Jig

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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF CAMPBELL ARMSTRONG

“Campbell Armstrong is thriller writing's best-kept secret.” —
The Sunday Times

“Armstrong is among the most intriguing of blockbuster writers … near to unputdownable.” —
GQ

“While touching on suspense with a skill to please hard-core thriller addicts, he manages to please people who … warm to readable novels of substance.” —
Daily Mail

“Armstrong's skill is not just an eye for a criminally good tale but a passion for the people that will populate it.” —
The Scotsman

“Subtle and marvelous … This is a dazzling book.”
—The Daily Telegraph
on
Agents of Darkness

“A consummate psychological thriller … Without doubt, Armstrong is now in the front rank of thriller writers.” —
Books
on
Heat

“Armstrong has outdone both Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett.” —James Patterson on
Jig

“A full throttle adventure thriller.”
—The Guardian
on
Mambo

“A wonderful puzzle that keeps us guessing right to the end.” —
Publishers Weekly
on
Mazurka

Jig

A Frank Pagan Novel

Campbell Armstrong

Rebecca Armstrong co-piloted this book with me. Her splendid insight and her fine judgment made her, in every sense, a full partner in this novel.

I am of England

And of the holy land

Of England

Good sir, pray I thee,

For of saint charity,

Come and dance with me

In England.

–
The English Dancer

Anonymous

1

Latitude 40 N, Longitude 60 W

Captain Liam O'Reilly didn't enjoy the crossing whenever the Courier was on board. A funereal man who spoke in monosyllables, the Courier rarely moved from his tiny cabin all the way from the coast of Maine to the disembarkation point in the west of Ireland. He had no fewer than
three
briefcases this trip, each locked and chained to a single bracelet on his wrist. Usually he carried only one, which he clutched throughout the entire voyage. Three brief-cases threw the man off balance. When he'd come aboard by launch eleven miles off the coast of Maine, he'd looked very clumsy, his skinny body listing to one side.

Why did he carry three this time? Liam O'Reilly turned the question over in his mind as he stood on the bridge and listened to the rattle of the ship's engines. He wondered how many more Atlantic crossings the two-thousand-ton
Connie O'Mara
was going to see unless she was completely stripped and refurbished. A rotting old tub, she'd begun her career in 1926, hauling various ores round the Cape of Good Hope.

When O'Reilly had won the old biddy in a drunken game of cut-throat poker with some dubious shipbrokers in Panama City in 1963, his first thought was to offer the ship to the Cause. Initially the Cause had been reluctant to accept O'Reilly's generosity because of the costs involved in maintaining the vessel. But a ship was a ship, even if it did look like a great floating turd and leak like a colander. In twenty crossings she had carried automatic weapons, explosives and – when the Courier was on board – considerable sums of operating cash for the Cause. She'd done all this without mishap and O'Reilly was proud of the fact.

He smoked a small black cheroot. A moon appeared briefly, then the night was black again. O'Reilly wondered about going amidships to look in on the Courier, but it was an unwritten rule that the man was to be left alone, except when he needed cups of the weak Darjeeling he habitually drank.

The bloody man! O'Reilly thought. He had a detrimental influence on the small crew of the
Connie
. He carried doom around with him the way some people always have a supply of cigarettes. Or maybe it was just the way the Courier put people in mind of their own mortality. Somehow you just knew that a man who looked exactly like the Courier was the same fellow who'd greasepaint your face when you were dead and comb down your hair before you were suitable for boxed presentation at your wake.

O'Reilly strolled on the deck. The March night was very cold. He sucked icy sea air into his lungs. He looked at the black Atlantic. Friend, enemy. Wife, mistress. Life, death. Its dark, amorphous nature had a symmetry that only a man like Liam O'Reilly could understand. He tossed his dead cheroot overboard. There were footsteps along the deck.

O'Reilly recognised the young seaman Houlihan. This was Houlihan's second crossing on the
Connie
. Liam O'Reilly preferred age and experience, but there were times when you had to make do with what you got.

‘The man just asked for some tea,' Houlihan said.

O'Reilly placed the young seaman's accent as that of a Galway man. ‘Make it weak. It's the only way he'll have it. The closer it looks like piss, the better he likes it.'

‘Aye, Captain.'

Houlihan vanished quietly along the deck. O'Reilly picked flakes of tobacco from his teeth and listened to the steady throb of the engines. He might have been listening to his own heartbeat, so well did he know the noises of his vessel. He walked a few paces, the engines seeming to throb inside his head, and then he understood there was something not quite right, something amiss in the great darkness around him.

The second engineer was a small, sharp-faced man called Waddell. He wore an oil-stained pair of very old coveralls and a woollen hat pulled down over his ears. Although it was hot in the engine room, Waddell didn't feel it. He checked his watch. It was two minutes before nine o'clock, United States Eastern Standard Time.

At nine o'clock exactly, Waddell was going to cut the
Connie
's engines.

He ran one dirty hand across his oily face. He listened to the chug of the engines. He made a pretence of checking various valves and pressure gauges. Brannigan, the chief engineer, was drinking coffee out of a tin mug and flicking through the pages of an old copy of
The Irish Times
. From the pocket of his coveralls Waddell took a large wrench, which he weighed in the palm of one hand.

Brannigan, his back turned to the other man, slurped his coffee and remarked on something he was reading in his newspaper. Waddell wasn't listening to him. He was thinking about piracy, which was a word he didn't much care for. He had spent much of his life in the engine rooms of ships and, like a physician who must kill his own patient, so Waddell disliked the task of shutting down the very system he was paid to keep running. He looked at the back of the chief engineer's head, thinking that he'd always got along well with Brannigan. It was a terrible pity.

Waddell stared at his wrench.

He lowered his head, ducked under an overhanging pipe, and hit Ollie Brannigan once right behind the ear. The chief engineer moaned but didn't go down. Instead, he twisted his face round in shock to look at Waddell.

Waddell grunted and struck Brannigan again, this time hammering the wrench down on the man's nose. Brannigan's face suddenly spurted blood. He dropped his tin mug and the newspaper and went down on his knees, groaning, covering his face with his hands.

Jesus God!
Waddell had to hit him a
third
time.

He heard metal crush Brannigan's skull, then the chief engineer was silent, stretched back across the oily floor. Waddell, sweating now, dropped the wrench.

It was one minute past nine o'clock.

To pass time during a crossing, the man known as the Courier often sang quietly to himself. He had a decent baritone voice, though this wasn't a fact known to many people since the Courier maintained a façade of strict anonymity. He came from a long line of men who could carry a decent tune. Hadn't his grandfather, Daniel Riordan, toured the music halls at the turn of the century, thrilling all Ireland with his voice? The Courier, who knew he'd never be in the same class as the Great Riordan, was proud of his voice all the same.

Just as there was a knock on the door of his cabin, the Courier was halfway through one of his personal favourites,
She Moved Through The Fair
.

‘Then she went her way homeward with one star awake

‘As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.'

The door opened. ‘Your tea, sir,' the young seaman said.

‘I don't recall asking for tea,' the Courier answered. He wondered if the young man had heard him singing. The possibility embarrassed him a little. He watched the seaman place a tray on the bunk-side table.

‘Captain's orders, sir. Will there be anything else?'

The Courier didn't reply. With a nod of his head he indicated that he wanted to be left alone. He noticed how the seaman – Houlihan, wasn't it? – let his eyes drift across the three brief-cases just before he went out of the cabin. The chains tethered to the Courier's wrist jingled as he reached for the tea mug. Those bloody brief-cases made him nervous. He was never happier than when he was rid of them. He didn't feel good until Finn took the brief-cases from him in Ireland.

The Courier sipped his tea. He thought it was a little strange that O'Reilly had seen fit to send the tea in, because O'Reilly wasn't exactly Captain Congeniality.

It tasted odd. Was there too much sugar in it?

He took a second sip and he felt blood rush to his head and his eyeballs filled with moisture and his heart was squeezed in a painfully tight vice and his balance went all wrong. He felt he was going to explode. He couldn't breathe and there was something hard and very hot rising in his throat. He tried to stand up but his legs were a thousand miles away from him. He slithered from the edge of the bunk to the floor, hearing the tea tray clatter past him.