Veil of Civility

Chapter Fifty-Two

Constance took a deep breath of damp Celtic air as she stood on one of the many balconies of the seventeenth century mansion owned by the McGuire family. Ivy crept up the sides of the stone house and stretched out along the stone balustrade she was leaning her elbows on, her hands either side of her face. Although she considered herself to be quite well traveled she had never seen any place like this. All of the stone columned buildings of Washington D.C., as awe-inspiring as they could be, couldn't hold a candle to the natural beauty that surrounded her. It was as if nature and man-made things had reached a sort of peace and now lived side by side in harmony.

Upon entering the property, Fintan had explained the layout of the grounds. The mansion stood on over two hundred acres near Mullaghmore, about five miles east of the town of Monaghan. What had once been heavily farmed land now stood empty, home only to the mansion in its northwest corner and to several smaller, but no less atmospheric houses in which the year-round staff lived.

The room Constance had chosen as her own for the duration of her stay was in the mansion's southwest corner and its balcony looked out over the expansive gardens and carefully maintained hedgerows that surrounded the entire house. She'd chosen it because in the distance beyond the gardens a small lake was visible, its water as blue as the ocean they'd crossed just hours before. She imagined the sun glinting off the windswept water and wished Declan could be there with her. She knew that for him, though, this place held many distant memories that he had probably tried to forget. She knew enough about the Troubles to know that many of the IRA's army council had kept homes in places just over the border of the Irish Republic, just far enough to be out of the reach of the British Army or the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the predecessor to Northern Ireland's current police force, the Police Service of Northern Ireland. While the McGuire mansion had obviously been there for many years before the Troubles, and even the war for independence, from what she had garnered from the various conversations she'd heard, Fintan's father had used it as a base of operations for his activities during the thirty year conflict.

She heard a polite knock at the door. "It's open," she said, and listened as someone pushed open the heavy oak door. Moments later Fintan stepped onto the concrete balcony. "Just wanted to see that all your needs had been met, love, and that everything was to your liking."

"It's fine. Thank you."

"There are clean clothes in the closet. I had Mrs. Hogan bring some of her daughter's things that she left behind when she moved to Germany a few years back. They're probably a bit dated, but I think they'll fit."

"I'm sure they'll do fine, thank you. And thank Mrs. Hogan for me if you see her."

Nicola Hogan was one of the staff that lived in the stone houses situated along the narrow gravel lane that led through the grounds to the mansion. When they'd first arrived, the roughly fifty-something woman had seemed delighted at Constance's presence. Now she knew the absence of the woman's daughter was why.

Fintan hovered for just a moment, the silence between them uncomfortable.

"Anything yet?" she finally asked.

He shook his head, knowing what she meant. They had yet to receive word from Declan that he had landed safely and while it hadn't been said yet, they both were beginning to suspect the worst.

"Dinner will be served at seven-thirty in the main dining room directly opposite us and one floor down. I hope you'll join me," he said, as he turned to leave, his movements on the two forearm crutches clumsy.

Constance turned back to the lake as the last rays of the sun fell behind the trees beyond it.

"He'll be grand, you know? He's done this kind of thing before," Fintan said.

Constance turned back to him and forced a smile. "I want to know. I want you to tell me."

"Tell you what, love?"

"About Declan's past. All of it."

Fintan adjusted his crutches and turned back to face her. "I'm sorry to say that I wasn't privy to a lot of it. My role was far more brains than brawn, intelligence gathering and the like. But I'll tell you what I do know."

"Please. I need to understand this. I know a bit about the Troubles, the IRA, their Protestant counterparts. But there seems to be more to this, more to Declan, then the IRA story I'm familiar with."

"Well, love," Fintan said, searching for the correct words. "Things in Ireland during those times were convoluted to say the least. Unless you lived it, it's hard to understand the amount of treachery and double-dealing that was a part of daily life back then. But I suppose there is more to Declan's part than was usual." The words seemed to catch in his throat and she wondered immediately if what he had to say was so bad that it could alter her view of the man she loved. Suddenly she wasn't so sure she wanted to know. But it was too late; he'd already begun to speak.

"For lack of a better analogy, Declan and his mates were like the IRA's version of the Frankenstein monster, and my father, Eamon McGuire, was the mad scientist." Fintan moved back onto the balcony and took a seat on one of the concrete benches that flanked the doorway.

Constance lowered herself onto the balcony floor and sat cross-legged to listen.

"Declan sought out the 'Ra after his parents were killed near their home in Ballygowan by a corrupt constable who was linked to a band of UVF thugs. They'd tried to hide some weapons on his da's farm and had been thrown off. Declan's da' was also a politician deeply opposed to the Troubles and always looking for a way to form a power sharing government between the Catholics and the Protestants. The UVF thought of him as a traitor to his Protestant heritage and his throwing them off his land was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. They murdered him and his wife at a fake checkpoint one night.

"I suppose Declan was looking for revenge and a few years later he found it. He was eleven when his folks were murdered, and when he was barely fifteen years old he went looking for their killers. Over the course of the next two years he tracked them down and killed every one of them, with the help of an older boy named Torrance Sands that he'd met in an orphanage in County Down. By seventeen, Declan had taken out eight men that were at least twice his age, most of whom had been killing since the Troubles began in the late sixties."

Constance was in awe as she took in the information. At the age of seventeen she'd been attending governor's school in Savannah, Georgia, and hadn't even been aware that there was a conflict in Northern Ireland.

Fintan continued, "Of course, you don't take out eight paramilitaries and not attract some attention. The attention Declan attracted was that of my father, who took him in as a sort of protégé, if you will; Sands, too. Declan was too young to be an official member of the army, but then so were a lot of the others who were taking part in the conflict. Right away my da' picked him out as something special. He showed an uncanny talent for tactical assaults. He could look at a given situation and within seconds tell you the best avenue of attack and where to strike for the most damage. He could also think on his feet. If an operation went south, and that happened a lot, he reacted fast and adjusted as necessary — most of the time saving the operation and the lives of the men involved in it. For someone of his age and apparent inexperience, it turned some heads. He operated under Da's direction for another year. Then my da' sent him to the Soviets to train. In a lot of ways he was the perfect recruit. He had no living family that could recognize him or worry about him."

"I thought the IRA only used training camps in Libya and such."

"That's mostly true. But Da' had a contact in the Russian special forces, The Spetsnaz. A Colonel, some man named Novikov or some such thing. He was in charge of a supposedly top secret unit at the time known as Vympel. To the best of my knowledge it was a counter-terrorism unit designed to help the Russian's win their war in Afghanistan, only it didn't operate like a typical counter-terrorism unit. It operated more like the terrorists themselves; bombings, kidnappings, assassinations. Their mission was to significantly destabilize the government of their enemy by attacking its foundation and hopefully causing a collapse from within."

"Why would the Soviets agree to train a foreigner in a top secret unit?"

"Well, you have to remember, by this time it was 1988 and the Soviet Union wasn't in a good way. The collapse had already begun in many parts of the country and there were a lot of military and police units left with absolutely no money or provisions for their soldiers, yet they were expected to carry on in Afghanistan. On top of that, corruption has always been a problem in Russia. I'm told it's even worse now than it used to be. I don't know what Da' paid this Colonel, but I know it was quite a lot. As I'm sure you've noticed, money is one thing my family has in good supply. Da' thought their training would be particularly advantageous in the 'Ra's war with the Brits. He sent twelve men. Only nine returned."

"So Declan fought in Afghanistan for the Russians?"

"I don't know exactly where they trained him for sure. Whatever happened, he came back an entirely different person. Disillusioned, I suppose. By that time there was a full blown power struggle going on in the IRA. Sinn Fein was trying to consolidate power in Belfast and had appointed its incompetent puppets to run the Army units around the North. Da' and several of the other council members didn't like it and were still committed to complete independence from Britain. He used Declan and the other eight to start what he called the Black Shuck Unit."

"Black Shuck?"

"Aye, it's a legend in southern England about some sort of demon dog that signifies death to any that see it. Da' thought it was funny, a team of Irish freedom fighters dealing out death to their British enemies under a name taken from British folk stories."

Constance nodded her understanding. She'd heard a similar story from Declan about a ghostly dog that was said to guard churches and graveyards in Ireland. The Kirkgrim he'd called it. "So how did all of this end?"

"It ended in 1993 when a member of the unit, Torrance Sands, betrayed my father and his allies to the politicians in Belfast. They subsequently hired Sands to murder the entire Black Shuck Unit. He did, in the basement of this very house nearly twenty years ago. Only Declan, a fellow named Shane O'Reilly, and myself survived."

"That's why you have trouble walking, isn't it?"

"Lower spine was shattered by a bullet from Sands' gun. I spent nearly a year in hospital in Dublin, didn't return here for years until after the peace accords were signed in 2000."

"And Sands, he was a friend of Declan's? You said he'd helped him as a teenager."

Fintan nodded. "Aye, but Sands was never really a friend to anyone other than himself. He was a stone cold killer from the word go. He used my da' to get the training and experience he wanted and then he left."

"What happened to him?"

Fintan shook his head. "Nobody really knows what happened to him. He just disappeared after that night."

"And Declan made his way to America?"

"Aye, Declan went to America and the other survivor, Shane, to England where he continued in a role my father put him in, working as an informer for MI5 to bring down the traitorous bastards in Belfast."

Constance took a deep breath. The holes in the story were almost filled. All except for a few details that she didn't think she wanted to know. She'd heard stories of the Russian atrocities in Afghanistan. At times they'd wiped out entire villages in search of one Mujahideen.

She stood up. "Thank you for telling me. I know it wasn't easy."

"Ancient history, love," Fintan said, shrugging off the notion that the story was an emotional one for him. But she could tell he was lying. It was nothing if not a painful memory, a lot of painful memories, actually. She kissed him on the cheek as he stood from the bench.

"I'll get ready for dinner. I'm sure Mrs. Hogan prepares a wonderful meal."

Fintan nodded and said, "Aye, and she'd be most disappointed if you didn't come and enjoy it."

"Then I will."

He nodded again and made his way out of the large room, closing the heavy door behind him.

She stepped inside and closed the balcony door. After locking both doors she stripped from head to toe and turned on the shower in the adjacent bathroom. As steam filled the ornately tiled room and fogged the mirrored surfaces, she thought about Declan. How he'd spent so much of his life completely alone with no one to understand what he'd been through. The thought of him out there alone now dealing with the same type of treachery scared her and brought tears to her eyes. She didn't care about what he'd done in the past. She loved him and that was all that mattered. As she stepped into the streaming water, she hoped she'd see him again, that he'd survive and would return to her so they could get on with their lives.