The Loo Sanction

'OK. You win.' He pulled himself up and rested against the headboard. 'Let's talk.'

She scooted down under the covers. 'Oh, I don't know. I'm kind of tired.'

'You're going to get popped right in the eye.'

'I'm sorry. But you are fun to tease. You rise to the bait so eagerly. What do you want to talk about, now that you've got me wide awake?'

'Let's talk about you, for lack of more interesting things. Tell me, how did a nice girl like you, et cetera...'

'Why am I working for Loo?'

'Yes. We both know why I am.'

She knew that taunt was not completely in jest, but she decided he had a right to some bitterness. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to share the truth with him. After all, the truth did mitigate her complicity. 'Well, most of what I told you about myself the other night was true. I was born in Ireland. Went to university over here, then returned. I was young and silly and politically committed—looking for a cause, I suppose. Or bored maybe. I used to meet my brother and some of his friends at a coffee shop, and we would talk about a united Ireland. Angry speeches. Plans and plots. You know the sort of thing. Then one day my brother was gone. I discovered that he had gotten into Ulster. He had always said he wanted to take an active part in the thing, but I had written that off as romantic game-playing. He was a poet, you see. Flashing eyes and floating hair and all that. I don't imagine you would have liked him.'

'He died?'

He felt her nod. 'Yes. He was found in his car.' Her voice became very soft. 'They shot him through the ear. And I... I...'

He hugged her head to his side. 'Don't talk about it.'

'No, I want to. It's good for me. For months the image of him being shot in that car haunted me. I used to have nightmares. And do you know what image used to shock me awake, all sweating and panting?'

He patted her.

'The noise of it! Can you imagine the terrible noise of it?'

Jonathan felt helpless and stupid. He was sorry for her, but he knew the emptiness of saying so. 'Who did it?' he asked. 'UDA? IRA?'

She shrugged. 'It doesn't really matter, does it? They're all the same.'

'I'm surprised you realize that. Good for you.'

'Oh, I didn't know it then, of course. I wanted revenge. More for myself than for my brother, I suppose. I went to Belfast and joined a cell of activists. And...'

'You got your revenge?'

'I don't know. We set bombs. People got hurt—probably the wrong people. After a while, I came to my senses and realized how stupid the whole business was, and I decided to return to Dublin. And that's when I was picked up and arrested. Things always happen that way.'

'You were sentenced?'

'No. They were taking me from one prison to another in an army vehicle, when they were run off the road by armed hijackers. The soldiers were all shot. The hijackers took me with them. Only me. They left the other prisoners.'

'I assume the hijackers were Loo people.'

'Yes.'

'How long ago was this?'

'Only a month. They brought me here for a week of briefing on your background file from CII. Then they placed me at Mr. MacTaint's where we met. And that's it.'

Jonathan slid down beside her, and they lay for a time staring into the dark above them. 'Why you, I wonder,' he said at length. 'Not that I'm complaining.'

She took a deep breath. 'I don't know. I could paint—well, in a way. And there was no question about my being cooperative. All the Vicar has to do is lift a telephone, and I'm back in Belfast facing charges. And this time I'll have to answer for those dead soldiers as well.'

Jonathan's fists clenched and unclenched. 'He's quite a number, that vicar. No messing around with fluctuating loyalties for him. When he wants you, he ties you up properly.'

'True. He's got both of us. And he does the whole thing with a hearty handshake and polite small talk.'

'And a wink.'

'Oh, yes. And a wink. I suppose that winking is just a nervous tic, but it's a nuisance. It's infectious when you're talking to him. You have this urge to wink back, and that wouldn't do at all.'

Jonathan was relieved that the talk was taking this lighter tone. The last thing in the world he needed was the burden of this girl's problems or, worse yet, her affection. Lovemaking was no threat to his precious insulation. Two people meet on the neutral ground of lust, they scratch their itches, then they go back into themselves. Nothing shared, nothing lost. But this sort of thing—this sharing of ideas and problems, this quiet talk into the common dark—this could be dangerous. Sapping.

Maggie leaned across him and butted her cigarette out in the bedside ashtray. Then she resettled herself against him and ran her fingers over his stomach idly. 'This is kind of old hat for you, isn't it? I read in your file about that Eiger affair—about that girl who roped you into it.' She felt his stomach tighten, but she plunged ahead with that well-intentioned instinct for the emotional jugular that characterizes good women grimly determined to understand and help. 'Her name was Jemima Brown, wasn't it?'

There was no inflection in Jonathan's voice when he said, 'Yes.'

'Was she at all like me?'

'No. Not at all.'

'Oh.' She removed her hand from him. 'Did you love her?'

Jonathan got up and sat on the edge of the bed. Beyond the window, the night horizon was still smudged by a reddish glow of burning stubble out in the fields, but this false dawn was not so distant from the real one, for the birds were beginning to sound the odd chirp in expectation.

Maggie sat up and patted the bed beside her. 'I'll make you a bargain,' she said in comic broad brogue. 'Bring your fine body back here, and I'll not plague you with me queries into your emotional life. Which is not to say that I won't be making any demands upon you at all, at all.'

He rejoined her, stretching out flat on his back and feeling that he had been childishly touchy. She scooted down beside him and pressed her forehead against his. He looked into her impish green eye—one only and large at this distance. 'You have a way of coming out one up, haven't you?' he said.

'Instinct for emotional survival. Do you realize that we've made sexual pigs of ourselves in the little time we've had together?'

'Shameful.'

'Isn't it just. Physically prodigal, I'd call it.'

'I think it's only fair to warn you that I'm an aging man. I may not be up to it.'

'Lord, I hate double entendre.'

Breakfast, the only meal English cooks feel comfortable with, was interrupted by The Sergeant bursting into the dining room, his face flushed and steaming with sweat. 'Where the 'ell 'ave you been!' he shouted at Jonathan, who was finishing a last cup of tea with Yank and Maggie at a corner table somewhat out of the draft. 'I've been runnin' me arse off around these bleedin' 'ills!'

Jonathan set down his napkin and looked out the window on the countryside, where the corn stubble was pastel under the lowering gray sky.

The Sergeant crossed to their table in three angry strides, and his bulk hovered over Jonathan.

'More tea?' Jonathan asked Maggie.

'No, thank you.'

'I'm talking to you, mate!' The Sergeant put his heavy hand on Jonathan's shoulder. Jonathan glanced down at the thick fingers as though they had dropped from a passing bird, then he looked across at Yank with raised eyebrows.

Yank intervened nervously. 'Come on, now. No need to get your dander up. He's just been sitting here having