Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (25 page)

1:46 p.m. Local Time – Monday

Sandford Road

Dublin, Ireland

Fintan McGuire swung his newly completed Newtonian Reflector telescope gently around on its axis. He was very proud of it, having ground the mirrors personally. Looking over the distant buildings of Dublin's skyline from his roof in the affluent Donnybrook neighborhood, south of the downtown area, he had to admit that he was impressed with his own handiwork. He swung the telescope to the east and smiled as he caught sight of the ferries that moved in and out of the Irish capital to the United Kingdom throughout the day. Even the venerable gates leading into his home looked tremendous through the telescope.

Diligently, he moved the scope again and refocused the lens on the crumbling, time-worn rock walls that surrounded his one acre property on Dublin's R117 Sandford Road. He'd purchased it a few years ago and was restoring it, and they were to be his next project, to be started just as soon as the weather warmed and the seasonal rains lessened. The only challenge that stood between him and its completion was figuring out exactly how, with his considerable disability, he would manage to spread mortar through the cracked stones. He shrugged off the doubt; it was a minor complication at best. There were few feelings in the world that matched that of a successfully completed project and there was nothing he loved more than taking on a challenge from an amateur's point of view.

That attitude, and his love of the country that surrounded him, were what had led him to run for office as
Teachta Dála
in his home county of Monaghan. County Monaghan was a five seat constituency in the north of the Irish Republic, near the border with the six counties of Ulster that were part of the United Kingdom. As a newly elected member of the
Dáil Éireann
, the Irish Parliament, the free time he was currently enjoying would soon be at an end. The economic bubble that had burst in 2008 and left Ireland's economy in shambles needed to be undone and as one of Ireland's most successful entrepreneurs and a longtime member of the country's center-right
Fine Gael
party, he'd agreed to take on the job.

The mechanical sound of the stately home's elevator rising to the roof drew his attention away from the telescope and he turned in his chair to face the old freight door as it was pulled open.

"Pardon the interruption, Governor," his assistant, Dean Lynch, said as he stepped off the car, "but I've just come across something in this morning's edition of the
Independent
that I think you need to see."

Fintan pushed himself away from the telescope and towards his assistant as the dark haired, muscular man held out a copy of Ireland's largest selling newspaper. Taking hold of it, he spread it open and looked at the page Lynch had marked.

Former bodyguard sought in bombing of American university; deaths of Israeli celebrity Kafni and undercover FBI agents
.

He scanned the article quickly and looked over the accompanying picture, a photo of a face he hadn't seen in over a decade, but one that was still very familiar to him. "Take me to my office, now," he said.

"Aye, Governor."

Lynch stepped behind him and gripped the handles on the back of the wheelchair. While McGuire much preferred to move about on his own the process could be laborious at times, especially when navigating the upper floors of the eight thousand square foot house below him, and at the moment, he didn't have any time to spare.

Lynch pushed him into the freight elevator and pulled the door closed behind them. When the car had reached the second floor, he tugged it open again and pushed the chair down a narrow hallway past the grand central staircase to a large office on the northern side. "I'll take it from here," Fintan said, as he gripped the wheels of the chair and propelled himself into the room towards a long, oak desk.

The room's decor was elegantly rustic and the walls featured the mounted heads of a number of large animals in addition to several antique hunting rifles. The floors were deeply stained wooden parquet and large windows looked to the north at the Irish capital's skyline. Not caring much about hunting or wild game, Fintan had made the room into his personal library and office. Where there had once been large lounge chairs and probably an antique floor globe, there was now a row of bookshelves, wooden file cabinets and an aquarium that boasted a variety of exotic fish, mainly from the Indian and South Pacific Oceans.

He pulled himself up to the oak desk and gripped the mouse that sat alongside a computer terminal boasting several monitors. As the various screens came to life, he pulled a keyboard from underneath the desk and typed in a web address. Lynch stood beside the door as if he already knew what his boss would soon find and was anticipating the order that would surely come if his intuition was correct. Once the site of an international, subscription based mail server in Switzerland had loaded, Fintan punched in a username and password. The login information accepted, he clicked quickly to the inbox and opened the draft folder.

"No messages. Why are there no messages?" he said aloud, the question rhetorical.

Lynch stepped into the room. "If everything this article says is true, Governor, he's got to be on the run. Maybe he just hasn't been able to contact you yet."

Fintan knew that Lynch was right. Whatever had happened in Declan McIver's life to bring him under the media's microscope in such a way had to have happened very fast and unexpectedly. Of his fellow surviving members of the Black Shuck Unit, which Fintan's father had founded and operated until being murdered in 1993, Declan McIver was the most careful and capable of all and the man Fintan least expected to need his help. But it was obvious from the article that he now needed all the help he could get.

"We have to find him, Lynch. Before anyone else can. Have Cummings meet us in Waterford within the hour. We have a sudden need to visit the United States."

10:26 a.m. Eastern Time – Monday

Intersection of Lee Jackson Hwy & Boonsboro Road

Lynchburg, Virginia

Declan pulled off of the Lee Jackson Highway and made a right onto Boonsboro Road. He'd decided that it would be safer to enter Lynchburg by coming over the Blue Ridge Mountains and across the James River instead of having to pass by the place where he'd been run off the road and nearly killed. He'd been listening to AM radio stations since he'd left the cabin looking for any word on what to expect when he arrived. The news anchor had just finished reading a statement from the university's chancellor, Jerry Fallwell Jr., in which he talked about the university's response to the attack, his narrow escape due to the health concerns of his mother and offered prayers and support for those effected, but Declan had yet to hear any indication that the police or FBI had roadblocks or checkpoints setup around the university.

He removed a navy blue baseball cap from the passenger seat and placed it on his head, pulling it down over his forehead to rest just above his eyebrows in an effort to disguise himself as much as possible. He was hoping that showing up at the university was the last thing anyone would expect him to do and that no one would be looking for him there for that reason, but he couldn't be too careful.

Driving the blue Mercedes sedan south onto the Lynchburg Expressway, the campus of Liberty University came into view. Leaving the four lane interstate, he drove a short distance onto the commercial street known locally as "Hamburger Row" and crossed a set of railroad tracks onto the campus. This was the rear entrance to the university and was marked by far less traffic than the more widely used entrance east of the main campus. He passed by several faculty parking lots and finally found a visitor parking area along the sidewalk adjacent to Arthur DeMoss Hall, the university's most recognizable building. The Hall had two levels of concrete steps and eighteen stone columns supporting a towering Jeffersonian portico, which made the building look a lot like the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. In front was a statue of an eagle with its wings spread wide as it perched atop a marble column.

Declan reached over the front seat and grabbed a dark red backpack before stepping out of the car and locking it. Placing the bag on the ground at his feet, he pulled on a black Gore-Tex raincoat, zipping the collar up as far as it would go to further hide his facial features. With a cold wind blowing off the mountains and the ever present threat of seasonal rain from the heavy clouds above, the weather was providing the perfect environment for such a disguise. He slung the backpack over his shoulder and walked onto the sidewalk. Unlike most of the people he would be passing as he searched for the university's faculty offices the contents of his bag weren't textbooks and notepads, but instead a collection of first-aid and survival gear, including two to three days' worth of ration bars, butane lighters, duct tape and light sticks. In addition were some items he'd placed in the pre-made kit himself, including a lock picking kit, two pre-paid cell phones and a Glock .26 pistol with two extra magazines. He didn't plan on starting a firefight in the middle of campus and he didn't expect anyone else to, either, but if any more of the men trying to take him out showed, he was prepared.

Allowing the bag to slide off his shoulder and around to his chest as he walked, he unzipped it and reached inside to retrieve the campus map he'd purchased from a convenience store several miles outside of town.

He had come to visit Michael Coulson, wanting to ask the man several questions that would hopefully shed some light onto what exactly had happened at the Barton Center two nights prior. He didn't suspect Coulson or anyone else at the university of being involved, although he couldn't rule out the possibility, but they certainly would know who the security company was and how to contact them. Returning the backpack to his shoulder, he spread open the glossy campus map and looked over it.

"Are you new here?" a female voice asked from behind him.

Declan turned to see a young woman with dark brown hair partially stuffed into a multi-colored stocking cap, her hands held close to her body inside the large pockets of a tan parka.

"Aye," he said, “just arrived today."

"You're kind of late," she responded with a quick smile. "Classes started two months ago."

"Okay," he said with a nervous laugh as he returned her smile. "You got me. I'm not a student, at least not yet. I'm here for a meeting with Dr. Michael Coulson. I'm hoping to start my master's degree here in the fall."

"I'm surprised Dr. Coulson is seeing anyone with everything that's happened over the last few days, but you'll find him in the Helms School of Government. I'm heading that way if you'd like a guide."

"Aye, that would be grand. I didn't call ahead to confirm the appointment, but I suppose I should have. I heard about what happened."

"It's been a rough couple of days for everyone around here," she said, as she started walking towards the front of DeMoss Hall. "Even with the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus a few years back you still don't think that it can happen to you, until it does. People here are in shock, classes have been canceled for the rest of the week. Grief counselors are all over the place for people who need to talk. I've just been trying to keep myself busy and not pay attention to the news and everything."

"Aye, I thought it looked a little desolate. Things like this used to happen all the time where I come from."

She looked over at him with a question on her face as they ascended the steps of DeMoss Hall and entered the relative shelter of the portico. "Ireland?" she said.

"Aye, Belfast area. It's not so bad anymore, but when I was a kid it was a violent place."

"I don't know much about it, I guess," she said with a shrug, as he held the front door of the building open for her. "I'm a math major."

"Oh," he said with a sarcastic laugh, “my favorite subject."

As they entered the building the girl removed her hand from the pocket of her coat and pulled off her stocking cap. Declan watched as her dark brown hair spilled down around her shoulders. He couldn't escape the thought that people just like her had been working in and around the Barton Center two nights ago. He'd noticed several of them as he and Constance had entered. How many of them had been killed or seriously injured? Did this girl know any of them? He grimaced as she led the way through the bottom floor of the building. Innocents like her were always the ones who got hurt and the people who planted the bombs or fired the guns dismissed their lives with petty political reasoning that, when you really stopped to think about it, held about as much water as a wet Kleenex. He felt anger rise from the pit of his stomach. He used to be one of those men. How many innocent girls and boys had been killed in IRA operations he'd played a part in? He'd realized early on in his days with the IRA that the type of attacks they were committing were doing little for their cause and only harming innocent neighbors. He'd tried to limit his involvement to attacks on the kind of men who had murdered his parents, but he was certain there had been unintended consequences, there always were.