The White Plague (30 page)

Without any warning, the boy fell on Herity, striking out with the thing in his hand which, John saw now, was the razor-tip can opener. He was trying to slit Herity’s throat, but the jacket collar prevented it.

Herity, awakened in shock, grabbed for the arm with the opener and caught it. They fought silently, the wild strength of the young body revealed in a flailing, unrestrained violence, terrifying in its silent intensity.

“All right! I’ll leave you be!” Herity’s voice carried a high-pitched hysteria. He caught the other arm and held both arms while the boy strained against him.

“Leave be, lad! I won’t bother you more.”

Father Michael sat up and asked: “What’s wrong?”

The boy appeared to react to the priest’s voice. He subsided slowly, his eyes still blazing at Herity, but the weapon dropped from the boy’s hand and Herity thrust him away, releasing the arms. The boy stood and backed away.

A strangely chastened Herity picked up the weapon. He looked at it as though he had never seen such a thing before, and felt at his collar where the thing had struck. He looked up at the boy then and, in a voice of contrition, said: “I’m sorry, lad. I’d no right to intrude on your grief.”

“What’s happening?” Father Michael asked.

Herity hurled the opener at him and Father Michael groped for it, lifting it to where he could see it.

“You be the keeper of that, Priest,” Herity said. “Your little shagger tried to use it on me throat.” Herity began to laugh. “He’s more of a man than you, Priest, and him no more than a chin above your belt buckle. But if he tries that again I’ll break him like a piece of kindlin’ wood.”

The boy went to Father Michael and sat down beside him, still watchful of Herity.

“Didn’t I tell you violence serves no purpose?” Father Michael asked. “Look at Joseph there, a man of violence, and ask do you want to become like him?”

The boy curled his knees up and buried his face in them. His shoulders shook but no sound emerged.

Watching them, John felt a surge of unexplainable anger. These people were so ineffectual! The boy couldn’t even carry out a proper killing. He’d had every opportunity and he’d failed.

Father Michael put an arm over the boy’s shoulder. “It’s bitter cold,” he said. “Should we have a fire?”

“Don’t try to be more of a fool than you are,” Herity said. “Cuddle up to your little shagger there and keep him from harm. We’re here for the night.”

The Irish, that harmless nation which has always been so friendly to the English.

– The Venerable Bede

A
DRIAN
P
EARD
stood at the window of Doheny’s office in the Royal Hospital. It was early evening of a cold and cloudy day, a sky to match the gray battlements of Kilmainham off to the right. His view out the window was down across Inchicore Road toward Camac Creek and the burned ruins of a petrol station. He could hear Doheny stirring in his chair at the desk but did not turn.

“Why did they send you?” Doheny asked. His voice sounded strained.

“Because they knew you’d listen to me.”

“He meant to kill me, I tell you! He had the gun right out on the desk and was fingering it the way he does. You’ve seen it.”

“None of us doubt your word, Fin. That isn’t the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

“There’s no one else can control the Beach Boys as well as Kevin.”

“So we just sit idly by and let him threaten our researchers, kill off anyone he…”

“No, Fin! That’s not the way of it at all.”

Peard turned his back to the window. It was a depressing scene out there, the petrol station ruins a reminder of the mob violence that had swept through here before the army and the Finn Sadal had brought back a semblance of order.

Doheny sat with his elbows on his desk, fists clenched and his chin resting on the fists. He looked ready to explode.

“You’re to stop threatening Kevin O’Donnell,” Peard said. “That’s the message I was told to convey. The army wants no internal battles. As for Kevin, they’ve taken him aside and warned him to leave the Lab alone. It’s off limits to him.”

“Unless he takes it into his mad head to kill us all in our sleep!”

“He’s been told the army will execute him if he doesn’t obey.”

“And the same for me?”

“I’m sorry, Fin.”

“He’ll not try to stop our exchanges with the Huddersfield people?”

“He’s been warned off, Fin.”

“They’ll continue to listen in on us, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And pass it along to Kevin?”

“He has his friends in the army.”

“So it would appear.”

“Well, that’s the lot, Fin. You’ll not disobey?”

“I’m not a foolhardy young idiot!”

“Good.”

Doheny lowered his hands and unclenched his fists. “How’re Kate and Browder doing?”

“As well as could be expected. She’s still crying she wants a priest to marry them.”

“Then get her one.”

“That’s not as easy as it sounds, Fin.”

“Yes… yes, I know.” Doheny shook his head. “That was a bad thing, Maynooth.”

“One man I know for certain is a priest, he denied it to my face,” Peard said. “Two of them still wearing the collar refused when I told them what we wanted. They don’t trust anyone in authority, Fin.”

“We’ve been consigned to hell, so they say.”

“I’ve been trying to find a Father Michael Flannery,” Peard said. “I was told he might…”

“Flannery’s busy and can’t be reached.”

“You know where he is?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Could you get word to him and ask if he…”

“I’ll do what I can, but you keep looking.”

Peard sighed. “I’d best be getting down to the corner. The convoy to Killaloe is supposed to leave on time.”

“They never do.”

“I’ll not fault them for a delay right now. The darker the night the better, I say.”

“I was told the N-Seven is safe,” Doheny said.

Peard shrugged. “I still think we should move the pressure tank and those two here to Dublin.”

“Not with Kevin O’Donnell right around the corner!”

“Well, there’s something in what you say, Fin.”

“Did you send a pistol in to Browder like I told you?”

“Yes, but he didn’t like it and I thought Kate would make a scene about it.”

“It’s little enough.”

“The army’s warned him off, Fin. Depend on it.”

“Where a madman’s concerned, depend on nothing except the unexpected.” Doheny pushed his chair back and stood. “Myself, I’m going everywhere armed and guarded. I’d advise you to do the same, Adrian.”

“He’ll not come to Killaloe. They promised.”

“Sure, and they also promised they could find all the other uncontaminated women and protect them! You’ve heard, haven’t you? Everyone in the Mountmellick mines is dead!”

“What happened?”

“One contaminated man. They killed him, of course, but it was too late.”

“I’ll be getting back to the Lab,” Peard said. “How’re things going here?”

“Not a glimmer yet, but that’s to be expected. You’ll have the readouts on our lastest findings when you get back to Killaloe. Let me know what you make of them.”

“I’ll do that. Damn! I wish we could go back and forth to Huddersfield!”

“Barrier Command won’t allow it. I asked.”

“I know, but it seems criminal. Who could we contaminate? They’re as full of the plague as we are.”

“More.”

“Open research is the only hope the world has,” Peard said.

“The only hope Ireland has,” Doheny said. “Don’t you forget it. But if the Yankees or the Russkies find the answer first, they’re as likely as not to just wipe us out. All in the sweet name of sterilization, you understand?”

“Do they accept this at Huddersfield?”

“Why do y’ think we’re being so open with each other, Adrian? They’re still the British, you know.”

“And we’re still Irish,” Peard said.

His slight body was shaken immediately by a high-pitched laugh. Doheny thought it a particularly nasty laugh.

The right of freedom of speech and press includes not only the right to utter or to print, but the right to distribute, the right to receive, the right to read… and freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach…

– United States Supreme Court (Griswold v. Connecticut)

D
OCTOR
D
UDLEY
W
YCOMBE-
F
INCH
knew what his people thought of this working office he had chosen – much too small for the director of the all-important English Research Establishment, too cluttered and too remote from the centre of things here at Huddersfield.

In the days when Huddersfield had been devoted to the physical sciences, this had been the basement office of a research assistant. The building above it stood on the perimeter of the fence-enclosed grounds. It was a three-story concrete structure with no ivy and little character. Wycombe-Finch did maintain another office “for state occasions” back in the Administration Building. That was a spacious oaken suite with thick rugs and barriers of administrative assistants in the outer rooms, but this little cubicle and its adjoining lab was where he was to be found most of the time – here in an enclosure of windowless walls covered by bookshelves, its one door leading into the small laboratory. The desk was small enough that he could reach the farthest corner easily with either hand. The one chair was comfortable, high-backed and swiveled. And here he kept his radio and the listening devices and the electronic tools.

He leaned back in the chair and puffed on his long, thin-stemmed pipe while waiting for the morning call from Doheny. He and Doheny had met on several occasions at international conferences and Wycombe-Finch could picture his Irish counterpart when they spoke on the telephone – a short, rather stout man with a blustery manner. Wycombe-Finch was a contrasting tall, thin, gray-mantled figure. An American colleague once, seeing him with Doheny, had called them Mutt and Jeff, labels that Wycombe-Finch had found offensive.

A dottle of bitter nicotine burbled out of his pipe stem, burning his tongue. Wycombe-Finch wiped away the offending particles with a white linen handkerchief, which he realized belatedly was one from the bottom of the drawer, one of those his wife, Helen, had laundered before… He veered his mind away from that channel.

Outside the small office, he knew, the morning was a cold and misty grayness, all distances lost in the drifting diffusion. A Lakes Country morning, they called it locally.

The telephone in front of him weighted a scattering of papers – reports, summations. He stared at them while he smoked and waited. The telephone link between Ireland and England was none too satisfactory at best and he had learned to be patient in dealing with these regular exchanges between himself and Doheny.

The telephone buzzed.

He put the instrument to his ear, laying aside the pipe in an ashtray. “Wycombe-Finch here.”

Doheny’s distinct tenor was identifiable despite a poor connection that provided static and distinct clicks.
Lots of listeners
, Wycombe-Finch thought.

“Ahhh, there you are, Wye. The damnable phone service is at its worst this morning.”

Wycombe-Finch smiled. He had last met Doheny at a London conference on interdisciplinary cooperation. Jolly fellow and with a first-class scientific mind behind those wide blue eyes. It was only during these regular telephone exchanges, though, that they had formed what Wycombe-Finch thought of as a working friendship.

Doe and Wye.

They had fallen into this first-name familiar relationship by the third call.

“I’m convinced the telephone was created to teach us patience, Doe,” Wycombe-Finch said.

“Stiff upper lip and all that, eh?” Doheny said. “Well, what’s new, Wye?”

“We’ve a new government boffin coming down this morning for an assessment of our progress,” Wycombe-Finch said. “I know the chap – Rupert Stonar. No head for science but very alert to wool over the eyes.”

“Stonar,” Doheny said. “I’ve heard of him. Political.”

“Oh, very.”

“What do you have to tell him?”

“Bloody nothing. Plodding, that’s what we’re doing. Good plodding, the kind that’ll produce in time but no big breakthrough, which is what Stonar and his people want.”

“What about those four new people you’ve added? The American, Beckett – I hear he’s the one figured out how the Madman spread this thing.”

“Brilliant fellow, no doubt of it. I’ve kept the four of them together as a team. There’s something about the way they work together. I hesitate to call it electric, but they are one of those happy associations that often produce great things.”

“Tell that to Stonar.”

“He already knows it. I was hoping you might produce a little tidbit we could share with him, Doe.”

After a moment’s silence, Doheny said: “We don’t hide very much from you, do we, Wye?”

Wycombe-Finch recognized this approach, part of a subtle code he and Doheny had worked out between the lines. Doheny had something to reveal, something hot that his masters might resent his telling, but that wouldn’t matter now because Wycombe-Finch obviously already knew it.

“I hope you don’t even try,” Wycombe-Finch said, picking up on his side. “God knows I resent the use of spies, and I assure you, Doe, that we’re being completely candid with you.”

Doheny’s laughter rattled in the phone. Wycombe-Finch smiled gently. What in the devil had Doheny come up with?

“Well,” Doheny said, “it’s true. We may have O’Neill himself.”

Wycombe-Finch took advantage of a long burst of static to ask sharply: “What? I didn’t hear that.”

“The Madman. We may have him here.”

“You have the fellow in durance, interrogators and all that?”

“God in heaven, no! I’m sending him the long way to our facility at Killaloe. He’s using the name John Garrech O’Donnell. Claims to be a molecular biologist.”