Veil of Civility

Chapter Sixty

David Kemiss walked over to the door, opening it in response to the sharp knock. "Come in, Colin. Come in."

Colin Bellanger stepped into the apartment. In the button-down shirts and ties required at the Senate office building, Kemiss thought the young man looked awkward and lanky. But tonight, in his off hours, wearing a black twill zip-up jacket that fitted his lean figure perfectly, with his hair wet from the rain outside and his glasses exchanged for a pair of contacts, he looked athletic and maybe even sophisticated.

"Dinner's just been delivered. I hope Chinese from City Lights is okay."

"Great. City Lights delivered all the way to Stanton Park? Impressive. Thank you, Senator."

"Perk of the job and its David tonight, I get tired of all the titles."

Bellanger smiled and unzipped his coat, pulling out a thick file from underneath that he had been shielding from the rain. "I can understand that, I guess."

The young man seemed nervous.

"So, I hate to bring you out on a night like this, but you said you'd found something?" Kemiss asked.

While he was trying very hard to be polite and to come off as cool and collected, inside Kemiss was feeling almost panicked. Earlier in the day he had learned that Declan McIver had been spotted in Wales and news since then had seemed to confirm Kemiss' worst fears; McIver appeared to be heading inland towards London. Police in the U.K. had discovered that he had carjacked a couple of tourists not far from where he had spent the night with a wildlife worker and her elderly father. The tourists' stolen car had turned up only an hour outside of London, but McIver had yet to be located. In response to the developments, Kemiss had charged Lukas Kreft with hiring assassins to kill Lane Simard, the only person in London that could positively tie Kemiss to McIver and so to the attacks on Liberty University and Abaddon Kafni. The question burning in his mind was could Kreft find the kind of men they needed to do the job in time? Having never hired professional killers, Kemiss would have had no idea where to start. Hopefully, Kreft was more experienced and better prepared.

"So what is it, what have you got?"

"Well, I think I've finally found something. I hope it will be useful."

"Well, don't keep me in suspense," Kemiss said with a smile, as they moved into the apartment's main living area and took a seat on the sofa. Two large bags filled with various Chinese entrées were on the table, but Kemiss pushed them aside as Bellanger placed the folder on the table and opened it.

"Yes, sir." Bellanger began removing some of the papers inside the file. "I've been going over the documents you asked me to and I've made what I think is an important connection. Do you remember the plane that the FBI had boarded when it landed in Ireland?"

"Yes."

"Well, I think it was connected to Declan McIver after all."

"Do tell."

"A lot of the names in the file have been redacted and the connection isn't an easy one to make without them, but by process of elimination I believe I've figured out the man who was running the show in the Black Shuck Unit of the IRA. I believe it's a man named Eamon McGuire."

Kemiss bristled for a moment. How could Irish law enforcement have allowed an international fugitive to get off an airplane without seeing him? And what about McIver's presence in the U.K.? He hoped Bellanger wasn't wasting his time. "As in McGuire & Lyons Industries?"

"Yes, sir, the company that owned the plane. Eamon McGuire never played an active role in the company. I guess he was far too busy with his IRA activities, so he left the running of the family business to his brother. Both of them are dead now, but the company is run by Eamon's son, Fintan, who's one of the names on the list of suspects in the Black Shuck Unit."

"And you're betting that Fintan is a chip off of the old block and is helping his old childhood friend, Declan McIver, hide out?"

"Yes, sir. Now, I know what you're thinking, that this can't be connected because McIver's in England, not Ireland, but hear me out?"

Kemiss nodded.

"Fintan McGuire was one of the people on that plane when it landed in Ireland, which means he was in the United States. Now, I've gone over everything I can find about him on Google and all over the Internet and I can't find any reason why he would be in West Virginia. I can't even find any reason why he would be in the United States, especially for such a short time. McGuire & Lyons Industries is focused primarily on emerging economies across Europe, Southern Asia and South America. Now, is it possible that he was in town for a meeting at the Greenbrier? Sure it is. But that's an awfully big coincidence, if you ask me, and I don't believe in coincidences."

"He was here to get his old friend out of the country," Kemiss said, though he thought the young man was reaching, possibly out of a desire to make a name for himself in the powerful company he found himself in. Careers in Washington had been made on less. Still, Bellanger was onto something and though he couldn't have known this, the airport McGuire's plane had landed and taken off from was a small, out of the way place not normally connected with the Greenbrier Resort, and that lent itself to the idea that McGuire had been trying to hide something. "Well, I'll admit there are a lot of factors in play and your theory has at best a fifty-fifty shot, but it's worth checking into further."

And it was worth checking into further. Though Declan McIver had been seen in the U.K., all of the eyewitness accounts had said that he was alone. There had been no sign of his wife which meant that he had to have hidden her again, and property associated with McGuire & Lyons Industries was as good a place to start as any. Even if McIver himself wasn't there, the presence of his wife would mean that he would eventually show up. Kemiss picked up his cell phone and dialed a number. "Allan, it's David. I have something I want you to look into."

Kemiss quickly caught Allan Ayers up to speed and set the NSA analyst to work. When he hung up the phone, he turned back to Bellanger and said, "Let's eat."

He had invited the young man to his home not because he had said he'd found something, Kemiss could have learned that over the phone, but to ensure that he had the young man's confidence. The job he'd been charged with was highly sensitive and while he had been told that at the time Kemiss had given it to him, he needed to be told again and made to realize the consequences of betraying that trust.