The Death of an Irish Consul

by Bartholomew Gill

  This computer process was new to Ireland and one of the many innovations which McGarr had made since becoming chief inspector. It allowed the police to keep tabs on visitors to the country.

  “Here is the list.” He handed another sheet to McGarr and a carbon to Gallup.

  One name caught McGarr’s eye. It was that of Enrico Rattei, the head of the ENI consortium. He turned to Gallup, who had also noticed it. McGarr, thinking back on the seven years he had lived in Italy while working for Interpol, could remember Rattei as looking very much like the man he had seen in the inn the day before and in the car here at the airport just a few hours ago.

  Mallon continued, “The flight is from Birmingham via Dublin. I’ve circled the names of all the passengers who boarded at Dublin.”

  Rattei and “Garcia” had taken the flight from Birmingham.

  “Check this name”—McGarr underlined the Rattei on the list—“and see where he went tonight. He departed from Shannon within the last six hours.”

  Mallon called over a Garda patrolman who set about the task.

  “As far as we can determine, Garcia has not left the country, although a jet that was carrying an American basketball team to Russia stopped at the airport to refuel. They left with one more passenger than they had when they landed.”

  “How many blacks aboard?” asked Gallup.

  “Nearly all of them.”

  “See if you can check with the airline about who the additional passenger was. When the plane lands in Russia, the airline telex should be able to tell us his name.

  “Also, put a general alarm out for this Garcia bloke. He’s six feet tall, seventeen stone, balding, speaks English with a Jamaican accent, no doubt. His other name may possibly be Foster. If it’s not, we can hold him for possessing a false passport.”

  Mallon wrote these instructions on a small pad, then said, “Otherwise, this Garcia could have left on any of the small private planes that used the airport today. We’ve checked all fifty-three flight plans and passenger lists, but anybody wanting to smuggle him out of the country had only to put Garcia aboard without logging him on the list. We have no regular agency to check the veracity of private plane flight plans or passenger lists. They go and come as they please.”

  Mallon handed McGarr yet another sheet of paper. “This is my preliminary fingerprint report. Both occupants were wearing leather gloves.”

  Again McGarr and Gallup exchanged glances. Foster, if indeed the black man were Foster, would certainly wear gloves throughout any assignment such as the execution of Hitchcock and Browne. But McGarr wondered why Rattei hadn’t, like Foster, used an alias. The latter, being a professional, should have insisted upon it.

  McGarr’s thoughts then ran to Hitchcock. He probably would have gone to great pains to prepare that dinner for Rattei. Officially, Rattei was his boss. Rattei was probably used to eating well. And Hitchcock might have felt some guilt regarding his involvement with Tartan Oil Limited.

  At the end of the room, a Garda patrolman ripped a sheet from the autowriter of the telex, walked over, and handed it to Mallon, who read, “Rattei, Enrico: Shannon to Dublin to Birmingham, where he changed to Caledonian that flew him to Aberdeen.”

  “Back to the oil fields,” said Gallup.

  McGarr smiled. “Good job, Lieutenant.” He then looked the young man in the eye. “Well?”

  “I accept your offer.”

  “What did the wife say?”

  “She said, ‘Ah, Dublin!’”

  “That’s fine. Now then,” McGarr turned to Liam O’Shaughnessy, “Lieutenant Mallon will report to you on”—it was Wednesday—“Monday next, Liam. He’ll have our car with him.” McGarr meant the one which O’Shaughnessy and Ward had driven out to Dingle. It was parked outside the office now. “That way he’ll have transportation and Hughie won’t have to lug us back to Dublin.”

  Ward was relieved. He allowed his shoulder to rest against the wall.

  McGarr checked his watch. “Do you reckon we can catch a shuttle back to Dublin, Lieutenant?”

  Mallon looked at the clock on the wall. “Within the hour.”

  “When’s your plane, Ned?”

  “Two hours,” Gallup replied glumly.

  “Then I’ll stand us a round or two in the bar,” said the chief inspector. “You too, Mallon. A celebration, what?”

  Mallon smiled and ripped the top sheet off the scratch pad.

  Sitting in a lounge booth on the second floor of the terminus, McGarr looked out on the expanse of concrete runway. The landing lights diminished into the distance until both lines seemed to merge. A plane taxied slowly past, its fuselage beacon spinning and tail lights winking.

  McGarr sipped from the tumbler that contained fourteen-year-old Jameson’s poured over crushed ice, and tried not to hypothesize about Foster’s role in the Hitchcock and Browne murders. He knew such speculating was bad form in police work, but often, as now, he couldn’t keep his imagination from speeding ahead of the facts.

  Thus, he mused: Foster had discovered Hitchcock and Browne’s involvement in Tartan Oil. Foster went to the Italian with the information. Rattei hired Foster, a man with a penchant for violence, to help him dispose of the two former C.’s of SIS. Rattei asked Hitchcock for a meeting. On holiday at the time, Hitchcock invited him down to Dingle. Foster waited in the car so Hitchcock wouldn’t be suspicious. Rattei presented Hitchcock with a gift—a bottle of wine drugged with the supplies Foster had gotten when working for SIS. When Hitchcock passed out, Foster and Rattei dragged him out to the shed, waited for the drug to wear off, then killed him. That was six days ago. Rattei flew out of there in a helicopter.

  Four days later, Rattei had Browne flown in, perhaps ostensibly for a meeting with him and Hitchcock, whose murder Browne could not have known about. They didn’t fool around with Browne. They bashed in his head, dragged him into the vacation house, and murdered him.

  One thing bothered McGarr about all of this—why a man in Rattei’s position would resort to the murders even of corporate criminals like Hitchcock and Browne.

  If McGarr’s speculations were true, then the helicopter pilot with the small feet was crucial. His stake in the Hitchcock and Browne murders could not be as weighty as Rattei’s or Foster’s.

  In order to distract his rampant fancy and learn more about Rattei, McGarr asked Gallup, “Wasn’t Enrico Rattei the last classic example of a condottiere?” For Interpol, Gallup had specialized in corporate crime.

  “With one exception,” said Gallup. “He had his own private vision of the part which Italy should play in international affairs and strong views of internal policies.”

  The waitress had just delivered the second round of drinks, and McGarr couldn’t keep himself from staring at her. But for a bump on the bridge of her nose, her face was beautiful. It was long, cheekbones and chin angular. She had brushed her black hair off her forehead. Her eyes were gray.

  What pleased McGarr most, however, was her body. She was just slightly overripe. A big woman, he knew how she would feel against him—soft, maybe just a little too soft. And that would be good.

  Embarrassed under his gaze, she hurried off.

  Remembering himself, McGarr asked Gallup, “Didn’t Rattei go along with Mussolini?”

  “Of course. He despised private industry, thought it inefficient because competition was wasteful of the nation’s collective energy and provided no mechanism for leadership and planning. In his Italy, he said, there would be no need for one hundred and eleven bicycle manufacturers. Italy would make one bicycle, the world’s best. And so for planes, ships, cars, et cetera. And nearly everything that his state-owned companies made was the best at least in some way.

  “I remember him on the Via Veneto, sitting at a sidewalk café like any other worldly Roman, having an aperitif and ogling the prostitutes, jibing with the pimps, familiar with the gangsters, dope peddlers, down-and-outs of every description. He remained cynically disdainful of bourgeois mores. For him,
life was a circus. He was no different from the performers on the Via Veneto, except that his act was to make huge industries run profitably. A Roman to the core.

  “And how about his skinning the international oil companies?”

  “What was that about again?”

  “The oil people had made a deal to pump Libyan oil. All of the companies had agreed to offering the Libyans no more than thirty percent of the profits. The Libyan government then had no choice. If they wanted their oil pumped, they had to agree to the thirty percent rate. They signed the deal and the companies began moving their equipment into Tripoli.

  “Then Rattei heard about it. Some oil executive at a party bragged about how his company had negotiated the agreement and that it was signed and there now was nothing ENI could do about it. Next day, Rattei was in Libya where he offered that government fifty percent. The oil industry was stunned. They never dreamed he’d attack them by cutting what they thought was an inviolable profit margin. All the other Arab countries began demanding a fifty-fifty split.

  “The television news interviewed him at his table in the café on the Via Veneto. He was smiling like a self-satisfied tiger. He said that if the privately owned oil companies couldn’t compete with ENI, they would have to step aside, that he was going to reexamine his profit margins in other countries the next morning. If he could still break even with a split of less than fifty percent, he would take some more foreign drilling rights away from the oil cartels. He said he would in no way honor any agreements that were founded on price fixing and international capitalist exploitation. Three days later, a plane on which he was supposed to be riding blew up. A few weeks after that, some gunman shot at him in Paris.”

  Every time the waitress glanced over at their table, McGarr fixed her with his gaze.

  Gallup continued. “Then there was the time he went on television to boast to the nation how ENI had discovered vast supplies of methane in Ferrandina, and right where private industry had prospected and found nothing. He began laughing again, and, I think, the entire Italian nation laughed along with him. Tall, good-looking, holding a ruler in his hand like a schoolteacher, he had taught the British and Dutch and Americans how competent Italians were. He wanted to give his countrymen a chance to gloat along with him.”

  “What’s his background?”

  “Working class. Father was a carabiniere, and Rattei ran ENI for the citizen-workers of the country. ENI led all commerce and industry in providing for worker comfort and dignity.”

  “Sounds like an interesting man.”

  “All that and more. Recently, in spite of his Fascist background, he has become the first Westerner to set up derricks in the Soviet Union. ENI is currently pumping Russian crude.

  “That puts Rattei in Russia, Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Scotland, and, I believe, he’s currently negotiating a deal right here in Ireland somewhere out there”—Gallup gestured toward the windows—“off the western coast. Some investment bankers think he’s over-extended right now, that ENI profits, of which Italy itself absorbs most, don’t justify all the exploration drilling he’s doing, but others, who have backbone, have financed him so far. One thing is certain, however—he needs to show some results.”

  “You mean Tartan might be hurting him?”

  “Maybe not in barrels-per-day pumped, but Tartan complicates the Scottish picture for ENI. I’m sure Tartan is a thorn in Rattei’s side. I understand he floated further oil exploration loans based on his own purported estimates of ENI’s Scottish holdings, which now he’s got to make pay.”

  “Is he married?”

  “No. They say he had a disappointing love affair when he was a student in university, and that ever since he has remained a great womanizer in the Don Juan mode—he makes no permanent commitments.”

  “Which university?”

  “Siena, I believe. But he was born in Rome.”

  Because McGarr paid the tab, he was the last to leave the booth. “Are you married?” he asked the waitress, as he placed the money on the table.

  “Widowed. And yourself?”

  He cocked his head, but said nothing.

  “Are you off to Dublin now, Inspector?” she asked. McGarr surmised that the story about Lieutenant Mallon had spread throughout the building. “That’s a shame,” she continued. “I was thinking it would be nice to have a drink and talk to you.”

  McGarr looked up at her face.

  It was her turn to fix him in the gaze of her gray eyes. She smiled. Her cheeks were flushed.

  McGarr walked toward the other policemen, who were waiting for him in the hall. He paused at the door and looked back at her.

  She had her back to him, placing the empty glasses on the tray.

  Passing by the international section, McGarr thought about popping into the duty-free shop and buying something for his wife. But he rejected this formal expiation. Somehow his guilt would sully the gift.

  And of this he was glad, since, when the police car pulled up in front of his modest Victorian house in Rathmines, a suburb of Dublin, he saw the light go on upstairs in his bedroom. His wife, Noreen, who was nearly twenty years younger than he, had drawn McGarr a bath by the time he deposited his hat and coat on the rack in the hall and poured himself a short drink.

  A small woman whose hair was a tight nest of copper curls, Noreen’s body was so perfectly proportioned that all her movements seemed effortless. Her face, arms, and legs were delicately freckled. Knowing he was tired, she didn’t ask him any questions, only smiled when she dried him with a large, fluffy towel, and took him to bed.

  FOUR

  FROM THE SHORE, the oil derricks seemed like toys in a child’s dream, appearing now and then through the mist. Here the coast of Scotland was treeless. Gorse, thistle, saw grass and lichen clung to the rocks and fronted the stiff breezes off the North Sea, such as the one into which McGarr and O’Shaughnessy now squinted.

  Both were standing at the windscreen of a launch that was charging through the choppy sea toward the ENI oil claim. They had dressed for the weather and seemed like Principal and Interest, two London bankers in search of a profitable deal, for not only did both wear black bowlers and charcoal gray overcoats, but also, standing side by side, their differing sizes made them seem like Investment and Yield in a vertical bar graph. O’Shaughnessy was 6'8", McGarr just 5'9". The latter, however, wore a bright red rose in his buttonhole. It was the first of the season, and he had plucked it from a bush outside his front door.

  O’Shaughnessy, not attempting to speak over the roar of the diesel engines, nudged McGarr and pointed into the overcast sky off the port bow. There a helicopter had dipped below the clouds and now skimmed over the water, passing by the launch in a rush. Earlier, they had seen several others. In a telephone call, Gallup had said that the job of checking on helicopter owners and pilots would be nearly impossible, but McGarr had scoffed at his attitude and had insisted on the continuing search. If they could find the helicopter pilot with the tiny feet, McGarr was sure they could learn the facts of the murders. The launch pitched and yawed, as McGarr and O’Shaughnessy stepped into the elevator of the oil rig.

  “Buona sera,” said McGarr to a man who approached them when they had reached the work platform of the derrick. Here everybody wore yellow safety helmets.

  The man held two in his hands which he gave to McGarr and O’Shaughnessy. “Sera,” he said. “Se e lecito, potrei sapere chi e lèi?”

  “Me chiamo Pietro McCarr. Io sono il chief inspector di la polizía, Dublino, Irlanda. Questo e il Signor Liam O’Shaughnessy, mio coòrte. E possíbile parlare con Signor Rattei?”

  “Certo. Follow me,” he said in English.

  As they walked toward a collection of low buildings near the center of the drilling platform, McGarr asked him, “Are you the security officer here?”

  “Si,” the man replied laconically. He, too, was small. He wore a heavy sweater and the left side of his face presented a walleye to the policemen. McGarr
could see O’Shaughnessy checking the man’s feet, which were quite small.

  On two corners helicopters were chained to the platform. One was a large freight-carrying affair with twin jet engines along the fuselage. The other was a small two-seater. The drilling shaft of the well was spinning very fast. Everywhere, it seemed, large diesel engines, painted the same bright yellow as the hard hats, were roaring. One was raising the hook of a crane. Another was turning a dynamo for electrical power. Others drove forklift trucks and mechanical mules.

  Once inside the metal building, however, the din ceased with an abruption that made McGarr’s ears ring. A pneumatic valve sealed the door. Thick insulation made the interior toasty. The security man waited while McGarr and O’Shaughnessy doffed their hats and coats, then showed them into a lounge area, one wall of which was a magazine rack. Periodicals in all the European languages bristled from it. On the other side of the room was a tea station. Hot water in Silex pitchers bubbled on the stove top. The large table in the center of the room was obviously used for conferences. The ashtrays were brimming with snuffed cigarette butts. Thus, the air was stale. McGarr stopped the security man before he could sugar their teas. “Signor Rattei will see you shortly,” he said and left the room.

  “I hear the pay out on one of these things is phenomenal,” said O’Shaughnessy, easing himself against the table.

  McGarr had sat in a low chair near the magazine rack. “It would have to be. Just think—you’re Bolognese, used to urban living at its pleasantest. You take a job out here to make yourself a stake, say, for a little business. The money is great, but you work fourteen straight days with nothing but the magazine rack for solace, then get three days off in some Scottish fishing village where the women wear knickers and bathe twice a year. I don’t know”—McGarr reached out and fanned the pages of a magazine—“life is too short to go through it like a drudge.”