Charlie

by Finn Óg

  The idea of being locked up until I found the Professor was evidently too much. I kept the pressure on in case there was any more to come. “Where’s he flying to?”

  “Belfast, but through London – I couldn’t get a direct flight.”

  “When did he ask you to book it?”

  She was a blubbering mess by that stage and I knew I would get all the information I needed.

  “About fifteen minutes after you left his office.”

  “Did he make any calls?” I strove to make sure that I maximised this rich flow of information.

  “He used a hangout. I never make those calls for him. He does it on his computer, with earphones.”

  I knew she was telling the truth. She was just too long in the tooth to be dealing with such internet hook-ups. “Do you know what this is about?” I probed.

  She paused for a moment. “I assume it’s something to do with Ireland. You’re Irish, he’s over there all the time. You could be IRA.”

  I actually snorted at that. “Get some food and whatever medication he needs,” I told her, then walked into the hall.

  There was a box room, which seemed cruel, but I felt I had no choice. If I locked them in a room with a window, she could summon help in an instant. I turned back to find her holding a Tupperware tub and a plate heaped with leftovers.

  “Who does your boss speak to? Who are his contacts in Ireland?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. The old woman was gathering a bit of composure, and my time was running out in all sorts of ways. “He flies in two hours. You should get out and leave us be,” she said.

  “One last thing. Where did you book him in. To stay. In Ireland?”

  She looked at me, confused. “He stays at the apartment.”

  “Where?”

  “Belfast. They all stay there.”

  “They all?” I was exasperated.

  “Just who are you?” she countered, now as curious as I was.

  “Well I’m not IRA. Your boss is into some pretty sick stuff. That’s what this is about.”

  “What sort of stuff?” she asked, but not in a dismissive way.

  “Abuse,” I said, and intended to leave it at that. To my surprise she nodded.

  “You knew?” I must have sounded incredulous.

  “You never know,” she said, “but I’m old, and I know how malicious he can be.” She looked lovingly at her husband. “And I’m wise enough to know how well connected he is, for no apparent reason. How a man like that got a job advising government people,” she shook her head and tutted, as she stroked her husband’s braw head of hair. “I’m in no position to challenge someone like that.” She rounded her gaze onto me. “And I’ve been around long enough to know that if you’re going to stop him, then you’re not like him, and that means you’re not going to hurt me or Hans.” She wiped his chin as a mother might an infant.

  “Tell me who the others are, those who stay at the apartment?” I pressed.

  “I don’t know. He deals with all of that directly. I have no contact with any of them.”

  “So how do you know there are others?”

  “Because I make the arrangements. The cleaning. The laundry bill lists five sets of bed sheets. I book the transfers to the airport. Why would one man need a seven-seat vehicle to pick him up?”

  I nodded. “I’ll let you out just as soon as I can,” I said.

  “What about the washroom?” she asked, apparently surprised that I still intended to bang her up.

  “Get a bucket,” I told her, and took the plate and the tub from her and placed it in the box room. She got a bottle of water and ushered the old man inside. She was utterly compliant, no longer out of fear, but out of loathing for her boss. Then she retrieved a bucket from a kitchen cupboard. I didn’t want to consider the logistics of its deployment. I felt bad enough as it was. The door was hinged favourably. It took no more than a broom handle, broken to size and levered against the hall wall opposite, and my own small plastic wedge, to incarcerate them.

  *****

  I missed the professor at JFK, which was irritating. I’d spent too much time with the receptionist, and when I arrived at the airport the plane was fully booked. No amount of cash could get me beyond the reserve list, and it wasn’t until ten minutes before the gate closed that a seat became available. I prayed that I could board from the rear, and sit behind the professor. There is nothing more conspicuous than a late arrival to an aircraft, as the passenger tacks up the aisle like a sail-maker’s stitch.

  I couldn’t see him as I took my seat, but it was a big plane. Even if he took a trip to the toilet he would not recognise me, so long as I kept my head down and my hat on. I took out the Mac and the camera and used them to play back the media.

  The conversation with the tutor was audible and in frame, but my hopes for it were quickly dashed. My intention had been to send his admission to the Boston Globe, but I was the one doing all the talking. Worse still, he’d identified me by name, and no amount of editing would prove him guilty of anything. I was also conscious that the law around secret recording was much more strict in the U.S.A. than the U.K., so I gave it up as a waste of time and put my head down to get some kip. Then an idea began to form, and I returned to the computer. I fumbled about with the editing software to ensure that I duplicated across only the parts of the conversation where I levelled the allegations at him, and his reaction. There would be nothing else on the computer but the exchange; no documents, no media, no photos. Then I erased my voice, and inserted subtitles instead. Once I had erased the parent file, and ensured that the original media had been properly trashed, I relaxed. It had taken half of the seven-hour flight time to perform the task, but I had achieved something, so I slept.

  I knew the professor would be headed for Terminal 5 for the domestic flight to Belfast, so I hurried to get there ahead of him. On the Express train, I connected to the Wi-FI, and used WETransfer to send the video file to myself. The progress symbol ticked round interminably, but it completed before I hopped off the carriage, with just enough time to erase the hard drive.

  My plan would require proximity, and it made me more jumpy than usual. The tiredness had exacerbated my paranoia, and the fact that the Professor knew my name and whereabouts suggested to me that he might also know about Isla. I could not shake the nagging fear that his people might know where she was, even if I did not. I was, therefore, out of options; his sick group of friends had to be dealt with in its entirety.

  I needed to get through to the departures area, which meant another cash transaction at the British Airways desk, another flash of ID, and another risk taken. My main problem was security, though. Heathrow is tight, and I watched the lift for fifteen minutes, willing him to come through. Just as I began to believe I’d missed him, his tweed came into view. He was fumbling with his knapsack, a kind of throwback from the fifties, very academic in appearance and made of beige canvas and brown leather. His distraction allowed me to fall in behind him, have my eyeball scanned, and to be waved into the queue for x-ray at his heel.

  We stood silently, edging forward by pace and by pause. He was no more agitated than most travellers, but it gave me the chance to see him prepare and re-prepare for the machine. Out came his little bag of toiletries, toothbrush, aftershave, toothpaste and floss. Then he remembered something in his inside coat pocket, and after much fiddling, he produced an e-cigarette, which he tried to fit into the clear plastic bag. As we neared the check-in, I had to shuffle with insistence behind him, to avoid being funnelled off to another team by a security guard with a retractable tape. The tutor didn’t appear to notice. I watched his un-packing like a hawk.

  “Please remove any liquids, computers, tablets, Kindles, and place them on separate trays,” called the woman with the plastic tubs. She sounded like a town crier.

  The tutor wrestled with the buckles on his bag and hauled out the MacBook. It sat alone in a tray, and I made sure mine did exactly the same beside his. Then he set
about unfastening his belt and his shoes. I’d had time to think it all through and was better prepared, so I filed around his back and hoisted my arms though the scanner tube, urging it to render me clear. I got out of the machine with a nod from a Sikh, and tried to suppress my adrenaline as I made for his computer. His tub came out directly ahead of mine, and my heart fluttered as I saw how battered his casing looked compared to my own. But it was take or break, so I lifted it, and willed my bag to emerge without further scrutiny. I grabbed it just as the professor came through the arch. One movement disposed of the tray between our two, and the laptop was stowed and zipped in before he had time to compose himself. I sidled off as he hopped around in his socks and tried to replace his brogues.

  The Belfast flight was two hours away, which offered me another opportunity. I watched him wander off, gazing up at the various shops and eateries. He paused at Wagamamas, where there was a queue for tables. Then he moved on. I followed at a distance, until he turned back, apparently having changed his mind. I had no choice but to proceed, and berated myself for having got over-confident. It can be easier to miss someone at close quarters than at a distance, and if he copped me now, a lot of work would go to waste.

  He eventually returned to join the queue for the Japanese food, and I could afford to take a break and wash my face. I bought some sticking plasters at a pharmacy. When the queue was gone, I was ushered to a spot overlooking the concourse. The professor was sitting at the bar. We were two single travellers eating in silence, backs to one another. I could see him, but only just, in the reflection of the glass in front of me. I had no idea whether he would do what I needed, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The waiter was happy for me to accept his recommendation, whatever it was, and I ate without looking at it.

  Only when he had finished, did the professor fish around at his feet and draw out the laptop. If he noticed anything wrong with it, he didn’t show it, and I allowed him time to flip the top and boot it up. When I heard the start-up chime, I slowly began to make my move. I took the phone, stroked it into video mode, and swivelled my stool to aim the camera at the stainless hood above the tutor. The shot, however, was rubbish, so I had to risk it and get in close. Putting the phone to my ear, I walked over and reached in between the professor and the woman beside him to grab a basket of soy sauce and forks. I loitered longer than was decent. I had no idea whether I had what I needed, but I had to get out.

  Back in the toilets I sat on the pan, phone in hand. Turning down the sound, I consulted the video, convinced that my good luck was sure to run out. I watched it all back, my clumsy attempt to catch the reflection above the professor’s head, the meandering stretch for the sauce, and then, thanks be to God, in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, was the flutter of his fingers on the keyboard. I caught five letters, VISIT, before the image moved out of shot. I heard him stroke three more keys.

  I opened his laptop and stuck a plaster over the webcam, then paused. There are about 80 possibilities on a laptop. I strained to remember the briefings we’d been given on observation training, the old DET instructors revelling in their connivance and cunning. Breaking passwords had been mentioned, but I could not recall anything specific. I sat on the shitter and went for the obvious, simply adding ING to the password box; it vibrated to indicate a mistake. ORS I tried instead.

  I was in.

  Twenty Two

  It turned out that we weren’t on the same plane to Belfast, but it didn’t matter. I knew exactly where he was going. The drop off address was in the taxi booking confirmation e-mail sent by his secretary, who was wedged in a box room with her demented husband, three-and-a-half-thousand miles away. I would make the call to the nurse in a while, but there was one more play to make before I could release them. I had a feeling she would understand.

  The doom set in on home turf.

  It was always thus. On tour, I’d been able to focus on the job, on killing and not being killed. It wasn’t until I got leave, that the horrors returned.

  When I got back to Belfast City Airport, there was no escaping the guilt; the magnitude of the responsibility I had heaped upon my parents, or the uncertainty I had about how safe they were. I knew they would protect Isla with everything they had, but they were civilians, kind, and gentle people. They were also blissfully unaware of what was really going on.

  I hired a car at the airport and on the Newtownards Road, I stopped at one of the few phone boxes left in the city. There I dialled my dad, then my mum, and got no answer from either. I ached to hear Isla, and had to work hard to reduce my heart rate and purge the panic. I reminded myself over and over that my folks didn’t always answer their phones, and didn’t always have them in their pockets. I imagined them having evening dinner at a beach restaurant, their cells buzzing away in a car or a hotel room. But the noise was returning, I could feel its whine. It started somewhere in my inner ear, and although it felt as though it had been there all the time, I only became conscious of it when that bottomless foreboding crept in.

  I dialled again and again, each time becoming more agitated. I allowed myself the anger. I knew it would have to surface before it could be purged. Before long there was blood everywhere, and the handset was in pieces and my jeans were torn from what remained of the glass walls of the phone box. The frenzy slowly subsided as I slumped in the cubicle, utterly helpless to protect my daughter, and my parents from a threat I could not be sure they faced.

  Such outbursts are not down to PTSD alone. I did experience anger attacks before I became a Marine, and ironically the trouble they got me into became part of the reason I ended up in the military. But the service just channelled the violence, and gave that occasional anger a grip that my teenaged years could not have imagined. Nobody came near the phone box, needless to say. As I calmed, my attention shifted from what I couldn’t do, to what I could do, and I got back in the car.

  The apartment was on one of Belfast’s finest streets. Trees lined the wide avenue, which had pillars at either side of the entrance, one way in, one way out. The car I had rented was easily the least expensive of all on that road; even the children of its inhabitants drove more up-market models. The apartment took up the top of the four-floor building, and the lights were on. There was a balcony, and the professor was home. I knew because he came out after a few hours to puff away on his vape. I worried that there might be someone else inside who might object to his habit, but I saw no evidence of company. If there was nobody else there, it suggested routine.

  I looked up at him from the anonymity of my parked car, musing on the fact that less than 18 hours had passed since I had confronted him in New York. I wondered how he would react if he could see me now, sitting below him. The upper hand is important, psychologically. I reckoned he would think I was still in Manhattan, scrabbling around for a lead. His ignorance gave me a certain degree of comfort, but not as much comfort as the realisation that I could see his legs quite clearly. The base of the balcony was made of glass plates. I decided to wait a while longer to establish his routine. An hour later he appeared again in a plume of vapour, gnawing on his pipe, before sliding the door to return inside.

  Eventually another light came on, followed by the first light going off, and then a softer glow beneath a blind. The recce had given me plenty of time to think. I knew from the receptionist that there were potentially five bedrooms in the apartment, but there was a light in just one. I felt strongly that he was alone, for the moment, but that it was too soon to deal with him. I needed to interrogate his computer properly. He would be able to locate it as soon as I connected it to the internet. I know my way around tech pretty well, but I decided I needed expert help.

  *****

  I drove straight to Dublin and appeared, unannounced, at midnight, on the doorstep of the charity woman. She was, of course, enormously impressed, but agreed to help. Her twin was similarly amused to be hauled out of bed at that hour, but by 1 a.m. her face was aglow with the reflection of the tutor’s compu
ter. Within minutes there were wires going into and sticking out of it, as she copied the entire contents onto a stick the size of my finger.

  “Ah, bollocks,” I heard her say, about twenty minutes into the process.

  “What is it?” her sister asked.

  “He’s got an MDM, it’s wiping.”

  I knew broadly what that meant, some sort of mobile device manager. I just closed my eyes and prayed.

  The twin worked furiously with the keyboard and then the cables. “Ok, now we see what the diddly-dory is,” she said, as she untethered the tutor’s computer and stuffed the drive into her own laptop. “Ah it’s grand. His hard drive’s all there, that’s it all cracked too. There shouldn’t be any files you can’t see.”

  I was tempted to get her to help me navigate around its contents, but I was more tempted to do something else while it was still dark outside.

  “Can you find a number for him, a contact number?” I asked her.

  “Sure, it’ll be here in his text messages.” She stirred two fingers around the track pad.

  “Oh, an American number,” she said, and read it to me. I wrote it down on the back of his receptionist’s notepaper.

  “This is all totally illegal like,” the twin said, “but if she’s involved,” she nodded at her sister, “I’m sure it’s all for some worthy cause.”

  For the first time since my wife died, I hugged a woman I wasn’t directly related to.

  *****

  Twenty minutes later, I bought yet another burner phone from an Indian man at a service station, on Dublin’s M50. It was a tiny place, cheap as chips, and its security cameras were dummies. Then I roasted up the road at over one hundred miles an hour. At my dad’s workshop, I was surprised to find my FedEx’d bag had beaten me back. I threw a wrap of pozidrives, a socket set and a suction handle into it, and headed for Belfast. I gave a lot of thought to the practicalities of my next move, and virtually none to the implications. My mind craved relief.