On target

TWO

Dougal Slattery said good-bye to his bandmates at eleven thirty, covered his thick white hair with a Donegal wool walking cap, and left the Oliver St. John Gogarty with his drum in its leather case hanging over his shoulder. It was a cold but clear evening, like a thousand other nights he'd played in the bar, and also like most other nights, he fancied a pint before heading back to his flat. There were three dozen pubs within a few minutes' walk, but his flat was a mile away on the other side of Pearse Station. He'd do what he usually did: head to his local watering hole for a nightcap.

Slattery walked with a limp, a bad knee. Actually, a bad knee and a worse knee, but limping on both legs was out of the question, so he leaned into the better of the two weakening joints, his thick body lumbering on through the cold night.

It took the big Irishman nearly thirty minutes to make it to the Padraic Pearse, named after the Irish Catholic leader executed by the British in the 1916 Easter uprising. It was a staunch Catholic pub; photos and relics of the Rebellion decorated the windows of the small establishment.

Dougal limped in, placed his coat and his bodhran in a corner booth, and headed to the bar for the pint of Guinness already being poured from the tap.

Court Gentry found a darkened doorway and sat down on the stoop. He'd done more walking today than he'd done in months, and he was surprised to feel the ache in the muscles of his thighs and his calves and thought he sensed a faint sting where the bullet had torn into his right leg the previous December. He wished he had a Vicodin, but he knew he couldn't be doped up and operational at the same time, so he just sat there and stared at the front door of the pub across the street. Tonight was reconnaissance only; he'd follow his target home and then assess where and when to act afterwards.

The Padraic Pearse it was called. A tiny saloon by the looks of it from the outside. Probably Slattery's regular haunt, seeing how he'd made a beeline here past countless other opportunities to sit and drink. There were more bars per capita here in Dublin than in any city in the world. The Irish loved their pubs, and Court was not surprised to find himself spending a portion of his evening watching the front door of a tavern, waiting for his target to down a couple of brews.

Gentry rose stiffly to his feet. He wanted to move his muscles, he was cold as well as sore, and he needed a toilet or a back alley. He knew the most reasonable place for a young local such as himself to be caught taking a piss would be the narrow passage alongside the Padraic, so he crossed the empty street and headed into the dark. Once there, he sniffed his way to a wall beside some rubbish tins, undid his belt, and then quickly retightened it. A noise farther down the alley had caught his attention: two men exiting a back door, a shaft of light fifty feet down from him, and the sound of other men talking from inside the building. The men went to a back wall and pissed, then returned inside a minute later with no idea a stranger stood nearby in the dark.

It was clearly a back door to the Padraic Pearse that they'd passed through. So the pub was much larger than Court had originally thought. He did his business against the brick wall and then walked to the back door. On the other side he heard the cracking of a pool cue against a cue ball and gruff men's voices, audible but unintelligible. Looking ahead, Gentry saw the back alley gave access to a side street, and he wondered if Slattery had already left the bar via this route. Perhaps he'd even made the tail on him, but Court had seen no hint of that at any point in the half-hour walk from the Temple Bar.

Shit. Gentry knew he either needed to knock off the surveillance tonight and try again tomorrow, or head into the pub and take a look to see if his man was still there. The danger of being compromised in a tavern this large would be minimal; it sounded as if there were dozens inside, and the Gray Man knew how to melt into his surroundings indoors as well as outdoors. He headed back to the front door, tucked his neck deep into his denim jacket to make himself an inch shorter, and then pushed open the front door of the Padraic Pearse.

Gentry entered the pub and immediately knew he'd made a grave mistake. It was incredibly small. The pool area he'd heard from the back was shut off with an access door against the back wall of the tavern with a large sign that read Members Only. The room Court had entered contained just a small bar, three tables, and a few snugs along the wall. He strolled to the bar and took a stool, did not turn his head left or right, just pulled out his wallet and stared straight ahead at the bottles behind the bar. He felt the eyes of the dozen or so patrons, but he did not yet know if Slattery was in the room with him.

There was a hard edge to the pub and its clientele. Court sensed it immediately. Malevolence filled the air.

This was no place for strangers.

Finally he glanced up into the mirror behind the bar. Every man in the pub, Dougal Slattery and the two young mates seated with him included, stared at him through the glass.

Tough crowd, Gentry thought.

A sign taped to the mirror caught his eye: No Singing Allowed.

Tough joint.

Shit.

The bartender eyed him for a long moment over his newspaper, finally laid it down, and raised his red eyebrows slightly.

"Pint of Guinness," Court said.

Slattery sipped his beer, listened to the two young blokes in his snug complain about a bad call in the rugby match the previous evening between Clontarf and Thomond. Dougal was a Wanderers supporter himself, couldn't give two shits about how bleedin' Clontarf had been bleedin' robbed by the bleedin' referee, but he enjoyed the company of the two young regulars nonetheless. He looked up when he heard the door open; it was late for anyone to come in for a pint, but certainly not unheard of. He cocked his head to the side. His eyes tracked the stranger as he headed to the bar.

Dougal quickly tuned out his tablemates.

Inside Dougal Slattery's large frame alarm bells clanged as loud as those in the belfry of the Christ Church Cathedral a mile to the west. A stranger in the Padraic Pearse was a queer enough sight, but this bloke had been in the crowd at the Oliver earlier in the evening. Moreover, he was young and fit, and just one shade too nonchalant for Slattery's taste.

He wasn't local. He dressed the part, true, but Slattery saw through it somehow. As the man sat himself on a bar-stool, the Irishman looked hard for evidence of a weapon in his clothing, either the printing of a handgun or that particular hitch a man with a sidearm must make to accommodate the iron on his hip as he sits. Dougal saw nothing, but the stranger's right side was shielded from him.

He heard the man order. "Pint of Guinness"-nothing foreign or odd there. He even sounded a bit Irish, but his voice was low and soft.

Was he police? Interpol? Dougal knew that cops in a half dozen countries would like to put him in shackles and drag him off his blessed island. No. This man did not appear to be a cop; he seemed somehow too relaxed for that line of work.

He also knew how to order a Guinness, and that was something. Uninitiated foreigners tended to reach for the glass as soon as it's placed on the bar, a cardinal mistake. The stout requires a two-part pour; the bartender allows the foam to settle for a couple of minutes, at which time the beer sits teasingly close to the patron, inviting him to show his ignorance by pulling the glass to himself.

But this stranger knew his manners.

Slattery caught a glance from the man through the mirror, just a quick, impassive, fleeting look. The other regulars in the bar were all staring at the stranger, as well. He looked them over before returning his attention to the bartender. George wasn't any happier to see a stranger at his bar than was Slattery, but he served the pint and took the money and went back to his newspaper.

Dougal leaned forward to the men at his table. He spoke to them softly. There was an affectation of levity, but the words were said with no smile at all.

"Listen, laddies. How would you fancy a little action tonight before your ma's tuck yas into your beds?"

Court had been made, and he knew it. He sat at the bar, stared into his beer, his body feigning relaxation but his mind tense, going over the protocol for dealing with a dozen men in a room not much larger than the interior of a school bus. There would be blades in this crowd, Gentry had no doubt. Brass knuckles, too, more than likely. Maybe even a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun behind the bar. Court wore a pistol in a holster in his waistband, but it wasn't much of a defensive weapon. A Russian Makarov. With the silencer in his coat pocket, he could make it an effective assassin's tool, but the.380-caliber bullet was too impotent to count on as an effective man stopper, the eight-round magazine capacity seemed woefully inadequate for the mass of beef around him in the room, and the magazine release mechanism was poorly placed and inefficient. Yes, Court knew, he could poke bloody holes in a few of these Micks if it came down to it, but if they moved on him in force and with motivation, he'd be good and well fucked.

He took a chug of his Guinness. Never had a pint looked so large. He thought he'd never drain down to the bottom of his glass so he could head out and get back to the dark street. Behind him he heard Slattery whisper something to the men with him. Court did not look up into the mirror. Slattery had seen him earlier at the Oliver St. John Gogarty; that was clear enough. Now he'd be letting his friends in on the situation. With good luck, Slattery would bug out, set up some sort of confrontation in the street. Send his men outside to hide in the dark and leave with them. With bad luck, it would go down here and now. Dougal would stand and proclaim to the room that the man who pitched the stranger through the front window would earn himself a year's supply of Guinness.

Son of a bitch, Court thought. Recuperating in France, he'd really wanted to get operational again, but this was much too fucking much.

Court began to stand. His pint was half-full, but he thought if he could leave this pub under his own power at any time, it would be right now, before Slattery got his plan together. But before Gentry could slide all the way off his stool, the bartender lowered his newspaper.

"Don't fancy yer pint, eh?"

The redheaded, barrel-chested sixty-year-old must have sensed the bad juju in the room between Slattery and the stranger.

Court didn't want to say too much. Instead he shifted on his stool, like he was just rearranging himself, and lifted his glass. Tipped it to the bartender and took another gulp. "It's just grand," he said. He thought he sounded Irish but wasn't sure.

To his left the two men in the booth with his target stood and left through the front door. Two more at a table behind him stood; Court tracked them through the mirror as they approached. They sat on either side of him menacingly.

The man on the left spoke first. His breath was hot with Irish whiskey and tobacco.

"Woar ye from?"

Court looked straight ahead. He dropped the attempt at an Irish accent. "Workin' a Maersk freighter. We docked this afternoon. Leave out in the morning."

"Woar are ye from?" The other man repeated his mate's question.

"I told you."

"You born on the freighter? 'Where you from' means where you come from?"

"Lads. Leave the man to enjoy his pint in peace." It was Dougal Slattery speaking. He had stood, strolled over to the bar with his limp, and made eye contact through the mirror. "Always good to see a new face here. Travelers included. Don't pay the lads any attention, friend."

Court wondered why it was that everyone was calling him "friend" today.