The Storm Protocol (23 page)

‘Ok, love,’ she said, placing the paper between them. ‘Looks like we have two here; one is forty five, the other is fifty two.’

Dale pointed to the first one.

‘It’s got to be him,’ he stated
, with certainty.

She pulled up the detailed record
.

‘You’re lucky. We moved all this stuff to electronic records only a year or so ago. It makes it much easier to cross-reference. The other way, everything was in huge individual ledgers.’

Dale said a silent prayer of thanks to the god of computerisation.

She looked at the details thoughtfully.

‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘I don't think the address here is going to help you. There is a shopping centre on that area now; it was heavily redeveloped in the late eighties. I’ll note it down anyway, but don’t hold your breath.’

She wrote the address in a neat copperplate script.

‘Now, according to this, his father was a man called Richard O’Neill.’

She tapped a few more keys.

‘Now, this is interesting,’ she said.

‘In what way?’ asked
Dale.

‘There are no
records linked with the father’s name. That means there were possibly too many of them to investigate at the time, which is feasible. However, it’s more likely to mean that they couldn’t find any records to match.’

‘So
, no record of the father’s birth or death?’ replied Dale, half statement and half question.

‘That's right,’ she said.
‘Now, let’s have a look at this; mother Mary O’Neill. Okay, yes, we have two records here. Birth; probably not relevant.’

She pulled up the details for the death certificate.

‘There is an address listed here alright, but bear in mind, this lady died about twenty years ago.’

‘It's a start,’ said Dale. ‘Thank you ver
y much, you’ve been most kind....’ he glanced at her nametag, ‘....Margaret.’

‘You can drop the phoney accent too,’ she said
, with a wink. ‘We’re a little bit more sophisticated here since the days of
the Quiet Man
. We do have access to televisions.’

Dale couldn’t help smiling. It had been pretty bad, and at least now he had another lead. He looked at the two handwritten addresses; one of them would pay dividends, he was certain.

#

Special Agent Ray Fox was going through his budget; the part of his job that he least enjoyed. His nametag said
special agent in charge,
but he didn’t consider himself that way. He had been the boss for about a year now, and he liked to think he still had the respect of his men. He was their colleague and peer, as well as their superior. It was why he found budgets particularly hard. He was being told to squeeze. They hadn't used the word redundancy, but he felt that it was only a matter of time before they did; not a prospect he was looking forward to. For the bean counters, these men were numbers; to him, they were friends.

He was locking his screen for lunch
, when the phone rang.

‘I’ve just had Langley
chewing my ear off,’ said an irate voice.

He didn’t need to expand on what
Langley
was, but it was a surprise to Ray nonetheless.

‘Maybe you can explain to me why you sent a DEA agent to the Republic of Ireland.’

Tiny alarm bells started ringing in Ray’s head.

‘Apparently
, he is about to cock up a large global operation.’

The doors clanged shut. Dale; it had to be.

‘But sir,’ he started to explain. ‘This was not a....’

‘I don’t care what it was or is,’ said the voice, cracking with the strain of not shouting. ‘You find this idiot and you stop him.’

The phone went dead in his hand. As he replaced the instrument in its cradle, fragments of the meeting with Dale started clanging back into place like vault doors. Ray jumped quickly to his office entrance and scanned the room.

‘Dodds!’ he shouted above the melee. ‘In here, now!’

He sat back down at his desk and waited. A shadow appeared in the doorway.

‘You wanted to see me, chief?’
asked Dodds.

‘Come on it, close the door,’ said the chief
, jovially.

He waited for Dodds to get comfortable
, before dropping the bombshell.

‘Where is A
gent Foster?’ he asked, dangerously softly.

He watched Dodds. His eyes flicked away for a millisecond. Dodds knew his boss
, so he said nothing.

‘You know where he is, don’t you?’

Dodds nodded.

‘He could be in big trouble,’ said the chief. ‘You need to tell me everything you know.’

‘Did you read the report?’ asked Dodds, a trifle disdainfully. ‘It was all in the report.’

‘Are you saying this is my fault?’ said the chief, finally exploding.

Dodds cast his eyes up to heaven for a second.

‘God give me strength,’ he
muttered under his breath. ‘No boss, what I’m saying is that it would be easier for me to explain it if you have all the information first hand, and to do that you’ll have to read the report.’

Dodds sat in silence as the chief skimmed the two pages.

‘Ok, I’ve read it, now what,’ he said, throwing it on the desk between them.

Dodds indicated the window of Ray’s office.

‘Dale reckons a new drug is due to hit the streets,’ he said. ‘I personally think he's put two and two together and made six, but he seems to believe that the common link is Ireland.’

He paused.

‘The whole thing is tied back to the Mancini family, and it’s going to be huge.’

‘Well, do you know what,’ murmured A
gent Fox thoughtfully, stroking the stubble on his chin. ‘He may well be right. The call I got was from the section chief, who had just got a tongue lashing from the CIA. I think he’s stumbled into something and unfortunately for Dale, I think he is well out of his depth as usual.’

‘We need to warn him,’ said Dodds, a look of concern appearing on his face. ‘You know what the CIA is like when it comes to collateral damage.’

‘Do you have a way of contacting him?’ asked Ray.

Dodds shook his head.

‘He was going to contact me if he needed anything.’

‘And you were going to get it for him?’ asked the chief incredulously.

‘That’s what partners do,’ said Dodds defensively, ‘or have you forgotten that from the comfort of your leather chair?’

The chief let the remark slide.

‘Just promise me something Dodds. If he contacts you, then you really need to let me know.’

‘Is that all?’ asked Dodds stiffly.

‘For now,’ said the chief.

He watched his agent leave; drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the desk
, as he did so.

16
th
May 2011 – Six days after the Storm.

Time’s glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light. – William Shakespeare.

I was in one of those cafes; the real greasy spoon places that they didn't have in America. Diners they had in abundance, cafes; no. I looked at my plate; sausage, egg, bacon, mushrooms, fried tomatoes, black and white pudding, toast, and a steaming mug of white milky tea. What better way to start the day.

I had my notebook open as I ate; going through and validating the information I had gleaned over the past thirty six hours. I had a positive identification on my
so-called
son,
which had been the intention. Alan Murphy had become Scott Mitchell.

After I’d made sure the girl had
been treated and taken to hospital, I’d done a bit more digging around. For the rest of that night and a little bit of the following day, I’d gleaned little more in the way of information. Other than his name, it transpired that Scott Mitchell was not a very nice fellow, but that was about all I learned.

I looked at it another way. Scott Mitchell
would have been very much a product of his age and his environment. Like many a teenager before him, Scott would have seen the drug dealers, driving past in their tricked out German cars with their fancy lifestyles, and he’d wanted a piece of the action. By all accounts, he’d started as a small-time dealer, working his way up to become a transporter and mule; trusted to distribute the drugs to the dealers and take the money back to the centre of operations.

No, I could understand all that. What I couldn't understand was how Scott Mitchell, a small-time wannabe criminal
, had ended up on the veranda of my house in Louisiana?

I took another mouthful of bacon, marvelling at how different it tasted th
e closer you got to the source.

No, I could understand where Scott was from; I just couldn't see his motivation to be where he was
, when I shot him. What was his motive in relation to me? He’d known a lot about me that he didn’t read in any book, and I didn’t share that information lightly.

And that brought me to the second piece of information that I had gleaned, this time from the girl. She had given me a name;
Black Swan
. The junkies and hookers had looked at me suspiciously when I’d mentioned this man. I’d pretended that I was an Irish-American journalist, working on an expose of the drug scene in Ireland.

It was a symptom of our reality TV
and celebrity drenched lifestyle, but as soon as I’d mentioned the words
journalism
and
confidentiality,
their defences had come down and they’d become positively verbose.

Black Swan was one of two kingpins who controlled the drug trade in Cork. I smiled to myself
, as I ate a large section of beef sausage; the other being the appropriately named
Bullock
. According to everyone I spoke to, there was no love lost between the two men. Both were extremely well protected, but both had also lost foot soldiers in the campaign; gang members killing each other on the periphery of the power struggle over silly squabbles.

Again I could understand all of it. Every bottle of milk has cream floating on the top. Every organisation has somebody running it. But the question I had to ask myself was; what did one half of the controlling interest in the drugs trade in Cork
, want with a forcibly retired ex-mob enforcer living in hiding in Louisiana? It just made no sense.

I picked up the toast and mopped up the runny yellow mess of the egg yolk. There was one person who could possibly tell me. It was dangerous
, but worth the risk, even if she could tell me nothing. I had an irrational desire to see her again that had nothing to do with information.

I didn’t know where to start
, but suspected the hospital might be a good place. It was only a day and a half since our previous encounter. I might have inadvertently hit her harder than I’d originally intended, and in most jurisdictions, concussion victims are kept under observation for at least twenty four hours.

Thirty minutes later, I stood outside the entrance to Cork University
Hospital. I walked up to the reception desk.

‘I’m wondering if you can help me.’ I said to the austere middle aged lady, accompanying it with my brightest smile. ‘A friend of mine was brought in last night; a young lady with concussion. You wou
ldn’t be able to tell me which ward she might be in, would you?’

‘Certainly s
ir, you go through this door, left and to the end of the corridor, up two flights of stairs and through the double doors in front of you. If she’s still here, that’s where she will be.’

I smiled my thanks and headed off. As I approached the ward
, I became increasingly nervous. I was not a naturally apprehensive person, so it was a very unsettling feeling.

I scanned the beds
, as I walked through the central corridor. She was in the last one on the left, sitting up with her eyes closed. As I approached, I realised she was asleep, her breathing shallow and even. I sat noiselessly in the chair and studied her.

She was wearing a regulation hospital gown, and her face had been cleaned of the outlandish and garish makeup that most men looking for
ladies of the night
seemed to think was attractive.

Even with the large bruise on the side of her face
, and the deathly pallor of her skin, to me she looked beautiful. Must be going soft in my old age, I said to myself. I realised then that her eyes were open and focused exclusively on me. To her credit, she hadn't jolted or started or even screamed; there was just a wan smile.

‘You sure know how to show a girl a good time,’ she said weakly.

I laughed in spite of myself.

‘It worked
, didn’t it?’

‘Thank you,’ she replied earnestly
.

Then she seemed to realise something
, and her eyes darted up and down the room in panic.

‘You
need to leave,’ she said. ‘My....’

She searched for a word.

‘....
manager
is due here any second. If he sees you here, you are dead. Especially after all they have been saying about you over the last day or so.’

‘
I can look after myself,’ I said evenly.

‘I’ll be dead too,’ she said.

‘Don't worry,’ I replied soothingly. ‘If he turns up, I’ll think of something.’

I could see she was about to argue and then thought better of it. She appeared to be very tired. I went to the end of the bed and pretended to be studying her notes. When I was satisfied that I’d memorised the name and address that were written in tightly spaced biro, I sat back down again.

‘So, what can you tell me about this Black Swan guy?’ I asked.

‘Only that you don't want to mess with him,’ she
answered quietly.

‘Have you met him?’ I asked.

She shook her head; negative.

‘Do you know where he lives?’

Her brow furrowed in concentration.

‘North side I think,’ she said. ‘That’s all I know.’

She closed her eyes again.

‘You’re a strange man,’ she s
tated suddenly.

I laughed abruptly.

‘You’re not wrong, Kate Howard.’

‘A
nd lonely too, I think,’ she said, ignoring my use of her name.

I was just about to answer, when I saw him loom large in the porthole windows at the end of the room. He would be through the double doors and into the ward in seconds. I had to protect her; I was the one who had put her in this position.

I sprang off the chair, and grabbed her around the neck with both hands. Her eyes flicked open in genuine fear. I winked at her and increased the pressure slightly. I saw comprehension flit across her face for a second, before she started making choking sounds.

I heard the shout.

‘Hey you; what the fuck are you doing?’

I looked up and tried my best to fake panic. I let go of the girl and dashed out through the double doors at the far end of the ward. I could hear her hamming it up, choking and coughing; good girl.

The door flipped closed behind me. I was just deciding which way to go, when there was an almighty crash. I heard the whistle of the bullet and the thud as it hit the far wall and then, a second later, it started raining glass and metal reinforcement.

I’d recognised this guy from the street last night. As they’d been driving her away in the ambulance, he’d stayed aloof and watchful; obviously a handler. I chastised myself silently; I hadn’t realised these guys would have weapons. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me; when I was running protection, I always carried a piece.

I ran for the stairwell and threw myself through the door. As it closed behind me, I felt the glass shatter. I threw myself to the outside of the stairs, using the banisters to steady myself, and took them two at a time to try and minimise any target area. I heard the bullets fly; feeling and sensing the zings, as they ricocheted dangerously off the steel stairwell fittings that enclosed the small confined space.

I crashed through the bottom doors and raced across the car park
, as though the hounds of Hades were upon me. I reached the car, lungs burning and legs pumping. I jabbed the unlock button on the alarm and hurled myself into the driver’s seat. I slid the key smoothly into the ignition and fired it up in one fluid motion.

The hairs on the back of my neck were doing their job. I ducked instinctively and slid the gearshift into reverse
, just milliseconds before the windscreen exploded out with a crash. I buried the throttle, glad I didn’t have to worry about gears; the girl who’d upgraded me to automatic at the rental desk, was now worth her weight in gold.

I hand braked the
machine savagely through ninety degrees, causing him to dive for cover. I slicked the gear lever into drive and then floored it. The car bucked like a stallion, as the front tyres scrabbled furiously for grip, gravel kicking and spitting in all directions.

‘Come on!’ I shouted and slapped the wheel in frustration.

Without warning, the front tyres suddenly bit into the exposed tarmac and the car rocketed forward. I kept my foot planted, as the vehicle gained speed. I ducked as there was another crash, and the side window came in, but at last I was moving ahead of him.

I raced
through a gap, flicking the wheel left and right as the tyres screamed in protest. We were now in parallel lanes within the car park.

At the end of my lane, I kept my foot planted to the floor and hung on grimly
, as I hauled the steering to the right. The tail stepped out savagely, to smash side-on into the line of cars at the end. I steered frantically in the opposite direction to the skid and managed to over correct, smashing into another two or three cars with the nearside front wing. I ignored the tearing rending sound; like a car in a junkyard crusher.

Two more bullets thudded into the side, deadened by the door padding and the air bags. My thigh and calf muscles were straining with the effort of keeping the accelerator at its maximum.

After another two or three slight wobbles, the car straightened and I wrestled it back under control. The speed started building again, and I felt the danger diminishing slightly. I dispatched the next obstacle, the car park barrier, with a crash, wincing at the additional damage; there was my excess gone.

I watched in the rear view mirror
with interest. I saw him tuck the gun into the waistband of his jeans, as he started sprinting as fast as he could after me. An idea formed, growing and maturing as it took shape.

I let the speed of the car drop slowly, infinitesimally almost; I wanted him
to think he was gaining on me. As the distance between us decreased by degrees, I saw his expression change gradually from despair, to hope, to grim determination, and then I saw the anger on his face. He was letting his emotions take over.

He suddenly veered off the footpath and onto the road, until he was running full tilt behind me, gaining with every stride. I watched him in the wing mirrors rather than using the rear view. I wanted it to appear as though I was frightened and distracted. I needed to try and disguise what I was going to do next; my timing had to be absolutely perfect.

Even in the bright sunshine, I could see the beginnings of a crooked smile. In his head, he was turning slowly from potential loser to potential winner. In his own mind he was starting to get the upper hand.

As the distance closed between us
, and his features became more discernible and real, he reached for his waistband; the signal I was waiting for.

I flicked the car into reverse
, without even a dab on the brakes. There was a rending and crunching sound; like someone was stirring a bucket of marbles with a golf club. The tortured tyres screamed their outrage, bellowing clouds of noxious fumes into the atmosphere. Milliseconds later, their grip was restored.