His hand shook so violently he could barely grasp the handle. Squeezing his fingers tight around it, he tugged.
The door opened easily.
And his scream threatened to bring the walls of the pit down on him. . .
. . . Kline's scream caused Khayed and Daoud to leap away from the bed in surprise. They quickly ran forward again and babbled soothing words to their master, assuring him it was only a nightmare, that he was safe under their watchful protection, nothing would harm him while they lived and breathed.
He looked from one to the other, his face a cracked mask of seams and ruptures. Suddenly he understand. 'He's dying,' Kline rasped.
35 THE WAITING GAME
He watched the Granada cruise by, its headlights brightening both sides of the narrow road. Keeping low and pulling aside minimum foliage so that he could observe but not be seen, he checked that there were still only two occupants in the patrol car. When it was gone, he stood and held up his wristwatch, waiting a moment or two for the moon to re-appear from behind rolling clouds. Just under twenty minutes this time. The driver varied his speed during the circuit around the estate so that there was never a regular time interval between certain points. The driver of the second patrol car did the same.
The man sank into the undergrowth, making his way back through the thick woods, only bringing out a flashlight when he was well clear of the road. Soon he arrived at a lane, one that eventually joined the route he had been watching; he continued his journey away from the estate.
Two vehicles were waiting in a picnickers' clearing a few hundred yards on, their occupants sitting in darkness. He flashed his torch twice, then switched off before climbing into the back seat of the first car.
'Well?' the passenger in the front said.
'Two patrols. Professionals, as you'd expect. We could easy take them out, though.'
'Shouldn't be any need.'
'No. It'll be no problem to get into the place. We only have to wait for them to pass, then make our move when they're out of sight. The fence'll be easy.'
'We'll wait awhiles, give them time to settle in for the night.'
'It's been a time coming, Danny.' His expression couldn't be seen, but the man in the front was smiling. 'It has that,' he said, the softness of his accent hardened by the intent of his words. 'But all the sweeter for it.'
36 A ROOM OF MEMORIES
Halloran 's senses reeled.
It wasn't a room he was standing in but a kaleidoscope of memories. They spun before him, some merging so that yesterday mixed with yesteryear, experiences of childhood confused with those of later times, scenes superimposed upon others. It was as if screens or veils fluttered in front of him—he thought of the veils he and Kline had passed through together in the dream of last night—thin, transparent layers, older images on those new.
He turned, ready to run from there, but the doorway was no longer behind him. Instead there were more visions, closing around him, the colours vivid and fresh, the details perfectly defined, as though they were being lived at that moment.
Slowly some began to dominate the others, dispersing weaker memories—less significant memories—to the peripheries of his mind.
He saw himself slicing the tendons behind the black tracker's knee, the man a volunteer of South Africa's Special Service Brigade who would have followed Halloran and his small raiding band of ANCs back across the border to their camp, later to lead his own forces there, had he not been put out of action.
Fading in over this was the church, moonlight through the high stained-glass windows revealing the three boys creeping along the centre aisle, Liam hugging the dead cat wrapped in old rags to his chest, its body mangled, opened by the wheels of a speeding car, the other two boys giggling nervously as he approached the altar and reached up to the tabernacle, opening its gilt door, pushing the bloodied corpse inside, running for their lives, laughing and piss-scared of the consequences. He whirled. Now he was with the girl, Cora, taking her forcibly, ignoring her struggles, her protests, thrusting into her until she submitted, wanted him, her lust as intense as his, the rape no longer so, becoming a mutual desire which had to be satiated. And here he was with his father, and Dadda was being torn apart by bullets, his eyes bulging with disbelief while his son, Liam, urinated unknowingly into the stream, the father falling then looking up at the boy, pleading or was it warning?—telling him to run, to get away from there before the gunmen turned their weapons on him, too, only unable to speak, his own blood choking his words. His father crawling to the bank, collapsing there, the masked Irishmen stepping on him, drowning him, shooting Dadda again. Halloran blinked, long and hard, but the visions would not disappear. Scenes from his military service, the killings, the terrible battle at Mirbat, the disillusionment with it all, the women who had drifted in and out of his life, the mother he had come to revile because of the craziness inside her head, the beatings he had dealt to others of his age who dared mock her affliction, and who dared spit the word 'Britisher' as a curse at mention of his father, even though Dadda's birthplace was County Cork—and the beatings Liam received when his anger and frustration were no use against the gangs who taunted him. Halloran staggered with the intensity of it all. A blurred figure appeared, walking towards him through the hallucinations, the recognitions, arms out to him, calling his name beseechingly, and he could feel his Mam weeping, although she was but a spectre, not yet clear in his vision. She drifted through the eidetic imagery, coming closer, her voice faint, begging for his embrace. And as she drew near, dissolving in and out of projections of his past, her head was distorting, becoming bent and twisted, as were her hands, pulping and spurting blood, as they had when she'd deliberately walked into the threshing machine on a neighbour's farm her arms and upper body churned by the machinery, her head smashed and almost lopped off . . . as it was now, tilting, collapsing, hanging by bloody threads on her chest. Halloran screamed. But the memories were relentless. There was the big priest, Father O'Connell, warning Liam that the wildness had to stop, that the Good Lord Jesus would punish the boy for his wickedness, that his cankered soul would be damned eternally into Hell. The priest came at him unbuckling the thick strap he wore around his waist, winding the buckle end around his fist, raising his arm to flail the boy, the man pity as well as fury raging in his eyes. Then gone, before the black- robed priest could bring down the leather scourge. Replaced by one of the gunmen who had murdered Liam's father, the cousin of Liam's mother. A man she had accused all those years ago, her accusations laughed off, sneered at. And here he was, sneering at Halloran again, a ghost not exorcised, even though the man had blown himself up a few years after the killing, along with a companion, the homemade bomb they had been carrying in the back of their car towards the border too delicate—or too faulty—for the rough, pitted lanes they had chosen to travel, the jigging and jogging causing wires to touch or to dislodge so that the boyos were blown sky-high, and the only person to celebrate the occasion was Liam, who could not understand how the assassin of his father could be venerated as a hero by the local townspeople, blessed by the Holy Roman Catholic Church when his bits and pieces had been returned for burial on consecrated ground, Father O'Connell himself pleading God's bountiful mercy for this poor unfortunate's soul, speaking of him as a martyr to the Cause, this killer who had robbed Liam of Dadda, who had laughed and sneered Mam to her death, who sneered at him now in this very room. Halloran yelled his outrage at the apparition, shaking with the emotion, every muscle and cord in his body stiffened rigid.
Then it all began to darken and fade, the memories slipping away, fresh ones barely glimpsed until one bright spot remained; it seemed a great distance away, too far to be within the walls of the house itself. It grew in size, coming forward, the movement steady, a gliding, the object soon recognisable, its surrounds slowly filtering through, misty at first, but gaining substance. The tabernacle was on an altar, the altar itself raised above three broad steps, before the steps a Communion rail, the kneeling cushions and then the pews on either side of the centre aisle. Liam, a youth, creeping towards the front of the church, in one hand a metal can from his grandfather's workshed, in the other a lit devotional candle. He swung over the low rail, leaving the candle on top, and mounted the steps. Doubt, guilt fear—urged him to open the tabernacle, to save the chalice containing the Communion wafers he knew Father O'Connell always prepared the night before early Sunday mass; but he didn't, too afraid to do so, for it would be like opening the door to God, Himself, inviting Him to witness the sacrilege Liam was about to commit, and perhaps God—if any such creature really existed might take away the hatred, the one emotion Liam did not want to lose, because it gave him his life objective, it overcame grief and insecurity, if only for a short while. He
