‘You said you went too far.You think that’s why the Brits shopped you. You were greedy.’
‘Oh, yes,’ the man said, then took a while to answer again, and this time not just because of his discomfort. Hank could almost hear him thinking. ‘Do the Aral Sea labs mean anything to you?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘It should. The Aral Sea is in Kazakhstan. It’s a big lake really, mostly dried op. The other soide of it is Uzbekistan. In the middle of it is an island, and on that island are the labs that used to churn out some of the deadliest biological weapons the world has ever heard of. That was back in the Cold War days . . . If yer know the right people, for the right price yer can buy a pint a pure death . . . Did yer know eight kilos of a chemical that oi don’t even know the name of could kill two and a half million people in a city as big as London?’
‘You saying you tried to buy some of that stuff?’ Hank asked.
‘Not troid. Oi’m sayin’ oi bought some . . . “Virus U” they call it. About two cupfuls for a hundred grand. The so-called experts talk about how much damage some a these biological weapons can do, but for the most part they don’t have a focken clue. A Pepsi can full could wipe out a small town and then spread and wipe out several cities. Oi don’t know what two cupfuls of Virus U’ll do, but oi wouldn’t want to be within a thousand miles of it when it’s released.’
‘Who did you buy this stuff for?’
‘Who do yer bloody think?’
‘The IRA?’
‘They’re me only client.’
‘And they have it?’
‘A course they have it.’
‘Would that be the IRA or the Real IRA?’
‘What’s in a bloody name?’
Hank was suddenly stunned as the implications of what he had just heard sunk in. ‘Are you out of your friggin’ mind?’
The Irishman didn’t answer. Hank wondered how out of touch he was with the IRA situation. He never would have believed they would be into biological terrorism.
‘Have the IRA ever bought anything like this before?’ Hank asked.
‘Not as far as oi know. This was a special request. It took me a year to set it op.’
‘What do they want it for?’
‘They don’t exactly include me in their top-level mission briefings.Tell you the truth, oi wasn’t going to let it happen. Oi’m tellin’ the truth. Dead men don’t tell lies . . . I was going to shop them to the Brits soon as oi got paid the money. It would’ve been me last job sure enough. Oi’d’ve got a few sheckles for that kinda information. The joke is the Brits’ve shot themselves in the foot by shopping me. You can’t expect me to feel sorry for ’em. They’ve focken killed me and that’s that.’
‘The Brits don’t know?’
‘Sure they know. I’d made me contact and said as much as the boyos have a bottle of bio . . . I think it was a case of the left hand not knowin’ what the right was doin’, I mean in British intelligence. Obviously they would’ve wanted to know where that stuff was. They were gonna give me a fortune for the information. Some eedjit shopped me before I could complete the transaction. Maybe it was that focken IRA mole they’re always talkin’ about. Now that oi think of it, that would make more sense than anything else.’
It was this last comment that flicked a switch in Hank and made him realise he was very much a part of all of this and not just an observer. It was the RIRA mole they were after in Paris. ‘Where is this stuff now?’
‘Don’t know. But they’ve got it. And some of the mad bastards I know in the Real IRA’ll use it too. They’re just as fanatical as the focken Muslims.They won’t lose any sleep over killing a few hundred thousand Brits, I can tell yer that much.’
Hank could only think of one thing. He had to escape and tell someone.
Suddenly the engines revved hard and the entire boat shook. There was a jolt, as if the boat had been pulled by a tug, and then a sense of floating movement.
‘We’re off,’ the Irishman said. ‘Soon as we’re out to sea that’s me for the chop.’
Hank no longer cared about the man’s future. He had committed an ungodly act by providing a handful of terrorists with the means to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Hank twisted his hands inside his bindings. They were firm and impossible to wriggle out of. He was going to have to do something more than just wait for an opportunity to escape. He was going to have to create one.
Kathryn walked into St Mary’s church and looked about. It was quiet. The single great room was bright in the centre but the many alcoves and corners were dimly lit and shadowy.
No service was taking place. A handful of people knelt or sat in silent prayer, a couple placed candles on a rack where dozens already burned and one lady stared blankly ahead as she sat outside the confessional box, situated against the far right wall under a row of stained-glass windows.
Kathryn felt an urge to genuflect as she moved across the centre aisle, even though she had not done so since her mother used to practically drag her here most Sunday mornings all those years ago. She chose not to and walked slowly behind the back benches and to the side wall, subconsciously hiding in a corner.
The church had not changed much as far as she could remember. The altar was clean and bare and the wooden tabernacle unimpressive.The candleholders looked cheap and plastic flowers in their plastic baskets adorned a nativity scene set up on one side of the altar. Anything of value that had not been stolen over the years was locked away.The church continued to be a target for thieves until it was well known there was nothing of value left in it. The police told Father Kinsella they thought it was the act of drug addicts. Kathryn remembered how shocked she was then. It didn’t seem so shocking any more. The evil was a part of life now.
The confessional box opened and a young boy stepped out and went towards the woman waiting in the pew close by. Kathryn watched as Father Kinsella, dressed in a black cassock, stepped out the other side of the box to have a chat with the pair of them. He smiled and patted the boy on the shoulder, shook the woman’s hand warmly before she and the boy turned and walked away. Father Kinsella followed them with his eyes until his gaze fell upon Kathryn watching him.
His smile remained and he headed towards her.
Kathryn watched the boy as he passed by, memories of her younger days and her visits to Father Kinsella’s confessional flooding back. She wondered if he was still recruiting young warriors for the cause.
‘Kathryn, Kathryn, Kathryn,’ he said quietly as he approached. ‘Good of you to come and see me so quickly.’
The boy paused in the entrance and waved back at the priest before leaving. Kinsella returned the wave.
‘Good lad that,’ he said, after the boy had left. ‘He wants to join the British SAS. I’ve got me work cut out for me there, so I have.’ He faced Kathryn, still smiling. ‘Did you manage to avoid the press when you left the house?’ he asked.
‘Yes. There were a few reporters hanging around out front, but the shortcuts through the back gardens haven’t changed.’ She smiled at the memory of finding those childhood escape routes almost exactly as she remembered them, but the nostalgia was quickly swept away by the growing dread of the media interviews the priest had spent the previous evening preparing her for. She had lost track of the number of newspaper and television journalists that had called at the house, only to be turned away by her mother with the promise Kathryn would speak to them soon. And it wasn’t just the media hounding her. She’d had calls from various military personnel in Washington DC, and also from the SEALs in Norfolk,Virginia; the commander of Team 2, Hank’s former boss, and another officer whose title escaped her, all offering moral support and assurances that everything was being done to get Hank back home. And then there was the guy from the State Department who was coming by in the week for a chat on national security and modern terrorism, and the welfare union was sending a psychiatrist over to evaluate her and the children for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Father Kinsella had said she would be ready for the press by this afternoon, after one last coaching session, but Kathryn had had more than she could take already. On receiving the priest’s message that he wanted to see her, she decided to tell him she was going back to Norfolk that evening, before meeting any of the press, and then prepared herself for the inevitable verbal onslaught on how important her work was and how she had to stick with it
