The Dead Yard (5 page)

In the last year the IRA had been in negotiations with Gerry McCaghan and his Sons of
Cuchulainn movement, asking him what his position would be if the IRA’s Army Council declared a
renewal of its cease-fire. Gerry had said, in no uncertain terms, that he would not lay down his
weapons for anyone.

But the Brits and Americans were close to a deal, a cease-fire was on the cards, and the IRA
didn’t need a Gerry McCaghan embarrassing them in front of President Clinton, so a decision had
been taken to kill him. Indeed, to kill all the recalcitrant types who would be opposed to a
resumption of the cease-fire. It would be a Night of the Long Knives. As well as this hit in
Boston there were going to be two hits in Belfast, one in Dundalk, and four in Dublin. All the
serious hard-line opposition would be taken care of in one blow. The IRA could then announce a
cease-fire without fear of disruption from the radical element.

A good plan, but what the IRA did not know was that their main weapons contact in Boston, a
weaselly little shitkicker called Packie Quinlan, had a cocaine problem. Packie had been caught
buying an entire klick by the FBI and as a get-out-of-jail-free card had sold them the
information about the upcoming Boston hit on Gerry McCaghan.

If this had been a whack in Belfast or Dublin, the British and Irish police would probably
have let the assassin kill the bad guy first and then lifted him on the way out of the bar, but
the FBI weren’t like that. They wanted no violence at all, just a nice clean arrest. So some
bright spark had come up with the idea of having Packie Quinlan give the hit man a doctored
weapon.

Purely as a courtesy, the FBI had informed the British consulate about the operation; the
consulate had told MI6; and Samantha had asked the FBI (at least I hope she had asked them) if
she could append a little operation of her own on to theirs.

That’s where I came in.

The single most important part of any undercover operation is the insertion of an agent. The
exit can be an extravaganza, hurried, broad, maybe involving helicopters, cops, or the bloody
Green Berets, but an entry has to be of a different pitch. Clever. Subtle. Low-key.

Samantha’s plan was breathtaking in its simplicity.

The moment the assassin was to pull out his machine gun, Samantha wanted me to throw myself
protectively on Kit.

End of story.

That was the whole goddamn plan.

When Samantha told me this I looked out the airplane window, pretending to be fascinated by
the cloud formations over the Azores and wondering again how I was going to get the hell out of
it. But she had shadowed me all the way to Revere and now here I was, either about to attempt to
carry out her harebrained scheme or run out the back of the pub into a new set of problems.

Samantha saw the op playing like this: The assassin pulls out the gun. People scream, I jump
on Kit, throw her to the ground, shield her with my body, the gun fails, the assassin gets
arrested, and I get up off Kit, embarrassed.

But Kit’s impressed that someone has tried to save her life and asks my name and I say Sean
McKenna from Belfast and she says she’ll remember it and me, so that a week from now when she
accidentally runs into me again at the End of the State Bar in Salisbury, Massachusetts, she
laughs and tells her father that this is the Irish hero that saved her life and
he
asks
my name and what I’m doing in America and I say, "Well, to be frank, Mr. McCaghan, I’m looking
for a job."

And that would be that.

My way into their crew. Maybe first he’d put me in the construction company, but when he
learned about my radical views he’d hopefully invite me into the Sons of Cuchulainn.

That’s why I had to be here tonight. A golden opportunity to take a big leap forward in
credibility. How else could you break into a cell as small and tightly knit as the Sons of
Cuchulainn? Normally you’d need years of work. But Samantha saw this as a shortcut on the trust
stakes. A moment of tension, a moment of embarrassment, and the good part was I wasn’t going to
try and ingratiate myself in one go. I wasn’t going to be pushy or forward. Not too keen. Better
just to make an impression tonight and then the real op could begin again in a week or so.

Besides, since I had no MI6 training this would be all I could handle. Playing this kind of
role took caution, caution, and more caution and I would have to be fully briefed and trained
before the real insertion came later.

Tonight it would just be: neat, clean, clever, out.

Only one small problem.

What Samantha didn’t know, what I didn’t know, what the FBI didn’t know, what Packie Quinlan
didn’t know, was that there was a second assassin.

The IRA believe in redundancy and if an op like this is to go down right, there has to be two
shooters, two chains of causation, two ways of getting the job done. The assassins would be on
different flights, meeting different contacts, not even acknowledging each other at all until the
target appeared.

Yeah, two gunmen, one with a gun that didn’t work, but unfortunately one with a gun that did.
None of us realized, not the feds, not Samantha, not me, that the arrest was not exactly going to
be plain sailing.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned round.

"I heard you were from Ireland."

"That’s right," I said to a short, bald-headed man with a bicycle messenger bag and a beer gut
barely contained by a
Star Trek
T-shirt.

"Take a look at this," he said and from his satchel he withdrew a plaster-cast Virgin
Mary.

"Nice," I said, not sure how I was supposed to respond.

"Are you going back to the Old Country soon?" he asked in a very heavy Boston accent.

"I might be," I said.

"Look, would you be interested in buying a batch to take back with you, five bucks each. You
can mark them up to twenty punts when you get there," he said.

"I don’t think so."

"What about a Jesus?"

He took a Jesus out of the bag. The problem with both votive statues was that they were
incredibly lifelike. Thus his venture was doomed to failure because of the dark skin tone of both
mother and son. I wouldn’t say I was a keen observer of Boston’s or Ireland’s Catholic community
but I do know that only Aryan-looking aspects of the Divine appear in Ireland; weeping Virgin
Marys popping up frequently in the west of the country, tears running down their porcelain white
skin and over the end of their retroussé noses. Whoever thought they could sell Semitic-looking
biblical characters in Ireland had to be out of their bloody minds. I was not the bloke to
disillusion the poor bugger.

"Sorry, mate," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"Not my racket," I told him.

"Ok."

He took his bag over to the next person at the bar, who happened to be the IRA hit man.

"Fuck off," the assassin said after listening to him for about three seconds.

The bald man got a bit intimidated by that and lucky for him he exited the pub only five
minutes before the shooting started. Indeed, he left the bar after talking to only one more
person, a short blond kid in the corner, who oddly enough wasn’t touching his pint of Bass.

The blond kid also refused to countenance the possibility of selling the holy family to the
Micks.

I laughed when the bald guy shuffled out.

I should have known better, for he had spoken to both assassins now, letting them know that
McCaghan was coming and that the job was on.

Kit came to the bar to pick up an order. She looked like a punk, but she smelled of—what was
that?—sweet pea. I gazed at her and tried to figure out precisely how I was going to throw myself
on top of her when the assassin was due to commence his work.

As soon as her da walked in, was I supposed to start following her around? What if the
assassin took his time about it? Look a bit suspicious, me hanging off Kit’s bloody shoulder the
whole night.

Samantha had given me zero instructions on this.

I would have to come up with something. I took a sip of my Sam Adams. Nah, couldn’t possibly
tag behind her the whole evening. I’d just have to keep my eye on the door and when Gerry showed,
I’d saunter over to wherever Kit happened to be. Until then, low profile, no fuss. If it didn’t
work, it didn’t work. I could only tell Samantha I’d tried my best and she’d have to believe me.
I looked at Kit. And really by now I wasn’t contemplating the stupid plan. Two minutes staring at
her was enough to get you.

Think Winona Ryder in
Heathers,
Phoebe Cates in
Gremlins,
Sean Young in
Blade Runner
. That kind of vibe. The dark eyes, the tubercular pallor, the thing on her
head that had once been a Louise Brooks bob but now was teased and hairsprayed in all
directions.

She leaned into the bar, picked up the order, and waltzed off with a tray full of black and
tans.

Had she even noticed me? I wouldn’t blame her if she hadn’t. When we’d arrived that morning,
Samantha and Jeremy had driven me to a safe house in Cambridge. A barber had shown up at four
a.m. Obviously as annoyed about the hour as I was, he had savagely cut my hair to a number two
and then dyed what was left a dark black. Previously, I’d had longish sandy-colored hair, and
everyone in New York had certainly known me that way. Now I appeared quite different. Not a bad
look for me. Little rougher, little tougher. But the jet-lagged eyes and nasty sunburn couldn’t
help.

"Get ya another?" the kid from Cork asked.

"Nah, still working at this one," I said.

"It’s all right, is it?" the kid asked.

"Aye, it’s fine," I said.

"One of this country’s great patriots."

"Who is?" I asked.

"Sam Adams. He rode from New York to Boston to warn the people the British were coming. And he
was the third president of the United States."

"And he made beer, too?"

"He certainly did now," the keep said and walked back to the bottles.

I looked at my watch, three minutes to six. I couldn’t help but be a bit nervous. Quick
time-out. I went to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. Ok, take it easy, Forsythe,
this is bloody nothing. Piece of piss, I told my reflection.

Nothing for you, buddy, remember you were in a riot a couple of days ago, my reflection
said.

I splashed some more water and went back to the bar stool.

The assassin had ordered another Schlitz Lite. The blond kid in the corner hadn’t touched his
drink at all. And neither had a bunch of clean-cut men wearing board shorts and Gap T-shirts,
sitting together, at two tables by the door.

Ah, the
federales,
I thought.

"So what you do for a living?" the assassin asked me out of the blue.

"Me, oh, um, I was a postman back in Ireland," I answered—the first thing that popped into my
head.

"Fucking posties, bastards so they are, on the whole. Always bills, always fucking bills," the
assassin said bitterly. The kid from Cork came over.

"Pushkin said that postmen were monsters of the human race, a bit extreme perhaps but you
could see his point of view," he intoned, obviously attempting levity.

Both the assassin and myself turned the evil eye on him and he pissed off. We didn’t need some
know-it-all student showing us up.

"The Commie with the dogs?" the assassin asked me when the kid had gone. For a sec I had no
idea what he was talking about.

"No, no, you’re thinking of Pavlov, mate," I said and was about to explain but got interrupted
by the assassin, who turned his full pale face and intimidating eyes on me.

"Look, maybe you should make yourself scarce, mister Carrickfergus postman," he whispered
slowly, measuring out every word.

"I’m heading just as soon as I finish my beer," I said.

"No, no, maybe you should split right now, if you know what’s good for ya," the assassin
said.

I was touched. Fair play of him to spare me the coming unpleasantness, but I couldn’t go.

"I’ll be heading soon," I said.

The assassin opened his mouth to insist that maybe I should leave right now, but before he
could the outside door opened.

In walked the bodyguards. The first one I noticed was "Big" Mike McClennahan. Of course, Big
Mike was about five foot five. Bald, skinny, wearing a black polo shirt and blue jeans. He was
from Boston, ex-cop, gunrunner, bookie. Next, Seamus Hughes—fifty-two, five nine, sallow-faced,
wearing a tan jacket and a 5-0 shirt. Another Bostonian, another ex-cop in fact, twenty-five
years, full pension, tough nut.

A heartbeat behind them, Gerry McCaghan.

Fifty-five years old. Six foot, a good three hundred pounds, pale, ursine, red hair, a really
nasty smear of scar tissue under his left eye where he’d gotten hit by a rubber bullet at a riot
in Derry. He was wearing sunglasses, blue corduroys, a Hawaiian shirt like Seamus’s, black
loafers, and rather surprisingly he had a gun showing in a holster on his left hip. The gun
visible only for a moment as the draft from the door wafted up his shirttail.

"Mr. McCaghan, the usual?" the kid behind the bar shouted.

Kit looked over, smiled at her dad, and waved.

The feds tensed.

The assassin put down his pint. Too late now to warn his compatriot about the upcoming
slaughter.

I got off the bar stool, began walking toward Kit.

Here goes, I thought. She was hovering over a table, clearing away the drinks. The table was
between the exit and a toilet, so I could always say I’d been heading for the toilet if she ever
asked why I had suddenly started walking toward her when all hell had broken loose.

About fifteen paces from me to her. How long did I have? A few seconds?

Three paces, four, five, six, seven.

I knew it was the wrong thing to do but I couldn’t help but half-turn and look at the
assassin. His pint was on the bar now, his cigarette in the ashtray, both his hands free. He slid
off the bar stool, stood, legs apart, steady.