“Shit, Matthew, what time is it?” Farrell sat up and scratched his chest. The digits on his clock radio glowed redly. It was one-thirty.
“You alone?” asked Bailey.
Farrell looked down at the sleeping body next to him. “Sort of,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Not too far away, Pat, old son. Everything on schedule?”
“No problems here,” replied Farrell.
“I’ll be dropping by tomorrow morning, I want to put the Centurion through its paces, okay?”
“Fine, I’ll have a few bottles of Guinness ready,” laughed Farrell.
“Eight hours between bottle and throttle, remember,” said Bailey.
“Yeah,” said Farrell, “right.” The sleeping figure next to him began to stir. Farrell reached down and ruffled the mane of black hair on the pillow. He lowered his voice. “Matthew, everything’s cosy here, but you might have a problem in New York. Do you know a guy by the name of O’Brien? Damien O’Brien?”
There was silence at the other end of the line for a while. “I know a Seamus O’Brien, but I can’t think of a Damien,” said Bailey. “There is a Damien J. O’Brien, lives in Dublin, one of the old school, but he must be in his seventies now and I never met him. What’s up?”
“There was a Damien O’Brien asking questions about you in New York a few days ago. Said he was a friend of yours.” An arm snaked through the sheets and Farrell felt a hand crawl across his thighs. He opened his legs and smiled.
“Seamus is getting on eighty years old and he’s in an old folks’ home in Derry, far as I know,” said Bailey.
“Thing of it is, Matthew, is that a couple of the boys went round to have a word with this O’Brien, to see what his game was. Police found them tied up in O’Brien’s room, both of them shot dead.”
“Bloody hell,” whispered Bailey, his voice so faint that Farrell could barely hear him. The inquisitive hand found its target and began to squeeze. Farrell stifled a groan. “What about this O’Brien?” asked Bailey. “Where is he now?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Matthew. He did a runner.”
“Sass-man, you think?”
“Dunno, he seemed okay from what I was told. Shorty gave him a job in Filbin’s, and you know that Shorty can smell SAS a mile off. O’Brien was a boozer, damn near an alcoholic.”
“So what do you think? Was he on to us? Was he trying to find out who did Manyon in?”
“Manyon?”
“The SAS officer that Mary got hold of. He was using the name Ballantine, but his real name was Pete Manyon.”
“O’Brien didn’t mention Manyon, it was you he was asking for.”
Bailey snorted. “Jesus, Pat, he’d hardly waltz around Filbin’s asking about an SAS officer, would he?”
“Yeah, sorry,” said Farrell. The hand in his groin was a distraction he could well do without, but it felt so good he didn’t want to push it away. He slid down the bed.
“You okay, Pat? You’re breathing heavy,” said Bailey.
“Just tired, that’s all. Maybe this guy O’Brien was working for the Feds, and they pulled him out when our guys got suspicious.”
“Feds wouldn’t kill our men, surely?” said Bailey. “MI5 would, and so would the SAS, but not the Feds. Not unless there was a shoot-out.”
“No shoot-out, the guys were tied up and naked, shot in the face and chest. Police reckon it was a gang killing, maybe drug-related.”
“Fuck!” exclaimed Bailey. “What in God’s name is going on? You think O’Brien knows where I am?”
“Matthew, nobody knows where you are.”
“Yeah, that’s right enough. You haven’t seen anyone strange around the airfield?”
“Come on, you’re getting paranoid,” said Farrell.
“Yeah, maybe, but I’d feel happier if you kept your eyes open.”
“Okay, I will do,” said Farrell. The hand between his thighs was becoming more insistent. “Look, I’ll see you tomorrow, I’ve gotta get back to sleep. I’m knackered.”
“Okay, Pat, old son, get a good night’s kip. I’ll be at the airfield at six. Cheers.”
The line went dead before Farrell could complain about the early start and he shook his head as he replaced the receiver. He rolled over and looked down at the young man next to him. “Right, you sod, I’ll make you suffer for that.”
“Oh good,” sighed the man, pulling Farrell down on top of him.
Cole Howard looked down on the lights of the Capitol as the helicopter descended out of the clouds. Washington was breathtaking at night, the national monuments illuminated in all their splendour while the drug dealers and hookers carried out their trades in the dark places in between. Crack cocaine, AIDS, murders, Washington had more of them than almost any other city in the world, but from the air none of that was visible and Howard looked down as entranced as a sight-seeing schoolboy.
It wasn’t his first trip in a helicopter but he was still a little uneasy. He could never forget that the whole contraption depended on a whirling rotor which was held in place by a single steel nut. Even with the headphones on he could hear the roar of the massive turbine of the JetRanger helicopter and his buttocks tingled from the vibration. It was difficult to imagine that the machine could hold itself together, even though he knew that flying in a helicopter was a hundred times safer than driving on the roads below.
The pilot’s voice came over the intercom, and even it was vibrating. “Folks, you should be able to see the White House down there on the right. I’ll make one pass over the grounds and then we’ll go in for a landing. The winds are gusting up to twenty knots so it might be a bit bumpy, but nothing to worry about.” Sitting next to Howard was Don Clutesi, a cheerful, portly man with slicked back hair that glistened with oil whom he’d liked the moment they’d been introduced. His handshake had been damp as if he sweated a lot, but the grip was firm, and he spoke with a nasally Brooklyn accent, like a gangster from a B-movie.
Howard looked down to the right and saw the home of the President, impossibly white amid the bright green lawns. Clutesi had seen it, too, and he gave Howard a thumbs-up and nodded. Behind the building Howard saw the white H in a circle, denoting the helicopter landing-pad, and some distance away a fluorescent orange wind-sock, swinging in the wind. As the pilot swung the JetRanger around Howard thought suddenly of his wife, and how upset she’d been when he left. He’d tried calling her from New York but the line was continually busy. Either she was punishing him, or she was on the phone to her father, pouring her heart out. Now it was almost two o’clock in the morning. He wondered if it was too late to call her.
The helicopter levelled off and before Howard realised they’d touched down the skids were rested on the landing-pad and the rotor blades were slowing. When the rotors had stopped turning the co-pilot slid open the door for the passengers and Howard, Mulholland, Clutesi and O’Donnell filed out, ducking their heads even though there was no danger. Howard supposed it came from seeing too many war movies where the grunts jumped out of their Hueys with the rotors still turning, bent almost double with their Ml6s at the ready. Mulholland went out of his way to shake the hands of the pilot and co-pilot and congratulate them for a good flight.
A Secret Service agent was waiting for them, and Howard was amused to see that, even though it was the middle of the night, the man was wearing sunglasses. He either knew Mulholland or had been well briefed because he went straight up to him and welcomed him to the White House before introducing himself to the rest of the FBI agents. His name was Josh Rawlins and he looked as if he’d only recently left college. He told the agents that their luggage would be taken care of and took them through a back entrance where they had to show their FBI credentials to an armed guard, and along a corridor to a staircase. Small watercolours in gilt frames were hanging on the wall to the right of the staircase and the carpet was a deep blue. It was, Howard realised, a far cry from the offices he worked out of in Phoenix. “We’ve come through the West Wing into the Mansion,” Rawlins explained. “The President’s private apartments are here, and our offices.” At the top of the staircase was another corridor off which led several polished oak doors. Bob Sanger’s was the third along. Rawlins knocked on the door and opened it. A young secretary, brunette with piercing blue eyes which were enhanced by the blue wool suit she wore, smiled and told them to go straight in. Rawlins said goodbye and went back down the stairs.
Sanger was sitting at his desk, his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his pince-nez eyeglasses perched on the end of his nose as he perused a stack of papers. Through the window behind Sanger, Howard could see the floodlit lawns
