graves Registration detail. To bring the bodies down."
"Too many dead bodies around here, before these guys even reach the shooting war," I said as I pulled on my shirt, wincing as I lifted my arm.
"There are places where the ground calls out for death, Billy, and this is one of them," Uncle Dan said, helping me with my web belt as he might help a child to dress. "And they'll be more if we don't finish this thing. Oh, I almost forgot it. There was this little wooden pig in your pocket too. What the hell is that?"
"A good luck charm that lost its power," I said as he handed Pig to me. I put him in my shirt pocket, and it felt like he belonged there. No harm in keeping him, I thought, as long as I don't start talking to him.
"Where to next?"
"The bodies," I said. "Are they here?"
"Yeah. In the morgue. You can always count on an army hospital to make room for the dead."
It might have been the few hours of sleep or the clean clothes but it was most likely walking out of a hospital room under my own power that gave me a thrill, that survivor's joy at having lungs, legs, and eyes that worked and moved as they should. I owed most of that to Taggart for not killing me. He had needed me mobile but subdued, and a through-and-through flesh wound was the quick and smart way to do it. I was lucky, I knew it. I also knew not to say it out loud, since Uncle Dan was famous for his thinking on the subject of luck. If you were really lucky, I could hear him say, you would have shot him dead first and been done with it.
They'd stripped the bodies
. I looked at each man, naked and laid out on cold stainless-steel tables in the morgue. Washed down, their bodies looked pale, the whiteness punctuated by gaping bullet wounds. Each was small and wiry, the descendants of the famine generation, their frames a testament to rule by Britannia. Two had healed wounds, bullet holes in a leg and shoulder.
"They have the look, don't they?" Uncle Dan said in a quiet voice. It was tinged with admiration, even though they'd tried to take his life the night before.
"Yeah. Their hands are rough but not callused like farmworkers."
I sorted through their clothes, laid out on a table opposite the bodies. Typical wool pants, collarless shirts, caps, and shoes that you'd see on any man on the street, in a pub, or at work. Not their Sunday best. The pants were spattered with mud-no surprise there, since they'd been out in the wet weather.
"Not a single piece of identification but that's standard practice. Even the labels were cut out," Uncle Dan said, showing me the inside of a shirt.
"I don't think Red Jack Taggart would have thought of that. Why isn't he here?"
"Hugh-DI Carrick to you-moved the body to Belfast. Proof that he'd been taken."
"Did you get a look at his clothes?"
"Yes, we went through everything. Now that you mention it, his tags were not cut out."
"I'd say that means someone else was in charge of the IRA men. You checked everything?" I knew it was a dumb question, and I avoided Uncle Dan's eyes as I felt along seams for anything hidden.
"Of course, what am I, a rookie? Jesus, Billy, you take nothing for granted, do you? I taught you well." He gave me a playful push on my arm, and I winced. "Sorry, lad, I forgot about the arm. Well, here's one small thing I did notice. These boys must have been doing some sort of farmwork before they came hunting you. Look."
He turned out the cuffs on several pants. A fine, gritty line of dark brown powder and fibrous material fell from each. I rubbed it together between my fingers and smelt it.
"Is it fertilizer?" Uncle Dan asked.
"You're no farmer, that's for sure. But you are an Irishman. Don't you know the smell of dried peat?"
"Jesus," he said. "I've heard of it all my life but never ran across it in Boston. I've smelled it burning here but never paid it much mind. So these boys all had been handling peat? Maybe working for some farmer as a cover, you think?"
I stared at the peat on my fingertips. Was it possible? I thought it through, and everything fell into place. No, I finally saw what had been right in front of me all along. It was all there-logical, deliberate, deadly, and cunning.
"You still have your revolver?"
"Yes and a new box of shells, courtesy of the RUC. Why?"
"I know where the BARs were hidden. They're probably gone by now but it's worth a shot."
"You could do with a better choice of words, Billy. Lead on."
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
We stopped at the hospital switchboard and I put some calls through. First to the executive officer at division HQ. I had him organize the I amp;R Platoon to meet Masters when he came down the mountain, and told him where the platoon was to rendezvous with us. Then DI Carrick's office but he wasn't in. I left the same information and thought for a minute about calling Major Cosgrove but I didn't. Either he wouldn't believe me or he'd send in his heavy-handed goons.
"We're on our own for the moment," I said. "Come on, let's find a jeep."
"Don't you sign them out from the motor pool?"
"Yeah, well, that takes paperwork, and paperwork takes time."
Once outside, I checked the jeeps parked in front. They all had drivers, sitting in them or leaning against fenders, smoking and passing the time as they waited for their officers. I signaled Uncle Dan to follow me around back, where a row of ambulances stood without drivers or anyone who might care if we borrowed one. One was still parked by the rear doors, maybe the one that brought me in. A medic's helmet with the distinctive red cross was on the seat. I opened the car door and signaled to Uncle Dan.
"Get in, you're driving. Button up your trench coat and put the helmet on."
"I wonder what you get for grand theft auto in Ulster," he said as he pushed the starter pedal.
"Don't worry about the RUC; this is army property. They'll probably shoot you."
"So where are we headed?" He turned onto the main road leading to the gate, grinding the gears as he got used to the three-quarter-ton vehicle.
I told the sentry at the gate we were headed to a convoy accident on the road to Lurgan, hoping he wouldn't look too closely at Uncle Dan and notice his nonregulation shoes and pants, not to mention his age. He managed to look bored, like any GI driver with a second louie in the passenger's seat.
"OK, what's the deal?" he said as we pulled through the gate, opened by another bored private not at all impressed by my state of urgency.
"Take this left," I said, pointing to the road to Clough. "There's a reason those guys had peat in their cuffs. The BARs were buried in stacks of the stuff, in a croft a few miles from here. I knew the BARs had to be close by but I never guessed I'd been within feet of them myself. There's an old fellow, Grady O'Brick, who lives in a cottage not far from the Lug o' the Tub Pub in the village."
"Poor old boy with his fingernails gone, right? Courtesy of the Black and Tans is the story I heard. Drummed out of the IRA for giving up an arms cache back during the war. After seeing what they'd done to him, it seemed a bit harsh to me."
"That's his story. But I think it was a ruse, an excuse for him to go underground. He told me, and others confirmed it, that his IRA cell had a reputation for keeping quiet, planning and carrying out operations without the Brits getting wind of a thing."
"This is beginning to sound familiar."
"When I first visited Grady, I drove down the boreen-that's a dirt track-and I noticed broken branches all along the shoulder. I'll bet that was from Jenkins's truck bringing the BARs there to hide them beneath the stacks of peat bricks drying in the croft. And I'll lay odds that there are newly broken branches there now that they've just been taken away."
"I know what a boreen is, lad; do you think I just came up the Liffey? But why Grady O'Brick? There's got to be dozens of peat crofts around here."
"I didn't put it all together at first but he was there when we found Pete Brennan's body. He drove his cart by, and had words with Sergeant Lynch. I think Grady recognized him, and maybe even the staff car. I mentioned to him in passing that I was going up to Belfast with a British officer the next day. He could've easily had Lynch and Slaine followed, and planted the bomb, or had it planted, since we know the IRA has plenty of plastic explosive. Plus, he was in the pub when we stopped to call the base. He saw Slaine with me, probably overheard the call. He must have known Taggart was up the mountain and called out the reinforcements when he found out we were going up after him."
"He seems like a harmless old gent, Billy. Are you sure?"
"It's the only thing that fits. He was present when I met Slaine and Sergeant Lynch on the road, and he was in the pub when we called the base on our way to Slieve Donard. So he was behind the hotel bomb and the ambush at the bridge. Everything that happened had the hallmark of a careful planner, which by his own admission, he is. But most of all, it would be the perfect revenge. He was tortured over a Lewis gun, did you know that?"
"No, I didn't."
"He gave it up after they pulled out nine fingernails. The Brit pulled the tenth for the hell of it."
"Jesus, they are a bunch of bastards for all their grand civilization, aren't they? So now he's taking an old man's revenge, turning automatic weapons on them in repayment for one Lewis gun. And he was in league with the devil himself, mad Jack Taggart, to get his revenge."
"Turn here," I said as we passed the pub.
"Why are you so sure the weapons will be gone?"
"Because they need to get into position before everyone arrives at Brownlow House, for the shindig the Royal Black Knights of the British Commonwe
alth are throwing tonight. Black tie and dress uniforms. Americans and British, armed services and the RUC. The cream of Protestant Ulster society and their Yank guests. How's that for an opportunity to start a shooting war?"
"God, the man's a genius," Uncle Dan said with fervent awe. "You know those so-called knights are not the firebrands, Billy. Most of them will look down their noses at us and try to put us in our places but they like things neat and stable. Yet if you kill enough of them, the ones left will be crying for blood in the streets."
"I know. And if that happens, what will the IRA do?"
"Accept about ten thousand new recruits and head north. Then the Republic will have to step in, and God knows where it will all end."
"It's what Slaine warned me about in Jerusalem. Here it is, turn left."
"Jerusalem? You do get around in this war."
He slowed the ambulance to a crawl as he turned the wheel to enter the boreen. The wheels straddled the track, rolling over the gorse with its yellow flowers and spiky vines. Stretching ahead of us was proof of what I'd suspected. The gorse had been flattened the whole way, the ground beneath still muddy and churned up from yesterday's rain. Another vehicle, larger than Grady's horse cart, had been through here today.
We parked in front of Grady's cottage and got out, guns drawn. But I wasn't worried about an ambush; I was certain the IRA men were gone. We checked the house and it was empty, the picture of the bloody rabbit still next to Jesus carrying his cross down the Via Dolorosa. His choice of artworks had seemed strange when I first saw them but now they seemed the perfect pair of pictures for Grady to stare at during his long nights by the fire, planning his retribution. A small animal, hunted and mutilated, next to a man whipped and tormented, carrying a heavy burden to his death. It's a strange world, that place inhabited by those who have been harmed and plan harm to others. A house of sadness, pity, and terror, drenched in dreams of blood. I shivered as I turned from the pictures.
"Look at this," Uncle Dan said, moving some papers on a rough wood table with the barrel of his revolver. It was a copy of the Ulster Gazette about five years old, opened to a photo spread of Brownlow House, a history of its architecture, and pictures of the adjacent park. "You were right. We better get over there with backup."