“Cover her up,” I said. “It isn’t right to bury her half naked.”
Axel had squinted up at me. “What is your name?”
“Paul.”
“Paul. I think you have American bourgeois inhibitions. You should deal with that. It isn’t healthy.”
“I said cover her up!” I snapped.
“OK! OK!” But instead of pulling the torn shirt over her body he caressed her small white breasts with his right hand, and it was at that moment I had hit him with the edge of the spade. I hit him so hard that the steel blade sank three inches into his skull, but even so the blow did not kill him straightaway. He was still making an odd noise, half pain and half protest, as I pulled him off Roisin’s body and he remained alive all the time that I took to bury her and to cover her shallow grave with a heap of stones to keep the beasts and birds away from her flesh. Axel could not speak, but his eyes watched me and he made the strange noises as I told him he was going to hell and that for the rest of eternity he would suffer an unimaginable agony. In the end he died, but I did not bury him. Instead I left him to the wild-winged creatures that screamed in the night, then I carried my bloodied spade back to the camp where I confessed my deed, but no one cared that Axel had been killed, for in Hasbaiya death was a creed.
Outside the window the snow fell with the coming night.
The air war in the Gulf blazed on, yet still no reprisals seared America. No planes tumbled from the sky, no bombs slashed at city centers. Indeed it seemed that my story of Saddam Hussein taking a terrorist revenge on America was just that, a story, a fantasy. Gillespie still questioned me about the Cubans in Miami, and the million and a half dollars, but I sensed he no longer believed a word of my tale.
The days passed in a blanket of snow. I turned the pages of photograph albums and dredged up memories of meetings years before. The days began to have a dull rhythm. I watched the breakfast television news every morning, always expecting to hear that the allied ground troops had attacked the Iraqi army, but the air war went on and on. One morning I saw Congressman O’Shaughnessy expressing his concern that a ground campaign would cost thousands of American lives. It would be better, Tommy the Turd said, if the bombing campaign was given several more months to do its work. I was about to switch the set off when a news bulletin told of a bomb attack in London. The Provisional IRA had parked a roofless van in Whitehall, and the van had concealed a battery of mortars that had launched their bombs against Downing Street. The new Prime Minister and his cabinet had narrowly escaped injury. The news footage showed the burnt-out van standing abandoned in a sleety rain. Later that morning, just as I had anticipated, Gillespie asked me about the attack, but I could only offer him my strong suspicion that the spectacular operation had been planned as a strike against Margaret Thatcher, whom the IRA detested, but that the plan’s execution had been delayed to become a part of Iraq’s world-wide terrorist revenge. That delay might have cost the Provisional IRA their chance of killing Margaret Thatcher, but it had doubtless pleased Colonel Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
Two more terror bombs struck London, both random attacks at train stations. One commuter was killed. The bombs had been left in rubbish bins and had exploded in the rush hour. They were primitive attacks, far removed from the sophistication of the Downing Street bombs, and I suggested to Gillespie that the Provisional had been driven to such crudities by their eagerness to convince Saddam Hussein that they were truly cooperating. None of the London attacks had brought a united Ireland one day closer, but they had undoubtedly preserved the IRA’s standing with their most generous sponsor, Libya.
In the days following the IRA attacks, and probably in response to questions coming from London, Gillespie pressed hard about my knowledge of IRA active-service units, but I knew nothing that could help him. The only top IRA men I knew were Brendan Flynn and Seamus Geoghegan. The rest were already dead, or else I had never met them. Gillespie thought I was hiding them, but he was wrong. I was hiding gold coins, not men.
I knew the debriefing was coming to an end when Gillespie asked about my future, offering to give me the benefits of the Federal Witness Protection Program. “We’ll give you a new name, a new social security number, a new job, and a settlement grant somewhere far away from your old haunts. No one could possibly trace you.”
“You’ll make me a school janitor in North Dakota? Thank you, but no. I’m going back to the Cape.”
He frowned. “Is that sensible?”
“Probably not, but it’s home.”
He was still troubled. “You’ll have made enemies. They’ll know where to find you.”
“I don’t want to hide.”
He half smiled. “You need the risk, is that it? You can’t bear to think of spending a dull ordinary life?”
“I like the Cape, that’s all.”
“Then so be it,” he agreed reluctantly.
Next evening, at long last, Simon van Stryker came to offer me his blessing. I received no warning of his coming, though Gillespie had shown an air of expectancy all day and, when we gathered in the library before dinner, I found a tray had been placed on the table with an ice-bucket, crystal glasses, an old-fashioned soda-syphon, two kinds of Scotch and a half-bottle of sherry. “Is this a celebration?” I asked.
“In a way, yes,” Gillespie said, then he turned to the window as the sound of a helicopter thumped through the library’s double glazing. A brilliant beam of light swept across the darkening snow then shrank as the helicopter descended and a cloud of wind-stirred white crystals made a fog of the beam, then the machine itself appeared in the sparkling white cloud and settled on to the snow-covered lawn. The landing lights went out. None of us spoke.
A log tumbled on the fire, spewing sparks. Carole Adamson frowned into her sherry while Gillespie surreptitiously patted his hair. A moment later the heavy front door banged hollowly and there was a mutter of voices in the hall. “That will be him,” Gillespie said unnecessarily.
“Who?” I asked. Then the door was thrust open to reveal a tall, smiling man clothed in faultless evening dress and it was suddenly hard to imagine Simon van Stryker dressed in any other way. His hair was whiter than I remembered and I guessed he must be in his sixties by now, but he looked very fit and his face was still lean and animated. He strode across the room. “Paul Shanahan! You kept the faith! Well done!” He held out his hand. I shook it awkwardly.
Van Stryker greeted Carole Adamson. “I never had a chance to congratulate you on your paper in the
“Do I get absolution now?”
Van Stryker laughed at my question, then thanked Gillespie for his whiskey. He took one sip then placed the glass on the mantel and I sensed it would not be touched again. “Help yourself.” He waved me toward the tray of drinks. Outside the window the helicopter’s engine grumbled. Van Stryker was clearly not staying long, but I was glad he had made the effort to come to this strange mansion in the snow-bound hills. I had needed to see him. For fourteen years he had been my mentor. “So what on earth happened to your Stingers, Shanahan?” van Stryker asked me now.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe they never existed?”
I shrugged. “Maybe, but I held one of them.”
He looked at me with his pale, clever eyes. “Have you told us everything?”
“At least three times, it seems.”
“Good for you, Paul,” van Stryker said, then frowned down at the coir rug. “If there were no Stingers, Shanahan, or only one of the beasts, why did they send you to Miami?”
“I don’t know.”
“We know you went there. We found your footprints in the airline’s computer.” He still stared down at the floor. “So why?” he asked softly.
