Fair Game (21 page)

‘Ransom?’ said Katie. ‘You want a ransom?’

‘Just let us go, please,’ said Joy. ‘We’re not anybody important, we’re just sailors. We were just taking the yacht . . .’

Roobie stepped forward and slapped her across the face and she fell back on the bunk, sobbing.

Katie put up her hands. She felt surprisingly calm now that she had someone she could talk to. ‘Roobie, please, just listen to me. I can help you get what you want. But you have to stop hurting us. If you hurt us, no one is going to help you, do you understand?’

Roobie pointed a finger at her face. ‘You talk to camera. Say you want them pay ransom or we kill you.’

‘You’re not going to kill us, though, are you?’ said Katie. ‘That wouldn’t make sense, would it?’

Roobie raised his hand to hit her and Katie scurried back on the bunk until she was up against the wall of the cabin. ‘OK, OK,’ she said.

‘Hold up passports and talk to the camera,’ he said.

Katie nodded. ‘OK,’ she repeated. She put her arm around Joy. ‘Come on, babe, we have to do what he says.’

‘They’re going to kill us, I know they are.’ Joy sniffed. ‘They’re not going to let us go, not after what they’ve done to us.’

‘They just want money,’ whispered Katie. ‘If they get a ransom, they’ll let us go.’

‘Who’s going to pay money for me?’ asked Joy. Tears streamed down her face. ‘Me and Andrew, we haven’t got a penny to our name. He hasn’t spoken to his parents in ten years and my dad died when I was a kid. My mum lives in a council house in Milton Keynes.’ She began to sob and Katie hugged her.

The pirate with the camera pressed the ‘record’ button and a red light glowed. Katie held up her passport. ‘My name is Katie Cranham,’ she said. ‘This is Joy Ashmore. We were crewing the
Natalya
, from Dubai on the way to Sydney. We’ve been kidnapped by pirates and they say that they’ll kill us if you don’t pay what they want.’ The words caught in her throat and she began to cry. ‘Mummy, Daddy, please, I want to come home.’ Tears streamed down her cheeks and she covered her eyes with her passport. More than anything in the world she wanted to be back with her parents, sitting in their farmhouse kitchen in front of the Aga with the family Labrador at her feet.

Roobie said something to the man with the video camera and he stopped filming. Roobie took the camera from him and checked the recording as Katie and Joy hugged each other on the bunk. They were both crying softly. Roobie gave the man back the camera then grabbed the passports from the two women.

‘Roobie, please, we need decent food,’ said Katie. ‘And we need to be able to wash properly. Otherwise we’re going to get sick.’

Roobie shoved the passports into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘You talk too much.’

‘I did what you wanted,’ said Katie. ‘Can’t you at least let us shower?’

‘Please, can I see my husband?’ asked Joy.

Roobie handed Katie’s chain to one of the teenagers and said something to him in Somali. He laughed and pulled the chain, dragging Katie off the bunk.

‘I want to see my husband,’ begged Joy. ‘Please.’

‘Today I am your husband,’ said Roobie, unzipping his jeans.

‘Please, no, don’t,’ said Joy. She curled up on the bunk, sobbing.

The teenagers dragged Katie along the corridor as Joy began to scream.

‘You bastards!’ shouted Katie.

One of the teenagers thumped her in the back and she staggered into her cabin and crashed against the bunk. Before she could turn they were on her, slapping her and pulling off her clothes. Katie went limp. There was no point in fighting. She closed her eyes and let them get on with it.

Robbie Fox tore the slice of bread into small pieces and tossed them to the waiting ducks, which were urging him on with a series of rapid quacks. He was standing by the lake in Stephen’s Green, the twenty-two-acre park in the centre of Dublin. He was on the O’Connell Bridge and he was early. Fox was always early to meetings, even when he was seeing someone he trusted as much as he trusted Kieran FitzGerald. It was a habit that had saved his life on at least two occasions.

The ducks gobbled up all the bread and began quacking for more.

It was FitzGerald who had wanted to meet in Dublin and it made sense to do it south of the border so Fox hadn’t argued. Northern Ireland was crawling with undercover cops and spooks but none of them had the authority to carry out any sort of investigation in Eire. If the authorities in the North wanted to monitor a conversation or meeting in the South they would first have to liaise with the Garda Síochána and the Irish police force was not renowned for its efficiency.

Fox had driven down and had parked in a multi-storey car park close to the Stephen’s Green shopping centre. He’d bought the small loaf of sliced bread at the food section of Dunne’s department store and then walked across to the park, checking for a tail, even though he knew that there was more chance of a donkey winning the Grand National than of somebody following him in the Irish capital.

He saw FitzGerald walking across the grass, coming from the Shelbourne Hotel, where no doubt he’d been having a pint of Guinness or two while waiting for the appointed time. FitzGerald had two bodyguards that Fox could see, a big man in a long coat who was walking ahead and to the left carrying a newspaper, and a smaller man in a dark suit wearing sunglasses who hung back at the entrance to the park and was trying unsuccessfully to look inconspicuous.

FitzGerald never went anywhere without protection, and with good reason. As Operations Director of the Real IRA there were any number of Loyalist groups who would happily kill him and dance on his grave.

FitzGerald was in his mid-fifties, more than a decade younger than Fox, but his hair was greyer and thinner than Fox’s and his hands were mottled with liver spots. He walked on to the bridge and stopped next to Fox, but made no move to shake his hand, and stood looking at the ducks. ‘How are things with you, then, Robbie?’

‘Fine,’ said Fox. ‘Yourself?’

‘Not so bad,’ said FitzGerald, holding the railing of the bridge with both gloved hands.

Fox threw another handful of bread at the quacking ducks.

‘You know the story of the ducks, right, Robbie? During the Easter Rising?’

Fox shook his head.

‘There were more than two hundred of the boys, holed up in the park, with Commandant Michael Mallin running the show. They’d blocked the streets with cars and carts and dug trenches in the park. Big mistake, because the Brits moved into the Shelbourne and started shooting at the Volunteers. Bloody trench warfare in the middle of the city. Bloody madness. Went on until the Volunteers pulled out and took refuge in the Royal College of Surgeons.’ He gestured at the quacking ducks. ‘Thing is, all through the shooting, there were ceasefires so that the groundsman could feed the ducks. I kid you not. Out he went with a white flag and they stopped shooting while he fed them.’ FitzGerald shook his head. ‘People are funny, right enough.’

‘They are that,’ agreed Fox. ‘As funny as fuck.’

‘So how’s it going, Robbie? How’s the knee?’

‘Hurts more in the winter than the summer, but I can walk on it OK.’

‘No fun getting older, is it?’

Fox shrugged. ‘Not many advantages to it, right enough.’

‘And young Lisa, quite the rising star.’

‘Aye, she’s committed, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders.’

‘Took care of that bastard SAS major for us, did a great job there.’

Fox nodded and threw another handful of bread pieces out to the quacking ducks. ‘Well, it was personal. She was close to Padraig and Sean, like brothers they were.’

‘Aye, that was a terrible thing. But he’s dead now.’

‘It was a quick death, though, and that he didn’t deserve. I’d have preferred to have had him screaming in pain and begging for mercy.’

‘Dead is dead, Robbie,’ said FitzGerald.

‘That’s what they say,’ agreed Fox.

The man in sunglasses had moved to sit on a bench from where he had a good view of the bridge.

‘So where do we stand?’ asked FitzGerald.

Fox looked around to check that no one could overhear them. Two nuns walked over the bridge deep in conversation and a middle-aged woman was pushing a stroller with a toddler munching on a bar of chocolate.

‘We’re not that much farther forward,’ said Fox. ‘Tanner killed Connolly and Hughes to protect O’Leary, who was undercover for the cops. Lisa went to the States and interrogated the ATF agent who introduced Tanner to the New York fund-raisers but that was a dead end. The thing is, if Tanner was a cop, he’d have known about O’Leary and it wouldn’t have gone as far as it did. He was surprised to hear about O’Leary, so he must have been with another agency. MI5, maybe. Or Sass. We think Five.’

‘He was bloody good with a gun, so I can’t see he’d be with Five,’ said FitzGerald. ‘Took out Connolly and Hughes without them firing a shot, I’m told.’

‘The thing is, Sass aren’t great at undercover work. They’re not the sharpest knives in the drawer, you know that. And this Tanner, he was good. He was bloody good. Barely been in Ireland for a few months and we had him on an execution squad with Connolly and Hughes, and those two didn’t suffer fools gladly.’

‘So maybe Sass working for Five?’ suggested FitzGerald.

‘If he had been with Sass there’d have been a dozen men with MP5s there and there weren’t,’ said Fox. ‘Tanner was alone.’ Fox threw more bread to the ducks. ‘Not that Tanner is his real name, of course.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling he’s going to get away with it, Kieran. The bastard is going to walk.’

‘So what do we have on this Tanner?’

‘We have a picture taken from a CCTV camera in the States. Lisa’s passing the photograph around Belfast, see if anyone knows him.’

‘That’s not much of a plan, is it?’

‘Here’s the thing, Kieran. If he’s with Five, one of our Loughside people could maybe get a look at his file.’

FitzGerald didn’t say anything as he watched the ducks bobbing for bread.

‘I know it’s a risk, right enough,’ said Fox.

‘Damn right it’s a risk,’ said FitzGerald. ‘We’ve precious few resources there and we need to take care of those that we have.’

‘Sure, they’re too valuable to squander. But this Tanner, he killed two of our men in cold blood. And blew a major bombing operation.’

The two men stood in silence for a while, looking at the ducks but their minds elsewhere.

‘The people we’ve got at Loughside, they’re gold, Robbie. They’ve passed positive vetting and their Republican sympathies are well hidden. If they keep their noses clean, who knows where they’ll be in ten years. We can’t put assets like that at risk for one man.’

‘It’s the long fight that matters, I see that,’ said Fox. ‘But there’s a point of principle here. If we strike back, they’re less likely to use undercovers in the future. And it shows that we’re serious about defending our Volunteers.’

FitzGerald’s eyes narrowed but there was no hint of annoyance in his voice. ‘You’re saying this is a PR exercise, are you, Robbie?’

‘I’m saying that perception matters,’ said Fox. ‘And that by letting this pass we might look weak. But if we show strength, if we show that we can strike at our enemy when they hurt us, it can only help our image.’

FitzGerald frowned. ‘Image? Is that what it’s come to?’

‘In the battle for hearts and minds, sometimes perception is more important than the reality of the situation,’ said Fox. ‘It’s a brave new world, right enough.’

FitzGerald said nothing for almost half a minute as he considered his options.

‘You see the guy on the bench, wearing sunglasses,’ said FitzGerald eventually.

‘Sure,’ said Fox.

‘Give him the photograph,’ said FitzGerald. ‘I’ll see what can be done.’

Fox nodded. ‘I appreciate that, Kieran.’

‘And if we find this Matt Tanner or whatever his name is, will Lisa take care of it?’

‘That’s the plan.’

FitzGerald smiled. ‘We need more like her, Robbie.’

‘We’ll get them,’ said Fox. ‘People can see that Martin and Gerry sold us out, that the only way we’ll get our country back is to fight for it.
Tiocfaidh ár lá
.’

‘
Tiocfaidh ár lá
,’ echoed FitzGerald.

Shepherd wandered over to the kitchen area, carrying his mug. Everyone on the floor had their own cup or mug and on his second day he’d bought one from a gift shop in Praed Street with a cartoon of a policeman on it. Shepherd knew it was a silly thing to do but no one paid it any attention. There was a coffee fund and Shepherd had put a ten-pound note into the tin when it was first pointed out to him.

Over the two weeks he’d been in the office he’d become a familiar face and everyone either nodded or said something to him. He chatted about football with the Spurs fan, the weather with the middle-aged lady who was going through an ugly divorce and listened to the office Romeo’s latest adventure. Shepherd was all smiles and nods, playing the nice guy. It was a total contrast to his regular undercover work, where more often than not he was in hard-man mode, intimidating those around him and getting physical when needed. His role as a human resources consultant wasn’t a part that he enjoyed playing and for most of the time he was bored rigid. At least when he was undercover in criminal gangs he had to be on his toes and the adrenalin rush kept him going. It was all he could do to stay awake during his eight-hour shifts at the company.

Candy Malone was pouring hot water over a tea bag when he walked up. She smiled at him over her shoulder. ‘Hi, Oliver, how’s things?’

‘Hopefully getting to the end of it,’ said Shepherd, and that was the truth.

‘Any hints as to what’s going to happen?’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘I just file a report,’ he said.

‘You don’t make recommendations?’

She turned to face him and he noticed bruising around her left eye. She’d done a good job of concealing it with make-up but it was still visible. And there was bruising on her right wrist, and scratches.

‘Someone in a different pay grade makes those decisions,’ said Shepherd, pouring coffee into his mug. ‘Are you OK? That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got there.’