employer stood, but whether he was helped up or they had mistaken him for another bomber, I couldn’t say. As I got closer, some of the constables turned toward me, ready to take me down, if I were a threat.
“He’s with me,” Barker called.
Then I saw Garrity, prone upon the ground, his arms and legs in the tight clutches of Scotland Yard and a look of black anger on his face as he cursed us.
“You’ve got him, then.”
“Yes, but the bomb is gone. We’ve been tricked. There, lad, up on the bridge!”
I looked behind me and doubted my eyes. The satchel was in the hands of a man wearing a coat and hat identical to Garrity’s, and he had just begun to cross the railway bridge. I had no idea who it could be. I was after him, even staying ahead of Barker, for once.
“Stop!” I yelled. It might have come out better had I Barker’s low, rough voice, but it had the desired effect. I saw the figure look over his shoulder and then run even faster. Our quarry was on the small railway bridge that my employer and I had crossed on the night of the first bombing. In half a minute I was on the bridge myself.
The bomber was much closer to me than before. I could easily make out his coat and bowler and one of the satchels I had purchased in Paris. He was so close, in fact, that he was within shooting distance.
“Stop, I say, or I’ll shoot!” I bellowed, with as much conviction as I could muster. I reached into the leather- lined pocket of my special coat, and my hand grasped the wooden grip of my Webley revolver. I thrust it out, and tried to push down any doubts as to whether I could really kill anyone, or even whether I should.
“Give up!” I cried. “I cannot possibly miss at this range!”
Then, on the wind, a scent came to my nose. Above the noxious fumes of the river, something carried on the breeze, full in my face, something I would recognize anywhere. It was lilac.
“Maire?” I whispered, as I realized who it was.
The figure stopped in its tracks. I did the same. We were no more than fifteen feet apart. Slowly, she turned. She was wearing a man’s coat and hat, over a man’s suit coat and trousers. It all came together in a flash. Maire O’Casey had been the youth who had set the first bomb, the one the cabman had let out at Scotland Yard.
“Put the gun down,” she said to me, as if I were an errant child. “You know you could never shoot me.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “You’re supposed to be in Liverpool.”
It was growing dark, but I could still see the smile on her face. She removed the bowler and threw it over the railing, her auburn hair spilling out around her upturned collar.
“You didn’t really think Dunleavy clever enough to think up this little enterprise, did you? If you did, you’re even more naive than I thought you were, Thomas.”
“If it wasn’t Dunleavy, it must have been O’Muircheartaigh,” I said bitterly. “I presume he’s waiting for you in a carriage across the bridge.”
“Is that so? Did you really think he is behind all this?” she asked.
“It was Maire, herself, lad,” Barker called out from somewhere behind me. The sun had almost set and he was in silhouette. “She is the leader of the faction.”
“That’s right, it was me. I thought up this entire plan. I recruited Dunleavy, with Eamon’s help. I organized the faction. I planned the entire operation and delivered the bombs that blew up Scotland Yard. And you, Cyrus Barker!” she called out.
“Yes, Miss O’Casey?”
“While you men were at the Crooked Harp, I went to see my old mentor, Seamus O’Muircheartaigh. He had a suspicion that you might be on our trail. You played a very good game, though not quite good enough. I still have this bomb.” She looked at me. “Thomas, there is still time. Come with me. Once safely across the bridge, we can blow it up and make our escape. We can begin again together. With my planning and your bomb-making skills, we shall free Ireland yet. What do you say?”
I actually did stop and think a moment of a life with Maire, away from the private enquiry work and my life as it was. It fell like a house of cards.
“I say, I work for Cyrus Barker and Her Majesty’s government. Set down the satchel at once, and step away.”
She held out her hand. “But, Thomas, forget all that. Come with me,” she urged in a low voice. “We can find a cab on the other side of the bridge. We can be in Paris again by tomorrow.”
I lowered the gun, staring into the face of the woman I had kissed so recently. My mind couldn’t take it in. “Stop it, Maire. You know I can’t.”
“Of course you can. You can do anything you want to do.” She plucked a revolver from her pocket and pointed it over my shoulder. “Not one step closer, Mr. Barker!”
“Miss O’Casey.” I heard Barker’s deep rumble behind me. “Your game is finished. Put down the bomb.”
“Come with me,” she said, stepping farther away, ignoring Barker.
“Not another step!” I ordered, but even I could tell it lacked conviction.
“Good-bye, Thomas.” She began to turn.
“Stop, blast you!” My finger was squeezing the trigger.
Perhaps it was the sudden anger in my voice that did it. She knew I wouldn’t let her leave. She swung the barrel of her pistol toward me and I saw the sudden flash of her gun.
I felt the bullet strike me on the left shoulder. It was caught in the leaden mesh built into my coat. It was as if I’d been prodded roughly with a stout poker. I don’t know to this day whether my finger twitched in natural reaction to the shot or whether I deliberately pulled the trigger. All I knew was that my own revolver discharged a second after hers.
Saying there was a boom simply does not describe it. One second, I was on the bridge, my feet braced, and the next, I was blown over the side. I have a memory of Barker’s arm reaching toward me, but he was too late. Maire O’Casey was no more to be seen, and I was launched out into the night sky.
28
Where was I? Oh, yes, twenty feet deep, just free of that infernal coat, and about to fill my lungs full of vile Thames water instead of air. It was then that I felt a rough but familiar hand seize my collar and begin to pull me upward. Somehow, Barker was beside me. He dragged me up to the surface, and we both took in great lungfuls of air. I had complained about the dank, fetid reek of the river dozens of times before, but just then it seemed the sweetest air in the world. I was alive, soaked like a water rat, and choking for breath, but alive for all that.
“Hold still,” the Guv ordered. “Stop thrashing about.”
No longer having the strength to struggle, I stopped moving while Barker reached over my shoulder and took hold of the lapels of my waistcoat, pulling me along through the water on my back. My employer was a strong swimmer and towed me as easily as if I were made of cork, while I sputtered and coughed, trying to expel the foul water from my lungs.
As I floated there, my thoughts scudding along like clouds on a blustering day, I eventually made out the sound of oars. Someone had alerted the suicide station under Waterloo Bridge, and they had launched a rowboat.
“Over here!” Barker cried. The next I knew, I was being pulled roughly over a gunwale, the hard wood scraping across my stomach, and was left sputtering like a fish in the bottom of the rowboat. A constable threw a blanket over me and rubbed me down with all the gentle tenderness of a turnkey. He made up for it by handing me a steaming mug of tea, leaving me to sort out my erratic thoughts while the others hauled in Barker.
In the boat, to the steady sound of the oars plunking in the water, my mind began to coalesce. Maire O’Casey. The bomb she had carried had exploded, obliterating her on the bridge from which we were slowly drawing away. Maire had taken me in completely, had even taunted my ignorance on the bridge. I’d been a fool. I’d thought her a gentle girl, the kind I would wish to see again if only I could figure out how she could accept my being the spy who turned her brother in. Now there was no need. She’d been leading the faction the entire time, and now she was dead. I felt an emotional mantle settle over me just then, chilling my heart, a mixture of cynicism, world- weariness, and grief. Better I’d been left at the bottom of the river. Had I been able to piece this together then, I might not have struggled so fiercely to be free from the embrace of my lead-lined coat.
