Jig (60 page)

Jig said, ‘A brass band would have made less noise. Put your hands in the air where I can see them, then have a seat.'

Pagan did as he was told. He sat down inside the hollow and stared at Jig, who had a gun in either hand. Pagan wondered if this were the place, this lonely ridge overlooking a lonely house, where he would die.

Until he saw the yellow school bus rolling towards the clearing and understood he was meant to open fire on the vehicle as soon as it stopped, John Waddell had never thought of himself as a terrorist. In his world, terrorists were always Arabs who blew up airports and planes, or IRA fanatics who planted bombs inside supermarkets and pubs. But suddenly, as if he had been given a stunning insight into his own condition, he realised he was no better than any of the thugs who committed these outrages. He wasn't a soldier in a credible struggle, he wasn't in the glorious vanguard of Ulster freedom, he wasn't even a
man
, because a man didn't fire an automatic weapon at a crowd of kids in a school bus. It was a monster's work. All the sensations that had been depressing him since White Plains became more strident, more compelling. What business did he have firing a fucking gun at a bunch of kids?

He watched the bus pull into the clearing and stop, and he heard the hiss of the automatic door as it slid open. He was conscious of a light blue car behind the bus, smoke from its exhaust rising into the frigid air. There was a man inside the car although Waddell hardly registered this fact because he was drawn to the faces of the children at the windows. A boy of about eleven appeared in the door of the bus, satchel over his shoulder. He was about to step down from the doorway but he hesitated, turning to say something to a friend. There was laughter and a good-natured insult and somebody tossed a rolled-up ball of paper at the boy's head.

Houlihan, thus far unseen by the kids in the bus or the driver of the blue car, was standing with the M-16 in firing position. Waddell was screaming inside. He wanted to stop this whole thing before it started, but now Seamus Houlihan was snapping at him to stand up and start firing, and the hell of it was he couldn't move, didn't want to move, wanted to remain crouched in the damned shrubbery and make believe this was all a nightmare. The kids all had the same face, and it was the face of John Waddell's own dead son, and he couldn't bear the image.

He looked up at Houlihan, and he shook his head.

‘Get up. Get up on your fucking feet, God damn you.'

Waddell stared at the big man with his mouth open.

‘Fucking eedjit,' Houlihan said. He poked Waddell in the chest with the barrel of the weapon and John Waddell understood that Seamus, his friend, his avenging angel, his mentor, would blow him away without even thinking about it.

Houlihan pulled the gun back, swung around, and opened fire. From the bushes at the other side of the clearing Rorke and McGrath began their volley as well. Waddell watched in white terror as the windows of the yellow bus exploded. He heard the shrieks of children and saw the boy in the doorway fall forward, lying half-in and half-out of the vehicle. He saw the driver of the vehicle slide out of her seat and disappear in a sudden spray of blood. The firing continued, on and on and on, until there wasn't a window remaining on the bus and the yellow panels had been riddled with holes. But now Waddell understood something else. The man in the light blue car was shooting back. He'd crawled out of the car and was concealed now behind the vehicle, a pistol in his hand, and every so often he'd send a shot into the trees. Houlihan changed his magazine and started firing again. Waddell stared at the bus. It was shattered, a great yellow shell, and now there were no faces at the windows, only jagged slices of glass hanging in frames at angles that defied gravity.

Houlihan made a roaring sound. A battle-cry. He was firing at the blue car with a savage determination. Waddell heard the shots ricochet off the metal. Then he stared down at the gun in his hands. He realised he should have shot Houlihan. It was the sane thing to do. He should have turned the weapon on the big man before all this started, but now it was too damned late.

Houlihan grunted, fired, his whole body shaking from the relentless kick of the gun. Waddell saw the blue car catch fire and explode all of a sudden. One moment it was there, the next it had gone up in a cloud of flame and smoke. And then there was a secondary explosion, louder than the first, and the clearing was showered with glass and plastic. The driver of the car lay face down some yards from the yellow bus.

It was over.

The clearing was silent. The whole afternoon, so sulphuric and cold, was terribly silent.

John Waddell dropped his weapon. He felt Houlihan grab him and pull him to a standing position. He was cuffed roughly by the big man, stinging blows that made his eyes water and brought blood into his mouth.

‘You're a dead man, Waddy,' Houlihan said.

John Waddell said nothing.

Houlihan had an odd little grin on his face. ‘It's war, John. It's this bloody war. And I can't have a man beside me who doesn't have the guts for it. You understand that, don't you?'

John Waddell nodded his head slowly. He looked in the direction of the dead boy who lay in the doorway of the yellow bus. His satchel had burst open and sheets of coloured paper spilled from it. Waddell thought he'd never seen anything as sad as that. He turned back to look at Houlihan, and he understood, in the final moments of his life, that Seamus was fighting a war that he never wanted to see finished. For as long as he lived, Seamus Houlihan would never be able to liberate himself from this conflict. He was trapped in violence because he was consumed by his love for it.

‘Maybe you'll go to heaven,' Houlihan said. He'd taken his pistol from his belt, and he pressed it against John Waddell's heart, and he pulled the trigger quickly. Waddell fell into the shrubbery, where he lay with his face turned up towards the sun.

23

New Rockford, Connecticut

‘What now?' Frank Pagan asked, looking up at Jig who stood on the rim of the hollow.

Jig's expression was grim. ‘I'm thinking of shooting you,' was what he said in the voice Pagan had heard a thousand times on tape. The accent was not exactly Irish. Nor was it American. It came somewhere between the two. It was the accent of a man who was neither one thing nor the other, as if he'd spent much of his life wandering indecisively between two nations. And the face, which Pagan had tried to imagine so many times and which he'd glimpsed only briefly before at St. Finbar's, was handsome and yet inflexible, almost as if all the muscles were locked in place. It was not the kind of face one could envisage smiling in a relaxed fashion, or in calm repose. The eyes were vigilant and guarded, the mouth defiant. Jig reminded Pagan right then of something wild, a creature forever conscious of traps and pitfalls, who sees enmities everywhere, who expects hostilities. But there was another quality, one so hidden it was difficult to detect at all, and Pagan had a problem defining it. In some other circumstances, he thought that this face – presently so hard and set – might be capable of showing sensitivity and concern. But not now. Certainly not now.

‘Let me know what you decide,' Pagan said.

‘However, I'm not in the habit of shooting defenceless people, Pagan. Unless they're guilty of crimes against Ireland.'

‘Am I included in that category?' Pagan asked. He stared past Jig and up into the trees through which the afternoon sun created white flickers. He had to gather his thoughts, all his resources, and decide how he might turn this situation to his advantage. It was a possibility that seemed ludicrously, laughably, slim.

‘As far as I'm concerned, you're just another English policeman. And that's enough to make you guilty.'

‘What about two young Cambodian girls in a house in Bridgehampton? What crimes had they committed against Ireland?'

Jig was quiet a moment. ‘They were killed by a man called Linney.'

‘It's not what the FBI believes, Jig.'

‘I don't give a damn what the FBI believes. The same applies to you, Pagan. I've never been interested in what people say or believe about me.' The wind, blowing down through the trees, stirred Jig's tightly curled hair almost as if a hand had passed over his skull. Pagan thought he had never seen a person so tense as this one. You could almost see glowing wires just beneath the surface of his skin.

‘The FBI also believes you were responsible for the explosion in White Plains.'

‘What explosion?'

‘You've been out of touch, Jig. Somebody blew up a Presbyterian church in White Plains. They made a pretty thorough job of it. Then they called the FBI to claim it as an IRA score. And where the FBI is concerned, you're the only IRA factor in the vicinity, ergo you're the one responsible.' Pagan looked to see what effect this information would have on Jig.

Jig's expression didn't change. ‘I've never been in White Plains,' he said, without any emotion in his voice. ‘I'd have no reason to blow up a church, Presbyterian or otherwise.'

‘They also claimed you killed a man called Fitzjohn in Albany.'

‘I get around, don't I?'

‘It would seem so.'

‘I haven't been in Albany either.'

‘Tell that to Leonard Korn. I understand he's a good listener.'

Jig stared at Pagan. ‘I don't know of any authorised IRA activities in this country that would involve bombing. It doesn't make sense.'

‘My feeling exactly,' Pagan said. ‘What makes it even more interesting in the case of Fitzjohn is that he was a member of the Free Ulster Volunteers. But it gets better still.'

‘I'm listening.'

Pagan said, ‘Ivor McInnes is in New York City.'

‘And what is that holy man doing there?'

‘I'm not absolutely sure. But I have the feeling he could clear up some of the mystery if only he would talk. Ivor can be very close-mouthed when he wants to be. He knows a hell of a lot more than he's prepared to say. Whatever's going on, Ivor has a dirty finger in it somehow.'

Jig's face changed slightly. The set of his mouth altered, but Pagan couldn't tell what it meant. He even wondered if any of what he was talking about interested Jig remotely. The man's mind was seemingly elsewhere, his manner distracted. It was the house below, Pagan realised. All Jig's focus was fixed there.

Then Jig turned to look at Pagan. ‘I'm wondering why you're here on your own, Pagan. I'm wondering if maybe there aren't more of you up in these hills and you're sitting here smugly waiting for them to turn up. Don't you have a little gang of associates? On Canal Street, you said you had a score of men.'

‘I dumped the Bureau.'

‘Did you now?'

‘They want your balls nailed to Leonard Korn's bulletin-board. Which made me a little unhappy. I have my own ideas about justice.' Pagan paused a moment. ‘They're turning over every stone they can find. It has all the makings of a massive manhunt. After all, you're a killer. And you can't hide under the umbrella of Irish romanticism, not after the barbarism in White Plains.'

‘Irish romanticism,' Jig said disdainfully. ‘There's no such thing, Pagan. Is Belfast romantic? Are checkpoints romantic? Do you find anything enchanting in the sight of a country that's dying from schizophrenic hatred?' He looked down at the guns he held in both hands, turning them over, examining them in a thoughtful way.

He said, ‘So the mighty FBI is looking for me, is it? I don't know if I should feel proud or humbled by the notion.'

‘Nervous would be a more practical response,' Pagan said. He was wondering how he could get the weapons away from Jig. Idle speculation. There was no way in the world Jig was going to be fooled by a surprise attack.

Jig pressed the barrel of one of the guns against the side of his face and scratched. ‘You could be telling me a complete fairy-tale, Pagan. You could be sitting here right now and making all this up. You could be thinking that some convoluted story about bombings and murder and an FBI manhunt might fluster me enough that I'll call off my mission and go home quietly. You obviously know what I'm looking for in this country, and it would suit your purpose – and your Government's – if I didn't find it. No money, therefore no weapons. The Cause would be strapped for cash, which would delight Whitehall.'

Pagan shook his head. ‘The only way I want you to go home is handcuffed to me.'

Jig smiled for the first time. ‘How do you propose to accomplish that?'

Pagan stood up. ‘Let me put it another way, Jig. If you decide to go down to see Kevin Dawson, you're dead. You're finished. There's absolutely no way in the world you're going to get within a hundred feet of that house without somebody blowing your bloody head off. I know that for a fact. Your only real chance is with me, Jig. I'm the only person who believes you're not the monster the FBI is itching to kill.'

‘And what makes you think so highly of me, Pagan?'

‘I know you. I've studied you. I know how you operate, and I know how you kill. I also know that you're out of your depth in this country, Jig. Too much is stacked against you here. This isn't your kind of operation. This isn't the old one-two, the quick in-and-out that you're used to.' Pagan made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘This isn't some future ambassador stepping out of his mews cottage and into his Jaguar. This is something else altogether.'

‘What exactly are you saying, Pagan? That I give myself up to you? I'm standing here with two guns in my possession and I'm supposed to give myself up to an
unarmed
man because he's got some intriguing stories to tell? Back to Britain and a cosy berth in one of Her Majesty's lodging-houses? I came here to recover some lost property, Pagan. I don't intend to go home without it.'

‘It isn't going to be a matter of just that, Jig. You're looking at the prospect of going home inside a plain wooden box. Take another look down at that house, Jig. There are two Secret Servicemen with guns they're just aching to fire. Be realistic.'