The City of Strangers (13 page)

When the flying boat was down he joined most of the other passengers, pulled on his overcoat, and left the cabin. Dominic Carroll didn’t stir, and he left him snoring quietly. He needed air and he wanted to walk. The air was cold enough. It was still dark. The Yankee Clipper was at one end of Botwood’s small harbour. Across the water he could see the lights of fishing boats coming into dock; there was only the chug of their engines and the sound of the wind, not strong but beating the rigging slowly, like a pulse.

Botwood was a village in the north of Newfoundland, almost as far east in North America as you could go. The whole of Canada lay to the west, but to the north the nearest piece of earth was Greenland, and to the east it was the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. The town sat in a sheltered bay, shaped by bare, treeless mountains, pretty much on the edge of nowhere; not very different from a thousand villages scattered along the western coast of Ireland on the other side of the Atlantic. Its buildings were of wood and corrugated iron sheets; most of its roads were dirt; an empty place in the great empty island of Newfoundland, which hadn’t even got round to calling itself part of Canada yet.

But Botwood had suddenly become important. By the time the flying boats of Pan American and Imperial Airways got there they were at the end of their range; they had to refuel. And the great and the good of Europe and America, the bankers and film stars, the heirs and heiresses and politicians, the makers and shakers, at least in their own eyes, now trailed regularly along the pier in the early hours of the morning, to drink coffee, eat a breakfast they didn’t need and talk about themselves.

Stefan drank the coffee too and spent some time talking idly with his fellow passengers. The conversation of the group, now all sitting together, had taken the turn every conversation did sooner or later, even at the edge of the world: war and the rumour of war. It wasn’t a conversation he wanted. He walked back to the sea along the dirt road from the pier and watched the fishermen unloading their catch. The lights of their boats marked one end of the harbour; the lights of the Yankee Clipper marked the other; the Atlantic water was very still in the darkness, full of the lights playing on its surface.

When he got back to his seat he opened his case to take out a pen. He had a postcard of the harbour at Botwood, with a flying boat tied up at the pontoon. Tom wanted an account of everything; writing it now would bring him out of the nowhere the night sky was, closer to home. He looked down at the contents of the case for a moment. Passport and tickets, his warrant card, a typed itinerary from the Commissioner’s office, a book, a notebook, three pencils held with a rubber band, a manila file with his own notes, and several envelopes, and the handcuffs; a change of underwear, a clean shirt. He wasn’t a particularly fastidious man, but things weren’t the way he had packed them, not quite anyway. He pulled out the file and looked at an envelope that contained a letter from the Garda Commissioner to the consul general in New York. It had been opened.

It had been done very carefully and the flap had been resealed, but it had not sealed perfectly. He smiled, looking across the aisle to the curtain of Dominic Carroll’s compartment. The snoring was a little too regular now. He settled down to write the card. It was odd, but it didn’t matter. If Carroll knew his business, he knew it didn’t concern him.

As dawn came the Yankee Clipper approached the Canadian mainland and turned to fly south through Canada and New England to New York. Stefan Gillespie and Dominic Carroll said little over breakfast. When the American talked he spoke about what a visitor should see and do in New York. Stefan listened politely to the list of sights, buildings, parks, galleries, museums, department stores, bars, clubs, theatres, restaurants that Carroll threw out at him every time another one came into his head. His enthusiasm for his city was infectious. Dominic Carroll was all charm this morning; there was no hint of the doubt and suspicion of the previous evening. It was clear that he had now put Sergeant Gillespie in a box labelled ‘harmless’.

In the early afternoon the plane started to drop and turn. The stewards were clearing the cabin. The Yankee Clipper was approaching New York. As Stefan looked out of the window he caught his first glimpse of the city. There was some thin, low cloud, and for a moment he couldn’t make out very much. Then he saw something above the cloud, the top of a building, caught in sunlight, then another, and then another, and then as the plane descended through the cloud he saw the city spreading out below, looking down into Manhattan from the bend of the East River. It was exactly as he had imagined it to be, and yet it was breathtakingly like nothing he could have imagined. He had not noticed that Dominic Carroll had moved across into the seat next to him, looking over his shoulder at the same view.

‘The lessons of the concrete, wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty, as of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice, whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps, the solid planting spires tall shooting to the skies.’ When Stefan looked round the old man’s eyes were shining with undisguised pride. ‘I wish I’d written it, but Walt Whitman got there before me. You won’t know the skyscrapers of course, but maybe you’ll get to know some of them before you leave. I know them all, like you know your mountains in Wicklow. They’re my mountains. If you do nothing else in New York, just walk the streets and look at them.’

The terminal at La Guardia had been open only months. It was new and everything in it was new; it was the biggest airport in the world. It spread along the East River on Long Island, looking across towards the Bronx and Harlem. The flying boat was moored at the marine terminal, away from the main runway, beside the river. The airport sat right next to the World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows, a part of the future the Fair proclaimed to the world; La Guardia was the future now. Stefan waited at the Pan Am desk to be met by someone from the consulate, with that future all around him. Dominic Carroll walked past; a uniformed driver behind him, carrying his cases.

‘I’ll make sure the NYPD doesn’t give you a hard time, Stefan.’

‘I’d say I’ll manage well enough.’

‘Well, you’re Irish, which should get you into the parlour at least, but as a Free State policeman you might not just get the seat by the fire.’ He chuckled, happily back on his own turf now. ‘Still, if you can stand your round, keep your mouth shut and remember to put in a quarter when the Clan na Gael cup comes round, you’ll be grand so. It was a pleasure, sir.’

He stretched out his hand; Stefan shook it.

‘At least you know who I am now, Mr Carroll.’

The American gave a wry smile. He knew that Stefan knew.

‘A shabby business but sometimes I do need to know who people are.’

Stefan nodded as if this was the reasonable explanation it wasn’t.

Dominic Carroll grinned.

‘Did your man really do his mammy in so?’

‘I haven’t met anyone who thinks he didn’t yet.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Ah, you’d be a man for the road less travelled, somewhere in there.’ The American tapped his head and laughed, then he turned away, followed by his driver.

A man in his late twenties, who had been hovering awkwardly in the background, waiting for the conversation to finish, approached Stefan immediately. He wore grey flannels and a tweed jacket; he was pale-faced and intense, and carried the air of a man who should be doing something a lot more important than meeting people at airports. Although he was only a third secretary he was, after all, an acting second.

‘Sergeant Gillespie?’

‘It is.’

The man reached out his hand to shake Stefan’s.

‘Roland Geoghegan. I’m from the consulate. I’ve a cab outside.’

They walked out through the terminal.

‘Mr McCauley will see you at four o’clock. There’s time to take you to your hotel. We’re not far from there. Have a good trip? I’m sure you did.’

‘Good enough,’ replied Stefan. He sensed that the man would like to have asked him more, but that too much interest in the flying boat didn’t accord with his position; such things were nothing to a diplomat after all.

The yellow Chevrolet taxi pulled out of the airport.

‘A friend of yours, Mr Gillespie?’ said the diplomat, quizzically.

‘What?’

‘The man you were talking to at the airport.’ It was clear from Roland Geoghegan’s pursed lips that he had been waiting to ask the question.

‘Well, I met him on the plane. Why?’

‘You know who he is?’

‘I know his name’s Dominic Carroll.’

‘He’s the president of Clan na Gael here.’

Stefan nodded; it all made more sense now. Whatever Clan na Gael claimed for itself in representing America’s Irish community, its hallmark was its antagonism towards the Irish government in the face of a revolution not only unfulfilled but betrayed, its bitterness towards Éamon de Valera, once its hero now turncoat Taoiseach, and the fact that it didn’t only fund the IRA from New York, Boston and Chicago; it made IRA policy there too.

‘I’m afraid politics wouldn’t be my strong point, Mr Geoghegan, especially not Republican politics. But he did give me a very long list of places to see in New York.’

The acting second secretary was unamused; he was a serious man.

‘Presumably you know who Seán Russell is,’ he continued.

The context told Stefan who Roland Geoghegan meant.

‘The IRA chief of staff Seán Russell?’

‘He’s in New York now. And he’s staying in Carroll’s apartment.’

The Hotel Pennsylvania, sitting directly opposite New York’s Pennsylvania Station, was something Stefan Gillespie hadn’t expected. If it wasn’t exactly one of New York’s grand hotels it had clearly been booked by someone who hadn’t been told that the Garda officer who was coming over was only a sergeant. The room on the corner of the tenth floor looked out over the city to the west and north along 7
^th
Avenue. He had only minutes to take in the skyline. Roland Geoghegan was waiting downstairs to bring him to the consul general.

Another cab took them from 7
^th
Avenue across town to the Irish consulate on Lexington Avenue, through more traffic than Stefan had seen; it was an entertainment in its own right. The city was there as a whole thing before he could appreciate its parts. Traffic, buildings, noise, colour, people; all happening at once; all drive and purpose; yet all just happening because it was happening, according to its own broken rhythms and discordant harmonies, just because the city was alive. Before he had time to take in what it really was, the vitality of New York had overtaken him.

The Irish consulate was four rooms and a corridor in a midtown office block on Lexington Avenue. Stefan was in the consul general’s secretary’s office. Leo McCauley was busy. Roland Geoghegan disappeared into McCauley’s office and came out, shutting the door behind him, leaving Stefan to wait.

‘He’ll be finished soon enough.’

The acting second secretary left with the air of a man who had a lot to do and was still irritated at having had his work interrupted. Stefan sat on the black leather sofa opposite the desk that took up half of the small room. Several posters on the wall advertised the glories of Killarney’s lakes, the beaches of West Cork and the monastic ruins at Glendalough that were over the mountains from where he lived; other posters showed the new Irish Pavilion at the World’s Fair, all glass and clean, cut stone and lean twentieth-century lines.

The door from the corridor opened and a woman came in. She smiled pleasantly and let that be greeting enough. He did the same. She walked to the secretary’s desk and sat down on the chair, which was the only other chair in the room besides the sofa. She turned it slightly sideways, and crossed her legs. She picked up a magazine from the desk and flicked through it, not exactly reading but with an idle, slightly impatient manner.

Stefan looked at the posters again. He was aware that he had been looking, for a moment, at the woman’s face, and at her legs as she had crossed them. She was worth looking at though he wasn’t sure why he seemed to be struggling to look at the walls. He wasn’t a man who spent his time gazing at women. She was attractive enough but not in any remarkable way. Her fair hair was slightly tangled. Her face was pale; she had almost no make-up on. He felt unaccountably awkward, sitting there, trying to avoid looking at her.

‘I’m waiting to see Mr McCauley,’ he said, for something to say.

‘He’s busy then?’

She looked up and smiled, but she didn’t want to continue the conversation. She turned away and glanced at her watch.

‘I’m just over from Ireland.’

‘That’s good.’ She smiled again and looked down at the magazine.

‘Do you think he’ll be long?’

He didn’t mind how long he waited. It was something to say again. The woman was hard work. The telephone on the desk started to ring. The woman continued to sit sideways on, flicking through the magazine for the second time, faster than the first time, paying even less attention to it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘is there something –’

The smile on her face was tighter, less generous than it had been.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ he laughed. ‘I didn’t mean to stare.’

‘In that case you should make more effort not to.’

It was a rebuke, but it was soft enough; it made him feel less awkward.

The phone was still ringing.

‘You’ve got a very relaxed way with telephones.’

She looked at him curiously.

‘Most secretaries answer them.’

‘I’m sure if I was a secretary I would,’ she replied.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I assumed –’

‘That’ll be because of the legs and the cute smile, will it?’

‘I didn’t mean –’

‘Don’t worry, what else would a woman be doing in an office?’

He couldn’t decide if that was real irritation or she was just milking it.

‘You are sitting at the desk.’

‘Next time I’ll make sure I cuddle up to you on the sofa.’