A Bodyguard of Lies

by Donna Del Oro

  McCoy was up and ready, his right foot swinging upward toward Jake’s groin. Seizing the man’s collar in both hands, Jake turned to the side just in time. The vicious kick caught Jake’s thigh instead, making him yell in pain, releasing his hold just enough so that McCoy lurched out of Jake’s arms. Clambering away, the man regained his balance and took off. Automatically, his mind momentarily switching into FBI-training mode, Jake rose to one knee and reached for the pistol in its shoulder holster.

  Dammit! It was still in his suitcase. His leg hurt like hell, and he rubbed it as he used a nearby table to help himself up. Upper teeth biting into his lower lip, he kept himself from swearing out loud.

  Meg grabbed his arm. When he turned to look at her, he almost gave in and swore. One side of her face bore the reddish mark of the man’s slap. Other than that, she appeared okay, though greatly rattled and frightened. She was fighting back tears.

  “Are you okay?” she asked breathlessly.

  Jake was panting so hard, he had to force the words out. “Fine, just roughed up a bit. Tend to your grandmother. I’m going after the sonuvabitch.”

  Two men in jeans and workers’ jackets and caps approached him and offered their help. One pointed in the direction of the fleeing assailant.

  “Want some help?”

  He nodded gratefully.

  “One of you, stay here in case he comes back!”

  Jake and the youngest of the two men, a blond-haired guy in a plaid wool shirt, ran toward the central stairway. Jake hesitated—had the man gone up to the open-air deck or down?

  “I saw him go down.”

  They took two steps at a time leaping down the staircase, Jake ignoring the pain in his leg as the adrenaline raced through his system. At each deck, they burst through the door and scanned the area. No sign of the gray-haired lunatic. Jake didn’t have the breath to ask whether his companion was part of the major’s surveillance team or not.

  Four more decks, they repeated the process. By deck five, the vehicle storage bay, they both slowed down. Jake sensed the man had come this way, seeking the cover and safety of his car.

  “Take that side, I’ll go here,” he commanded the blond worker. A heartbeat later, he asked, “You Temple’s team?”

  “You got it, sport,” the kid called out. “Sorry, we were late to the fracas. We were in line at the coffee bar. Then we saw the bloke go for the ladies.”

  One by one, they looked inside each car, climbed up to the cab of each truck and checked it out. Jake took extra time with two vans, their privacy windows making it impossible to see inside. Their doors were locked; otherwise, he would’ve looked inside—at the risk of eating a boot or facing down the barrel of a gun! Don’t be a fool, man, he kept scolding himself. Don’t corner a lunatic! You’re unarmed!

  His thoughts sprang to Meg. There’s too much to live for.

  Standing outside the white van, he noted the license. Republic of Ireland plates. So were half of the vehicles on this deck. He peered through the front tinted windshield, couldn’t see much except a map of London, lying flat on the dashboard. Could be our man, Jake thought. He pounded on the van’s door with his fist.

  “Come out, you asshole! You’re such a coward, you like to hit women?”

  Nothing. No sound within.

  A half hour later, after checking each and every vehicle, they reconnoitered back by the metal, deck-exit door. The man had disappeared into thin air.

  “No sign.”

  “Sorry, Agent Bernstein. The major warned us about this McCoy character. Quite batty, I’ve heard.”

  “Yeah, looney-tunes. Will you be staying undercover?”

  The blond nodded. “Yes, Major’s orders.”

  “Fine with me. Just good to know you guys are around.” He hated to admit it, but that was the truth. This assignment was proving to have a dangerous wrinkle or two.

  By the time Jake limped back into the lounge, Meg appeared to have composed herself. The other man on Temple’s surveillance team excused himself and rejoined his friend. They kept a visual on the little group while pretending to be distracted by an island the ferry was passing.

  “How’s your leg, Jake? Did he hurt you?” Meg asked. He suspected the bruises had turned purplish. She jumped up. “I’ll get you some ice for it.” She pointed to his jaw.

  His attention diverted from his pain, Jake grabbed Meg’s arm as she started to stand up and studied her face. Her bruise was darkening, like his probably was.

  “Your face needs some, too.” Distracted by Meg, he’d forgotten to look at Mary Snider. The elderly woman was leaning back on the bench, her head lolling forward on her chest. Drool trickled out of one side of her slackened mouth. What the heck—

  “What happened?”

  “I had to give her a trank—she was so upset! Crying, nearly hysterical, Jake. She was shaking so hard, I thought she was going to have a stroke or—or a heart attack! I gave her just one tranquilizer pill and it put her to sleep. I didn’t know what else to do. That man really frightened her! Frightened me, too. He acted so crazy! God, my heart’s still pounding!”

  He hated that Meg was caught in the middle of this mess—this tangled web of lies and deception. Every ounce of his being felt sympathy for her. Anger boiled up inside him, against Mary Snider for causing it all. Why hadn’t Mary resolved whatever her cousin’s beef was?

  Why couldn’t the late Mike McCoy have let sleeping dogs lie? Jake blamed himself for letting this case get out of control!

  Stroking her upper arms, Jake examined Meg’s face. They’d both have dark, angry bruises. Letting the crazy bastard get away bruised his ego even more. Resentment coursed through him. He longed to get the man in another headlock. This time, he wouldn’t be so easy on him.

  “What did he want? What did he say?” he asked, enfolding Meg within a close embrace. He soothed her until she could collect her wits.

  “I don’t really know. He kept calling her Mary McCoy and saying, ‘It’s mine, that property’s mine. You have no right to it.” She was breathing deeply, calming herself as she relived the experience. “Grandma kept saying she didn’t know anything about this property. That someone named Dillon had all her parents’ papers. Ever since they died—”

  “Father Dillon, the Killarney priest…?” Jake instantly caught himself.

  Meg leaned back, searched his face in total confusion. “Father Dillon? Jake, how do you know about him? He was her priest since childhood, the only one in her hometown she said she wrote to during the war. Grandma said he was a good man. He praised her for what she was doing for the war effort.”

  When Jake said nothing, their gazes locked, his dark and troubled, hers now full of alarm. Damn, how much could he tell her without blowing his cover and the entire case?

  “Jake,” she persisted, “what’s going on? All those questions about the war, the spies, her German fiancé? I need to know what’s going on. If you care at all about me, you’ll tell me what’s really going on. Who is this man that attacked us? Do you know about him, too?”

  Slowly, he blew air out his cheeks and let go of her arms. He stood up, looked over at the old woman slouched over on the bench, actually felt a pang of pity for her. Meg’s outraged expression, however, was what drew his full compassion. Her face was flushed and she was panting a little.

  His chest felt like it was going to explode, the weight of his deception was so heavy upon his mind and heart. Never before in all his undercover work had he felt this burden. The dilemma of both wanting to break cover and maintaining it was making it difficult to do his job. Meg adored the old woman and he had to be the one to tell her that her beloved grandmother was a war-crimes suspect. That it was his job to gather the evidence against her.

  “Meg…”

  God help him, he couldn’t.

  “…I can’t tell you. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

  To her credit, rather than erupt in fury, she sighed like a child, half sob, half sigh. He wanted to take he
r in his arms again but didn’t.

  “Is it true? Are you a cop? Does this have something to do with Grandma’s work during the war?”

  Jake couldn’t even nod. The way she said “cop”—like it was an obscene word—made him clam up. Was Meg’s mind as poisoned as her grandmother’s against the authorities? He could understand Mary Snider’s fear…but Meg’s?

  Did Meg know more than she was letting on? Or did she just suspect something was out of whack with her grandmother?

  Jake had no choice but to maintain his cover, flimsy though it now was. Once his cover was compromised, he’d be removed from the case. That had never happened to Jake before and it wasn’t going to happen to him now. The stigma would follow him all through his career—the guy who blew his cover because he’d gotten too close to one of the subjects and let down his guard. He’d never be assigned fieldwork again.

  He didn’t want Major Temple to lose faith in him or the FBI. After all, dammit, he was a professional. If there was a way, he’d deal with it somehow, some way.

  He remained silent. Meg’s eyes filled with unshed tears, which abruptly spilled over. After a swipe at her cheeks, she appeared to find the steel within her. She blinked twice and looked away. Her upper lip thinned as she bit it hard.

  “I’ll get some ice,” she said coldly. She brushed past him without another glance.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There were murmurings in the motor coach all during their long ride from Waterford to Cork—with a brief stopover in Blarney for lunch. The word had dispersed, like sneeze spray in an elevator, about the assault on Meg, her grandmother, and even Jake, who had intervened to help them. While her grandmother dozed, Meg and Jake fielded all the questions. They thanked everyone for their concern, but afterward Meg refused to talk to Jake or join him for lunch.

  At a pub within fifty yards of the Blarney Castle, Jake settled in a booth with Hank and the two New Jersey sisters. Having heard about his and another man’s chase after the attacker, Judy and Jeannie bombarded him with questions, obviously turned on by his bold chase of the attacker around the ferry.

  The younger sister, Judy, fluttered her dark eyelashes at him while he tasted his shepherd’s pie. Hot and flavorful, he decided, while fending off her flirtations. Outside the cozy pub, rain lashed the windows and the wind howled. Their first Irish rainstorm, and only a few hardy souls decided to take the trek up the hill to the castle with Robert and his umbrella.

  Judy declared, “Who wants to kiss a disgusting stone that hundreds of thousands of people have left their saliva on? Not me!”

  Jeannie smiled slyly. “Yeah, I know something else you’d like to kiss instead.” Both girls giggled as Jake exchanged a rolling-eye expression with Hank.

  “Seriously, Jake, join us tonight for drinks. Unless you enjoy running in the rain. I wouldn’t if I were you, especially with lightning about.”

  Jake made a noncommittal, diplomatic gesture that was somewhere between a shrug and a nod. Again, conversation drifted to the attacker on the ferry and Jake explained for the fifth time that day that neither Meg nor her grandmother knew the crazy man. Which was true. Mary McCoy would never have met her cousin, Mike’s son, who was over thirty years her junior. She’d already emigrated to the States long before he was born. The only Mike McCoy she’d met in Dallas was Mike Junior’s father. He wondered if mental disorders ran in the family.

  Crazy old coots!

  The other three at the table chalked it up to a random case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. On the coach drive from Waterford to Blarney, Robert Morse had reassured the group that he and the driver would keep a vigilant eye out for the “the bloody ol’ wanker”.

  That, of course, hadn’t stopped everyone from checking their carry-ons for anything that could double as self-defense weapons—in case they were the next targets. One middle-aged lady had held up her nail files; another, her Swiss Army knife—scissors, screwdriver and all, which she’d transferred from her suitcase to her purse. While Robert Morse appeared alarmed by this, all of the Americans on board seemed energized by the excitement of it all.

  Jake had considered his 9 mm pistol for all of two seconds, decided it would be like bringing a cannon to a turkey shoot, and left it in his suitcase. Carrying it in his shoulder holster would frighten everyone, destroy his cover, and end up freaking out MI5 as well as Global Adventures. They’d call him a Wild West cowboy and yank him out of his assignment faster than he could say Operation Hummingbird. Before his plane touched down, the news would’ve traveled all the way back to D.C. and that would be the ignominious end to all further undercover cases. The rest of his career would be consigned to desk duty, analyzing reports until he went cross-eyed.

  After their lunch stop in Blarney, due to Robert’s silly, daily game of musical chairs, Jake had moved up clockwise in the coach. He was now sitting across the aisle from Meg and her grandmother, who’d moved a couple of seats toward the back. What would’ve pleased him five days ago and played into his plans at getting acquainted, now seemed to mock him. Meg sat with her arms folded across her chest and stared out the window at the passing scenery, shunning him completely.

  She was angry with him, and he couldn’t blame her. If he’d been in her place, he’d have been furious. His cover as a banker, who just happened to be extra curious about the war and who just happened to be adept at martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, was now shot to hell.

  Feeling deceived must hurt, too. She wasn’t dumb. She’d been insightful enough to ask him just one more question while applying the ice pack to his face: “Was this all an act? Coming on to me to get to my grandmother?”

  He made the mistake of confessing the truth. “At first, yeah, but not after Bath. Certainly not after Cardiff—”

  She’d turned away then, and had refused to hear any more explanations. Even to his ears, he’d sounded so pathetic, it made him cringe inside.

  Fuck, man, you couldn’t come up with anything better than that…

  Still, the truth hurt.

  Four hours later, the coach and its sleepy passengers pulled into the driveway in front of their Marriott motor inn in Killarney. Jake’s whole body ached from sitting so long, but most of all, his thigh and shoulder felt on fire. He planned to take a long, hot bath after a quick run around the town of Killarney.

  He had to learn the layout of the place, where important landmarks were, familiarize himself with Mary McCoy’s hometown. Certainly, the Catholic cathedral had played a part in her upbringing; Father Dillon had been a pastor there. According to the major’s files, the house where Mary grew up in a fairly affluent family was nearby. By Irish standards, the McCoys had been upper-middle-class Catholics and had lived in a large home; her father had owned a pub, store, and gas station downtown. He had to check out those properties as well. The property Mike Junior had railed about on the ferry was probably one of those four pieces of real estate.

  When Robert mentioned the location of the motor inn, on Muckross Road, south of town, Jake sat up. If he recalled correctly, that was close to the very street on which Mary McCoy and her parents had lived just before the outbreak of the war. He looked over at Meg’s grandmother, who’d begun stirring from her nap. She didn’t appear to recognize Muckross Road or its name, for she said nothing to Meg. Of course, Mary’s hearing wasn’t perfect and memory can fade.

  He needed to ask them if Mary had kept any pre-war photos of her parents or the town of Killarney. You’d think she would’ve taken some with her to London, especially after her parents’ deaths.

  “Meg,” he tried, leaning over the aisle, “wanna go for a run after dinner? Scope out the town?”

  She appeared to hesitate and she glanced at the window. The rain had stopped and small patches of blue sky were visible. From all appearances, it was clearing up. When she finally cast a doleful gaze his way, he knew what her answer would be.

  “No, don’t think so, Jake—or whatever your real name is.”

&
nbsp; “Wanna see my driver’s license?” Not appreciating her stubbornness, he dug into his pocket and fished out his wallet. Showed it to her. She studied it.

  “Is this fake, too?” Her dark blue eyes drilled into him, challenged him. Her lovely mouth was turned down in a slight sneer. She wasn’t about to believe him, no matter what he said.

  “Of course,” he said drily, “I always carry fake IDs with me.”

  “Now that I believe.” Blonde locks twirled in front of his face as she turned away.

  Women!

  Angrily, he stood up with the others and grabbed his carry-on case. His trouser fly and butt were at her eye level as he waited his turn to disembark. From the corner of his eye, he saw her stare at his body despite her determination to hold him in contempt.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “I thought I’d get to know your grandmother’s hometown before it got dark. Maybe clear up some discrepancies.” The hint at his ongoing investigation of the old lady got Meg’s attention. Her eyes flared up but she said nothing.

  This time, he didn’t help the two women with their carry-ons; instead he left the coach and went directly to his room. No longer feeling hungry—in fact, feeling downright depressed—he skipped dinner, changed into his running sweats, T-shirt, and sneakers, and went to scout the area. After a few minutes, his stiff muscles warmed up and he was able to ignore the soreness in his shoulder and leg. Moving his body felt good.

  Compared to American towns its size—population no more than 100,000—Killarney was smaller, more compact, easy to get around and size up. Roughly shaped in a square, with major roads running in and out of town on all four sides, the downtown area centered around the cathedral on Port Road, the Garda—or local Irish police station—on New Road, the shops and pubs along High Street, New Street, and Main Street, and the Franciscan Friary, now apparently the Killarney Youth Centre.

  He was alert for any tails. Mike McCoy’s crazy son was out there somewhere, but as far as Jake could discern, the man wasn’t following him on his run around the town. Neither were any of the major’s men.