Jig (55 page)

There was a certain hypnotic effect in the cadences of McInnes's voice. It lulled and it soothed even as it provoked. Pagan could see how thousands of people in Ulster were swayed by the man. You had to give it to Ivor. He put on a damn good show. Even the hand movements, which were expressive and sinewy, must have impressed people in a society not known for great conversational use of the hands. There was something Mediterranean about it all, something exotic. And in drab, burned-out Belfast it must have had enormous appeal.

Now Pagan wanted to bring this conversation, which Ivor had taken up to roof level, back to the ground floor. ‘We were talking about Fitzjohn.'

‘I was talking about my enemies,' McInnes said.

Pagan sighed. ‘You claim you don't know Fitzjohn. But my London office has different information. We have a photograph of yourself and Fitzjohn together taken outside your church. It's quite a chummy little composition.'

A photograph?
McInnes couldn't recall ever having a picture taken with Fitz, whom he hadn't seen since the man had emigrated. ‘You're bluffing me,' he said.

‘Hardly, Ivor.'

McInnes thought of Houlihan. Bloody Seamus, who had to go and kill a man and then turn around and call the FBI! It was the one flaw in the whole mosaic, the one tile that didn't quite fit right, and it could so easily have been avoided. Damn. Damn Houlihan. Everything should have been perfect. Now there was one spidery crack. And it wouldn't be sealed because bloody Pagan wasn't going to leave it alone.

‘Do you have the photograph, Frank?'

‘Not in my possession. But I can get it.'

‘I wouldn't mind seeing it. I'm sure there's some mistake.'

‘I don't really think so, Ivor. This picture shows you and Fitzjohn standing side by side. You have an arm round Fitz's shoulder and he's looking happy as the day is long.'

McInnes blinked. ‘I don't deny I may have
met
the man, but I don't remember the encounter. As for the photograph, I'd have to see it before I could comment. If there is such a picture, which I doubt.'

He stood up, but Frank Pagan caught him by the wrist and tugged. Pagan's grip was very strong.

‘Don't run away, Ivor. Stay and chat.'

‘I've got work to do, Frank.'

‘What kind of work?'

‘Research.' McInnes saw that Pagan's eyes, which were hard and distant, resembled the small grey moons of some icy planet. It was a look he didn't like.

‘Why was Fitzjohn in Albany?' Pagan asked. His tone of voice was chilly now, and harsh. It was the voice of an interrogator demanding answers in some basement room.

‘How the hell would I know?'

‘Who killed him?'

McInnes made a flustered movement with his hands. ‘Frank, for God's sake. You keep harping.'

‘Did you know the IRA was in America?'

‘How could I know something like that?'

‘
Did you know they planned to bomb the church?
'

McInnes shook his head. ‘You're losing control, Frank.'

Pagan stood up. He released McInnes now. Ivor took a couple of steps away.

‘You're scared of something, Ivor. What is it?'

McInnes smiled thinly. His wrist hurt from Pagan's tight grip. ‘Irrational people upset me, Frank.'

Irrational people. Pagan thought that was pretty good, coming from McInnes.

‘It's the photograph, isn't it?' Pagan asked. ‘That's what's worrying you now. You can't remember where or when it was taken, and you're desperately trying to think up some lie to cover it.'

McInnes shook his head. ‘I don't even believe in this photograph, Frank. So how could it worry me?'

Pagan came very close to McInnes now. There was hardly an inch separating the two men. ‘You and Fitzjohn,' Pagan said. ‘You must have been close, Ivor. Two good pals.'

McInnes stepped back. He rapped his rolled-up newspaper against his leg. Bloody man, he thought. Hard man with his tough talk. But Pagan knew absolutely nothing. He was all bluster, all empty performance. A man on a fishing expedition, that was Frank Pagan. There was no photograph. There couldn't have been.

‘Why don't you do something important, Frank? You said Jig was here in America, didn't you? Why don't you go out and
catch
him?'

Frank Pagan smiled, but barely. The expression was little more than a slit on his face. ‘Nice comeback, Ivor. Very nice,' he said in a grim way. ‘But remember this. Whatever it is you're doing here, I'll find out. I'm good at finding things out. In other words, Ivor, keep looking over your shoulder.'

‘I'm used to that, Frank.'

‘You may be used to it, Ivor. But you better be good at it.'

McInnes turned away. He moved in the direction of his hotel, walking without glancing back, even though he knew Pagan was still watching him. He wasn't going to let Pagan shake him. Damn the man! But today of all days he wasn't going to be upset by Pagan. He entered his hotel, passed the telephone banks, tempted to make one call,
aching
to make one call, longing to hear the voice of reassurance that would tell him his plan was fine, that it wasn't going to go wrong, that Frank Pagan couldn't stop it.

He kept moving.

When he entered his room, he locked the door. He opened his briefcase and searched the lining for the streetmap of New Rockford. He spread the map on the bed and stared at the thick black pen-marks, meticulously drawn arrows that indicated the route the bus always travelled. He concentrated on the arrows but what he kept hearing was Frank Pagan's bloody voice saying
I'm good at finding things out
.

Not this time, McInnes thought. Not now.

Pagan exited from Central Park on Fifth Avenue at Sixtieth Street and walked to the place where he'd parked his rental car, a very mundane Cutlass. He'd abandoned the Cadillac because it was too conspicuous. The Olds, on the other hand, was the colour of excrement and melted into the background, which was the kind of camouflage he wanted. Last night, when he'd dumped the whole FBI in the shape of Tyson Bruno, he'd walked all the way to the Village, where he'd checked into a rundown hotel and passed a bad night on a mattress that felt like the surface of Mars. He had half-expected Zuboric to break down the door.

He drove up Sixth Avenue, clogged with bad-tempered Monday morning drivers. There was a great deal of rage on the streets of New York City. At a stoplight, he pressed the scan button on the digital radio and found a rock station with which he felt comfortable. He listened to the Mersey Beats singing
Sorrow
, and although he wasn't a big fan of the old Mersey sound, the music was restful. More restful, certainly, than the little scene with Ivor, which had proved only that the Reverend was a man with a secret he was grimly determined to keep even when confronted by a potentially damaging photograph.

A secret, Pagan thought.

Was it
possible
Ivor knew of an IRA presence in the U.S.A.?

Was it possible that he had come to America
knowing
the IRA was about to launch a mysterious offensive?

And was it Ivor's intention to direct covert operations against the IRA, using America as a battlefield? Had Fitzjohn been one of Ivor's foot soldiers who came to grief in a skirmish with the IRA?

Pagan shook his head. He wasn't sure where this line of speculation was going. If it was true, it would mean that both the FUV and the IRA had forces present inside America. But why would the IRA
suddenly
export its violence? Why bring it to America in the first place? That made no sense. The only foreign soil on which the IRA had ever operated was England. And there was nothing to be gained from acts of terrorism inside America because they would certainly alienate the Irish–Americans who provided both sympathy and money. The main attraction of the Cause, after all, was that it conducted its affairs at a distance of some three thousand miles and was therefore not something to sully your own backyard. The Irish–Americans appreciated that, and the IRA understood it, and there was agreement on that basis. So why the hell spoil a decent understanding by blowing up a church, even a Protestant one?

It was all wrong. It was all out of balance.

Pagan braked at another stoplight. Ivor wasn't a stupid man. He had a cunning capable of creating byzantine situations. Jig, for instance. McInnes had surely known all along Jig was in the country, but he'd consistently denied it. Just as he denied any association with the Free Ulster Volunteers. These links and connections, these skinny threads, made painful knots inside Pagan's brain. And he had the feeling that it was all utterly simple, something so damned obvious it was staring him in the face only he couldn't see it.

He squeezed the Olds between a taxicab and a garbage truck, a manoeuvre that caused several cars behind him to brake quickly. He made a right turn, sliding away from the chaos he left in his wake. He wondered what Artie Zuboric was doing right now. But he didn't wonder for very long.

New Rockford, Connecticut

Patrick Cairney lay flat on his stomach. The long blades of grass around him were coated with a thin film of ice. Overhead, the branches of bare trees were illuminated by a weak sun, a frosted disc with no colour. Cairney edged forward through the grass until he could go no further because the hill became sheer suddenly, a grassy cliff, a long drop to the road below. He blinked into the sun.

He'd seen such a sun before and he remembered it, remembered participating in a raid with Libyans inside the border of Chad. Twenty men, himself included, had attacked a convoy of trucks about two hundred miles from Sebra, the last Libyan command post before Chad territory. It was a dawn attack, filled with surprise. The Chad drivers, their trucks loaded with old machine-guns, had been travelling straight into the sun and they hadn't seen the small force descend on them, weapons blazing. It was over in a matter of minutes, and what Cairney recalled best was the sense of anti-climax after the long night of anticipation.

He peered across the road below at the big house, which was located at the end of a narrow driveway. It was a sprawling house, additions made here and there with no particular theme in mind. He brought his binoculars up to his eyes and swept the grounds. A car sat in the driveway. Earlier, a woman had escorted two children into a station wagon and, followed by a pale-blue sedan, had driven down the driveway and vanished along the road. Neither the wagon nor the sedan had returned.

Before coming to New Rockford, Cairney had gone to a newspaper office in Stamford, Connecticut, which had an entire section in its morgue dedicated to the adventures of the Dawson family. America, it appeared, couldn't get enough of the Dawsons. Tons of newsprint were devoted to Tommy and Kevin and Martha and the daughters. The daughters especially. In the absence of presidential offspring, Kitty and Louise Dawson were the next best thing. They went to a local school. They were ordinary kids, the kids next door. Unspoiled, nicely flawed. Little princesses, the Republic's answer to the royalty it had cast off two hundred years ago and still pined for.

Cairney assumed that the big dark car was a Secret Service vehicle. The grounds, so far as he could see, offered very little opportunity for any kind of cover. Winter had stripped the trees with the result that anybody travelling up the driveway could be seen clearly from the windows of the house. He realised that if he was to get to Kevin Dawson without being seen he'd have to wait until nightfall. His coat was damp from the grass and his feet were cold. His breath hung on the chill air. This wasn't going to be a snap. This wasn't going to be anything simple, like slipping inside Nicholas Linney's home or mingling with the half-drunk crowds at Jock Mulhaney's court.

He brought the binoculars back up to his eyes. He saw a tall, dark-haired man get out of the big car and light a cigarette. The man crossed the lawn slowly in front of the house, surveyed the grounds, stubbed his cigarette underfoot, then returned to the car. Cairney lowered the glasses. Nightfall, which was many hours away, many dead hours away, was going to be his only chance. He crawled backwards from the edge of the hill and when the house was no longer in view he stood up, shivering. He was tense, and his sense of solitude strong.

Hours to kill. He was thirsty and hungry now. He walked back down the slope to the place where, behind a stand of trees at the end of a faded path, he had parked his car. He'd seen a diner some miles back near the freeway. He'd go there, eat and drink quickly, then come back here to his post on the hill. He drove through the sombre Connecticut landscape, which reminded him more than a little of certain parts of Ireland in winter.

The diner was an aluminium tube with an air of the Depression about it. Cairney parked the Dodge and went inside, where he sat up on a stool and ordered coffee and a sandwich. He picked at the sandwich, no longer as hungry as he thought he was. Then he looked round the diner. A married couple with a child sat near the window. Two linemen for the phone company occupied a back booth. It was all very ordinary. For a moment he wondered about conventional lives, little acts of love and hatred, commitments and belongings and yearnings. He wondered about the bricks of everyday life and how people managed to balance them. Mortgages and library books and envelopes with cellophane windows in them and alarm clocks ringing on chilly mornings. He wouldn't have been very good at such a life. He was alone the way Finn had always been alone, married to an abstraction called the Cause. And the only freedom from the marriage lay quite simply in the last divorce of all, which was death.

The Cause, he thought. What would become of ibe waving if yot if he didn't get the money back? The blood would cease in the veins of the Cause, and the heart would stop pumping, and the brain would atrophy and die. And what would he have given his life to if the Cause withered on his account –
because he couldn't get the money back?
There was a small, panicked voice in his head now.