“And you can chew on that, you bastard!” Michael Ryan said and put an arm around his niece. “All right, Martin, take us to some sort of shore.”
IT WAS FOUR o’clock in the morning, the sky lightening just a little, when they coasted into a wide beach, the land rising on the other side cloaked with trees. Keogh killed the outboard motor, jumped over with the line, and waded out of the water. Ryan helped Kathleen over the side and followed her.
“What do we do with the inflatable?” Keogh asked.
Ryan was inspecting it in the light of a small torch. “No name on it as far as I can see. Shoot a couple of holes in it, Martin.”
Keogh waded in again and pushed the inflatable out to sea again. It drifted for a while, then an eddy took it out some distance. He took careful aim with his silenced Walther and fired twice. After a while the inflatable went down.
“And where do you think we’d be, Uncle Michael?” Kathleen asked.
“God knows, girl, but it hardly matters. We’re home.” He turned to Keogh. “What now, Martin?”
“I think it best we part company,” Keogh told him. “You go your way, Michael Ryan, and I’ll go mine.”
“Martin?” Kathleen sounded distressed. “Can’t we stay together?”
“I don’t think so, Kate. Your uncle will have his plans and the Army Council and Reid to consider. One trip back home to dear old Ireland has been exciting enough for me. I’ll say goodbye, Michael.” He shook Ryan’s hand.
The girl grasped his arm, reached up, and kissed his cheek. “God bless you, Martin, and thanks for all you’ve done.”
“I didn’t have the chance to pay you,” Ryan said. “I’m sorry.”
“Not to worry.” Keogh smiled. “It was a great ploy.”
He started to walk away and Ryan called, “Who are you, Martin, who are you really?”
“God save us, there are days in the week when I don’t know that myself,” and Keogh turned into the trees.
HE DISAPPEARED AND Ryan said, “Off we go, girl. We’ll find a road, follow it, and see where we are.”
He led the way up through the trees, a ghostly passage as dawn came so that it was comparatively easy to see the way. They came to a narrow country road in a few minutes. There was a turning opposite and a signpost.
“You stay here in shelter and I’ll see where we are.”
He walked through the rain to the signpost, examined it, and came back, standing beside her in the shelter of the trees to light a cigarette.
“Drumdonald three miles to the left. Scotstown five miles the other way. We might as well go for the shorter walk.”
They stayed there for a moment and she said, “All for nothing. We don’t even know where the Irish Rose went down.”
“Don’t we?” He laughed and took another black instrument from his pocket that looked rather like the Howler. “Another gadget that young electronic genius at Queen’s University found for me. It’s called a Master Navigator. I gave him Marsh End and Kilalla and he programmed in their positions. This thing has given a constant reading of course and position all the way across. I know exactly where the Irish Rose went down.”
“My God,” she said, “and you never told me.”
“There are things I keep close to myself.”
“So what do we do now? Reid will be looking for us and that swine Scully.”
“And the Army Council,” Ryan said. “No, time to take a trip, I think. They say America’s grand at this time of the year. We’ll get to the safe house at Bundoran. False passports there. You know how careful I am. They’re always in stock.”
“But money, Uncle Michael, what about that?”
“Oh, I wasn’t exactly honest with Martin. I still have the second fifty thousand pounds I was to pay Tully in an envelope in my breast pocket.”
“My God, what a man you are.”
“It should keep us going for a while. When it runs out I’ll think of something.”
“Such as?”
“I’ve robbed banks in Ulster and got away with it. No reason I can’t do the same in America.”
“Sometimes I think you’re a raving madman.”
“And sometimes I am, but let’s get going.” He took her arm and they started along the road to Drumdonald.
There was silence, only the rain, and then Keogh stepped out of the trees where he had sheltered while listening to the conversation.
“You bloody old fox,” he said softly and there was a kind of admiration there.
He turned and started to walk the opposite way toward Scotstown.
IT WAS SIX o’clock in the morning and in Dublin Jack Barry was half awake, lying in the big bed beside his wife, when the portable phone he’d placed at the side of the bed sounded. He slid out of bed, picked it up, and went into the bathroom.
“Yes.”
“A reverse charge call for you from a Mr. Keogh. Will you take it?”
“Of course,” Barry said.
A moment later Keogh’s voice sounded in his ear. “That you, Jack?”
“Where are you?”
“A public telephone box in a village called Scotstown on the Down coast.”
“What’s going on? I have twenty men from the County Down Brigade waiting at Kilalla.”
“Send them home, Jack, the Irish Rose won’t be coming.”
“Tell me,” Barry ordered.
Which Keogh did. When he was finished, Barry said, “Christ, what a ploy and to end like that.”
“I know. Quite a fella, Michael Ryan.”
“I was thinking,” Barry said. “Standing in the trees listening to him talk to his niece you could have shot the bugger and taken that Master Navigator thing. We’d have known the location of the damn boat then.”
“A major salvage operation to get that gold up, Jack.”
“That sounds like an excuse. Have you gone soft on me?”
“I liked him, Jack, and I liked the wee girl. The bullion didn’t reach its destination, the Loyalists won’t be able to arm for a civil war. Let it end there.”
Barry laughed harshly. “Damn you, right as usual. Scotstown, you say? There’s a pub there called the Loyalist, but don’t believe it. The landlord, Kevin Stringer, is one of our own. I’ll phone him now and tell him to expect you. I’ll send a car for you later.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Watch your back.”
Keogh came out of the phone box and stood there for a moment in the rain thinking of Michael Ryan and his niece, aware with some surprise that he wished the enemy well, then he lit a cigarette and went down the village street in search of the pub.
NEW YORK STATE
IRELAND
LONDON
WASHINGTON
IRELAND
1995
SEVEN
PAOLO SALAMONE WALKED across the grass with his lawyer, Marco Sollazo. In spite of the Sicilian names, they were both good Americans born and bred. There the similarity ended.
Salamone was off the streets of New York’s Little Italy and he’d followed the usual Mafia route. First as one of the boys, the piccioti, gaining advancement and respect. He’d acted as an executioner three times, which had gained him entry into the family of Don Antonio Russo as a sicario, a specialist assassin. He’d been to prison twice on comparatively minor matters including drug dealing. His downfall occurred two years earlier when on taking out one of Don Antonio’s competitors, a street policeman had unexpectedly arrived on the scene. Salamone in a gun battle had received a bullet in the leg, which had put him down. Unfortunately, his own bullet had killed the police officer, who just happened to be a woman. His sentence of twenty-five years instead of life reflected the skill of his lawyer, Don Antonio’s nephew, Marco Sollazo.
The only reason Salamone had been transferred to Green Rapids from the Ossining Correctional Facility was because he had taken a full nursing course and was therefore thought of more use in the Green Rapids medical facility.