Secret Asset

31

Liam O’Phelan had an extremely low tolerance of ambiguity. This made him notoriously impatient with students who dithered or didn’t know quite what they thought, and now it made him impatient with himself. For in the wake of his visit from “Miss Falconer” he didn’t know what to do.

Part of him was tempted to let sleeping dragons lie, as he sensed that stirring them might be dangerous. If the man in London thought he had put all this behind him, then he might be less than pleased to have O’Phelan re-emerge, like the black sheep of a family suddenly returning to the fold.

Who knows? The man might panic and tell all. O’Phelan wondered fleetingly if he could be prosecuted for recruiting him. Then he reminded himself that they had never called on the fellow actually to do anything.

Yet part of him—the greater part, he began to recognise as days turned into a week, a week turned into two—wanted to stir things, if only for the sake of his own curiosity. What would have happened to his recruit after all these years? Would he have changed much? Got married, settled down, done his best to forget he’d ever had another agenda dominating his life? Or would the flame still burn? Would he share O’Phelan’s disgust with the state of affairs in Northern Ireland, this wretched phoney peace that was no more than a sell-out?

Curiosity won out, and with an energy he hadn’t felt in years he went to work in a half-exhilarated, half-anxious state. It took a dozen phone calls, but finally he had the number he wanted. It was a mobile phone number. The first three times he phoned, it was switched off. Finally, stealing five minutes from marking a stack of first-year exams, he rang yet again. This time the other end answered right away.

A sly smile appeared upon O’Phelan’s face. “Hello there,” he said. “Do you know who this is?”

He waited, and what he heard seemed to please him. “No flies on you, even after all these years. Now listen, I’m bothering you for a reason, even though it’s really you who owe me a call. Very naughty that. But a woman came to see me, asking questions.

“I thought that might get your attention. What’s that? Of course I can. I’d say she was in her thirties, mid-thirties. Light brown hair, shoulder length, green eyes, average height. Dressed smartly—not at all bureaucratic in appearance. Attractive in a brisk kind of way, well spoken. Rather cleverer than I thought at first. She said her name was Falconer, and that she was from the Ministry of Defence. I did my best to look as though I believed her. We know better, now don’t we?”