There was a sudden noise above me. I froze, then slowly reached out with my right hand for the carbine. The noise was a scuttling sound, sudden and fitful, and I realized it was nothing but a squirrel come to the roof from its nest in the scrawny stand of pines that stood to the north of the house. I relaxed, resting the rifle’s stock on the patchwork quilt so that its muzzle faced the ceiling. I stared at the gun’s lean and efficient lines.
That was my fate, I guessed. Just as my brother had died in Vietnam, so I would die with a bullet in my guts, or in my heart, or exploding the blood vessels in my skull. I would die in a rage of adrenalin, snarling and shooting back at my enemies, but shot down like a dog all the same. But better to die of a bullet, I told myself, than to die alone and old and unloved. I had chosen my path, though now, smelling the smell of a woman in my bed, I doubted that the choice had been wise or even fair, for there would have been nothing drab about raising children in this good place.
But now I would face my enemies here. Like a beast seeking refuge, I had come home, but only to play for the biggest stakes of all, gold and life. If I won I would be left here alone with all the money a man would ever need, and a deep-water sailing boat and a high-bowed fishing boat and what else? Bed-sheets losing their scent? A cat-boat no child would ever learn to sail? But they were just maudlin regrets for the long nights, and now, in this light-flooded morning, I had to think ahead and see where danger lay.
Brendan Flynn was dangerous. But Brendan was far away and he would be loath to set an operation on American soil, for the first commandment of the IRA was Thou Shalt Not Upset The Americans With The Truth. Brendan would therefore leave things to Michael.
Michael was angry, because I had stung him and a stung Michael Herlihy was a relentless enemy, but he was not a fool. I knew he would make some effort to retrieve the gold, but the effort would be subtle and, in the end, like the lawyer he was, he would probably agree to a settlement. Maybe one million? That seemed fair, and certainly I could make the price of all five million much too steep for Michael’s taste.
The Brits? I doubted they were in the game. Michael Herlihy liked to imagine that the British kept a team of killers on the American coast, but that was Michael’s wishful thinking. He did not like to think of other men facing danger each day in the slums of the Bogside or across the hedgerows of South Armagh while he lived easy in the New World, and so he wove a fantasy that he too, in his city office or in his bleak apartment near Boston Common, faced the horror of a knock on his door in the night’s black heart. But there were no SAS killers patrolling the streets of Boston looking for Michael. I could forget the Brits.
Which left the most dangerous enemy of all, il Hayaween, but would he really come for me in America? This was not his turf. There were no Palestinian slums to hide his men in America. America was an unknown land to il Hayaween, it was a glittering heaven that would dazzle a Satanic archangel. I dared not underestimate him, but I had come to the one place that would give him pause for, though the Palestinians understood Europe, America unnerved them. Besides, van Stryker would always help protect me if he thought there was the slightest chance of il Hayaween pursuing me into the New World and so, for the moment, I felt safe.
Then tires suddenly crunched loud on the clam-shell drive and I flung back the bedclothes, pulled the harpoon away from the door and, taking the safety catch off the loaded carbine, ran down the steep stairs. I was crouching behind the front door even before the approaching vehicle had come to a halt. My heart rate had doubled in just fifteen seconds.
I listened. The crunching sound of the tires stopped and I heard the ratchet of the parking brake. A click as the vehicle’s door opened, then I too ripped open the house door and aimed the carbine straight at the intruder’s chest.
Straight at Kathleen Donovan.
Who stared at me, and I suddenly knew there was no one else I had rather see, for I had so much unfinished business with her, and if my conscience was ever to be clear then she was as good a person as any to begin the process. Then I saw her eyes widening in alarm at the sight of the gun. “No!” she said. “No!”
“I’m sorry.” I made the gun safe, put it aside and straightened up. “I’m sorry,” I said again, for she was still looking horrified, and then I realized I had come downstairs stark naked. “It’s all right,” I said, “you just woke me. Come on in. I’ll get dressed. Come in. I’ll only be a minute,” and in that utter confusion I ran back upstairs and prayed to God that this time I would not miss my chance. Not this time, not now that I was home at last and so utterly alone.
She waited outside the house, refused my offer of coffee, refused even to come into the house, but instead asked to walk toward the sea. She was nervous, but perhaps that was hardly surprising for she must have known I had lied to her in Nieuwpoort and it must have taken real courage for her to come and accost me in my Cape Cod retreat. “How did you know I was here?” I asked her.
“I didn’t. I was just hoping.” She walked ahead of me on the narrow track, staring down as she walked. “If you must know”—she finally turned and looked defiantly back into my face—“I hired a private detective to discover more about you, and he found this address.”
“So you just came here?” I asked.
“Because I want to know why you lied about Roisin,” she said. “Or do you still insist you never knew her?”
“I knew her,” I admitted.
We walked on in silence. The sand on the path had been bleached white as bone by the dry winter air and by the day’s bright sun. Small streaks of snow lay in the shelter of the far dunes and shards of ice glinted at the margins of the small pools between the brittle pale grasses. The wind was light, coming cold from the north-east. Kathleen wore a black overcoat edged with red cuffs and a tall collar that stuck up to meet her tasselled woollen hat. “Is she dead?”
“Yes. Four years now.” We were speaking very stiffly.
“How?”
I could feel myself shaking, and I only trusted myself to answer with one word. “Shot.”
“In Ireland?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
I sighed. My breath misted in the air, blew away over the salt marsh. “She died,” I said, “in a Palestinian training camp called Hasbaiya. She’d gone there to learn about bombs and killing, but instead they killed her.”
“Why?” A terrible intensity in the voice.
“Because they thought she was a CIA agent.”
“Oh, my God.”
I thought for a second Kathleen was going to sit down on the path, and I held out a hand to steady her, but she shook my help away and walked on alone. We were threading the path that twisted erratically about the head of the bay between stands of reed and clumps of grass and which led eventually to the great stretch of beach where the Atlantic rollers crashed against the strand.
She turned after a few paces and raised her green eyes in a challenge. “Why didn’t you tell me this in Belgium?”
“Because…” I began, then faltered into silence. The truth would sound so stupid, but I had promised myself I would tell this girl the truth and so I launched myself into the lame excuses. “I know it’ll sound stupid, but I kind of thought you might be working for the Brits.”
She laughed. Not with amusement, but in bitter scorn. “First Roisin is the CIA, now I work for the British?”
I tried to explain. “Concealment’s a way of life. Lying is a response to any question. I’m sorry, I really am. I wanted to tell you, but I dared not.”
“So why tell me now?” She had begun walking again.
“Because I’m out of it now. It’s all over for me.”
“Out of what?” she asked derisively. “The IRA?”
“I was in the IRA,” I said carefully, “but only because this country asked me to join.” No, that was not true. I would have joined anyway because it was tribal, because it was adventure, but would I have stayed? Could I have stayed after seeing an adult shrunken to the size of a child by a bomb made from gasoline laced with soap-flakes that make the fire stick to flesh like blazing napalm? “I worked for the CIA,” I told her.
