Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 (23 page)

“Sit.” Smiling up at him, she patted the cushion next to her. “Or are you still here in an offi?cial capacity?”

From his jacket McGarr pulled the second ransom tape. “Number two. I’d like you to see it and tell me if you think it could possibly be Pape.”

“Really?” Rising from the couch, she stopped in front of him. “Know what? I hate leaving things unse
t
tled. I want you to kiss me, so I know you care.”

McGarr brushed his lips against hers.

“No, a real kiss.” Stepping in on him, she kissed him softly at fi?rst but then with evident pleasure, her eyes closing, her body folding into his.

“Yah,” she then said into his ear, refusing to part from him even though the grip of his one free hand was light on her back. “You’re the one. For me.

“Does that scare you?” She craned back her head to regard him; her pelvis was pressed tight against his, her eyes studying his face. “I can tell it does. But part of you doesn’t seem to mind.” She moved her hips slightly. “You’ll stay with me tonight.” It was not a question.

“Check the hands,” McGarr said when they had se
t
tled themselves on the couch. Kara moved closer to him and placed a hand on his thigh.

“But they’re gloved.”

“Perhaps if you magnify them, as you did...”

Reaching across him for the device that operated that function, she smiled down on him as her breasts brushed his chest and he was enveloped in that same mélange of aromas that he knew he would never forget.

And he couldn’t help himself. Taking her in his arms, he laid her body across his and kissed her in a way that made him dizzy and left them rather breathless.

“What about the tape and the hands?” she asked, as he slipped one of his own under her nightgown to play his palm around her nipple. Lightly. Teasingly.

He hefted her breast; she tugged at his belt.

“. . . assembled the fi?fty million in...” the curious voice was saying.

“Later,” McGarr whispered in her ear as, mirac
u
lously it seemed, she had him out and then in her—the epiphanic glide of skin against the softest, most lubr
i
cious of membranes. Intimacy at its most particular.

Later, in the darkness of the bedroom, they were roused by the ringing of Kara’s telephone.

“I can’t imagine who that could be,” she whispered, reaching for the receiver on a nightstand. After liste
n
ing for a while, she held the phone out to McGarr. “It’s for you.”

Orla Bannon, McGarr thought; she was the only one who could possibly know where he was. He held the receiver to an ear.

“McGarr? Chazz Sweeney here. I’ve got the money.”

McGarr had to think—what money?

“The fi?fty million.”

McGarr lowered the phone and pushed himself up against the headboard.

“McGarr, you there?”

He grunted, trying to piece out if Sweeney could possibly mean what he said, and how and where he might have assembled that kind of money.

“Sure, didn’t I put together a group of right patriots with deep pockets. With the emphasis on
right,
don’t you know. Like a consortium, with one of them a banker who had no problem getting hold of Republic of Venezuela bearer bonds. Did I tell you they’re the
preferred currency of drug dealers and gun runners? But you doubtless know that.

“Now then, we’ve got the money, and I’ve heard from them again. Them New Druid fooks what done the dastardly deed.”

The language and the abrupt way Sweeney was tal
k
ing made McGarr wonder if the man was drunk. Or drunker than usual. “You have fi?fty million Euros.”

“That’s what I said. Fifty fookin’ mill in Venezuelan bearer bonds and not a farthing less.”

“Your own money?”

“No, Jaysus—I put in only two. Where would I get that kind of money to throw around? But you know that.”

McGarr did not. Nor did anybody else know of Sweeney’s assets. After the deaths of Noreen and Fitz, McGarr had tried to learn everything he could about Sweeney. To no avail.

Through a web of shell companies and trading ent
i
ties both in Ireland and abroad, Sweeney had co
n
cealed his wealth, such that a fi?nance expert hired by McGarr could determine only that Sweeney owned
Ath Cliath,
a small merchant bank with one other e
m
ployee and limited taxable assets, and several pieces of city center property. But in no way did his holdings add up to 50 million Euros.

“And your fellow patriots are who?”

“Just a bunch of yokes I toss jars with and who wish to remain anonymous.”

More and more, it was sounding like drunken blather. “But you have the bonds in your possession?”

“Would I lie about a matter like this? We’ll get the books back, but we need your assistance, McGarr.

You... you know how these things are done and how to handle them New Druid cockbites and druggie chancers, all tattooed and pierced. Aren’t you, after proving it out there at their HQ in Glasnevin? I’d fookin’ pierce them meself so they’d know it. But, Janie, isn’t that another story?

“And, and, and—come closer while I tell yeh— wouldn’t it be a bloody fookin’ coup, you coming back with the goods, given how shabbily that godless culchie cunt Kehoe and his gobshite sidekick Sheard have done you? There you are with your arse swinging in the breeze, man. Think of that. How does it feel?

“We get the books back, you get vindicated and the chance to see who the thieves are up close and personal. It’s what you want, I know you well enough for that. One sniff, and you’ll have the miserable mithers.

“And I, what do I get? I fookin’ get to make sure that none of those posturing, Protestant, bluenose pricks in that sieve of a place called Trinity College never ever again get to look after those sacred books.

“They will be lodged in the care and the safekeeping of the Holy Roman Catholic Church where they b
e
long, if I and me fi?fty fookin’ million in negotiable s
e
curities have anything to say about it.”

There it was, McGarr concluded. Sweeney à la Opus Dei. The books of Kells, Durrow, and Armagh were out there, and Sweeney, who was nothing if not an o
p
portunist, had drawn upon that signifi?cant power base to assemble the ransom price.

“Why me? Why not Sheard?”

McGarr now heard liquid being poured into a glass.

“I told you what I think of Sheard—an arse-lickin’ yes-man if ever there were one—and in a matter such
as this he could only play the fool. No clue in this class of thing, none whatsoever.

“And there’s another wee problem—we’ll need a helicopter and a pilot, like the choppers the Garda po
s
sesses and your man McKeon. They want us up in the air before they’ll tell us where the drop is.”

McKeon had been a helicopter pilot with the Irish army during the peacekeeping operation in Lebanon and still maintained a license.

“I couldn’t get access to a helicopter, not now. And Bernie, he—”

“Ach, don’t give me that, man. You’re still a senior Garda offi?cer in good standing and without question the most respected man on the force, no matter what Kehoe, O’Rourke, and Sheard have tried to do to you. This is an emergency with a tight time frame. One bloody short window of opportunity. And, as far as I know, McKeon wasn’t placed on administrative leave. He’s fully qualifi?ed to fl?y, if only to maintain his hours.”

“How do you know the demand was genuine?”

“It was the voice, the fookin’ voice, man.”

“And what did it say?”

“We should ready a helicopter. When we get ever
y
thing together today sometime, they’ll tell us what bearings to take after we’re in the air and traveling north northwest out of Swords.” It was the location of Dublin Airport.

“We’re to contact nobody else. If they detect an
y
body else in the air around us, the deal’s off and they’ll destroy the books.”

Kara, who had been listening while recumbent, now sat up beside McGarr, the warmth of her arm and shoulder settling against him.

“You only have to say the word. And, sure, we’ll be
up, up, and away, only to return in a trice as brilliant heroes with the bloody books for all the world to see.”

Which was also classic Sweeney. For all his secr
e
tiveness about his personal fi?nances, the man was a publicity monger of the fi?rst rank, and here was the possibility of garnering what would surely be great glory using mainly the money of other people. With the publicity certainly worth the two million he said he was putting up. To him.

Gone would be his reputation as a probable mu
r
derer, convicted thief, and cynical manipulator of the worst sort. The fi?rst thing—the great and brilliant thing—that would spring to mind when his name was mentioned would be “the man who splashed out mi
l
lions to save the Book of Kells.” Philanthropist, patriot, and churchman.

Perceptions. Didn’t it forever come down to that? McGarr mused, considering his own present situation, in which he could well now become known as the man who let the possibility of retrieving the Book of Kells slip through his fi?ngers. Because of his own pride.

“I’d have to speak with them directly.”

“Them who?”

“The”—McGarr had to pause for a term—“ra
n
somers.”

“Ah, shite—how the fuck d’you think I’m going to do that?”

“How did you notify them that you’d assembled the money?”

“I didn’t. They contacted me.”

“Well, I imagine we’ll just have to wait. I must speak with them directly.”

“Christ fookin’ almighty, you’re going to blow this thing, McGarr. I can just feel it.”

“And your principals—I need a list of who put up the money. I’ll speak with them as well.”

“All fookin’ fi?fty fookin’ yokes? It’ll take fookin’ years.”

McGarr let the silence carry his resolve.

Finally, Sweeney sighed. “Well, the bastard did give me a beeper number.”

“Which is?”

“Ah, none of your shenanigans, McGarr. I won’t have you pullin’ the cop thing on me.”

Again, he heard Sweeney’s throat work.

“And one other thing, you prick you. You should think of bringing your bed partner along to verify the books are what he claims. Wouldn’t we be the fools if the entire exercise was nothing but a bloody big fi?ft
y
million-Euro scam.” With that, Sweeney began a drunken laugh that devolved into a hacking, wet cough.

McGarr waited until he had quieted. “How did you know I was here?”

Sweeney passed some air between his lips. “You should know by now I’m omniscient. But, sure, I’ve never been one to hold the odd session against any man, even when the woman is another man’s wife.

“Later.” He rang off.

Orla Bannon, McGarr thought. In spite of her r
e
ported contempt for Sweeney, the man signed her pa
y
check, and like him she was a manipulator of some skill. He wondered what she had got from him in r
e
turn.

After he explained to Kara what Sweeney had pr
o
posed, she used both hands to brush her hair back b
e
hind her ears, so that the profi?le she presented with its nearly equal angles—forehead, nose, and chin—was regal and commanding.

“I don’t like it, Peter. I don’t like him nor the sound of what he intends for the books, if he manages to r
e
cover them for that outrageous sum. And the way it will be gone about is fraught with danger. What’s to prevent the thieves from taking the money and blowing you out of the sky? Just for the”—she swirled her hands—“New Druidism of it, and to foil any police presence?

“That said”—she turned to him and took his hand—“if you decide it’s something you should do, I’ll go along with you, as Sweeney suggested. As your expert.”

In the darkness, McGarr pulled her to him, and they sank down in the pillows.

At nearly midnight on the night before, one after a
n
other of the seven bay doors of the old warehouse had opened and a different type of vehicle had driven out. First came a Ford van with a “Castrol Oil” logo on the side; next a Mooney’s bread van. Bays three through six issued large cars of various makes, and the last a stretch limo.

“Notice anything similar about those vehicles?” Ward asked Bresnahan.

“Apart from their size? No.”

“Tinted windows, each and every one of them. And what do you fancy is in them?”

“Drugs.”

“And who do you fancy that is, based on mug shots we saw at headquarters?” Ward jerked his chin at the sixth bay door, where the limo was pulling out and a tall, square, but thin young man was waiting in the doorway, his hand on a switch to lower the door.