“Maybe it was an operation that went sour,” I suggested, and did not add the suggestion that it might have gone sour because some clever bastard had purloined the purchase price. “Most operations do,” I said instead.
Van Stryker’s gaze snapped up to me and I knew he was wondering if I was one of his operations that had gone sour. “What’s happened to the rest of Saddam Hussein’s terrorist revenge?” he asked. “Has that gone sour too?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“All but for the Provisional IRA,” he said bitterly. “Of all Saddam Hussein’s allies only they have drawn blood. One dead civilian on London’s Victoria Station. Is that the very best il Hayaween can produce?”
Everyone seemed to be waiting for my answer. I shrugged. “Il Hayaween told me that the Syrians and the Iranians were not supporting Iraq’s terrorist campaign,” I said, as if that explained everything.
“Nor are they,” van Stryker said impatiently, “but one dead rail commuter? Is that Saddam Hussein’s best effort?”
“They almost got the British Prime Minister,” I suggested.
Van Stryker shook his head. “Our analysis shows the Provisionals had that attack planned for months. They just delayed it to please their Arab masters. No! There has to be something more!” He sounded angry. “Have you really told us everything, Paul?”
“Of course.” Though articulating the lie gave me a stab of guilt which I assuaged by telling myself that all I had held back was the real price of the missiles and the method by which the Libyans had tried to pay that price. The gold was mine. Yet I still felt guilty for hiding it, but that was the effect van Stryker had. He was a man who inspired loyalty, but I reassured myself that the gold was as harmless as a check, or a bank transfer. What mattered were the things the gold had been intended to buy. “Maybe,” I proffered, “the two Cubans were trying to rip off the IRA?”
“A rather dangerous game,” van Stryker replied with a humorless laugh.
“Not if you’re far enough away from them. They’ve never mounted an operation over here.”
“And they’d better not!” van Stryker said, then looked at his watch before turning to Gillespie. “What’s your evaluation of Shanahan, Peter?”
“I think the debriefing’s been very useful,” Gillespie said, though without enthusiasm. “I don’t think he’s told us everything he knows about the IRA, but that was never our prime target. We haven’t solved the Stinger story, and maybe never will, but what he’s told us about the Palestinian groups and Libya has proved most valuable.”
“The Israelis are pleased with us, you mean?” Van Stryker looked at me, but still spoke to Gillespie. “So you think Mr. Shanahan’s life has not been wasted?”
“Not at all,” Gillespie said stoutly.
“Dr. Adamson. What is your considered judgment of Paul Francis Shanahan?”
“I’m not sure I have one yet. He hasn’t permitted us to see him yet. He’s been protecting himself because he resents being questioned, which is why he treated this debriefing like a contest.”
“And who won?” Van Stryker asked lightly.
“I lost score.” Carole Adamson was suddenly no longer motherly and comforting, but sharp. “He’s hidden his real self behind a mask of flippancy.”
“You mean he’s a deceiver?” Van Stryker was still equable. “But isn’t that why we chose him in the first place?”
“But who is he deceiving? Because I tell you he’s hiding more than his personality behind that slippery mask. Whatever Mr. Shanahan sees as being in his own best interest will be kept good and private from us.”
“Paul?” Van Stryker turned courteously toward me.
“I’ve hidden nothing,” I said with wondrously feigned innocence.
“You entered America with false papers, did you not?” Van Stryker seemed unperturbed as he asked the question.
“For old times’ sake,” I said happily. “I’ll never do it again. Promise.”
Carole Adamson gave me a disinterested glance. “I wouldn’t worry about his papers. I’d ask him a few hard questions about Miss Roisin Donovan instead. That should lift a corner of his mask.”
Van Stryker held his hands toward the fire. “We know you lied about her, Paul. She lived with you in Belfast, yet you claim not to have known her?”
“Aren’t I allowed some privacy?”
“Not in America’s confessional, no.” He smiled, glanced at me, then looked back to the fire. “You were lovers?”
“Yes.”
“She had a lot of other lovers. Did you know that?”
I wondered how much they knew about Roisin, but I did not want to ask. I did not want to talk about her. “I know she had other lovers,” I said defensively.
“Does that hurt you?”
I had no intention of answering that question, or any damn question like it. I had been sent into the dark to bring back information, not the raw materials of psychoanalysis, so I said nothing. Van Stryker held his hands toward the fire. “Not that it matters,” he answered his own question blithely, “because she’s dead and you’re very much with us. But you always were a survivor, Paul. A rogue and a scoundrel, but an undoubted survivor.” He smiled at me. “I came here to thank you.”
“To thank me?” His gentle courtesy took me by surprise.
“You’re my first stringless puppet to come home. You’ve brought your cargo of information and I thank you for it. And we owe you money.” He held up a hand to still my exclamation of surprise. “I know we said you would not be paid, and officially we owe you nothing, but I’ll make sure the agency diverts some funds. Just as a token of our thanks. It will take time, maybe some months. And, of course, we may have more questions for you. In fact I’m sure we’ll have more questions for you. Questions are the one thing that never end. Peter knows where you’ll be, does he?”
“I’m going back to the Cape,” I told him.
“I envy you. Nancy and I have a summer cottage on the Vineyard, but we never manage enough time there. Life is too busy. We do some sailing as well, when we can.”
“You’ve got your own boat?” I asked him.
“A Nautor Swan,” he said casually. “A sixty-one-footer named for Nancy. We keep her at Edgartown, but of course she’s ashore now, on jackstands in our yard.”
It would be a Nautor Swan, I thought, and doubtless Nancy was beautiful and their children successful and the summer cottage on Martha’s Vineyard a waterfront mansion. This was the codfish aristocracy.
Van Stryker took a business card from his breast pocket. “If you do dredge anything up from your subconscious and want to talk to me, then that number will always reach me.” He held the card toward me. “And thank you, Paul, for taking the risks you did.”
I took the card. I felt awkward because I had told lies. They were not important lies, but still I felt I did not deserve van Stryker’s generosity, nor his thanks. Then I told myself that of course I did. I had been the poor bastard who dared the Beka’s Valley and the back streets of Tripoli. I was a hero, and I deserved thanks, peals of trumpets, and a boat’s belly filled with gold. I deserved it all.
“Now I really must go!” Van Stryker smiled a courteous farewell to Gillespie and Adamson, shook my hand one more time, and then was gone. Gillespie let out a long relieved breath. Outside the window the helicopter lights dazzled us as the machine hammered up into the darkness.
They let me go next morning. Gillespie gave me five hundred dollars in cash and an air ticket to Boston. It was Sunday and somewhere in the valley a church bell was tolling like a tocsin. It was a cold still morning and a new fall of snow glittered under the wintry sun. I pulled on my yellow oilskin and stepped into the bright new day, a free man again. And going home.
I KNEW HOW BADLY MICHAEL HERLIHY WOULD BE WANTING to discover the truth of the missing gold; he would be wanting it badly enough to have its location beaten out of me. Yet Michael was a lawyer, and a careful
