Run Before the Wind (19 page)

I explained.

"I'm sorry. Will, but I haven't seen Derek since London. I've talked with him once, briefly, but since the bomb in Berkeley Square he's been keeping a very low profile. There were rumors that they were after him, personally."

"I see. Well, if he should contact you, would you ask him to get in touch with Mark? It's very important."

"Of course, but it's unlikely that I'll hear from him. How are things in Ireland?"

"Damp. As usual. Paris?"

"Very nice, lately. Say, what are you doing New Year's Eve?"

"No plans, yet. My folks are coming to visit my grandfather for Christmas, but they leave before New Year's."

"Why don't you come to Paris?"

"Paris for New Year's?" Mark nodded and mouthed the word, 'go." Connie had already asked me to a party, and I had accepted, but I didn't hesitate.

"That sounds terrific."

"Wonderful! How long can you stay?"

"Not more than a couple of days. Things are going hot and heavy at the boatyard. Will you book me a hotel room?"

"Nonsense, you'll stay with me. I've got a lovely flat." She gave me the address.

"Bring your dinner jacket. We get terribly elegant in Paris."

"Okay." I didn't have a dinner jacket, but I had my new American Express card. We chatted for a moment longer, then hung up. I shook my head.

"She doesn't know how to reach him. But if she hears from him, she'll ask him to call."

"Well, that's something, anyway. Not to worry, we've got a few days yet." We headed back to the waiting boat, but he still looked worried.

On Saturday afternoon I went to see Connie and found Sister Mary Margaret there again. I had chatted with her briefly several times, now, and found her intelligent and, as a nun, disconcertingly attractive. I would catch myself trying to figure out what sort of body was hidden beneath the habit, and I think she suspected my thoughts once, because she blushed and left shortly thereafter.

"How goes it with the boat. Will?" Connie asked, when she had got me a drink.

"Very well, indeed, with the boat, but Mark hasn't heard from the sponsor for a while, and there's a payment coming due."

"Where is your Mr. Thrasher these days?" Sister Mary Margaret asked.

"The papers say he's dropped out of sight."

I was startled, then remembered that Connie had told her about Thrasher.

"I've no idea, and, apparently, neither does anybody else since the bombing in London."

"There's been another one," Connie said, handing me a newspaper. A restaurant in Chelsea had been ripped apart and two people killed.

"I don't understand those creeps," I said heatedly.

"What do they have to gain by killing innocent Londoners in a restaurant?"

The nun looked at me sharply.

"What makes you so sure they're innocent?"

"You mean they might have been after somebody in particular?"

"No, but they were English."

"And what does that make them guilty of?"

"They allow themselves a government that persecutes people in the North. When a people are fighting for their freedom as Catholics in Ulster are, the war has to be taken to the home of the oppressor. When England understands that the war will be taken to English cities and not just to Belfast and Deny, maybe they'll consider that they've been in Ireland long enough."

I couldn't believe I was hearing this from a nun.

"That's the sort of thinking that's behind things like the attack on the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics."

"If you like." She was reddening, now.

"Oh, Will," Connie broke in, "you mustn't get Maeve started on the British in the North."

The nun rose.

"I've got to get moving, so you needn't worry about a lecture."

Connie walked her to the door. Shortly, I heard the convent van drive away.

"Jesus, Connie, does she really believe all that stuff?"

"She's stifled at the convent. Will. She has no one to talk with about this sort of thing, so when she does the marketing she stops by and chats with me, lets off some steam."

"But does she really believe that terrorism is okay?"

Connie wheeled on me.

"Now don't you get started on something and somebody you don't understand."

"What's to understand? It sounded to me as though she was clearly taking a stand in favor of the murder of innocent civilians to achieve a political end."

"Isn't that what happens in any war? It's what the Germans and the British did to each other, murdered each other's civilians."

"It's not quite the same thing."

"Well, the civilians were just as dead." She held up a hand to stop me from speaking further.

"Now listen, I'm not going to argue politics with you, Will Lee. If you want a pleasant evening around here, just you stop it right now."

I knew what she meant by a pleasant evening, and I changed the subject very quickly. Later, she turned to me in the dark.

"Say, I've got a lovely new dress for New Year's; you'll love it--lots of cleavage."

I winced.

"Jesus, Connie, I forgot. You know my folks are coming at Christmastime--well, they're going on to Paris from here and have asked me to come with them. They called today. Do you mind?" I had not even thought about the lie; it just came rolling out.

"Oh. Well, sure, you'd better go, then."

The disappointment in her voice was clear. If I hadn't been such a shit I'd have felt like one.

I WOKE AT TEN the next morning to find the bed empty and a note saying she had gone to mass and was spending the day with her parents. I dressed and drove slowly back to the cottage, lured by the thought of the roast beef I knew Annie would be preparing.

Mark and Annie had a strong streak of English traditionalism in them, and never was it more apparent than when Annie put a joint of beef or a leg of lamb on the Sunday table. I stopped in Carrigaline and picked up the English Sunday papers. The Sunday Times and The Observer. We didn't see the papers often, but a nap after lunch and a browse through them seemed a pleasant prospect.

The smell of the cooking beef struck me before I was even inside the cottage. I closed the door.

"Hey, that really smells good!"

"Shhh!" Annie cautioned, sticking her head out from the kitchen.

"Mark's sleeping in." She pointed to a pad beside the phone.

"Your father called last night and asked that you call him back at that number."

She went back to her cooking and I called the international operator and asked for the number, which was to the apartment my parents kept in Atlanta. I waited somewhat nervously for the operator to call back. Neither of my parents used the long distance telephone with me very often, preferring to write and be written to.

I was worried that something might be wrong. The ringing of the phone jolted me.

"Hello, Will?" my father's voice came over the line, scratchy and faint.

"Hello, Dad, I'm afraid we haven't got a very good line. I'm sorry to call so early, but I thought it might be important." It was five hours earlier in Atlanta.

"Is something wrong?"

"Not really; we're all fine. But I had a call from a London newspaper yesterday. They knew about our dinner with Derek Thrasher and were calling to find out what I knew about him."

"What did you tell them?"

"I confirmed that we had dinner and that I hadn't met Mr.

Thrasher before that time or since; said that he was an acquaintance of yours and Jane's. They wanted to know how to get in touch with you; I said you were traveling in Ireland. I don't know how resourceful they are, but I doubt if they'll find you."

"Why would they be interested in a dinner that took place nearly a month ago?

"They wouldn't say. I had the impression they had some sort of story and didn't want to leak any details until they'd published.

Have you heard anything about him over there?"

"No, but I've just bought the Sunday papers. I'll go through them and call you back if there's anything. How are you and Mother doing?"

"We're just fine. You knew Jimmy Carter won the governor's race?" My father had been a strong supporter of Carl Sanders, Carter's opponent.

"Mom wrote me. I'm sorry about that; I know it'll cause some complications for you."

"Probably. Well, at least we won't have Lester Maddox there anymore. You knew he got elected lieutenant governor this time?"

Maddox was a racist clown who had caused great embarrassment for moderate Georgians such as my father.

"Yeah, I guess you won't be rid of him entirely."

"Listen, read the papers and call me back if there's anything worth knowing. Your mother isn't up yet, but she's dying to know any news about Thrasher."

I hung up and sat down with the papers. Mark appeared at the bedroom door, rubbing his eyes.

"What's going on? What's all the shouting about?"

"Sorry, Mark. I was talking to my father, and we had a bad line. He says he had a call from a London paper about Derek Thrasher. I'm just looking to see if there's anything in today's papers about him." I had to look no further than the front page of The Observer. In the lower right corner I was greeted by the headline:

FINANCIER SOUGHT BY PUBLIC PROSECUTOR

DOCUMENTS MAY MEAN CHARGES AGAINST DEREK THRASHER

Mark snatched the newspaper from me and stared at it.

Annie came in from the kitchen.

"Well, let us in on it. Mark."

He read aloud:

The Director of Public Prosecutions has expressed a keen interest in talking with mysterious financial wizard Mr. Derek Thrasher about exchange control violations and irregularities in Thrasher's company reports to the Inland Revenue over the last two years. The Observer has learned that an apparently disgruntled former employee of Mr. Thrasher, Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald Pearce, of Streatham, several days ago delivered a set of books from an investment firm principally owned by Mr.

Thrasher that are said to be different from the books previously examined by the Bank of England and the Inland Revenue. A spokesman for the Prosecutor would confirm only that information about Mr. Thrasher's business activities had been received, and, as a result, that the prosecutor wished to meet with Mr. Thrasher for "discussions" and sought to learn of his whereabouts. The spokesman denied that charges had been brought, though he declined to rule out that possibility in the near future.

Mr. Pearce worked as an accountant for Avondale Enterprises, said to be a company set up to invest profits of other Thrasher businesses in property and holiday resorts on the Continent. A spokesman for Avondale, who declined to be identified, confirmed that Mr. Pearce had been employed for some months by the company and that he had resigned a week ago, saying he wished to return to his native Ireland.

The significance of the documents now in the hands of the Prosecutor lies not so much in the dealings of Avondale, but, The Observer has learned, in the personal dealings of Mr.

Derek Thrasher himself. It is believed that the documents may shed light on how one of Europe's most reclusive and, it is rumoured, wealthiest businessmen conducts his affairs.

Mr. Thrasher has for some time been seen rarely in public, most recently in mid-November, when he dined at the Connaught Hotel in the company of Mrs. Genevieve Wheatley, widow of Mr. Winston Wheatley MP, Mr. William H. "Billy" Lee, former governor of the State of Georgia, USA, Mrs. Lee and their son, and Lady Jane Berkeley, eldest daughter of the

Duke of Kensington. Governor Lee, reached at his home in Atlanta, said that he had not met Mr. Thrasher before that evening, nor since; that he had been introduced to Mr. Thrasher at the dinner by his son, William H. Lee IV, apparently a friend of Lady Jane.

"We found him very pleasant company," Governor Lee said. He denied any business connection with Mr. Thrasher and said the evening was purely social in nature.

Two days following that dinner a car bomb was set off in Berkeley Square, outside a building occupied by a construction firm owned by Mr. Thrasher, and credit for the explosion was later claimed by the Irish Freedom Brigade, a radical offshoot of the Provisional IRA, who said they had a quarrel with the" company's hiring practices on several Northern Ireland building sites. It is believed that, because of the explosion and the possibility of threats on his life, Mr. Thrasher has since become even more reclusive. Prior to the explosion he apparently resided in a house adjacent to the office building, according to reports from people who know him, but now none of those people nor anyone else can say with any certainty even what country he now resides in.

The spokesman for the Director of Public Prosecutions said that it may be several days or weeks before a decision is made whether to charge Mr. Thrasher or his employees with violations of the law.

Mark stopped reading and sat down heavily.