The White Plague (26 page)

“If only we could,” John said. “And all the women and children killed by the terrorist bombs, too.”

A look of black rage pressed over Herity’s face and was gone. He spoke pleasantly: “And what would you be knowing of such bombs, Mister O’Donnell?”

“What I read in the news,” John lied.

“The news!” Herity said. “That’s not the same as being in the presence of a real bomb.”

“This is not getting Mister O’Donnell to the Lab,” Father Michael said. “Shall we be on our way?”

“We!” Herity said. “The good Father is coming with us! How grand it’ll be, Mister O’Donnell, to tramp along in the safe keeping of God’s grace!”

Without replying, Father Michael strode around John and up the thin trail toward the road. The boy, clutching his blue jacket close in front, ran quickly to catch up, falling into step behind the priest.

“Come along, Mister O’Donnell,” Father Michael called without turning.

John turned his back on Herity and followed. He heard Herity striding along behind, closer than felt comfortable. But that priest would go to the Lab. John felt confident of this. He was going to be led right into the heart of the Irish effort to combat the plague!

For his part, Herity felt an immense dissatisfaction with the exchange between himself and this
O’Donnell.
The man could be just what he said he was. And what then? A bald-headed gawk who didn’t fit the O’Neill descriptions at all.

Herity cursed under his breath.

This assignment galled, and the worst of that was his knowledge that Kevin had intended it to gall. And saddling him with Father Michael at the last minute! And then the priest refusing to abandon that weak-faced boy! Useless little shagger! Everything about this mission was odious. Well, sooner started, sooner finished.

Herity, setting off after O’Donnell, pressed close behind, watching the man’s movements, the bunching of his shoulders under the thick woolen sweater.

He’s my onion,
Herity thought.
If he’s really O’Neill
… Herity contemplated the project with a bit more good humor – verbally stripping away O’Donnell’s layers of concealment, getting the dry skin off the onion to find the sweet, tearful meat underneath.

Father Michael reached the road and helped the boy over the stone fence there. They paused to watch O’Donnell and Herity climb toward them.

That Herity was a bad one, Father Michael thought. On the edge of blasphemy every second. Always probing for weaknesses in everyone around him. Something vicious in Herity enjoyed pain. The Yank would not be safe alone with Herity. The powers in Dublin had been wise to fill out their party this way.

O’Donnell reached the road, breathing hard from the climb. Herity, right behind him, hesitated on the far side of the stone fence, looking back the way they had come.

Always watching his back trail, that Herity!
Father Michael thought.
Bad things back there.

Father Michael turned slightly and met O’Donnell’s gaze, a veiled and measuring look in the Yankee’s eyes. Could that truly be the Madman? He had a strange look about him, that for sure. Well, the powers in Dublin had made it plain that this was a question to be answered by Herity. They had said Father Michael was only to see that Herity gave no harm to O’Donnell. Father Michael did not ask: “Why me?” He knew.

Because Herity saved my life. We’re bound together, Herity and me, by the bond of shame. The powers in Dublin know what happened at Maynooth.

Slinging his pack over his shoulders, Father Michael set off northward along the road. He could hear Herity and O’Donnell coming along behind. The boy hurried up beside Father Michael and walked close to the priest, as though seeking protection there.

It’s your life, lad
, Father Michael thought.
And I wish you joy of it. But I do wish you’d speak.

Presently, Herity began singing “The Wearing of the Green.” The words echoed in the lake valley.

Herity had a fine voice, Father Michael thought, but his choice of song for this occasion… Father Michael shook his head in dismay.

There is no truth on earth that I fear to be known.

– Thomas Jefferson

F
INTAN
C
RAIG
D
OHENY
was more than five minutes into the private conversation with Kevin O’Donnell before realizing that his own life was on the line. Doheny had always known Kevin was a killer, but had thought the need for the Doheny medical expertise was protection enough.

Apparently not.

They had come together into one of the new cell-offices in Kilmainham Jail at Kevin’s request. Doheny did not like Kilmainham. Its choice as a central control point for Dublin Command had been a Finn Sadal move “for historic reasons.” The place repelled Doheny. Every time he walked across the inner court with its wire-guarded walkway all around, the giant curved skylight overhead, he thought of the men who had lived – or died –  in the minuscule cells that ringed the area: Robert Emmet, Patrick McCann, Charles Parnell…

But Kilmainham Castle and the Royal Hospital were less than a block away and Doheny was forced to admit that the hospital facilities were excellent.

The meeting had begun calmly enough when they entered the cell-office shortly after breakfast. Kevin had received a “general circulation” report about the Killaloe Lab. When both of them were seated, a tiny desk and one light on it between them, Kevin said:

“Themselves say our only hope is the Lab.”

“If we ourselves are first to find the cure, the whole world must come to us,” Doheny said.

“The Lab, that’s not much hope after all this time,” Kevin said.

“We have as much chance at it as anyone.”

It was as though Kevin had not heard. “But we’re used to disappointments in Ireland. We’ve come to expect them.” He leaned back and stared at Doheny. “Anything else is the true unexpected.”

“That’s defeatist talk, Kevin. I tell you Adrian Peard is as fine a mind as I’ve ever met.”

Kevin opened a drawer of his desk, brought out a small Belgian automatic pistol and placed it on the desk near his right hand.

“I think often of that young medical student and his woman in that tank,” Kevin said. “Them holding each other in the night while the rest of us go lonely to our beds.”

Doheny looked at the pistol, feeling a chill in his stomach. What was happening here? And what was this hypocritical talk about young Browder and Kate? It was common knowledge how the Beach Boys treated any surviving woman off the coffin ships. And the way Kevin’s people often killed outsiders driven ashore because of plague contamination. Hunting these “shore birds” was considered sport by the Finn Sadal. Then burning the poor fellows in the old Celtic way – confined in wicker baskets over flames! This Kevin O’Donnell was a cruel man and that pistol on the desk could not be an idle gesture.

“What’s on your mind, Kevin?” Doheny asked.

“I wonder who’ll be the last man in Ireland?” Kevin asked. “Some think it’ll be that wee wain in Athlone, the one taken alive from his dead mother. Where should I place my money, Fin?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. If I were you, I’d not bet. There’s still a few women around.”

“There’s those think it’ll be that boy being trained by the priests in Bantree,” Kevin said. “And then there’s ‘the Gypsy boy of Moern’ – himself already eight, but from a family where many lived past one hundred. Do you fancy him, Fin?”

“I’ve no concern except the plague,” Doheny said. “We’ve nothing before us but a desperate search for the cure. And Adrian Peard’s people are…”

“Then you don’t think it’s O’Neill himself out there with Herity and the priest?”

“I’ve doubts. And even if it is, how do we make him help us to a solution?”

“Oh, there’s ways, Fin. There’s ways.”

“O’Neill was in that Seattle-Tacoma area,” Doheny said. “And after the searchers left his house, they put the whole region to the Panic Fire. Not even a count of the bodies and no way to identify the dead.”

“Fin, I tell you all of this lovely island is one great coffin ship. And I’ve seen the proof of it.”

Such an anger as he had never before felt filled Doheny. He barely managed to ask: “What proof?”

“In due time, Fin. In due time.”

Doheny made to rise, but Kevin put a hand on the pistol.

“All those deaths,” Doheny said. “No true Irishman would wish them to have been in vain!”

“Which deaths?” Kevin asked, not taking his hand from the pistol. “The ones killed by the Brits and the Ulstermen?”

“Them, too.” Doheny stared at the hand on the pistol, realizing:
He means to kill me. Why?

“Them, too?” Kevin asked in a tone of incredulity. A mad light in his eyes, he stared across the desk at Doheny.

He’s insane,
Doheny thought.
He’s truly insane.

“No death in the name of Ireland can be abandoned by us,” Doheny said. “That’s why Peard and I and all of our people are working so hard to…”

“Such blather explains nothing, Fin! I know why this curse was laid upon us. It was because we wouldn’t forgive Dermot and the woman he stole from Ternan O’Ruarc.”

“Good God, man!” Doheny shook his head. “That was more than eight hundred years ago!”

“And they’re wandering Ireland yet, Fin. The Brefney curse. They’re never to find peace, never be together until one Irishman forgives them. It’s those two in the tank at Killaloe, Dermot and Dervogilla come alive! We must forgive them, Fin.”

Doheny took two shallow breaths. “If you say so, Kevin.”

“And didn’t I just say it?” Kevin brought the pistol into his lap, caressing it with one hand. “Every brother killed by the Brits must be avenged, but Dermot and his woman must be laid to rest at last.”

“Without the work Peard and I are doing, there’ll be no future for Ireland,” Doheny said.

“Have you heard, Fin, about the throng of headless women in the Vale of Avoca? There’s some say they hear their cries at night.”

“You believe that?” Doheny asked.

“Foolishness! Without heads, how can they cry?”

I must humor him
, Doheny thought.
There’s no reasoning with a madman.

When Doheny did not respond, Kevin said: “There’s a new kind of American Wake for those being sent back to die in Ireland. Have you heard, Fin?”

Once more the pistol was placed on the desk, but Kevin’s hand remained on it.

“I hadn’t heard.”

“They distribute poison to them as don’t want to get on the ships.”

Doheny could only shake his head.

“We’ve been listening in on your telephone calls to England, Fin,” Kevin said. He lifted the pistol and pointed it at Doheny’s chest.

Doheny’s throat and mouth went dry.

Kevin said: “You’ve forgotten, Fin, that we cannot trust the Gall. Never.”

“The Huddersfield Establishment is helping us,” Doheny said, a note of desperation in his voice.

“Is it now? And this fine fellow, this Doctor Dudley Wycombe-Finch, is not a Brit after all?”

“You know he is, but he’s got one of the finest research establishments in the world. And they’ve just received a new lot of help from America.”

“Oh, that’s grand it is,” Kevin said. “We’ve tapes of your telephone calls, Fin. Would you deny you’ve committed treason?”

Kevin’s finger began to tighten on the pistol’s trigger.

Desperately, Doheny said: “You’d forgive Dermot and his woman but you’d not listen to my explanation?”

“I’m listening,” Kevin said.

“Everything Wycombe-Finch has told us has been tested in our Lab. Every bit of it has proven out. He hasn’t lied to us.”

“Many an hour I’ve spent listening to those tapes,” Kevin said. “That British public school accent, many’s the time I’ve heard that before from the likes of your Brit friend.”

“But never under these conditions,” Doheny said. “Their fat’s as much in the fire as ours!”

“The carefully cultivated sound of sweet reason in their voices,” Kevin said, “even when they’re making the most unreasonable demands.”

“You don’t have to take my word for what he’s given us,” Doheny said. “Ask Peard.”

“Oh, I have. The problem with that accent, Fin, is that they tend to believe the accent itself and not give too much thought to the words spoken in it.”

“What did Peard say?”

“The same as you, Fin. And he was very sorry if he’d offended us. No harm intended.”

“You… you haven’t harmed him?”

“Oh, no! He’s still there at Killaloe, working away at his little test tubes. It’s all harmless enough.” Kevin shook his head sadly. “But you, Fin. You’re the one consorted with the Gall. It wasn’t Peard.” Kevin lifted the pistol until Doheny was staring into the barrel.

“After you’ve killed me, what do you intend with Peard and the people at the Lab?” Doheny asked.

“I’ll keep them alive and comfortable until the day I want that woman in the tank,” Kevin said.

Doheny nodded, deciding on a desperate lie. “We thought as much,” he said. “That’s why we prepared to spread the word of it all over Ireland.”

“Word of what?” Kevin demanded.

“Word of that woman and your designs on her,” Doheny said. “You’ll find mobs marching on you to tear out your heart with their hands. You’ll not have bullets enough to stop them.”

“You haven’t!” But the pistol lowered slightly.

“But we have, Kevin. And there’s not a way in this world you could stop it.”

Kevin returned the pistol to his lap. He studied Doheny for a moment. “Ah, that’s a fine kettle of fish!”

“Go ahead and shoot me if you’ve a mind to,” Doheny said. “And once you’ve done it, put the next bullet in your own head.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Fin?”

“You’ll die slow or fast, one way or the other.”

“There’ll be no more calls to the Brits, Fin.”

Angered beyond his ability to measure the consequences, Doheny said: “There will be, damn you! And I’ll call the Yanks or the Russkies or the Chinamen! Anyone who can help us, I’ll call him!” Doheny passed a hand across his lips. “And you can listen to every word I say!”