The Dead Yard

by Adrian McKinty

  A door opened at the rear of the boat. A young man in a bathrobe humming to the music. Curly-haired, blond, early twenties, maybe even younger, an Eton pugilist’s nose, a handsome face with deep green eyes.

  He froze when he saw us.

  “What the fuuu . . .” he said in complete terror.

  “Put your hands up,” Touched whispered.

  The kid began to tremble.

  “What do you want?” he asked in a frightened British accent.

  Touched put his fingers to his lips.

  “Put your fucking hands up. Where’s General Blackwell? Is he sleeping?” Touched whispered.

  “Are you the IRA?” the kid asked.

  “Where the fuck is he?” Touched asked, louder this time.

  “He w-went to Boston,” the kid said.

  “What?”

  “Boston, he’s in Boston.”

  “Fuck,” Touched muttered to himself and then turned to me.

  “You and J., make sure he’s not lying.”

  Jackie and I searched the boat, but the kid was alone.

  Jackie didn’t see me pick up a pen and slip it into my pocket.

  My own wee plan B.

  “Nobody here,” Jackie said.

  “What’s your name, boy?” Touched asked the kid.

  “Peter.”

  “Peter Blackwell?” Touched asked. “You’re his son?”

  “Yes. I’m the youngest,” he said, too frightened even to lie.

  “Keep those hands up,” Touched said, and he turned to Gerry. “What do you want me to do?” Gerry shook his head.

  “When does your father get back?” Gerry asked.

  “I don’t know, I think tomorrow, he’s meeting the crew and they’re all supposed to come up tomorrow.”

  “We could wait overnight, get the jump on him tomorrow,”Touched whispered to Gerry.

  Gerry looked doubtful.

  “How many crew?” he asked Peter.

  “I don’t know, I think five or six,” Peter said honestly. If it had been me, I would have said a dozen.

  Gerry sat down on the edge of a foldout bed.

  “I think we’ll have to abort, the better part of valor and all that, six men plus Blackwell, it’s got all the makings of a disaster. We’ll have to shut this one down,” he said.

  Touched was furious, his face contorting with rage and frustration.

  “No way, no way. I planned this out meticulously. We cannot afford another defeat. The way things have been going, this will be the end of us,” Touched said.

  “What do you suggest?” Gerry asked.

  “Kill him as a message. Or the original fucking plan, take him instead. Even better this way, exert real moral pressure on the Brits. They’ll cave, fucking Blair will cave.”

  Gerry considered it.

  “We would ask for the same prisoners?”

  “Absolutely. Same deal. Give them forty-eight hours and we let the kid go,” Touched said.

  “I don’t have anything to do with Northern Ireland, I’ve never been there or anything,” Peter pleaded.

  “Shut up. You’re coming with us,” Touched said.

  If he came with us, he was dead. I knew it and Peter knew it. It was not likely that the Brits would give in to this kind of intimidation, especially not a new prime minister who was perceived as weak on foreign policy.

  “Fuck it, there’s no point bringing him. This wasn’t the plan. He’s no good to us at all. Look at him. He’s barely out of his teens,” I said.

  I could feel Touched’s look. I turned and sure enough those cold gray eyes were boring into me. After all the good credibility I had built up overnight, I had made him suspicious yet again. Goddamnit, Michael, that mouth of yours is going to get you killed one day.

  “Yeah, please, you can’t take me. No one gives a shit about me, just leave me and I won’t say anything, I promise, just let me go please,” Peter begged.

  “Shut up, Englishman. We decide, and you shut the fuck up,” I yelled and smacked him hard on the skull with the butt of the revolver.He crumpled to the deck like a Chinese lantern folding up. “I think you killed him,” Jackie said in horror.Touched leaned down and checked the pulse at his throat.

  “Nah, he’s alive.”

  “Well, what do you think, take him or leave him?” I asked Touched cheerfully.

  He didn’t answer me. He stood, nodded to Gerry.

  “Let’s get this bloody show on the road,” he said and nodded at Jackie and me to pick him up. We lifted him. The second person I’d had to carry like this in twenty-four hours.

  “What do you think?” Gerry asked sotto voce.

  “Gerry, you take a situation. You roll with the punch. I think it’s ok. I think we’re finally doing things right,” Touched said.

  Jackie and I carried him out onto the deck.

  “You think we should get some of his clothes? We can’t really keep him in his robe?” I asked Touched.

  Gerry shrugged, looked at Kit, then back at me.

  “You might as well grab a pair of trousers or something,”Gerry said.

  I ran to the rear cabin, closed the door, wrote “FBI Michael Forsythe Gerry McCaghan’s cabin Maine” prominently on one of the walls, grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and ran out.

  They had Peter in the dory now. I handed Gerry the jeans and helped him into the motorboat.

  A tight squeeze but we got to shore without incident. We lifted Peter out of the dory, dressed him, tied him up, gagged him, and chucked him in the back of the van.

  Touched watching me every step of the way, very wary of me again.

  Touched locked the van’s doors from the outside and made me sit in the back with Jackie and Peter.

  Gerry drove so that Touched could keep an eye on me.

  But I chilled and didn’t do anything else stupid to raise his suspicions. Instead, I lay down on the floor, put my rolled-up jacket under my head, and pretended to sleep for the four or five hours it took us to get up to Gerry’s cabin in the woods of Maine.

  We finally stopped.

  The van doors opened.

  An exhausted stumble-around in the darkness, a big house somewhere deep in the forest. I could tell we were miles from the nearest town because the stars were brilliant and unobscured.

  Touched took care of me first. He led me upstairs to a bedroom and handcuffed my foot to a cast-iron bed.

  “Piss pot under the bed if you need it, see you in the morning,” he said brusquely and left.

  * * *

  Later. Noiseless outside. Then a door banging at an outhouse or a barn. Men speaking.

  “. . . do for him” is all I can catch.

  Inside, the rest of them, excited, nervous.

  Talking, laughing, timber chairs scraping on the timber floor.

  The voices in murmurs. A few loud good nights then footsteps on the stairs. A tiny voice singing to herself in French.Sonia going to bed.

  A door closing. Movement, and then one by one everyone else comes upstairs.

  Jackie first, muttering to himself. Then Kit, almost making no sound at all. Finally Gerry, wheezing as he goes.

  And the last man up. Touched. I flinch as he stops outside my door but he doesn’t come in.

  A few more timber creaks and groans but in an hour the house is quiet. Fantastically silent. A deep nothingness.

  Just the room, the bed, the window, me.

  Starlight.

  A hill cutting off the bottom of the constellation Pegasus. The smell of wood, resin, old sheets, rusting iron, mold spores, damp.

  Peace distills into my soul.

  And I know that this is the place for the final chapter.

  This is the place where it will end. Where Samantha will be avenged or I will die.

  Here in the woods. In blades and bullets, with the seasons poised as they approach the equinox. I can see it, because I will make it.

  I’ll be there, outside in the cold air. Under the trees.

&n
bsp; Birds wheeling diagonals. An iodine sky. Chevroned pines. Oaks as old as the republic itself. Corpses sprawled on the cold earth.

  It will be done. The diorama of death around me.

  I don’t know how. But I will make it happen. And though I’m bound and watched and unarmed, I wouldn’t be in their shoes.

  No. Only her will I spare the slaughterhouse. The screams, the blood. The salt tears dripping into the wet earth.

  Only her.

  It will be terrible. I promise. The owl of Minerva will fly afraid. And miles from here a black bear will stand on her back legs and sniff the air, alarmed, smelling the carnage coming to her on the soft south wind. Yes.

  And I smile in my sleep and dream it close.

  10: BETRAYAL IN BELFAST

  Haze smothers a distant mountain. The sun excites a million trees. Butterflies and blue jays fluttering above the window ledge and more birds in the discased vacuum around the house. Cirrus clouds, vapor trails, the sky the blue of a hangman’s suit.

  I flex my fingers. Sit up, rub at the handcuff around my right ankle.

  I’m a city boy. I don’t know the names of trees, but there are several different types, from the valley bottoms to the hilltops, absorbing the topography in a blanket of green, brown, and black. An occasional firebreak or clearing or winding trail.

  The air is filled with oxygen. We are not in the high country or I would feel it. We’re in the forest and in fact we are near water. Saltwater. We’re close to the coast or a broad bay or an inlet. I can smell the Atlantic. Something that gives me comfort when every morning I wake in a different room and I’m a different person in a different type of jeopardy.

  I haven’t been plain, uncomplicated Michael Forsythe for five years—back in the good old days. Not that they were ever any bloody good.

  I check the handcuff and the cast-iron bed for a weak link.Nothing.

  But knowing that we’re near the sea helps. That, and the message I left in the Elizabeth Regina. And, above all, the feeling that this is going to be the day.

  Aye.

  Today, I wake under discipline of war. Today, I will take the fight to the enemy. Peter Blackwell has forty-eight hours before Touched will murder him and I have only the same time before doubts concerning my identity arrive from Belfast.

  So now is the time to act.

  Bearings are the first key. From the bed, a limited view of woods and hills and an old disused railroad line almost completely recolonized by nature, and indeed, in the trees behind an outhouse there’s an old railway car minus its bogies and roof. But the cabin itself is not the humble dwelling one associates with the presidents on our low-denomination bills. This place is enormous. It bends round in an L shape and there are two floors and at least three different outbuildings. I wouldn’t call it a cabin, it’s more a log-hewn summerhouse. I don’t know how many acres of woods go with the place, but I’m sure we’re talking many millions of dollars for the entire estate.

  That also gives me hope.

  If the feds had been looking for a humble little Unabomber hut that was off the books, we’d be fucked; but this monstrosity couldn’t have escaped the notice of a tax-hungry local authority. It might take them a while to get here, but eventually they would, hopefully not to find the two rotting corpses of the kid and me.

  In the kitchen below me a cheerful voice begins singing in Quebecois French.

  “Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse. Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse tout en rond.”

  She hasn’t a care in the world.

  Doesn’t Sonia know that Touched will kill that boy as easily as chopping wood? Are they all in goddamn denial about what they’ve done?

  A knock at the door.

  “Come in,” I say.

  Kit enters wearing a black dress and DM boots. She hasn’t slept well, and her eyelids are heavy and dark. It only accentuates her loveliness. She’s carrying a tray with breakfast.Fresh croissants and coffee.

  She closes the door and sits on the edge of the mattress.She puts the tray on a little table next to the bed.

  “Touched told me that we were going to have to keep you under restraint for a day or two. Apparently you said something on the boat that made him suspicious. I didn’t hear you say anything, but he’s always . . . Anyway. I’m really really sorry, Sean,” she says and takes my hand in hers, squeezes it.

  “Touched is crazy, he’s completely crazy,” I tell her.

  “Jackie and Dad both pleaded your case, but he didn’t listen to them,” Kit says, and her fingers are cold and soft in my rough, scarred palm.

  “Is this breakfast?” I ask.

  “Oh yeah, of course, Sonia made these croissants from scratch, they’re delicious, and there’s maple syrup if you want to dip them. It’s local. And then there’s coffee.”

  “Thanks, I’m quite hungry,” I say.

  I take a sip of coffee. It’s hot and good.

  “Nice.”

  “I made it,” she says, pleased.

  “So, uh, where’s the boy?” I ask her.

  “He’s out in the smokehouse. He’s ok. He’s, like, frightened, as you would expect him to be, but Sonia and I brought him breakfast and we told him that it was only going to be for a day or two and then we’d let him go.”

  I shake my head from side to side.

  “Touched is going to kill him. I guarantee you that,” I tell her.

  “No. He wouldn’t do that. Even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t, Dad wouldn’t let him. And Dad’s in charge,” Kit says, but she bites her lip a little nervously.

  “Kit, Gerry knows and Touched knows that he’s going to have to die. The State Department and Her Majesty’s fucking Foreign Office will not humiliate themselves by doing a deal with terrorists just to save a general’s son. And when the deadline passes, Touched will not let him go. He’ll kill him or he knows the Sons of Cuchulainn will be finished.”

  Kit’s brow furrows and I can see she’s digesting what I’ve told her. But now is not the time to push it. Plant the seed now, fertilize it later.

  “Where is here by the way? Where are we?” I ask.

  “The cabin, silly.”

  “Honey, I know, but where’s the cabin?”

  “We’re about ten miles from Belfast, Maine. Of course, when he was looking to build somewhere, Dad had to buy land up here because of the local connection. We should take you into town, show you this Belfast, and you can compare it to yours. There couldn’t be two more different places on the planet Earth.”

  “I’m sure. That sounds like fun, I’d love to go into town.Could we go today?” I ask eagerly.

  Kit shakes her head sadly. She takes a knot out of her bob and hunts for a hair clip to keep the fringe out of her eyes.

  “Nah, I don’t think so, I don’t think Touched would let me take you,” she says.

  “Oh, that’s a shame, well, you could always ask anyway, he can only say no,” I suggest.

  “Maybe,” she says.

  “So how often do you guys come up here?”

  “Two, three times a year.”

  I fake a groan and take a sip of the coffee.

  “What’s the matter?” Kit asks.

  “It’s nothing. My leg hurts a little bit.”

  “Your good leg or your . . .” she asks delicately.

  “The handcuff around my ankle’s been cutting off the circulation and the cramp has been killing me. You couldn’t do me a favor, could you, Kit?”

  “What? Anything.”

  I touch her wrist. She shivers.

  “Well, I know Touched doesn’t want me going into town for obvious reasons, but you could just ask him if I could go for a walk, you could come with me and if he wanted to, he could have my wrists handcuffed for extra security. I’m really sore, I really need a walk to stretch my legs. It’s pretty painful.”

  I bite into the croissant, dip it into the maple syrup, and take another mouthful.

  “This is very go
od.”

  “I’ll tell Sonia you like them.”

  “And will you ask Touched if I can go for a walk? I’m in total agony.”

  “When do you want to go?”

  “After breakfast.”

  Kit gets to her feet.

  “I’ll see what I can do, we’ll apply moral pressure. All of us think it’s disgraceful the way he’s treating you.”

  She leans in and kisses me on the cheek.

  “Back in five minutes,” she says.

  She leaves the room and I hear her go downstairs. There’s a conversation and then she comes back with Touched. His hair is wet, he’s wrapped in a towel and dressing gown and wearing flip-flops.

  “What’s the matter, Sean? I thought you were ok with me keeping an eye on you for a day or two,” he says.

  “I am. I just need a wee walk, you can handcuff me if you want. But I’m dying of cramps here, I only have one good leg anyway and the circulation is being cut off in the other. Half an hour, forty-five minutes, just a wee stretch.”

  Touched shrugs. “Ugh, I don’t see why not. Kit, go get my trousers from downstairs, will ya?”

  Kit leaves.

  “So, how’s everything going?” I ask him.

  “It’s going well.”

  “Did you make your call?”

  “I did. I told them they had forty-eight hours to release the Newark Three, or the kid dies.”

  “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “I think they’ll release them. Those boys are not important and the Irish community has been lobbying Clinton to let them go. Win for everybody. Clinton looks compassionate, the Newark Three get out, and we establish ourselves overnight as players.”

  Kit comes back with Touched’s pants. He takes out a set of keys and hands them to her.

  “Ok, Kit. Take that cuff off his ankle, let him stretch, pull his pants up, put his shoes on, and then cuff his hands in front of him. You can take him for a walk. Don’t get out of sight of the house, and remember he’s under observation, so if he does any funny stuff you give a holler and we’ll come running.”

  Touched takes the 9mm from his dressing gown pocket and holds it while Kit uncuffs me and lets me put my shoes on.