by John Brady
Then, driving back up to Dublin after the games, Minogue would sometimes dream what life would have been like had he left for the States those years ago. He might be a cop on the beat in New York City. He might be a farmer in Montana with a Ford pick-up truck and steers. His wife would be a blonde with big white teeth and a skin that'd tan. Maybe two cars. The kids would have American accents.
No end in sight to this business, is there, Matt? That is if the English insist on being blackmailed by those Orangemen. No, Mick, it doesn't look like it.
Mick didn't shoot the guns, but Minogue was sure he cheered the count of soldiers or loyalists killed.
Maybe it'll spread, Matt. It may well, but we'll do what we can, Mick.
Minogue listened to the things his brother left unsaid. Minogue had by then given up any ambition of rescuing his brother or indeed any of his countrymen from whatever threw them effortlessly between savagery and kindness.
Agnes laid the vapouring cups on the table. Slowly the two of them sipped their tea. Occasionally, a gust sprayed rain on the window and rattled the frame. Finally, Agnes spoke:
"A great day for going to the library… or a funeral."
Minogue couldn't deny her. He had been sitting there as a visitor drinking tea. He was afraid to intrude upon her by asking her questions about her own family. That was none of his business. She had told him as much as she could about Jarlath Walsh. Agnes prepared to go. He couldn't stay here. He was supposed to be detectiving, not sitting here with a girl, daydreaming.
He walked down the flights of stairs ahead of her and side by side to the carpark. Allen leaned over and pushed the passenger door open for her. When Allen fussed with attaching her seat-belt, Minogue believed that this was a different Allen, a solicitous man taking custody of a precious cargo. A fatherly concern? Easy in a man with no brood at home to be keeping him in the real world, a part of Minogue's mind jeered.
Minogue closed Agnes' door. It closed with a solid clap. Beads of rainwater quivered on the waxed paintwork. A nice, big, new Toyota without an excess of chrome, Minogue mused. He would have had to put his boot to his own door on the Fiat to get it to close first time. As if reading the thoughts of a poor but secretly favoured suitor, Agnes looked up briefly and smiled through the glass. Unreachable, going. As he walked aimlessly back into the college, Minogue worked at persuading himself that he was not somehow envious of Allen. A moment of juvenile insecurity, he chided within.
What Minogue could not put aside, however, was the belief that the case had left him beached with the ebbing tide no longer touching him. Funerals. The last funeral Minogue had attended was that of an old IRA man from 1916, one who had survived the Civil War and a spell interned in the Curragh, to write memoirs and die renowned as one of the last of the hard men. There couldn't be many left. Three old men, propped up by their relatives, had stood over the grave. Mick had been among the hundreds of mourners there. Minogue had caught his brother looking over at him several times. He thought it was a look of some satisfaction on Mick's face, as if to claim the damp countryside and its people as his inheritance, not Minogue's.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Back in his room, Minogue doodled. He wrote down names and events. Then he tried to join them with lines so he could work out cause and effect later. Nothing.
They'd be burying the boy now. There'd be beads of rain on the coffin. The wet would give the bouquets more colour. Minogue reached a disagreeable decision. He phoned the Drug Squad.
While Minogue doodled, thought and telephoned, a well-dressed man in his late thirties took up a padded barstool in the Bailey public house. He held a copy of the Irish Times under his arm. He had stepped from a taxi but feet from the door.
The barman prided himself on recognising customers' occupations by the way they dressed. He took the order for a small Paddy, and he registered some surprise at an American accent, soft but there all the same. The customer unfolding the paper had the ruddy tan of a robust Yank with any amount of rhino for holidays and grub. Took care of himself.
The barman put him as a legal eagle, but that was a long shot, he realised, as he poured the water into the jug. Irish-looking, all the same, probably in the early thirties. The barman recognized a forty quid shirt when he saw one. The plain grey suit had the looks of having cost three hundred quid. Although he hadn't seen the customer hang up his coat, the barman guessed an Aquascutum.
The customer opened the paper to the editorial, which concerned itself with a condemnation of the murders of policemen, culminating in another one yesterday. He sipped at the whisky. The barman returned to his preparations for the lunchtime crowd.
When the customer's pal showed, the barman pegged him for a journalist or a theatrical type. Maybe not though. He served him a pint and returned to setting up glasses. He felt the light grab at the small of his back, the twinge that would grow to an ache by lunchtime. The barman's name was Gerry, and he wasn't any more interested in politics than he was in soccer, but he talked about both endlessly every working day. He heard enough guff. The tanned and fit-looking barrister who was not a barrister was likewise disinterested in what passed for politics. He was so antipathetic toward the way politics ran on this island that he carried a large-calibre automatic pistol holstered under his armpit. The magazine was fully loaded and there was a bullet in the spout. The man wanted nothing to do with talking politics or any other conversation which policemen might wish to engage him in.
Before starting out on this project, he had weighed the things he felt were necessary and those which he could get around. Daily, and with no sense of excitement, he cleaned the gun in his hotel room. Carrying it was a non-negotiable item in his list and he felt quite at home with yet another hard and fast rule in his life.
Gerry the barman's guess about the other fellow, who was dressed half as a farmer and half as a priest, was partially correct in that the man was a playwright. The playwright had spent the best part of a half hour making sure he was not being tailed.
The tanned man disliked the playwright, not least for the maudlin viciousness of his nationalism. He regarded him as a fool whose brains were stewed by decades in fifth-rate theatricals. He did not trust the playwright, but he knew that having to work with him was a test which others were watching.
"You can see that results come quickly," he began.
"There's no gainsaying that," agreed the playwright. "So it went smoothly this time and the volunteers got away. Maximum effect, oh yes, I can see that."
"But…? You have reservations?"
The playwright observed the bubbles rising to the ice in his glass before replying.
"I'll say this much. All this firepower and technology are fine and well. You are well able to do the fancy footwork. But I've been in this thing for most of my life. I know how the lads on the ground feel. I can tell you that they're not too excited about the Russians getting in on this like they've started to."
The tanned man saw the beginnings of a faint irony in the smile on the other's face. Patronising.
"What don't they like?"
"Don't get me wrong. The movement is all for arms supplies, even from the man in the moon. As long as there's no strings attached. What do I say when they ask what we're supposed to hand over in return? Some of the lads'll think maybe it's too much of an assembly line thing. They wonder what we had to give to get this kind of support."
The tanned man looked directly at the playwright.
"Does it really matter to the active service units where the stuff comes from? It's a command council decision. I haven't traded away the place to get this stuff. And that consideration has really nothing to do with either of us, has it? I'm here to monitor things. I have to report to them at some point otherwise they won't hand over any more," he added.
"Risk," the playwright said.
"Everything has risk. It was even a risk trying to persuade the council to go along with this scheme. The drop to the trawler went off without a hitch, didn't it? The So
viet boat didn't pick up on anyone. And they're stuffed with monitoring gear. It went off perfectly. The guns were in use and even safely back across the border within a week."
"Could be the Yanks are stringing them along and waiting for a big haul so they can tip off the Brits. I read where those satellites can read the paper you have in your hand from up there," the playwright said.
Testing my patience, the tanned man thought, to see how far he can go with me, how much he can find out.
"Could be," he began. "But we're not talking of sheer numbers of weapons. The risk of detection is not as high as you might think. It's a matter of having the right weapon at the right time. Look at all the publicity about the grenade launcher. Let them think we have these things coming out our ears. They think we have any amount of nightsights. That's what works. Effectiveness, economy. There's more yet."
"Another toy?" the playwright asked.
"You don't need to know details. Just get your guys to set up a car to take something the size of a suitcase. The guidance and the sights fit into the suitcase too. It looks like a typewriter case. Light, portable; about twenty-five pounds."
"A suitcase?" The playwright had become very attentive.
"Have you heard of a Sagger?"
"I've heard of a shagger. I've met a lot of them…"
"They were big in the Egypt and Israel war in seventy-three."
"What is it?"
"It's a guided missile, an anti-tank missile. It'll go a mile and a half. If it hits dead-on, it'll go through 400 mil plate."
The tanned man watched the playwright lose his battle to keep his composure.
"Jesus, Mary and Holy Saint Joseph. Is it here?"
"It was in, as of eleven o'clock last night."
"Same stunt?" the playwright whispered.
"Same route, different boat. I told you they're serious about this. It's a whole new approach. You've missed out on the global picture here. They're peeved with the Americans sending in stuff to Afghanistan. There's Central America. We're all part of the big picture. It's not just a local squabble."
"So it could be released a mile and a half from target?" the playwright asked.
"It's proven accurate to that. It needs two men, one to sight and control as it's in flight, the other to set up behind. It's wire-guided. Not for space cadets. It's reliable. It works."
The playwright frowned. He wondered yet again what this Yank, or whatever he was, had as a stake in this. The rumour was that the Yank was actually Irish, even born here. Another part of the mythology which had gathered around his arrival was that he was a tycoon businessman. That was too much to hope for, that image of Ireland's emigrant sons renewing the struggle. In any event, the council had put their suspicions aside and allowed this newcomer some rope. So far, to their astonishment, he had delivered. Although they had no way of checking, few could doubt that indeed he had enough links to set up the deliveries right from the Soviet Union. Still, no one could fathom his motives enough to allay their suspicions. He hadn't approached any of the movement in the States. A search on him had turned up things that the leadership had kept to themselves, causing the rumours to fly around even more. Some suspected a plant, but again they were discredited when the guns went into use in the North.
As the playwright tried to digest this news, the tanned man observed with some scorn. Resentful, befuddled. This remnant of a green peasant Ireland was out of his depth.
The playwright and his like didn't want a rational solution to the mess, because they wouldn't be the kings of the pygmies any more afterwards. He had no commitment to unloading the mess, the national inferiority complex, the energy deflected into 'politics,' the bitterness. Like any neurotic, the playwright didn't see how he was clinging to the neurosis itself.
"And will you be wanting those couriers still…?" the playwright asked.
"You sound like you want to tell me there's some hitch," the tanned man said.
"It's not a hitch."
"Well, what's the big deal then?"
"There's no big deal. I hope you've got a car lined up yourself for this. I don't have anything in the garage right now. Seeing as you don't like Mercedes and all that."
"Get your guys to boost something a lot less conspicuous next time, that's all I said. You ditched it like I said, right?"
"Almost."
"What does that mean?"
"Some of the boys are down from Belfast and I had to give them a car. The only one in the garage was the Merc, so I gave it to them for today and tomorrow. What's the point of torching a perfectly good car?" the playwright answered.
"Look. You know the cars are for this operation." The tanned man's voice began to rise.
"I know, I know. Don't be getting yourself-"
"Shut up for a minute. I say what goes here. Just because I say dump that car, that doesn't mean it's yours and you can loan the god-damn thing out. Get it back off those hoods straightaway. Tell them to boost their own transport if they have to. I want this operation watertight. Get it back and burn it, OK?"
The playwright held his palms up in mock surrender.
"Anyway. I have the guy I need for this one. Good cover and a car thrown in as well, all legal. I want you to use the gas-the petrol tank for the package."
The playwright finished his drink and got up to leave.
"Better get the car to me soon. Can't do much at the garage until they have the exact dimensions. It's a very precise thing. The cars are not as big over here," the playwright said.
The tanned man turned aside the veiled jibe and merely nodded his head. You must be kidding, he thought. Whip off the gas tank and secure the thing inside another one. No doubt this loser favoured putting it on his shoulder and running across the fields. Or taking chances on the roads even when they didn't know which roads the Brits were likely to crater from one day to the next. The British Army had infra-red and thermal surveillance as well as roving patrols out in the fields at night.
When the playwright left, the tanned man took up the newspaper again. Much to the chagrin of the barman, he ordered a coffee. Gerry was twenty years in the trade and still couldn't get used to serving up tea and cake in a public house.
As the lunch time crowd began coming in, Gerry noticed the well-dressed fella get his coat and leave. The man crossed Duke Street and entered the shopping arcade. He went to a phone booth, deposited the money and dialled.
"I'm calling about the matter we discussed on the weekend. It's ready to go."
"Have you got a day on it yet?"
"No. But I'll know by tomorrow evening probably. It'll be your fellow doing it again."
The other person paused.
"Is there a problem with that?"
"Not really. We might need to let some things blow over."
"Like?"
"That business about the student. My fellow balked a bit. It scared him a lot."
"Is that it?"
"We have an irritation which prevents things from, shall we say, healing over. The dick who's looking into it. Not what you'd call a sleuth, but I have a bad feeling about him. Deceptive kind. Behind the scenes."
"Did you spin oil? the drug thing?"
"Yes. I think it's working."
"Well, we can't wait forever."
"No. I'm thinking that we should maybe nudge more things on him, set him going on the trail."
"That's your affair. Just make it work. We have to work this thing to show we can deliver. Then we can relax."
While the tanned man left the arcade, the person he had called sat wondering what to do about Minogue.
For his part, the playwright was not a happy man. He sat in a taxi which had been caught in a traffic jam in College Green. A bloody bomb scare, wasn't that funny? The playwright did not like the man he had met in the Bailey. He didn't like him one bit. He was a snotty, smart, pushy, well-to-do Yank. Telling him who he could give out one of the cars to. What was this well-connected Yank going to get out of this anyway? What would the R
ussians get out of it? Surely they knew that Irish people wouldn't accept their way even if they did help to win in the Six Counties. Although it was tougher and tougher to get in the stuff from the States, at least it didn't alienate the rank and file. What if the Yank was an undercover, a set-up?
It had come hard to the playwright to be told by the leadership to give this man all assistance. It might even be that this new thing could change everything. The taxi inched around College Green, under the portals of the Bank of Ireland and the haughty Trinity College. He smiled grimly at the sight: god-damn it to hell, he decided, if that institution can claim to have any say in the business of Irish liberation. He knew then what he would do. The preparations would go ahead, but the weapon would find a different route to the North. We'll test out this fancy scheme, he thought. Well and good if they make it through, then he'll have been wrong and he'll admit it. No one would blame him in the end for being so vigilant. He'd find a way to get the weapon in by his own route.
More and more as he thought about it, the playwright began to believe that this was the acid test. The Brits would have stepped up searches with the latest incidents. Any number of things could banjax this whiz kid's operation and all its glamour. A tip-off was the worst danger, of course. Tip-offs. At least such betrayals sent the command council scurrying around trying to find the traitors and made them rely again on the proven loyalty of men like himself. Tip-offs, yes. A constant worry, something that high-flying boyos with their shady deals overlooked.
The taxi-man swore long and loud.
"Everything'd be just dandy if people just knew the ropes in this city," he muttered. "The trouble is you have drivers who think they know bloody short-cuts and fancy moves. They're the ones that jam up the shagging place when a street is closed with a bomb-scare. Fuckin' ujits, pardon me language."
The driver switched off the engine. Exactly, the playwright thought. The war is being fought by Irishmen and women here in Ireland. For their own homes and families, their own country. Ordinary people like this taxi-driver, born and bred here. Living here, enduring, persevering. And the Yank, or whatever he was…? The playwright didn't need to deliberate any longer. He caught sight of the tired face of the driver as he turned in the seat to share his exasperation. Right, he thought, certain now about the Yank: our Ireland, not his.