Aloysius Tempo (15 page)

He’s giving it the ‘why me?’ treatment, and I know he knows why. I know a man like him always has the possibility of a terrible happening at the back of his mind, because even a man as buckled as Marley has, somewhere, somehow surviving amid all the misery, a simmering little pool of guilt.

I grab his right leg, work it back and forwards, needing to be as sure as I can that I rip through enough old muscle to tear open the femoral artery.

I feel bone grind against metal as I grip and shove, as I give it the 360-degree treatment and really get that wound opened. I see he is fainting, about to fall backwards as I work it, and I grab him by his throat.

‘Stay with me, Marley,’ I say. ‘Stay with me, you bastard.’

I pull him up, see the blood on the spike, some on the floor, and I see it pissing out of the back of his leg like a busted wine box.

I drop him on the ground and he is trying his crawl into a ball thing, but gives up to stretch his neck, to make some kind of animal sound, something that would come from an abattoir.

‘Move,’ I say. ‘Crawl forward.’

‘Je … sus,’ he goes, a shivering hand, grasping at a twig on the ground, his right leg quivering as blood bubbles and pumps out at high speed, rolling off his skin and soaking onto the soil and grass below.

‘Move it,’ I say, and kick his arse. ‘Crawl forward you fucker. You’ve had a DIY disaster. Don’t you want to get help?’

He tries, makes another gurgle sound, hasn’t the strength to go further. He has maybe a minute now, if he’s lucky, his blood spreading over the thirsty, blotting ground beneath him.

And he tries again to crawl, a pathetically weak grasp at a tuft of grass, and I reckon he’s had enough.

I go to his face as he puts it on the ground, his eyes open. I go down on my hunkers, look at this old, dying man. I smile knowing this is no life wasting away, this is a waste wasting away.

‘I fucking love my job,’ I tell him, and he has no words for me. ‘You know, it’s times like this, I wish there really was a Hell.’

I say, ‘It’s good when something that must happen goes ahead and happens, don’t you think?’

The blood slows now and I can see that little, blurred light of life he had in his face has faded away.

The final pumps and he is leaving fast, and I say, ‘Goodbye, Father Marley.’

I watch as he breathes in once more, and I think maybe that’s his last breath. I think this is another one biting the dust, another one who has bought the farm, another one popping the clogs.

That’ll be the last stretch of this one’s lungs, the last beat of this one’s rotten, tired heart.

And this is one to remember, this evil old cunt. This is one for the memoirs, this view I have right in front of me right now.

I wave a hand, a friendly farewell to the imminently dead man from the guy who just killed him.

‘Be sure,’ I say, ‘to tell God everything.’

And with his last, failing breath he says it, very slow: ‘Aloysius.’

February 2017

I USE my time, my space, my car, and take a long drive north on long roads, sleeping on and off on the back seat, stopping at cafés and neon-lit fast-food flytraps as the need arises.

There’s a viewpoint in Austria that catches my eye and breath, and I stop for a break, a stretch, a piss.

I climb over a wall, find a rock, bring it back to the car, and smash the old priest’s computer and flash drive to smithereens. I scatter some of the pieces into the roadside bin, take the rest with me to ditch in another bin somewhere else along the way.

In half a week I’m used to Germany and closing in on the Netherlands, a place I’ve been missing a little, a nation with guts, class, brains, ambition and the strongest sense of fair play of them all, except they don’t force that information upon you. For some reason, for a little moment, I just can’t remember having had a bad day in Amsterdam, but I have to stop thinking about it right away before a few memories make themselves known.

I’m going to stop by with Tall Marianne, see how she’s doing, tell her I never took her inherited car in the end, ask her if she’s really found love.

Tall Marianne was always someone I could do business with, someone I could understand, who understood me. There are few questions you can ask Tall Marianne, few that she will answer anyway. And I never really asked her any at all. Likewise, there aren’t many you can ask me, none that are worth your while asking, and Tall Marianne never asked.

She has no idea what I do, where I’ve been, where I’m going. She doesn’t care. She lives in the now, a dreamy ultra-liberal moment where the past is barely prologue, where the definites of what just happened are just something that was, where the next second means everything and everything is fluid again.

I park up at 4
AM
in the city, slip my seat back, pull the sleeping bag over myself, close my heavy eyes. I’m thinking how I’m thinking less these days, how my head isn’t racing in and out of places I don’t need it to be, it doesn’t have me looking at strangers to add up numbers I don’t need to add.

I’m exhausted but rested, hungry but feeling much more solid inside. I’ve found some kind of thing to do, some agreeable shape that fits some kind of grumbling hole.

I sail off to sleep, back in Amsterdam, just a day or so away from being back in Ireland, back to waiting, back to sitting around until I get number three on the list. And I see white lines flashing on long German roads in my mind’s eye and it’s all good.

*

Morning and I get three takeaway coffees, assuming Karson is still on the scene, and go to her door.

She opens, topless, plastic tits even bigger than they were, and beams. She throws her full arms around me and the coffees – one, two, three – smack the floor.

‘You raggy Irish bastard,’ she says, delighted. ‘You really did disappear on me.’

‘I really fucking did,’ I say. ‘I got a proper job.’

And yep, Karson is here, wearing only jeans, half awake, halfway through a bottle of Jack Daniels and very stoned.

‘Ah bejesus,’ he says in an accent he thinks is Irish, ‘sure it’s that Aloysius fella again.’

We shake hands and he goes, ‘Oh man, I’ve heard some crazy stuff about you in the last few months.’

And I go, ‘Don’t believe a word she says.’

And he goes, ‘I didn’t hear it from her.’

Then that’s him, turning away, going for his glass of bourbon, going for another smoke of that spliff in the ashtray.

He did that on purpose, dropped a quick bomb to get me thinking. I reckon that, for some reason, he likes to put me on my guard, to say unusual things. He looks out the window, tapping his feet to some music that no one can hear, and my instinct screams at me there’s something that doesn’t add up here.

Is this compact little guy just a really bad spy, still hanging around Amsterdam, tipping off his marks? Is he a shit spy who has fallen for this transsexual woman who is half a foot taller than him? Is he rebelling after being told by Langley to get his pants back on, stop drinking and smoking and get the fuck back home?

I just don’t know, just don’t know and just don’t know. How do I move ahead on that? I just don’t know.

We have omelettes in a dark, warm café off Vondelpark and, uninvited, Tall Marianne pours Tabasco all over hers and mine and Karson’s and says she has missed me.

‘I don’t think I’ve been missed by anyone before,’ I say.

‘Aw, too, too sad, baby Aloysius,’ she says. ‘All your playing around in the shadows and shit, all that standing in the park at 5
AM
and all that shit – Amsterdam is a tiny little bit less crazy with you gone.’

And all the time she is touching Karson’s hands, eye contacting with him, kissing him as she chews her breakfast, crunches on her toast. He’s too pissed to notice most of it, too pissed to stop smiling even when he is trying to get his grub into his face.

She’s in the toilet and I tell Karson she’s in love.

‘I think so, yeah,’ he says. ‘A sweet, sweet girl, dude.’

‘And you?’ I say.

‘Oh yeah,’ he says. ‘She’s hard not to love.’

And I don’t think he loves her, not as much as she loves him.

I say, ‘Who told you about me?’

‘What’s that, buddy?’

‘You said someone had told you stuff about me. What did you mean?’

He nods, chews on some egg, nods again, chugs some coffee. He goes, ‘Yeah, yeah. How long are you around for?’

‘A day. Maybe two. What did you mean?’

He nods again.

‘I hear stuff,’ he says. ‘I know you think I’m CIA and all … ’ and he takes another bite.

And I nod. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You more or less said as much. You’re something like that. Maybe not their best man in the field, Karson, but you’re a guy in the field in some way or another. A guy of use to them at the very least. Am I right?’

He puts his fork down, slurps some more coffee. He may not have cleaned his teeth in a few days.

‘Yeah,’ he goes, ‘but I talk too much. It fits with the drinking and falling in love.’ And he laughs at that. I laugh too.

He says, ‘Some of the guys I work with at the university, some of them come and go, you know? I’m in communications, signals. The uni here is a bit of a hub, you know? We can pick up all sorts of stuff, push the envelope a bit with some of the tech smarts we have. Everyone is a little interested in us – Russians, Brits, Israelis,’ and he laughs again.

I laugh, let him roll on.

‘So much shit flying around Europe, Ireland at the one end and Russia at the other, and we can see a lot of it, man. If we want to, you know? What I’m telling you – and I shouldn’t be telling you anything – is that we have some guys come and go, some of those guys you were referencing, you know?

‘They like to use some of the equipment we use, like to piggyback on some of the licences we have to get them into places that it’s not so easy to get to otherwise, gain access to some of the material we can see, you know? We’re basically academics profiling applications for high comms stuff, but if you wanted to see that stuff as potential assets for the US, as ears and eyes, then you could call it that. Explains a lot of the funding that comes our way, you know, from the State Department, you know? Basically, what I’m telling you Aloysius, is that some of our visitors don’t always travel under their own names.’

Tall Marianne is back, fast finishing her breakfast. She always tells people she has a great appetite for pretty much anything that can be put into one’s mouth.

‘Cutting-edge work by the sounds of it, Karson,’ I say. ‘And how does this link back to me?’

Karson slurps some more. He looks at Tall Marianne, looks at me. He shrugs.

‘You got some ears on you,’ he says. ‘Eyes and ears. On you in Dublin, on what’s going on over there, on what you’re doing over there, what you’re doing in other places.’

I shake my head, acting confused. I know some of this, I know Imelda and Martin asked for me to be tracked. I also know Imelda called it off after I came on board, but I’m not making any confessions to this guy.

I say, ‘What do you mean?’

He shakes his head, laughs.

‘Aloysius,’ he goes, ‘listen buddy, us two didn’t think we’d ever see you again. I haven’t come looking for you and I’ve never tried to get in touch with you, okay?’

‘Yeah, why would you?’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘T Marianne wanted to see if I could find you, asked me a favour, wanted to know if you had died or some shit, after she found out that car she gave you never moved. I did a little search, checked out a couple of records. We have good equipment man, I’m telling you. So, yeah, there you were. On records, in Dublin. And these records, you know, they had been opened and compiled by some of the guys we’ve been talking about, you know? And they had a lot of detail and shit, you know? Like they really had been tracking your ass.’

‘Okay,’ I go. ‘Well, I’ve travelled a lot, done some stuff I shouldn’t have. I’ll be one of thousands of people they’re keeping an eye on. No biggie.’

Karson nods. ‘Yep,’ he goes, and eats his last bit of toast. ‘You could think of it that way.’

And he looks at me, nods again.

And I say, ‘But?’

He goes, ‘Listen Aloysius. I’m not talking bullshit. I’m not too interested in bullshit. I just want you to know I’m doing you a favour. I’m doing you a favour because this woman here – who loves the fucking hell out of you – told me thirty minutes ago that she wants me to tell you this stuff. So I’m just telling you. You do what you want with it.’

I look at her and she’s embarrassed, blushing, munching bacon.

‘I’ve heard all this,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know what to do but it was better that you heard it than you didn’t hear it, right?’

I go, ‘Right. Thanks.’

He goes, ‘In the end, it’s probably pretty meaningless to you, but there are eyes and ears, okay.’

I go, ‘Okay.’

‘These guys,’ he says, ‘they know you’re working off a list, okay?’

And my stomach does some kind of tiny roll.

I go, ‘Okay,’ try to give nothing away.

He goes, ‘And here’s the rub.’

Oh shit.

I go, ‘What?’

‘The list has four names. Two names are scored off. The last name? The word is you’re not going to like it.’

The details this guy knows are incredible, worryingly bang up-to-date. I have no idea if he’s pulling some move on me, but he knows stuff he should not know, stuff even I do not yet know. At least I know that on one impressive, dangerous level, he is not bullshitting.

I go to speak, feeling dazed, totally vulnerable, and all I say is, ‘You couldn’t know … ’

‘Ya think? Ya fucking think, man? Hey buddy, the guys I know, they look at the world from the inside out, from the screens outward, from the phones outward. They don’t have to get inside anything anymore, they are fucking inside before you come along and press buttons and make calls and look shit up. You can assume they are above your head in drones and satellites 24/7. There is information fucking overload going on. There is more intel out there on people than they know what to do with.

‘The shit I’m telling you is so fucking minor, so fucking unimportant, that it isn’t even held in a secure file. It’s in a file called “Ireland”, and it’s got a fucking laughing leprechaun as an icon, you get me?’

‘Right.’

He goes, ‘You go on the dark net and you think you’re hidden? Man, you go on the dark net and you’re more interesting, that’s the truth. There is no hidden. There’s just degrees of how interesting you are. You and your “hard solving”, yes? You and your five stars for doing what you do all over Europe, yes? Guys I know are sitting around watching stories like yours like it’s a fucking soap opera, taking bets on who you will be sent to get next. You think you operate in secret? You’re fucking crazy, man. I heard you just made an old man bleed to death. I heard you spent a day beside someone’s pool and watched them drown. I heard you pulled some guy into a damn dog pit and stood there as he got eaten up. You don’t have any secrets, man. Now isn’t that supremely refreshing?’

I go, ‘Yeah.’

Tall Marianne starts humming to herself.

And I don’t answer, just drink the last of my coffee.

He goes, ‘You want me to tell you the name on that new passport?’

And I say, ‘Yes.’

He goes, ‘Marcus Tempo.’

I go, ‘Right.’

He goes, ‘You going to drink whiskey and fuck your boss again?’

I go, ‘Right.’

He goes, ‘Right.’

I say, ‘So finish the conversation.’

‘What?’

‘Tell me the rest.’

‘What rest?’

‘The last name on the list.’

‘I don’t know, man, that’s the truth. It’s written somewhere, not on anything that can connect to the Internet. But the guys picked up chatter, some stuff about it being a hard decision at the end, that it’s a betrayal and that they can’t tell you until the time is right. Said you’re not going to like it, said you’ll have to be bluffed into it. I guess these people – this agency you work with – it wants to close all this shit off, Aloysius. This damn list is final, then it’s over, you know? Whatever that means to you, is whatever it means. Be careful who you trust.’

And he goes to drink up and there’s no coffee left.

He says, ‘I guess if you’re the guy doing the what you call “hard solving”, you can at least be sure that number four isn’t you. Or at least that there’s no sign of you on any list, not yet anyways. I’d stay wide awake to that possibility, though. Be careful who you trust, my friend.’

I smile at Karson.

‘Cheers,’ I say.

He goes, ‘If you get the last name, call me. I’ll tell you the direction of all this shit. Or don’t call me. I don’t give a fuck.’

I say, ‘Cheers.’

‘Hey no problem,’ he says. ‘Let’s go get drunk and baked and not talk about it any more.’

*

I sit at the
Sunflowers
, try to find a simple, uncluttered place in my head. Everything that had been blossoming feels now like it’s closing, everything that had fitted is now gripping too tight.

I’ve gone from being all fully charged to flat. I’ve been hit by a smart missile, a know-nothing boy from the sticks, hit around the head by a professor. My ducking and diving has just been a dance for some to watch, a stupid little set of moves watched by judges who couldn’t help themselves but laugh.