Drink With The Devil

holding the Walther. “Don’t be stupid.”

Tully glowered at him. “What do you want?”

“Well, I know you were at the William and Mary. By rights I should put a bullet between your eyes, but I’ll settle for the fifty thousand pounds Ryan gave you earlier.”

“You can go to hell.”

Keogh raised the Walther and fired. There was the usual dull cough and the lobe of Tully’s right ear disintegrated. He cried out sharply and clutched at the ear, blood spurting.

“That was for starters,” Keogh said. “Come on, the envelope.”

Tully got the drawer open with his free hand, took out the envelope, and tossed it over. Keogh put it in his pocket. Tully took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his ear.

“My God, look what you’ve done.”

“So what’s the difference?” Keogh said. “You couldn’t look worse than you do.”

“Fuck you.” Tully opened a cupboard one-handed, took out a bottle of Scotch, and pulled the cork with his teeth. He took a long swallow. “Now what?”

“Now nothing,” Keogh told him. “I’ll see you at Marsh End on Friday.”

Tully looked astonished. “You mean it’s still on?”

“Too late to get anyone else now,” Keogh told him. “This is what I call an I-know-that-you-know-that-I-know situation, so behave yourself and you’ll get this envelope back plus the other fifty thousand pounds when we reach Kilalla.”

“Sod you!” Tully said.

“Yes, I know that,” Keogh told him. “But you will be at Marsh End on Friday.”

“Yes, damn you, I will.”

“Good man yourself. Now you can escort me to the gangway and we’ll say goodnight.”

The engines rumbled into life at that moment. Tully led the way out, negotiating the ladder with difficulty, blood streaming from his ear. Only Dolan and the German, Muller, were working on deck. Muller was casting off and Dolan was about to haul in the gangway. He looked up in astonishment.

“Here, what’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that you leave the gangway alone until I’ve gone down it,” Keogh said.

Dolan tried to rush him and Keogh wiped him across the face with the Walther. Dolan staggered back with a cry of pain and Keogh went down the gangway. He turned at the bottom and smiled up at Tully.

“To our next merry meeting at Marsh End.”

“Bastard!” Tully called.

Keogh laughed and walked away through the rain.

JACK BARRY WAS sitting at the desk of his study when the portable phone rang.

Keogh said, “It’s me.”

Barry said, “Where are you?”

“Wapping High Street in old London Town.”

“So what’s happening?”

“You were right about the gold.”

“Is that a fact? Tell me.”

“It’s complicated, but here goes,” and Keogh went through the whole business step-by-step.

WHEN HE WAS finished, Barry said, “Christ, but it’s the ruthless bastard you are. Will Tully play?”

“He will. A hundred-thousand-pound payday. He isn’t going to turn that down.”

“Right. Let’s say everything works. What happens on board the Irish Rose once you put to sea? They’ll try to take you.”

“Of course, but we’ll be prepared.”

“You, Ryan, and his niece? God save us all.”

“Oh, He will, He will. What about the Kilalla end?”

“Oh, I think I can promise you an interesting reception. A considerable contribution to IRA funds. It could win us the war.”

“Just think of that,” Keogh told him. “And it’s only taken seven hundred years.”

Barry laughed. “Go on, dark hero, get on with it and keep in touch,” and he switched off his phone.

IN THE PARLOUR at the William amp; Mary, Ryan and Kathleen sat at the table and listened to what Keogh had to say. Keogh helped himself to a Bushmills on the side.

Bell said, “You shot him?”

“Only a little.” Keogh sipped his Bushmills. “The lobe of his right ear.”

Kathleen’s face was infused with excitement. “That taught the bastard a lesson.”

Ryan said, “You think he’ll still come?”

“Of course he will. He wants his hundred thousand pounds.”

“But he’ll try for more on the run to Ulster?”

“Yes, well, we know that, so we’ll just have to be prepared.”

“I suppose so.” Ryan took a deep breath. “We’ll catch the Glasgow Express in the morning. We’ll leave at Carnforth and take the local train to Barrow.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll be met,” Ryan told him. “Something else I didn’t tell you. I have a cousin who runs a sheep farm in the Lake District not far from Ravenglass. But enough of that now. I’m for bed. We’ll need an early start.”

AS THE IRISH ROSE moved down the Thames, Tully stood at the wheel, his head disembodied in the light of the binnacle. His right ear was covered by a taped bandage. The door of the wheelhouse opened and Dolan entered with a mug in one hand. He put it down by the wheel.

“Tea,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Tully told him.

“So what about that little bastard?”

“Oh, when the right time comes I’m going to cut his balls off.” Tully reached for the mug and drank some tea. “There’s an old Sinn Fein saying, ‘Our day will come.’ Well, mine certainly will where Keogh’s concerned.”

He swung the wheel and increased power.

THREE

THE GLASGOW EXPRESS wasn’t particularly busy. Keogh sat opposite Kathleen at a corner table. Ryan took the one opposite. Almost immediately he opened his briefcase and took out a file. He started to work his way through it, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.

The girl took the copy of The Midnight Court from her carrying bag and an Irish dictionary, which she put on one side. A strange one, Keogh thought, a strange one, indeed. He sat there gazing out of the window, wondering what she would say, what her reaction would be if she knew he was everything she hated – a Roman Catholic and an IRA enforcer. God, but the fat would be in the fire the day that got out.

About an hour out of London an attendant appeared pushing a trolley with tea, coffee, sandwiches, and newspapers. Ryan stopped working and took a coffee. The girl asked for tea and so did Keogh. He also bought the Times and the Daily Mail and spent the next hour catching up on the news.

There wasn’t much on the Irish situation. A bomb in Derry had taken out six shops in one street – a tit-for-tat killing of two Catholics on the Falls Road in retaliation for the shooting of a Protestant in the Shankill. An Army Air Corps helicopter flying in to the command post at Crossmaglen had come under machine gun fire as well. Just