Cathedral (8 page)

Her response was quick, as his had been. They both knew their catechism.

"I think a people would rather be governed by their own incompetent politicians than by foreign incompetents."

Baxter sat back and pressed his palms together. "Please don't forget the two-thirds of the Ulster population who are Protestant and who consider Dublin, not London, to be a foreign capital."

Maureen Malone's face grew red. "That bunch of Bibletoting bigots does not recognize any allegiance except

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money. They'd throw you over in a second if they thought they could handle the Catholics themselves. Every time they sing 'God Save the Queen' in their silly Orange Lodges, they wink at each other. They think the English are decadent and the Irish Catholics are lazy drunks. They are certain they are the chosen people. And they've guiled you into thinking they're your loyal subjects." She realized that she had raised her voice and took a deep breath, then fixed Baxter with a cold stare to match his own.

"English blood and the Crown's money keep Belfast's industry humming-don't you feet like fools, Sir Harold?"

Harold Baxter placed his napkin on the table. "Her Majesty's government would no more abandon one million subjects-loyal or disloyal-in Ulster than they would abandon Cornwall or Surrey, madam." He stood. "If this makes us fools, so be it. Excuse me." He turned and headed toward the door.

Maureen stared after him, then turned toward her host and hostess. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have picked an argument with him."

Margaret Singer smiled. "That's all right. But I'd advise you not to argue politics with the other side. If we tell the Russians what bullies they are and then try to get a Soviet Jew released from the camps, we don't have much luck, you know."

Hull nodded in assent. "You won't agree, but I can assure you that the British are among the fairest people in this troubled world. If you want to get them to end internment, you'll have to appeal to that sense of fairness. You broke with the IRA to travel this path."

Margaret Singer added, "We all must deal with our devils-and we do." She paused. "They hold the keys to the camps."

Maureen took the gentle rebuke without answering. The good people of the world were infinitely more difficult to deal with than the bad. "Thank you for breakfast. Excuse me." She stood.

A bellhop came toward the table. "Miss Malone?"

She nodded slowly.

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"For you, miss." He held up a small bouquet of green carnations. "I'll put them in a nice vase in your room, ma'am. There's a card I can give you now, if you wish."

She stared at the small buff envelope, then took it. It was blank. She looked questioningly at Singer and Hull. They shook their heads. She broke the seal on the envelope.

Maureen's mind went back to London five years earlier. She and Sheila had been hiding in a safe house in an Irish neighborhood in the East End.

Their mission had been secret, and only the Provisional IRA War Council knew of their whereabouts.

A florist had come to the door one morning and delivered a bouquet of English lavender and foxglove, and the Irishwoman who owned the house had gone up to their room and thrown the flowers on their bed. "Secret mission," she had said, and had spit on the floor. "What a bloody bunch of fools you all are."

She and Sheila had read the accompanying card: Welcome to London. Her Majesty's government hope you enjoy your visit and trust you will avail yourself of the pleasures of our island and the hospitality of the English people. Right out of a government travel brochure. Except that it wasn't signed by the Tourist Board but by Military Intelligence.

She had never been so humiliated and frightened in her life. She and Sheila had run out of the house with only the clothes on their backs, and spent days in the parks and the London Underground. They hadn't dared to go to any other contacts for fear they were being followed for that purpose. Eventually, after the worst fortnight she had ever passed in her life, they had made it to Dublin.

She pulled the card half out of its envelope to read the words. Welcome to New York. We hope your stay will be pleasant and that you w ill take advantage of the pleasures of the island and the hospitality of the people.

She didn't have to pull the rest of the card out to see the signature, but she did anyway, and read the name of Finn MacCumail.

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Maureen closed the door of her room and bolted it. The flowers were already on the dresser. She pulled them from the vase and took them into the bathroom. She tore and ripped them and flushed them down the toilet.

In the mirror she could see the reflection of the bedroom and the partly opened door to the adjoining sitting room. She spun around. The closet door was also ajar, and she hadn't left either of those doors open. She took several deep breaths to make sure her voice was steady. "Brian?"

She heard a movement in the sitting room. Her knees were beginning to feel shaky, and she pressed them together. "Damn you, Flynn!"

The connecting door to the sitting room swung open. "Ma'am?" The maid looked across the room at her.

Maureen took another long breath. "Is anyone else here?"

"No, maam."

"Has anyone been here?"

"Only the boy with the flowers, maam."

"Please leave."

"Yes, ma'am." The maid pushed her cart into the hall. Maureen followed her and bolted the door, then sat in the armchair and stared at the Paisley wallpaper.

She was surprised by her calmness. She almost wished he would roll out from under the bed and smile at her with that strange smile that was not a smile at all. She conjured up an image of him standing in front of her.

He would say, "It's been a damned long time, Maureen." He always said that after they had been separated. Or "Where are my flowers, lass? Did you put them in a special place?"

"Yes, very special," she said aloud. "I flushed them down the goddarnned john."

She sat there for several minutes carrying on her imaginary conversation with him. She realized how much she missed him and how she wanted to hear his voice again. She was both excited and frightened by the knowledge that he was close and that he would find her.

The phone next to her rang. She let it ring for a long time before she picked it up.

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"Maureen? Is everything all right?" It was Margaret Singer. "Shall I come up and get you? We're expected at the Irish Pavilion-"

"I'll be right down." She hung up and rose slowly from the chair. The Irish Pavilion for a reception, then.the steps of St. Patrick's, the parade, and the reviewing stands at the end of the day. Then the Irish Cultural Society Benefit Dinner for Ireland's Children. Then Kennedy Airport. What a lot of merrymaking in the name of helping soothe the ravages of war. Only in America. The Americans would turn the Apocalypse into a dinner dance.

She walked across the sitting room and into the bedroom. On the floor she saw a single green carnation, and she knelt to pick it up.

73

Patrick Burke looked out of the telephone booth into the dim interior of the Blarney Stone on Third Avenue. Cardboard shamrocks were pasted on the bar mirror, and a plastic leprechaun hat hung from the ceiling. Burke dialed a direct number in Police Plaza. "Langley?"

Inspector Philip Langley, head of the New York Police Department's Intelligence Division, sipped his coffee. "I got your report on Ferguson."

Langley looked down from his thirteenth-story window toward the Brooklyn Bridge. The sea fog was burning off. "It's Eke this, Pat. We're getting some pieces to a puzzle here, and the picture that's taking shape doesn't look good. The FBI has received information from IRA informers that a renegade group from Ireland has been poking around the New York and Boston IRA-testing the waters to see if they can have a free hand in something that they're planning in this country."

Burke wiped his neck with a handkerchief. "In the words of the old cavalry scout, I see many hoofprints going in and none coming out."

Langley said, "Of course, nothing points directly to New York on Saint Patrick's Day-"

"There is a law that says that if you imagine the worst possible thing happening at the worst possible moment, it will usually happen, and Saint Patrick's Day is a nightmare under the best of circumstances. It's Mardi Gras, Bastille Day, Carnivale, all in one. So if I were the head of a renegade Irish group and I wanted to make a big splash in America, I would do it in New York City on March seventeenth."

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"I hear you. How do you want to approach this?"

"I'll start by digging up my contacts. Barhop. Listen to the barroom patriots talk. Buy drinks. Buy people."

"Be careful."

Burke hung up, then walked over to the bar.

"What'll you be having?"

"Cutty." Burke placed a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. He recognized the bartender, a giant of a man named Mike. Burke took his drink and left the change on the bar. "Buy you one?"

"It's a little early yet." The bartender waited. He knew a man who wanted something.

Burke slipped into a light brogue. "I'm looking for friends."

"Go to church."

"I won't be finding them there. The brothers Flannagan. Eddie and Bob.

Also John Hickey."

"You're a friend?"

"Meet them every March seventeenth."

"Then you should know that John Hickey is dead-may his soul rest in peace. The Flannagans are gone back to the old country. A year it's been.

Drink up now and move along. You'll not be finding any friends here."

"Is this the bar where they throw a drunk through the wiqow every Saint Patrick's Day?"

It will be if you don't move along." He stared at Burke.

A medium-built man in an expensive topcoat suddenly emerged from a booth and stood beside Burke. The man spoke softly, in a British accent. "Could I have a word with you?"

Burke stared at the man, who inclined his head toward the door. Both men walked out of the bar. The man led Burke across the street, stopping on the far comer. "My name is Major Bartholomew Martin of British Military Intelligence." Martin produced his diplomatic passport and military I.D.

card.

Burke hardly glanced at them. "Means nothing."

Martin motioned to a skyscraper in the center of the block. "Then perhaps we'd better go in there."

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Burke knew the building without looking at it. He saw two big Tactical Policemen standing a few yards from the entrance with their hands behind their backs. Martin walked past the policemen and held open the door.

Burke entered the big marble lobby and picked out four Special Services men standing at strategic locations. Martin moved swiftly to the rear of the lobby, behind a stone fagade that camouflaged the building's elevators. The elevator doors opened, and both men moved inside. Burke reached out and pushed floor nine.

Martin smiled. "Thank you."

Burke looked at the man standing in a classical elevator pose, feet separated, hands behind his back, head tilted upward, engrossed in the progression of illuminated numbers. Despite his rank there was nothing military about Bartholomew Martin, thought Burke. If anything he looked like an actor who was trying to get into character for a difficult role.

He hadn't mastered control of the mouth, however, which was hard and unyielding, despite the smile. A glimpse of the real man, perhaps.

The elevator stopped, and Burke followed the major into the corridor.

Martin nodded to a man who stood to the left, dressed in a blue blazer with polished brass buttons.

On the wall of the corridor, opposite Burke, was the royal coat of arms and a highly polished bronze plaque at read: BRITISH INFORMATION

SERVICES. There tas no sign to indicate that this was where the spies usually hung out, but as far as Burke knew, nobody's consulate or embassy information office made that too clear.

Burke followed Martin through a door into a large room. A blond receptionist, dressed in a blue tweed suit that matched the Concorde poster above her desk, stood as they approached and said in a crisp British accent, "Good morning, Major."

Martin led Burke through a door just beyond the desk, through a microfilm reading room, and into a small sitting room furnished in a more traditional style than the rest of the place. The only detail that suggested a government office was a large travel poster that showed a black and

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white cow standing in a sunny meadow, captioned: "Find peace and tranquility in an English village."

Martin drew the door shut, locked it, and hung his topcoat on a clothes tree. "Have a seat, Lieutenant."

Burke left his coat on, walked to the sideboard and took the stopper out of a decanter, smelled it, then poured a drink. He looked around the well-furnished room. The last time he'd been in the consulate was a week before last St. Patrick's Day. A Colonel Hayes that time. Burke leaned back against the sideboard. "Well, what can you do for me?"

Major Martin smiled. "A great deal, I think."

"Good."

"I've already given Inspector Langley a report on a group of Irish terrorists called the Fenians, led by a Finn MacCumail. You've seen the report?"

"I've been apprised of the details."

"Fine. Then you know something may happen here today." Major Martin leaned forward. "I'm working closely with the FBI and CIA, but I'd like to work more closely with your people-pool our information. The FBI and CIA tell us things they don't tell you, but I'd keep you informed of their progress as well as ours. I've already helped your military intelligence branches set up files on the IRA, and I've briefed your State Department intelligence service on the problem."

"You've been busy."

"Yes. You see, I'm a sort of clearinghouse in this affair. British Intelligence knows more about the Irish revolutionaries than anyone, of course, and now you seem to need that information, and we have a chance to do you a good turn."