He looked at her. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, but there was a determined sort of recklessness in them, brought on, he supposed, by the insanity of the long night, and he saw that she wasn’t going to be put off so easily. “Yeah, give me a lift.”
She took her foot from the stirrup, reached down, and helped him up behind her. “Where to?”
He put his arms around her waist. “Where do you usually go?”
She laughed again and reined the horse in a circle. “Come on, Lieutenant—give me an order.”
“Paris,” said Burke. “Let’s go to Paris.”
“You got it.” She kicked the horse’s flanks. “Gi-yap, Mayor!”
Maureen Malone rubbed her eyes in the sunlight as she came through the doors of the north vestibule flanked by FBI men, including Douglas Hogan. Hogan indicated a waiting Cadillac limousine on the corner.
Harold Baxter came out of the south vestibule surrounded by consulate security men. A silver-gray Bentley drew up to the curb.
Maureen moved down the steps toward the Cadillac and saw Baxter through the crowd. Reporters began converging first on Baxter and then around her, and her escort elbowed through the throng. She pulled away from Hogan and stood on her toes, looking for Baxter, but file Bentley drove off with a motorcycle escort.
She slid into the back of the limousine and sat quietly as men piled in around her and the doors slammed shut. Hogan said, “We’re taking you to a private hospital.”
She didn’t answer, and the car drew away from the curb. She looked down at her hands, still covered with Flynn’s blood where he had held them.
The limousine edged into the middle of the crowded Avenue, and Maureen looked out the window at the Cathedral, certain she would never see it again.
A man suddenly ran up beside the slow-moving vehicle and held an identification to the window, and Hogan lowered the glass a few inches. The man spoke with a British accent. “Miss Malone …” He held a single wilted green carnation through the window. “Compliments of Sir Harold, miss.” She took the carnation, and the man saluted as the car moved off.
The limousine turned east on Fiftieth Street and passed beside the Cathedral, then headed north on Madison Avenue and passed the Cardinal’s residence, Lady Chapel, and rectory, picking up speed as it moved over the wet pavement. Ahead she saw the gray Bentley, then lost it in the heavy traffic. She said, “Lower the window.”
Someone lowered the window closest to her, and she heard the bells of distant churches, recognizing the distinctive bells of St. Patrick’s playing “Danny Boy,” and she sat back and listened to them. She thought briefly of the journey home, of Sheila and Brian, and she recalled a time in her life, not so long ago, when everyone she knew was alive—parents, girl friends and boyfriends, relatives and neighbors— but now her life was filled with the dead, the missing, and the wounded, and she thought that most likely she would join those ranks. She tried to imagine a future for herself and her country but couldn’t. Yet she wasn’t afraid and looked forward to working, in her own way, to accomplish the Fenian goal of emptying the jails of Ulster.
The bells died in the distance, and she looked down at the carnation in her lap. She picked it up and twirled the stem in her fingers, then put it in the lapel of her tweed jacket.
