With the body of the late Jerry O’Connell lying slumped at the roadside, General Rashood needed to move very quickly. On the right-hand side, the land fell away down the cliff toward the ocean, and Ravi elected to roll the corpse down there and hope to hell it jammed in the foliage but was hidden from view.
He checked that there was no further traffic from either direction and then dragged the dairy farmer to the edge of the cliff top and tipped him over. Jerry rolled down for about forty feet and came to a halt against a gorse bush that was still in flower. Ravi stared. Jerry was plainly visible.
Leaving his bag on the roadside next to the milk truck, he clambered down the cliff and dislodged Jerry, dragging the body around the gorse and jamming it into the far side. Now it would not be noticed from above, although it was still just visible if someone was really looking. Which, Ravi guessed, they would be before this day was done.
He climbed back up the cliff and considered his getaway options. Walk or ride? And then he boarded the milk truck, revved the engine, put it into gear, and took off, with the urns rattling in the rear. He considered that he was, more or less, safe for another half hour, before someone missed either Jerry or the truck.
There was only one way to drive, and that was straight along to Goleen, through the village, and on to Schull, Ballydehob, and Skibbereen. He kept his driving gloves on and kept going, passing the West End Hotel in Schull, where, unbeknownst to him, his wife had stayed last week.
Only one person in the entire fourteen-mile journey noticed him. Patrick O’Driscoll, the driver of the central milk tanker, was just coming out of Murphy’s Breakfast Bar in Goleen when he saw O’Connell’s truck with the usual four big urns of milk come fast through the village, drive straight past the dropoff point, and keep going out along the road to Schull. He found that puzzling, but guessed Jerry must have had an errand. Still, he thought, he’d better get back here quickly, or I’ll be gone, and then he’ll have to drive to Skibbereen.
Meanwhile, Ravi was approaching the market town of Skibbereen and preparing to ditch Jerry’s truck. He slowed down a half mile out of town and turned onto a farm track that led to a house situated beyond a wood. Ravi swung into the trees and drove for about three hundred yards before coming to a halt in a dense clump of birch trees. He switched off the engine, grabbed his bag, and walked on to Skibbereen. It was 7:15 in the morning, and the town was more or less deserted.
Ravi had eaten nothing since the previous evening and had not had anything to drink for many hours. The lure of the Shamrock Café was too strong for him to resist, and he took off his jacket, which he knew made him very distinctive in these rural areas. He stuffed it into his bag and walked inside, where he ordered toast, orange juice, and coffee from a very sharp young Irishman, aged around twenty, who Ravi thought would probably end up mayor of Skibbereen one day. He asked about the bus to Cork City and was told it left daily at 8 A.M. from outside the Eldon Hotel on Main Street.
Ravi sat at a table with his back to the counter. The excesses of killing Jerry and climbing up and down the cliff had made him thirsty, and he hit the orange juice in one go, then ordered another. He was so thirsty, he ignored the terrorist’s mantra never to do anything that would cause anyone to notice anything. The kid behind the counter might now remember.
The mistake was small, and Ravi cast it to the back of his mind. He ate his buttered toast and drank his coffee. He paid with his euros and made his way out to the Eldon Hotel for the bus to Cork. The journey was a little over forty miles, but it took General Rashood much longer.
Twice he left the bus, at Clonakilty and again at Inishannon on the Bandon River. Both times he waited for the next one, but at Clonakilty he caught sight of the Michael Collins Centre and spent a half hour standing at the back of a group of tourists, listening to the guide recounting the exploits of Ireland ’s great twentieth-century patriot.
Eventually he arrived in Cork just before 12:30, and, since he would shortly be wanted for murder, decided to take a circuitous route to Dublin rather than the regular direct rail link from Kent Train Station. He elected for a long train ride along the coast to Waterford, and then to take the three-hour ride on the railroad up to Dublin.
Every step of the way, Ravi did everything possible to cover his tracks. On the train to Waterford, he changed carriages every half hour. He spoke to no one, ate nothing, drank nothing, kept his head buried in a succession of newspapers. People may have seen him, but no one had time to take a lasting impression of him.
He arrived in Waterford late in the afternoon. It was Monday, July 16, the first day Shakira would be looking for him in Dublin, in the precincts of the Mosque at five in the afternoon. He was not going to make it. But the Mosque, in Ravi ’s mind, was only a “fail-safe.” He had Shakira’s cell-phone number, but intended to use it only in an emergency, perhaps just once, in the middle of Dublin where it would be untraceable.
And was this ever an emergency. In the following few hours, Ravi was aware, he would become an unknown but hunted man. He did not believe he had left many clues behind, but the Irish Garda would be very angry that a well-liked farmer from West Cork had been brutally murdered two miles from his home. And it would not take them long to deduce that the killer was a stranger.
There were two police cars outside Seaview Farm, where Mrs. Mary O’Connell was utterly distraught. Yes, Jerry had left with the milk at the usual time, and no, he had not been seen since. And no, he had never gone missing before.
Down on the waterfront, there were two more police cars, with Garda officers calling at every shop, business, and private home. There weren’t many, but everyone who spoke to the Garda that morning knew Jerry, and had not seen him that day.
Detective Superintendent Ray McDwyer, who had taken over this relatively routine missing-person case, was thoughtful. He sat alone in the police cruiser, waiting for his driver, Officer Joe Carey, who was busy talking to the girl who pumped gasoline at the waterfront garage.
When he returned, Ray suggested the most useful thing they could do would be to check out whether Jerry had indeed arrived at the dropoff point in Goleen with his four cans of milk. He made one quick phone call to the Central Milk Corporation and came up with the name of the tanker driver, Patrick O’Driscoll, who lived in Goleen.
Ten minutes later, they were at his front door, and Patrick quickly explained the unusual events of the early morning: “Sure, I saw Jerry’s truck come speeding through the village around seven this morning. He drove straight past the collection point and kept on going.”
“Did you see him come back?”
“I did not. And I noticed that his other four cans were still there when I packed up at two o’clock. I collected no milk from Jerry today.”
“Was the truck going unusually fast?”
“Well, Jerry always did drive it pretty quickly, but this morning it was going real quick, even for him.”
“Did he wave to you, or acknowledge you in any way?”
“He did not. Just went right by.”
“Mr. O’Driscoll, I want you to think very carefully before you answer this question. Are you absolutely certain that Jerry was behind the wheel of that truck when you saw it drive straight through Goleen?”
Patrick O’Driscoll hesitated. “Well, I’d thought he was… when you see a fella like Jerry every day of your life, you get a kind of set impression. You know. Truck, milk, and Jerry.”
Detective Ray McDwyer smiled. He was a well-dressed serious man of around forty and looked like the managing director of a bank. But he was a very good policeman, and there were those who thought he would climb even higher in his chosen profession.
“Patrick,” he said, “I want you to swear to God you saw Jerry Driscoll in his truck driving through Goleen this morning.”
Patrick was silent for a few moments. And then he said, “I’m trying to get the picture clear in my mind. And I can do no more. But I cannot swear Jerry was behind the wheel. That truck was past me in a flash, and to tell the truth, if I hadn’t known it was Jerry’s truck, I would not have known who the hell it was.”
Detective McDwyer persisted. “Did you see his back, or his coat?”
“I did not. I was focused on the milk cans swaying around in the back. I just thought Jerry was off on some errand and that he’d be back. I didn’t mean to mislead you, sir. You can trust me on that.”
“I know you didn’t,” replied Detective Ray McDwyer. “The memory’s a funny thing. It can trick you. And I’m grateful for your help.”
Officer Joe Carey drove them back to the Crookhaven waterfront, where McDwyer called in the other cars. He asked all seven of his men to pay attention, and he told them, “It looks to me as if Jerry O’Connell was removed from his truck somewhere between the top road and Goleen, a distance of less than three miles.
“I want you to organize a search all along there with as many officers as you can find. This is getting more serious than I first thought. But Jerry’s truck was seen driving fast through Goleen at around seven o’clock. You may assume he was not at the wheel.”
There were many hours of daylight left, and another dozen policemen were drafted in from outlying districts. And for hour after hour they walked along the high road above the harbor, searching both sides of the road for signs of an injured man-or a dumped body.
At 4:30 P.M., Ray McDwyer himself was walking along the road, staring down in search of any clue as to where the milk truck had stopped. And he stopped at a short, maybe four-foot-long skid mark on the left-hand side of the road. To him, the rubber looked fresh and black, and he told Joe Carey to step up the search along this stretch of road, with six men on the left and eight on the right, along the cliff top.
At 5:25 that afternoon, they found the body of Jerry O’Connell, his septum crushed into his brain.
“Mother of God!” murmured Ray McDwyer.
The Royal Navy’s 7,000-ton Astute-class hunter-killer submarine Artful was making a steady course southwest at twenty-two knots, bound for the Gibraltar Base. This part of the North Atlantic has been known for centuries as St. George’s Channel, named of course by the English, possibly to let the hapless Irish know precisely who owned the great waters and who indeed might be expected to walk on them. Cry God for Harry, England, and St. George.
The ship was quiet. There were no U.S. submarines this far south, the French underwater boats were in their huge base at Brest on the Brittany coast, and the Russians right now had nothing beyond the confines of the Baltic. Everyone knew there was nothing around, and nothing was expected.
However, at four minutes past four o’clock, a short, sharp exclamation was uttered by one of the young sonar operators; uttered almost in disbelief, in language not normally associated with the formal idiom of a submarine on patrol.
“What the bloody hell’s that?” snapped Able Seaman Jeff Cooper, staring at his screen. “I’m getting something, a rise, could be engine lines. I’d say it’s a submarine.”
A supervisor walked over and said, “Let me take a look.”
AB Cooper just had time to say “Right here, sir,” before the contact disappeared. And it did not return any time in the next five minutes. But then it did, and this time it was clearer, perhaps closer. Jeff Cooper coordinated the data quickly.
“Level of certainty they were engine lines?”
“One hundred percent, sir.”
“You thought it was a submarine?”
“I’m sure it was.”
“Well, that’s very peculiar. We have no notification that there is any submarine within two hundred miles of our track. What does the computer conclude?”
“Single shaft. Five blades. Compressed cavitation. Fits Russian diesel-electric Kilo-class boat.”
Five minutes later, the commanding officer was informed. Immediately, he ordered Artful to periscope depth and sent a signal to the satellite.
Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe stared at the signal in front of him, which had arrived direct from Naval Intelligence. It was not couched in alarming tones, nor was it regarded as urgent. It just stated: RN HMS Artful 51.15N 08.29W picked up short transient contact on very quiet vessel at 161604JULY12. Insufficient hard copy for firm classification-aural, compressed cavitation, one shaft, five blades, probably non-nuclear. No information on friendly transits relates.
“That, old mate,” said Jimmy decisively, to the entirely empty room, “is a bloke who was bloody sure he just heard a submarine.”
He pulled up his computer chart for the northeastern Atlantic and checked the precise whereabouts of Artful when the transient contact was detected. About twenty-four miles south of Kinsale in County Cork… now, what in the name of Christ is an unknown submarine doing there? Unless the crew wants a decent round of golf-my dad played Old Head, Kinsale, last year-shot a 98!
He hit the secure link to COMSUBLANT and spoke to a lieutenant he knew well, questioning the likelihood of a submarine patrolling the coast of Ireland.
“Jack, I think it might have been Russian,” he said. “Five blades, that’s Russian for sure, and non-nuclear. The Brits obviously think it’s a Kilo, but they haven’t said so in as many words.”
Jim, we do have something on the boards. Only one, an Iranian Kilo, recently out of refit in the Baltic. We were tracking it in the western end of the Med, then tracked it north maybe a week ago. That’s probably her.
“Well, the Brits are damn reliable and wouldn’t make a mistake like this. Were you guys tracking it subsurface?”
Sure. We had Cheyenne in there.
Jimmy closed down the link and phoned the Big Man, who was, for once in his life, not betraying outright impatience.
“Listen, kid. You are sure the only submarine that has gone off the boards is that Iranian Kilo, right?”
“I am sure. COMSUBLANT has every other underwater boat on earth under observation.”
“And now a submarine, which fits the pattern, is located by the Brits twenty-four miles south of Kinsale in Ireland, right? Maybe 1,500 miles from its last known.”
“Correct.”
“Well, that Kilo can probably cover three hundred miles in a day, snorkeling. I guess that’s gotta be it. Hull 901 on the loose, way south in the Irish Sea.”
“That’s how I figured it, boss.”
“And what do you want me to do about it? Fire a torpedo?”
“Nossir. But I just had a few thoughts.”
“Don’t tell me. You think the Kilo is being driven by a barmaid from Brockhurst?”
“Close. I’ll talk to you later.”
As he said good-bye, the lieutenant commander could hear Arnold Morgan chuckling… heh-heh-heh, the knowing laugh of an ex-nuclear submarine commander who still thinks he’s one jump ahead.
Which was precisely the opposite of what Jimmy Ramshawe thought. For the first time in his life, he considered the Big Man to be several steps behind. And if he didn’t shape up, he’d be several steps dead. And now Jim pulled his biggest computerized chart into zoom-out mode, showing the ocean from Gibraltar to Kinsale.
He studied it, measured it, and deduced that the distance was almost 1,500 miles-that was five days, maybe less if she was in a major hurry. And since there was no likelihood that it was proposing to open fire on someone, Jimmy considered it most likely that the submarine was either picking someone up or depositing a person or persons on the shores of Ireland. Probably yesterday.
Intelligence officers of his caliber often act on a hunch. And right now Jimmy did so. He called a regular contact at the FBI and asked him to check whether anyone, repeat anyone, had purchased an unbooked ticket, either first-class or business-class, on a flight to Shannon or Dublin on the morning of July 3. “Almost certainly Aer Lingus,” he added. “They have a virtual monopoly on flights into southern Ireland from the USA. Try Washington, New York, and Boston.”
One hour later, he had an answer. A Miss Maureen Carson of an address in Michigan had purchased a first-class ticket from Boston to Dublin on the Aer Lingus flight that left at 10:30 A.M. on Tuesday, July 3. “Better yet, Jimmy. Aer Lingus booked her into the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin that night.”
“Have we checked that out?”
“Sure. She was there for three days, then checked out, paying with her American Express card.”
“Did you check that out?”
“Sure. It was originally issued to the Jordanian embassy in Paris. Miss Carson is an extra signatory.”
Jimmy’s heart stopped beating. In his mind, he’d just found Carla Martin. And he’d made the Islamic connection. She was a Middle Eastern agent. And she’d gone to Brockhurst to check out when Arnold and Kathy were leaving the country. She’d killed big stupid Matt Barker, driven to Boston, and bought a ticket to Dublin.
And, if he was not absolutely mistaken, she’d just been joined by at least one other Middle Eastern agent who’d been landed on the Irish coast by Kilo Hull 901. Carla was either Syrian or Jordanian. The new one was an Iranian.
No one could string together a long group of unconnected facts like Jimmy. And now he was off and running, his mind in a turmoil. First he called back his pal, Lieutenant Jack Williams at COMSUBLANT, and advised him to keep a watch on the Gibraltar Strait for the return of the Kilo.
“She left through there, and she’ll return through there,” he said. “Either to restation off Lebanon, like she was before, or to go through the Suez Canal and then home to the Gulf.”
Jack wanted to know what the Kilo was doing skulking around the Irish coast. Jimmy filled him in. “She dropped someone off, someone who was up to no bloody good whatsoever.”
Then he called the FBI back and asked if they could make some kind of a search on Maureen Carson, either in Ireland or in Great Britain, where he believed she was headed. This was not going to be a problem, and they would also instigate a check on the Maureen Carson passport.
Jimmy called the Big Man, yet again. And he was not as cooperative as COMSUBLANT or the FBI. He listened carefully, and then said, rather coldly, “Kid, you have no goddamn idea what the submarine was doing off the coast of Ireland. She could have been on a training exercise. You need better facts. Your imagination will lead you nowhere.”
“It led me to Maureen Carson,” he said bluntly.
“Congratulations. Some nice rich lady on a shopping expedition. Not one single shred of evidence against her. Lemme know when they find her, willya?”
Christ, Arnie could be infuriating.
Ravi pulled into the Waterford station after his long, meandering journey from Cork, tired, hungry, and very thirsty. He went into the little bar and asked for a large glass of water and a cup of coffee. He also bought a couple of fresh-looking ham-and-cheese rolls. He gulped down the water and took the rest to a passenger bench in the station to wait for the 7:00 train to Dublin.
He finished his picnic and then went to the ticket office to purchase a single fare to Dublin. There were two people in front of him, and the clerk was slow. The young woman in front of him turned and said, “You’d think we were going to China, eh?”
Ravi smiled. She was a pretty girl. But Ravi tried to avoid her gaze. By tomorrow morning, he’d be the most wanted man in Ireland, and he did not want her telling the police she’d traveled to Dublin with the murderer on the train.
He pretended not to speak the language, and replied in Arabic, which was probably an even bigger mistake. But it discouraged her, and she turned away, bought her ticket, and walked off. At the counter, he bought his ticket, but then the phone rang and the clerk turned away to answer it before he gave Ravi his change.
The Hamas general hadn’t been thinking about the amount, twenty-eight euros, and had handed over a fifty-euro bill. And now, to get his change, he was going to have to stand here facing the office, where a secretary was still working. So he just took the ticket and retreated to his passenger bench.
Three minutes later, the clerk came in search of him and handed him the twenty-two euros in change. Ravi thanked him and tried not to look at him, but he was now probably firmly in the memory of the clerk.
The train ride up through beautiful Kilkenny and County Carlow was picturesque all the way. The track followed the River Barrow for several miles and then swerved right across Kildare before following the Grand Canal into Dublin. Ravi arrived in Heuston Station, just south of the River Liffey along the quays, at 10:15 P.M.
He stepped out of the station and into a dark shop entrance and dialed Shakira’s number. She was sitting in her room at the Merrion, watching television, and she answered immediately.
“Be quick, Shakira,” he said. “I’m in Dublin. Meet me at the Mosque, tomorrow morning at 11 A.M. Where are you?”
“I’m in the Merrion Hotel, around the corner from St. Stephen’s Green.”
“Good girl. Don’t be late.”
Shakira almost went into shock. All these weeks waiting to see him, and now he just said “Good girl” and vanished into the night. What was that all about? She was on the verge of stamping her foot in temper when the phone rang again.
She answered it immediately, and a voice just said, “I love you,” before the line went dead.
She was not quite sure whether to laugh or cry. And she chose the latter. With happiness. That he was safe, and he loved her, and tomorrow they would be together.
Ravi too was discontented with the fifteen-second duration of their call. But he had to adhere to that rule, because that rule meant the call could not be heard, traced, or recorded. Ravi was keenly aware that the National Security Agency in Maryland had tapped into Osama bin Laden’s phone calls and often listened in on the terrorist mastermind talking from his cave to his mother in Saudi Arabia. If they could eavesdrop on the great Osama, they could locate him. Fifteen seconds only.
He had the name of a Dublin hotel, and he flagged down a cab before it drove into the station and told the driver to take him to the Paramount Hotel, corner of Parliament Street and Essex Gate. The place had a Victorian façade, but inside it was all 1930s, very comfortable, and Ravi thankfully checked in. Last time he had slept had been in the submarine, and dearly as he would have liked to join Shakira in the Merrion, he thought he might get more sleep this way, and anyway he did not wish to be seen publicly with her in a place where staff might recall them.
Tomorrow morning he would risk watching the television news.
Detective Superintendent Ray McDwyer decided he needed help. The wound to Jerry O’Connell’s forehead was something he had never seen before. The bone was completely splintered between the eyes, and the nose bone had been driven upward and into the brain with tremendous force. The crushing blow to the forehead could have been delivered by a blunt instrument, but there was no sign that any implement whatsoever had been used on the nose.
Ray had spoken to the police pathologist, and he too was mystified. And together they decided that there was something all too precise about this killing. The murder had been carried out by an expert, someone who knew precisely what he was doing. There were no signs of a struggle, no other bruises, no abrasions. The killer had taken out Jerry O’Connell instantly, with the minimum of fuss.
At twelve minutes after nine o’clock, Ray McDwyer phoned London and requested help from New Scotland Yard, Special Branch.
At first Scotland Yard wondered what all the fuss was about, the murder of a dairy farmer in a remote spot on the Irish coast. But Ray was persuasive. He told them he thought they were dealing with a highly dangerous character, who might have come in from the sea and might have bigger things on his mind than knocking over a dairy farmer. And after about ten minutes, the duty officer at the Yard was inclined to agree. “We’ll send someone over,” he said, “direct to Bantry. This morning.”
Twenty minutes after Ray put down the phone, a local farmer, Colm McCoy, walking his dog, found Jerry’s truck hidden in the birch trees. He’d already seen the Cork Examiner and knew about the murder and that the truck was missing. The newspaper had specified there were four large milk urns in the back, and Colm knew what he’d found.
He called in to the Garda Station, and ten minutes later two police cars turned up, with four officers including Ray McDwyer himself. Behind them came a tow truck to haul Jerry’s vehicle out.
“Touch nothing,” said Detective McDwyer. “Take it away and have them check for fingerprints. Then tell the Milk Corporation to pick up the cans, dispose of the milk, and return them to the O’Connell family.”
Meanwhile, back at Crookhaven, officers in a Coast Guard launch were calling on every yacht and fishing boat in the harbor, asking everyone aboard if they had seen any strangers, either afloat or on land.
The operation had been going on since 8 A.M., and they had drawn a complete blank until they reached Yonder. And there Captain Bill Stannard told them about the little boat that had chugged past him just before six o’clock the previous morning.
“It was a Zodiac,” he said. “Maybe twelve-foot. Yamaha engine. We got one just like it riding off the stern.”
“Did you see who was driving?”
“Sure, I did. Just one guy. There was no one else aboard.”
“Did you see his face?”
“Not really. He was going past, real slow, when I woke up. He was not an old guy, and he looked kinda broad and tough, short, dark curly hair.”
“What was he wearing?”
“Now that’s what I do remember. It was a brown jacket. Could have been leather, but I think it was suede. Looked smart, kinda out of place out here on the water.”
“Collar and tie?”
“No. He had on a dark T-shirt. I think it was black.”
“Did you see which way he went?”
Bill Stannard pointed to the shore, farther into the harbor. “He was headed that way, but I was real tired, never saw him land. I guess the boat’s over there somewhere, because I definitely never saw him leave.”
“Any idea where he came from?”
“Hell, no. I never caught sight of him until he was more or less alongside. But there’s nothing much down toward the harbor entrance. The guy just showed up, out of nowhere.”
In the following twenty minutes, the police and Coast Guard searched the harbor from end to end for a twelve-foot Zodiac with a Yamaha engine. Nothing. And no one else had seen it, either. Which presented the investigation with a blank wall, the main trouble being that everything, including the murder, had taken place too early, when hardly anyone was awake.
Back in Skibbereen, Detective Ray McDwyer decided to concentrate on the killer’s getaway. It was clear that he had driven away from the crime scene in Jerry’s truck and had come as far as Skibbereen at the wheel. But what then?
The Crookhaven team called in to report the mystery man in the Zodiac, arriving in the harbor wearing a brown suede jacket and a black T-shirt. Both he and, more surprisingly, the boat had vanished.
Ray assessed that the man had somehow left the area from Skibbereen, and since there was no car dealer open at that early hour, he must have either gone on the bus, taken a taxi, walked, or stolen a car. There had been no report of anything stolen, so Ray dispatched an officer to check the taxi company. He and Joe Carey made calls to any business that might have been operational at seven in the morning.
The choice was limited. In fact, it didn’t stretch much beyond the Shamrock. Joe Carey went in first and beckoned for the youth behind the counter to come over for a quick word. The two had known each other all their lives, and Joe was friendly.
“Hello, young Mick,” he said. “Right now we’re looking for a fella who may have come in here yesterday morning, a little after seven.”
“Anything to do with that murder in Crookhaven yesterday?”
“Mind your business.”
“Sure, it is my business,” replied Mick, quick as a flash. “Any time there’s a bloody killer out there threatenin’ the lives of me and my fellow citizens, right there you’re talking my business. Anyway, I already read your boss is in charge, so it must be about the murder.”
Mick Barton proceeded to fall about laughing, despite the seriousness of the situation. He was only two years out of school, where he had been the class wit, and now he was the café wit. Joe Carey punched him cheerfully on the arm.
“Come on, now, the boss will be in here in a minute. Just let me know if there was a fella in here yesterday, early, wearing a brown suede jacket. A complete stranger.”
“No jacket,” said Mick. “But there was a fella, a stranger who came in. He drunk two big glasses of orange juice down in about twenty seconds. Then he had toast and coffee.”
“What was he wearing, Mick?”
“I think it was a black T-shirt, and he was carrying a leather bag.”
“Anything else you recall about him?”
“He could have been foreign. He was dark, short curly hair, heavyset. But he spoke English, naturally, or I wouldn’t have known what he was talking about.”
“Any idea where he went afterward?”
“Sure. He asked me about the bus to Cork, and I sent him up to the Eldon Hotel for the eight o’clock.”
Outside the Shamrock, Ray McDwyer put three men on the bus route to check with the drivers where the man in the black T-shirt had gone. They made contact with the Bus Eireann office and had their drivers check into the Skibbereen police station as soon as they pulled into town.
At midday, Ray and Joe left for Bantry, twenty-four miles away. Two detective inspectors from Scotland Yard’s Special Branch had flown direct from London to Cork and been transported by a Garda helicopter to the town of Bantry, where the body of Jerry O’Connell was in the morgue beneath the new Catholic Hospital.
Joe and Ray met them at the little airport, which had been constructed mainly to service Bantry’s major oil and gas terminal. All four went immediately to the hospital, and the two men from London expertly examined the body.
The chief inspector touched it only once. He gently pressed the area in the central forehead with the flat of his thumb. Then he stepped back and said immediately, “Ray, this farmer of yours was killed by an expert in unarmed combat. Death was caused by something smashing into and weakening the big forehead bone, which allows the combatant to slam the septum into the brain much easier.
“I’ve seen it before. But not often. When you’re looking at a murder like this, you instantly think of the SAS or one of the other Special Forces. But I can tell you, this cat really knew what he was doing. The farmer died in under five seconds. This was a lethal blow.”
Ray McDwyer nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder who the hell he was,” he said.
“That’s always the question, right? But this was a very local man, I imagine, no business far beyond West Cork?”
“ West Cork!” said Ray. “Jerry O’Connell didn’t have any business beyond Crookhaven.”
The inspector chuckled. “And that means he probably died by accident. I mean, the killer had no intention of harming him when he arrived in the area. Jerry just somehow got in the way.”
“I’ve assumed that from the start. At least I assume it on the basis that the murder could not have been committed by wandering Irish scoundrels.”
“Absolutely not,” declared the inspector. “This was committed by a professional. The issue is, why was he here, and what’s he doing now?”
“I’ve got half the force trying to trace him. But we’re having only limited luck. I’ll know more when we get back to Skibbereen. Are you fellas willing to stay a little longer?”
“Well, we had planned to return to London right away, but this is very brutal, and very bewildering. Do you have any ideas yet where this character came from?”
“Not really. First sighting was from a yacht captain in Crookhaven Harbor. He saw a man, who answered the rough description, cross the harbor in a Zodiac at the right time. Needless to say, the boat’s missing, but the yacht guy said it came in from the outer harbor.”
“Could he have been dropped at sea?”
“It’s hard to imagine how the hell he got there before six o’clock in the morning if he hadn’t been.” Joe McDwyer was visibly uneasy. But, as the Irish host, he stayed cool.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get you a couple of rooms at the Eldon and we can have a strategy meeting this afternoon. I’m grateful you could come, but your diagnosis has made a grim situation somewhat worse.”
General Rashood awakened reasonably early, showered, shaved, and had breakfast in his room. He opened the door and found the Irish Times on the carpet. He picked it up and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw the lead story, straight across all eight columns of the front page:
WEST CORK SEAPORT STUNNED AT BRUTAL MURDER Dairy Farmer Found Battered to Death Garda Baffled at Senseless Slaying.
There followed a lurid account of how the longtime Crookhaven resident had gone missing and then been found dead on the cliff top, his truck and 160 gallons of milk missing. The newspaper speculated that it might have been just a milk thief, but later quotes from Detective Superintendent Raymond McDwyer suggested something much more sinister.
Extra police were due to be drafted into the area, and a nationwide search for the killer was launched last night. D-Sup. McDwyer was still in his office at 3 A.M. trying to piece together the many separate parts of his investigation.
Who might want to kill Jerry O’Connell? Did they mean to kill him? Was it mistaken identity? Or was this a homicidal maniac who might strike again? Either way, the pressure is on McDwyer to come up with something.
Ravi put down his newspaper and turned to the television news, which was making an even bigger meal of it. There was a camera crew in Crookhaven, reporting “direct from this heartbroken community.” There was a crew in Skibbereen awaiting news from “the murder inquiry headquarters.” There were pictures of the harbor, pictures of the cliffs, pictures of Seaview Farm, interviews with Mary O’Connell, wedding photographs of the couple, an interview with Mary’s aging father.
Ravi pulled some clean clothes out of his bag and began to dress. His new T-shirt was white. He skipped through the remainder of the newspaper, pausing only to look at a story which told of a gigantic bomb blast that had knocked out all the windows in the American embassy in Tel Aviv.
“Well done, Ahmed,” he muttered.
He stuffed a pile of euros into his pocket, picked up his bag, and went downstairs to check out. He paid the 190-euro bill with four fifties. Outside, he jumped into a cab and asked for the Mosque at Clonskeagh, which stands on the south side, next to University College Dublin.
The Mosque, which was opened by President Mary Robinson in 1996 and backed by the great Dubai statesman and racehorse breeder Sheik Hamdan al Maktoum, is one of the finest buildings in Dublin, a massive brick-and-steel edifice with a minaret tower and a breathtaking metallic dome. It is built within a giant square, a total of nine buildings including a prayer hall of majestic beauty. The Mosque is surrounded by perfectly kept lawns. It is the Mecca of the Emerald Isle.
Ravi had heard much about it and had been wanting to visit for several years. Now, however, it was an irrelevance, for within its precincts today was the only reason Ravi had to live, his beloved Shakira, the Palestinian girl for whom he had laid down his life and career.
The taxi swung into the wide entrance to the Mosque and headed for the main building. He could see Shakira leaning on the wall, dressed in jeans, sandals, and a white blouse. There she was, waiting for him, longing for him, and entirely oblivious of the fact that he had left behind in County Cork a manhunt as big as the one she had left behind in Virginia.
Should he tell her? Perhaps not. She had quite enough to worry about, without burdening her with yet another preoccupation. Still, she would have to be aware of the need for the utmost caution, even if he did not quite tell her the full details of the murder of Jerry O’Connell.
Ravi permitted the driver to stop about fifty yards from where Shakira stood. He paid, climbed out, and walked slowly back toward her. She was looking the other way, and he put his arms around her from behind; without seeing, she knew it was him. She twisted and flung her arms around him as if she would never let go, and he held her close and told her over and over that he loved her above all else.
But then he broke away from her embrace and said sternly, “Nothing in public that would ever attract attention. Not in our business.”
“I know, I know,” she said, a shade petulantly. “But it’s been so long and I miss you every day. Where are we going now?”
“We are leaving Ireland as fast as we can,” he said. “This was just a port of entry for us. We have to get to London as fast as we can.”
“How do we do that?”
“We get a taxi to a place called Dun Laoghaire. It’s right on the coast, and it’s not far from here. That’s the ferry port to England.”
“I can’t see any taxis.”
“No, I’m going to call for one. I arranged it this morning. I have the number.”
Ravi dialed a number on his cell. Shakira heard him say, “Hello, Robert Bamford here. Taxi to pick me up at the Mosque. I ordered it this morning. Yes, that’s correct. I’m right at the main entrance… to Dun Laoghaire, cash. Okay, five minutes.”
Jimmy Ramshawe was fielding a succession of catastrophically depressing E-mails, all of them confirming that Carla Martin had most definitely vanished. The Maureen Carson lead came to nothing. The passport was forged; the only Maureen Carson of Michigan with correlating numbers was dead. The Jordanian embassy in Paris said they had never heard of Miss Carson, which was, Jimmy guessed, unsurprising since she did not appear to exist.
The Jordanian attaché had told the FBI that since Miss Carson appeared to have a forged passport, she probably had forged her American Express application as well. Worse yet, the Shelbourne Hotel had not the slightest idea where she had gone after leaving them.
The Kilo had not shown up anywhere along the route from Ireland to Gibraltar. And yet the Ireland connection continued to bother Jimmy. He still believed Maureen Carson was Carla Martin. Who the hell else buys a pricey one-way first-class ticket to Dublin at an hour’s notice, unless they’re on the bloody run?
And all the bloody documents are forged, for Christ’s sake. Something’s going on, and I can’t understand for the life of me why nobody can see it except for me. And what in the name of Christ are the fucking Iranians doing frigging around in a submarine, a drive and a nine iron from Kinsale Golf Club? Tell me that. Jimmy, all alone in his office, was working himself into a lather about Ireland.
So much so that he opened his computer and Googled the Irish Times just to see what the hell was going on over there. And what greeted him was that whacking great front-page headline announcing the brutal murder of the Irish dairy farmer Jerry O’Connell.
Jimmy wrote down Crookhaven and checked the distance along the coast to Kinsale Old Head-forty-two miles along the shore. He then compared the GPS numbers; not the numbers that separated Kinsale from Crookhaven, but the ones that separated Crookhaven from the submarine when the Brits detected her. The latitudes were submarine 51.15, Crookhaven 51.32, about seventeen miles different. Longitude, submarine 08.29, Crookhaven 09.34. About the same forty-odd miles, with the submarine running predictably south.
She’d been running all day. It was 4 o’clock in the bloody afternoon. I don’t know what happened to the Irish farmer. But something’s really weird here. Bloody great headlines, murder, Maureen Carson, towelhead submarines. All concerning Ireland. Give me a break. They’ve got to be connected.
And this is where Jimmy Ramshawe parted company, mentally, with Admiral Morgan, who told him bluntly, “Kid, you still lack the one truth that might bind all this together. Right now they’re all floating coincidences.
“Nothing’s connected to anything else. Nothing puts Carla or Maureen on the submarine. Nothing connects either woman with the other. Nothing suggests the submarine was doing anything except a training exercise. As for this murder, no one knows who committed it, and there is not one shred of evidence to indicate that one of the Iranians got off and then kicked an Irish pig farmer to death.”
“Dairy.”
“What?”
“Dairy farmer, not pig.”
“Oh, thank God. That makes all the difference.”
“Arnie, I agree nothing quite adds up. But something’s going on, and I don’t think you should go to England…”
“Bullshit.”
General Rashood bought two first-class passenger tickets for the two o’clock ferry to Holyhead in North Wales, a journey of sixty-five miles across the Irish Sea. This was unusual, because the Stena Line fast ferry is essentially for cars and trucks, roll on, roll off. The vast majority of passengers were planning to drive through Wales, England, or Scotland, either vacationing or going home. There were some passengers without cars, but mostly students, backpackers, and hitchhikers. Ravi and Shakira did not fit the pattern.
Nonetheless, they found their way up to the first-class lounge, and ordered hot sandwiches for lunch. The stewardess would bring them complimentary coffee throughout the journey.
The summer sea was calm, and the ferry, a giant hovercraft, charged toward the United Kingdom in a blizzard of howling spray, ripping past a regular shaft-driven ferryboat as if it had stopped.
Holyhead, their destination, sits on Holy Isle, the northwest point of Wales, jutting out into the Irish Sea. This in turn is joined to the ancient twenty-mile-long Isle of Anglesey where the A-5, the main road into England, begins. Or ends, depending on your direction.
Ravi and Shakira had to wait for the cars and trucks to leave the ship before foot passengers were permitted to walk off. They joined a busy line of mostly young people going through the passport control area, and twenty minutes later, with only the most cursory glance at one of Shakira’s four passports, the British one for Margaret Adams, they waved her through.
Ravi, the former British Army officer, said “good afternoon” crisply in that unmistakable tone the British use to intimidate the lower orders, and was waved through immediately. The official paid hardly any attention to this well-dressed Charles Larkman, in his expensive brown suede jacket and white T-shirt.
However, the closed-circuit camera behind him was more observant, and there was a photographic record that Miss Adams and Mr. Larkman had indeed entered the United Kingdom, off the two o’clock ferry from Dublin, on July 17.
From the immigration area, they walked to the car-rental desks, and Shakira hired an Audi A6 for a month, using her new American Express Gold Card, originally issued to a staff member at the Syrian embassy in London. She offered one of her three driver’s licenses, the one in the name of Margaret Adams, and Ravi booked himself in as an extra driver using Mr. Larkman’s clean British license.
Thankfully, they stowed their two bags in the trunk and set off on the long 300-mile journey to London, Ravi at the wheel.
The regular route for most drivers is to cross the Menai Strait onto the mainland and then travel all along the North Wales coast until it reaches the fast motorway system south of Liverpool. Ravi would do it differently, driving through the mountains of North Wales, southeast to Shrewsbury, and then south into Hereford, home of the British Army’s elite SAS, his old stomping ground. It was perhaps the irresistible urge of the outlaw to return, in the broadest possible sense, to the scene of the crime.
Shortly after 5 P.M., the two officers from New Scotland Yard agreed to consult with MI-6, Britain ’s overseas intelligence agency. It was clear to both of them that the man who killed Jerry O’Connell was no passing villain: this was a man who had almost certainly made illegal entry into Ireland, and if challenged in any way would kill ruthlessly and without compunction.
Both men had previous experience with such operators, mostly in the field of counterterrorism. The IRA had men like that, and the various jihadist organizations were full of them. Fanatics.
At the heart of the O’Connell killing was the fact that the murderer had been trained militarily. No one can kill like that, not without expert instruction. MI-6 listened attentively and promised to make immediate inquiries, find out if there was a rogue Special Forces operator on the loose.
One hour later, it was clear that MI-6 had raised a serious hue and cry. They’d talked to the CO at Stirling Lines, headquarters of the SAS; they’d touched base with military intelligence in all three branches of the service. They even heard about the suspect Iranian submarine, and it seemed everyone in the entire intelligence community understood there was something very strange about the death of the Irish farmer.
At 7 P.M. in England, 2 P.M. on the East Coast of the United States, the FBI was put in the picture. This was no longer an Irish-country-murder inquiry; this was now a preliminary examination of a possible terrorist on the loose in the British Isles. Jimmy Ramshawe, who was no longer in the office, was informed by a young duty officer that his buddy in the FBI had called and wanted to talk urgently.
Jimmy was in his apartment at the Watergate with Jane when the message came through. He called back and listened as the agent explained that the Special Branch had flown into Ireland from Scotland Yard and all hell seemed to be breaking loose over the death of the Irish farmer.
“Any idea why?” asked Jimmy innocently, hardly able to contain his excitement.
“Yeah. He was apparently killed by an unarmed combat blow which could only have been delivered by a Special Forces guy, you know, a Navy SEAL or an SAS man.”
“I KNEW IT!” yelled Jimmy.
“Knew what?”
“I knew there was something going on in connection with southern Ireland.”
“Not to mention southern Virginia. Christ, Jimmy, we’ve made more calls for you than we have for ourselves. Carla Martin, Maureen Whatsername, Aer Lingus, Shelbourne Hotel, passports, embassies. I gotta tell you, buddy, it looks like there might be some connection here-”
“NO SHIT!” yelled Jimmy, ungraciously. He thanked his buddy for the call, pressed the cutoff button, and dialed Admiral Morgan.
And once more he related the myriad of “disconnected facts” that suggested to him that someone was going to make an attempt on the life of the president’s most trusted adviser, scourge of the Middle Eastern terrorists.
But this time he was leading up to a payoff line. And with something of a flourish, he revealed the priceless information to the admiral: that the Irish farmer had been killed by a blow which could only have been delivered by a member, or at least a former member, of the U.S. or British Special Forces.
“You’re telling me, Jimmy, that someone hopped off that Iranian submarine, right out there in the Irish Sea, and killed the farmer on his way to killing me?”
“Well, not exactly. But I do know that an agent, wielding a Syrian dagger, befriended your mother-in-law very deliberately and then vanished from the face of the earth, in the full knowledge of your arrival time and hotel reservation in London on Tuesday, July 31.
“And that female agent, in my opinion, went to Ireland. Where the submarine was, and where another agent, a colleague and Special Forces guy, has just committed a murder on the way to his final destination, which might just be the Ritz Hotel.”
“Steady, kid. There’s too many gaps. Too few real links. Although I recognize the death of the Irish farmer is significant, and according to your story it does look as if the killer might have got off that submarine.”
“Arnie, will you cancel London?”
“Hell, no. I got a lot of security around me. I’ll be fine. You can’t let ’em rule you, kid, otherwise they’ve won. And we’re not gonna let that happen, right?”
Jimmy ended the phone call, and contemplated the sheer futility of trying to convince Admiral Morgan that he might be in danger. And he racked his brains to think of a link, or even a terror suspect who might have killed Jerry O’Connell.
He pulled up his most-wanted list of Middle Eastern hard men, guys suspected of heinous crimes against humanity, guys who’d killed and maimed in Israel, murdered in Jordan, committed atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and at various U.S. embassies in Africa.
Had one of them traveled to Ireland in the missing Kilo? And why Ireland? Arnie wasn’t going there. He tried to put himself in the shoes of the terrorist, and went through a process he had perfected years ago:
Right, guys, here I go. I’m gonna kill the Big Man at the Ritz Hotel. Shoot him stone dead. Question: what with. Answer: a rifle, telescopic sights, no bullshit. Where do I get it: London, because I cannot possibly get such a weapon into the country, too much security at the airports and seaports. You get caught with a weapon like that, trying to smuggle it into Great Britain, they’ll put you in the slammer and throw away the key.
Jimmy leaned back reflectively as Jane reentered the room. “Could I ask why you’re talking to yourself?” she said brightly. “Aside from the fact that you might be losing your mind through overwork.”
“I’m not talking to myself,” he replied. “I’m processing information. Forming strategy.”
“Okay. It just sounded to me a lot like you were talking to yourself.”
“Perception, Jane, perception. Try to look beyond the obvious.”
“Well, I did. And you were obviously talking to yourself.”
“Jane, I was strategizing. And I still am. And I want to ask you a question. You are a terrorist, and you’re trying to get into England, unarmed, and with a passport. How do you do it?”
“Me? I get a flight to Heathrow, and walk through with my passport.”
“That’s what you won’t do. They make a record of that. Computerized. The security is unbelievable, and remember you’ve got to get out after you murder your target.”
“Okay, I’ll come in by car, off a ferry, from a different country. I know they’re not nearly as strict at the ferry ports.”
“Okay. Which country are you coming from? France? Holland? Spain?”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“And how do you get in there?”
“I fly in.”
“Wrong. Then you run into that heavy European security again.”
“Okay. Well, how do I get in?”
“ Ireland, by sea, Jane. It’s always been the soft option. For years they did not even have passports between the two countries. And it’s not much different now, even in England, not if you’re holding a European Union passport. Ireland ’s the way into England.”
“How about flying into Ireland from a foreign country?” asked Jane.
“That’s much more difficult. The Irish adhere to the European rules as best they can. They want to know who you are, how long you’re staying, and the rest.”
“Well, how the heck do you get in then?” said Jane, tiring of the conversation.
“You get in by sea. There’s miles and miles of coastline, and the Irish have hardly any Coast Guard protection. You could land from deep water just about anywhere. You’d never try the same thing in England. Because they’d catch you. They arrest people all the time.”
“So the method for a killer is into Ireland by boat, then a ferry to England, and no one would know you were in the UK.”
“Precisely.”
“And you think Carla did that?”
“No. Carla’s not an assassin, though I doubt Matt Barker would agree. But her mate is. The one who killed Jerry O’Connell.”
Shakira’s fast Audi A6 came swiftly into London ’s grandest square after their long journey halfway across England. They had made it in seven hours, which was superb driving considering that the general had elected to duck and dive through country roads and never to stick to a predictable route down the high-speed British motorways.
His reason was clear. If anyone had managed to identify them, or somehow get on their trail, it was ten times easier for the police to patrol the freeways than to organize a search through the highways and byways of the rural heart of England.
He’d stuck to the A-5 all the way to the historic river town of Shrewsbury, then cut to the M-5 freeway south of Birmingham, through Herefordshire, on roads he had once known like the palm of his hand. He exited at number 10, picked up the A-40, and in the twilight of this fine July evening raced through some of the loveliest country in England, to the wonderful steep Cotswold town of Burford, and then fast around the Oxford Ring Road onto the M-40.
From there it was a straight shot at London, past his old school, Harrow, and then off the freeway into the Holland Park area. He knew these roads better than he knew Damascus, and he cut through to Knightsbridge, swung right just before Harrods, and made Belgrave Square right on time.
He pulled up outside No. 8 and immediately two staff members from the Syrian embassy ran down the steps to greet him. One said, “General, please take your wife inside immediately. We will take care of everything.”
Ravi and Shakira ran inside, while one Syrian grabbed their bags from the trunk and the other slipped behind the wheel and drove the Audi around the square and into the underground Motcombe Street garage, where the embassy had many reserved spaces. The two runaway terrorists had spent exactly seven seconds on the sidewalk.
The ambassador was there to meet the Hamas C-in-C, with his wife and the military attaché. One of the cultural attachés was also there, but he knew roughly as much about culture as Genghis Khan. Ahmed was a terrorist and a spy, fresh from slamming a bomb at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.
Dinner was set for the six of them, and the ambassador requested that Ravi and Shakira not take time to change, which both of them thought was very thoughtful since neither had much to change into, their bags containing mostly a pile of laundry.
His Excellency understood entirely and poured everyone a glass of Château-bottled French Bordeaux, 2002, never mind Muslim disapproval of alcohol, and led them to their allotted places for dinner. The ambassador sat at the head, with Ravi and Shakira on either side. Lannie, his wife, sat next to Shakira, and Ahmed was next to the general, with the military attaché at the foot.
As dinner-table place settings go, with four men and two ladies, it was thus all over the place, but this was a military strategy meeting, not a social gathering. Lannie was only there as a politeness to Shakira.
The conversation was grim and extremely serious. The Syrians understood entirely the purpose of the visit. For they too had little reason to thank the USA for its attitude to them. And they were frankly furious at the recent bombing of the street near Bab Touma in Damascus.
Everyone at the table knew that Admiral Arnold Morgan was behind all of the carnage, and they were honored indeed to have been selected by the Hamas High Command to provide a headquarters for the legendary Palestinian terrorist general, who planned, finally, to dispose of the American Prince of Darkness.
“You have accurate dates and times?” asked the ambassador, who was a very smooth-looking Arabian diplomat, medium height, slim, perfectly dressed in a light suit cut for him by Prince Charles’s tailor, Huntsman, on Savile Row.
“Thanks to Shakira, I do,” replied Ravi. “I must visit the gunsmith tomorrow; we have only two weeks to plan everything and organize my exit, first from Piccadilly, then from England.”
“We’ve done the documents and arranged the transportation,” replied the ambassador. “In the end, timing will be everything.”
“It usually is,” said Ravi.
The ambassador smiled. “Don’t miss,” he whispered theatrically.
“I never miss,” replied the Hamas general sternly.
Detective Superintendent Ray McDwyer was combing through the evidence that had been gathered from the bus and train companies. Despite all of Ravi’s shenanigans, jumping on and off various buses and changing railroad carriages, the Irish police had traced his route all the way to Dublin. Ray had thus made his new headquarters in the city, where they now believed the killer was.
So far as the investigation was concerned, there were only two people who had come face-to-face with the murderer. There were others who claimed to have seen him, bus and train staff who might have seen him. But only two who had both seen and spoken to him.
One was the ticket clerk at Waterford Station, who could not swear it was the right man because he could not remember the facial makeup of the passenger on the bench who had left behind his change from a fifty-euro bill.
The other was Mick Barton from the Shamrock Café, who had served the stranger, recalled what he was wearing, and directed him to the bus stop outside the Eldon Hotel. Officer Joe Carey had called in and asked if he would be prepared to come to Dublin and spend a day looking through closed-circuit television footage, to try to identify the man to whom he had served two large glasses of orange juice.
“Forget it,” said Mick. “I’m too busy trying to earn a living, not pouncing around all day on wild-goose chases like yourself.”
Joe put him in a cheerful headlock, and told him this was a serious matter. Mick said his neck was probably broken and he’d be suing for a million.
Joe asked how he’d feel about a private helicopter ride up to Dublin, and they would award him two days’ full pay for his time.
“Done,” said Mick. “What time?”
“Tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock. Right here in the square.”
“Where’s the helicopter gonna be?”
“Right over here in that field.”
“Oh, jaysus, Joe… I can’t… I forgot… I have a dentist’s appointment.”
Joe sighed the sigh of the profoundly suspicious.
“Of course you have,” he said. “All right, three days.”
“Done,” said Mick. “Final offer?”
“Final offer.”
“I’ll be there.”
Mick Barton arrived at the Garda Station in style, in the back of an unmarked police car. He was led into a private room, where Ray McDwyer met him with a cheerful “Morning to you, Michael.”
At the back of the room were a projector and an operator. At the front was a large white screen.
“Okay, lad, you know what you’re doing. We are going to show you a steady line of people going through security at Dublin airport getting onto international flights only. We just want you to stop us and identify the man you served the orange juice to on Monday morning.”
“Do I get a bonus if I find him?”
“Absolutely not,” said Ray. “You might make something up, just to get the bonus!”
“Who, me?”
“I’ve only known you since you were three years old. Yes, you.”
Mick laughed, half flattered. He saw himself, after all, as a hard-driving businessman. But suddenly he was dead serious. “Roll ’em,” he said. “If he’s there, I’ll find him. Black T-shirt, right?”
And slowly the projectionist began to run the film, and Mick sat quietly, sometimes leaning forward asking for a pause or a rewind. He worked solidly for three and a half hours, drinking just one cup of coffee, which obliged him to ask, formally, whether it had been percolated in Dachau. Everyone laughed, which Mick expected, being Skibbereen’s established breakfast-bar wit and everything.
He had looked carefully at hundreds of air travelers, and found a couple of marginal candidates, but in the end he always said the same thing, “No, that’s not him.”
They gave him a ham sandwich and an ice cream for lunch, and then settled down to show him the much shorter lines of people disembarking the Irish Sea ferries in England. As expected, they were mostly backpackers and hitchhikers. “Bloody rabble,” observed Mick, but he kept going, checking every person who had sailed from Dun Laoghaire or the Dublin Port Terminal over a two-day period.
He found nothing, not until three o’clock in the afternoon. They were rolling the seventh tape from Holyhead, when Mick asked first for a rewind. Then for a pause. Then he stood up and stepped closer.
And he shoved out his finger, pointing directly at a passenger wearing a jacket and a T-shirt, accompanied by a very good-looking lady who was standing slightly aside.
“You want me to zoom in, Mick?” asked the projectionist.
“Good idea,” he replied. “On the guy in the jacket.”
The image came up bigger. Mick pointed again at the man in the jacket, which was now obviously made of suede or some other kind of soft leather.
“That’s him,” said Mick. “That’s definitely him.”
“One thing, Mick,” interjected Ray McDwyer. “That T-shirt he’s wearing is white, not black.”
“Personally,” replied the kid from the Shamrock Café, “I don’t give a rat’s ass if it’s pink. That’s still him, the thirsty bastard who couldn’t find his own way to Cork City.”
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.”