Run Before the Wind (15 page)

Death missed its mark in Berkeley Square this morning, but only just. Shortly after ten o'clock a car bomb went off outside the offices of a building company, breaking windows on virtually all of one side of the square and demolishing two other vehicles. Miraculously, a large removals van driving past took the brunt of the explosion, saving the lives of half a dozen pedestrians on the opposite sidewalk. Normally heavy foot traffic in the streets had been kept down by heavy rain, no doubt sparing many other lives.

A retired, sergeant-major, serving as commissionaire in an adjoining building, was treated briefly at St. George's Hospital for cuts from flying glass but then released. Minor injuries were reported in other buildings, but none required more than first aid. Police immediately sealed off the square, causing massive traffic tie-ups in most of the West End. More than two hours passed before the wreckage was cleared and traffic flow restored to Berkeley Square and adjoining streets.

At 10.18 a.m. a telephone call was received at the offices of the Evening Standard from an organization calling itself the Irish Freedom Brigade and claiming responsibility for the blast. The caller, who spoke with an Irish accent, said the bombing was in protest against discriminatory hiring practices of Thrasher Ltd." a company specializing in heavy construction and currently engaged in three large projects in Ulster. Mr. Derek Thrasher, owner of the company, was said to be out of the country and unavailable for comment, but a spokesman said that a threat had been received and police called shortly before the explosion. Any discrimination against Catholic workers on the company's sites was denied. No further comment would be made, the spokesman said. (More photos inside).

I flipped open the paper and found pictures of the demolished moving van and a heavy door of twisted wrought iron grillwork, its plate glass scattered about the hallway inside. The desk where I had stood talking to the commissionaire was overturned. I tried to remember what time I had been in Berkeley Square. About ten o'clock, it must have been--only minutes before the explosion. I remembered the man at the door, his hand under his coat and his eyes on the package in my hand. He must have been a policeman or a security guard. As well as escaping the explosion, I was probably lucky not to have been shot.

I returned to my seat and sat down heavily. I felt shaky and was sweating. I felt that I should do something, but I didn't know what.

I wanted to tell somebody what had nearly happened to me, but I didn't know whom to tell. I knew nothing, had seen nothing that would be useful to the police; I didn't want to frighten my parents with a story of what had almost happened. There was nothing I could do, nothing I should do. I sat back and tried to relax, breathed deeply. A woman sitting next to me looked at me.

"Are you all right, young man?"

"Yes, ma'am, I'm fine," I replied, trying to look more normal.

The rest of the day passed as a bad joke about air travel. My plane finally took off at three in the afternoon, circled Cork airport for nearly an hour, waiting for a break in the fog, then was diverted to Shannon. The passengers were herded aboard a bus and driven through a steady downpour to Cork Airport. It was nearly dusk by the time I had retrieved my luggage and found the Mini-Cooper, and I was exhausted. I drove toward Coolmore Castle more slowly than usual, not wanting a high-speed encounter with another cow.

I turned into the gates, drove past the castle in the dusk and turned down the single-track road that led to the cottage. I was looking forward to a hot bath and a drink.

As I drove along the rough road, a Volkswagen suddenly appeared from the woods a couple of hundred yards ahead of me, heading in the opposite direction. I was about to pull off the road to let it pass, when it stopped, then suddenly drove off the track into the adjacent pasture and roared, bouncing and rolling, across the field until it reached the road again, some distance behind me.

There appeared to be four men in the car. I was too tired to wonder who they were or why they preferred driving across a pasture instead of down the road. They could have easily got past me without leaving the road had they tried. I parked in the clearing where we usually left the cars, got my luggage and walked the last few yards to the cottage.

The lights were out. Mark's van was not there, so he was probably still at the boatyard. As I approached the front door in the failing light I saw that it was ajar and the glass in the upper half of the door had been broken. I set down my bags and approached the door slowly, not sure of what to expect. The men in the car must have been burglars, I thought, though I had never heard of burglary in the neighborhood. I pushed the door open and peered into the semi-darkness inside. Total disarray greeted me. Lamps and furniture were overturned, books were scattered about. The picture over the fireplace had been ripped away, and something was painted crudely where it had hung. I moved closer into the room to get a better look at it in the bad light, practically tiptoeing. I heard a loud click and a husky voice said, "Get out of here right now or I'll blow your bloody head off."

I jerked around and saw a dark figure standing in the kitchen door, pointing a large revolver at me. I froze in my tracks.

"Willie?" It was a female voice.

"Annie?" She lowered the pistol and ran toward me.

"Oh, Willie, I'm so glad to see you!" she said, throwing her arms around me, sobbing.

I took the gun from her and eased down the cocked hammer.

"What happened?" I asked, holding her tightly.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know," she sobbed, then continued, jerkily.

"I was just getting out of the tub, when I heard .. . glass breaking ... I got into my robe and was about to open the bathroom door when I heard a gun go off and .. . voices ... I locked the door and prayed they wouldn't find me ... I heard them knocking things about and laughing .. . They sounded drunk .. . When they seemed to be gone I dashed to the bedroom and got some clothes on, then I heard you coming and got Mark's service revolver."

"Gunshots?"

She released her hold on me and turned on the ceiling light. In addition to the general disorder, a shotgun had been fired indiscriminately around the room, making big gouges in the plaster.

With the light on I could read what had been sloppily painted over the fireplace.

brits out!!

PROVOS ORDER!

"Oh, shit," I said. Then I heard the door behind me creak open.

I swung around, the pistol in my hand.

Mark stood in the doorway, looking at the room and me incredulously.

"Stop pointing that pistol at me, Willie," he said calmly.

I lowered the gun and wiped my damp brow.

"Well," he said, "is anybody going to tell me what's happened?"

Annie repeated her story, while I searched through the rubble for a bottle that hadn't been broken. The room smelled like a distillery.

I found an intact bottle of Jack Daniels, my personal import, and got some glasses from the kitchen, which remained unscathed.

The three of us sat down on the sofa with our neat bourbon.

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"Jesus, this is awful whiskey," Mark said absently.

Annie suddenly sat up straight.

"We've got to call the police!

Is the phone still working?"

Mark pulled her back onto the sofa.

"We're not calling the police," he said wearily.

"And why not?" she asked.

"You're not going to let them get away with this, are you?"

"She's right. Mark. The house has been wrecked and threats have been made."

"Now hang about a minute, both of you; just think about this;

what's really happened here?"

"Well ..." Annie began.

"I'll tell you what's happened. A couple of the local lads have heard rumors about Belfast; they've got a few pints down and played a prank."

"There were four of them, I think," I replied.

"I saw them come out of the woods in an old Volkswagen, light green. When they saw me coming they cut across the pasture."

"A light green Volkswagen," Mark said.

"You have any idea how many of those there are in the country? In the county? They assemble them in Dublin, you know, and half of them are light green."

"You think we should just go along as if nothing had happened, then?" Annie asked, clearly amazed at his attitude.

"The Proves are not people we ought to be messing with, Mark," I said.

"What makes you think this was done by the Provisional IRA?"

"They were kind enough to sign their little note," I replied, waving my glass at the paint above the fireplace.

"Now listen to me, both of you. First of all, there is no Provisional IRA in Cork. Some republican organizations, sure, but all they do is drink Guinness and talk about the old days."

"What makes you so sure?" Annie asked.

"I thought something like this might happen; I've done some asking around. Finbar's an old republican, you know. He knows the lay of the land hereabouts."

"You think of this as just a practical joke?" I asked.

"Those are gunshots in the walls, there. Suppose one of us had been here, what would have happened then?"

"One of us was here," Annie said tightly.

"If there had so much as been a light on, they'd never have come close," Mark said confidently.

"And they used a shotgun, double-barreled, I'll bet."

"It sounded that way," Annie said, "as if they stopped to reload."

"Every Irish farmer has a shotgun. Now, if they'd sprayed the place with automatic weapons, I'd be worried, but this was nothing more than some over patriotic drunks."

"Even if that's what they are, I still think we should have the police on them," Annie came back.

"Then we'd buy ourselves a pack of trouble," Mark said, his voice rising.

"They'd never find out who it was, but it'd be in the papers, and Peter-Patrick Coolmore would want us out of here quick-time. The Belfast thing would get published again, probably hopelessly distorted, and then we might start having problems with local suppliers. Don't you see what could happen to the whole project if we overreact to this?" He was very worked up, now, angry, but not with the people who had done this--with us, who he perceived were about to endanger his project by going to the police.

Neither Annie nor I said anything.

"I agree with you about what the publicity could do to us," I said finally, trying to calm him.

"Maybe you're right, maybe we shouldn't go to the police, but what if these guys are the real thing?

Don't we have to consider that possibility?"

"Willie," Mark said, shaking his head, a bit calmer, now, "does the Ku Klux Klan still exist in your Georgia?"

"Yeah, they're still around. They still have rallies and burn crosses now and then."

"Do they ever do anything, though? Do they still lynch blacks?"

"No, it's all talk, they bluster and hand out leaflets, that's about it."

"Exactly. The IRA in the South of Ireland is just like your Klan--all talk. Oh, up in Galway and Tipperary you hear about some farmer who's been arrested for making bombs out of chemical fertilizer and shipping them to the North, but they don't go out on raids in the Republic."

"That's true, I guess."

"Yes, but what about these threats?" Annie asked, pointing at the message over the mantel.

"Look, the real Proves don't go around overturning lamps and making threats. They snipe and ambush and plant car bombs, and they don't give warning."

"Well, you're right about the car bombs, anyway; have you seen this?" I tossed them the Evening Standard. They read it in silence.

"Willie, have you ever told anybody that Thrasher was my sponsor?"

"No, you asked me not to." I reflected a moment.

"Well, my folks know. We had dinner with him in London. And I told Connie." I looked at him sheepishly.

"I'm sorry about that, Mark.

I shouldn't have, but Connie's on our side; she know's that's confidential."

"It's all right, Willie; I don't think Connie would give that away.

So there's no way for anybody to connect Thrasher with us or the yacht; one of his companies may be having Provo problems in the north, but the bomb in London and what happened here tonight aren't connected; it's purely coincidence."

"I think you're right about that," I said.

"There's just no way that information could have got around. Derek, himself, is too secretive for it to have leaked from him, and we know everybody else who knows about it."

"So what's your plan?" Annie asked.

"Business as usual?"

"Absolutely," Mark said, "but with some prudent precautions.

You two see what you can do about straightening up here. I'll be right back." He got up and left the cottage. In a moment I heard the dinghy being dragged across the shingle at the river's edge outside our front door and oars splashing.