A Bodyguard of Lies

by Donna Del Oro

  “On High Street,” interjected a dispirited Mike McCoy, Jr.

  “—this pub going after the war and was willing to split the profits between Mary and himself. But he didn’t know where to find Mary McCoy after 1945. Your father thought she’d gone to America but he could never find her. Rather, he found a Mary McCoy Snider but she claimed to not be his cousin. So all these years, Mary’s profits from this pub have been gathering interest in the local Bank of Ireland. You’re saying, if Mary’s dead, you should be sole owner of this pub and this account. But there was never a death certificate.”

  “Right, you are, and I’ll have you know, that money’s still there. I haven’t touched a pence of it. Not a single pence or Euro.”

  Since the Republic of Ireland joined the European Union, its currency was now the Euro. Jake digested this information, wondering if the man was being completely honest about the money. Not his concern, anyway, but it was strange that Mary Snider, though legally entitled to her portion of the pub’s profits over the years, had made no claim to them. Not that she appeared to need the money, anyway. Her late husband, John Snider, Senior, seemed to have left her financially well-off.

  Mike’s agitation was mounting. “Here’s this American woman pretending to be my cousin, Mary McCoy, but me Da knew her for an impostor. Curse it all, I’m stuck in a legal…”

  “Limbo,” Jake supplied, “You can’t buy out Mary’s part and you can’t inherit her half because she’s not legally deceased.” He wondered why Mary Snider hadn’t cleared this up. Fine, if she didn’t want to admit a family relationship but to dangle this man in some kind of legal quandary all these years made no sense. Why not just sign over to Mike McCoy the Irish version of a Quit Claim Deed?

  Unless, of course, Mary Snider knew nothing about the will, nor where it’d been safeguarded. But hadn’t she corresponded with Father Dillon during the war? Surely, the priest safeguarding her parents’ will and family legal records would have told her that they were in his possession. Or maybe not…if the priest had suspected something was wrong.

  Unless, of course, Mary McCoy knew about the pub but had never expected to return to Ireland to claim half ownership. Or didn’t care. In London, Mary’s life was so different. Had she no longer been concerned with provincial life in County Kerry? Or any of the people she left behind?

  Or Mike McCoy, Senior, was right and Mary Snider was an impostor. Her signature and handwriting would’ve been so different from the real Mary’s. Anything could be forged, but it took a great deal of skill to forge someone’s handwriting. Was that why Mary McCoy, the War Office translator, sent typed letters to Father Dillon? That detail, Major Temple had included in his dossier.

  Mike McCoy, Junior, stared glumly at him from the other side of the bars, waiting for his reaction.

  “There’s an office supply store in town,” offered Jake, placating the man, “If I can get a—what we call in the States—a Quit Claim Deed and get Mary Snider to sign her fifty-percent portion of this pub, the Muckross Stag, over to you, will you be satisfied? And what if she signs over the bank account to you? Will you leave those women alone?”

  “You bet, young fella. I just want what’s justly mine.” The tall man shrugged his big shoulders, pulled up his trousers and stood straighter. “If the American woman had my cousin killed and took her place—as me Da figgered—well, mebbe it’s too late to do anything about that. Though that’s not right, neither. Least I can get what’s rightfully mine. And the poor souls of my cousin and uncle and aunt can rest in their graves.”

  Jake frowned and pocketed the recorder. “No, it’s not right, Mr. McCoy. They’re still rounding up war criminals from World War II. Some people want justice done, no matter how long it’s been.” For a moment, he thought of Grandpa Nate and the justice he’d longed to see for his own family and had felt was denied.

  “Tell me what you remember about your uncle’s and aunt’s deaths. From what your father told you?”

  “Not much, just that they drowned in the lake—Ross Bay, by the castle. You can see the castle ruins from shore.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just that old Father Dillon thought it was foul play that caused them to drown.”

  “Why foul play? You mean, the priest thought someone had murdered them?”

  Like Thomas McCoy, alias Horst Eberhard? To force Mary McCoy to spy for him?

  McCoy nodded soberly, casting his red-eyed gaze to the bare, concrete floor.

  “That’s what Father Dillon thought. Me Da always said his brother was a damn fine swimmer. The best swimmer in Killarney, ’tis what he said. A drinking buddy of Uncle Paddy’s told the priest that Paddy was taking a man out on the lake to fish.”

  “A man?”

  “Told the priest—this buddy of Paddy’s—he felt like he’d sinned, that he didn’t tell the Garda ’bout it right after it happened. But those were strange times. War had broken out, people were nervous, U-boats were all up and down the Irish coast. The man was a foreigner, Paddy told his buddy. Dutch, I think. Wanted to pay a good price for the gas station though at the time it wasn’t for sale. Uncle Paddy was out to impress him with some local ale, a picnic basket ’n all and to hear the Dutch man’s offer. Just in case it turned out to be a humdinger. To be sure, the two of ’em, Uncle Paddy and Aunt Lizzie, went out on the lake with this foreigner. A storm came up and they ended up drowning and the foreigner disappeared. The Garda thought all three were drowned. Me Da thought it strange. T’was a wee squall, he said. Uncle Paddy could’ve swum to the island.”

  Jake was astounded. None of this was in the MI5 files. The deaths of Mary McCoy’s parents were a closed case. Accidental death by drowning. No one connected the dots, not even Major Temple.

  “Did you tell MI5 about your father’s and the priest’s suspicions? These details about the McCoys’ drownings?”

  McCoy nodded. “It was all there in me Da’s notebook. What he called his investigation book. It took him over seven years to put it all together.”

  Most likely, someone on the MI5 staff had distilled all 140 pages of Mike McCoy Senior’s notebook into the ten pages Jake had perused; these details had been omitted in the summary. MI5 had discounted, apparently, the hearsay testimony of one man. Perhaps no one else had corroborated the man’s testimony.

  “Where was Mary when her parents drowned?”

  “In Dublin. Me Da said she came home for the funeral. Da was there, too. Shipped out the next week on a Royal Navy ship. The priest thought Mary was going to do away with herself, she was so frantic with grief. After she sold the house and gas station—me Da said it was ’bout a month or two later—Mary left Killarney for good. Went to London to do her part for the war effort. Anyway, that’s what she told me Da. She wanted to do her part for the war effort.”

  “Even though Ireland was neutral during the war?” Jake probed.

  “Me Da said Mary hated the Nazis, called them all hellbound and evil, Satan-lovers.” McCoy hawked and spat behind him in the cell. “That’s why she said she wanted to help in the hospitals. Donated half the money she got from the sale of the house and gas station to the Irish Catholic relief agencies and the rest, she was going to donate to the hospitals in London. Because of all the wounded during the Blitz over there. A lot of her friends at Trinity College were English, you see.”

  Jake’s head shivered. The picture that McCoy painted of Mary, his cousin, was a far different one from the woman he personally knew. Mary McCoy Snider, hating the Nazis?

  “So Mary was a devout Catholic? Did she ever mention to your father that she’d met a German student in Dublin?”

  The man shook his head. “No, don’t reckon he mentioned that. But devout, she was. When in town, she was at the cathedral every morning for mass. A good Catholic girl, she was.”

  “And she didn’t speak German, according to your father? Not even a little?”

  The man made a small sign-of-the-cross over his heart. “If me Da was right, sw
eet cousin Mary hated the Germans. Wouldn’t speak German if her life depended on it.”

  Interesting choice of words, Jake noted; maybe poor Mary’s life did depend on it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Mike, can anyone verify any of this? I mean, the priest, or anyone else in town?” Jake recalled that Father Dillon, according to the MI5 files, was already dead. “Good friends of the McCoys? Neighbors?”

  McCoy scratched his chin, then his forehead, while Jake waited patiently. He could almost see the wheels and gears turning in the man’s head. That’s what self-medicating’ll get ya, dude. A sluggish brain.

  “Oh, yeah,” the man said slowly, “the secretary at the rectory. Millie O’Loughlin. She took over the job when Father Dillon’s secretary quit and moved away. Millie was with the good priest for over twenty years, she was. She knew Mary McCoy. T’is true, though a wee child, she was there at the McCoys’ funeral. Millie still lives in Killarney, too. In her late sixties, she is. I was over there yesterday at the cathedral, soon as I got here. Just to say hello. But Millie already’d gone home, she had.”

  Jake considered making a visit to the cathedral rectory and having a chat with Millie O’Loughlin. His watch told him he had sixty minutes to spare before the jaunty car ride, something he definitely did not want to miss.

  “Okay, Mike, thanks. By the way, speaking of yesterday—the ferry. Where did you run to after our…little scuffle? Were you in the ferry’s car bay? The white van or the black one?”

  The man looked up, surprised. “The white van’s mine. But I didn’t go down there. I went up to the bridge. The skipper’s a buddy of mine and he let me in. He didn’t know I went down to talk to that old American lady. ’Tween you and me, fella, she’s no lady. She’s a killer.”

  Jake raised his chin and narrowed his eyes at the man. Mike McCoy believed everything he was saying. He’d bought his father’s theory about Mary Snider, probably grew up brainwashed with the old pit bull’s idea that his cousin and her parents were murdered. But convinced of a theory didn’t make him delusional.

  “Look, Mike, I’ll do what I can to get Mary Snider to sign over the pub to you. And sign over that bank account. I promise you that.” Jake moved to the security door. “I’ll be in touch, man.”

  “Tell ’em out there I behaved, young fella!” McCoy shouted from behind the bars. His voice broke, then, and the next thing Jake heard was soft sobbing. He shook his head and wondered if Mike McCoy wasn’t as sane as the rest of them.

  An emotional, alcoholic wreck, maybe, but sane.

  He took his leave of the Garda police and was standing outside the station door before Mike McCoy’s words finally hit him: I went up to the bridge. The skipper’s a buddy of mine.

  His memory of the chase on the ferry was crystal clear: The blond guy from MI5’s surveillance team told Jake he’d seen McCoy run down the stairs. Not up the stairs to the bridge.

  He’d sent Jake on a wild good chase.

  But why?

  Why didn’t MI5 want the man caught and arrested? Especially after assaulting the two women on the ferry?

  And why did Jake get the uneasy feeling he was more of a pawn in this game than he realized?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  As soon as Jake stepped into the lobby of their hotel, he honed in on Meg standing in front of the concierge. He did a quick scan around the large room and noted that passengers were beginning to gather for the jaunty car ride. Basically, it was a trip in a horse-driven cart that holds up to eight passengers. Robert, the group’s escort, was nowhere in sight. Neither was Meg’s grandmother.

  Then he spied the blond guy and his partner, MI5’s new surveillance team, lounging on sofas, reading newspapers, near the fireplace. The older man had a bulky briefcase by his feet.

  The concierge was speaking to Meg. “I can reserve an American or Continental flight from Dublin to JFK, then on to Dallas. Would a Saturday, 8:30 morning flight, fit your schedule? Or would you prefer one later in the morning?”

  Meg watched him approach, held a forefinger up to the man behind the concierge desk. “I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you.”

  So she was running! Good for her, he thought, not the least bit guilty. It was an American right to protect yourself and lawyer up. Jake smiled as if he hadn’t heard her. He stepped up close to her, bent over and kissed her cheek. Whispered in her ear, “Don’t say another word. MI5’s here and they’ve got a directional mike aimed your way. Come with me.”

  Blue eyes wide and alarmed, Meg let him steer her toward the bar, where they found a dark, private corner. Then she shook his hand loose and erupted.

  “MI5! British intelligence? Like in James Bond? They’re here? They’re following us?”

  “Yes, but not James Bond. You’re referring to MI6, the equivalent of our CIA. MI5 agents are here. They’re like our FBI. Meg, where’s your grandmother?”

  “In the back patio with the Le Blancs. MI5! Christ, Jake, what’re you talking about? You’re FBI, isn’t that bad enough? Now MI5’s involved. Did you call them and report my grandmother? You want to put my grandmother in prison, don’t you?”

  Placing his hands on her shoulders, he pressed her down on a chair by a bistro table, trying to calm her down. He scooted a chair over near her and propped a hip on the seat, leaned over her and touched her arm. With a hostile look, she shook his hand free.

  “Don’t you touch me! You’re a heartless bastard. You used me!”

  “Meg, keep your voice down. They’ll follow us in here if they think we’re arguing. You’re upset, I know, but I’m trying to tell you, MI5 brought me into this case. They’ve been investigating your grandmother for months. They’re preparing an arrest warrant. They’ll scare, shake, do whatever they have to do, to get the truth out of her. Under interrogation, she’ll break like, like one of those Waterford goblets. She’ll turn into a babbling idiot, confess to anything and they’ll have their case. Then she’ll go to prison for war crimes.”

  That got her attention. Meg’s lovely mouth gaped open. Her hands flew to her mouth.

  “Oh, God—”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this—it’ll probably get me fired—but I’m giving you fair warning. Your instincts are good. You and your grandmother should fly home as soon as you can. Get a good defense attorney for her. They’ll be filing charges in another week, most likely.”

  “My-my God, Jake. What do they think Grandma did?”

  “The charges? Espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, the murder of fifty-four civilians in that ferry bombing. For starters…”

  Meg’s eyes filled with tears; she angrily swiped at her cheeks as the tears spilled over and streaked her face. Her pain weighed heavily on his chest and Jake’s own throat threatened to clog up. He cleared it noisily. This was no time for sentimentality.

  “Look, Meg, baby…”

  “Don’t!” She turned her tear-streaked face away.

  His heart drilled pain in his chest like a jackhammer drilling a hole. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Impatiently, he wiped it away. Bernstein, what the fuck are you doing? If MI5 finds out, I’ve just shot my career all to hell.

  He took a deep breath and stepped over another imaginary line. A line he’d once sworn he’d never cross. “I’m stalling MI5, telling them I can get the truth out of Mary Snider the easy way. Cornering her with questions, pushing but not too hard, keeping the pressure up. I can keep them—MI5’s team—at bay until Dublin. That’s the day after tomorrow. I’ll give them bits and pieces, enough to let them think she’s on the verge of breaking down. That’ll give you a chance to take off for home. I’ll tell them I had no idea you were planning to sneak off.”

  “You’d do that? Risk your job for us?” Meg absorbed that, frowning at her tightly clasped hands on the table. “Jake, you’re FBI. You don’t owe us, not a thing. You don’t owe…me.”

  “Maybe not, but I feel like I do.” He smiled and glanced over at the bar entrance. So far, so goo
d; the Brits were being patient and staying away. Thinking the two lovers were having a little tete-a-tete. When he felt Meg’s gaze bore through him, he looked back at her.

  “I didn’t tell Grandma you were an FBI agent.”

  “Yes, I knew you wouldn’t.” He gave her a rueful smile.

  “You were so certain?” Her eyes narrowed.

  Jake shrugged. “No, I just hoped you wouldn’t. I think you’re having doubts, too. So last night you were using me to find out…?”

  “It’d serve you right.” She glanced away. “No, I didn’t think about searching your stuff until later, until this morning. After I saw that gun of yours.”

  “What was last night about?” he asked quietly. “Us being stupid and weak? Or us finding something special?”

  Meg chuckled mirthlessly and whipped her head around to stare at him. Their stares locked. There was fear and hurt in hers. “Yes, that’s it. Us being stupid and weak.” Her chin rose defiantly. “Look, I promise I won’t tell anyone if you’ll let us leave when we get to Dublin. Gran’s getting worse, anyway.”

  “What’d’ya mean, worse?”

  “She’s saying things…crazy things.” She looked away. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. Just let us leave Dublin, okay?”

  “I said I would, Meg. I’ll keep my word.” He paused. “Or…”

  Her blue eyes searched his face in desperation. It pained him to see her so frantic and frightened.

  “…or you can stay for the entire tour and let me get at the truth. Do you want to learn the truth about your grandmother?”

  Meg slowly shook her head. “Not if it means she’ll be hurt.” She looked away, apparently not so convinced, herself. “She’s been mumbling a lot in her sleep. She’s always been a very restless sleeper, but now it’s so much worse. In her sleep, she’s mumbling things in German. What does that mean?”

  He had an idea but he wasn’t about to voice it to Meg. Not now, not yet. A shrug was the coward’s way out.

  Meg wasn’t buying it. “You think she’s German, that she was a Nazi spy, don’t you? MI5 thinks so, too, don’t they?” She shook her head vigorously. “How can that be? She was born here, she’s Irish, for God’s sake. You think she spied for her German lover, don’t you? That’s what this is all about. She told us she didn’t and I’ve never known her to lie. In fact, she’s always been so blunt-speaking. Overly truthful, if you ask me. You heard her, Jake, that Horst guy asked her to spy but she turned him down. And now MI5 and the FBI are trying to make her look guilty!”