Veil of Civility

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Fintan McGuire swung his newly completed Newtonian Reflector telescope gently around on its axis. He was very proud of it, having ground the mirrors personally. Looking over the distant buildings of Dublin's skyline from his roof in the affluent Donnybrook neighborhood, south of the downtown area, he had to admit that he was impressed with his own handiwork. He swung the telescope to the east and smiled as he caught sight of the ferries that moved in and out of the Irish capital to the United Kingdom throughout the day. Even the venerable gates leading into his home looked tremendous through the telescope.

Diligently, he moved the scope again and refocused the lens on the crumbling, time-worn rock walls that surrounded his one acre property on Dublin's R117 Sandford Road. He'd purchased it a few years ago and was restoring it, and they were to be his next project, to be started just as soon as the weather warmed and the seasonal rains lessened. The only challenge that stood between him and its completion was figuring out exactly how, with his considerable disability, he would manage to spread mortar through the cracked stones. He shrugged off the doubt; it was a minor complication at best. There were few feelings in the world that matched that of a successfully completed project and there was nothing he loved more than taking on a challenge from an amateur's point of view.

That attitude, and his love of the country that surrounded him, were what had led him to run for office as Teachta Dála in his home county of Monaghan. County Monaghan was a five seat constituency in the north of the Irish Republic, near the border with the six counties of Ulster that were part of the United Kingdom. As a newly elected member of the Dáil Éireann, the Irish Parliament, the free time he was currently enjoying would soon be at an end. The economic bubble that had burst in 2008 and left Ireland's economy in shambles needed to be undone and as one of Ireland's most successful entrepreneurs and a longtime member of the country's center-right Fine Gael party, he'd agreed to take on the job.

The mechanical sound of the stately home's elevator rising to the roof drew his attention away from the telescope and he turned in his chair to face the old freight door as it was pulled open.

"Pardon the interruption, Governor," his assistant, Dean Lynch, said as he stepped off the car, "but I've just come across something in this morning's edition of the Independent that I think you need to see."

Fintan pushed himself away from the telescope and towards his assistant as the dark haired, muscular man held out a copy of Ireland's largest selling newspaper. Taking hold of it, he spread it open and looked at the page Lynch had marked.

He scanned the article quickly and looked over the accompanying picture, a photo of a face he hadn't seen in over a decade, but one that was still very familiar to him. "Take me to my office, now," he said.

"Aye, Governor."

Lynch stepped behind him and gripped the handles on the back of the wheelchair. While McGuire much preferred to move about on his own the process could be laborious at times, especially when navigating the upper floors of the eight thousand square foot house below him, and at the moment, he didn't have any time to spare.

Lynch pushed him into the freight elevator and pulled the door closed behind them. When the car had reached the second floor, he tugged it open again and pushed the chair down a narrow hallway past the grand central staircase to a large office on the northern side. "I'll take it from here," Fintan said, as he gripped the wheels of the chair and propelled himself into the room towards a long, oak desk.

The room's decor was elegantly rustic and the walls featured the mounted heads of a number of large animals in addition to several antique hunting rifles. The floors were deeply stained wooden parquet and large windows looked to the north at the Irish capital's skyline. Not caring much about hunting or wild game, Fintan had made the room into his personal library and office. Where there had once been large lounge chairs and probably an antique floor globe, there was now a row of bookshelves, wooden file cabinets and an aquarium that boasted a variety of exotic fish, mainly from the Indian and South Pacific Oceans.

He pulled himself up to the oak desk and gripped the mouse that sat alongside a computer terminal boasting several monitors. As the various screens came to life, he pulled a keyboard from underneath the desk and typed in a web address. Lynch stood beside the door as if he already knew what his boss would soon find and was anticipating the order that would surely come if his intuition was correct. Once the site of an international, subscription based mail server in Switzerland had loaded, Fintan punched in a username and password. The login information accepted, he clicked quickly to the inbox and opened the draft folder.

"No messages. Why are there no messages?" he said aloud, the question rhetorical.

Lynch stepped into the room. "If everything this article says is true, Governor, he's got to be on the run. Maybe he just hasn't been able to contact you yet."

Fintan knew that Lynch was right. Whatever had happened in Declan McIver's life to bring him under the media's microscope in such a way had to have happened very fast and unexpectedly. Of his fellow surviving members of the Black Shuck Unit, which Fintan's father had founded and operated until being murdered in 1993, Declan McIver was the most careful and capable of all and the man Fintan least expected to need his help. But it was obvious from the article that he now needed all the help he could get.

"We have to find him, Lynch. Before anyone else can. Have Cummings meet us in Waterford within the hour. We have a sudden need to visit the United States."