Book Three

The Killing


"The Irish are loose, untamable, superstitious, execrable, whiskey swilling, frank, amorous, ireful, and gloating in war."


—Giraldus Cambrensis (of Wales), thirteenth century


23


Unwisely — but thinking his stay in Switzerland would be a matter of weeks rather than a couple of months — he had left the Land Rover in the Long Stay Car Park of Dublin Airport. Somewhat to his surprise it was still there on his return, though sticky with a thick deposit of unburned aviation fuel mixed with Dublin grime.

He reached out his hand to open the befouled door with reluctance. A sudden gust of chill north wind angled the rain into his face, drenching his shirt. He suppressed his squeamishness and yanked the door open, threw in his bags, and climbed into the vehicle. A rush of wet cold located around his right foot informed him he had just stepped in a puddle. He slammed the door shut, and the wind and rain were excluded from his cold, damp aluminum and glass box.

A rat biting at his nerve endings inside his skull reminded him that he had a hangover. God damn the Swiss and their going-away parties.

Why the hell did he have to live in such a miserable, wet, wind-swept place as Ireland? It was May, and he was bloody freezing.


* * * * *


"I thought you were dead," said Kilmara cheerfully, "or dying at least — surrounded by nubile nurses in Tiefenau's intensive care unit." He rubbed his chin and added as an afterthought, "but I've prepared dinner anyway." He led the way into the big kitchen. "I've sent Adeline and the kids away for a while."

"There was fuck all wrong with me," said Fitzduane dryly, "thought I guess I was a bit dazed by the pyrotechnics. It was the paramedic who put me out — determined to have his moment of glory."

"Have a drink and relax," said Kilmara, "while I fiddle with pots and pans. You can tell me everything after you've eaten." He handed Fitzduane a tumbler of whiskey. "I assume you're staying the night. You'd better; you look terrible."

"Swiss hospitality," said Fitzduane. He slumped in a chair beside the fire. "It feels weird being back, weird and depressing and anticlimactic — and damp and cold."

"You're always going away to sunnier climates," said Kilmara, "but still you come back; you should know what to expect by now. What's so different this time?"

"I don't know," said Fitzduane. "Or perhaps I do." He fell asleep. He often did in Kilmara's house.


* * * * *


It was five hours later.

The plates had been cleared. The dishwasher had been loaded. The perimeter alarms had been rechecked. The dogs had bee let loose to roam or shelter as they wished. Kilmara had received a brief report over a secure line from the Ranger duty officer. The day was nearly done.

Sheets of rain driven by an unseasonable gale-force wind lashed the darkness. Double glazing and heavy lined curtains muted the sound of the storm except for the occasional eerie shriek echoing down the chimney. They sat on either side of the study fire, coffee, drinks, and cigars at hand.

Fitzduane was still suffering from reaction to events in Bern. His fatigue was deep and lasting, and he felt only marginally refreshed after his sleep despite the fact that Kilmara, seeing his friend's torpor, had delayed eating until very late.

He could hear the sound of a clock chiming midnight. "Hell of a time for a serious discussion," he said.

Kilmara smiled. "I'm sorry about that. I'm tight for time, and it's important I talk to you."

"Fire away."

"The Hangman," began Kilmara. "Let's start with his death."

"The Hangman," repeated Fitzduane thoughtfully. "So many different names; but it's funny, you know, I'll always think of him as Simon Balac."

"Different aliases and personas are still coming out of the woodwork," said Kilmara. "Whitney seems to have been another of them. Best guess is that that particular name was inspired by his late-lamented blond CIA boyfriend in Cuba. Still, it does look as if Lodge was his real name. The background fits, took or at least the psychiatrists seem to think so. You read the stuff that was prized out of the CIA?"

Fitzduane nodded. He remembered the clipped sentences describing Lodge's upbringing in Cuba: a brilliant, scared, lonely little boy maturing into a psychopath of genius. Fitzduane doubted that they had been supplied with the full story. The CIA didn't like to talk too much about Cuba.

"We'll call him the Hangman," said Fitzduane. "The press seems to have picked up on the name anyway. ‘Death of a Master Terrorist. Major success for joint Bernese / Bundeskriminalamt task force. The Hangman slain.’"

"The Bernese cops had to say something," said Kilmara. "they couldn't turn part of the city into a war zone and then burn down a complete block and say nothing. So tell me about it. I need to get a feel of the situation. The Hangman may be dead, but do his various enterprises live on? A friend of mine in the Mossad has suggested a few things that make me uneasy."

"The Mossad?" said Fitzduane.

"You go first," said Kilmara.

Fitzduane did.

"So you didn't actually see the Hangman killed?" said Kilmara.

"No," said Fitzduane. "Things happened very fast after Paulus shouted ‘Sempach!’ and shot Julius Lestoni. It was all over in a matter of seconds. The last I saw of Balac he was headed toward the end of the studio. I got off a couple of rounds, but I don't think I hit him. Then the assault group and the Bear's fucking tank took over. When I woke up in the Tiefenau, they told me the rest. The assault team had seen the Hangman through a door at the end of the studio. They blasted him with everything short of things nuclear, and then some kind of embedded thermite bombs went off and the whole place went up in flames. The entire block was sealed off, and when things were cool enough, they went in and dug through the wreckage. They found various bodies. The Hangman was identified by his dental records. Apparently he had tried to destroy them and had succeeded, but the dentist kept a duplicate set in his bank vault.

"Anyway, that, according to the powers that be, was the end of the Hangman. I stayed on a week to answer a whole lot of questions a whole lot of times and get drunk most nights with the Bear. And now here I am."

"Why did Paulus von Beck shout, ‘Sempach’?" asked Kilmara, puzzled.

Fitzduane smiled. "Love, honor, duty. We're all motivated by something."

"I don't follow."

"The von Becks are Bernese aristocracy," said Fitzduane. "Paulus felt that he had besmirched the family honor and that he was redeeming it by facing up to the Hangman. The Battle of Sempach took place when Napoleon's troops invaded Switzerland. The defending Bernese lost, but the consensus was that they had saved their honor. One of the heroes of the battles was a von Beck."

Kilmara raised his eyebrows and then shook his head ruefully. He looked at his friend in silence for a short while before speaking. "So what's troubling you? The Hangman's dead. Isn't it over?"

Fitzduane looked at Kilmara suspiciously. "Why shouldn't it be over? The Chief Kripo says it's over. He even paid for my going-away party — and drove me to the airport. He thinks Bern is returning to normal. He'll have a seizure if I go back."

Kilmara laughed, then he turned serious again. "Hugo, I've known you for twenty years. You've got instincts I have learned to listen to — and good judgment. So what's bugging you?"

Fitzduane sighed. "I'm not sure it's over, but I really can't tell you why, and I'm not sure I want to know. I'm so bloody tired. I had a bellyful of trouble in Bern. I just want to go home now, put my feet up, twiddle my thumbs, and figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I'm not going to photograph any more wars. I'm too old to get shot at and too young to die — and I don't need the money."

"What about Etan?" said Kilmara. "Does she come into the equation? You know she hauled me out to lunch a couple of times when you were away. I have the feeling I'm supposed to act as some sort of middleman. I wish you two would talk to each other directly. This habit of not communicating when you're away on an assignment is cuckoo."

"There was a reason for it," said Fitzduane. "The idea was for both of us to keep a sense of perspective, not to let things get out of hand."

"As I said," said Kilmara, "cuckoo. Here you are, crazy about each other, and you don't communicate for months. Even the Romans used to send stone tablets to each other, and now we have something called a telephone." He shook his head and relit his pipe. "But why do you think it may not be over?" he said. "Are you suggesting the Hangman didn't die in that fire?"

Fitzduane took his time answering. "The Hangman's whole pattern is one of deception," he said eventually. "And I would feel a whole lot happier if we had had a body to identify. Dental records can be switched. On the other hand I was there, and I don't see how he could have escaped. He certainly couldn't have lived through a fire of that intensity. So the guy must be dead, and I'm not going to spend my hard-earned rest in Connemara worrying about what might happen next. Almost anything might happen. My concern is with what probably will happen."

"The evidence suggests that the Hangman is dead," said Kilmara, "but that is no guarantee his various little units will vanish or take up knitting. Remember, he operated through a series of virtually autonomous groups, and it's likely that new leaders were waiting in the wings. Another thought that nags away concerns Rudi von Graffenlaub's hanging and the other peculiar happenings on your island. There are a lot of rich kids there, and the Hangman never seems to do anything without a reason. He has a track record of kidnapping. Were Rudi and his oddly dressed friends being psyched up to provide some inside support for a kidnapping, maybe of the whole school? The place is isolated, and the parents are richer than you and I can imagine."

"Geraniums," said Fitzduane sleepily.

"What?" said Kilmara.

"Geraniums keep popping up," said Fitzduane, "on the tattoos and in Ivo's notes, and the word was actually written down in Erika's apartment —but I'm fucked if I know what it means."

Kilmara drained his brandy and wondered if there was any point in talking to Fitzduane when he was this tired. He decided he'd better make the effort since time seemed to be a commodity in distinctly short supply.

"Leaving flowers out of the equation," he said dryly, "I've got some other problems worth mentioning." He refilled Fitzduane's glass.

The effort of holding his glass steady forced Fitzduane to pay reasonable attention. He was almost awake. "And you're going to tell me about them," he said helpfully.

"My friend the prime minister," said Kilmara, "is fucking us around."

"Have you ever considered another line of work? I fail to see the attraction in working for a bent machine politician like our Taoiseach. Delaney is a prick — a bent prick — and he isn't going to get any better."

"Kilmara privately agreed with Fitzduane's comment but ignored the interruption. "A good friend of ours in the Mossad — and they're not all such good friends — has told me of a Libya-based hit team, some seventy plus strong, that has unfriendly intentions toward an objective in this country."

"The PLO coming here?" said Fitzduane. "Why? Unless they've been out in the sun too long and want a real rain-drenched holiday to relax in. What has the PLO to do with Ireland?"

"I didn't say PLO," said Kilmara. "There are PLO in the group but as mercenaries, and the objective, if you can believe what the Israelis found on a rather abortive preventive raid, is the U.S. Embassy in Dublin. The timing is put at some time in May."

"How would seventy armed terrorists get into the country," said Fitzduane, "and what has an attack on the U.S. Embassy got to do with me? The embassy is in Dublin. I'm going to be as far away as one could possibly be without falling into the Atlantic. I'm going to be sleeping twelve hours a day and talking to the sea gulls and meditating on higher things and drinking poteen and generally staying as much out of trouble as a human being possibly can."

"Stay with me," said Kilmara, "and I guarantee to get your full attention. We've kicked this thing around since our Mossad friend visited and we hear the news about the Hangman's death — and our conclusions will not make your day. We think this U.S. Embassy thing smacks of the Hangman's game playing, or that of his heirs and successors. It's probably a diversion, and heaven only knows where the real target is. Possibly it won't be in Ireland at all. It could be anywhere, including back in the Middle East. Unfortunately, suspecting it's a diversion doesn't help. The Rangers have been ordered to keep the place secure until the flap is over. That means my ability to deal with any other threat is drastically curtailed. I don't have the manpower to mount a static defense and also maintain strength for other operations."

"I thought the idea was that the Rangers were only to be used as a reaction force, along with certain limited security duties."

"It was and it is — normally," said Kilmara, his voice expressing his frustration, "but I was outvoted on this one. Ireland has a special relationship with Uncle Sam, and my friend the Taoiseach played it perfectly and boxed us in. The Rangers are a disciplined force, and there are times you just can't buck the system."

"So where is all this getting us?"

Kilmara shrugged. "You've got good instincts. If you think the Hangman is out of the picture, I'm tempted to go along with you, but when you're this tired — who the fuck knows? Anyway, it's my business to cover the down side."

Fitzduane yawned. The clock struck two in the morning. He was so spaced he was floating. It was not time to argue. "What do you want me to do?"

"I've got a radio and other equipment here for you," said Kilmara. "All I want you to do is proceed as normal but with your eyes and ears open. If you detect anything untoward, give me a call — and we'll come running."

"If you're so committed elsewhere, how and with what?"

"I'll think of something," said Kilmara. "It'll probably never happen, but if it does, red tape isn't going to stop me."

But Fitzduane was asleep again. Outside, the storm was abating.


* * * * *


Ambassador Noble felt like a child playing truant as he idled around the hills and lakes of Connemara in his rented Ford Fiesta. It was the first vacation in years in which his pleasure hadn't been diluted with some element of State Department business, and he positively luxuriated in the freedom of traveling without bodyguards. Ireland might have its troubles in the North — and even they were exaggerated and rarely involved foreigners — but the bulk of the island was about as peaceful as could be, he had been assured.

The greatest potential threats to his life were more likely to result form Irish driving habits, an excess of Irish hospitality, and the weather. He would be well advised, he was told, to dress warmly and bring an umbrella. If he planned to fish, he should hire a gillie.

He calculated afterward that his briefing had enhanced the federal deficit by a couple of thousand dollars. He did remember to bring an umbrella. He was managing fine without thermal underwear. He decided the gillie could wait until he arrived at Fitzduane's Island in a few days. He was looking forward to seeing his son and hearing how he was getting on at Draker.

Meanwhile, he was having a ball doing almost nothing at all. No diplomats, no crisis meetings, no telexes, no press. No official dinners or receptions either, he thought as he ate his baked beans out of the can with a spoon and waited for the kettle to boil. And positively no worries about terrorism. He had left them at the office the way all those books on how to succeed said you should.

He looked up at the leaden sky and listened to the rain bounce off his fishing umbrella and thought: Life is bliss.


* * * * *


Fitzduane slept in and enjoyed a leisurely midafternoon breakfast. The storm had done its worst, but the rain continued as if determined to leave him in no doubt whatsoever that he was back in Ireland.

Kilmara had gone hours before but had left behind a note detailing that day's security procedure. Getting in and out of Kilmara's home without setting off some part of the labyrinth of alarm systems was no easy task, and codes were changed at least daily at irregular times. Fitzduane wondered how Adeline put up with being married to a target. That made her, he supposed, a target herself — and then there were the children. What a life. Was he, Fitzduane, since his encounter with the Hangman, now a target, too? And would he stay at risk? What would that mean for his wife and his children? For the first time it came to Fitzduane that once you were involved with terrorism — on either side — there was really no end to it. It was a permanent state of war.

He was digesting this unpleasant thought when he heard a faint noise coming from the front of the house — a house that was supposed to be empty. It sounded like a door opening and closing. The sound was not repeated.

He was tempted to stay where he was, to ignore what he almost doubted he had heard. He checked the perimeter alarm board — there were monitors in every room — but all seemed secure.

He took the Remington and chambered a round. Moving as silently as he could, he left the kitchen and edged along the corridor to the front hall. He had two doors to choose from. As he deliberated, the door of the living room opened. Fitzduane dropped into a crouch.

Etan stood there.

"Holy shit!" exclaimed Fitzduane.

Etan smiled. "Shane's idea," she said. "The colonel as matchmaker." She looked at the gun. "He's told me quite a bit. Things make more sense now."

Fitzduane realized he was still pointing the gun. He lowered it, replaced the safety catch, and laid it down gently. He felt weak and happy and scared stiff and more than a little stupid. His heart was pounding. He couldn't believe how glad he was to see her. He sat on the floor.

"Hugo, are you all right?" she said anxiously. "For God's sake, say something. You're white as a sheet."

Fitzduane looked up at her, and his pleasure was plain to see. He shook his head. "Cuckoo," he said.

Etan was wearing jeans tucked into half boots and an Aran sweater. He could smell her perfume. She pushed the gun away with her boot and then knelt beside him. "Staying long?" she said. She peeled off her sweater and blouse. She wasn't wearing a bra. Her breasts were firm and full, the nipples pronounced. Her voice had gone husky. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed. He didn't argue. He lay back.

"Soldier from the war returning. Where have you been? How has he been?" She undid his belt and unzipped him and encircled his organ with her hand. She squeezed hard. "I have a proprietary interest," she said. "My mother told me never to put anything in my mouth if I didn't know where it had been." She teased him with her tongue. "Where has this little man been?" She released her hand and looked. "On second thoughts," she said, "he's not so little." She shucked her boots and wriggled out of her jeans, then lay on her stomach on the carpet. "Do it this way," she said, "nice and slow and deep." She raised her buttocks suggestively and parted her legs. Fitzduane put his hand between them and stroked her where she liked. He ran his lips and tongue along her back and slowly moved down. It was only after she had been moaning and quivering for quite some time that he took her doggie fashion on the floor. Halfway through he turned her and entered her from above. She reached up and sucked his nipples, and he gasped. He drove into her again and again, and their loins became slick.

When it was over, he took her in his arms and just held her. Then he kissed her gently on the forehead. "You know," he said, and there was laughter in his voice, "this has been a year of tough women."

Etan bit his ear and then lay beside him, her head resting on one arm. Her free hand caressed his loins. "Tell me," she said, smiling sweetly, "about Erika."


* * * * *


Kilmara sat in his office examining yet again the plans of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin and the security arrangements. Every fresh examination made him feel unhappier.

The embassy had been built in the days when a violent protest consisted of a rotten egg or two thrown at the ambassador's car. It seemed to have been designed to facilitate terrorist attacks.

The three-story circular building — plus basements — had a façade consisting mainly of glass hung in a prestressed concrete frame. Offices were positioned around the perimeter of each floor. The core of the building was a floor-to-ceiling rotunda overlooked by the circular corridors. The embassy was located at the apex of a V-shaped junction of two roads, each lined with houses that overlooked the embassy building. Car access to the basement level was by way of a short driveway guarded by a striped pole.

A terrorist was faced with a downright excess of viable choices. The place was so easy to attack that if you didn't know better — and Kilmara unfortunately did — you might think that there must be a snag, or else be put off the idea for reasons of sportsmanship because the target hadn't a chance. Even the sewers — thought why any terrorist would choose the sewers when he had such a range of more hygienic options was beyond Kilmara — were not secure.

Kilmara closed the file in disgust. Short of blocking off the access roads — impossible because one was vital for south Dublin traffic — and surrounding the place with a battalion of troops — too expensive considering the state of the nation's finances — full or even adequate security for the embassy was impossible to achieve against a small well-armed terrorist unit. Against a force of seventy, his efforts would be derisory.

Unless, of course, he got lucky. With a sigh he opened the file again. The saying was true. The harder he worked, the luckier he seemed to get. He wondered if the same principle applied to the other side, and he was not pleased with his conclusion.

The bottom line in this situation meant: one, he had to obey orders; two, out of his full complement of sixty Rangers, roughly a third were assigned to full-time embassy duty, and given that there were three shifts per day, that meant that almost the full command was committed; three, they were operating in exactly the wrong way for a force of this type — tied down and waiting to be attacked rather than staying flexible and keeping the initiative; four, training time was being seriously eroded (to keep to their unusually high standard of marksmanship, Rangers shot for several hours a day at least three days a week and often more); five, his own time was being used up running this screw-up of an operation; six, God knows what else was happening while this was going on.

It was a crock.


* * * * *


Fitzduane stayed another night in Kilmara's house and left for home the following afternoon, his body satiated from a night of lovemaking and the long, deep sleep that had followed.

Kilmara had called to say he wouldn't be back and the couple could have the house to themselves. "Couple?" Fitzduane had queried, stroking Etan's nipples with the tips of his fingers.

"Lucky guess," said Kilmara dryly.

Fitzduane laughed. "We're getting married."

"About time," said Kilmara. "I've got to go." He phoned back about two minutes later. "Don't forget what I said," he added. "People in love are dangerous; they forget things."

"I don't feel dangerous," said Fitzduane.

"I'd feel a little better if you did. Check in by radio when you get home. The signal is automatically scrambled. You'll be able to talk freely."

Fitzduane was thoughtful as he replaced the phone. Etan ran her tongue over his penis. "Pay attention," she said. He did.


* * * * *


The Pillars of Hercules — better known in more recent times as the Strait of Gibraltar — are a classic naval choke point dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar.

Gibraltar, if one forgets for a moment the slightly paranoid local population of some twenty-eight thousand crammed into a land area the size of a parking lot, consists of surveillance equipment, weaponry, hollowed-out rock, military personnel, and apes in roughly that order.

Despite all this concentration of spies, people, apes, and matériel, it was nonetheless scarcely surprising that the passing through the Strait of Gibraltar of an Italian cattle boat, the Sabine, en route from Libya to Ireland to pick up a fresh cargo of live meat for ritual slaughter on return to Tripoli, should be logged but attract no further attention.

The Irish cattle trade with Libya was both known and established. The sight of the Sabine was routine. The only change that might have been commented on, but was not, was that the Sabine failed this time to refuel in Gibraltar. She had, apparently, braved the bureaucracy and chronic insufficiency of Qaddafi's Libya and bunkered in Tripoli (a practice the experienced ship's master learns not to repeat unless desperate).

An inquirer — if there had been one — would have been told, with a shrug, that it was a matter of an arrangement, and the thumb and forefinger would have been rubbed together. Such an answer would have sufficed.

The Sabine left the Pillars of Hercules behind and set a course for Ireland.


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