The Dead Yard (21 page)

"Have you seen much of America so far, Sean?" Sonia asks.

"No, not really, flew into New York, saw a bit of that and then I came up to Boston looking
for work, hardly seen any of the country."

"And speaking of accents, sometimes it’s almost as if you sound a bit American," Sonia says
without suspicion. But still it sets the alarm bells ringing. It’s something I’m aware of. I’ve
been trying to fight against it but after five years living in America, of course I had lost some
of my Irish accent and colloquialisms. Regardless, I’d have to damp that fire immediately.

"Yeah, I pick up accents very quickly, it’s one of my failings. You should have heard me when
I lived in London. I was talking like Mick Jagger after a few months. I suppose it’s a symptom of
a weak personality. I’m definitely a follower not a leader," I mutter with a touch of meekness
and embarrassment.

Gerry nods wisely.

"Don’t worry about that," he says. "Can’t have too many leaders, Sean. Every group needs
followers. Men who will obey and do their duty. In any case, it’s nothing to be ashamed of—you,
me, Touched, and Jackie all came from the Old Country originally and only Touched has preserved
the exact timbre of his north Antrim dialect. He won’t be swayed by anyone."

Gerry laughs. Sonia looks at him with frustration.

"I’ve forgotten what I was going to say. Oh yes, now I remember. All I wanted to say is that
if he hasn’t seen much of America we should show him some things. We’ll have to drive out to the
Cape, although I know you hate the Cape, but it doesn’t matter and we’ll have to go there and up
to the cabin in Maine, or better yet, Nantucket."

"Count me out. I certainly do not fancy an autumnal ferry ride across the choppy water to
Nantucket. But certainly next month, my dear, we will have to go to Salem," Gerry says.

"What’s in Salem?" I ask innocently.

"It’s where they live on
Days of Our Lives,
" Jackie contributes. "Everything happens
there."

Gerry frowns at him and looks at me significantly as if to say "Can you believe he is seeing
my daughter?"

"Think they mean Salem, the witch place," I say.

Gerry shows his gleaming teeth, as disarming as Mack the Knife’s pearly whites.

"Salem has a wonderful Halloween parade. It’s very scary. Kit used to be afraid to go, didn’t
you, Kit?" Gerry says, making a ghostly groan.

"I thought there were no witches; wasn’t the whole thing a huge mistake?" I ask.

Sonia nods at me in agreement.

"It’s in very poor taste. If you think about it, it’s the site of an awful massacre of
innocents. It would be like holding a jokey parade to remember Auschwitz. I, for one, certainly
wouldn’t go there," Sonia says, huffing at Gerry for pooh-poohing the Nantucket idea.

Gerry knows he has to make amends.

"The cabin then. It’s lovely this time of year."

"Everything is nice about it, except the name," Sonia replies, not completely won over.

"How many times do I have to tell you? It wasn’t my doing. That’s the real name of the actual
place," Gerry says defensively and looks at me with an impish grin.

"Oh, the fucking suspense," I almost say sarcastically but instead: "What is the name?"

"The Dead Yard," Gerry announces with fiendish satisfaction.

"Unusual," I add, playing along.

"It used to be railway land. On the old Maine-Boston Atlantic line. And at certain points
along the tracks they needed a clearing to put damaged or unused rail cars, so they’d just fell a
big chunk of forest and leave the cars there in what they called a ’dead yard.’ Of course, the
train tracks are long gone now. Sad. Passenger trains don’t go to Maine at all now. You might
have noticed the old ruined rail bridge over the Merrimack in downtown Newburyport."

"I hadn’t noticed," I say quickly before Gerry can trot out
sic transit gloria mundi.
"But I have to agree with you, Mr. McCaghan, that it’s a real shame to see railways
disappearing."

Touched grunts, and I’m expecting an atypical contradiction of Gerry but instead he says: "If
you knew your Civil War history, Sean, you’d know that the Dead Yard was also a nickname for an
infamous Southern prison."

Gerry nods knowledgeably, but mercifully, before Touched can launch into a description of the
horrors of Andersonville, the maid comes in to clear the table.

Touched checks his watch and gives Gerry a look.

Gerry stands, pats his ample belly.

"Well, folks, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wee bit of business to attend to,
tempus
fugit
. I have to travel up to Portsmouth."

He gives Sonia a kiss and goes upstairs.

"I’ll take a shower," Jackie says.

"Jackie, upstairs, Gerry’s den, ten minutes, ok?" Touched says.

Jackie nods and excuses himself from the table.

Touched looks at Kit.

"Kit, you’re going to help your dad today? Is that right?" he says in a slightly clandestine
tone. Whether he’s unwilling to openly discuss things in front of me or the maid I’m not sure,
but he’s certainly holding back something.

"What are you saying, Touched? I should hurry up?"

"Love, I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do, but you don’t want to keep your da waiting,
do ya?"

Kit says nothing, walks slowly from the table and when she’s round the corner, bolts up the
stairs. Sonia goes into the kitchen and Touched looks at me with a conspiratorial smile.

"Listen, Sean, you came about the right time. Now you’re here we can do a few more things of
an operational nature. We can progress a wee bit faster."

"Why? Is there something on for today?"

"There is, as a matter of fact. Can’t discuss it here. Now go back to the guesthouse, shower,
shave, brush your teeth, and join me and Seamus in Gerry’s den ASAP. Ok?"

"Ok."

"And next time you come for breakfast, change out of your jammies, it’s bad fucking form,
mate."

The den was in a round tower constructed in a corner of the house facing the ocean. This was
where Gerry kept his private papers and conducted his most secret meetings. This, apparently, was
also where he kept his books.
Expand Your Word Power, Teach Yourself French, Teach Yourself
Irish, 100 Latin Aphorisms Everyone Should Know
. Titles like these showed where Gerry’s
florid language came from and also revealed perhaps why he was doing it. He was trying to impress
his half Quebecois new bride. Gerry was about fifteen years older than her and from a different
class, but he needn’t have bothered with any of this shite. I could tell that Sonia loved him and
no matter what happened she wasn’t going to be the weak link. Her attraction to Gerry was not
physical nor intellectual, but rather, romantic. Gerry was a poet of violence, a crusader for his
oppressed people, a bane for the wicked oppressor. Though if she was into Byronic freedom
fighters surely my dodgy foot made me a better match.

The maid had brought up a pot of tea and chocolate biscuits and then discreetly disappeared
down the stairs. In Gerry’s home there seemed to be two maids and a cook, all Mexican, all quiet
and unobtrusive. Exactly the type that might prove very fruitful and productive if it ever came
down to prosecutions. Servants always know a hell of a lot more than people give them credit for
and they’d either be loyal right to the bitter end or have a host of resentments that they’d like
to pay back in kind, possibly in a court of law.

Touched noticed that I was looking at a little green toolbox on Gerry’s desk.

"Is that your screwdriver set?" I asked.

Touched grinned as if I’d just made a faux pas.

"Something like that," he said, took the toolkit, and stuck it in a drawer.

He rummaged in the same drawer and found a couple of Gerry’s cigars wrapped in silver
tubes.

"Havana Churchills, very good," he said and offered us a smoke.

Each of us declined, so he lit one only for himself. Seamus, myself, Jackie relaxing in
leather chairs while Touched puffed his cigar and explained the op.

As usual with this talky crew, he outlined his grander theory first. Real chatty bastards, the
lot of them. Touched blew out a smoke ring and began his spiel:

"I suppose you all want to know where Gerry and me plan to go now we’ve had a bit of a
setback. Well, while you lads have been relaxing, we’ve been out doing work. As you may have
realized, the IRA cease-fire has sowed chaos not just for us but for the Ra, too, and its
partnership organizations. Been a bad few weeks. Very bad. But the silver lining is that things
are starting to turn round now. I’ve made a few contacts with a group calling itself Real IRA,
which is based in Dundalk under the command of a good friend of ours, Ruari O’Lughdagh. And I’ve
also had feelers from a group called Continuity IRA, which I don’t know too much about, but I’ll
make it a priority to find out. We’re not necessarily looking for an umbrella group but it would
certainly help us out, especially in these times. Now to impress those boys, we’ll have to get
cracking, we’ll have to do some jobs. Don’t worry, Sean, I see your eyes widening. Gerry and I
have about thirty years experience between us and although you boys have none, if you’re willing
to learn, we’re willing to teach ya."

During this entire speech, Jackie had been giving me the evil eye. It annoyed me; I thought
I’d already put that wee skitter in his place.

"Jackie, stop looking at me, you’ll wear your fucking eyes out," I told him.

"Fuck you, Sean" was his witty comeback.

"Go to hell," I retorted.

Touched had been interrupted. Something that drove him apoplectic. He stood, pointed his
finger at us.

"You two better cut it out, especially you, Sean, you’re still on probation here and Jackie is
your superior, and you’ll do what he says. You’re going on a fucking op tonight and if you can’t
handle taking orders you can go home right now," Touched shouted furiously.

"Sorry, Touched," I said, trying not to see Jackie’s look of triumph.

"You will be bloody sorry. Getting too big for your boots and you’re here one bloody day. Dial
it back, mate, dial it back a lot."

"Won’t happen again, Touched," I said.

To make himself more comfortable, Touched took the revolver out of his trouser pocket and
placed it on the table. As an intimidation tactic it got my attention. Probably Jackie was armed
too.

"I’ve lost my drift," Touched said, breathing deeply and looking pissed.

"The Real IRA, Continuity IRA," Seamus told him.

"Oh aye. Ok," Touched said, sitting down again. "This is the picture. We’re going to start
small and smart. A bombing a week. British businesses, companies, status symbols, that sort of
thing. No casualties in the first few months of the campaign. Very important. Get the public on
our side and show the boys across the water that we are disciplined and controlled. Get them to
sponsor us. After Christmas, when we have some depth and political clout, we intensify things. I
know about a few soft targets we can hit. This is where we have to have moral courage. It’s going
to mean killing. Now, I know you had a problem with that, Sean…."

"Not me," I assured him.

"It won’t be civilians. Biggest fucking mistake we could make would be to kill American
civilians. We were all very impressed with McVeigh and Nichols killing 160 with one truck bomb.
But even if they’d gotten away with it, where would it have left them? Nowhere, because the
public was against them. We have to keep the public on our side. Or at least, our public, Irish
Americans, the
Boston Herald,
our section of society. I’m talking about targeted hits,
British military officers living in America, British consular officials, CEOs. Hit the empire
where it hurts."

"How would you do that? Shoot them?" Jackie asked.

"No, no, nothing so risky. We’ll be long gone. Very simple. At night, plant a bomb under their
car with a mercury tilt switch. It goes off as soon as they go up or down a hill. Three, four
pounds under the driver’s side. Very nice. Done it myself half a dozen times."

Jackie kicked his shoes off and put them on Gerry’s desk, wiggling his ten toes in what was
possibly an extremely childish attempt to bait me. Touched continued.

"Our problem today, lads, is explosives. For both campaigns we’re going to need explosives. As
you know, Gerry can get access to dynamite and other industrial explosives aplenty because he’s
in the construction business. But the difficulty is that those explosives could and would be
traced back to him. And if, as we suspect, the FBI is keeping a wee eye on us from time to time,
we have to be very careful about that."

"So how do we get explosives? Do we make them? McVeigh made his, right?" Jackie asked.

"McVeigh made a truck bomb. We are talking about finesse and you don’t finesse with fertilizer
and gasoline. Nah. I’ve got it sussed. I’ve been doing a wee bit of intelligence work," he said
and then stopped talking to puff his cigar and keep us in suspense.

"Go on," Jackie said.

"I have a wee mate in the know," Touched said.

This time I took the bait.

"Aye?"

"Massachusetts National Guard base on Route 1A. The headquarters of the 101st Engineers.
You’ve probably all seen it. According to my mate, the base is only used Friday nights,
Saturdays, and Sundays. On weekdays it’s completely empty."

He produced a plan of the base that someone had photocopied for him. It was small—half a dozen
rooms, a gym, an indoor range, and, of course, next to the range an armory that Touched had
marked with a red
X
.

"This is your objective. The base has a five-foot-high wire-mesh fence with a single line of
barbed wire on top. The rear exit, here, is chained and padlocked. Seamus, with bolt cutters and
your expertise, you should be able to get through the chain in about two seconds."

Seamus nodded.

"You’ll go in the door, turn left, walk down the corridor, you’ll see another door, also
chained and padlocked. Again Seamus with the bolt cutters. That’s the door to the range. Once you
get in, the armory is the door off it to the left. On the door there’s a sign that says ’No
Admittance Without Officer’ or something like that. This door you’ll have to smash with a
sledgehammer, because it’s got an internal lock. The door’s thick but it’s wooden and apparently
in not the best shape, so it should give in about a minute or two. The armory is
Alice-in-fucking-Wonderland, but you are to ignore everything, all the guns, grenades, everything
except for a stack of green boxes marked ’C4—Handle with Care.’ You are to take one box each and
get out of there. Any questions?"