Day of Reckoning

They laid the Walthers, the Semtex, the Uzis and stun grenades on the main saloon table. 'Let's give you a quick course on the Uzi, Billy. The Walther is simple enough.'

They spent half an hour going over things, then Dillon took one of the Walthers and led the way up to the wheelhouse. There was a flap to one side of the instrument board. He found a button, pressed, and inside was a fuse board. He cocked the Walther, slipped it inside, and closed the flap.

'Ready for action with ten rounds, Billy. Remember it's there. It's what is called an ace in the hole.'

'You think of everything, don't you?'

'That's why I'm still here. Let's go ashore and eat.'

He switched on the deck lights before they left and they coasted to the front at Oban on the inflatable and tied up. There was a pub close by that offered food. They went in, had a look at the menu, and opted for fish pie.

Dillon ordered a Bushmills, but Billy shook his head. 'Not me. I never liked the booze, Dillon. There must be something wrong with me.'

'Well, most things in life are in the Bible, and what the good book says is: wine is a mocker, strong drink raging.' He smiled. 'Having said that, I'll finish this and have another.'

Later, back on the Highlander, it started to rain harder. They sat on the stern deck under the awning, and Dillon went through everything from Katherine Johnson's death in New York to Al Shariz.

Billy said, 'These Mafia guys are fucks, Dillon, and Murphy's no better.'

'That about sums it up.'

'So we take them out?'

'I hope so.'

The rain drummed on the canvas awning and Dillon poured another whisky.

Billy said, 'Listen, Dillon, I know a little bit about you, the IRA hard man who switched sides. But every time I ask my uncle how it all happened, he clams up. What's the story?'

Maybe it was the rain, and maybe it was the whisky, but instead of giving him a hard look and telling him to mind his business, Dillon felt himself talking, the words coming slowly but steadily.

'I was born in Ulster, my mother died giving birth to me — a heavy load to bear. My father took me to London. He was a good man. A small builder. Got me into St Paul's School.'

'I thought that was for toffs?'

'No, Billy, it's for brains. Anyway, I liked the acting. Went to the Royal Academy. Only did a year and joined the National Theatre. I was still only nineteen. My father went home to Belfast and got caught in a fire fight between IRA and Brit paratroopers.'

'Jesus, that was a bastard.'

Dillon poured another whisky, looking back into the past. 'Billy, I was a damn good actor, but I went back to Belfast and joined the IRA.'

'Well, you would. I mean, they killed your old man.'

'And I was nineteen, but they were nineteen, Billy, mostly a lot like you. Anyway, the IRA had access to camps in Libya. I was sent for training. Three months, and there wasn't a weapon I didn't know inside out. You wanted a bomb, I could make it, any bomb.' He hesitated. 'Only that side I never liked. Passersby, women, kids — that isn't war.'

'That's how you saw it, war?'

'For a long time, yes, then I moved on. I was a professional soldier, so I sold my services. ETA in Spain, Arabs, Palestinians, also the Israelis. Funny, Billy, the job I've just done in Lebanon, blowing up a ship with arms for Saddam. Back in ninety-one, I worked for them.'

'You what?'

'Gulf War. I did the mortar attack on Downing Street in the snow. You wouldn't remember that.'

'I bleeding well do. I've read articles. They used a Ford Transit, then a guy on a motorbike picked up the bomber.'

'That was me, Billy.'

'Dillon, you bastard. You nearly got the Prime Minister and the entire cabinet.'

'Yes, almost, but not quite. I made a great deal of money out of it. I'm still rich, if you like. Later, I got into trouble in Bosnia. I was due to face a Serb firing squad, only Ferguson turned up, saved my miserable skin, and in return I had to work for him. You see, Billy, he wanted someone who was worse than the bad guys, and that was me.'

There was a kind of infinite sadness, and Billy surprised himself by saying quietly, 'What the hell, sometimes life just rolls up on you.'

'You could say that. The kid who was an actor at nineteen carried on acting just like in a bad movie, only he became the living legend of the IRA. You know those Westerns where they say Wyatt Earp killed twenty-one men? Billy, I couldn't tell you what my score is, except that it's a lot more.' He smiled gently. 'Do you ever get tired? I mean, really tired?'

Billy Salter summoned up all his resources. 'Listen, Dillon, you need to go to bed.'

'True. It's not much good when you don't sleep very well, but there's no harm in trying.'

'You do that.'

Dillon got up, rock steady. 'The trouble is, I don't really care whether I live or die any more, and when you're into the business of going into harm's way, that's not good.'

'Yes, well, this time you've got me. Just go to bed.'

Dillon went down the companionway. Billy sat there thinking about it, the rain beating down relentlessly, dripping off the awning. He'd never liked anyone as much as he liked Dillon, never admired anyone as much, outside of his uncle, anyway. He lit a cigarette and thought about it and suddenly saw a parallel. His uncle was a gangster, a right villain as they said in London, but there were things he wouldn't do, and Billy saw now that Dillon was the same.

He looked at the bottle of Bushmills morosely. 'Screw you,' he said, then picked it up, and the glass, and tossed them over the rail.

He sat there, the rain falling, feeling curiously relaxed, then remembered the paperback on philosophy, took it out of his pocket, and opened it at random. There were some pages about a man called Oliver Wendell Holmes, a famous American judge who'd also been an infantry officer in their Civil War: Between two groups of men that want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy except force…It seems to me that every society rests on the death of men.

Billy was transfixed. 'Jesus,' he said softly, 'maybe that explains Dillon,' and he read on.

He awoke in the morning in the aft cabin, and was lying there, adjusting, when he was aware of a loud cry. He threw aside his blankets and went up the companionway in his shorts. It was still raining relentlessly and mist draped the whole of Oban harbour. As he looked over the rail, Dillon surfaced a few yards away.

'Come on, the water's wonderful.'

'You must be bloody mad,' and then Billy cried out. 'Behind you, for Christ's sake.'

Dillon turned to look. 'Those are seals, Billy. No problem. They're intelligent and curious. You get them a lot around here.'

He struck out for the ladder and climbed it, his shorts clinging to him. There was a towel on the table under the awning and he picked it up.

'What a bleeding place.' Billy looked out across the harbour. 'Does it always rain like this?'

'Six days out of seven. Never mind. Get dressed and we'll take the inflatable and go back to that pub. We'll get an all-day breakfast, just like in London.'

'Well, I'm with you there.'

Hannah Bernstein called in at Rosedene around nine-thirty and found Martha in reception.

'How is he?'

'Not wonderful. The bullet gouged deep. We thought twenty stitches and ended up with thirty. Look, I don't know what's going on, but he isn't fit to go anywhere. The professor is checking him out now. I'll go and see how he's doing.'