The Dead Yard

9: A BURIAL ON PI

Touched pulled down the blinds and dimmed the lights, all the while, casually, keeping me in eyeline, his itchy trigger finger pointing the 9mm at my chest.

Big-eyed, bloody, his face a sunburned brown, his disordered graying hair a grisly crown of pride. He was pleased with himself. Happy.

He looked at the body.

“Aye, she’s dead now, Sean. You ever seen someone die before?”

I shook my head.

“No, I suppose not. Ok. Well, it’s only a first step. The night’s not over yet. You’re about to get a valuable learning experience,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping the lid on the pressure cooker.

“Clean up. Have you touched anything since you came upstairs?”

“You know I haven’t, I’ve just been standing here,” I said.

“And I was wearing these for most of the evening,”Touched said, showing me his black silk gloves.

“I see,” I said.

“Sit down on that stool and don’t do anything for a minute,” Touched ordered.

I sat down. Touched pulled out his mobile phone and speed-dialed a number.

“Aye, Gerry, it’s me… Yeah, I took care of it. I’ll want you to come by with Jackie, and we’ll get rid of her. Bring plastic sheets, that big sail bag, cleaning supplies, and overalls… Nah, no problems… Listen, mate, interesting sidelight, young Sean showed up looking to buy chocolate biscuits. He was shouting through her letter box. I’m not sure if I like it.There’s a chance that she was the FBI agent on the outside and he’s the inside man, so we’re going to have to watch him, interrogate him. I think he’s kosher, he’s a good lad, but you know me, Gerry, fucking caution is my middle name… Aye.

Listen, the sooner the two of you get over here the better. You best tell the family we’re going to have to go up to the cabin, especially if you still want to do plan B… Aye, until all of this cools down… Ok, see you, mate.”

He clicked off the phone and looked at me.

“You don’t have to worry about me, pal,” I said.

He smiled, rubbed his chin.

“Listen, Sean, I think you’re ok, but Jesus, we have to be careful. We don’t really know you from Adam. So after we get rid of this bitch we’re going to have to give you a bit of the old fucking third degree, ok?”

I said nothing.

Touched leaned against the wall, shook his head, got a glimpse of Samantha out of the corner of his eye, grinned.

“Yeah, Sean, it’s like this. Gerry and me have already decided we’re going to split town for a few days. We can’t do anything with the FBI breathing down our necks and they’re going to get nervous when their agent disappears. We’ll dump her body and we’ll clean this place so it’s spic-and-span even under the UV lights but, still, they’ll definitely increase surveillance on us when they realize that she’s missing. But we’ll have the drop on them. We’ll be up in Maine at Gerry’s cabin, which he has kept off the books and no one even knows about. It’s a fantastic spot. Aye, remember we talked about it? He calls it the Dead Yard because of the trains. Even if they are looking, the FBI wouldn’t find us in a million years. “

“What’s up there?”

“Nothing’s up there. Except us. We’ll be up there and hopefully with a wee surprise, too.”

Touched looked at his black T-shirt, speckled with blood and saliva and God knows what else.

“This T-shirt’s ruined,” he said, leering, itching to tell me details. How she was an uncooperative cow, how she bled so easy, how she screamed under the gag…

He coughed, blinked. Motioned me to get up and go downstairs. I went ahead of him down the steps and into the shop. He went to the door, checked the street, pulled the blinds, grabbed a Flake bar, threw it to me. I shook my head and forced a hurt and disappointed look onto my face.

“Eat your chocolate,” he said. “That’s why you came in.”

“I came in to get some for Kit, we had a bit of a fight.”

“Eat it, you’ll need energy for later.”

I shook my head.

“What’s the matter with you? Are you upset about her upstairs?”

“If she was a British agent, she got what was coming to her,” I said.

“Are you pissed off at me for doubting you?” he asked.

“No, it’s not that either. It’s just, you know, things look like they’re getting a bit out of control,” I said, to show him that I was a naive immigrant who knew nothing of this violent world he inhabited.

Touched was sympathetic.

“I know, Sean. I know. From your perspective things probably look really fucked up about now. But you gotta believe me, mate, these are just setbacks but they’re not fatal setbacks. Ok, so we don’t know what the hell happened to Sea-mus. If you ask me, he’s either dead or he’s on his way to fucking Australia by now. Doesn’t matter, unless that soldier boy IDs you and Jackie, and the news says he can’t do any descriptions, then we can draw a line through that episode and forget the whole thing. And this, well, you could almost see this as a good thing. Now we know the feds are keeping tabs on us, so we’ll all have to be more careful,” he said.

I nodded, unconvinced.

“Come on, mate, cheer up, you don’t want to look this blue when the lads show up,” he said, giving me a wink.

Touched seemed a different man than the morose and depressed character of this morning. A couple of hours of rape and torture had clearly invigorated him.

“But you’ve murdered one of their agents now. Won’t that make things worse?” I asked, making sure I said the word murdered, not killed.

“No, they’ll never find her. Not where we’re going to put her. They won’t know what happened to her. It’ll fuck them up for weeks. And let’s say the feds are watching us, the last thing they’ll expect us to do is what we’re going to do next.They’ll figure we’ll be running scared. They’ll think that. Not us, mate. You’ll see, Sean, we’ll impress you yet. And if you go back to Ireland someday, you’ll say that the Sons of Cuchu-lainn were the baddest, smartest, coolest lads you ever worked with. You’ll see.”

Touched laughed. He was so excited and relaxed that it was making me physically ill.

“So what happens next, tonight?” I asked.

“Gerry, me, you, and Jackie are going to dig a hole in the salt marsh on Plum Island and dispose of that lass. Then me and you are going back to Gerry’s house and I’m going to have to question you like you’ve never been questioned before.And then, after that, as much as you were on probation before, you’ll be in purgatory now,” he said dispassionately.

“What about the mess upstairs?”

“I’m going to be busy with you. Gerry is not in the best physical shape, so I suppose young Jackie will have to spend most of the night doing that. I’ll swing by in the morning with my UV scanner to check it out. Be a job, but don’t worry about that, the hard work will be good for him.”

There was a knock at the back door.

“There’s the boys,” Touched said.

Touched kept me in pistol shot and opened the back door. Gerry and Jackie were dressed in old clothes, carrying a holdall and a huge plastic sail cover that presumably was to be the improvised body bag. Jackie limped over and shook my hand. Gerry, too, greeted me warmly.

“Sean,” Gerry said loudly. “I believe the shadow of suspicion has been draped over you. Not to worry. Macte nova virtute puer. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.Kit told me about the little trick she pulled, no wonder you needed some refreshment after your long walk.”

“What are you going to do to him?” Jackie asked.

“We’re going to have to quarantine Sean a wee bit,”Touched said. “And check him out.”

Jackie looked upset.

“I don’t mind it, Jackie, really, better safe than sorry. I mean, I can totally see Touched’s point of view,” I said.

“Anyway, don’t worry. We’re going to have a grand few days. We’re going to switch to plan B and we’re going to go to the cabin,” Gerry said.

“I’ve filled him in already, Gerry, can’t let him know too much, though; I told him he’s going to be in purgatory for a wee bit,” Touched announced.

“Of course. We’ll have to keep an eye on you,” Gerry said, slapping me on the back a little too hard.

“Ok,” I said.

“These are difficult times,” Gerry said, his eyes tight and betraying nothing.

I nodded and Jackie came over and patted me on the back too. Not like Gerry. Gentle, affectionately.

“I believe in you. You were cool under pressure last night and as far as I’m concerned you’re a mate for life. And, for, for, for my part that shit between us is all in the past,” Jackie said, his cheeks reddening.

I give him a Gleason tap under the chin.

“Thanks, Jackie,” I said, trying to sound moved.

“Well, if the fucking lovefest is over, we have work to do,” Touched declared. “Gerry, since you are not the most physically able of the four of us, I’m going to have to ask you to keep Sean covered with the gun. I know it’s bloody distasteful but you’ll have to do it.”

Gerry nodded and gave me a sympathetic look. Touched opened Gerry’s holdall, removed overalls and gloves. We put them on. Touched grabbed the sail bag and led us upstairs.

We went into the Mediterranean blue bedroom, with the lovely pictures and new drapes. Jackie took one look at the bed and had to leave. We heard him retch into the toilet bowl.

“Make sure you bloody flush,” Touched said.

I looked at her again. Samantha was naked, cold, but she didn’t look dead. Even disfigured, there was, even now, a hint of the woman. That big personality who, if she could, would be telling me to keep a cool head and be careful.

There she was, still and lifeless, three men in her web, looking at her.

“Better get started,” Touched said.

Gerry didn’t say anything, which in itself was remarkable.

No “Oh my God, Touched, what the fuck have you done?”or “You’re a fucking animal, we need to get you help” or “This time you’ve gone too far,” nothing like that. Just a shrug and on with the bloody task at hand.

I untied her wrists and lifted her by the head, secretly caressing her frigid cheek.

“That’s the ticket, Sean. Hold her up. Get in here, Jackie,”Touched said, lifting her legs. We eased her into the sail bag and Gerry zipped it up.

“I don’t recognize her at all, are you sure about this, Touched? I mean, just because she drove past our house a couple of times,” Gerry wondered.

“No mistake, Gerry, I’m telling you she was FBI. I promise. I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”

Gerry nodded. That was good enough for him. It had to be good enough for him.

We carried Samantha to the stairs and as far as I could I made sure the passage down was gently done. Gerry checked that the coast was clear and we heaved the body outside to one of his big white vans. We shut the van and closed, but didn’t lock, the back door of All Things Brit. Touched drove us away from the scene of butchery, Gerry pointing the gun from the front, Jackie and me in the back with Samantha.

We hit the Plum Island turnpike, went over the bridge, and turned right towards the wildlife sanctuary. This was almost the very spot Samantha and I had been at last night. And here she was again in different circumstances entirely.

We easily skirted the barrier the Department of Fish and Wildlife had put up to stop people going into the reserve after dark and drove about a mile down the single-lane road, finally coming to a halt at a sign marked “Salt Pan.”

All four of us got out. A desolate part of the island, between barren sand dunes and the tidal marsh with no trace of people, birds, anything.

Gerry distributed shovels and Jackie, Touched, and myself began digging a hole in the weird, sucking, salty earth.

I began to get nervous.

Of course, they could just as easily shoot me and throw me down this hole too.

I could, at any moment, make a break for it, run off into the darkness. But Touched and Jackie were very fit. They’d track me and kill me for sure. And from what I’d read, Touched was a marksman.

I looked up at the waxing moon and the surroundings.

Not much cover in these dunes.

I decided to play it cool, for now. Though I’d have to give it a go if I twigged that they were going to execute me.

“Why bury her here, Touched?” I asked.

“It’s a good spot,” Touched replied. “The ground is so salty no big animals can stand it, so nothing’s going to dig her up.She’ll stay here undiscovered, pretty much until the end of bloody time. I found out about this place, when, uh, when, well, let’s just say, I had a similar problem about a year ago. Woman trouble. You know what’s it’s like. ’Course I had to do the digging all by myself. Gerry would not help me.”

“Damn right, Touched, you got yourself into that mess and no bloody mistake,” Gerry said and chuckled as if Touched had failed to pay his parking tickets or been caught sneaking into the cinema.

Touched wiped the sweat from his brow and took a breather. It was now a hot, sweaty night and naturally the flies were murderous. Gerry, keeping the gun on me and excused from digging, passed us a water bottle. We all took a swig.

“Have you been to Maine before, Sean?” he asked when I gave him the water back.

“Nope,” I said, grunting between shovels.

“You’ll like it. Fall in the Maine woods is a truly beautiful experience. And I think the leaves just might be starting to turn when we get up there, although it’ll probably still be too early. We’ll see.”

We dug for another fifteen minutes. When Touched called a halt, I was relieved to see that there was room enough for only one body. We laid Samantha in her final resting place and threw in our overalls and Touched’s bloody clothes. When no one was looking, I put my cell phone in one of my gloves and dropped it in too, just in case they had the wit to check the call log. Now there was no link between me and her.

I made sure my shovel was the first to throw the dirt on her. It’s not an insult, it’s a blessing, I said to myself.

We filled in the hole quicker than we dug it. Touched stamped down the sand and put his hands on his hips, admiring a job well done.

He looked at Gerry.

“The old ways?” Touched asked.

“We got time?” Gerry replied.

“Aye,” Touched said. “Come on, lads.”

Touched unzipped his jeans, took out his penis, and began urinating on the grave. Gerry began unbuttoning his fly and I saw that this was an opportunity not to be missed. I unzipped my pants and unleashed a strong stream of urine onto the grave.

“Fucking bitch,” I muttered under my breath but loud enough for the boys to hear.

Gerry laughed and Touched nodded with satisfaction.

“Come on, Jack, you too,” Touched said.

Jackie took out his prick but he couldn’t pee. He wasn’t a bad sort, Jackie, and this was all just too much for him.

“I can’t go,” he said when the three of us were finishing up.

“Forget it, Jackie. It’s enough. We better get cracking,”Gerry said.

Touched grunted and took something out of his pocket.

“I’d be much obliged if you put these on, Sean,” Touched said, passing me a pair of handcuffs.

Jackie was incensed.

“Is that really necessary? For fucksake, he’s one of us,” he said.

“Jackie, you shut the fuck up now. I’m head of security here and I’ve already explained to Sean why I’m suspicious and he understands it.”

“I don’t mind, Jack,” I told him.

I zipped my pants and cuffed my hands in front of me. Touched checked that they were tight with a tug on both wrists that made me flinch with a momentary flash of terror, for now that I was safely restrained this was another occasion for an abrupt change of mood: screaming, yelling, kicking me to the ground…

But it didn’t happen.

“All right, job well done,” Gerry said.

We walked back to the van.

Gerry drove. He dropped Touched and me back at the house on PI and gave Jackie a lift back into town for his long hours ahead. Jackie would have to scour the place of blood and any clues that she’d met a violent end. Definitely an all-nighter. But at least he wouldn’t find a fax from the FBI or MI6 confirming Samantha’s request for a million dollars and a pardon from Spain and Mexico. She either hadn’t gotten round to asking for that yet, or, like the professional agent she was, she’d destroyed the note as soon as she’d gotten it.

“This way,” Touched said, leading me not to the guesthouse but instead to a basement room in the main house.

I was relieved. If I didn’t sufficiently convince Touched and this was to be my prison cell it would be ok. Eventually the FBI backups were bound to notice that Samantha was missing and they’d come looking for me; and if I was still alive they’d find me down here. Hopefully, before Touched had a chance to work his magic.

The dead channel of the TV casting a dismal glow out into the thick air of the musky room. The blinds drawn but sunlight filtering through the gaps, illuminating the dust spirals rising from the heat of the floor. Outside crickets and grasshoppers beginning their summer song and greenheads and biting flies waking from their nighttime slumber, ready for another day of greedy torment on the human population of the island.

Morning.

I was knackered, but Touched was exhausted too. He wasn’t up for this. Asking questions without torture, where was the fun in that? Harder than it looked.

He had sat me in a comfortable old leather reclining chair, but five hours with my right hand cuffed to the radiator and the worry that one slip would mean certain death was still a dark night of the bloody soul.

Touched yawned.

“Let’s go through this one more time,” he said, rubbing at the blear in his eyes.

He’d asked about random times in my life, what school I’d gone to, my teachers, where I’d shopped in Belfast, the names of various pubs. And of course he realized that if I was an Englishman or an American pretending to be an Irishman I was impossibly good. Still, that didn’t prove I wasn’t working for the FBI. He’d asked about every year of Sean’s life, asked names, contacts, addresses. But I’d broken the back of him in the wee smalls and after that his heart wasn’t in it.

Or at least so it appeared.

One thing you couldn’t do with Touched was underestimate him.

That was ok too. I was patient and I’d wait him out. I wanted to wait him out. I was in a dangerous place, but the moment I’d seen Samantha I’d made a decision. The mission had changed. It was no longer about money or the Sons of Cuchulainn. Touched had taken it into the realm of the personal, and I’d decided that whatever else happened I wasn’t running now. I was in it for the long haul. Now it was between him and me. Let the Sons of Cuchulainn carry out their little fantasies, let them have their delusions of grandeur. Let them do what they wanted. But give me time alone with him. Before I escaped to the feds, before I got away from these people, I’d make bloody sure that he got what was coming to him. No trial for you, Touched. Gerry and the rest, yes, but I’m taking care of you myself.

Touched yawned loudly and I could see he was hamming it.

He was about to roll his final play.

“So between March 1992 and November 1992 you don’t remember where you were working at all?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head.

“It was either in London or it was Spain, I don’t fucking remember, Touched, I really don’t. I’m beat,” I said.

He stood up and got himself a drink of water from a tap in the corner. He hit the TV set to switch it off.

He turned and looked at me.

Carefully, he took his little green toolbox from an inside jacket pocket. He opened it and removed a blood-encrusted scalpel.

His eyes narrowed.

“You think you’re so fucking smart. Well, you’re not. You’re as smart as her and that’s not smart enough,” he said coldly.

He walked over, threw his arm round my neck, pulled my head back, and brought the bloody scalpel up to my eyeball.

“Tell me the fucking truth,” he said. “Tell me the truth or I’ll fucking cut you right now.”

The bloody blade touched my eyelid. It made me wince.

Fear rushed through me.

But I wasn’t going to lose it now.

“I don’t fucking remember, Touched,” I insisted.

He pushed on the blade for a horrible ten seconds but then he let go the grip around my neck, removed the scalpel, and shook his head.

He yawned.

“Ugh, it doesn’t matter, Sean, I don’t remember anything of the 80s and not much of the early 90s either,” he said with a half-laugh.

I nodded.

“So you finally believe me?”

“Aye, I think you’re ok. I have a sixth sense for these things.You’re one of us. I’ve thought so all along… There’s just that one wee thing.”

“What one wee thing.”

“Well, ach, it’s nothing, it’s just that you’re a bit too good to be true, you know? You’re cool and you’re clever and you’re young. And you fell in our lap at just the right time. Do you see what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“No. Well, it doesn’t matter. The thing is, I want to believe you and it’s easy to believe you.”

“You should believe me ’cos I’m telling the truth.”

“Aye, so you say. You probably are. It’s nothing to do with you and I’m going to tell Gerry that. It’s my fault, I’m just a suspicious old dog,” he said with a mechanical wink.

He gave me a cup full of water. I drank it and leaned back in the reclining chair. Touched rubbed his face.

“It’s morning,” I said, looking out the basement window.

“Aye, we’ve been at this all night, and I still have to go and check up on Jackie and ring my wee pal in Portsmouth Harbor. Fuck it. Ok. Ok. I think we’ll call it right here,” Touched said with weary eyes.

“Fine by me,” I said. “You wanna undo the cuff?”

With him tired and the cuff off and the gun in the other corner of the room I could fucking kill him right now. But Touched was an old pro.

He backed away, got his gun, and took another drink of water.

He shook his head.

“Like I say, I’m a sussy oul dog. But still, we’re on the job today and I’m going to have to keep you under close observation until then. Do you mind?” he said, sounding a bit ashamed of himself.

“You got to do what you think is right,” I said like a good little disciple.

Touched stood, threw me another set of cuffs, and motioned me to fasten my wrists together. Only then would he undo the chain to the radiator.

“Ok, what time is it? Let me see, six, ok, I can hear them moving around upstairs. Well, what I suggest is this. You and me go upstairs and get some breakfast and I’ll buzz Jackie and we both have a big bloody sleep for four or five hours. Let them do all the packing and hard work. We’ll kip, have some lunch. Go to Portsmouth, get our man, and head to the cabin.What do you say?”

“Sounds good to me,” I muttered.

“It wasn’t too bad, was it?”

“I’m wrecked, Touched, totally wrecked. I hope you did all this with Jackie and Seamus, too, and all the others,” I said.

He put his arm round my shoulder.

“Come up for breakfast. Got to keep those cuffs on ya until after the op or at least until I’m sure. Do you think you can sleep with them on?”

“I doubt it,” I said.

“Cuff your good ankle to the bed. What about that?” Touched said in an attempt to be tender.

It made me hate him all the more.

“Whatever you say, mate,” I told him.

He led me upstairs. He threw me the key so I could eat breakfast, but he was sitting at the other end of the table and he had the gun in his pocket now.

After I’d forced myself to swallow some toast and eggs, he made me cuff myself again, took me to my old room upstairs, and handcuffed my ankle to the iron bedstead, only then undoing the wrists. Suspicious old dog was right. And from his extreme caution, it was not impossible that he’d seen through my act and actually he was the one fooling me, not vice versa.Not impossible, but not likely.

Touched waved goodbye, shut the door, and I lay back on the bed.

I closed my eyes. But I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t come down from the high plateau of concentration. One wee slipup and I’d be joining Samantha in a hole in the salt pan.

Samantha.

Oh my God, Samantha.

What a hero she’d been. Saying nothing, when it would have been so easy to give me up to end her pain. If I got out of this alive I’d make sure the Brits knew about her courage.

I stared at the cloud patterns through the window and watched the tide come in, and then, despite everything, I did manage to doze for a while…

Two, three hours later?

The door opened.

Gerry was standing there.

He walked to the bed and undid the handcuff at my foot.

“We won’t be needing that anymore,” he said.

I was free.

I sat up, rubbing my ankle to get the circulation back. Gerry was easy, even if he was armed. A dropkick to the sternum. Get him on the floor, rip that revolver from him, grab a pillow to act as silencer, shoot the fucker twice, one in the gut, one in the head, run down through the house looking for Touched. But where was Touched and the rest of them?

“Where is Touched? I should really tell him that there’s no hard feelings.”

“Oh, he’s gone already, and listen, I want to talk to you about that, better that he’s not here.”

“Go ahead.”

His big frame lumbered up beside me and his sad eyes blinked slowly.

“Sean, I just want to let you know that I’m very sorry about all of this. This is not how I customarily treat my guests,” he said.

I don’t know what was worse, Touched’s suspicions or Gerry’s constant fucking apologies.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“I had no idea he had shackled you and it will not happen again… I want to let you know that I for one never doubted you.”

“It’s ok,” I said, standing up and balancing myself.

“No, it’s not ok. Goddamnit, you saved my daughter’s life.And I was moved by that more than you can ever know, Sean,” Gerry said, his eyes getting all watery. “Touched doesn’t want me to tell you this, but I feel so terrible about the way he’s been abusing you in the hospitality of my house. And he even wants to…” Gerry’s voice trailed off.

He’d certainly piqued my bloody interest, though, and I couldn’t let it stop there.

“What?”

Gerry sighed. “Oh, I suppose it’s nothing really. But I wanted to let you know that he’s asked our friends in Belfast to check you out too. We should have word back in a couple of days and then the cloud will be gone permanently. We’ll do a proper induction ceremony into the Sons of Cuchulainn and after that, my boy, you’ll start to see how we really work. What the FBI don’t realize is that we’re not lunatics or chaos merchants, we’re smart, and we’re long-term thinkers, and we’ll get it right, you’ll see.”

I hoped I wasn’t showing any emotion. There were two ways they could check me out back home. They could look into the police computer files, school records, that kind of thing and Sean McKenna would be fine. Six had sorted all that out for him. But the other way might be more tricky. If these “friends” actually went to the trouble of asking questions in the alleged neighborhoods where I used to live, went to the schools I used to attend, talked to the men I supposedly knew, well, then things could be quite a bit hairier.

I shrugged and smiled.

It didn’t matter to me anyway. I had already made up my mind. I was staying in until I butchered him and if it meant I had only a couple of days of safety, well, then that rapist-murderer had only a couple of days too.

We stood in the driveway while Gerry lowered the flags. The van was loaded up, and the two vehicles were ready. Kit was wearing a black trench coat that didn’t suit her, a wool sweater, and a Boston Red Sox wool hat.

“How far up is this cabin? You look as if we’re going to the North Pole,” I asked her.

Kit looked at me and smiled. She was goofy but she could get me killed, that girl. One blab to Touched about the army and I’d be dead meat.

“You’d be surprised how cold it can get. You ever look at the weather reports in the papers? On days when it’s ninety degrees in Boston, a hundred degrees in New York, check out Mount Washington and it’s like forty.”

Sonia laughed.

“She’s exaggerating, Sean. It won’t be that cold. And the cabin isn’t even in the mountains. We won’t be anywhere near Mount Washington,” she said.

Kit’s nose wrinkled up in a way that would have made the Ottoman eunuchs weep into their sherbet.

And because she looked so beautiful I had to insult her.

“That coat doesn’t really work on you, it’s trailing along the ground,” I said.

“That’s what I told her,” Jackie said.

“You two know nothing. It’s called a trail-duster frock coat.They’re, like, making this film next summer called The Matrix, Keanu is in it and that’s the whole look,” she said.

“Again with Keanu,” Jackie groaned.

I turned my attention to Sonia, who also looked radiant in a summer dress that shimmered brilliantly with the light behind her.

“It’s in the woods though, right?” I asked.

“It is in the woods, a very beautiful part of the state, I think you’re going to like it very much. We’ll have so much fun,”Sonia said happily.

Sonia, it seemed, was unaware of the “surprise” that was going to happen to us when we got up there. The mysterious plan B.

“Gerry said something about the fall colors.” “Oh, we’re far too early for that, but you never know. Anyway, since I’m the pathfinder I’d better go,” she said. She kissed Gerry and Kit, waved, and drove off in the Mercedes.

“She’s not going with the rest of us?” I asked Kit.

“Nah, she’s going first to get the cabin ready. I was supposed to go too, but there was no way,” she said.

“She’s totally incorrigible,” Jackie said. He considered me a mate now to whom he could lightheartedly bitch about his crazy girlfriend.

“Was it really bad last night, back at the flat?” I asked him.

“I do not even want to talk about it,” he said.

“What happened last night?” Kit asked. “Was it that woman you chased out of town?”

My mouth opened and closed. Chased out of town? Who had told her that bald-faced lie? And what other unpleasant episodes had they kept from her?

Hmmm. Exactly how sure were they of her and Sonia? And if her own father was ashamed to tell her about the horrors Touched had perpetrated, it might mean that she was pliable and not as committed as the three men. Good. I would choose to believe it that way. Maybe I could even like her without the guilty conscience.

Kit tapped her foot. She was waiting for an answer. I looked at Jackie but he wasn’t ready for an off-the-cuff remark and I wasn’t going to help him out.

“Nothing,” he said finally. “I had to clean up a big mess.”

Kit looked at him suspiciously and let the matter drop.

Jackie smiled at me and fidgeted with a gun in his pocket.A small-caliber revolver. So both he and Gerry were packing heat. But that was ok too, I wasn’t worried.

Having lowered his flags and put them away, Gerry walked over.

“Ok, lads and lasses, we better go. I told Touched I’d pick him up by six and the afternoon is wearing on.”

“Where is Touched?” I asked him.

“Oh, he went up to Portsmouth already, Kittery actually, Kittery, Maine,” Jackie said.

“We’re meeting him there?” I asked. “Yes, well, we are. We have a slightly tricky but ultimately rewarding task to accomplish. Important for you, Sean, in particular. I think this will be an opportunity for you to show Touched that paranoia is perhaps not the most agreeable of notions.”

Gerry locked the house and we piled into another big McCaghan Construction van. Jackie driving, Kit and Gerry squeezed into the other seats of the front cabin. Only a half-partition between them and me in the back. Gerry had locked me in, I’d noticed, but it didn’t faze me. If I wanted to escape I could easily cry for help any number of times in the slow drive through Newburyport before we got to the highway. True, Gerry could have shot me with his silenced 9mm, but it was moot, I wasn’t looking to escape, I was looking to bide my bloody time…

It was nearly dark when we arrived in Kittery-a small town just across the water from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

We drove into a landing place for boats and, sure enough, there was Touched, large as life, twice as nasty, looking sinister in leather jacket, boots, and a brown shirt.

“There he is,” Kit said happily.

Yeah, good old Uncle Touched.

He slammed the side of the van and, using his own key, opened it and got in the back next to me. He nodded a hello and I nodded back, but when he noticed Kit his good humor departed.

“Gerry, what the fuck is she doing here?” he asked.

Gerry looked shamefaced.

“I couldn’t keep her away,” he said.

“Jesus Christ, Gerry, I thought we discussed this,” Touched said. “She was supposed to go with Sonia and get the cabin ready.”

“We did discuss it-” Gerry began but Kit cut him off.

“First of all, Touched, it’s not ‘she,’ my name is Kit. And second of all, you are not the boss of me, and third of all, how come you’re bringing along Sean, who’s been with us for less than a week, and not me? How come? I’ll tell you how come. Because I’m a girl and you’re a fucking sexist pig,” Kit said loudly.

“Keep your voice down for one thing. And for two, just because you’re Gerry’s daughter doesn’t mean I can’t give you orders. I am the boss of you and you’ll do as you’re fucking told,” Touched said.

Kit stared at him, then at her da. Touched clenched his fist. Another time, another crowd and he would have belted her.But Kit slipped in one of her devastating apology/seductress smiles. Touched quivered, cracked, relented.

“Well, anyway, I guess now that you’re here,” he said, “I suppose I have no bloody choice.”

“No choice,” Kit said triumphantly.

Touched looked at Gerry. “Did you tell Kit and Sonia about Sean’s wee dose of house arrest?” he asked.

Gerry coughed. “Er, no, I’m afraid I did not have an occasion for that, we were all so busy and what with the packing and everything,” he said.

Touched sighed. “Kit, it’s like this, we had a bit of a close call yesterday and now Sean is under close watch. He knows it and he approves of it, so he doesn’t get access to firearms and you’re not to be alone with him. Understood?”

Kit looked at me strangely, a little intrigued by my new status, but she obediently nodded.

“Better brief them, Touched,” Gerry said.

Touched cleared his throat and grinned excitedly.

“Ok, folks. This is what we call a target of opportunity. I know what you’re thinking, we should lie low for a few weeks after all that’s happened in the last couple of days. But it’s exactly the opposite. We have to prove to the real Provos in Ireland that even in the face of a couple of setbacks, we can hit fast and hard and effectively,” Touched said, explaining nothing at all.

“Yeah, but what’s the mission?” Kit asked.

“The mission for you is to do nothing, Kit. I’m handling it.Me and Gerry will do all the work, the three of you do what we say and stay out of it. Me and Gerry are old hands, we know what we’re doing.”

Touched reached into his jacket and gave Kit and myself each an old Webley revolver.

“These are just for show, they’re not loaded. Gerry and me will do any shooting that’s necessary,” Touched said, but I checked the gun anyway in case there was one in the chamber.

“What about me? I can help. I got mine,” Jackie said.

“Jackie. Don’t you do a goddamn thing without my say-so.

Understood?” Touched said.

Jackie nodded.

“The mission, explain the mission,” Gerry said.

“Ok then. I’ve got a motorboat and we’re going to that yacht over there in the harbor with the two masts and the yellow paint. It’s called the Elizabeth Regina. We’re going to go on and get someone and get off it again. Simple as pie,”Touched said.

“Who are we getting?” Kit asked.

“The Elizabeth Regina is owned by Peter Blackwell,”Touched said significantly.

Kit, Jackie, and I looked stupidly at one another.

“Surely you know who he is, Sean?” Touched said.

“Sorry, Touched, no clue,” I admitted.

“Peter fucking Blackwell is a full general in the British Army. He was commander in chief of the British Army in Northern Ireland for full four years. Four years. Two tours.Target number one for the Provos for four years and they never got him. He’s on leave from Germany now, but still, he has to be very high on everyone’s list back home. As high as Thatcher, some people might say,” Touched said triumphantly.

I couldn’t help looking at Kit for a moment. She knew that I’d been in that army too. But Kit didn’t bat an eye. Good for her.

“What’s he doing over here?” I asked Touched.

“Intelligence wins the day, Sean. I found out that his boat the Elizabeth Regina was entered in the Kittery Twenty-Four-Hour Race that begins the day after tomorrow. He flew in yesterday, he’s spending the night on the boat, his crew joins him in the morning, and then he goes off racing. Except that he doesn’t. We get him first.”

“What do you mean, get him?” Kit asked.

“We lift him. We kidnap him,” Touched said.

“You should tell them why,” Gerry whispered.

“We grab him and on a stolen cell phone we call the State Department and tell him that unless Hannity, Buchanan, and O’Reilly are allowed to go to a third country unhindered then we’ll kill Blackwell. If they release the Newark Three, then we let him go and it’s kudos for us, if they don’t release them we kill Blackwell and again it’s kudos for us.”

I looked at Kit, but her face was turned away. Was she upset? What was she thinking?

The plan was ok but no Manhattan Project. Hannity, Buchanan, and O’Reilly, the Newark Three, were a trio of IRA hoods who had been in an INS detention facility in New Jersey awaiting extradition back to Ulster. They were smalltime gunrunners, so I suppose Touched and Gerry thought it was just about possible that the British government would pressure the State Department into letting them go in return for General Blackwell’s safe release. Possible, but not probable. The Brits had a long-standing policy of not negotiating with terrorists.

Still, the underlying assumption was correct. It would be a win-win for Touched. If they didn’t release the three, he killed the general and got big respect from every dissident republican in Ireland. If they did let the three out, again big fucking respect.

But even so, a high-profile kidnapping that could go horribly wrong in many ways was more a sign of weakness than one of strength for the Sons of Cuchulainn.

“Won’t they trace your call?” I asked.

“No, they won’t. Thought of that. I got a couple of nicked phones from my mate in the Hampton Beach casino. I’m only making one call and then I’m throwing the phone away. If they release the Newark Three, we’ll hear on the radio, and if they don’t we’ll hear that, too.”

“We wouldn’t really kill the general in cold blood, would we?” Kit asked, her face controlled, calm.

“Damn right we would. He’s a war criminal. A British occupier. We’d have to, Kit. It wouldn’t be a murder, it would be a sanctioned execution,” Touched said.

“So far it’s been all hits against us. Revere and Seamus and the FBI snooping on us, but now we’re striking back, we’re taking the war to the enemy,” Gerry added.

“Would you kill him, Dad?” Kit asked.

“Time is pressing,” Touched said before Gerry could answer.

We got out of the van and went down to the boat Touched had rustled up from somewhere. A large, long boat that in Ireland we called a dory. Tied to a wharf, it was still a little tricky to get in it, especially for Gerry. But eventually, when we were all nervously aboard, Touched pulled the outboard and it whirred into life.

Portsmouth Harbor was packed full of ships and boats. To the right was the Piscataqua River and to the left was the Atlantic. The Elizabeth Regina was not the biggest boat in the harbor, but it was still large. A two-masted schooner, about sixty-five feet long.

Not the sort of thing you could afford on army pay. The general obviously had money.

Touched steered us closer, the dory struggling against the current and Gerry’s weight. Kit was next to me, shivering. She had removed her trench coat and was dressed in only a thin black silk sweater. I put my arm round her and she didn’t refuse it and Jackie, bless him, didn’t mind.

Since I was near the back, Touched handed me a pair of binoculars.

“Is he still moving about, Sean?” he asked me.

I looked through the binocs and, sure enough, I could see a figure belowdecks futtering around.

“Aye.”

“And there’s only one person, Sean?” Gerry asked.

“Yup. I think it’s just one guy, but I don’t know how on earth you could know that for sure,” I said.

“Don’t get smart, Sean, I’ve been watching the bloody boat for the last four hours. It’s one guy,” Touched said.

“One old guy. One unarmed old guy,” Gerry said.

“How do you know he’s unarmed?” Jackie asked.

“There’s no way he would have been allowed to enter U.S.territory with a gun on his boat,” Gerry said, discounting the possibility of a flare gun, boat hook, ice axe.

“Which is not to say that he is not armed and not dangerous. He will definitely be the latter and maybe the former. So if it comes to trouble, Kit, you hang back, looking menacing; Sean, your job is to look after Kit; me, Gerry, and Jackie will handle the old man,” Touched said.

Closer. There was music coming from the boat.

“Hey, that’s Radiohead,” Kit said to me.

“Sounds like the general’s up with the kids,” I said skeptically.

Whether he was into Radiohead or not, he had very helpfully placed half a dozen fenders along the port hull of the Elizabeth so that other boats could easily moor alongside.

“Masks on,” Touched whispered. We pulled on black ski masks and gloves. It wasn’t completely dark yet, so if anyone was passing in a fishing boat or a dinghy they’d certainly notice us.

Unfortunately, no one was passing.

Touched cut the dory’s motor and we drifted for about twenty feet until we were against the Elizabeth’s hull.

“Fend off,” Touched whispered to Jackie. Jackie had no idea what Touched meant but he put up his arm anyway to stop us crashing into the side of the boat. We were near the ladder at the stern and Jackie had the presence of mind to nudge us along so that we could climb it rather than having to haul ourselves up over the rail. Gerry probably couldn’t have managed that in any case.

“Up you go, Jackie boy,” Touched said.

Jackie climbed the ladder and pulled out his gun. There was no sound from the subdecks. I went next, then Gerry. The whole stern of the boat bobbed in the water when he came onboard; but again nothing from belowdecks. Kit next.Touched last.

Touched led us to the cabin entrance and he opened the sliding hatchway that led down below. I followed him into the forecabin. A large luxury yacht, fitted out for at least a dozen crew, not really a racer, more of a cruiser because it had a big heavy cooking stove, a drinks cabinet, even a library up against one wall. Radiohead coming from a CD player.

A door opened at the rear of the boat. A young man in a bathrobe humming to the music. Curly-haired, blond, early twenties, maybe even younger, an Eton pugilist’s nose, a handsome face with deep green eyes.

He froze when he saw us.

“What the fuuu…” he said in complete terror.

“Put your hands up,” Touched whispered.

The kid began to tremble.

“What do you want?” he asked in a frightened British accent.

Touched put his fingers to his lips.

“Put your fucking hands up. Where’s General Blackwell? Is he sleeping?” Touched whispered.

“Are you the IRA?” the kid asked.

“Where the fuck is he?” Touched asked, louder this time.

“He w-went to Boston,” the kid said.

“What?”

“Boston, he’s in Boston.”

“Fuck,” Touched muttered to himself and then turned to me.

“You and J., make sure he’s not lying.”

Jackie and I searched the boat, but the kid was alone.

Jackie didn’t see me pick up a pen and slip it into my pocket.

My own wee plan B.

“Nobody here,” Jackie said.

“What’s your name, boy?” Touched asked the kid.

“Peter.”

“Peter Blackwell?” Touched asked. “You’re his son?”

“Yes. I’m the youngest,” he said, too frightened even to lie.

“Keep those hands up,” Touched said, and he turned to Gerry. “What do you want me to do?” Gerry shook his head.

“When does your father get back?” Gerry asked.

“I don’t know, I think tomorrow, he’s meeting the crew and they’re all supposed to come up tomorrow.”

“We could wait overnight, get the jump on him tomorrow,”Touched whispered to Gerry.

Gerry looked doubtful.

“How many crew?” he asked Peter.

“I don’t know, I think five or six,” Peter said honestly. If it had been me, I would have said a dozen.

Gerry sat down on the edge of a foldout bed.

“I think we’ll have to abort, the better part of valor and all that, six men plus Blackwell, it’s got all the makings of a disaster. We’ll have to shut this one down,” he said.

Touched was furious, his face contorting with rage and frustration.

“No way, no way. I planned this out meticulously. We cannot afford another defeat. The way things have been going, this will be the end of us,” Touched said.

“What do you suggest?” Gerry asked.

“Kill him as a message. Or the original fucking plan, take him instead. Even better this way, exert real moral pressure on the Brits. They’ll cave, fucking Blair will cave.”

Gerry considered it.

“We would ask for the same prisoners?”

“Absolutely. Same deal. Give them forty-eight hours and we let the kid go,” Touched said.

“I don’t have anything to do with Northern Ireland, I’ve never been there or anything,” Peter pleaded.

“Shut up. You’re coming with us,” Touched said.

If he came with us, he was dead. I knew it and Peter knew it. It was not likely that the Brits would give in to this kind of intimidation, especially not a new prime minister who was perceived as weak on foreign policy.

“Fuck it, there’s no point bringing him. This wasn’t the plan. He’s no good to us at all. Look at him. He’s barely out of his teens,” I said.

I could feel Touched’s look. I turned and sure enough those cold gray eyes were boring into me. After all the good credibility I had built up overnight, I had made him suspicious yet again. Goddamnit, Michael, that mouth of yours is going to get you killed one day.

“Yeah, please, you can’t take me. No one gives a shit about me, just leave me and I won’t say anything, I promise, just let me go please,” Peter begged.

“Shut up, Englishman. We decide, and you shut the fuck up,” I yelled and smacked him hard on the skull with the butt of the revolver.He crumpled to the deck like a Chinese lantern folding up. “I think you killed him,” Jackie said in horror.Touched leaned down and checked the pulse at his throat.

“Nah, he’s alive.”

“Well, what do you think, take him or leave him?” I asked Touched cheerfully.

He didn’t answer me. He stood, nodded to Gerry.

“Let’s get this bloody show on the road,” he said and nodded at Jackie and me to pick him up. We lifted him. The second person I’d had to carry like this in twenty-four hours.

“What do you think?” Gerry asked sotto voce.

“Gerry, you take a situation. You roll with the punch. I think it’s ok. I think we’re finally doing things right,” Touched said.

Jackie and I carried him out onto the deck.

“You think we should get some of his clothes? We can’t really keep him in his robe?” I asked Touched.

Gerry shrugged, looked at Kit, then back at me.

“You might as well grab a pair of trousers or something,”Gerry said.

I ran to the rear cabin, closed the door, wrote “FBI Michael Forsythe Gerry McCaghan’s cabin Maine” prominently on one of the walls, grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and ran out.

They had Peter in the dory now. I handed Gerry the jeans and helped him into the motorboat.

A tight squeeze but we got to shore without incident. We lifted Peter out of the dory, dressed him, tied him up, gagged him, and chucked him in the back of the van.

Touched watching me every step of the way, very wary of me again.

Touched locked the van’s doors from the outside and made me sit in the back with Jackie and Peter.

Gerry drove so that Touched could keep an eye on me.

But I chilled and didn’t do anything else stupid to raise his suspicions. Instead, I lay down on the floor, put my rolled-up jacket under my head, and pretended to sleep for the four or five hours it took us to get up to Gerry’s cabin in the woods of Maine.

We finally stopped.

The van doors opened.

An exhausted stumble-around in the darkness, a big house somewhere deep in the forest. I could tell we were miles from the nearest town because the stars were brilliant and unobscured.

Touched took care of me first. He led me upstairs to a bedroom and handcuffed my foot to a cast-iron bed.

“Piss pot under the bed if you need it, see you in the morning,” he said brusquely and left.

Later. Noiseless outside. Then a door banging at an outhouse or a barn. Men speaking.

“… do for him” is all I can catch.

Inside, the rest of them, excited, nervous.

Talking, laughing, timber chairs scraping on the timber floor.

The voices in murmurs. A few loud good nights then footsteps on the stairs. A tiny voice singing to herself in French.Sonia going to bed.

A door closing. Movement, and then one by one everyone else comes upstairs.

Jackie first, muttering to himself. Then Kit, almost making no sound at all. Finally Gerry, wheezing as he goes.

And the last man up. Touched. I flinch as he stops outside my door but he doesn’t come in.

A few more timber creaks and groans but in an hour the house is quiet. Fantastically silent. A deep nothingness.

Just the room, the bed, the window, me.

Starlight.

A hill cutting off the bottom of the constellation Pegasus. The smell of wood, resin, old sheets, rusting iron, mold spores, damp.

Peace distills into my soul.

And I know that this is the place for the final chapter.

This is the place where it will end. Where Samantha will be avenged or I will die.

Here in the woods. In blades and bullets, with the seasons poised as they approach the equinox. I can see it, because I will make it.

I’ll be there, outside in the cold air. Under the trees.

Birds wheeling diagonals. An iodine sky. Chevroned pines. Oaks as old as the republic itself. Corpses sprawled on the cold earth.

It will be done. The diorama of death around me.

I don’t know how. But I will make it happen. And though I’m bound and watched and unarmed, I wouldn’t be in their shoes.

No. Only her will I spare the slaughterhouse. The screams, the blood. The salt tears dripping into the wet earth.

Only her.

It will be terrible. I promise. The owl of Minerva will fly afraid. And miles from here a black bear will stand on her back legs and sniff the air, alarmed, smelling the carnage coming to her on the soft south wind. Yes.

And I smile in my sleep and dream it close.