Jig (66 page)

He hung up, smiling. The girl had gone now. The lobby was empty. McInnes felt a deep glow of anticipation. He had almost reached the end of it all now. Only the final pieces remained to be put in place.

In the rear seat of the helicopter Thomas Dawson sat huddled inside his overcoat. Below, there was one of those staggering views of Manhattan, all lights, like a huge cathedral of electricity. He closed his eyes and sat with his head tipped back. He wasn't looking forward to an encounter with his brother's anguish. He patted his gloved hands against his knees and sighed and gazed out of the window again as the chopper banked abruptly, swinging away from the canyons of the city.

There had been a great deal of sorrow in the Dawson family history. His older brother Joseph, to take one example, had shot himself through the head with a revolver at the age of twenty-three because he'd been depressed over some affair of the heart that hadn't worked out. And his youngest sister, Sarah, had died in a sanatorium from an overdose of heroin. But there had never been anything quite like this, the deaths of two small children in the most violent way imaginable. Sarah and Joseph had been neurotic, highly strung, the kind of people who perceived every slight in the most magnified fashion and perhaps their self-inflicted deaths were not so terribly surprising.

But the two girls –

Dear Christ, they'd been nothing but innocent children! What had they
ever
done to deserve such deaths? Dawson, not unnaturally, searched his mind for somebody he might blame for this tragedy. It was easy to say that he might have done more personally, could have been more persistent in forcing Kevin to take his family out of the country. He might also have acted more decisively in dealing with the presence of Jig. By the same token, the FBI could have been more vigilant, worked a little harder at bringing Jig to justice. When you started down the blame trail, it was hard to stop. Kevin himself – for God's sake, he should have seen the danger in his involvement with the Irish. Now, if he understood that at all, it was just too damned late. Goddammit. You could lay blame all over the place with thick brushstrokes, but nothing would ever restore those two small girls to life.

Thomas Dawson took out a cigarette and lit it. He exhaled the smoke slowly in the direction of his fellow passenger, Leonard M. Korn, who'd come aboard in Manhattan.

‘We could have done more,' Dawson said. He couldn't keep a certain quiver out of his voice. ‘God, we should have done more.'

Korn said nothing. He nodded his shaven head. He wasn't a man who felt the kind of pity most human beings do, but in the presence of Thomas Dawson's obvious grief, he was touched a little. It wasn't his main concern at this moment, however. He was also thinking of ways in which he might perform some damage control. Admittedly, the Secret Service had been directly responsible for the two children, but there
had
been an FBI presence in the vicinity, and that was bad. He'd have the scalps of the two agents, of course. He'd nail them to a wall in public. But this kind of blood-letting would only go so far to protect the Bureau from charges of negligence. There was really only one thing that might turn the situation around somewhat.

And that was the death of Jig.

Korn looked at The President. ‘We haven't prepared for terrorism from this quarter,' he said. ‘From the Libyans, of course. From some of the Arab countries, certainly. We routinely keep such people under scrutiny. But the Irish …' And he flapped one of his small white hands.

Thomas Dawson wasn't interested in what Korn had to say. He was remembering the previous summer when he'd taken his nieces out on the Presidential yacht and they'd cruised Chesapeake Bay. He was remembering a quality in those girls which had struck him as rather unDawson-like. They were without guile, that's what it was. You couldn't imagine them conspiring about anything. This had to be on account of Martha's influence. Dawson gulped down more smoke, which was harsh at the back of his throat. He wondered how Martha was doing. She was a steadfast little woman, one with reserves of strength, but how could anybody pull out of a situation like this?

The Dawsons would survive. They always did. They had their own shock-absorbers for family tragedies. They retrenched, regrouped, and came out stronger in the end. But there was a very bad time ahead. He stared from the window. The lights of Manhattan had gone and there were stretches of black landscape below.

‘We could have done more,' he said again. He wasn't really speaking to Leonard Korn, but rather to himself. As far as he was concerned, Korn's career was coming dangerously close to an end.

Korn could see, even in the darkened cabin, that Thomas Dawson had all the mannerisms of a shellshocked man. The tremor in the fingers, the toneless voice, the way his eyes were quite without life.

‘I give you my solemn vow, Mr. President,' Korn said, ‘that we'll settle this Irish business –'

Thomas Dawson interrupted. ‘The British have been saying the same thing for centuries, Korn. And what have they actually achieved?' Dawson turned so that the instrument lights around the pilot's seat threw eerie little colours, stark reds and chill greens, against his face. ‘The answer is nothing. In several centuries, the British have accomplished absolutely nothing.'

Korn chewed on a fingernail. It was hard to talk to a man in Thomas Dawson's present distraught condition.

The President put out his cigarette and continued to speak in the same unemotional voice. ‘Tomorrow, the next day, I'll meet with the British and Irish ambassadors. I won't push the matter too strongly – at least not yet – but I'm coming very close to recommending that they consider some form of American assistance in combating the IRA.'

‘An American presence?' Korn asked. ‘In Ireland?'

Thomas Dawson nodded. ‘A handful of advisors, in the beginning. People with some expertise in counterterrorist tactics. Twenty, say. Twenty-five. Whatever the situation calls for. Later, of course, we could add to that number if need be.'

Korn asked, ‘Will the Irish and the British accept this?'

Dawson shrugged. ‘Who knows? It's a friendly suggestion. One ally to a couple of others. They haven't exactly handled it well on their own, have they? Besides, I'm not talking about sending in armed forces. Advisors only. There's a big difference.'

Korn sat back in his seat. He wasn't interested in the President's plans for Ireland.

Thomas Dawson said nothing more on the subject. He was conscious of the helicopter losing height. He looked out of the window and saw, like a submarine rising on an empty dark sea, the pale lights of an isolated dwelling. And then he was dropping towards it, down and down to his brother's house of sorrow.

25

Hastings, New York

The River View Motel was a brown brick building located five miles from State Highway 87. It was inappropriately named. Unless you had an excellent telescope and a forty-foot high platform on which to stand, you'd never get a glimpse of any river. The view, such as it was, was obstructed by the roof-tops of surrounding houses and by trees. Seamus Houlihan stood on the balcony outside his room and looked out across a concrete forecourt at two small neon lights that said OFFICE and VACANCY. He saw the shadow of the man who sat behind the window down there. Then, changing his angle of vision, he saw the yellow truck. It was the only vehicle in the whole bloody place. Scratched and dented and splattered with mud, it resembled some old wagon of war.

Houlihan leaned against the rail. So far as he could tell this place had no other residents besides himself and Rorke and McGrath. He yawned, turned around, stepped inside his room. He locked the door, sat down in his armchair, picked up his M-16 from the floor and wondered why bloody McInnes had been so insistent when he'd called a while back. The man had turned into a nag. He was like an old woman, Houlihan thought. Worrying over this, over that, fretting and whining. He'd be taking up crochet next. Dump the weapons indeed!

Houlihan heard Rorke and McGrath move along the balcony. They knocked quietly on his door. He got up, slid the chain, let them come inside. Rorke was carrying a sixpack of Genesee Cream Ale, and McGrath had a pint of Johnny Walker Red Label.

Houlihan produced a deck of cards from his duffel bag and shuffled them. ‘Want to play a few hands?' he asked.

‘Aye, why not,' McGrath said. He and Rorke sat down at the small table by the window. Houlihan popped one of the beers and proposed a game of three card brag, nothing wild.

They played a hand for American pennies and Houlihan won it with a queen high. Rorke had a ten, and McGrath the worst hand possible in brag, a five high. Houlihan smiled and sipped his beer, which tasted like soapsuds in his mouth.

Rorke dealt a second hand, which Houlihan also won, this time with a pair of eights.

‘Shitty cards,' McGrath said, turning over a four, a six and a nine.

McGrath dealt another hand. Houlihan received three threes, called a prile, the highest hand in the game. He had quite a collection of pennies by this time, a small coppery heap in front of him.

‘You're a lucky sod,' McGrath said.

Houlihan scooped the pennies towards himself. He liked the simple pleasure of winning.

Rorke yawned. McGrath shuffled his feet. Neither of them ever enjoyed playing cards with Houlihan for long. Seamus had a way of always winning. When he started to lose he'd begin to cheat, palming cards in the most obvious fashion. Nobody ever complained when he cheated.

From the forecourt below the window there was the sound of a car. Houlihan stepped to the drapes, parted them deftly, saw a small red car go past the truck and then it disappeared around the other side of the building. After that there was silence again. Houlihan dropped the curtains back in place.

‘Anything wrong?' Rorke asked.

‘Just a car,' Houlihan replied.

McGrath ran a tattooed hand through his short brown hair. ‘I don't mind saying, I'll be glad when we're out of this place. It gives me the willies being the only people in this whole dump.'

Even though the car had gone, force of habit kept Houlihan listening. He experienced a small shrill sensation of unease, and he had been trusting such instincts for a long time now. He reached down and picked up his automatic weapon, a movement that was almost involuntary.

He looked at the other two men. ‘Where are your guns?' he asked.

‘In our room,' Rorke replied.

‘Get them and come back here.'

‘Get them?' Rorke asked.

‘Do as I tell you.'

Both men turned towards the door.

‘One of you,' Houlihan said. ‘It doesn't take two men to pick up the weapons.'

McGrath went outside, closing the door behind him. Houlihan, stepping back to the drapes, saw him move along the balcony. Outside, the forecourt was still, lit only by a couple of pale lamps and the neon signs burning above the office.

‘What's wrong?' Rorke wanted to know.

Houlihan didn't answer. He wasn't sure anyhow. There were times when he had feelings he just couldn't explain. Some people called it a sixth sense, but to Seamus Houlihan it was nothing more than a survivor's caution. One time, in Armagh Jail, he'd known in advance that some Catholics were lying in wait for him in the lavatories. Nobody had actually told him this. He hadn't seen anything unusual either. It had simply
occurred
to him. There had been a slight pricking sense of danger, nothing he could truly identify, but he'd heeded the sensation with enough attention that when he stepped into the lavatories he was armed with a lead-pipe wrapped in a rag. The Catholics had been there all right, but when they saw what he was carrying they dispersed quickly. Consequently, Seamus had a healthy respect for his own antennae. With his fingers holding the drapes about a half-inch apart he scanned the forecourt.

‘What's wrong?' Rorke asked again.

‘Probably nothing,' Houlihan answered. ‘But I'm not in the business of taking chances.'

‘How do you know this isn't an elaborate trap?' Pagan asked. ‘How do you know that this isn't something McInnes and I cooked up between us? We play out a dramatic scene. I get to punch Ivor. But it's all fake. It's all done for the purpose of luring you here to Arsehole-on-the-Hudson so we can kill you. How do you know that isn't true?'

Patrick Cairney stared through the windshield of the Dodge at the side of the motel building. He wasn't really listening to Frank Pagan. He was looking up at the balcony. At the lit windows of one room. There was a pain inside him that throbbed endlessly. He shut his eyes a second, and what he saw pressed behind his lids was Finn, Finn the indestructible, the immortal. Finn in his baggy cords, standing by the window in the room of harps. Finn's finger tunelessly plucking strings. Everywhere he searched his mind he saw images of Finn.

Cairney opened his eyes and stared hard at the yellow rectangle of window above. When he'd called the house near Dun Laoghaire, an unfamiliar voice had answered the telephone. Not Finn. Finn, who always answered the phone himself because there was never anybody else in the house to do it, would have picked up the receiver
if he'd been there to do it
. And he wasn't. The strange voice had been hard and sharp and edgy.
Who is this? Who's calling?
Patrick Cairney had a mental image of Garda officers going through the house, and somewhere lay Finn's body covered in a plastic sheet, surrounded by photographers and fingerprint men and all the other officials who attended so clumsily to violent death. A murder investigation, Finn's house ransacked by careless fingers, files opened and read, correspondence analysed for clues.

Finn was dead
.

Patrick Cairney tried not to think. But this one incontrovertible fact kept coming back at him. Again and again. It surged up out of all the hollows he felt inside. It echoed, died, returned with vigour.
Finn was dead
. He'd never felt loneliness like this before.