by Martin Hand
‘Surely with all your technology you should be telling me that. You know, after all, that we made friends with tribesmen in Jordan. Am I to assume that your spy technology let you down?’
Mr Y had regained his voice. ‘We are simply looking for confirmation, that is all.’
‘Of course, I can confirm that we were attempting to do valuable United Nations work, work which was meant to do no harm and only good. You might say God’s work.’
‘Well if as you say this is God’s work, why are you reticent to answer our simple questions?’ asked Mr Y.
‘Because, my friend, I suspect you are not interested in my views about God’s work. Your great nation has been made great by a common loyalty. Loyalty to the State, loyalty to God. Yet you ask me to be disloyal to my own as if it were a mere nothing. Nothing could ever induce me to do such a thing, not even if torture was involved.’
Mr X thought the misfortune lay in not having enough time for torture.
What disconcerted Mr Y was that Fionn must know what they were thinking. Why else, in God’s name, would a prisoner be the person to mention torture?
‘Let us ask a different question then,’ said Mr Y quickly. ‘How and why did you transfer from your original boat?’
‘That is of no consequence. I simply must go where I can best serve the mission,’ said Fionn.
Mr Z had long since realised that the boy in front of him was not an ordinary young man. Even if torture was an option, he very much doubted if it would work. He equally doubted if Israeli intelligence would countenance allowing the young man his freedom to expand the influence he already possessed.
Chapter Eleven
Late Saturday evening, Mr Z – David – discussed the situation with the PM, as arranged.
‘Prime Minister, the prisoner Private Fionn is proving to be impenetrable to our most intense questioning. I would request that you sanction the use of more extreme measures.’
‘That, my friend, is not an issue, but what is an issue is time. This renegade UN mission even has Trump tweeting. He is at least with us on Jerusalem and I think he likes thwarting the UN’s tired old stance that the Holy City is still disputed territory. Why is there a story about a missing soldier in the first instance?’ asked the prime minister.
‘Our satellite images showed us two boats of similar size close together when we intercepted,’ replied Mr Z.
‘And why did we not detain both?’
‘Our captain is adamant that the searchlights could not have missed the second vessel.’
‘Great. With a story that’s now capturing world attention, we would appear to be proceeding with a degree of incompetence ourselves.’
‘There may be confusion among the Irish as to who was in the vessel we detained,’ said Mr Z.
‘Good. That might be useful if we need to build on any confusion, especially if there has been bungling going on, on our side,’ said the PM. ‘You say this private did good work in patching up our young soldier.’
‘Yes, Prime Minister, but there is more to it than just that. Our own men are in awe of this boy. He carried out a medical intervention on the Jordanian pilot, injured during our boarding, a medical intervention that could be viewed as miraculous,’ said Mr Z.
‘Now look, David, this has to be stopped and put to bed before it can grow any bigger.’
‘Of course. I’ll get on it at once, Prime Minister. There is, however, one more pertinent item to report.’
‘Which is?’
‘A replay of the satellite footage shows an object move between the two detected vessels.’
‘The significance being?’
‘We are probing the Irish boy to find out if he was the object transferring between boats. This would explain the confusion about a missing soldier,’ said Mr Z.
‘Not making any sense, David. Swimming in the Dead Sea?’
‘No, sir, the object was moving too fast for a swimmer.’
‘Keep concentrating on the private. The sergeant, it would seem, has little more to offer. It’s too late to deal with the other detained soldiers. We have all fought hard to build this great nation for seventy years. What a shame it would be if it all unravelled because of a small thing that we deemed not to warrant our full attention. David, let me assure you this will not happen on my watch. Come back to me with an immediate update if he breaks. One way or another you will receive my final orders. Get that mouthpiece Dannell lined up again to be on the media tomorrow, as a contingency. Just to cover our options, I will extend the interrogation deadline to 6 a.m. Expect my call.’
Chapter Twelve
A new low, the lowest, descended at about one o’clock Irish time on Sunday afternoon. The buoyancy that had been created by Knesset member, Dannell, the previous day, was sunk by the same man. He was again in front of the cameras and this time not just Fox.
Dannell was artificially contrite and annoyed at the same time. It apparently wasn’t his fault that the Irish Army was mixed up about its troop’s strength. ‘Six, six – how many times do I have to repeat it? – is the number of legally detained UN warmakers. No, no, no, the Israeli authorities see no necessity for a wild search of the Dead Sea for anyone allegedly missing. If the Irish wanted a search mission, then they should ask their Palestinian and Jordanian friends.’
This breaking news sent the Irish Army command into a tailspin over what it should say next. The despair for Sergeant Doyle and his men in Bethlehem was total. Joe was destroyed. So Fionn was lost after all?
‘They must have gotten mixed up and included the pilot of their boat in our number,’ said Seamus.
All the hope that had emerged from the Tel Aviv on Saturday was now dead, utterly.
Confusion wasn’t the sentiment shared between Dermot, Mary and Margaret. More like turmoil. When Dermot told Fionn’s mother that their joy from yesterday might have been misplaced, both he and Mary were nearly glad that Margaret was too exhausted to take it in. Mary had confided in Dermot that she thought there was a little bit of self-medicating going on. Margaret had access to people who had access to Xanax.
Even the United Nations high command seemed unnerved. A sharp-looking suit on the steps outside New York HQ gave a press statement. The UN were suspending their peacekeeping observation mission and requesting the immediate release of all detained Irish personnel. They looked forward to the repatriation of all thirteen observers in time for Christmas. They, too, were hoping the maths added up, even though the Jordanian captive, Ahmed, didn’t get a mention in the press release.
In Bethlehem the Palestinian officials had to suppress their delight at the anti-Israeli PR success of an observer mission that, after all, never got to observe anything except an Israeli jail and Bethlehem hospitality.
Joe was disconsolate but got his comfort and bearings, as he had done all weekend, from his email relationship with Eleanor. He felt he had given Fionn’s mother too much hope and Eleanor countered that as best she could.
‘Everyone’s head is destroyed by how counting the number of boys in custody could be so difficult. Still, don’t give up hope,’ was her message to try and keep his spirits up.
Monday was a bleak day in early-December Palestine. It was like the world had gone back to work. All the media noise of the weekend in, Dublin, New York, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was drowned out by sports news.
Sergeant Doyle, in Bethlehem, could tell Irish Army HQ nothing that he hadn’t already told them on Saturday. They, similarly, had nothing new to say about when either the Bethlehem-based troops or the Jerusalem captives would be heading home to Ireland. Fionn’s fate remained a mystery.
Doyle briefed his men at teatime on Monday evening. He let them know that the Saint Gabrielle would seat them for a private meal and that they were to be in bed by 10 p.m. He would not be joining them to eat. At that stage the whole lot of them were too deflate
d to be of any use to anyone.
Joe had his head down absently gazing at a keyboard like a man with writer’s block.
Fionn rested his hand on Joe’s shoulder there in the partial privacy of the hotel alcove. ‘My friend, seems like an age,’ he said.
Joe turned his head towards the voice, dazed. ‘What the feck?’ he stuttered as he stood to embrace his buddy, not in disbelief but in total belief at the flesh and blood in front of him.
Taylor and Jake saw the commotion in the alcove from their barstools and came over with what had become the youngsters’ chosen greeting: ‘My man, Fionn! What the feck?’
It probably would have been fuck, but the young soldiers had learnt that the Arabs took a dim view of bad language used only for the sake of using it.
‘Que pasa, que pasa?’ A half-cut Taylor carried on like he was on a low-budget Spanish holiday.
‘Fill us in, fill us in,’ said an excited Jake.
‘Well, there’s lots to tell but very little time to tell it. I know Ireland can be a beautiful and strange little country, but this piece of the world is even stranger and more beautiful,’ said Fionn. ‘First a bunch of Palestinians wanted to throttle me, and then the Israelis, well, maybe enough said for the moment.’
Joe, who had been emailing soberly, was trying to figure it out. As for Taylor and Jake, their buddy was back, and all was right with the world.
Two days earlier, on Saturday, Joe had shared with his parents the good news that Fionn had been picked up along with the rest of Sergeant O’Brien’s troop. He had dared not talk to his old man when on Sunday news emerged from the Israeli spokesman that six had been arrested and not seven. Joe’s excuse, in his own head, was that it was impossible to say for sure that Fionn was the seventh soul. Maybe the Israelis were messing with the maths because the Palestinians were scoring kudos over the whole crazy mission. But he knew it was Fionn. And now the relief, for Joe, was immense.
‘Boys,’ said Fionn, ‘you’re going to be media celebrities when ye get home. If the army allow, you might even make it onto The Late Late. Ye have to think out what you’re going to say.’
‘Oh yeah, we’ll tell them we are the boys in green, the best you’ve ever seen and the rest of ye can go shag yourselves,’ said Taylor.
‘Now listen up,’ Fionn said, ‘keep the message simple. We do our best and we don’t do any harm. We’re army, we’re Irish and we want the people we serve to do better, try harder, don’t hate.’
Joe had gathered himself a bit. ‘Good man, Fionn. Sure you’ll be there to do the talking, right?’
‘No, Joe, my friend, I won’t. This is just a fleeting visit. You might say I’m on the run, but I delight in having seen Jerusalem, well a little bit of it anyway. It would be a shame, you might say, not to see a bit more and, well, do no harm. Lads, I have to show you a cruel thing, a thing I honestly prayed you would never have to see.’ Fionn unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and revealed something that would be impossible not to recognise, even if you were seeing it for the first time: a bullet-hole wound in the upper sternum.
‘Jaysus, that must’ve hurt,’ said Jake.
‘It did but that’s yet another story for some other time,’ said Fionn.
Joe was feeling suddenly unsteady. He got it together and spoke, almost feeling that he was running out of time. ‘Are you staying for the meal? What will I tell your ma?’
‘Don’t worry about my mother. I’ll tell her myself. Jake, I’ll have one last glass with the lads before I start making myself scarce. Don’t want the natives getting restless.’
Joe’s da continued to deal with the emotional roller coaster of that first weekend in a bleak Irish December – deal with it like a bull in a china shop, Mary would have said.
Mary, meanwhile, continued to be the main emotional support for Fionn’s mother. The media had decamped from outside Private Martha O’Dowd’s house and had re-established themselves outside Private Fionn O’Toole’s Glasnevin terraced home. Luckily for his mother, she had long since moved in with Dermot and Mary and the media had yet to track them down.
‘Any feckin’ media show up here and I’m tellin’ ye …’ Dermot said without feeling the need to finish the sentence. He couldn’t hack that Margaret wasn’t following the plot, as he saw it.
That Knesset guy had reappeared in front of the cameras on Sunday, flippantly saying that six captives were in a Jerusalem jail, where according to him they deserved to stay and rot.
‘Feckin’ failed Rabbi, that fella.’ Dermot smelt a rat. The army weren’t in touch, and even his own son had gone to ground. He was particularly grumpy on the Tuesday morning because Mary had insisted, for the second day, that he shouldn’t go to work while all this was going on. At the breakfast table Dermot was irked by Margaret’s continued calmness in the face of her missing son.
Mary thought that Margaret was using a very human coping mechanism. ‘Look love, if digging her head in the sand works for her, it’s not your place to ram reality down her throat,’ she told her husband. Margaret isn’t ready for reality yet.’
‘I think I’ll head home today,’ ‘Margaret told them as she sat down for breakfast.
‘Now don’t be hasty, Maggie,’ Dermot said. ‘Those media hounds are still baying for blood, you know.’
‘No, I think they’ll be gone,’ said Margaret.
‘Why so?’ asked a calmer Mary.
‘Because Fionn told me, or at least he was here,’ she replied. ‘So I’m guessing all that media kerfuffle is over.’
‘What?’ said an incredulous Dermot, just about keeping his head.
‘Yeah, did you see when ye came down this morning, Mary? I left our two cups in the sink. I didn’t want to start rattling the dishwasher around in the middle of the night. We had a cup of tea. He said he’d already eaten.’
Mary and Dermot looked at each other. Mary put her hand on Dermot’s knee and squeezed it tightly, a signal that now was not the time for an explosion in his quest to bring order and logic to the world.
Mary calmly asked, ‘Where is he now?’
Margaret didn’t immediately answer. She was in a reverie now, going over in her mind the reunion with her son.
‘Son, I’m not really that surprised to see you. I dreamt you would come. I know you’re dead and I know by loving you I must hate the monsters that did this to you. And yes, I already know that’s not what you want.’
‘Mam, that’s the point. We don’t die, really. We’re all just divine energy. I just have more of it than most poor souls. More in life and more in death. I think I was able to do some good works in life, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t continue.’
‘But, son, where are you? Where is your body?’
Margaret’s eyes filled with tears. She felt she couldn’t cry for fear of it getting in the way of these precious moments. Deep down she knew something was ending, and no matter how strange, human sadness is a well that cannot run dry.
Mary repeated, ‘Where is he now?’
‘Oh, gone back. He said his mission wasn’t over yet.’
Dermot, with a tightly gripped knee, simply said, ‘Maggie, if you do go home today and you do bump into any of those media curs, will ye do me a favour? Don’t mention Fionn’s visit.’
Epilogue
The president was in imperious mode at the weekly Friday press conference.
‘No, I’m not going to condemn the Israeli people for defending their borders, no more than I would condemn the United States for defending its borders with Mexico. If the United Nations wants to send Irish military on half-baked errands then, you know what, there are consequences. No, the United States won’t be intervening in the dispute. Soldiers go missing. That’s just the way it is.
‘Don’t you just get a bit tired of this fake news from the Irish? You know, I’m going to tell you, if these
leprechaun shenanigans are kept up, I’m not so sure we can do the Saint Patrick’s Day thing in the White House going forward.’
A reporter from NBC asked, ‘Are you aware, Mr President, that Palestinian women are being denied entry into Jerusalem when they state that the purpose of their visit is to seek the Messiah?’
‘I just think,’ said the president, ‘if you’re looking for a Messiah, then Jerusalem is a very good place to start, right?’