The Storm Protocol (22 page)

They walked over to a pillar with cables sticking out
, in a neat labelled bundle.

‘All we need to do literally,’ he said, ‘is to drop the machines into place, screw them into the ground, cable them up and we are golden.’

David nodded; he was actually very impressed.

‘Do you want to see your office?’ asked Ben suddenly.

‘Is it ready?’ asked David.

‘The first thing I worked on,’ said Ben
, with a straight face.

David didn't know whether he was trying to be funny or deadly serious.

They went back out the way they had come. Ben directed them through the lobby, and up a modern steel and glass spiral staircase. There was only one door facing ahead of them, and David chuckled. It already had his name on it.

David walked in. He’d always based himself at home. It sounded stupid
, but he’d always felt more at home, at home. This was a huge departure for him. To base his business out of an office, was something he had never done before. It was also a big gamble, moving the control of his operation to West Cork, when the majority of his action was in the city centre. It was a calculated risk. David prided himself on his balls of steel; all or nothing was his motto.

As he settled himself into the high backed leather chair, he realised that all the important items from his study had been relocated. He needed to revisit Ben's salary again; he really was priceless.

#

It was well and truly dark
, as the car pulled out of the car park on the return journey. David was contented, and at times like this, he liked to go back and talk to them.

Ben had stayed at the facility; he’d cried off with the excuse that he had a lot of things to organise. Truth was, he found it uncomfortable being there and David understood that, promising to send the car back for him later.

People had been surprised at the time, but David could never understand why. For him, it had seemed a natural thing. As a family, this is where they had enjoyed their most intimate moments. It was the only place he would have dreamed of interring them, and he had already given Ben a discrete envelope containing his own instructions.

Tony dropped him at the entrance to the graveyard; it was the only time he never opened the door. David stepped out and the car moved off and stopped a polite distance away; near enough to be summoned, yet far enough away to give him a little bit of privacy.

It was a wild night; David did not feel the cold, and relished the rain as it drove horizontally into his face. He struggled through the old stone gates, and made his way slowly to his first stop. He was literally dripping wet, when he made it over to the other side.

The monument was without doubt the biggest in the cemetery
, by at least a factor of two. His old man did not do things by halves, and he and John had wanted something to stand-out in death, the way she had in life.

The tears formed
, and on these visits, he never stopped them; never tried to suppress the emotions. That’s why he always came alone.

His mother had died when he was very young. She had been a force of nature, but she remained to David like a dream; an ideal of what a parent should be. He didn’
t remember her in harsh reality. It was like looking at something with your eyes almost closed; blurry and indistinct. She was perfect, because he couldn’t remember her not being that way.

The temperature was dropping rapidly
, and the wind was tracking the tears all over his face. He moved on from the relative perfection of the ostentatious monument, to the simple plot that lay next to it. There were three spaces, three small and simple black granite headstones. The middle one was his father, the one to the left was John, and he had reserved the other side for himself; at the right hand of the father.

He supposed it was a bit macabre
, erecting your own gravestone before you were dead, but he had experienced his father being shot dead and his brother knifed to death. He lived in a dog eat dog world, and he fully expected to get eaten one day very soon. He had never seen himself living beyond thirty. He didn’t know why, maybe he just couldn’t see that far ahead. He had the arrogance of youth, but some part of him was already dead.

Twins have a rarely understood and very close bond, especially identical twins. He saw it very clearly in black and white
, that they came from the same genetic blend. As far as he was concerned, he was half dead already. He knelt at the foot of John, the indistinct mound in front of the black granite, and imagined his brother’s skeleton lying just below the surface. He kissed the peaty earth, tasting the darkness and remembering the inscription.

John, brother, rest peacefully for soon you will
.

He moved on to the middle space; he could almost feel the plot swell
, as he stood in front of it. He remembered every defect, every line and mole on his father’s face, as his emotions took physical form. Nose to nose, they would scream abuse at each other, neither backing down. And then, on the sofa in the living room at night, he would snuggle up to his father, praying for the moment that the arm would come around, feeling the warmth of the fire and his father’s embrace.

He had not been an easy man to love; respect yes, love no. But he and John had earned both. His father had respected few men and loved none; not even his own father. But the twins had got under his skin, and broken down the barriers early, especially after his wife had passed away.

He was never violent; he was vigorous and forthright in his views, but so were the boys and it led to some furious rows. But in all those years, they never once ended the day on harsh words. They always made up, and if he was wrong he would admit it; a big step for such a powerful and opinionated man.

David made the sign of the cross and blessed himself, just as an icy gust of wind made him shudder. If he felt it, it must be really cold.

He’d heard it said that revenge was a dish best served cold. He was going to ensure it was sub zero.

The Bullock
had come of age; had come full circle and become
The Bull
.

16
th
May 2011 – Six days after the Storm.

The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it. – Remy de Gourmont.

Dale stretched his legs as far as the economy seat would allow. He wouldn't like to be any taller. As he shifted his position, he smiled at the recollection of Dodd’s scowling face, as he’d looked sourly across the desk at Dale.

‘Do you have your tickets?’ he’d asked.

Dale had nodded.

‘Do you have your passport?’

Dale had nodded again.

‘Do you have your p
hone?’ he’d asked.

Dale
had nodded a third time.

‘Then what the fuck else do you need?’

Dale had thought about it, and realised that Dodds was right; the time was now.

Dodds had driven to JFK as though his trousers were on fire. Dale had hung on grimly. He had been deposited at set-
down; literally ejected, as the car was still moving. Dodds had shouted a salutation and then Dale had been left alone with his journey.

The girl at check-in had eyed him suspiciously, as had the Department of Homeland Security officials, especially when he’d said he was going for pleasure. They had eyed his lack of luggage with jaundiced eyes
, and he had been about to show this DEA identification, when for some reason, a small voice inside his head had stopped him. He’d had a strong feeling that his anonymity might be an advantage; he’d also been fairly certain that the Department of Homeland Security knew exactly who he was.

‘Can I get you anything
, sir?’ asked the Stewardess, interrupting his reminiscence. ‘Tea, Coffee, Beer?’

‘Coffee,’ he said automatically, and then changed his mind. ‘No, I’ll have a beer actually, if I could?’

He smiled at her.

‘Here you go
, sir,’ she said, handing him a very small can, and a plastic cup. ‘Enjoy.’

As she turned to go
, she winked at him, and he recognised something in her expression. Maybe Dale was mistaken, but it wasn’t the normal, painted on, have a nice day facade that stewardesses normally presented to the world. Maybe a working holiday was exactly what he needed.

He closed his eyes, and as he drifted off to sleep, his investigators mind kept subliminally reminding him that the stewardess had worn no engagement or wedding ring. His subsequent dream had been all the more pleasurable for that information.

Fifteen rows back in one of the standby seats, a man was furiously typing on his laptop. The battery indicator had already told him that he only had twelve and a half minutes left. He was also a government employee, but unlike Dale, he was aware of the existence of his fellow federal agent. In fact he knew a huge amount about DEA Special Agent 2897.

Dale slept soundly until landing. The captain, wh
o was an old Delta veteran, kissed the plane onto the tarmac at Dublin airport with barely a judder. The stewardess had to shake him awake. She handed him his coat and his bag, and he was halfway down the steps into the terminal building, when he realised she had slipped him a piece of paper, too. He was astonished to find her number written on it in neat handwriting, and a single simple exhortation; call me! He patted the thankfully tri-band phone in his pocket; maybe later he would, he said to himself.

As his leather heels clicked a steady beat off the marble floor of the newly completed terminal two, he silently marvelled at his newfound personal spontaneity. Even Dodds had been secretly impressed; Dale could tell.

Dodds had also promised to provide any backup or information that Dale might require, via local access to the official DEA and other federal systems. It would look suspicious if his ID was discovered to be live while he was away on vacation. Any time, day or night, Dodds had said. He was probably going to regret that statement.

Dale encountered his first delay in the passport hall. The Irish customs officials had decided to only open two kiosks
, to cope with a large planeload of American business people and tourists. It was over an hour and a half before he was able to step through the green channel and into relative freedom.

At that
point, he walked to the nearest cafe. One black coffee later, he was sitting at a table for two with his notepad open. For the previous ten hours, he had been running on hunches and adrenalin, now he needed to regroup. He was in a foreign country; one he had never visited before, and he was unsure of where it was he needed to be going. His first priority had to be transport.

He contemplated going to the information desk and asking them what was the best way to get to Cork, but rightly or wrongly
, he felt it would have portrayed him as a stupid American tourist. He reasoned to himself that he could fly to Cork, but then he would have the same problem with transport when he got there. Ditto the train and ditto the coach. He drove everywhere in the US, so why not here.

Twenty minutes later
, and with his wallet five hundred dollars lighter, he was the proud owner of the smallest automatic transmission that Hertz could rent him. He could cope with the wrong side of the road, but not a stick shift on the wrong side too.

In the US, he had continually kept his phone up-to-date with all the new GPS maps and releases. He’d always felt he would need them eventually; now he was glad he’d done it.

The journey from Dublin airport to Cork city took him about three hours. He could summarise it as two and three quarter hours of boredom, and fifteen minutes of sheer terror.

American freeways were all pretty lawless places, but the motorway ring road around Dublin, with cars flying in all directions
, doing at least seventy miles an hour, was not a happy place to be learning to drive on the wrong side. It was like driving through downtown Manhattan at speed. The other thing that struck him, as he entered the outskirts of Cork, was how small Ireland actually was. He had driven across literally half the country in three hours; some folks in America would regard that as a commute. He’d heard the differences between America and the English-speaking countries in Europe, described as being divided by a common language; having now seen some of it at first hand, he suspected there was slightly more to it than that.

As he drove into Cork city
, he ignored the entrance to the port tunnel. Pulling into the car park of the first large hotel he saw, the Silver Springs, he got out and stretched his legs. He needed somewhere to base himself and get his bearings.

Ten minutes later
, he was in a business suite, reeling from the price he’d had to pay. He wanted to stay in the room, not buy it. Seemed there were other differences, apart from just the language.

He put on the kettle, and made himself a cup of tea, mainly to give himself some time to think. He made a decision quickly and opened his notepad; he needed a computer badly.

The hotel Internet cafe was deserted. He checked the page in his notepad. He had a name,
Thomas Eugene O'Neill
, he had a pseudonym,
the Street
, and he had a place of birth,
Cork city
. His index finger lightly tapped the return key without actually pushing it, as his brow furrowed in concentration. He quickly typed
how do I get more info?
and then deleted it in disgust. He sat looking at the screen, hoping the information would leap off the page by itself. In the corner, the timer was ticking off the minutes; he needed to focus.

He typed in
next of kin?
First thing he needed to find out, was whether the elusive Mr O’Neill had any family left in the city. Thinking about it in the cold light of day, it seemed such a tenuous link, but Dale remembered a phrase his father used to say, when considering coincidental information.

‘It’s like this, Dale,’ he would say. ‘Take a compass and set it down; see which way it points. Set another one next to it, and then add another and another. Check which way they point. If they all point in the same direction, t
hen pretty soon you know where north is.’

Dale smiled at the memory. It did seem a tenuous connection
, but he’d seen the compass needle point to Cork too many times. If it all came to nothing, then at the very least, he’d have a nice holiday. He patted his pocket; he had a number after all. Thinking about the stewardess prompted his next leap of faith.

He’d tried a number of Google searches and they had all come up negative. If he couldn't get the information online
, he’d have to go old school, and where was the best place to get information about family? He typed
find family in Cork
and found the address he was looking for; the office of the registrar of marriages, births and deaths, as good a place as any to start.

He still had two further challenges. How did he get there
, and how did he get the information he wanted when he arrived there. The first was easily solved; the second, he suspected, would be less so.

As Dale wrote down the address, an image floated to the front of his mind. He clicked his fingers; he had himself an in.

An hour later, and his own mother wouldn’t have recognised him; the transformation from Dale to tourist was complete. He parked in a multi-storey near the registrar, and then used his GPS to locate a department store nearby. He had bought the most hideous pair of brown check golf trousers he could find. He had teamed these with a vertical striped green rugby top, and a multicoloured Guinness cloth cap. A cheap Nikon SLR camera around his neck completed the look.

As he walked the five minutes to the office block
that was his destination, he practised his southern accent; it would complete the effect he was hoping for.

At first, the ticketing system confused him, but an elderly lady showed him how you had to rip off the ticket, and how your number would appear in garish red digits above one of the service hatches. He waited patiently for his turn to come.

He noticed with relief that the kiosk displaying his number was staffed by a homely looking middle-aged woman. Being the possessor of useless, investigation based information, he knew that he had a higher statistical chance of convincing her to give him the information he wanted, than if she was young and pretty.

‘Howdy,’ he said
, in his best southern drawl, with a smile painted on his face. ‘I'm hoping that you can help.’

‘I’ll cer
tainly try, young man,’ she answered brightly.

‘I’m trying to trace a long lost cousin,’ he said. He handed her the sheet he had printed in the hotel an hour and a bit earlier. He had taken the homepage of one of the American genealogy websites, and amended the search with the details he knew about Thomas Eugene O'Neill.

‘This is all I know,’ he said truthfully.

He handed her the sheet.

‘The only other thing I can tell you, is that he would be in his early forties.’

She looked from the paper to him and back again. He noticed a slight hesitancy in her manner.

‘Do you have ID?’ she asked.

He slid his Passport across the table.

‘Well Dale,’ she added, after studying his Passport closely. ‘We can’t normally give out this type of information without....’

For the briefest of seconds
, he contemplated sliding his DEA identification across the desk, but he instinctively knew in this case that it would be the wrong thing to do. Instead, he slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out some large denomination bills, and leaned confidentially across the desk. He beckoned her in closer.

‘I’m unde
r cover,’ he said. ‘I’m a private detective, working for a woman in the US who is trying desperately to trace her runaway husband. He skipped the jurisdiction without a forwarding address and owes a huge amount of alimony....’

‘
It’s okay young man,’ she said. ‘And before we go on, you didn’t need to go to all that trouble and subterfuge. I was merely going to say, that we would normally need a bit more information, that’s all. But private detective; sounds very exciting.’

She was gri
nning broadly; playing with him. It was no more than he deserved for being so stupid, but Dale cursed his rash action; it could come back to haunt him.

‘So
, let’s try and find this mystery man of yours.’

She turned her screen around
, so they could both see it. Dale had been holding his breath, and realised just how difficult it was to silently breathe a sigh of relief.

She slid his piece of paper over
, so that it was between her and the keyboard.

‘Let’s see,’ she said
, her fingers dancing at speed across the keys. ‘Ok, we’ve got seven returned.’

She then seemed to mumble to herself
, as she went through the list systematically.

‘Too young, too old, too old, too old, maybe, maybe, too old.’

She hit the print button on her screen and the dot matrix beside her clacked into life.