would have been churlish to deny them the pleasure.
Liam, the more articulate of the two, took up the story. “We used to meet them in a bar, right, and ask if they wanted to meet the IRA. They didn’t know we were the IRA, did they? How could they? I mean, if you told every stray Yank that you was in the movement then you might as well tell the focking Brits. So of course the Yanks would always say yes, I mean why else were they there? They’d come all the way from Boston or Chicago to give us a wee bit of support, to pat us on the back, like, and slip us a dollar or two, so of course they wanted to meet the Provisional IRA soldiers. So we used to tell them, go to such-and-such a house at ten o’clock next morning. We’d give them the address, it was always an abandoned house, one of those that had been half burned out like, and we’d say that some of the boys were meeting there before going off to plant a bomb or shoot a soldier.”
“You could tell a Yank anything,” Gerry put in. “They’d believe you!”
“They wanted to believe, you see,” Liam, who did not want me to feel slighted, explained helpfully.
“So what happened?” I asked, as if Seamus Geoghegan had not told me this exact same story ten years before.
“Well, they’d go, of course,” Liam said, “and sometimes their wives with them, because the women are just the same. They’d be all excited like! I mean they were going to meet the real IRA! They were going to meet the heroes! But what they didn’t know was that we’d phoned the focking Brits on the security line, you know what the security line is?”
“Of course he focking knows!” Gerry put in. The security line was a telephone number that anyone could call to lay anonymous information against the terrorists. A machine answered the call and no names were asked, which meant that more than a few personal scores were settled courtesy of the security forces.
Liam grinned. “So we’d phone the focking Brits and we’d say that some Provos were meeting at such-and- such a house at quarter past ten the next morning, and then we’d ring off. Well, you can imagine what happened!”
“Tell me.”
“The Yanks would turn up”—Liam was grinning at the sheer cleverness of the ploy—“and they’d wait there, and the next thing they’d know there was a focking patrol of focking Brits, all scared out of their focking wits because they thought it might be a focking ambush, and the focking Brits would hammer into the house like it was D-Day and all they’d find was the Yanks there! But the Brits wouldn’t know they were Yanks, not straight away! They thought they were our lads! So they’d knock them about a bit, you know, give them a focking good kicking!” Liam laughed and shook his head. “It always worked! The Brits fell for it every focking time, and of course the Yanks would go home and say how focking brutal the focking Brits was, and they’d never know it was the IRA that aranged the kicking for them! And when they got home they’d send us even more money! Especially if one of their womenfolk got a hammering! Jasus! It was like stealing sweets off a baby.” He chuckled, then looked wistful. “They were good times. The best.”
Gerry sloshed the whiskey round his mug. Despite the open companionway the cabin was foul with cigarette smoke and reeking of unwashed bodies, whiskey and stale food. Gerry leaned back on the berth cushions. “The Provos must have made focking thousands of pounds out of having the Yanks given a focking good kicking. And others too, of course. The Dutch, now, they always wanted to be in on the thick end of it. Especially the Protestant ministers, because they wanted to prove they loved Catholics, see? But it was mainly the Americans, so it was.” He fell silent, evidently remembering the good days of home and thuggery, then, as a sudden thought blew across his mind, he frowned at me. “Is it really five million dollars we’re waiting for?”
I nodded. “It truly is.”
“In gold?”
“In gold,” I said.
“Fock me,” Gerry said wonderingly, and I knew for a second or two he was thinking of stealing the money, but then the stern call of duty made him shake his head in self-reproof. “Brendan said it was the most important mission we’d ever perform. For the movement, like?”
“I’m sure it is,” I said, “I’m sure it is,” and, the very next morning, in a cold north wind, the gold arrived.
Il Hayaween arrived before the gold. He came in a black-windowed Mercedes and was accompanied by his two dark-suited bodyguards who commandeered a fisherman to ferry all three men out to
“Good.”
He sat on the cockpit thwart after fastidiously wiping it with a linen handkerchief. He seemed awkward, but I put that down to his unfamiliarity with boats. “Is she suitable?” He waved his good left hand around
“She’s a pig.”
“A pig?”
“She wallows like a pregnant sow. She’s too heavy. But I can get her to America, if that’s what you wanted to know.”
“And quickly,” he said in his harsh voice.
I shrugged. “There’s a chance the Stingers will reach Ireland by April 24, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Not unless someone makes arrangements to ship them before the gold gets to Miami.”
“April 24?” Il Hayaween frowned at me.
“The seventy-fifth anniversary of the Easter Rising. Isn’t that what Flynn and Herlihy want? To give the Brits an anniversary Easter egg?”
He blinked as if he did not really understand what I was talking about, then shook his head. “The war will come sooner than that.”
“In Kuwait?” I asked.
“Of course.” He paused, staring at the withies which served instead of buoys to mark the harbor’s uncertain entrance. “We shall be relying on your organization to support Iraq’s defense against the imperialist aggression.”
I wondered what the hell I was supposed to say. There had been a time when I would have been the main conduit for passing such a message to the Provisional IRA’s Army Council, but Roisin had ended that responsibility. Nevertheless il Hayaween seemed to expect some response, so I nodded and promised to pass the message on.
He angrily shook his head as though he did not need my help to communicate with the Army Council, then laboriously raised his maimed hand to light a cigarette. “We have already received pledges of support from Ireland. But will they keep their word?” He glared at me as he asked the question.
“I’m sure they will,” I said truthfully. I was hardly surprised that the Provisional IRA had promised to support Iraq with a campaign of violence because for many years now the Arabs had been the major supplier of the IRA’s needs, and the Army Council could hardly turn down such a request from so generous a benefactor. What did surprise me was that il Hayaween was telling me of the Army Council’s promise, but his next words went some way to answering my puzzlement.
“Reactionary forces in Damascus and Tehran have suggested we should wait and see how effective Iraq’s armed forces prove before we launch a world-wide campaign of terror, but we have refused to condone such timidity.” He sucked on the cigarette as though taking strength from its harsh smoke. “We expect action, Shanahan.”
“I’m sure you’ll get it,” I said, but inside I was noting the true import of il Hayaween’s message. If Damascus and Tehran were preaching caution then there had to be deep rifts within the Palestinian ranks. Some fighters must be siding with Syria, others with neutral Iran, while yet a third faction, which il Hayaween led, was sticking with Saddam Hussein. Yet the rift plainly threatened the success of his plans for a global campaign of terror and, as those plans collapsed, he was desperately trying to keep his surviving troops in line. He was even desperate enough to seek my opinion of whether the Provisional IRA would keep their word, but I doubted he really needed to worry. The IRA’s strongest Arab link was Libya, and Libya still seemed fully committed to Saddam Hussein’s ambitions. “You’ll get your big bang from the Irish,” I reassured him.
