Jig (62 page)

He tried to relax but Pagan came again, returning to his thoughts like a ghost you couldn't exorcise. He would have liked to see Pagan one more time, just one more time, and give the man a dose of some very bad medicine. He'd never trusted Pagan from the beginning, never warmed to the guy, and now he was filled with a churning need for revenge that might have to go unsatisfied unless he happened to run into the limey again. After all, hadn't Korn practically given the green light to the final solution of the Pagan problem?

‘Magoo thinks we screwed up, so he's giving us a little taste of exile. Call it a warning,' Bruno said.

Zuboric frowned. So far as he was concerned the assignment wasn't such a bad one and certainly couldn't be construed as a severe knuckle-rapping. After all, Kevin Dawson was the President's brother, and Magoo wouldn't take that fact lightly. On the other hand, the Director's inscrutability was legend. You didn't make it to the top if you were an easy guy to figure. Zuboric gazed up into the hills, then looked back at Tyson Bruno, who appeared quite uncomfortable.

‘Spooky landscape,' Bruno said. ‘What makes a guy want to live way out here anyhow?'

Zuboric shrugged. ‘Privacy, I guess.'

Tyson Bruno made a snorting sound of derision. It was clear he didn't think much of privacy. He tightened his drab plaid scarf at his neck and narrowed his eyes as he looked across Dawson's estate. In Zuboric's mind, Tyson Bruno was a perfect example of the old school, a graduate of the J. Edgar Hoover Academy for numbskulls. He was dependable up to a point, but not very inventive. Until Frank Pagan had come along, he'd been a rather reliable watchdog. Frank fucking Pagan. Ireland, fucking Ireland. He found himself wishing that the whole goddam island would sink under a tidal wave, drowning Frank Pagan with it and all the problems he'd laid, like so much crap, on Zuboric's doorstep. Problems Artie most certainly didn't need. He had a whole shitload of his own. Charity had started talking about some rich physician who was paying a lot of attention to her lately. How could Zuboric compete with that?

Zuboric walked between the trees. At his side, Tyson Bruno was scanning the landscape, his head swivelling on the thick stalk of his neck. He reminded Zuboric of a bullfrog in certain ways.

‘I could use a nip of gin,' Bruno said. ‘This damn cold is getting to me.'

Zuboric stopped quite suddenly. In the distance he'd heard something, a sound that never failed to raise the level of his adrenalin. It was the shrill siren of a police car, and it was growing louder, sending scared birds whining out of branches. Zuboric turned his face towards the road. He could see flashing lights, two small points a couple of miles down the road.

He leaned against the trunk of a tree and watched. The cop car was still blasting its siren as it swung into the driveway and went towards the house, where the two SS agents were already taking up a defensive position behind their car, weapons drawn. The police vehicle came to a halt, the siren died. It was all very quick. Two uniformed cops jumped out of the car. The SS men, trusting nobody, especially callers in uniform – who could easily have been fakes – emerged with their guns ready.

‘What the fuck,' Bruno said.

Zuboric, who knew the signs of trouble when he saw them, started to walk back towards the house. The cops and the agents, having apparently arrived at an understanding, had gone inside the house already. Even before Zuboric had reached the house, Kevin Dawson was hurrying out, the agents flapping behind him. All three got into the Secret Service car, which whipped past Zuboric at top speed and tore down the driveway, spewing dirt as it travelled.

Puzzled, Zuboric looked at the two uniformed cops. He flashed his ID and asked what was going on. The two state policemen appeared flustered and uncertain.

The older of the pair studied Zuboric's ID a second. His hand trembled.

‘I can't really describe it,' was what he said, and his voice, like his hand, shook.

Patrick Cairney shaded his eyes against the harsh afternoon sun that burned against the windshield of the Dodge Colt. He glanced at Pagan, who was behind the wheel, then looked down at the gun in his lap. As he did so, he remembered something Finn had once said about how the Cause would one day wither because it lacked nobility. And it lacked nobility because it had no heroes any more.
I'll make my own bloody hero out of Jig
, Finn said. My own bloody hero. What would Finn think of him now that he'd entered into this pact with Pagan? Would he call it an error of judgment, damned from the very beginning?

Finn's advice might have been to withdraw from the vicinity of Dawson until the heat had gone out of the situation and an approach to Dawson involved less risk. Maybe. But Finn would also have been angry about somebody maligning the Cause by blowing up a church. And Finn's outbursts of anger were fierce things to behold, as if the whole person were on the volcanic rim of exploding into lava. Finn might have done precisely the same thing as Jig was doing now.
Let's find out what bloody McInnes is up to and put a stop to that bastard once and for all
.

Cairney turned the gun over in his hand. He was unsure of the decision he'd made. Thoughts crowded him, cramped him. His sick father. The missing money. The possibility that Ivor McInnes might know something about it. The notion that Pagan could be setting a trap.

And Celestine. The last thought he wanted or needed right then. But there was her face, her face floating through his mind, the remembered feel of her mouth, the vibrant warmth of the woman. There she was, a bright, enticing intruder on his thoughts. He closed his eyes for a second. The retreat into darkness. The calm centre of himself. It wouldn't come. He couldn't find it.

He opened his eyes, looked at Frank Pagan's face as Pagan drove the winding road that led narrowly through the hills. He suspected Pagan was telling the truth about McInnes being in New York and the attack on the church, but he wasn't certain if Ivor McInnes knew anything about the money. How the hell could he? And how could the FUV have informed Pagan about the American trip anyway – something only he and Finn knew about?

This last question buzzed in his head. The obvious answer – that there was a traitor within the ranks of The Association of the Wolfe – was disheartening. But Frank Pagan might have been lying from start to finish, fabricating everything he'd said. He'd have to be wary from here on in, supersharp, each one of his senses prepared for some sudden occurrence – a move from Pagan, a car following too close behind, anything. If Pagan was as tenacious as he thought, this truce was going to be as substantial as ice in springtime. And if it melted – if it melted he'd shoot Frank Pagan without any further thought.

What had Pagan said?
Be a martyr? Isn't that what the Cause expects of you anyhow?
That remark had stung Cairney more than anything else, because Pagan had somehow managed to centre in on the one thing that was anathema to Jig – the idea of martyrdom, the notion that that was what the Cause was all about finally. To succeed you had to be dead. To win you had to have died a soldier's death. A loser's death. To win you had to have old women light penny candles to your memory in cold churches and old men drink Guinness over your sanctified name. The old Irish ways, your name immortalised in song and dredged up on every anniversary of your death, which was usually premature and always fruitless.

And something else Pagan had said had struck a chord inside him.
You're out of your depth in this country, Jig. Too much is stacked against you
. Maybe. But it didn't matter now. It was too late for it to matter. Finn had sent him into this, Finn with his hopes and ambitions, his conviction that Jig could do anything. He'd prove Finn right in the end. When he went back to Ireland with the money it would prove that Finn's decision to send Jig to America had been the right one all along, that Finn's faith in him was completely justified.

‘I wonder why Kevin Dawson left in such a hurry,' Pagan said. He was turning the Dodge into a sharp bend, driving in a fashion that was a little cavalier. The squeal of tyres on pavement seemed to delight him.

Cairney said nothing. He'd been just as curious as Pagan at the sight of Dawson hurrying out of the house and racing off in a car with the two Secret Servicemen. Shortly after, the FBI agents and the two state cops had also departed. If Cairney had been indecisive about his next step, then the knowledge that Kevin Dawson had left the house made his mind up for him. What was the point of watching an empty house when you had no way of knowing if and when Dawson was coming back?

Pagan swung the Dodge into a hairpin turn and looked at Cairney as he did so. ‘Does my driving make you nervous?'

Cairney shook his head. He wouldn't give the Englishman any small satisfaction. Pagan, as if Cairney's refusal to be upset rattled him, put his foot harder on the gas pedal and the car went whining into the next turn. Pagan took his hands from the wheel for a second. The speedometer was approaching seventy-five and the small Dodge was quivering.

Cairney pressed his gun hard into Pagan's ribs. ‘I see how it would suit you if we were pulled over by the highway patrol. But I don't think I'd care for that personally. Anyway, guns behave unpredictably at high speeds, Pagan. Keep that in mind. Never play games with me.'

Pagan caught the wheel, braked gently, and the car slowed. ‘I'll drive like a senile dowager,' he said.

Cairney pulled the gun back from Pagan's body. ‘So long as we have an understanding.'

Pagan nodded. ‘I'm sure we have,' he said. He was concerned about the tension in Jig, the extreme wariness. He didn't like the proximity of the gun either, the way Jig had it pointed directly at his side. He sighed, jabbed the radio, heard only static. Jig reached out and turned the radio off.

‘Let's get some groundrules straight upfront, Pagan. No noise. No music. No conversation. If we get to New York and I find out all this is bullshit, you're dead. On the other hand, if Ivor
does
know something, I decide the next step. Is that clear?'

‘Clear,' Pagan said, thinking how he wasn't cut out for this chauffeur business. He hated being in an inferior position.

On either side of the road now the hills were flattening, drifting down gently into meadows. Roadsigns appeared, indicating the thruway some miles ahead. Older signs pointed out backroads, cattle crossings, deer warnings. Everything was lit by the same filmy ivory sunlight, which had an illusory quality. Here and there an old farmhouse or barn was visible, framed by trees. There was a bucolic assurance about everything, a timelessness.

The road curved suddenly, a long sweeping turn that almost took Pagan by surprise. He braked lightly as he took the Dodge into the curve. And then, surprised by what he saw ahead of him, he slowed the speed of the car so abruptly that Jig was momentarily thrown forward. Not enough to make him careless with the gun, but enough to irritate him.

‘For God's sake, Pagan –'

And then Jig saw what it was that had so surprised Frank Pagan, and his first thought was that if
this
were the trap, then it was elaborate and cunning, involving all kinds of incongruous vehicles – a shattered school bus, a sedan that issued a thin cloud of smoke, a couple of state police cruisers, two ambulances, and several other vehicles all parked carelessly around the pathetic relic of the yellow bus, whose windows had been broken and side panels blitzed. Then Jig became conscious of something else, the sight of bodies lying in a clearing between the trees, with men in white coats hovering over them. The realisation that many of these bodies were unmistakably children caused his heart to freeze. He put his hand involuntarily up to his mouth.
Kids
. And his mind was spinning back to a street-scene he'd once witnessed in the Shankill Road area of Belfast when two kids, both bloodied from random gunfire, had been stretched out on a sidewalk, small casualities of a conflict that was beyond their understanding – but that had only been two kids, now he was staring at about ten, a dozen, he wasn't sure. He heard his own blood pound inside his skull, and ice laid a terrible film the length of his spine.

Pagan was travelling past the scene at about ten miles an hour. A cop came across the road and waved an arm impatiently at the Dodge, gesturing for it to pass and mind its own goddam business. Pagan's nostrils filled with the stench of burning rubber and gasoline.

‘Keep moving,' Cairney said. He poked the gun into Pagan's hip, concealing the weapon under the folds of his overcoat.

Pagan winced. ‘I've got no bloody intention of stopping. Do you imagine I'm going to try and turn you over to some local cop? Take that fucking gun away from me.'

Pagan pressed his foot on the gas pedal as the car drew closer to the cop. Smoke drifted thickly across the road, obscuring the cop for a moment. When it cleared the policeman was about fifteen feet away, still waving his arm. Pagan stared past him at the clearing. What the hell had happened here? It looked as if the schoolbus had been used for target practice. It was an unreal scene, yet the air of authentic tragedy hung over it. Those small bodies under sheets. The ambulance lights flashing. The men sifting around the wreckage. Pagan's eye was drawn quickly to an area at the rear of the clearing.

Artie Zuboric was standing there, ash-coloured, his usually upright body set in a slouch, as if the weight of whatever had happened in this place were too heavy for him. At the centre of the clearing, flanked by his Secret Servicemen and a group of cops, stood Kevin Dawson.

‘Jesus Christ,' Pagan said, horrified by the scene, by the awful expression on Dawson's face.

Jig, who had also recognised Dawson, asked, ‘What the hell's going on here?' And his voice was hushed, his question phrased in a tone Pagan hadn't heard from him before.

Pagan barely had time to absorb the whole situation before the scene dwindled in the rearview mirror and was finally lost beyond a curve in the road. But the look on Dawson's face stayed with him. It was that of a man shattered, a man bewildered by events that defy description, someone who has seen his world tilted on its axis.