through the venetian blinds. 'The rain isn't so bad,' he said. 'It's only spitting now. What about a stroll in Herbert Park?'
'It's winter and it's March and it's cold,' said Fitzduane, but his movements belied his words. He shrugged into his still-damp coat. 'And there are no flowers.'
'There are always flowers,' said Kilmara.
They walked the short distance to Herbert Park and turned onto the deserted grounds.
The four security guards moved in closer, though they were still out of earshot. They were perceptibly edgy. The light was dull, and the shrubbery provided cover for a possible assailant. It was unlike the colonel to expose himself for this length of time in what could not be made, with the manpower available, a secure area. The bodyguard commander called in to Ranger headquarters for backup. He wondered what the two men were talking about. He hoped the rain would get heavier so they'd return to bricks and mortar and a defensible perimeter.
They were talking about terrorists.
'Take our homegrown lot,' said Kilmara. 'We hunt them and imprison them, and occasionally we kill them, but I still have a certain sympathy for, or at least an understanding of, the Provos and other splinter groups of the IRA. They want a united Ireland. They don't want Britain hanging on to the North.'
'By exploding bombs in crowded streets, by killing and maiming innocent men, women, and children, by murdering part-time policemen in front of their families?' broke in Fitzduane.
'I know, I know,' said Kilmara, 'I'm not defending the IRA. My point is, however, that I understand their motives.'
They left the ponds and gardens of Herbert Park and crossed the road into the area of lawn and tennis courts. Wet grass squelched underfoot. Neither man noticed.
Kilmara continued. 'Similarly, I understand other nationalist terrorist organizations like ETA or the various Palestinian outfits, and the Lord knows there are enough of those. But I have great difficulty in grasping the motives of what I tend to think of as the European terrorists – the Baader-Meinhof people, the ‘Red Army Faction,’ as they call themselves, Action Directe – or gangs like the Italian Brigate Rosse.
'What the hell are they after? Most of the members come from well-to-do families. They are normally well educated – sometimes too well. They don't have material problems. They don't have nationalistic objectives. They don't seem to have a coherent political philosophy. Yet they rob, kidnap, maim, and murder. But to what end? Why?'
'What are you leading up to?'
Kilmara stopped and turned to face Fitzduane. He shook his head. 'I'm buggered if I know exactly. It's a kind of feeling I have that something else is brewing. We sit on this damp little island of ours with mildew and shamrock corroding our brains and think all we have to worry about, at least in a terrorist sense, is the IRA. I'm not sure it's that simple.'
'I've no time for communism, which is self-destructing anyway, but all is far from well in Western democracies. There is a gangrene affecting our values that gives rise to terrorists like the Red Army Faction, and I'm beginning to get the smell in this country.'
They started walking again. To the great relief of the bodyguard commander, the heavens opened, and rain descended in solid sheets. The colonel and his guest headed toward a Ranger car.
'Is this instinct or something harder?' asked Fitzduane. 'Is this academic discussion or something that crosses what I'm up to?'
'It's not academic,' said Kilmara, 'but it's not hard. 'It's bits and pieces sifted from intelligence reports and interrogations. It's the presence of elements that shouldn't be there. It's stuff on the grapevine. It's the instincts of someone who's been a long time in this game. As for whether it affects you, I don't see how – but who knows? Suicide is about alienation. There are other ways to show society you're pissed off. And there is a lot about our society to piss people off.'
Kilmara stopped at they approached the car. The sky was black, and thunder rumbled. Rain poured down and cascaded off the two men. Lightning flashed and for a moment illuminated Kilmara's face. He started to say something, then seemed to change his mind. He reverted to what they had just been discussing. 'In this new modern Ireland of ours – and for Ireland you can substitute the Western capitalist world – our idea of progress is a new shopping center or video machine. It just isn't that simple. Life can't be that hollow.'
Fitzduane looked at his friend.
'I've got children,' said Kilmara, 'and I'm not sure I like the view in my crystal ball.'
They returned to the hotel and dried off and had a hot whiskey together for the road. They drank in companionable silence. The hotel's central heating was as usual too hot, but their coats and hats, draped over the radiators and dripping onto the carpet, were drying out. The room smelled like an old sheepdog.
'I wonder what you've got into this time, Hugo,' said Kilmara. 'You and your fucking vibes.' He swirled the clove in his hot whiskey. 'Tell me,' he said, 'do they still call you the Irish samurai?'
'From time to time,' replied Fitzduane. 'The media have picked it up, and it's in the files. It livens up a story.'
Kilmara laughed. 'Ah,' he said, 'but the name fits. There you are with your ideals, your standards, your military skills, and your heritage, looking for a worthwhile cause to serve, a quest to undertake.'
'The idea of a samurai,' said Fitzduane, 'Is a warrior who already serves, one who has already found his master and has his place in the social order, a knight in the feudal system answerable to a lord but in charge of his own particular patch.'
'Well,' said Kilmara, 'you've certainly got your own particular patch – even if it is in the middle of nowhere. As to whom you are answerable' – he grinned – 'that's an interesting question.'
The thunderstorm was working itself up to a climax. Rain drummed against the glass. Lightning split the sky into jagged pieces.
'It's the weather for metaphysics,' said Fitzduane, 'though scarcely the time.'
Fifteen minutes later Kilmara was connected by telephone to a white-tiled room in Cork.
A smallish man with salt-and-pepper hair and the complexion of a fisherman was given the phone by the lab technician. The smallish man was wearing a green smock and trousers and rubber apron. His white rubber gloves were splashed with blood.
'Michael,' said Kilmara after the proprieties had been observed, 'I want you to take a break from cutting the tops off of Irish skulls with that electric saw of yours in a fruitless search for gray matter. I'd like you to take a friend of mine out to dinner and do a wee bit of talking.'
'What about?' asked the smallish man. There was the sound of dripping from the open body into the stainless steel bucket below.
'A Berlinese hanging.'
'Ah,' said the smallish man. 'Who's paying for dinner?'
'Now, is that a fair question from a friend to a friend about a friend?'
'Yes,' said the smallish man.
'The firm.'
'Well now, that's very civilized of you, Shane,' said the smallish man. 'It will be the Arbutus, so.'
He decided he would have a nice cup of tea before returning to the corpse.
Kilmara phoned Switzerland.
Fitzduane soaked in the bath, watching his yellow plastic duck bob around in the suds. That was the weakness of showers. There was nowhere to float your duck.
The music of Sean O'Riada wafted through the half-open door.
