The Dead Yard

by Adrian McKinty

  “Reagan did it,” Kit said.

  I shook my head.

  “That was a crazy one-off illegal scheme conducted by a rogue colonel. The British and American governments never make deals for hostages. Peter is not going to be exchanged for anyone. It’s not going to happen, they’re not going to release the Newark Three. I promise you that. What do you think is going to happen after that? I’ll tell you. With his credibility on the line, Touched is going to have to kill Peter and you are going to be complicit in that boy’s murder.”

  “You, too,” she said.

  “Me, too. All of us. For as sure as I am standing here, Touched is going to murder him.”

  Kit shuddered. “I don’t think he’d really go through with it, it’s more a sort of a bluff, like in poker.”

  “Touched has killed many people. Murdered many people. You know that woman who ran the All Things Brit shop? Touched killed her the night before we came up here. That’s the cleanup Jackie was talking about. Touched raped her, tortured her, and then he slit her open from her vagina to her throat and he watched while she gasped for breath and bled to death.”

  All the levity had vanished from her expression now. I had gotten her attention.

  I let it sink in and then continued.

  “Touched is a sociopath. He’d kill you, me, anyone who gets in his way. He’s a lunatic. If you don’t believe me about the woman, ask Jackie. He was there, he saw what Touched did. He threw up when he saw it. Touched tortured her and it took her hours to die. And that kid is going to get the same fate. How old do you think he is, twenty, nineteen? And what was his crime? Nothing.”

  “They said they chased her out of town,” Kit muttered, the words sounding ridiculous even to her.

  “Chased her out of town? Are you joking? You don’t believe that. You’re cleverer than that. Chased her out of town? Is this a Western? You didn’t believe it when they said that and you don’t believe it now. Touched killed her. And Gerry and Jackie and I threw her body in the back of the van, dug a hole in the salt pan on Plum Island, and buried her. Buried what was left of her.”

  Kit looked stunned. She must have known some of this, perhaps most of it, but she’d been hiding it from herself. In denial about her father’s business, about its ugly side. All she wanted to do was live in that big house and surf and spin romantic yarns about Ireland. Wear the green and sing rebel songs and hero-worship her freedom fighter and his old comrade-in-arms Touched McGuigan. But she knew. She wasn’t stupid. She was wavering, there were tears in her eyes again, this time certainly not tears of joy.

  “The British woman wasn’t the first, not by a long shot; Touched told us that he killed a woman last year that he’d been having problems with. He said that in front of Jackie andyour da, if you want to check that out too. Believe me, Kit, when this goes wrong, which it will, Touched is going to torture and kill Peter, who looks as if he’s a goddamn hippie who never did any sentient creature any harm in his whole bloody life.”

  Kit wiped away her tears and looked at me imperiously.

  “My dad won’t let him kill that boy,” she said.

  “He let him kill that woman.”

  “She was an FBI agent.”

  “That’s what Touched says. You talked to her. Did she seem like an agent to you? And so what the fuck if she was? Did she deserve that? Rape and torture and death?”

  She shook her head.

  “What are you saying, exactly, Sean?” Kit asked warily.

  I took her hand and looked her right in the watery baby blues.

  “We can stop this, Kit, you and me, we can stop it,” I said.

  “How?”

  “You’ve got to make some excuse and drive into Belfast and call the FBI. They’ll come and they’ll arrest all of us and, Jesus, we’ll do time for kidnap, but at least it won’t be murder, and that poor lad will go free,” I said.

  “Why do I have to do it? Why do I have to betray everybody?” she asked. Indignant that the act would fall to her, but not, it seemed, outraged by the act itself.

  “I can’t do it, how could I, like this,” I explained.

  “Yes, you could, you could run away right now. I could say you hit me and knocked me down and you could run. You could get to the outskirts of Belfast in a couple of hours and I wouldn’t have to tell on anyone.”

  “Kit. Look at me. Don’t be ridiculous, with these bloody cuffs on and a prosthetic foot I wouldn’t get a quarter of a mile, Touched and Jackie would find me and kill me.”

  Kit let go of my hand and stood up.

  “We better be getting back now,” she said coolly.

  In that coolness was ambivalence and ultimately death. I hadn’t closed yet and I was running out of time.

  “Haven’t you been listening? Only you can save his life.Tell them you want to get supplies, take Sonia’s car and drive into Belfast, go to the police station and tell them to contact the FBI.”

  She turned her back to me so I couldn’t see her face and her emotions. Her shoulders were shaking in big sobs. I remained quiet. Letting it all sink in.

  She wiped her face, looked at me.

  “Even if I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t; the FBI would come here and they’d kill us all like they did with Waco. I wouldn’t be saving anybody’s life. We’d all fucking die,” Kit said.

  “No, you wouldn’t, you’d be ok, we’d all be ok.”

  “My dad would go to prison and I’d go to prison,” she said, tears rolling down those white rose-hip cheeks.

  “You wouldn’t go to prison. You wouldn’t serve a day. I promise you that, Kit. And your dad would get a deal too.Touched is the one they want,” I insisted.

  “How do you know? How can you promise anything?”

  I stood up and put my arms around her.

  It had to be the truth.

  The truth would show her that it wasn’t bullshit. That although I had deceived them all, I wasn’t lying about my feelings for her. The truth would be a clear light illuminating the way out of this quagmire, this goddamn nightmare.

  The truth would free me and her from the history that was weighing us down, breaking us, sinking us.

  And besides, she’d already proven to me that she could keep a secret. She hadn’t told them that I’d been in the British Army, not even when Touched said I was on probation or when we’d gone to the Elizabeth to get a general from that army. She’d already joined me in the conspiracy against him. She was flaky, she was young, but she was loyal to her own system of morality. I was asking her to do a betrayal but it was for the right reasons and with the best of intentions. And I could tell she hated Touched. If I handled this right, it wouldn’t be me versus Gerry.It would be me versus Touched, and that contest I could easily win.

  Especially this way. This would be the trump card, me put- ting my life in her lap. This would push her over the abyss.

  I backed away, put my hand under her chin, and tilted it up to face me.

  “Kit, I promise you, the authorities will be lenient with you and your dad. I personally will see to it.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, puzzled.

  “The woman Touched murdered was working for British Intelligence and the FBI,” I said.

  “How—”

  “Because I am too. They put me in that bar in Revere in the hope that I would run into you and win your trust. They got me that crappy job in Salisbury working with another British agent. I was brought here specifically to infiltrate your group, to stop you carrying out atrocities, to prevent a further escalation of violence in Ulster, and to help save the peace process. Everything I’ve done is for Ireland and for a peaceful future.”

  Her lip quivered, her mouth opened, but she said nothing.

  “It’s true, Kit. I’ve been associated with the FBI in one form or another for the last five years. My name’s Michael, not Sean. Everything I’ve told you about myself is made up. But everything I’ve told you about me and you is true. I love you and it ha
ppened the way I said it happened. That night in Revere when they tried to kill your dad. I care about you, Kit. I want you to do the right thing. If you let Touched kill Peter, it’ll destroy you. It will ruin your life before it’s even begun. You’d be killing yourself and your father and Sonia and Jackie. All of us will die because of Touched’s insanity. He’s a fucking twist, Kit. He is touched. He was so crazy that they exiled him. You know what he would do to me if he found out I was an inside man for the Brits? That woman in Newburyport would consider herself lucky she wasn’t me.”

  Kit walked backwards away from me, as if I’d punched her in the stomach. All the color out of her face.

  “You, you, you’re a liar,” she said in such a quiet voice that I wasn’t sure she was speaking at all.

  “I did lie, Kit, I had to. But you yourself said the ends justify the means. Remember that? We can save Peter, we can save your father and all of us,” I said.

  “You lied to me.”

  “I had to. If I hadn’t, there would be no one here to stop this madness. Kit, come on. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

  “What?” she muttered.

  “Listen to me. Pay attention. Say you’re having your period and you need tampons, Touched won’t question that; get the car, drive into Belfast, and call the police. Tell them to come after midnight when everyone’s asleep. There won’t be any gunplay. We’ll all get arrested and—”

  “You won’t get arrested,” she interrupted.

  “No, I won’t. But Touched will and he’ll go to jail for life for his many fucking crimes and the rest of you will get a few years and be out again. Think of the alternative. Peter dead and the rest of you, haunted forever by a senseless killing, on the run from the police. And it won’t stop there. Touched will kill and kill again until he’s caught. He’s like a virus. That twisted brain will keep on killing and infecting other brains with his evil. It’ll be too late for your father then, he’ll be an accomplice and he’ll get locked up forever, or worse.”

  “We’ll all be locked up now under your plan,” she said softly.

  She was forcing herself to be controlled, her eyes big and broken and on the edge of an emotional abyss. How could I do this to her? How could I? Easy. I’d really no other choice.

  “No. Only for kidnap. Nothing else,” I said quickly. “I’ll testify that it was Touched’s plan and everyone else went along under duress. A few years, Kit. That’s all. Believe me.”

  “Believe you?” she said, her voice breaking.

  “Yes. Believe me, you have to do it. It’s the right thing to do. The way of life is better than the way of death,” I said, but she still couldn’t take it in.

  “Your real name is Michael?”

  “It is. I am from Belfast, but I’ve been living in America since 1992.”

  “Working as a policeman?”

  “No. It’s complicated. It’s a complicated situation. Can’t you see? I’m risking everything by telling you this. You get that, don’t you? I’ve taken my life and put it in your hands like a fallen bird. You can save it or you can squeeze it out. My life is the bird in your hands.”

  “I don’t know, Se—Michael,” she said, wavering.

  “I need you, Kit. I need you to do this for me. And I need you because I love you and I want to spend my life with you. I want to make you happy.”

  She laughed bitterly and wiped streams of tears away from her cheeks.

  “You’re not making me happy now,” she sobbed.

  “No, I know. But it’s only a little bit of pain and it’ll all be over. You’ll have to be brave. You’ll have to be smart. You can’t overact. You can’t make them suspicious.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked in a monotone.

  “Come back with me and tell Sonia you’re having your period. And then tell your da that you’ll need the car. Tell them in a couple of hours, a long time after you’ve talked to me, so they don’t even associate the idea with me.”

  She stood.

  “It’s too much. All of this. It’s too much. My head hurts,”

  she said.

  “No. You’re doing great. You’re doing so well, Kit. So well,”

  I said.

  She stepped backwards over the fallen tree, away from me.

  “I need time to think,” she said.

  “Take all the time you need.”

  I leaned over to hold her hand. She flinched and backed farther away.

  “Don’t touch me,” she seethed.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I fucking need time to think about all this, for Christ’s sake. Why did you have to tell me today? This was supposed to be the greatest day of my life. This is the thing I’ve been looking forward to for years, when I would do it, with the right man. And now this is the fucking worst day of my life. My head feels like it’s going to explode.”

  “Take your time, Kit, take your time. I’ll sit here.”

  Kit nodded and stormed off into the trees without looking back. I waited a minute, then five minutes. I sat down on the big fallen tree trunk. Would she come round? I didn’t know.

  It was my only play. I had no regrets. I had to do it.

  I lay down on the mossy bark and waited; waiting still as the wind picked up and it grew colder and I watched the cirrus clouds and cerulean sky give way to the first black line of the storm front that was marching ominously south from Canada.

  * * *

  A twig snapped farther down the trail in the direction of the pond. And of course I knew what it meant. Goddamnit. It meant I was going to die.

  The birds were quiet.

  I pulled up my trousers, tightened my belt, and got into a crouch.

  Another twig snapped in the same place.

  Now I was certain of it.

  She’d told them what I’d told her. And they were coming to kill me. The twig snapping was the person Touched had sent to circle around me and lie in wait ahead of me on the path leading to the pond. They would come from behind.Maybe they’d even goose me out, like beaters after pheasants— they’d barrel down from the house with their guns drawn, screaming profanities and yelling blue murder, I’d run for the trail, and there he’d be, pointing a big hand cannon at my face. Jackie, more than likely, since he was the nimblest on his feet.

  Gerry and Touched from the back. Jackie ahead.

  No Kit, though. Touched would make Kit stay at the cabin with Sonia. There would be no arguing this one.

  I listened but the woods were quiet.

  It didn’t matter. I was certain.

  Yeah, Jack up front, the big lads at my back, probably coming ninety degrees apart from the northwest and northeast.

  I slid off the branch, crawled into the leaves of the forest floor, and scanned the trees.

  Waited.

  Nothing.

  Of course, that crack could have been a deer standing on a sapling, a squirrel doing a suicide leap from a tree, a dry branch expanding with the heat of the day.

  But it wasn’t.

  It was goddamn Jackie or I’m a Dutchman.

  I shrugged off my leather jacket, which Kit had draped over my shoulders, stripping to the dirty matte black T-shirt underneath. I slithered away from a log and towards the trail, mucking myself up as much as possible. Any camouflage would do. Even half-assed last-minute stuff.

  Kit, oh God, Kit. You’ve signed my death warrant. It was hard. You had to choose between me and duty and you picked the noble cause over me.

  Still, you don’t kill Michael Forsythe that easy.

  And I had several things in my favor. The forest was dark, I was on to their game, and they were a hodgepodge bunch of hoods. An inexperienced one, an obese one, and an overconfident crazy one. Whereas I was a Grade A survivor. The bad penny that always turns up. The cockroach that will not die.The man who took down the empire of Darkey White and cleaned the clock of his goons and lackeys.

  I slid through the leaves and the dirt, down an incline.

>   Keep your head down and don’t look up. Slide, don’t crawl. I slithered over roots and through a bramble bush and a mulchy pile of rotting leaves.

  Gunning for you, Jack.

  The weak link.

  The woods were as still as woods get and the silence was an alarm. They were close and closing. If it had been night, I could have hid and waited them out, but it was day and I had to move. Follow the slope downhill to the path to the pond.

  Oh, Kit.

  Put you in the God’s-eye view. What do you hope will happen? They capture me? Or I get away?

  I slid over a rock and down a gravel embankment that was steeper than it looked. There’d been a fire or flood or tree fall because the earth was frictionless and scoured of bushes and roots. I slipped faster and faster and finally fell, tumbling over my feet until I reached the bottom of the slope at a small clearing.

  I’d made a lot of noise. I tensed.

  But they hadn’t seen me.

  I got to a crouch and listened for them. Again, nothing. I was now about a hundred feet from where I’d started, from where Kit said that I’d be. I was cuffed and alone and there were three of them with guns, but I might just . . .

  If I kept going in the same direction eventually I’d come to a road. Maybe flag a car. Of course, if they lost me, they’d have to clear out of the cabin. Flee to some other bolt-hole Gerry had stashed away. They’d be in disarray. They’d know that they were fugitives, that Gerry couldn’t return to his cozy life and his big beach house. Would they kill the general’s son and then go? Would they take him with them? Would the dissent be strong enough for Gerry to decide that the game was over? Would he surrender?

  I had to put the pressure on. I had to get away.

  Not just for me, but for that eejit Peter, too, and for her.

  For all of them, come to that. Touched was as much a danger to them as he was to me.

  He was a real dead-ender. He’d bring them all down in flames. He’d make them drink the Kool-Aid.

  A white shirt in the trees fifty feet to my left. Gerry, carrying a massive double-barreled shotgun, wading through the woods, breathing hard, as determined as a big bear. He hadn’t seen me. He wiped his brow on his shirtsleeve.