The Dead Yard

10: BETRAYAL IN BELFAST

Haze smothers a distant mountain. The sun excites a million trees. Butterflies and blue jays fluttering above the window ledge and more birds in the discased vacuum around the house. Cirrus clouds, vapor trails, the sky the blue of a hangman’s suit.

I flex my fingers. Sit up, rub at the handcuff around my right ankle.

I’m a city boy. I don’t know the names of trees, but there are several different types, from the valley bottoms to the hilltops, absorbing the topography in a blanket of green, brown, and black. An occasional firebreak or clearing or winding trail.

The air is filled with oxygen. We are not in the high country or I would feel it. We’re in the forest and in fact we are near water. Saltwater. We’re close to the coast or a broad bay or an inlet. I can smell the Atlantic. Something that gives me comfort when every morning I wake in a different room and I’m a different person in a different type of jeopardy.

I haven’t been plain, uncomplicated Michael Forsythe for five years-back in the good old days. Not that they were ever any bloody good.

I check the handcuff and the cast-iron bed for a weak link.Nothing.

But knowing that we’re near the sea helps. That, and the message I left in the Elizabeth Regina. And, above all, the feeling that this is going to be the day.

Aye.

Today, I wake under discipline of war. Today, I will take the fight to the enemy. Peter Blackwell has forty-eight hours before Touched will murder him and I have only the same time before doubts concerning my identity arrive from Belfast.

So now is the time to act.

Bearings are the first key. From the bed, a limited view of woods and hills and an old disused railroad line almost completely recolonized by nature, and indeed, in the trees behind an outhouse there’s an old railway car minus its bogies and roof. But the cabin itself is not the humble dwelling one associates with the presidents on our low-denomination bills. This place is enormous. It bends round in an L shape and there are two floors and at least three different outbuildings. I wouldn’t call it a cabin, it’s more a log-hewn summerhouse. I don’t know how many acres of woods go with the place, but I’m sure we’re talking many millions of dollars for the entire estate.

That also gives me hope.

If the feds had been looking for a humble little Unabomber hut that was off the books, we’d be fucked; but this monstrosity couldn’t have escaped the notice of a tax-hungry local authority. It might take them a while to get here, but eventually they would, hopefully not to find the two rotting corpses of the kid and me.

In the kitchen below me a cheerful voice begins singing in Quebecois French.

“Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse. Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse tout en rond.”

She hasn’t a care in the world.

Doesn’t Sonia know that Touched will kill that boy as easily as chopping wood? Are they all in goddamn denial about what they’ve done?

A knock at the door.

“Come in,” I say.

Kit enters wearing a black dress and DM boots. She hasn’t slept well, and her eyelids are heavy and dark. It only accentuates her loveliness. She’s carrying a tray with breakfast.Fresh croissants and coffee.

She closes the door and sits on the edge of the mattress.She puts the tray on a little table next to the bed.

“Touched told me that we were going to have to keep you under restraint for a day or two. Apparently you said something on the boat that made him suspicious. I didn’t hear you say anything, but he’s always… Anyway. I’m really really sorry, Sean,” she says and takes my hand in hers, squeezes it.

“Touched is crazy, he’s completely crazy,” I tell her.

“Jackie and Dad both pleaded your case, but he didn’t listen to them,” Kit says, and her fingers are cold and soft in my rough, scarred palm.

“Is this breakfast?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, of course, Sonia made these croissants from scratch, they’re delicious, and there’s maple syrup if you want to dip them. It’s local. And then there’s coffee.”

“Thanks, I’m quite hungry,” I say.

I take a sip of coffee. It’s hot and good.

“Nice.”

“I made it,” she says, pleased.

“So, uh, where’s the boy?” I ask her.

“He’s out in the smokehouse. He’s ok. He’s, like, frightened, as you would expect him to be, but Sonia and I brought him breakfast and we told him that it was only going to be for a day or two and then we’d let him go.”

I shake my head from side to side.

“Touched is going to kill him. I guarantee you that,” I tell her.

“No. He wouldn’t do that. Even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t, Dad wouldn’t let him. And Dad’s in charge,” Kit says, but she bites her lip a little nervously.

“Kit, Gerry knows and Touched knows that he’s going to have to die. The State Department and Her Majesty’s fucking Foreign Office will not humiliate themselves by doing a deal with terrorists just to save a general’s son. And when the deadline passes, Touched will not let him go. He’ll kill him or he knows the Sons of Cuchulainn will be finished.”

Kit’s brow furrows and I can see she’s digesting what I’ve told her. But now is not the time to push it. Plant the seed now, fertilize it later.

“Where is here by the way? Where are we?” I ask.

“The cabin, silly.”

“Honey, I know, but where’s the cabin?”

“We’re about ten miles from Belfast, Maine. Of course, when he was looking to build somewhere, Dad had to buy land up here because of the local connection. We should take you into town, show you this Belfast, and you can compare it to yours. There couldn’t be two more different places on the planet Earth.”

“I’m sure. That sounds like fun, I’d love to go into town.Could we go today?” I ask eagerly.

Kit shakes her head sadly. She takes a knot out of her bob and hunts for a hair clip to keep the fringe out of her eyes.

“Nah, I don’t think so, I don’t think Touched would let me take you,” she says.

“Oh, that’s a shame, well, you could always ask anyway, he can only say no,” I suggest.

“Maybe,” she says.

“So how often do you guys come up here?”

“Two, three times a year.”

I fake a groan and take a sip of the coffee.

“What’s the matter?” Kit asks.

“It’s nothing. My leg hurts a little bit.”

“Your good leg or your…” she asks delicately.

“The handcuff around my ankle’s been cutting off the circulation and the cramp has been killing me. You couldn’t do me a favor, could you, Kit?”

“What? Anything.”

I touch her wrist. She shivers.

“Well, I know Touched doesn’t want me going into town for obvious reasons, but you could just ask him if I could go for a walk, you could come with me and if he wanted to, he could have my wrists handcuffed for extra security. I’m really sore, I really need a walk to stretch my legs. It’s pretty painful.”

I bite into the croissant, dip it into the maple syrup, and take another mouthful.

“This is very good.”

“I’ll tell Sonia you like them.”

“And will you ask Touched if I can go for a walk? I’m in total agony.”

“When do you want to go?”

“After breakfast.”

Kit gets to her feet.

“I’ll see what I can do, we’ll apply moral pressure. All of us think it’s disgraceful the way he’s treating you.”

She leans in and kisses me on the cheek.

“Back in five minutes,” she says.

She leaves the room and I hear her go downstairs. There’s a conversation and then she comes back with Touched. His hair is wet, he’s wrapped in a towel and dressing gown and wearing flip-flops.

“What’s the matter, Sean? I thought you were ok with me keeping an eye on you for a day or two,” he says.

“I am. I just need a wee walk, you can handcuff me if you want. But I’m dying of cramps here, I only have one good leg anyway and the circulation is being cut off in the other. Half an hour, forty-five minutes, just a wee stretch.”

Touched shrugs. “Ugh, I don’t see why not. Kit, go get my trousers from downstairs, will ya?”

Kit leaves.

“So, how’s everything going?” I ask him.

“It’s going well.”

“Did you make your call?”

“I did. I told them they had forty-eight hours to release the Newark Three, or the kid dies.”

“What do you think they’ll do?”

“I think they’ll release them. Those boys are not important and the Irish community has been lobbying Clinton to let them go. Win for everybody. Clinton looks compassionate, the Newark Three get out, and we establish ourselves overnight as players.”

Kit comes back with Touched’s pants. He takes out a set of keys and hands them to her.

“Ok, Kit. Take that cuff off his ankle, let him stretch, pull his pants up, put his shoes on, and then cuff his hands in front of him. You can take him for a walk. Don’t get out of sight of the house, and remember he’s under observation, so if he does any funny stuff you give a holler and we’ll come running.”

Touched takes the 9mm from his dressing gown pocket and holds it while Kit uncuffs me and lets me put my shoes on.

Touched examines the gun for a moment and then begins to unscrew the silencer. I can tell what he’s thinking. There’s no one for miles. If he has to kill me or Peter, he can do it without fear of being overheard.

When she’s cuffed me, he checks to see that she’s done a good job.

He gives me a wink.

“You know how it is, mate. When this wee task is over and we get the all clear from over the water, it’ll be different. We’ll forget the fuckups. I’ll take you for a big session as an apology. I can tell, Sean, that you are going to be our right-hand man.”

He gives me a friendly dig on the shoulder.

“I hope so.”

Kit leads me out of the room and helps me downstairs.

The “cabin” is even bigger than I’d thought. It’s a huge edifice, with a large central room, almost an interior courtyard, and six or seven bedrooms arranged around the inner space on the second floor. The style is that of a Swiss chalet rather than that of an old Kentucky home. A large stone fireplace made from irregular local rocks, a kitchen, and the big open-plan living area and dining room. You’d need to burn half the surrounding forest to heat this place in winter, but in summer, with the windows open and the breezes off the mountain, it would be quite temperate.

And they’re not living the simple life either.

A big-screen television, a stereo, and a speaker system that would give Aerosmith’s roadies a hard time.

Jackie and Sonia are tucking into breakfast at an enormous pine table. Jackie’s hair is also wet and he’s wearing swim trunks. Maybe they have a pool or there’s a lake nearby.

“Morning, all,” I say.

Jackie nods. “You sleep ok, mate?” he asks, noticing me and trying to ignore the handcuffs on my wrists.

“Slept fine.”

“Did Kit bring you breakfast?” Sonia asks.

“Yeah, it was delicious, thanks,” I tell her.

“The maple syrup is from here,” Sonia adds.

“Yeah, Kit told me, it was fantastic… Where’s the big guy?”

“He’s still sleeping. He sleeps so well up here,” Sonia says and gives me a little grin of domestic bliss.

Keep that smile, love, it’s going to be a happy fucking tapestry when that poor kid, Peter, is screaming for his life.

“Gerry design this place himself?” I ask.

“Oh yes, this has been his labor of love,” Sonia says.

“And do you own part of the forest, too?” I inquire.

“Twelve acres,” she says.

“Must be a big tax bill on that?” I ask.

“I have no idea,” Sonia says.

Kit looks at me.

“Well, do you want to gab away, or do you want me to show you outside?” she asks.

“Don’t get out of sight of the house,” Touched says, putting his 9mm on the table and tucking into the rest of his breakfast.

“I know,” Kit assures him.

I can see that Jackie has only started his food, so it will be ok to ask him.

“Jack, you wanna come along for a wee walk in the woods?”

“Nah, I’ve just started breaky,” he says.

Good.

We walk outside.

The Mercedes, the van, a few outbuildings. The woods beginning thirty feet from the house.

The sky is grayer and it’s a little colder than I’m expecting.

“It’s getting chilly,” I say to Kit.

“Yeah, Sonia heard on the radio that there’s a storm front coming down from Canada.”

“Funny, I was just thinking it would be tricky heating this place in cold weather,” I say.

“Yeah, despite what Sonia said on PI, it could even dip into the forties tonight. Touched said we might have to chop some wood and get the fire going. But don’t worry. It’ll be fun.”

“Will Peter be warm enough?” I ask.

Kit sighs, as if I’ve spoiled a nice conversation by bringing up an awkward subject.

“He’s in the smokehouse, it’s pretty warm there.”

I look at the three single-story log structures scattered around the clearing. They are all inverted V shapes. A steep slope from the ground to the top of the roof. One of these must be the smokehouse.

“Can we see him?”

“See who?”

“Peter.”

Kit shakes her head.

“Touched would definitely not allow that.”

“Ok,” I say, not wanting to make a big deal out of it.

“So, Sean, what do you want to see first? Do you want to go to the back of the cabin or do you want to go on the little trail to the pond?”

“The pond sounds fun.”

“It’s not really in sight of the house, but, like, what exactly are you supposed to do to me with handcuffs on?” she says, laughing.

Oh, I’ll do plenty, love.

“I’ll be helpless,” I agree.

We walk into the trees and follow a lightly worn trail as it curves downhill away from the house.

“It’s so peaceful here. Are there any neighbors nearby?” I ask.

“Nah, the nearest is in the next valley and he’s a German and I don’t think he comes here much,” Kit says.

“And Belfast town is ten miles away?”

“As the crow flies, but it’s a little longer by road.”

“Fifteen minutes, twenty minutes in the car?”

“Yeah. Something like that. But it is so quiet here, such a contrast to Plum Island on a weekend when all the dregs of- Ah, here we are at the pond.”

The trail stops at a small lake about a hundred yards across that is choked with pond scum, leaves, tree branches, probably hundreds of drowned animals, and maybe the odd former associate who got on Touched’s bad side.

“Yeah, I know, it’s not very nice, but Daddy’s going to get it cleaned out and someday we can go swimming or even kayaking,” Kit says.

“I think Jackie already took a dip.”

“Did he? Well, he’s braver than me.”

“Let’s go over here,” I say. I walk to a little rise away from the trail and sit down on a fallen tree. It’s a good spot. That way I can hear and see anyone coming from the house.

“Sit next to me,” I tell her.

There’s only going to be one chance at this and I can’t blow it. She sits, her dress bunching up over her knees. She moistens her full raspberry lips in anticipation of something exciting.

“Kit, I want to tell you something and I didn’t want anyone around to hear,” I explain quietly and take her hand.

“What?” she asks a little too eagerly.

“I think you know what I’m going to say.”

“No?” she says, a touch of fear in her eyes.

“You do,” I insist. “It’s about you; me and you.”

Kit’s smile evaporates. Her eyes narrow. She does know what I’m going to say. Women always do when you’re in this subject area.

“I hope you’re not fucking with me,” she says, even her surfer/stoner accent disappearing in the gravity of the moment.

“I am perfectly serious, Kit. I think there’s something between us. Something important. Something real. I’ve been in love with one person in my life but she was in love with someone else, so that didn’t work out too well. But I know how I felt then and I know how I feel when I’m with you now,” I begin slowly.

I look at her.

I’m trying to keep the conflict out of my face. The confusion of thoughts and emotions.

It’s an odd sensation. I don’t know if I’m playing her or not.

If this is a lie or whether it’s some part of the truth.

But I’ve begun and the only choice is to continue.

“I’m falling in love with you,” I say and pause for a full beat.

“You shouldn’t say that if you don’t mean it,” she whispers.

Her eyes close and she holds me tighter.

“I do mean it. And it’s not that we’ve got a lot in common: you surf, I don’t; you’re rich, I’m not; you’re American, I’m Irish. But none of that matters. It wouldn’t matter what you did, or where you were from, or what you were like. I think I’ve loved you from the moment I set eyes on you. In the bar at Revere, when you were waiting tables and wearing your Marine Corps shirt. It was as if the lightbulb flashed above my head and a voice said, she’s the one, Sean, you had one false start, but she’s the one. And it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d hadn’t been nice, and sweet and funny. If you were a bad person or stupid or mean, I still would have fallen for you. But luckily for me, as I got to know to you, I saw that you were perfect. You are perfect.”

She blinks and stares at me in amazement, and when she sees that I’ve finished speaking, she turns away. She’s been robbed of her voice and she may even be tearing up. We sit in silence for two minutes, the only sounds the birds on the water, the breeze in the trees.

I’m waiting for her.

It’s her move.

I’m feeling… what exactly?

Yes, that’s it: guilt. Above all, guilt. At the lies within the lies within the lies. And I still don’t know if that speech was part of them too.

“I’m not sure what to say, Sean,” she mutters at last.

“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to get that off my chest. To let you know how I feel. I don’t even need reciprocation. I don’t need you to say that you love me. I don’t need you to say anything. Now that I’ve told you and you believe me, that’s enough. That’s enough for the present.”

She takes my hand in hers and holds it. And then she kisses it.

“Talk about something else for a while. Let me think,” she says.

“We don’t have to talk.”

“No, I want you to talk, I like to hear your voice,” she insists.

“What about?”

“Anything. You talk and I’ll listen and think. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Ok. Um. Let me see. We’re in Maine. Oh, I know. You probably don’t know this story. But some people think the Irish were here first, in Maine or Nova Scotia or somewhere around here. Did you ever hear that? You ever hear the story of Saint Brendan?”

“No. Tell me.”

“It’s a bit of a fairy story, but the theory is that Saint Brendan and a bunch of monks sailed a coracle from Ireland to America. They sailed right across from Ireland and landed somewhere around these parts. And of course Brendan met the Indians and he proselytized to them and tried to convert them from their heathen ways. And then the monks traveled around and saw great wonders and built a church and had lots of adventures, then they came home again. A mad Englishman sailed a replica of Brendan’s coracle over here sometime in the 1970s.”

“What’s a coracle?” she asks.

“I don’t really know, it’s some kind of leather boat, I think.”

“When was this?”

“A thousand years before Columbus.”

“Do you know the entire story?”

“Bits and pieces,” I say.

“Tell me the whole thing.”

And I do tell her. Everything I know of Saint Brendan and Saint Patrick and Saint Columba and all the Irish missionary navigators, and she listens to me and relaxes and laughs and holds my hand tighter and before I’m done, she turns to face me. She’s nervous. Terrified.

“I want you,” she whispers in a tiny, shy, almost nonexistent voice. And she lets go of my hand, takes off her shoes and her dress, and stands there naked. Her pale body and small breasts, her long legs and dark eyes and hair. She is so beautiful that she robs me of my breath. My pulse pounding in my ears.

She helps me take off my trousers and my boots. And she hooks herself under my outstretched, handcuffed arms, and she pulls me close and kisses me.

We lie on the forest floor and she arcs her torso over mine, my arms round her back and leading her. Touching her spine and buttocks and the back of her hair. Clement and meek, the both of us. Like it’s our first time. She gives herself and I ease her to the leafy ground and grasp her tighter, touching her with my lips. I kiss her on the shoulders and the faint, scared smile on her face. And she rolls me back to the forest floor and stretches out her body on me, kissing me, breathing words that are careful and true.

“I feel the same way, Sean, from that night, from the journey in the car, I couldn’t help it, I can’t help it…”

And she tells me more. “This, this is my first, my first time.”

It shocks me. Incredible, in this day and age, that she has waited, saved herself, for the right moment and the right man.

And it proves that a lot of her character was bravado and an act and it shows me that she thinks she’s found that man at last.

And gently, very gently, I climb on top of her and I can see that this is the way it’s supposed to be. That this is what it’s been like for everyone else. Not hard or frantic or desperate. But like this. Geometries of movement and belonging, a giving of each other for each other. We maneuver our limbs and she puts me inside her and I can feel her pulse, a hasp of beating.

“Sean, I know it’s strange, but I-”

“Ssshhhhh…”

I push, and for her it’s an awakening. A revelation. And no less for me, too. And I fall in those blue eyes and the shadows of thoughts on her face. Things that I couldn’t read but now I can.

“Hold me. Hold me tighter,” she says.

“I am.”

“Hold me. Hold me and never let me-”

“I won’t,” I say and hook my handcuffed arms about her back.

We make love under the trees like a human and his elven enchantress. Or is it the other way around, that I am the woodland spirit and she is the lost mortal girl entering the dark part of the fairy tale?

We make love and she cries and I talk to her and hug her. And the moment is beautiful and complete and in the present tense there is no future, there is only her pulsing heart and her skin and the look of completeness on her soft lips and sylvan eyes.

It’s perfect. But I’ve seen this movie before. It’s the scene in the book of Genesis before the storm.

I hold her and we make love again, in the near absolute dark of the forest, without a noise or an interruption. A fragile promise of me and her. The calm before the hurricane.

The woods were wild and thick and the regions between the trees were pierced by sunlight through the canopy.

The red men had taught them to tap the bark for syrup and showed them berries and the nests of bees. Drunk on sweetness, they forged between huge firs and giant elms and trees of no description yet known to civilized man.

They had seen nothing but forest since coming off the fish-swarmed shore and it was to the forest gods that the local people prayed. Fintan was here and Daana, too, and in the glades they felt the heathen presence of age-old Pan. They came sometimes upon an altar or mound or other pagan edifice, yet they were not afraid, for the knowledge of the One God sustained them.

They crossed a river of leaping salmon. They listened to wolves and spotted eagles and even vultures-a bird no monk but one from Italy had seen before.

They rang the angelus for the first time in the breadth of river valleys and laid a monument to Patrick of humble stone, humbled yet under a huge mountain. Life was so much here. Beautiful and abundant and brimming over. Sprouting forth upon all dimensions and angles. The priest from Alba mentioned the Gnostic heresy and ventured that here the world was untouched by evil or the Fall. But Brendan was quick with him and made him do penance of sacking and chastisement. He knew in his heart that beauty was a corrupter, that the monks were being seduced by the very earth itself…

I woke.

Kit was looking at me. She was fully dressed.

“You were dreaming,” she whispered.

“How could you tell?”

“Rapid eye movement,” she said, smiling.

“What time is it?” I asked, wiping the leaves off my back, shivering.

“It’s nearly twelve o’clock, lunchtime.”

“Won’t Touched be going crazy?”

“No. I walked back to where I could see the house and waved to him. And he said: ‘Where the fuck is Sean?’”

“And what did you say?”

“I shouted to him that you had a toilet emergency and were going to the bathroom,” she replied with a wee laugh.

“What did he say to that?”

“He didn’t seem that fussed; Dad and him were having a discussion about something but he told me to hurry you up.”

“Yeah, but even so, Kit, you should have woken me,” I said.

“You never wake a sleeping baby. And besides I had to do what I always do with Touched.”

“And what’s that?”

“Ignore him.”

I rubbed my eyes, sat on the log, and pulled on my boxers and trousers. I fitted my prosthesis and with some difficulty tied my boots while she watched with fascination. If she was still in the business of comparing me with Jackie, this was a mark for him.

I caught her looking at me. She blushed and turned away. But then again maybe the time for comparisons was over. Jackie was an irrelevancy now. Things had progressed from that pissing contest to a matter of life and death.

I brushed the leaves and pine needles off my T-shirt and sat on the fallen tree and stared at her until her smile fixed and she saw that I wanted to say something.

“What?” she asked.

“Kit. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. We don’t have much time.And we might not get another chance to talk. I want you to sit down on the tree next to me and listen to what I have to say. You’ve got to listen to me very carefully,” I said.

“You suddenly got very serious. While I am walking on air,” she said, mocking herself in a silly, preppy accent.

“I’m not joking. Take a seat.”

She frowned, but sat.

“Ok, say your speech,” she demanded.

“They’re going to have to kill Peter tomorrow. The Brits will not cave to Touched’s demands. There is a long-standing policy about negotiating with terrorists. Neither the Brits nor the Americans are allowed to do it. They never give in to kidnappers, ever. It’s a standing order,” I said slowly and carefully.

“Reagan did it,” Kit said.

I shook my head.

“That was a crazy one-off illegal scheme conducted by a rogue colonel. The British and American governments never make deals for hostages. Peter is not going to be exchanged for anyone. It’s not going to happen, they’re not going to release the Newark Three. I promise you that. What do you think is going to happen after that? I’ll tell you. With his credibility on the line, Touched is going to have to kill Peter and you are going to be complicit in that boy’s murder.”

“You, too,” she said.

“Me, too. All of us. For as sure as I am standing here, Touched is going to murder him.”

Kit shuddered. “I don’t think he’d really go through with it, it’s more a sort of a bluff, like in poker.”

“Touched has killed many people. Murdered many people. You know that woman who ran the All Things Brit shop? Touched killed her the night before we came up here. That’s the cleanup Jackie was talking about. Touched raped her, tortured her, and then he slit her open from her vagina to her throat and he watched while she gasped for breath and bled to death.”

All the levity had vanished from her expression now. I had gotten her attention.

I let it sink in and then continued.

“Touched is a sociopath. He’d kill you, me, anyone who gets in his way. He’s a lunatic. If you don’t believe me about the woman, ask Jackie. He was there, he saw what Touched did. He threw up when he saw it. Touched tortured her and it took her hours to die. And that kid is going to get the same fate. How old do you think he is, twenty, nineteen? And what was his crime? Nothing.”

“They said they chased her out of town,” Kit muttered, the words sounding ridiculous even to her.

“Chased her out of town? Are you joking? You don’t believe that. You’re cleverer than that. Chased her out of town? Is this a Western? You didn’t believe it when they said that and you don’t believe it now. Touched killed her. And Gerry and Jackie and I threw her body in the back of the van, dug a hole in the salt pan on Plum Island, and buried her. Buried what was left of her.”

Kit looked stunned. She must have known some of this, perhaps most of it, but she’d been hiding it from herself. In denial about her father’s business, about its ugly side. All she wanted to do was live in that big house and surf and spin romantic yarns about Ireland. Wear the green and sing rebel songs and hero-worship her freedom fighter and his old comrade-in-arms Touched McGuigan. But she knew. She wasn’t stupid. She was wavering, there were tears in her eyes again, this time certainly not tears of joy.

“The British woman wasn’t the first, not by a long shot; Touched told us that he killed a woman last year that he’d been having problems with. He said that in front of Jackie andyour da, if you want to check that out too. Believe me, Kit, when this goes wrong, which it will, Touched is going to torture and kill Peter, who looks as if he’s a goddamn hippie who never did any sentient creature any harm in his whole bloody life.”

Kit wiped away her tears and looked at me imperiously.

“My dad won’t let him kill that boy,” she said.

“He let him kill that woman.”

“She was an FBI agent.”

“That’s what Touched says. You talked to her. Did she seem like an agent to you? And so what the fuck if she was? Did she deserve that? Rape and torture and death?”

She shook her head.

“What are you saying, exactly, Sean?” Kit asked warily.

I took her hand and looked her right in the watery baby blues.

“We can stop this, Kit, you and me, we can stop it,” I said.

“How?”

“You’ve got to make some excuse and drive into Belfast and call the FBI. They’ll come and they’ll arrest all of us and, Jesus, we’ll do time for kidnap, but at least it won’t be murder, and that poor lad will go free,” I said.

“Why do I have to do it? Why do I have to betray everybody?” she asked. Indignant that the act would fall to her, but not, it seemed, outraged by the act itself.

“I can’t do it, how could I, like this,” I explained.

“Yes, you could, you could run away right now. I could say you hit me and knocked me down and you could run. You could get to the outskirts of Belfast in a couple of hours and I wouldn’t have to tell on anyone.”

“Kit. Look at me. Don’t be ridiculous, with these bloody cuffs on and a prosthetic foot I wouldn’t get a quarter of a mile, Touched and Jackie would find me and kill me.”

Kit let go of my hand and stood up.

“We better be getting back now,” she said coolly.

In that coolness was ambivalence and ultimately death. I hadn’t closed yet and I was running out of time.

“Haven’t you been listening? Only you can save his life.Tell them you want to get supplies, take Sonia’s car and drive into Belfast, go to the police station and tell them to contact the FBI.”

She turned her back to me so I couldn’t see her face and her emotions. Her shoulders were shaking in big sobs. I remained quiet. Letting it all sink in.

She wiped her face, looked at me.

“Even if I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t; the FBI would come here and they’d kill us all like they did with Waco. I wouldn’t be saving anybody’s life. We’d all fucking die,” Kit said.

“No, you wouldn’t, you’d be ok, we’d all be ok.”

“My dad would go to prison and I’d go to prison,” she said, tears rolling down those white rose-hip cheeks.

“You wouldn’t go to prison. You wouldn’t serve a day. I promise you that, Kit. And your dad would get a deal too.Touched is the one they want,” I insisted.

“How do you know? How can you promise anything?”

I stood up and put my arms around her.

It had to be the truth.

The truth would show her that it wasn’t bullshit. That although I had deceived them all, I wasn’t lying about my feelings for her. The truth would be a clear light illuminating the way out of this quagmire, this goddamn nightmare.

The truth would free me and her from the history that was weighing us down, breaking us, sinking us.

And besides, she’d already proven to me that she could keep a secret. She hadn’t told them that I’d been in the British Army, not even when Touched said I was on probation or when we’d gone to the Elizabeth to get a general from that army. She’d already joined me in the conspiracy against him. She was flaky, she was young, but she was loyal to her own system of morality. I was asking her to do a betrayal but it was for the right reasons and with the best of intentions. And I could tell she hated Touched. If I handled this right, it wouldn’t be me versus Gerry.It would be me versus Touched, and that contest I could easily win.

Especially this way. This would be the trump card, me put- ting my life in her lap. This would push her over the abyss.

I backed away, put my hand under her chin, and tilted it up to face me.

“Kit, I promise you, the authorities will be lenient with you and your dad. I personally will see to it.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, puzzled.

“The woman Touched murdered was working for British Intelligence and the FBI,” I said.

“How-”

“Because I am too. They put me in that bar in Revere in the hope that I would run into you and win your trust. They got me that crappy job in Salisbury working with another British agent. I was brought here specifically to infiltrate your group, to stop you carrying out atrocities, to prevent a further escalation of violence in Ulster, and to help save the peace process. Everything I’ve done is for Ireland and for a peaceful future.”

Her lip quivered, her mouth opened, but she said nothing.

“It’s true, Kit. I’ve been associated with the FBI in one form or another for the last five years. My name’s Michael, not Sean. Everything I’ve told you about myself is made up. But everything I’ve told you about me and you is true. I love you and it happened the way I said it happened. That night in Revere when they tried to kill your dad. I care about you, Kit. I want you to do the right thing. If you let Touched kill Peter, it’ll destroy you. It will ruin your life before it’s even begun. You’d be killing yourself and your father and Sonia and Jackie. All of us will die because of Touched’s insanity. He’s a fucking twist, Kit. He is touched. He was so crazy that they exiled him. You know what he would do to me if he found out I was an inside man for the Brits? That woman in Newburyport would consider herself lucky she wasn’t me.”

Kit walked backwards away from me, as if I’d punched her in the stomach. All the color out of her face.

“You, you, you’re a liar,” she said in such a quiet voice that I wasn’t sure she was speaking at all.

“I did lie, Kit, I had to. But you yourself said the ends justify the means. Remember that? We can save Peter, we can save your father and all of us,” I said.

“You lied to me.”

“I had to. If I hadn’t, there would be no one here to stop this madness. Kit, come on. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

“What?” she muttered.

“Listen to me. Pay attention. Say you’re having your period and you need tampons, Touched won’t question that; get the car, drive into Belfast, and call the police. Tell them to come after midnight when everyone’s asleep. There won’t be any gunplay. We’ll all get arrested and-”

“You won’t get arrested,” she interrupted.

“No, I won’t. But Touched will and he’ll go to jail for life for his many fucking crimes and the rest of you will get a few years and be out again. Think of the alternative. Peter dead and the rest of you, haunted forever by a senseless killing, on the run from the police. And it won’t stop there. Touched will kill and kill again until he’s caught. He’s like a virus. That twisted brain will keep on killing and infecting other brains with his evil. It’ll be too late for your father then, he’ll be an accomplice and he’ll get locked up forever, or worse.”

“We’ll all be locked up now under your plan,” she said softly.

She was forcing herself to be controlled, her eyes big and broken and on the edge of an emotional abyss. How could I do this to her? How could I? Easy. I’d really no other choice.

“No. Only for kidnap. Nothing else,” I said quickly. “I’ll testify that it was Touched’s plan and everyone else went along under duress. A few years, Kit. That’s all. Believe me.”

“Believe you?” she said, her voice breaking.

“Yes. Believe me, you have to do it. It’s the right thing to do. The way of life is better than the way of death,” I said, but she still couldn’t take it in.

“Your real name is Michael?”

“It is. I am from Belfast, but I’ve been living in America since 1992.”

“Working as a policeman?”

“No. It’s complicated. It’s a complicated situation. Can’t you see? I’m risking everything by telling you this. You get that, don’t you? I’ve taken my life and put it in your hands like a fallen bird. You can save it or you can squeeze it out. My life is the bird in your hands.”

“I don’t know, Se-Michael,” she said, wavering.

“I need you, Kit. I need you to do this for me. And I need you because I love you and I want to spend my life with you. I want to make you happy.”

She laughed bitterly and wiped streams of tears away from her cheeks.

“You’re not making me happy now,” she sobbed.

“No, I know. But it’s only a little bit of pain and it’ll all be over. You’ll have to be brave. You’ll have to be smart. You can’t overact. You can’t make them suspicious.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked in a monotone.

“Come back with me and tell Sonia you’re having your period. And then tell your da that you’ll need the car. Tell them in a couple of hours, a long time after you’ve talked to me, so they don’t even associate the idea with me.”

She stood.

“It’s too much. All of this. It’s too much. My head hurts,”

she said.

“No. You’re doing great. You’re doing so well, Kit. So well,”

I said.

She stepped backwards over the fallen tree, away from me.

“I need time to think,” she said.

“Take all the time you need.”

I leaned over to hold her hand. She flinched and backed farther away.

“Don’t touch me,” she seethed.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I fucking need time to think about all this, for Christ’s sake. Why did you have to tell me today? This was supposed to be the greatest day of my life. This is the thing I’ve been looking forward to for years, when I would do it, with the right man. And now this is the fucking worst day of my life. My head feels like it’s going to explode.”

“Take your time, Kit, take your time. I’ll sit here.”

Kit nodded and stormed off into the trees without looking back. I waited a minute, then five minutes. I sat down on the big fallen tree trunk. Would she come round? I didn’t know.

It was my only play. I had no regrets. I had to do it.

I lay down on the mossy bark and waited; waiting still as the wind picked up and it grew colder and I watched the cirrus clouds and cerulean sky give way to the first black line of the storm front that was marching ominously south from Canada.

A twig snapped farther down the trail in the direction of the pond. And of course I knew what it meant. Goddamnit. It meant I was going to die.

The birds were quiet.

I pulled up my trousers, tightened my belt, and got into a crouch.

Another twig snapped in the same place.

Now I was certain of it.

She’d told them what I’d told her. And they were coming to kill me. The twig snapping was the person Touched had sent to circle around me and lie in wait ahead of me on the path leading to the pond. They would come from behind.Maybe they’d even goose me out, like beaters after pheasants- they’d barrel down from the house with their guns drawn, screaming profanities and yelling blue murder, I’d run for the trail, and there he’d be, pointing a big hand cannon at my face. Jackie, more than likely, since he was the nimblest on his feet.

Gerry and Touched from the back. Jackie ahead.

No Kit, though. Touched would make Kit stay at the cabin with Sonia. There would be no arguing this one.

I listened but the woods were quiet.

It didn’t matter. I was certain.

Yeah, Jack up front, the big lads at my back, probably coming ninety degrees apart from the northwest and northeast.

I slid off the branch, crawled into the leaves of the forest floor, and scanned the trees.

Waited.

Nothing.

Of course, that crack could have been a deer standing on a sapling, a squirrel doing a suicide leap from a tree, a dry branch expanding with the heat of the day.

But it wasn’t.

It was goddamn Jackie or I’m a Dutchman.

I shrugged off my leather jacket, which Kit had draped over my shoulders, stripping to the dirty matte black T-shirt underneath. I slithered away from a log and towards the trail, mucking myself up as much as possible. Any camouflage would do. Even half-assed last-minute stuff.

Kit, oh God, Kit. You’ve signed my death warrant. It was hard. You had to choose between me and duty and you picked the noble cause over me.

Still, you don’t kill Michael Forsythe that easy.

And I had several things in my favor. The forest was dark, I was on to their game, and they were a hodgepodge bunch of hoods. An inexperienced one, an obese one, and an overconfident crazy one. Whereas I was a Grade A survivor. The bad penny that always turns up. The cockroach that will not die.The man who took down the empire of Darkey White and cleaned the clock of his goons and lackeys.

I slid through the leaves and the dirt, down an incline.

Keep your head down and don’t look up. Slide, don’t crawl. I slithered over roots and through a bramble bush and a mulchy pile of rotting leaves.

Gunning for you, Jack.

The weak link.

The woods were as still as woods get and the silence was an alarm. They were close and closing. If it had been night, I could have hid and waited them out, but it was day and I had to move. Follow the slope downhill to the path to the pond.

Oh, Kit.

Put you in the God’s-eye view. What do you hope will happen? They capture me? Or I get away?

I slid over a rock and down a gravel embankment that was steeper than it looked. There’d been a fire or flood or tree fall because the earth was frictionless and scoured of bushes and roots. I slipped faster and faster and finally fell, tumbling over my feet until I reached the bottom of the slope at a small clearing.

I’d made a lot of noise. I tensed.

But they hadn’t seen me.

I got to a crouch and listened for them. Again, nothing. I was now about a hundred feet from where I’d started, from where Kit said that I’d be. I was cuffed and alone and there were three of them with guns, but I might just…

If I kept going in the same direction eventually I’d come to a road. Maybe flag a car. Of course, if they lost me, they’d have to clear out of the cabin. Flee to some other bolt-hole Gerry had stashed away. They’d be in disarray. They’d know that they were fugitives, that Gerry couldn’t return to his cozy life and his big beach house. Would they kill the general’s son and then go? Would they take him with them? Would the dissent be strong enough for Gerry to decide that the game was over? Would he surrender?

I had to put the pressure on. I had to get away.

Not just for me, but for that eejit Peter, too, and for her.

For all of them, come to that. Touched was as much a danger to them as he was to me.

He was a real dead-ender. He’d bring them all down in flames. He’d make them drink the Kool-Aid.

A white shirt in the trees fifty feet to my left. Gerry, carrying a massive double-barreled shotgun, wading through the woods, breathing hard, as determined as a big bear. He hadn’t seen me. He wiped his brow on his shirtsleeve.

I slid backwards into the undergrowth.

Checked the sun, got my bearings.

The pond was about a hundred yards behind me. But the path that skirted the bank was not thickly forested. Still, if I could get there, I’d leg it. Sprint to the far shore and then just go like mad to the top of the next hill. Keep going over it, into the next valley and then east to a road or a farmhouse or anywhere.

I was almost at the pond path, but where was Jack?

He should be right here.

I moved slower.

Got ready.

The air freshened and a wind blew thick with moisture. It was going to rain at any minute. That would help me too.

Another downslope. Face first, eating dirt and all the bases.

Static from a walkie-talkie.

“Any sign of him?” Touched’s nervous voice asked.

“Nope,” Jackie said, a few feet from me on the top of a rise.

“Not yet.”

I stole a peek over a thornbush. There he was. Radio in left hand, pistol in right, back to me, head bent down out of the wind.

If I could take him out, and get a gun into the bargain, that would certainly level the goddamn odds.

Gerry couldn’t follow me up the hill, so we’d be talking one against one.

Nice.

Jackie was walking away from me, up towards a rocky outcrop from where he could survey the terrain. I crouched on all fours and made my way behind him. Six feet away, five feet, four feet.

I’d jump him. I’d land on his back, left arm round his throat, pull hard. Snap his neck, soundlessly, take his walkie-talkie, his jacket, his gun, shoot the cuffs, run for the far side of the pond.

I loosened my fingers.

Tensed.

Stood.

A huge crashing noise.

A sharp hammer blow in the back of my shoulder. I was spinning through the air. I thumped into a tree and came down heavily on a rocky outcrop, cracking half a dozen ribs.

Jackie turned. He was right above me. I’d landed at his feet. I reached out to grab his shoe and pull him off balance but I was moving in slow motion and he easily stepped away.

Lightning triage. Ribs, broken nose. I’d been shot in the shoulder and the bullet had ricocheted off my head. Flesh wounds, but it wouldn’t matter now.

“Don’t move,” Jackie said, nervously pointing a.22 pistol at me.

“I got him,” Touched shouted. “I fucking nailed him.”

“Get over here,” Jackie called out.

Touched ran over, breathless, his.38 smoking, his grin as wide as ever.

“Is he dead?” Jackie wondered.

“No way, he’s not dead. Don’t think he’ll die from that. Will you, Sean? Or whatever your name is. Just winged him, Jack.”

“Hell of a shot.”

“Aye, glad I didn’t top him. For him it has to be slow. He’s going to think that the unluckiest thing that ever happened to him in his miserable life was my bullet missing his traitor brain.”

“Fucking liar, too,” Jackie snarled.

“We may as well get started,” Touched said, and I made an effort to turn my head and stare at him. Delight on his upcurved mouth and a frenzied look in his eyes.

You may as well, I tried to say, but there was blood on my tongue. Blood everywhere: in my nose, mouth, and ears and running underneath my T-shirt.

My limbs were heavy. My eyelids drooped. Closed.

Heartbeats. Voices.

Gerry: “You got him, Touched?”

“Aye, I got him.”

“Dead?”

“No, Gerry, not dead. Not by a long way.”

“What now? Dig a hole?”

“Aye. But we’ll have to interrogate him first. We’ll take him to the smokehouse with the general’s son.”

“We could use him as a bargaining chip too.”

“Nah, we won’t be doing that, Jack. We’ll use him as a lesson. When they find him the feds will know they made a mistake. They’ll know how serious we are.”

Just leave me here, Touched, for old time’s sake, I’ll die

soon enough, I promise. Leave me.

“You want me to drag him?”

“Aye, have you got that rope?”

The birds, spooked by the gunshot, began chirping again. A rope uncoiled on my thigh. Water on my face. It was that rain at last. Icy cold rain from Quebec or the Hudson Bay or Newfoundland.

“No, Jack, a slipknot is what you need. Let me have a go.”

“I’ve got the rope, I’ll tie it round him. Lift up his legs.”

“Tie it round his fucking throat, not his legs.”

“Do what he says. Round his throat.”

No, no rope. Just leave me, Touched. Out here in the woods. Leave me. I’ll die and the rain will turn to snow and cover me up and no one will find my body until the spring, when they’ll see me thawed-a vernal votive offering. Maybe they wouldn’t find me for years, just a pair of boots, a skeleton, and the well-preserved carbon fibers of an artificial foot.

“Look, he’s moving, he’s crawling, he’s trying to get away.”

“Get that fucking rope.”

Crawling. Who knew where? It didn’t matter. North. Under cover of the front. Over the Saint Lawrence and the Ottawa and the Kapiskau rivers.

“Here you go, Touched.”

A rope around my neck.

Crawling, perhaps I’d go on forever until I was in the kingdom of the bears. There was nothing between here and the pole and I could slip through unseen because I was invisible now.

Rope tightening. My breathing stopped.

“Drag him now?”

“No, Jack, we have to soften him up first.”

And the kicks came.

From three pairs of booted feet. Angry, furious, violated, betrayed. In my side, in my legs, in my back, in my testicles, in my head. I tolerated them for a minute and then I took myself to another place.