Jig (46 page)

‘The second male victim was Gustav Rasch,' Korn said. ‘An East Berlin party hack. He came to the U.S. periodically. General gopher. Sometimes he wanted to buy a piece of U.S. technology. Sometimes he wanted to tout a touring ballet company.'

Leonard M. Korn placed the sheets flat on the briefcase that lay on his lap. The expression on the Presidential face struck him as a little queasy, sea-sick.

‘Linney was involved in raising funds to be sent to Ireland,' Korn continued. ‘This much we've learned. As for Rasch, perhaps he was an investor, perhaps not. It doesn't matter very much at this stage, especially to Gustav Rasch. The two dead girls were probably Linney's personal harlots. He imported them from Cambodia as housemaids. They simply got in Jig's way.'

Harlots, Dawson thought. Quaint puritanical word. He remembered Nick Linney's fondness for oriental girls. He coughed quietly into his hand then asked, ‘Can we assume Jig retrieved the stolen money and has returned to Ireland?' It was the kind of question a man asked with his fingers crossed.

Leonard M. Korn shook his head, as if the question were too naive to contemplate. ‘We can't assume anything, Mr. President. If Linney didn't have the money, Jig would go looking elsewhere for it. It's that simple. Until we have evidence to the contrary we have to work on the understanding that he's still in the country, still actively searching. And the killing isn't going to stop. One man in Albany isn't very significant. But four people in Bridgehampton – well, that's a different kettle of fish.'

Dawson walked to the window. He'd never seen fish in a kettle in his whole life. Outside, under the rainy trees, Secret Servicemen stood around like drenched though vigilant birds. He thought of the two men he had supplied to brother Kevin. He wondered if, in the circumstances, two was enough.

‘Do you have any suggestions?' Dawson turned to look at Korn.

Leonard M. Korn stood up. In his platform shoes, which were made specially for him by a discreet shoemaker on Atlantic Avenue in Virginia Beach, he stood five foot nine inches tall. It wasn't imposing but the shaved head added a quality of menace to his appearance.

Korn took a deep breath. ‘Thus far, my agency has had only minimal involvement. As per your own instructions, sir. And thus far the show has been run, so to speak, by the Englishman Pagan. With marked lack of success.' He lowered his voice on this last sentence, a tone he hoped would not presume to question the President's judgment. ‘I'd advise a fullscale manhunt,' he went on. ‘I could activate every available agent in and around New York. That way, I firmly believe we could see conclusive results, which is something we haven't been getting from Frank Pagan.'

Thomas Dawson returned to the sofa and sat down. He understood Korn's need to blame this character Pagan, but the idea of a fullscale manhunt was totally unacceptable. Given the Bureau's heavy-handedness, there would inevitably be publicity. And where you had publicity you also had public reaction, which was a scandalously fickle barometer.

He was certain of only one thing. He was not about to alienate his precious, dependable Irish–American Catholic vote. So slender was the margin between further residency in the White House and the unseemly role of useless ex-President, fitted out in pathetic plaid knickerbockers and paraded on the golf circuit, that Dawson needed all the support he could muster. Publicity would be fine for Korn and his Bureau, especially if Jig were landed in the FBI net. But it could well be another matter for Thomas Dawson. Things were getting out of hand, admittedly, but he was going to turn down Korn's gung-ho suggestion.

‘I'll think about it,' he finally said.

An objection formed on Korn's lips, but he said nothing. He understood the meeting was over. He was waiting only for the President to dismiss him.

‘In the meantime,' Dawson said, ‘we continue to play it all very quietly.
Sotto voce
.'

Korn nodded. Although he wondered how long it could continue to be played
sotto voce
, he wasn't going to voice this aloud. Presidents, like sticks of dynamite, had to be handled with care. They needed flattery, reassurance, agreement.

‘Thanks for coming, Len,' Dawson said. ‘Remember. Quietly. Very quietly. And keep me informed.'

When Korn had gone, Thomas Dawson lay down on the sofa and stared at the rain sweeping the window. He thought again of Kevin. If Jig had found his way to Linney, how long before he reached Kevin?

He pondered the prospect of calling Kevin. He had given his brother two seasoned Secret Servicemen – what else could he possibly do? If he stepped up the Secret Service detachment at his brother's house, for example, sooner or later somebody was going to notice. There was always somebody, deep in a Washington cellar, who kept tabs on such things. There were always gossip columnists as well, who were drawn like doomed little moths to the Dawson flame and who were never very far from the centre of Kevin's life. Dawson-Watchers who reported each and every Dawson social engagement with a shrill passion and who knew, courtesy of their sensitive antennae and inside informers, the things that went on around Kevin's household. And if these snoops observed a goddam battalion of Secret Servicemen lingering in New Rockford, they'd be pecking away at their portable Olivettis like a crowd of clucking birds.

The trouble with being President of the United States, he thought, was the sheer weight of the secrets you felt you had to keep. Jig's presence in the country, the murder of Nicholas Linney, Kevin's fund-raising activities. It was all just a little too much.

There was one simple solution to the immediate problem of Kevin's safety, and when it occurred to him he picked up the telephone and dialled his brother's number in Connecticut. It was answered by the woman who ran the Dawson household in New Rockford, an old family retainer named Agatha Bates. Agatha, ageless and humourless, was one of those stiffbacked examples of New England spinster who were bred less frequently these days. She had been connected with the Dawson family one way or another for most of her life.

‘Kevin's gone,' she said. She wasn't impressed by young Tommy being President. He'd always been the least of the Dawsons in her mind. Too ambitious. Too sneaky. Character flaws.

‘Gone?'

‘Took the family,' she said.

‘Where?'

‘Up to the cabin.'

The cabin was a primitive wooden shack located thirty miles from Lake Candlewood. It was a place without electricity. No telephone. No amenities. It was where Kevin took his wife and kids when he wanted privacy, when he felt the need to retreat. Kevin had this notion, which Thomas Dawson found quaint and yet politically useful at times, about family unity, togetherness. He was always dragging Martha and the girls out into the wilderness. Backpacking, camping, fishing, communing with nature.

‘Did he say when he was coming back, Agatha?'

‘Sunday night,' she answered.

‘What time?'

‘Didn't say. And I didn't ask. Just threw some stuff into the station wagon and left. The two men from Washington went up there with him.'

‘Fine,' Dawson said. ‘I'll call him Sunday night.'

He put the receiver down. At least Kevin would be safe up at Lake Candlewood with the Secret Servicemen protecting him. At least he'd be safe until he returned to New Rockford, which was when Thomas Dawson was going to suggest that Hawaii or the Virgin Islands would be a pleasant change of pace this time of year.

19

New York City

Frank Pagan did not get the chance to think about the information he'd taken from Nicholas Linney's computer until nine o'clock in the evening. There had been delays in Bridgehampton while Zuboric, looking extremely secretive, hung around waiting for the telephone to ring with instructions from God in Washington. There had also been a visit from two men who drove a rather anonymous van and who carted the corpses away in plastic bags. When the phone finally rang at approximately seven-thirty, hours after they'd first arrived in Bridgehampton, Zuboric spoke into it briefly then hung up. It was apparent that no new instructions were forthcoming from Washington, at least for the time being.

They drove back into the city in the green Cadillac, Zuboric subdued and thoughtful. He escorted Pagan inside the Parker Meridien, his manner that of a male nurse attending a certifiable lunatic.

‘Stay home, Frank. I'll be in touch.'

Pagan stepped inside an elevator and was glad when the doors slid shut. He locked himself inside his room and lay for a while on the bed. He took the piece of paper out of his coat and stared at it, smiling at the idea of slipping something past the vigilant Arthur. As his eyes scanned his scrawled handwriting, he couldn't help thinking of the dead girls again. The direction of his thoughts irked him. You could see everything through a prism of grief if you wanted to, you could dwell on morbid associations, but it was a hell of a way to live a life.

He called room service and had them send up a bottle of Vat 69, a scotch sometimes referred to as the Pope's phone number. He half-hoped that Mandi with an ‘i' would appear in the doorway, but the scotch was finally delivered by a young Greek whose English was riddled with fault-lines.

Pagan poured himself a generous glass, dropped in some ice. Harry Cairney. Kevin Dawson. Jock Mulhaney. All good Irish lads and perfect candidates for raising and dispersing IRA funds. Who else could they be but Nicholas Linney's comrades? Harry Cairney, the retired Senator from New York, had been part of that Irish Mafia in Washington which included Congressman Tip O'Neill and Senator Moynihan. He had served on various committees that had pumped funds into the Republic of Ireland. It seemed perfectly natural that the retired Senator, under the surface of his public persona, would be involved in something a little darker than political gestures of good-will. And Kevin Dawson, the President's baby brother, had made several trips to Ireland to pay homage to the Dawson ancestry. The visits were always surrounded by tight security and excessive publicity. The Irish loved Kevin and his family and adored Kevin's loyalty to the country of his heritage. He was shown such adulation in Ireland that it must have gone straight to his brain and perhaps compensated somewhat for any sense of inferiority he might have felt about his brother's prominence. Sigmund Pagan.

Pagan closed his eyes. The next step was the question of what to do with his knowledge. He wasn't going to enlist the help of Zuboric, he was sure of that. Their reluctant marriage of convenience was heading down the slipway to divorce. Artie's problem was obvious – he accepted as gospel the first solution he thought of, and nothing could make a dent. For example, his unshakable conviction that Jig was responsible for the slaughter in Bridgehampton – there was just no way in the world to make Artie consider alternatives. He didn't have the imagination for them. Besides, it was easier to lay the blame on Jig than go to the trouble of exploring other possibilities. There was something of lazy discontent in Artie's makeup, the death of natural curiosity, a dangerous thing for a man licensed to carry a gun and use it.

Pagan thought of the zigzagging geographical patterns involved here. New Rockford. Brooklyn. Rhinebeck. Why couldn't it have been convenient – Cairney and Dawson and Mulhaney all under one roof right here next door to The Russian Tea Room? Sure. But what then? Would he have gone to them and sat them all down nicely and talked to them of Jig?
If you happen to run into Jig, be a sport and let me know?
They would deny any association with the act of collecting funds for Ireland. They were secretive men accustomed to operating furtively, and each was a public figure. They weren't going to want their Irish activities made common knowledge. If you even broached the subject with them, they were bound to look as if they'd never heard of Ireland, let alone the Irish Republican Army.

What the fuck had really happened in that Bridgehampton house anyway?
He wondered now if Jig had discovered the same names from the same source, Linney's wonderful computer. If he had, there was no way of knowing which of the three men he would visit next. Besides, there was also no way of knowing if Nicholas Linney had been able to point Jig in the direction of the missing money.
It's buried under a tree in my back yard, Jig. It's banked in Zurich and here's the account number
. You had to work on the assumption that Jig was out there still hunting and that sooner or later he would pay a visit to the names on Linney's list. But when? To guess Jig's movements was close to impossible, even for Frank Pagan who had made a study of his prey like a meteorologist examining shifts in the wind. Finally, there was just no certainty.

He stood up, moved absently around the room. Problems had a habit of multiplying. Now he thought of the man called Fitzjohn garrotted in Albany. And Ivor the Terrible sitting cosily over in the Essex House. You could play with these threads all the goddam day. You could ruin your health. The link he especially didn't like was the one that seemingly connected Fitzjohn with Ivor. That whole FUV thing troubled him. Ivor McInnes's presence bugged him. Why the
hell
was he here at the same time as Jig? And why had the FUV informed Pagan that Jig was in the U.S. anyway? He kept returning to this particular conundrum, although now it had become more complicated with the murder of Fitzjohn. He was irritable and jumpy and filled with the urge to cut through all the mystifying shit at one stroke, as if all the various questions in his mind were in reality one huge question, something that could be resolved with one equally huge answer.
Give me the simple life
.

What was Fitzjohn doing in Albany? Why had he been murdered? What came back to Pagan again and again was the notion that Ivor McInnes was the key to these questions. That if you could get inside Ivor's head the mysteries would begin to dissolve. The idea of the descent into Ivor's mind wasn't an exactly pleasant prospect, but then nothing about this whole business was what you might call delightful. Pagan picked up the telephone, called Foxworth's home number in Fulham, rousing the young man from inebriated sleep. Foxworth loved to dig into the data-banks, which he did with all the enthusiasm of a fanatical mechanic getting inside the engine of a car.