Run Before the Wind (17 page)

"And watch your language in front of a nun!" Connie came back. Both women collapsed in laughter.

I laughed in spite of my embarrassment.

"What is going on, here? Are you both pissed?"

This caused further gales of laughter.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"

the nun was finally able to say.

"If Mother Superior were here now, I'd be shipped off to foreign missions tomorrow."

"Ah, you'll have a lot to confess, you will," Connie said, and they burst out laughing again. It was contagious, and I laughed mindlessly with them. Connie came and sat on my lap, wriggling about.

"And what's that I feel, sir?" More riotous laughter.

"You well know what it is," I said, hoping to embarrass her into silence, but that only brought on more hysteria.

"So how's Mister Society?" Connie asked archly.

"What?"

"Oh, the darling of the aristocracy," Maeve/Sister Mary Margaret chimed in.

"Okay, you two, what's going on here?" Then I saw the London tabloid on the coffee table. Lady Jane Berkeley looked disdainfully straight ahead, accustomed to this unwanted attention, while I, new to the game, gaped blankly at the camera. I looked quite foolish.

"Oh, that," I said lamely.

"A blind date. We had dinner with my parents, in fact."

"Did you, now?" Connie came back.

"We did."

"And who fixed you up so nicely, then? Must have been Mark's friend, Mr. Thrasher, eh?"

I looked quickly at Maeve, who seemed to know everything and be vastly amused by it.

"No, she picked me up in a pub," I said, regaining my composure. I wondered how the hell Connie came up with that connection and quickly glanced through the article. The presence of neither Thrasher nor Genevieve Wheatley at the

Connaught had escaped the newspaper, though they both had escaped the photographer. There was a picture of Mrs. Wheatley at the time of her husband's death, and one of Derek Thrasher that must have been ten years old. His hair had been cut severely short at the time and he had worn glasses. I would never have recognized him had the photograph not been captioned.

"You'd be better on" in a pub than in that company," Maeve said, with a vehemence that surprised me.

"I wouldn't have eaten nearly as well, though." I was trying to think of a way to change the subject.

"And I wouldn't have seen my folks."

"Are they well?" Connie asked.

"Oh, yeah," I said, grateful for a way out of the Thrasher corner.

"Just great. Mother had already heard about you from Grandfather; she was very curious."

"Holy Mother of God!" the nun exclaimed, looking at the clock on the wall.

"I've got to make a move. Mother Superior will have my .. ." she stopped herself, and we filled the space with laughter.

She gathered herself together, said her goodbyes, still giggling, and drove away in the van.

"Are you sure that's a nun?" I asked Connie.

"She doesn't fit the image at all."

"She's just Maeve when she's with me. By the time she gets back to the convent she'll be Sister Mary Margaret again, don't worry."

"You shouldn't have told her about Thrasher, Connie. Mark asked me to keep that quiet. I shouldn't even have told you."

"Well, even if I hadn't told her, you're all over the papers with him, now, so it hardly matters. Why is Mr. Thrasher's sponsorship a secret, anyhow?"

"He seems to like to do things quietly at the best of times, and this isn't the best of times. Did you hear about the bomb in Berkeley Square?"

"Oh, yes, that was intended for his company, wasn't it?"

"Yes, and I don't think it would improve our relationship with the locals if there were a connection with Thrasher. Have you told anybody else about him?"

She shook her head.

"No, and your secrets are always safe with a nun. Mind you," she said, pulling me toward the sofa, "I'm not sure you'd be safe with that particular nun if I weren't about." She pulled me down on top of her. We were soon groping at each other's clothing and made love half dressed. I still had one leg in my trousers when we had finished and lay panting on the floor where we had fallen.

"I think you got all turned on having a nun about the place," Connie teased.

"I'm a Baptist, remember. My fantasies were never about nuns the way yours probably were about priests."

We got dressed, and Connie made coifee.

"What's Maeve's story, anyway? Why did she become a nun?"

"To tell you the truth, I've never really understood it. Had something to do with men, I think. When we were kids the boys were all after her; she's really a great looking girl. Donal O'Donnell had the most awful thing about her when we were about sixteen, but I think she preferred Denny."

"God, I can't imagine anybody being sweet on Denny. What a complete jerk! Donal's okay, but even he's been acting funny lately, while Denny ..." I stopped short of telling her about the incident at the cottage.

"Denny just hates Brits, that's all, and you're buddies with a Brit."

"But that's all so stupid, so futile. Jesus, Mark's project is paying Denny's wages for several months."

"All the more reason for Denny to hate him, because he's taking his money. Denny's and Donal's grandfather was a great republican, you know, during the troubles."

"No, I didn't know."

"His problem was, when the troubles were over, he kept settling his differences the way he had during the troubles. They say he burned a couple of fellows out, and eventually he was hanged for killing a man."

"By the government he had fought for?"

"Yes. And I think there's a lot of his grandfather in Denny."

THE PHOSPHORESCENT GLOW of the cathode ray tube flitted about the darkened room, changing slightly with the click of each key. Pearce stared into the computer terminal like a surgeon searching for a tiny, hemorrhaging vein to tie off. He shook his head angrily, removed the floppy disk from its drive, and inserted the next disk--a thin wheel of mylar plastic held rigid by a paper envelope.

It had taken weeks to be allowed to stay in the computer room after hours, but finally enough accounting work had piled up so that his offer to toil late had been received with enthusiasm instead of suspicion. Each night for nearly two weeks he had spent an hour rapidly posting figures into the computer's general ledger program and two hours searching the magnetic storage records. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he would know it when he saw it.

Now he thought he saw it. Since the labels on the disks were coded and the code book locked away, he had had to view each one individually to have an idea of its contents. The title of the disk now in the drive made him stop breathing for a moment.

FOREIGN EXCHANGE APPLICATIONS LEDGER, 1968-69

Pearce scrolled quickly through the figures and almost immediately began to see his opportunity. He found the operating systems manual in a desk drawer and referred quickly to its index. Then he went to the supplies cupboard, found a blank disk, inserted it into the number two drive, and carefully following the instructions in the manual, imaged the data from the original disk to the new one.

Now he had what he needed. He returned the original to its storage envelope and replaced it in the file drawer.

He inserted the new disk, invoked the systems editor and began to scroll slowly, carefully, through the columns of figures. Every fourth or fifth line, he changed a number, doubling or tripling it.

Pearce glanced at his watch. He wouldn't be able to finish this in one evening or two, but he had made a start. He switched on the printer and instructed the computer to make a hard copy of the first ledger. As the machine rapidly spat the eighty-column paper, he flipped through the continuous-form pages, viewing his handiwork.

He began to grow excited; it was going to work. A few more evenings of this and he would have a cooked ledger that would be devastating.

When the printout was complete, Pearce put the new disk into its envelope and taped it to the bottom of his center desk drawer, working it a couple of times to be sure the envelope did not foul as the drawer slide in and out. He gathered the printout into its original accordion folds, loosened his belt, tucked the sheaf of papers under his shirt and into his trousers and buckled up again.

With his coat and mackintosh on and left unbuttoned there was no noticeable bulge.

Still, on his way out of the building, he approached the security desk with some trepidation. He need not have feared. The guard was by now accustomed to his late hours.

"Still burning the midnight oil, Mr. Pearce?" the man asked.

"Yes, but I think I'll be done in a few days' time. All done."

"Good night, then. Mind how you go; wet out tonight."

"Good night." Pearce walked quickly from the building toward the car park, his heart pounding joyfully. He hoped his mother could feel his happiness, his triumph. After what she had gone through, it would be sweet satisfaction.

I SLEPT WITH the loaded riot gun under my bed for a week.

Nothing happened. No more visitors, no threats of any kind. I tucked the shotgun away into my clothing cupboard and left it unloaded, which would not have pleased Mark but made me more comfortable. I continued to see light green Volkswagens at every turn. I even saw the one with the OOP number plate once, parked in front of a cinema in Patrick Street, in Cork. If I hadn't been in a hurry to get Connie Lydon into bed at the time, I might have hung around until the movie let out to see who was the driver.

In spite of my loving Annie from afar, as it were, and lusting for Jane Berkeley from an even greater distance, I was attracted to Connie in a way that endured. She was always fresh and new to me whether we were at a hooley, in the tub together, or sailing Tosccma in Cork Harbour on a Sunday afternoon. Although I had never done anything as rash as to profess love, she seemed happy and made no demands for declarations, to my relief. Pressed into a corner, I probably would have told her anything she wanted to hear; I was much happier seeing her than not.

We continued to sail, even as the weather turned cooler, then cold, and ever wetter. It rains a lot in Ireland, almost any time of year, but in the late autumn it gets serious. We'd slip the mooring in front of the cottage, motor down past the Royal Cork Yacht Club, and sail idly around the big harbor, tying up at Dirty Murphy's, a pub on the eastern shore, and have a Guinness in front of a turf fire in the smoky lounge bar. Sometimes Connie would cook dinner aboard, and we would make love in the forepeak double berth and not pick up our mooring until nearly midnight,

having slipped past the moored yachts at the club on our way upriver.

Work on the yacht continued steadily. By mid-November we were ready to turn the hull, which had been constructed upside down and begin work on the interior structure and the decking.

The job went surprisingly quickly. We rigged a chain hoist from an overhead support system to one side of the hull, hauled it as far upright as we dared without having it fall on top of us, then braced it, took the chain hoist to eyes set in the wooden keel and, while everybody stood bracing with four-by-fours, let down until the hull was suspended upright from the chains, hanging just over the lead keel, which had been ordered from England. We then lowered the hull gently until the stainless steel keel bolts mated with the holes in the wooden keel and then screwed down the nuts tightly. The hull was left resting on its lead keel, which held it some six feet on" the floor, and the keel, in turn, rested on a sturdy little rail car, on which it would roll to the water at launching time. The chain hoist would not be powerful enough to lift the whole boat when it was completed, so the car had to be in place early. The hull was then braced all round with four-by-fours, which were chocked, and, finally, the chain lift was unhooked. The hull stood gleaming with its seven skins of varnish, three more still to come when the entire boat was nearer completion.

"Jesus," Mark said.

"She begins to look like a yacht, doesn't she?" It was the first time he had referred to the hull as "she."

"Have you decided on a name, yet. Mark?" I asked. We had once made a list of possibilities, but Mark had ignored it, saying that the proper name would emerge at the proper moment.

Mark grinned.

"She's going to cost 150,000 pounds sterling before she's all done. I think I'll call her Expensive."

I laughed.

"You'll certainly have the sympathy of every boat owner in the world."

The entire crew, except for Denny O'Donnell, stood and looked at her in awe for a moment. She was the largest vessel to have been built at Cork Harbour Boatyard: sixty feet in length, fourteen feet of beam, and eight and a half feet of draft. Denny O'Donnell was already out of the building before anyone else stirred. His twin looked sorrowfully after him. The brothers did not seem to be getting on well lately. Donal was now arriving in his own car, and rumor had it that he had moved out of his lodgings with Denny and found a place of his own. Denny had returned to his usual sour disposition, and Donal, while still friendly, seemed somehow detached.