Now and in the Hour of Our Death (44 page)

“But you've other things for me now, haven't you?”

“Like what, for Christ's sake?”

“More details.”

“Like what?” Sammy sat heavily on the wooden chair.
“Like what?”

“You said you'd been ordered to get stuff ready. What stuff?”

“Christ. Do you want me to take you out to the big shed and show you?”

“No. Just tell me. I'll believe you, Sunshine.”

“Five hundred pound of ammonal…”

“How much? Holy shite.”

“Five hundred, and I'd to steal a tractor to carry it.”

“Had you, by God?”

That made the bugger sit up and take notice.

“And a station wagon. I've just been painting it black.” He showed Spud paint-stained fingers.

The policeman fished in his inside jacket pocket and produced a notebook. “What's the plate numbers of the tractor and the wagon?”

“HKM 561.”

“And the wagon?”

“LKM 136.”

Spud scribbled, blew out his breath, patted Sammy's knee, and said slowly, “Jesus, Sammy, but you've done good. It is going to be a big one all right.”

“I told you, didn't I?” There was a hint of pride in Sammy's voice, and that wee bit of praise went a long way. Sammy had needed someone to tell him he'd done well, and more; he wanted Spud to reassure him that promises would be kept. “I've kept up my end. It's up to you now.”

Spud stood and offered his hand. Sammy looked at it suspiciously. The peeler had never offered to shake hands before.

“You get me the date, Sunshine, and you're on your way. That's a promise.”

Sammy took the hand, knowing that to an Ulsterman a bargain sealed with a handshake was as binding as one stamped and sealed before a High Court judge. “I told you. I'll know by tomorrow.”

“Phone me.” Spud released Sammy's hand. “And if you can't get through, do you remember what I told you about the dead-letter drops?”

“Aye. Them secret places I can leave you a note.”

“Use the one under the Celtic cross in Ballydornan churchyard.”

“Why won't I be able to get through to you?”

Spud rose. “I'm going to be just a wee bit busy for the next few days.” He walked to the door. “I'll see myself out—and, Sammy, if anyone has seen me, you tell them it was a routine visit … looking for Eamon.”

“I will,” Sammy said. “I just hope nobody did.”

“Another wee thing.”

“What?”

“You're getting out. You've my word on that…”

“I should fuckin' well hope so.”

“After the Strabane raid.”

“What?”
Sammy knew he sounded like one of the altar-boy trebles in his chapel on a Sunday at Mass.
“After?”

“If you vanish before, do you not think your friends'll suspect, call the whole thing off?”

“I suppose.”

“And we want your Active Service Unit, Sunshine. We know who they are.”

“You what? Away off and feel your head.” The policeman was bluffing, trying to trick Sammy. He wasn't going to fall for it.

“We've known about the O'Byrnes for years. Their da was in the IRA. Cal and Erin went into the family business with him. We nearly got them when we nailed Eamon Maguire, but we've never been able to pin anything on them. Nothing that would stand up in court. We want them badly, so we have to get them committing such a serious crime that a hundred lawyers couldn't get them acquitted. This raid's our best shot. We can't afford to scare them off.”

Sammy's hands trembled, but to his surprise he felt a kind of relief. If what Spud said was true, that he already knew about the O'Byrnes, then Sammy wasn't really grassing about them. Not really. And the bit about no lawyers getting them off? That meant an arrest for sure. Erin's life would be spared.

“Get me the date and go on the raid with them. I'll get you out.”

“Look”—Sammy scuffed his feet on the linoleum—“just say it is the O'Byrnes, and I'm not saying it is, so I'm not…”

“You don't need to, Sammy. We know.” Sammy heard the absolute certainty in the man's voice.

“Why not lift them as soon as they come here to pick up the stuff in the shed? Nobody'd get hurt.” And that included Sammy. Better Erin alive in jail than—

“It's not what the higher-ups want. I've talked to my bosses since you phoned. Told them there was likely a big one coming. They're embarrassed as hell about the breakout. They want to send a message. It's not up to me.”

Sammy understood only too clearly what the E4A man was saying. Corpses didn't need lawyers. He could see Erin, bloody, torn, dead. Had he the guts to confess what he'd been doing to the O'Byrnes so they'd cancel the raid and she'd be safe?

“Sunshine, I've taken a chance telling you this, and I'm telling you because we're friends. I trust you, and I don't think you'll try to play the double agent and tip them off.”

Shite. Could the bloody peeler read Sammy's mind? Friends. He'd come to rely on Spud's friendship for the last six months, and now they were so far down this road that the E4A man was Sammy's only hope of staying alive. Telling the O'Byrnes would be great for his conscience, but he'd be signing his own death warrant.

“I'd not be that fuckin' stupid,” he said.

“And I'll look after you, Sammy. All you'll have to do is tell one of the officers you're Sunshine.”

“How can I tell anyone anything when you buggers start shooting?”

“Have you a green scarf?”

“Aye.”

“Wear it. I'll have my people well briefed.”

“You'd fuckin' well better.”

Spud clapped Sammy's shoulder. “I will.”

Sammy grunted.

“Right,” Spud said. “I'm off.” He grinned at Sammy. “I've a lot to do … and that includes getting a ticket to England for a friend of mine.”

Sammy barely heard the door close or the car pull away. England. He'd done it. He was going. As he waited for his breathing to slow, he savoured the thought. England. But, fuck it. At what price? He'd sold his soul. He'd sold Erin. He was a fuckin' Judas.

But even if he had exaggerated his certainty about Strabane, he'd forced Spud to commit himself. And he had, by God, he had. Sammy was convinced he was going to have his suspicions confirmed tomorrow, and if he had guessed wrong, one phone call would soon set that right. What the policeman was interested in was a big raid and who was going to make it. The O'Byrnes.

He didn't want to think about it now. At least he'd be alive to feel guilty if he survived. He'd hoped he could get out before the attack, hadn't foreseen the one snag that Erin might cancel the thing if Sammy disappeared. Spud had been onto that like a flash. Sammy was going to have to go, knowing the Security Forces would be waiting.

He saw a long butt in an ashtray, lifted it, and struck a match, seeing how the flame shook as his whole body shuddered. He inhaled, took no pleasure from the smoke, but he was going to finish it before he went back in the shed to complete the job on the station wagon.

Was there no way to stop Erin from going? None at all? An idea began to form, but he couldn't quite understand. It had something to do with him having to take part. He worried at the thought, but his mind refused to focus.

The cigarette was nothing but a tiny stump, the burning tobacco hot on his lips. He chucked the butt back in the ashtray, not bothering to crush it out. Fuck it, he'd go and see to that bloody wagon.

He let himself out to walk back to the shed, pausing to look round in a full circle to see if anyone was near. Anyone who could have been watching.

From above his head, he heard a plaintive “pee-wit, pee-wit” and looked up to see lapwings slowly straggling across an eggshell-blue sky. There was something dark higher than the flock, hovering, head to the wind, tail feathers fanned.

It was a kestrel waiting in ambush.

Sammy watched as the hunter closed its wings and stooped, plummeting down the sky. “Look out,” he called, as if his warning could do a damn bit of good. Sammy heard the “thump” and saw the burst of green feathers as the kestrel struck. Royal Ulster Constabulary uniforms were a darker shade of green. The poor bloody lapwing couldn't have known what hit it. Locked together, hunter and prey fell into the next field, and from there he heard the falcon's shrill, “kek-kek-kek,” the predator's cry of triumph, and he pictured the victim, body broken, its blood already congealing on the warm ground.

 

CHAPTER 37

TYRONE. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1983

The blood where he'd nicked himself shaving had clotted hours ago. Davy touched the scab under his nose and peered in a mirror hanging from the back wall of the tumulus. He frowned at his reflection. Deep lines from the sides of his nostrils ran down to the outer corners of an upper lip, which seemed to be shorter now that his moustache was gone. He'd had the thing for thirty years. Taking it off this morning hadn't seemed so difficult to do, but now he felt as if he'd lost an old friend.

“You look about ten years younger,” McGuinness said from where he sat on his cot.

Davy grunted and ignored the remark, although there was some truth to McGuinness's words now that Davy's thinning hair had been dyed auburn with Clairol. When he put on the plain-lens granny glasses to complete his disguise, he looked his forty-seven years again.

It didn't matter a damn how old he looked as long as the photographs taken by a young man Eamon had brought from Newtownstewart at noon would do the trick. Davy's forged passport and Canadian driver's licence were to be delivered on Friday.

They'd better be here by then, because before he'd left with the photographer, Eamon had said that on Saturday they'd all be heading for Dublin and the shelter of the Provos based there. Davy'd be only a plane flight away from Fiona. He hoped he could phone her from Dublin. Hearing his voice would unsettle her, but not be as big a shock as turning up in person, clean-shaven, auburn-haired, and hardly looking at all like the man she'd known.

Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

He wasn't the man she'd known years ago. Back then, when they'd first met, he'd been sustained by his rigid faith in the Cause, embarrassed in her presence by his lack of schooling. Even before he'd been jailed, that faith had faltered, tottered, and collapsed, leaving a vacuum in his soul that no religion could fill. He'd only had Fiona and her unshakeable belief that he could change to sustain him.

She'd been willing to understand why he'd fought and had never wrapped up her disapproval but didn't keep harping on about it. She'd been able, at least at first, to forgive him. Had she forgiven him for insisting on the one, last raid at Ravernet? He believed with all his heart she had and would tell him when he saw her—soon, very soon.

From the mirror, his blue eyes stared back and told him, despite his repudiation of the violence, some of the old Davy lived on. Some of him would never be altered. He still believed in Irish freedom, but not at the cost the Provos wanted to exact; he believed in friendship, he believed in keeping his word, and he believed in his devotion to the only woman he'd ever loved.

She'd been certain he could change, and—he smiled at his bare lip and auburn hair—he had, and not just in his appearance. He had a skill, carpentry; he'd built on her early tutoring and had read just about every book in the Kesh library—novels, biographies, some philosophy, Irish history. One of those books had said that a man's attitudes could only be altered by some shattering experience. Watching a little girl burn had torn at him and forced him to see the havoc he was creating, and not just for the victims of the bombings and shootings. He couldn't be the only one of the hard men who was revolted by what they were doing, who carried their guilt like millstones.

There must be men who felt the way he did, but they didn't include his friend Eamon or—Davy glanced over to where the man sat on his cot, arms folded, shoulders hunched one higher than the other, his good eye fixed on the stones of their sanctuary—Brendan McGuinness.

He must have seen Davy's questioning look. He stood, arms still folded. “If you've finished admiring yourself, I'd like a word with you, McCutcheon.” The man's voice had its usual harsh edge. He walked toward Davy.

Davy waited.

“You and me's had our differences.”

“We still do, and no amount of you preaching at me's going to change that. You and I are never going to agree.”

“We both agree Ireland should be free.”

Davy hesitated and then said slowly, “I'll grant you that.”

“Whatever way you cut it, we're both on the same side.”

Davy shook his head. “Not anymore. Not since you sent me out to blow up an army patrol and I killed a farmer and his family.”

McGuinness shrugged. “Accidents happen. If we're going to get the Brits out, we have to hit them and keep hitting them.”

Davy wondered what, if anything, drove the man other than hatred and an overweening lust for revenge. He'd not rest until Northern Ireland was a heap of corpses, and even then he'd not be satisfied. Davy said, “Maybe
you
have to. I've had enough, and in case you've forgotten Sean Conlon trusted me. He gave me permission to quit after the Ravernet attack.”

“I didn't want you to go out on that one. I didn't think you were up to the job, and I was right. You let us down and got the pair of us arrested.”

“Do you think I don't know that? I've had nine bloody years to think about it.” And, he thought, nine years to ask myself, why did I go to Ravernet when Fiona didn't want me to, nine years to try to work out who I was then, who I am now? Some kind of Mr. Hyde becoming a gentler Doctor Jekyll? He hoped to God she would see the transformation when he got to Vancouver.