Veil of Civility

Chapter Twenty-Three

Declan had insisted Constance stay in the warm car while he got the fire going. Now that the place was beginning to warm up, he escorted her inside and she stood still in the center of the room, taking in the rustic decor. After helping her out of her coat, Declan pushed a wooden Adirondack chair to the edge of the stone hearth so she could sit by the fireplace.She took her seat gingerly, as if she was being asked to sit on a rusty nail. He watched for a moment, and then moved to the galley kitchen at the right side of the cabin to begin a pot of coffee.

Standing on the edge of a lake at the end of a half mile dirt road that was barely passable without four wheel drive, the cabin's sturdy log construction was testament to a bygone era of rugged craftsmanship. Inside, it consisted of one large room, a small bathroom the only area with privacy. Directly across from the front door a stone fireplace jutted out from the back wall and tonight, for the first time in years, smoke spewed from the chimney.

The lake was situated ten miles west of the Virginia / West Virginia state line, in the Monongahela National Forest northeast of the tiny, unincorporated town of Lowry's Mill. With nearly twenty miles of one and a half lane road between it and anything closely resembling civilization, the cabin was as safe a place as someone wanting to hide out would find. Whether you were a dedicated homesteader, a paranoid survivalist, or someone delusional enough to want a hideout from the zombie apocalypse, you'd be hard pressed to find a more remote location and still be within driving distance of a few modern amenities. For Declan, the place was all about preparation.

Declan had bought most of the property he owned at auction, after a bank or some lien holding agency had foreclosed on it. In the case of the cabin, its original owner had been a retired widower who'd moved there to take up gold prospecting in the nearby creek beds after a life of working on aircraft for the United States government. The man had drowned while trying to retrieve some mining equipment during a storm and since he had no relatives the Greenbrier County government had ended up owning the property. By law, they'd put it up for auction to the highest bidder. Declan had shown up at the county courthouse despite a snowstorm and in a small bidding war between himself and two area residents, he'd paid twice what the property was worth.

Leaning against the green laminated counter top in the galley kitchen, he watched his wife as she stared into the fire. Here he was sure they would be safe for however long they needed to be, but living in a place this small and this secluded was out of the question long term. The presence of two obvious outsiders in the small town of Lowry's Mill would surely bring attention and eventually someone would put two and two together. He needed to come up with a plan, but it could wait until morning. Right now, he had something else on his mind.

Constance sat still, her hands in her lap, staring into the flames as they licked the top of the stone fireplace. Declan had no idea what she was thinking. Despite the brief argument in the parking lot of the gas station, few words had passed between them on the journey from Roanoke. He supposed she was just trying to take it all in. Having been raised in a devoutly Christian home, he knew that her experience with violence likely amounted to what she had seen on television. Seeing the bodies of the two men who had been following her had been a shock, for sure. He hated the idea of burdening her with even more information tonight, especially the revelation that he'd lied to her for nearly a decade about who he was and where he came from, but on the drive he'd worked things over in his mind. He'd tried to convince himself that there was no need to tell her, no need to cause her further pain and risk driving a huge wedge between them in their relationship, but ultimately he'd decided it was time that he came clean about his full history with Abaddon Kafni. If she was going to trust him throughout this situation, she needed to know everything.

"You know… I… uhh… I want to tell you more about how I know Abe and how all of this came about," he said, as he walked over and handed her a cup of hot coffee.

She looked briefly up at him and then back to the fire, taking the cup without a word.

In the last twenty four hours he had reacquainted himself with a way of life he thought he'd left behind nearly two decades ago and had hoped he'd never have to revisit. He'd faced down six trained killers like an old pro, but telling his wife how he'd done it scared the hell out of him.

"I wish I could tell you that none of this was my fault. That somehow I just happened to get caught up in this. But the truth is that Abe and I go much further back than just working security for him when I first arrived in the States."

Constance looked up at him, her interest renewed. The expression on her face scared him; it was vacant with the slightest hint of' what now? in her eyes. Disappointment settled in his stomach and he couldn't avoid the feeling that he would never look the same in her eyes again, no matter what he did.

"I'm not from Galway in the Republic," he began. "I was born in a town called Ballygowan about twenty miles south of Belfast and I lived there until I was eleven."

"Northern Ireland?" she asked rhetorically.

"Aye, Northern Ireland, and my family weren't fisherman who had a bad bout of pneumonia and left me orphaned."

The look on her face told him that she knew what was coming. While most Americans had only a slight notion of the thirty year war in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles, mostly from romanticized books and movies about the IRA, he knew that she was better educated on the subject. Not only was she married to someone from Ireland, but she also held a master's degree in history and had more than a passing interest in the British Isles. In fact, their first conversation had been about the subject when they had met at a book store just over nine years ago.

"My da' was Paul McIver, elected MP of the North Down constituency located just south of Belfast. He and my mum were killed in 1980 by men linked to a loyalist paramilitary group called the Ulster Volunteer Force."

Tears formed in Constance's eyes, sliding slowly down her cheeks. She knew exactly where he was going with this. For a moment it looked as if she might try to comfort him, but instead she buried her face in her hands without a word.

"They were killed because the UVF said my da' was a traitor. My mum was Lorna Flynn, a Catholic from Derry. Da' hid me in the backseat of our car under a blanket just before the masked men approached the car. I heard the whole thing. I heard my da' beg them not to hurt my mum, I heard my mum screaming, and then I heard them both being shot. I was eleven years old."

He recounted the story without emotion. For him it was just something he lived with every day and he hadn't felt one way or another about it for years. It was just a fact, a sad part of the story of his life, a life he'd hoped had moved away from death and violence and war towards a successful marriage and a family of his own. He sat down on the edge of the queen bed and waited for her to gather her thoughts.

"So there's more?" she said, finally looking up at him and wiping away tears. "You didn't just lie about where you were born and who your parents were, did you?"

He winced. Her words felt like a razor blade being dragged repeatedly across his conscience.

"Yeah, there's more," he said, after a moment. "After my parents died I was sent to live in a Catholic orphanage in County Armagh. I lived there until I was fourteen. I ran away with an older boy after we intervened in a rape being committed by one of the clergy."

He stopped talking momentarily as Constance's face softened, but she continued to dab away tears.

"On the streets I met up with and joined the IRA as an angry young man who thought revenge for the wrong done to him was all that mattered. I spent nearly ten years in their ranks before I realized I wasn't solving problems, I was perpetuating them."

"So you were a member of a terrorist organization?" she asked. Her voice was full of indignation, but the look in her eyes communicated sorrow, although whether it was sorrow because he'd lied and wasn't who she thought he was or because of the story he'd just told her, he wasn't sure. "Why did you feel like you had to lie to me about it?" she asked, and he took his time forming his reply. He knew exactly how important this was.

"Because I wasn't exactly proud of who I was, who I had been and the things I'd done,” he said, eventually. “I just wanted to move on. I wanted someone to look at me as more than just a sad son of a bitch who'd picked up a gun to solve his problems. I wanted to be someone different, and I was, in your eyes, it seemed. America was my chance to start over. To have the life my da' always wanted his family to have, but never got the chance to give them. Now all of this has happened and I feel like I'm right back on the streets of Belfast."

For some reason that he couldn't put his finger on, Declan was angry. He felt like he couldn't breathe. Pulling his coat on, he opened the door and walked out into the cold mountain night.

Minutes later he stood at the end of the rickety pier thirty yards from the front door of the cabin. He lit a match and placed it into the end of his churchwarden pipe, inhaling the first burst of smoke from the cherry tobacco. He only smoked when something was bothering him. Flicking the lit match into the air towards the black water in front of him, he watched as the orange light moved through the air and vanished with an audible hiss. In its absence he realized exactly how dark it was at night without any street lights nearby.

A brief light broke the darkness again as the front door to the cabin opened. He took another drag from the pipe and exhaled slowly as he felt a pair of slender arms slide around his waist in a light embrace, followed by a head resting against his back. He held the pipe between his teeth and placed his hands over his wife's arms.

"None of this is your fault," she said after several moments of holding him silently. "I didn't marry you because you were a fisherman from Galway. I married you because I loved you, and I love you now. I don't understand everything that's happened, but my feeling is that the outcome would have been much different if you weren't who you are."

One of the things he loved most about her was that she never held a grudge. No matter how angry she got, she worked through it quickly and always had a clear way of thinking about things afterwards. This time, as usual, she was right, whether he liked it or not. If not for his past experiences, the outcome of several situations would have been much different. For starters, he'd be dead, the two goons on the highway would have seen to that, and the other two waiting in the park would have killed Constance. Despite the sins of his past, they were both alive now because he was a trained killer. He silenced the thought that if he hadn't been, he never would have met Kafni and none of this would have even happened. Following such thoughts led a man in circles.

"It's not that I didn't want you to know that I'd done some bad things," he said. "I wasn't running from you, I was running from myself. I'd been running for years. When we met, for the first time I actually dared to believe that I could have a normal life."

"And we do have a normal life," she said, moving around to face him. "Or at least we did."

He snorted a short laugh and said, "Yeah, past tense. Abe's timing has always been an issue."

She hugged him tightly and rested her head against his chest. "How'd you meet him?"

"He was a Mossad agent working illegally in Belfast. He was acting on intelligence Israel had received that Arafat's PLO was being aided by the IRA. The 'ra was helping to train some of Arafat's men in the use of IEDs in exchange for shipments of weapons and semtex. I was on the outs by then, most of the right-wingers I'd run with were dead. I supplied him with some dates and times. Earned myself a right good beating for it, too," he said, tracing his index finger down a small scar beside his right eye. "They'd have killed me that night for being a tout if Abe and two of his men hadn't shown up."

"He saved your life?"

"Aye. Moved me to the Republic that same night, to a Mossad safe house in Galway. The Brits didn't have anything on me so I was able to leave the country on a freighter heading to Boston."

"And once he quit Mossad and came to the U.S. you two met up again," she said.

He nodded. "I worked in Boston doing the only thing I knew how to do, smuggling and gun running. I got wind of an assassination plot that my employer was involved in and found out that Kafni was the target."

"And you saved his life to return the favor he did you?"

"Aye."

Several minutes passed as they stood holding each other in silence.

"What do we do now?" she asked, finally breaking the silence.

Declan shook his head. "I don't know. My mind keeps going back to that FBI agent, the one who interviewed me in the hospital. He was combative from the very beginning and stopped just short of accusing me of being involved. It was his voice on that phone a while ago, I'm sure of it."

She drew back and looked up at him as if she was studying his face to see if he was serious.

"I met him too," she said finally, “in the waiting room last night. I didn't really think much of it at the time, but I got a weird feeling from him. He kept insisting that he needed to talk to you right away, but the doctors and nurses wouldn't let him."

Her voice trailed off and he knew she was thinking the same thing he was. If an FBI agent was involved then they were in a lot of trouble. Not only did it mean that the people against them weren't just some two bit thugs, it meant there was a much wider conspiracy that could involve countless numbers of people. What did they do now? Run?

Declan felt a surge of anger rise inside him as he considered the options. He and Constance had built a life together and if they ran then that life would crumble away into nothing. Sure, they could rebuild somewhere else and probably even live safely, but they'd never be able to stop looking over their shoulders and he didn't want that kind of life. He'd been down that road before and had determined to leave it behind.

"That's why I didn't want to go to the police. If there's some kind of conspiracy going on, then we'd just end up back in the same situation. By coming here, by disappearing, we've got the advantage. We get to decide when and where we surface, or even if we surface."