The Dead Yard (9 page)

As for the radical element, an arrest record had already been created for me—vandalism, petty
theft, jail time in Manchester—and the big story was that when I was sixteen I had the shit
beaten out of me and got charged with rioting by the Northern Ireland cops for throwing a petrol
bomb at a police Land Rover. Again they put all this on file and backdated the records. If, as
Samantha suspected, Gerry had a contact in the Boston PD, they could look me up in Interpol and
there would be my rap sheet.

Sean’s parents were conveniently dead and he was an only child, but so that he wasn’t lonely
he had a host of cousins in County Cork. Just like every other Mick in the world.

Samantha was thorough. Questioning me again and again, asking about every month of every year
of my fictional life. She got me tired, tried to catch me out, called me Brian, Michael,
interrogated me, woke me at night to question me, sleep-deprived me. Every trick in the goddamn
book. It was a new game for me. You’d think the army training would all have come back with a
vengeance but it didn’t help for shit. In the army you learn the application of deadly force, how
to wait between bouts of deadly force, and how to clean boots. They don’t teach you this kind of
thing, unless you’re in the Special Air or combat intelligence and I certainly was never a good
enough soldier to be asked to try out for those boys. And that special ops course on my résumé
that Samantha thought so highly of had really been an SAS staff sergeant and a dozen of us
getting drunk and trying not to fall off the windy cliffs of Saint Helena.

But I remembered the discipline, and learning a new identity was easy for me. I’d played many
roles in my quarter century on planet Earth. This was just another one.

I had to trust Samantha, though, because her role was crucial.

She was my control, my contact on the ground.

They were going to put her into a British food and merchandise store in Newburyport,
Massachusetts. The owner was a man called Pitt, an old Foreign Office hand, who had been
contacted and asked if he wouldn’t mind taking a vacation for a couple of months. Pitt’s supposed
cousin Samantha was going to run the store while he was away. She’d been up there once already to
meet the man and learn the workings of his shop. He was happy to be doing something hush-hush for
Her Majesty; and after all, MI6 was compensating him well for his cooperation.

Any time I wanted to talk to her all I had to do was walk right into the store. Easy.

I was to be based in the town of Salisbury Beach, about five miles away from Newburyport, but
they hoped that would only be temporary until I made contact with Kit again. I was going to be
sharing a flat with a Six agent called Simon Preston that Jeremy had recommended for the job.

With me, Samantha played it both ways. Keeping me sweet, keeping me off balance. I don’t know
if it was a tactic or just her approximation of a happy medium.

Trying to calm me: "You’ve done well, Michael. Jolly well. As good as I’ve seen. I’ve run
twenty-year veterans behind the Iron Curtain that don’t have it down as good as you."

Trying to scare me: "Oh yes, Michael, you’re going to have to be careful. McCaghan will be
like a wounded bear now following the assassination attempt. We don’t know what he’s capable of.
He’s already killed scores in Northern Ireland. He’s ruthless. Cold-blooded. He could do
anything…."

But this talk was unnecessary. I already knew the stakes and I was already scared enough.

A Friday night. A going-away party that had the uncomfortable feeling of a wake. A long
evening of drinking with Dan and Sam. Dan drunk in two hours, Samantha sober enough to order me
to bed.

The next morning she woke me before dawn and said that we were ready for the drive up to
Massachusetts. She looked terrible, and I got the impression that she had stayed up drinking all
night after I’d gone to bed.

It made me nervous.

"Rough night?" I asked. She grunted a response.

I went outside and bummed a cig while everyone got their keek together.

I smoked the fag and looked at the predawn activity in the borough of Queens. No one was
watching me. I could run now.

Bolt into the street, hit the subway, and they’d never bloody find me.

I shook my head. Pure fantasy. I wouldn’t run. I needed their help, I needed their protection,
even if it meant risking my own life to get it.

Jeremy pulled up outside the safehouse in an old Jaguar Mark 2 from the 1960s. Burgundy or
plum with sparkling chrome. I don’t know where Samantha got it from but you wouldn’t call it
discreet. And that also disturbed me. The thing you had to remember when dealing with these
people was that the Britain of the Empire was long gone. The Brits may have conquered India and
won two world wars but they also had a complacency and an incompetence that had gotten many
people killed. Jeremy and Samantha were the descendants of the people who had been responsible
for the disasters of the Somme and Gallipoli in World War One. The people who had tried to walk
to the South Pole instead of taking dogs, who had built the unsinkable
Titanic,
who had
lost America, surrendered at Singapore, starved Ireland, appeased Hitler. And now that I thought
about it, wasn’t it MI6 that had been so thoroughly and completely penetrated by the Russians
that the KGB were practically running British Intelligence for a time in the 1950s?

And the FBI wasn’t that much better. What the hell was I doing with these people?

"Ready for the show?" Jeremy asked, getting out of the car with a stupid grin.

I ignored him and let the gloom take over again.

Go for it, Michael. Punch Jeremy and run. Live on the lam. By your wits. Like the old days.
Except that in the old days I didn’t have a contract over my head and an arrest warrant waiting
for me in the Republic of Mexico.

"Take a puff?" Jeremy asked.

I passed him the cigarette.

"Keep it," I said.

Samantha appeared outside and my mood flipped yet again.

From mousy Diana Prince to Wonder Woman. Green eyes, Roman nose, crimson lipstick, acherontic
hair tied in a severe plait behind her head. A sharp black business suit, pumps, powerful hips;
she seemed slimmer, ten years younger, and the heels brought her up to about five nine. She
looked corporate, competent, professional.

"Do you like the car?" she asked.

"It’s a bit bold, don’t you think?"

"Not really. I’m Pitt’s rich country cousin. Of course I would drive a classic car. It’s part
of my character," she said.

I didn’t say anything.

I got in the passenger’s side.

Jeremy slid into the back next to a sallow-faced, bald man called Harrington, who was to be
the FBI liaison. They didn’t exactly inspire confidence either. Harrington was listening to a
Walkman, Jeremy staring gormlessly into space.

"So basically there’s only going to be four people watching me," I said to Samantha while she
fiddled with the radio.

"Who’s the fourth?" she asked breezily.

"Simon. The guy in Salisbury."

"Oh, he’ll be flying back to England as you soon as you make contact with the Sons of
Cuchulainn."

"So, the three people in this car," I said in as neutral a voice as I could.

Samantha sighed.

"I have to warn you, Michael. We are here under sufferance. You can’t just go around running
foreign agents in a host country without conditions. This has to be a low-key affair. The
administration is keeping a tight rein on things. Simon will be your contact in Salisbury, but
I’m afraid after that we’ll have to lose him. But don’t worry. I’ll be your control in
Newburyport and Jeremy and Harrington here will be in Boston waiting to bring the entire
resources of the FBI to our assistance if we need them."

And there’s also Dan, I thought to myself. Dan says he’ll keep an eye on things.

"You should give him the speech, Samantha," Jeremy said from the backseat.

Samantha nodded at him in the mirror.

"In your case, Michael, it probably won’t be necessary. But sometimes I’ve had to restrain my
more enthused agents," she said.

"Oh no, I’d love to fucking hear it," I said.

"Well, maybe I’ll give you a précis, Michael. Basically, I tell anyone I’m running that
there’s to be no silly heroics. No theatrics, no diminishing of the problems. You see, some
people can get carried away, they don’t want to let me down, let the side down."

"So what does that entail?"

"At the first sign of trouble, darling, you really have to let me know. You should remember
it’s my safety too. God forbid they suss you, grab you. They’ll make you talk. They’ll make you
talk and then they’ll come for me. So at the first inkling that you may have slipped or done
something, or someone has rumbled you, you come to me, we’ll talk it over. And if things haven’t
gone as planned I’ll make sure you’re out with an honorable discharge and all threats
dropped."

"No extradition?" I asked.

She nodded. Maybe she wasn’t such a cold-hearted cat after all. And I found myself fighting
two contradictory impulses. The first, to find a way out of the assignment and my association
with these people. And the second, a desire to do the job, to get it right, to please Jeremy and
Samantha and Dan. The second I had to battle against.

In Cambridge we dropped Harrington and Jeremy at another nondescript FBI safehouse on Harvard
Square, and after an enormous traffic jam on 98 we didn’t get into Newburyport until close to
midnight.

We quickly found the All Things Brit store on State Street.

A twee, quaint, touristy street with a Celtic imports store, a sewing shop, a chocolate shop,
an antique maps store, and three ice-cream parlors.

The place was quiet. The kids were in Boston and the tourists were in bed.

"We shouldn’t really be seen together, darling, but it looks as if there are no witnesses.
Come on in and I’ll show you the shop," Samantha said.

She parked the Jag and found the keys to All Things Brit. We went inside. It was the usual
collection of tat. British foods, Barbour jackets, pipes, hats, damp-looking woolen things. The
decor that of an old vicarage that would appear complete only with a spinster lady shrieking over
the body of a poisoned industrialist.

I thumbed through a selection of
Masterpiece Theatre
videotapes while Samantha hung
up her coat.

"Let me show you the upstairs and then I’ll drive you up to Salisbury, it’s only about fifteen
minutes away. McCaghan takes his family up to Salisbury Beach every Friday night in summer. They
have a fireworks show just over the state line. That’s why we picked it as a place for you to be.
You’re not following him to his home on Plum Island, you’re not showing up on his doorstep asking
him for a job. You’re just accidentally bumping into Kit at the fireworks display. It won’t seem
strange at all. I expect Kit will be happy to see you."

"I expect so," I said sourly.

"Hopefully, Touched will have you checked out and they’ll ask you to join them down at their
rather palatial home on Plum Island, which is only a mile or so from here. It’s an actual island,
by the way—a barrier island, quite nice, I went there bird-watching with Pitt, the whole bottom
two-thirds is a wildlife reserve. I think we saw plovers, egrets, that kind of thing."

"Fascinating."

She led me upstairs to Pitt’s flat. A poky affair. On one side of the stairs, a bathroom and a
den that barely had room to squeeze in a sofa, drinks cabinet, and bookcase. On the street side,
a tiny kitchen and a bedroom dominated by a big cast-iron bed with red silk sheets and pillows.
Above it, an enormous skylight that let in the heavens.

"I am going to have this completely redecorated. I think a Mediterranean theme will work very
well here. We’re near the sea and this is a working fishing port. What do you think?" Samantha
asked.

"You think we’ll be here long enough to bother about that?"

"Oh good Lord, I have no idea. Could be weeks, could be months. Would you like a drink? Pitt’s
got an excellent Scotch collection. All island single malts, wonderful, I promise. And the brandy
is to die for. He really is a very resourceful and charming man."

She went into the den.

"He used to be in the civil service or the Foreign Office or something, did I tell you that?"
she shouted in.

"You told me that," I said, unable to shake the somber feeling that had been following me
round all day. The feeling that Death was making his way back into my life again after five long,
lean years.

She came back with the drinks. I sat on an ottoman and she sat on the bed. She kicked her
shoes off and let her hair down. She had poured two generous glasses of a sixteen-year-old
Bowmore and brought the bottle, too. She knocked hers back in one. I followed suit and she poured
us both another. Again she scooted her drink. This time I sipped mine.

She undid the top button of her blouse.

"How nervous are you, on a scale of one to ten?" she asked. I held up five fingers.

"That sounds about right. The Greeks tell us…well, never mind what the Greeks tell us. Finish
that and let me go to the loo and I’ll drive you up to Salisbury. Simon will be dying to meet
you."

I finished my glass of whisky. She retired to the bathroom.

"I’ve been thinking. You know what your problem is, Michael?" she said through the bathroom
door.

"No. What?"

"Men will always hate you and women will always love you."

"Is that a fact?"

"Pour me another drink," she said.

"I thought you were going to drive me."

"Pour me another drink," she insisted.

I poured two more whiskies. She came out of the bathroom a little unshaky on her feet, with
her blouse completely off and draped over her shoulders and her beautiful, voluptuous body
stunning me under the stars. She took the glass and drank the whisky and lay down on the bed.