Ray McDwyer chuckled. And Mick added, “I’ll tell you something else, and there’s no charge for this — that’s a very fair piece of crumpet he’s got with him.”
CHAPTER 10
Ray McDwyer looked hard at the image of the man who might have killed Jerry O’Connell for reasons unknown. And he also looked hard at Mick Barton, the local Flash Harry, upon whose memory this entire case rested. Could Mick be trusted? Maybe. Did he have any doubts about this identification? Apparently not.
Ray suddenly viewed the entire scenario with mixed feelings. If Mick was correct, the murderer was no longer in Ireland: he’d gone to England on the two o’clock ferry from Dublin to Holyhead. Right now he could be anywhere. And there were only sixty million people in England.
So far as Ray was concerned, his task was more or less over. The killer had gone, and the most the Irish detective could do was to circulate the picture to all the relevant agencies and see if anyone recognized the man in the brown suede jacket.
This could, of course, be achieved extremely fast with modern E-mail, and Ray instructed a young Garda officer to have the photograph digitally enhanced to the highest possible standard and then transmit it to New Scotland Yard, MI-5 and MI-6, Interpol, the CIA, the FBI, and the Mossad. Each of those agencies would forward the picture on to various military intelligence operations, and within a couple of hours every branch of every secret service in the Western world would be staring at the apparent killer who had come into Crookhaven from the deep rough water that pounds the Fastnet Rock.
Ray McDwyer, though nominally the officer of record on the case, was essentially finished with it, unless someone arrested the suspect and he was brought back to County Cork to face trial. Meanwhile, he would return to Skibbereen, and politely he asked Mick Barton if he would mind sharing the helicopter.
“Yes, I think I can put up with that,” replied Mick. “Although it’s not something I’m used to.”
Two hours later, Mick was walking down Main Street on his way to his home on the outskirts of Skibbereen, and Ray McDwyer was back in his office. So far as he could tell, nothing had broken loose. But he was wrong. Because it had, two and a half thousand miles and two time zones away, in Tel Aviv.
Colonel Ben Joel, leader of the Mossad team that had somewhat spectacularly blown up Bab Touma Street in Damascus the previous February, was sitting with two of his most trusted officers, Major Itzaak Sherman and Lt. Colonel John Rabin. It was a hot, quiet night in the city, and the three of them were planning to go out for a glass of wine somewhere off Dizengoff Square.
Right now, they were just examining the last of a pile of photographs of people on the Mossad “wanted” list. They checked the latest photographs every night before leaving, just in case there had been a sighting, somewhere definite, of someone they really wanted to find.
Tonight there was nothing. Until, staring at the last two or three pictures, Colonel Joel suddenly exclaimed, “Jesus Christ. look who we have here. ”
He was holding an eight-by-ten printout of the closed-circuit picture of General Rashood and Shakira at the English ferry port of Holyhead. The E-mail transmission had just arrived from MI-6 in London, with a request for identification if possible.
And had that photograph ever landed in the right place. These three Mossad hitmen had been charged with eliminating Ravi and Shakira in that highly expensive and well-planned operation only five months ago. They had been beaten in the mission mostly because of sheer bad luck. The couple had returned to their house separately, accompanied by different people, and it had been too dark to see the discrepancy. The bomb went off in the main room while Shakira was in the basement-level kitchen and Ravi was not even in the house.
But no one knew what Ravi looked like better than Colonel Joel, who had photographed the Hamas commander through a telescopic lens, from right across the street, had observed him in daylight, would recognize him anywhere.
The other two also knew precisely what Ravi looked like, and there was no doubt in any of their minds. The man in the English ferry port was General Ravi Rashood, and the lady with him was his Palestinian wife, Shakira.
For one final check, the colonel called for comparable pictures of the general, and Itzaak pulled them up on the big computer screen set into the wall like a plasma television. The group consisted of three pictures taken on a cliff top in the Canary Isles and the expansive set of photographs the colonel himself had snapped from across Bab Touma Street in Damascus.
No doubt. This was General Rashood and his wife, arriving in England, and now identified by no lesser figures than the Mossad’s top assassination squad, and Mr. Mick Barton, of the Shamrock Cafe in faraway Skibbereen.
Colonel Joel called for the MI-6 report, which mostly contained an assessment by Detective Superintendent McDwyer of the murder of Jerry O’Connell in County Cork, and the likelihood that the man in the picture had committed the murder. The report also mentioned the possibility that the murderer had been landed from an Iranian submarine patrolling off the coast of southern Ireland.
The Mossad men knew all about that submarine. They too had been tracking it, not with another underwater boat like the Americans, but via the satellites. And they too had been aware that the damn thing had vanished somewhere in the deep water off the eastern coast of Majorca. Like the Americans, the Israelis had not regained contact, and were more or less certain the Iranian submarine was no longer in the Mediterranean. Somehow, the Israeli Navy believed, it had broken out through the Gibraltar Strait into the Atlantic Ocean.
Colonel Joel sent a POSIDENT signal to all the appropriate departments in the King Saul Boulevard headquarters. He put it on the nets to the Navy and all branches of Israeli Military Intelligence, particularly Shin Bet, the interior intelligence operation, equivalent of London’s MI-5. No one wanted Ravi Rashood’s head as badly as Ben Joel.
Back in England, MI-6 E-mailed the picture to Military Intelligence, with a special copy to SAS headquarters in Stirling Lines, Hereford, where once Major Ray Kerman had served with honor and courage. By the time the photograph arrived, it was mid-evening, and it would not be examined in the normal course of business until the following morning. However, an urgent communication was picked up from the Israelis at around 10 P.M., and the duty officer instantly summoned the commanding officer.
The communique from Tel Aviv read:
Lieutenant Colonel David Carter, CO 22 SAS, walked through steady rain to his office, accompanied by Major Douglas Jarvis. Neither of them had been in Hereford when Major Kerman had jumped ship back in 2004, but both of them knew the seriousness of his crimes. It was common knowledge nowadays that Kerman had murdered two highly regarded SAS NCOs and had then wreaked havoc on behalf of the well-funded Hamas terrorists. The name Ray Kerman represented the most inflammatory utterance in SAS history.
The two Special Forces officers shook off their rain smocks and made their way quickly to the CO’s office. Lt. Colonel Carter had served with Ray Kerman in Sierre Leone a dozen years ago, knew him well. The duty officer had put the photograph up on a wall screen, and David Carter took one look at it and said, “That’s Ray. Not a single doubt.”
Douglas Jarvis picked up a hard copy of the report from Tel Aviv, and said, “Christ! He’s here.”
Lt. Colonel Carter replied, “Well, he was when that ferry came into Holyhead. Who knows if he’s still here?”
“What do we do now?”
“Well, I suppose we better confirm our positive identification of Kerman to all of the interested parties, looks like Israeli Intelligence, MI-5, MI-6, CIA, FBI, and the Irish. We’ll send our confirmation direct to MI-6 and they’ll
