“Sounds fair.”
“It
“So what do you want of me particularly?”
Major Martin looked at Burke. “Just wanted to tell you directly about all of this. To meet you.” Martin stood. “Look here, if you want to get a bit of information to me directly, call here and ask for Mr. James. Someone will take the message and pass it on to me. And I’ll leave messages for you here as well. Perhaps a little something you can give to Langley as your own. You’ll make a few points that way. Makes everyone look good.”
Burke moved toward the door, then turned. “They’re probably going after the Malone woman. Maybe even after the consul general.”
Major Martin shook his head. “I don’t think so. Sir Harold has no involvement whatsoever in Irish affairs. And the Malone woman—I knew her sister, Sheila, in Belfast, incidentally. She’s in jail. An IRA martyr. They should only know—but that’s another story. Where was I?—Maureen Malone. She’s quite the other thing to the IRA. A Provisional IRA tribunal has condemned her to death in absentia, you know. She’s on borrowed time now. But they won’t shoot her down in the street. They’ll grab her someday in Ireland, north or south, have a trial with her present this time, kneecap her, then a day or so later shoot her in the head and leave her on a street in Belfast. And the Fenians, whoever they are, won’t do anything that would preempt the Provos’ death sentence. And don’t forget, Malone and Sir Harold will be on the steps of Saint Patrick’s most of the day, and the Irish respect the sanctuary of the church no matter what their religious or political beliefs. No, I wouldn’t worry about those two. Look for a more obvious target. British property. The Ulster Trade Delegation. The Irish always perform in a predictable manner.”
“Really? Maybe that’s why my wife left me.”
“Oh, you’re Irish, of course … sorry….”
Burke unbolted the door and walked out of the room.
Major Martin threw back his head and laughed softly, then went to the sideboard and made himself a martini. He evaluated his conversation with Burke and decided that Burke was more clever than he had been led to believe. Not that it would do him any good this late in the game.
Book III
The Parade
CHAPTER 10
In the middle of Fifth Avenue, at Forty-fourth Street, Pat and Mike, the two Irish wolfhounds that were the mascots of the Fighting 69th Infantry Regiment, strained at their leashes. Colonel Dennis Logan, Commander of the 69th, tapped his Irish blackthorn swagger stick impatiently against his leg. He glanced at the sky and sniffed the air, then turned to Major Matthew Cole. “What’s the weather for this afternoon, Major?”
Major Cole, like all good adjutants, had the answer to everything. “Cold front moving through later, sir. Snow or freezing rain by nightfall.”
Logan nodded and thrust his prominent jaw out in a gesture of defiance, as though he were going to say, “Damn the weather—full speed ahead.”
The young major struck a similar pose, although his jaw was not so grand. “Parade’ll be finished before then, I suspect, Colonel.” He glanced at Logan to see if he was listening. The colonel’s marvelously angular face had served him well at staff meetings, but the rocklike quality of that visage was softened by misty green eyes like a woman’s. Too bad.
Logan looked at his watch, then at the big iron stanchion clock in front of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Building on Fifth Avenue. The clock was three minutes fast, but they would go when that clock struck noon. Logan would never forget the newspaper picture that showed his unit at parade rest and the clock at three minutes after. The caption had read: THE IRISH START LATE. Never again.
The regiment’s staff, back from their inspection of the unit, was assembled in front of the color guard. The national and regimental colors snapped in a five-mile-an-hour wind that came down the Avenue from the north, and the multicolored battle streamers, some going back to the Civil War and the Indian wars, fluttered nicely. Logan turned to Major Cole. “What’s your feel?”
The major searched his mind for a response, but the question threw him. “Feel … sir?”
“Feel, man.
“Fine. Fine.”
Logan looked at the battle ribbons on the major’s chest. A splash of purple stood out like the wound it represented. “In ’Nam, did you ever get a feeling that everything was not fine?”
The major nodded thoughtfully.
Logan waited for a response that would reinforce his own feelings of unease, but Cole was too young to have fully developed that other sense to the extent that he could identify what he felt in the jungle and recognize it in the canyons of Manhattan Island. “Keep a sharp eye out today. This is not a parade—it’s an operation. Don’t let your head slide up your ass.”
“Yes, sir.”
Logan looked at his regiment. They stood at parade rest, their polished helmets with the regimental crest reflecting the overhead sunlight. Slung across their shoulders were M-16 rifles.
The crowd at Forty-fourth Street, swelled by office workers on their lunch hour, was jostling for a better view. People had climbed atop the WALK–DON’T WALK signs, the mailboxes, and the cement pots that held the newly budded trees along the Avenue.
In the intersection around Colonel Logan newsmen mixed with politicians and parade officials. The parade chairman, old Judge Driscoll, was patting everyone on the back as he had done for over forty years. The formation marshals, resplendent in black morning coats, straightened their tricolor sashes and top hats. The Governor was shaking every hand that looked as if it could pull a voting lever, and Mayor Kline was wearing the silliest green derby that Logan had ever seen.
Logan looked up Fifth Avenue. The broad thoroughfare was clear of traffic and people, an odd sight reminiscent of a B-grade science-fiction movie. The pavement stretched unobstructed to the horizon, and Colonel Logan was more impressed with this sight than anything else he had seen that day. He couldn’t see the Cathedral, recessed between Fiftieth and Fifty-first Streets, but he could see the police barriers around it and the guests on the lower steps.
A stillness began to descend on the crossroads as the hands of the clock moved another notch toward the twelve. The army band accompanying the 69th ceased their tuning of instruments, and the bagpipes of the Emerald Society on the side street stopped practicing. The dignitaries, whom the 69th Regiment was charged with escorting to the reviewing stands, began to fall into their designated places as Judge Driscoll looked on approvingly.
Logan felt his heart beat faster as he waited out the final minutes. He was aware of, but did not see, the mass of humanity huddled around him, the hundreds of thousands of spectators along the parade route to his front, the police, the reviewing stands in the park, the cameras and the newspeople. It was to be a day of dedication and celebration, sentimentality and even sorrow. In New York this day had been crowned by the parade, which had gone on uninterrupted by war, depression, or civil strife since 1762. It was, in fact, a mainstay of Irish culture in the New World, and it was not about to change, even if every last man, woman, and child in old Ireland did away with themselves and the British to boot. Logan turned to Major Cole. “Are we ready, Major?”
“The Fighting Irish are always ready, Colonel.”
Logan nodded. The Irish were always ready for anything, he thought, and prepared for nothing.
