"But what did you mean that the men on the recording are not native speakers?" Jaxon asked. "If the last died thirty-odd years ago, they couldn't be."
"Well, in some schools of linguistic thought, only small children who have been brought up speaking the language can be considered native speakers," Magee said. "However, that's not what I meant. The Manx being spoken on that recording is a bastardized form of the language. Although the men are fluent, their pronunciations are definitely not the same as what was spoken on Man. Sort of like how the English that an Australian speaks is markedly different from a native of London; they have different words that are either entirely homegrown-like 'bloke' to mean 'man'-or derivations of words from a local culture-like billabong, an Aboriginal word for 'watering hole.'"
"Meaning?" Jaxon asked.
"Meaning that if I had to guess, I'd say that these two people did not learn their Manx from anyone on the Isle of Man."
"Are there other places where it's spoken?" Lucy asked.
Magee shook his massive head and pushed his glasses back onto his nose. "Outside of a few scholars, or expatriates, nowhere except the Isle of Man that I'm aware of."
"I thought you said the last of the native speakers died in 1974," Jaxon said. "But some people do speak the language on Man?"
"Oh, yes…the history lesson," Magee continued. "Other than a few recordings, the death of that last native speaker might have been the end for the language-which is different enough from its cousins Irish and Scottish that neither can understand it. Making matters worse, there had never been a written form of Manx. However, about the same time that man died, there was a resurgence of native pride on the Isle of Man, tied to nationalist goals that some hoped would lead to complete independence from the British Crown. With the help of linguists and hundreds of hours of recordings made prior to the 1970s, they began teaching children to speak Manx in a few schools, though those with any fluency probably still only number in the hundreds."
"So do I need to go to the Isle of Man to translate this?" Jaxon asked.
"Oh, no, not at all," Magee said. "About twenty-five years ago, I was approached by the education society from the Isle of Man and asked to help revive the language. To be honest, it was the best thing I've ever done." He stopped and shook his head sadly. "I only wish that I wasn't afraid of flying and of the ocean so that I could have gone to Man personally. Instead, they brought me the old recordings, as well as taped interviews with people who remember bits and pieces from hearing their grandparents."
Jaxon took out a notepad. "Okay, then, I'm ready whenever you are," he said with a smile.
Magee grinned back. "Okay, I get the hint. Now, there's a couple of words and aspects about the structure that aren't completely clear to me, and perhaps my skills are a bit rusty. It has been years since I heard Manx. However, the two men on your recording seem to be talking in some sort of prose, or a poem."
"A poem?" Lucy asked.
"Well, yes, and given the business of our friend here, I'm wondering if it is some sort of code," Magee replied. "Anyway, in the beginning there's a greeting that doesn't seem to mean much to either of them. But the crux of the message comes from the older man who says: 'A son of Man will march among the sons of Ireland and silence the critic for the good of us all.'"
"It does sound like a code," Lucy said.
"Yes, an instruction of some kind, perhaps," Jaxon agreed. "I wonder if they're talking about patriots from the Isle of Man. You mentioned that there was a nationalist movement on the island. Have you ever heard of any Isle of Man connections to terrorists, say, the Irish Republican Army?"
Magee frowned. "Not that I'm aware of. The nationalist movement was pretty benign when I was involved in the language project. It was more of a cultural pride thing and something that seemed would have a nonviolent political solution. I mean, it's not like the Isle of Man is occupied by British troops or under the thumb of Parliament. Independence would be more symbolic. But who knows? Maybe the nationalists have grown more violent in the years since."
Jaxon bit his lip. "A son of Man…so someone from Man will march with the sons of Ireland…boy, does that sound like good old-fashioned IRA polemics. Maybe some cross-fertilization? And then silencing the critic. An outspoken politician? Somebody within their own ranks?" He sighed, then added, "I think I better talk to my friends with MI5-the British secret service-and see if they can make heads or tails of it."
Magee shrugged. "Like I said, I'd be surprised if it's nationalists. It's really a sleepy little island-only thirty-three miles long and thirteen wide. It relies on tourism. They are a seafaring people from way back, which reminds me that there is one bit of naughty business associated with the Isle of Man."
Jaxon and Lucy both leaned forward. "Naughty?" they asked.
"Well, for hundreds of years the Manxmen, as they're called, were quite the smugglers," Magee said, happily going back to storyteller mode. "It really picked up in the seventeenth century. Ships from all parts of the world would anchor off the Isle of Man, hidden in any of the hundreds of small bays, and unload their cargoes into the small, fast sloops of the Manxmen. The smugglers would then make the run to remote shores of England or Ireland, where they'd sell their goods for the black market and then slip back out to sea. Of course, the Crown's tax collectors weren't too happy, and the Royal Navy was sent to stop the smuggling. The price of getting caught was pretty steep; some ships were sunk and their crews abandoned in the freezing waters of the Irish Sea, or if caught, they were hanged from the closest yardarm. However, on the Isle of Man, the smugglers enjoyed a sort of Robin Hood reputation. They've a lot of fun stories about the merry chases they would lead the British on."
"Can you tell us one?" Lucy asked.
"Certainly. Let's see, well, many of the stories are attributed to one particularly resourceful scoundrel named Quilliam. I recall one tale of Quilliam, who, when spotted by a British frigate and knowing he couldn't outrun the warship, told his men to go belowdecks. He then grabbed the wheel and ignored orders to stop until the Brits fired a warning shot across his bow. A longboat was lowered from the frigate, commanded by an angry English officer who demanded to know why he'd kept going. Quilliam told the officer that he was dreadfully sorry, but he wasn't feeling well. All the rest of his men, he said, were either dead or dying from what he guessed was cholera. 'You're welcome to come aboard and see for yourself,' he's reported to have said. Hearing about the dreaded disease, the English longboat stayed well away from Quilliam's sloop and skedaddled back to the frigate. Once the British were out of sight, Quilliam ordered his men back to their stations and, after a good laugh, they were on their way again."
"What happened to the smuggling operations on Man?" Jaxon asked.
"Well, the British tried just about everything to put a stop to it," Magee said. "And by 1778 were bound and determined to squash it once and for all. You'll remember they were in a bit of a fight over here in America, and they needed the revenues the smugglers were siphoning off. So they came up with an offer that-as Marlon Brando might've said-they hoped the smugglers couldn't refuse. The British government offered to pardon any smuggler, many of whom had prices on their heads, who volunteered to give up the smuggling life and enter the Crown's service as a sailor or soldier. Legend has it that five hundred turned themselves in and joined up. Those who did not were hunted down on the Isle of Man and sent to prison or hanged. Even at that, it still took another fifty years to stamp out all of the smugglers. It's a well-known fact that many of the wealthiest families living there now owe their fortunes to a smuggler in the family tree."
Lucy looked bemused but then shrugged. "Smugglers from hundreds of years ago seems pretty disconnected to this."
Jaxon nodded. "I agree. But it was an interesting tale."
"Thank you, we aim to please. And well, with your permission, and perhaps Miss Lucy's assistance, I'd like to continue doing a little research," Magee said. "I still have friends on the Isle of Man who I
correspond with on occasion. Maybe they could make some sense of the poem. I'll make sure my inquiries seem innocent enough."
Jaxon thought about it as he was standing up. He reached for Magee's hand. "Be careful and don't tell anybody about where you heard the poem. I'll appreciate hearing about anything you come up with."
"It will be my pleasure," Magee said, and turned to Lucy. "You want to give me a call when you're available, my love?"
Lucy also stood and walked over to give Magee a hug. "I will, Cian," she said. "Oh, I almost forgot. What's 'Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh,' mean? It sounded like a sign-off to me."
"What? Oh, yes, you're quite right," Magee replied. "'Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh' means 'What must be, will be.' Sounds pretty dramatic."
"That it does," Jaxon agreed. "Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh, then."
"Dia dhuit," Magee replied. "Which is how we Irish say 'God be with you.'"
10
"Got to go, honey bunny, I'm freezing my sweet keister off out here, and the cell doesn't work inside the restaurant." Ariadne Stupenagel had stepped into an alley off Brighton Beach Avenue in Brooklyn to escape the bitter wind that was howling in from the Atlantic, but she still shivered in the cold.
"If you come home now, mon cheri, I promise to warm it up for you," Murrow said in his best attempt at a sexy French accent, which came off as a fairly accurate rendition of the romantic cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew.
"You want to warm my cell phone up?" Stupenagel laughed. She adored the man and found him incredibly sexy-but not when he was trying to be sexy and French. Then it was mostly just funny.
"No, your sweet…how do you Americans say?…derriere," Murrow continued.
"Oooh, Pepe," she squealed, wondering if he would get the joke. "When you talk like so, it makes me purr ze cat."
"Well, my little kitten, sounds like you have need of scratching, ze l'amour."
Stupenagel giggled and sighed. Her boyfriend really did have wonderfully talented fingers and knew just how to use them for "ze l'amour." But she had work to do and it was time to focus.
"Sorry, baby," she said. "I need this interview for a story, and this might be the only chance I get. It may take a while, so don't wait up…but if you want, I can wake you up, as only I can, when I get back."
"Ah, oui, madam, please and most definitely," Murrow mumbled. "Until then…au revoir."
"Ciao," she replied, and flipped the telephone shut. She allowed herself a smile for a few seconds longer, and then put on her hard-nosed journalist game face. She'd been in the business a long time and knew that her pursuit of the St. Patrick's Cathedral story had her treading in shark-infested waters. She was making someone very nervous and/or very, very angry.
They'd already tried to kill Gilbert, though she knew that she was the real target. However, that hadn't stopped her lover's boss, Butch Karp, from haranguing her over taking chances with "other people's lives."
Stupenagel had told him to mind his own business, though she knew he was just being protective of his aide and friend. Recalling the battle on the rooftop, she did feel a pang of guilt for endangering her lover for the sake of a story. But investigative journalism was more than what she did, it was who she was, and Gilbert had known that going in. And he hadn't tried to blame her for nearly being strangled to death. His only comments had been regarding his concern for her safety.
"They tried once, they'll try again," he'd said as they lay in bed that night after the police left.
She'd tried to allay his fears with the old journalism adage that the most dangerous time for a journalist with damning information on a potentially dangerous person or organization, like the mob, was prior to publication. "After it's out, the only thing they'd accomplish by killing me is to bring more of a spotlight on them," she said. "Remember back in 1976 when Don Bolles, a reporter for the Arizona Republic, was killed by a bomb planted under his car? He'd been digging into allegations of land fraud concerning the mob and corrupt officials. I was one of thirty reporters from newspapers around the country who went to Phoenix as part of the 'Arizona Project.' We finished the job Bolles had started-a twenty-three-part series on official corruption, organized crime, and land fraud in Arizona. Even the mob now thinks twice before killing a journalist because it focuses too much attention on them."
Murrow was hardly mollified. "I wouldn't care that the job got finished if someone blew you up."
"Ahhh, you're so sweet, Silly Gilly," Stupenagel replied, and then kissed him. His steadfastness in light of his near-death experience touched her. Most of her former lovers would have headed for the hills to protect their hides, much less been more worried about her than themselves. "But you're missing my point. The sooner I can put a wrap on this series, the sooner there's no point in killing me. When I get done with them, the cockroaches will be scurrying for cover, not trying to get to me."
The look on Murrow's face told her that he didn't believe a word of it. He knew that what she'd said was true, but only to a degree. The bad guys were sometimes perfectly willing to kill a journalist out of revenge and to send a warning to other journalists that sometimes the First Amendment was bought with their blood.
The first round had gone to Stupenagel and a wooden baseball bat. The dead man had been identified as Don Porterhouse, a multiple offender with a history of sexual assault, assault, and burglaries. After she read his police jacket, something didn't seem right; Porterhouse didn't strike her as the sort to attack grown men with a garrote, and there was no mention of him being a trained martial artist. But a friend of hers at the Medical Examiner's Office had confirmed that the body he had autopsied had been positively identified as Porterhouse.
The bored NYPD detective who'd been assigned to the case had attached himself to the theory that Porterhouse had intended to burgle and rape Stupenagel and that Murrow had surprised him. "He just grabbed the first weapon he could think of," the detective said of the garrote. When she ventured the possibility that the man had been hired by someone upset with her stories, the cop had politely taken notes, but she could tell that he was doing it to humor her.
The story was the reason she was out on a blustery night to finally meet the man with the Russian accent who had been supplying her with her inside tips regarding Nadya Malovo, the Russian terrorist, and now some character named Jamys Kellagh, who was supposedly in the middle of it all.
She had been trying to meet the Russian source personally ever since the first call, but he'd refused. Then out of the blue, he'd called her that afternoon and suggested that they meet that evening. "I have something to give you in person," he said.
Although she didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, Stupenagel was curious about the change of heart. "Why not just mail it to me?" she'd asked.
"Because what I have to give you is one of a kind and cannot be trusted to a third party."
"Can you tell me anything about it? I mean, geez, it's awfully cold outside." There was no way in hell she wouldn't have met the man, but she'd learned from experience to always try to garner as much information while she had someone talking, just in case they didn't show up or disappeared altogether.
"Don't play games," the man warned. There was a pause, and she could hear him talking to someone in the background, although not well enough to understand what was being said. "I will tell you it has to do with Jamys Kellagh."
"You win," Stupenagel surrendered. "Where do you want to meet?"
On the way over to Brooklyn, she'd stopped by the Karp-Ciampi loft, ostensibly to check in on Butch's rehabilitation. But really she wanted to feel him out on the Russian agent, Nadya Malovo. The attack on St. Patrick's had resulted in several murders on his turf, and even if he was cooperating with the feds, she thought, ol' Butchie wouldn't have been too happy to hear that a suspect had been turned over to the Russians and then conveniently disappeared.
However, the district attorney and his wife were getting ready to entertain "a couple of friends from Idaho," and there'd been no time to
talk. I didn't know they had any friends in Idaho, she'd thought as she left the loft. Her reporter radar told her to delve a little more into these "friends" when she could get Marlene alone with a bottle of wine.
Stepping back out of the alley and onto the bustling sidewalk, Stupenagel got the impression as she always did in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach that she had awakened in a foreign city. The part of the avenue that she was on ran beneath the elevated subway track, which created a steel cavern that looked straight out of a futuristic movie. But it was hardly the physical setting that was unsettling.
Framed by the community of Coney Island to the west, Manhattan Beach to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, Brighton Beach was home to one of the largest Russian communities outside of that country, so much so that the inhabitants referred to the enclave as Little Odessa. Hardly anyone on the streets, whether they were store owners, vendors, or passersby, spoke anything but Russian, though the salesmen quickly switched to English when they spotted a visitor with money. The signs above and in the windows of the stores were written in Cyrillic, and even the Dogs Must Be Curbed sign had a Russian translation.
Stupenagel had done plenty of stories on the Russian community of Brighton Beach, and she knew that they were different from the Russian Jews who'd escaped what had been the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s. And she knew that they were different than the wave of Russian Jewish immigrants who had settled in the neighborhood at the beginning of the twentieth century after fleeing the pogroms of tsarist Russia.
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