The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf (4 page)

FORD STAGGERED AND fell again. He had imagined the descent down the muddy and slick slope to Mirna’s compound on the cliffs would be hardest on his old bones, but the climb back up proved far worse. He could barely get his knees to lock and unlock with each step. How could he ever hope to defend himself or even flee with Breege, when he could barely walk himself?

Fighting through the pain, he forced himself to think of how Rehm had got onto him, after all these years. He had scuttled the boat in a trench off the continental shelf. Could it have broken up and some of its pieces been caught, say, by one of the modern draggers that now fished Irish waters? It was unlikely, since the boat had been designed never to break up, even under the most harrowing fire.

No—Ford stopped to brace himself after blundering off the trail into a slough of mud—it was probably the release of all the war records now that the fifty-year most-secret limit had passed. Before scuttling the boat, Ford had sent a final radio communiqué to his confederates on land, in case he perished. Granted it had been mere coordinates, naming the final position of the boat, but the signal might also have been picked up by some other source and recorded.

After the war a few “tourists” did visit Clare Island,
snooping around, asking questions. But for the first four or five years, Clem Ford had remained almost exclusively with his new wife at their isolated home on the far side of the island. Scarcely a cart track led to them then. And Breege’s aunt Peig had put it about that Ford—in spite of or perhaps because of his British accent—was an I.R.A. man on the run. A “strong woman” with known “Republican connections,” her word was heeded.

Below him now, Ford could see the lights of his own house glowing dimly in the distance. As he got closer, he also caught sight of Kevin O’Grady’s old car parked in front. The sitting room lights were on too, and, of course, the Judas stone had been moved, when O’Grady let himself in.

The wind was now wailing about Ford’s bare head, and he felt a sudden chill. More acutely, when, stepping cautiously toward the front cubby, he noticed that the front door, the one that opened into the hall, was slightly ajar.

No Clare Islander—not Kevin O’Grady, not Breege—would ever allow any door, especially one facing the blast, to stand open even a crack. He reached for his belt where he sometimes tucked his Webley, but, of course, he had given it to Breege.

What to do? Go back round to the kitchen cubby and try the door there? If it were open, then he’d know something had definitely happened and Rehm was there.

But it was locked. The little Ford could see through the salt-spattered windows and between the curtains was the cooker with his tea on it, warming. Suddenly he felt cold, old, ravenous, and weak.

Because then he noticed something else beyond the kitchen on the floor, something he could not make out distinctly with his old eyes. When he reached into his breast pocket for his spectacles, he discovered that he had smashed them, falling.

Turning his head suddenly to the outbuildings in the haggard behind him, he thought he sensed somebody there, among the tools and farm implements. But all was dark and quiet. In horizontal sheets, the rain pelted him, as he stepped around the windward side of the cottage to approach the front door again.

All he could think of was Breege—if Rehm was in there,
he had to get her out one way or another. After all, their secret and the Trust were now in good hands, and all they had to do was get away and live out whatever days they had left.

At the cubby door, Ford took a deep breath and scanned O’Grady’s banger—a large, old Ford Granada—but there was nobody in it, or behind it, that he could tell. With a trembling hand, he turned the handle on the cubby door and pushed it open. But the front door did not crash back with the force of the storm that now swept into the cubby.

The reason was soon apparent. There was something behind the door stopping it. Something heavy. Ford had to put his large shoulder into the door and shove to squeeze himself inside. Looking down, he was horrified by what he saw.

Kevin O’Grady was spread out in the hall, his eyes open, his hands clutched to his chest. There was a spot on his forehead, dark, like something from Ash Wednesday. Most of the back of his head was gone, having been blown away. A spray of blood and brain and bone coated the wall, the mirror, and the framed photographs Ford had taken of Breege and Peig over the years.

With two fingers Ford reached out and touched the spattered glass surface over the very same photo Mirna was using to paint Breege’s portrait. And the enormity of Kevin O’Grady’s death and what it would mean to his wife and children descended upon Ford. O’Grady had been the very best sort of neighbor and friend—a
guard
in every sense—and now he was dead, because of Ford himself. Nobody else.

Then, heedless of his own person or who might have murdered O’Grady, Ford shouted, “Breege!” and bolted into the sitting room.

There she sat, her blind blue eyes staring up at him as though he had never left. Her knitting was in her lap. One hand was stuffed down beside the shawl over her legs, the other was resting upon the doily on the arm of the wing chair. Her ring finger had been chopped off cleanly at the last knuckle but had bled only a trickle.

Ford fell to one knee beside her, only to realize from the slackness of her jaw that she too was dead.

“It was the on’y way I could get the bloody thing off her finger,” said a Scot’s voice behind him. “Trust me—I tried
everr’athing else. And the coincidence is really quite remarkable. D’ye’ know the woman it was taken from, the lass who owned it first? Why, it had to be chopped from her mitt in the verra’ same manner, or so I was told.”

Slowly, Ford turned to behold Angus Rehm sitting in the far corner of the room, the Norwegian fisherman’s cap that Ford had seen him wearing earlier in his lap. Again Ford noted that apart from the snowy white hair and his creased and weathered face, Rehm looked unchanged from 1945.

Rehm opened one hand to reveal a bloodstained handkerchief. In it was Breege’s finger with the ring still round it. In the palm of the other hand lay a pistol that Ford had never seen before with three gathered barrels and a long curving banana clip.

Standing behind him were two young men with short-barreled automatic weapons hanging from long slings. A woman now appeared in the doorway to the hall, carrying another gun. Those three were still dressed in the bright orange oilskins Ford had seen them wearing on the boat. The
Mah Jong
.

It was only then that Ford realized how changed the room was. The contents of every drawer and cabinet had been tossed into a heap in the center of the room. Years of correspondence was everywhere. Even the stuffed chairs had been flayed, including the one Breege was sitting in. The stuffing from it was scattered all over.

Was there any hope that the Webley was where Ford had concealed it? Breege looked as though she hadn’t stirred an inch from how he had left her. Maybe out of respect for the dead they had let her be.

Ford’s eyes shied to the hearth. He was shocked to see that the fresh fire he had started had been pushed aside and the deep stone prized up.

“Clem—is that yehr handle these days, laddie?—ye’ underestimate us. Don’t ye’ think we would have done our homework?” Rehm’s manner was colloquial and jovial almost. “Heather here”—he gestured to the young woman—“is a student of your adopted culture.

“Knowing you could only be here or in Scotland, given yehr dearth of crew and fuel, we made it our business to study
this country, its habit of mind, its culture and traditions, its…texture. But then back in the old days, ye’ always favored Irish waters, di’ y’not?

“Pity about the old girl—yehr wife, I take it from the pictures.” Rehm waved his stiff, gloved hand at the photographs on the floor. “I don’t believe her heart could take the shock of what happened in the hall. If it’s any consolation, she was a’ready dead before I took the ring.”

Which meant the handgun might still be where Ford had placed it, between the cushion and the chair. If it was time for him to die, he would take Rehm and maybe one of the others with him. Maybe all, if he could manage it. That would leave Mirna Gottschalk with a free hand with the Trust. One thing—he would not allow himself to be tortured. He could see from the way everything in the room had been pulled apart, and even floorboards ripped up, that they had already conducted a thorough search. The kind Rehm had been good at, all those years ago.

Ford glanced back down at poor, generous, innocent, and wonderful Breege, and tears popped from his eyes. She had been so gentle and so undeserving of this sort of violent death.

“Come, come now, Clem—or is it Clement?—that’s no way for a thief of yehr caliber to behave. Ye’ knew I was coming one day. Yehr excellent Zeiss binoculars tell me as much. How did ye’ ever allow yehrself to buy German? But why not with yehr money!”

Ford said nothing, as he tried to gather himself.

“May I introduce ye’ to my family? For years I’ve been distressing them with my apocryphal—they thought—story about some great, lost fortune and the legendary ‘Sea Wolf’ who stole it from me. Now at least they no longer think me a dotty old fool who was dreaming of the good old days, the halcyon days of the war. How’s that poem go, Clem? The one ye’ used to spout at university when ye’ were in yehr cups?

“
Two things greater

than all things are
,

The first is Love

and the second War
.

“Kipling, wasn’t it? Another bloody bellicose Brit, like you. Could you stand and show my children how tall ye’ are?”

Ford managed to find his voice. “I’d…I’d prefer to remain here beside my wife.”

“Granted. Ye’re allowed. But please first stand for a moment so we can be sure ye’re not armed. I’d like to keep this reunion as pleasant as possible, our being old comrades and so forth. Ye’ canna’ know how yeh’ve given my life point, Clem. All the success that I’ve had in my second life—or was it my third?—I owe to ye’. ’Twas the thought of ye’ and nobody else that kept me young and vital, and my sons and daughter should thank ye’ for it. Year after year I kept tellin’ meself, I need the money, the health, the time to right the wrong of forty-five, and by gum, I’ll do it. Clem and I will meet again, and here we are at last.”

Sighing contentedly, Rehm motioned to his sons to move forward. “So tell us now, what’s left? From yehr modest lifestyle, one might hope much. For yehr sake.”

As the young men approached him, Ford considered reaching for the Webley and perhaps taking them both out. But he could not remember if he had slid off the safety (or know if Breege had thumbed it back on), and another, better plan now occurred to him. He had not been called Sea Wolf for nothing.

Slowly Ford got to his feet, his knees now not paining him in any way. It was as if all of him—body, mind, and soul—had decided that he would accomplish this last act, and this would be his final day on earth. Knowing he could not and
would not
go on without Breege, Ford only hoped that her spirit was still somewhere close by, so he could now join her.

“Please, Clem—ye’ have not answered any of my questions. Ye’ have not really even acknowledged our presence, which is impolite.”

The two young men, while considerably smaller in stature than Ford, were well muscled and strong. Spinning him round, they threw him against the mantel. Like police, one spread out his legs, while the other patted him down. Satisfied that he was unarmed, they slowly moved away, the assault rifle of the third one—the girl—having been trained on him all the while.

“Which question do I answer first?” Ford straightened up. “May I remain here beside my wife?”

Rehm nodded. “
If
we can keep the discussion on this level, certainly. If it degenerates, we’ll take you out into the kitchen.”

Ford lifted Breege’s legs from the footstool and eased himself down onto it. Like that, he was but a reach away from the Webley, and the chair between him and the woman in the doorway.

“The primary question, of course—is there much left?”

Ford shrugged and reached for his pipe.

“It’s even better than that. There’s more,
much
more, than in forty-five. I invested the lion’s portion, and it’s grown, as you can imagine.”

Rehm smiled, and his eyes swept his three children. “See? I kept telling ye’ my Sea Wolf was no fool. If he lived, the treasure would still be intact. How much would yeh say there is, Clem?”

Ford struck a match into his pipe and puffed up a cloud of Yachtsman, a strong blend that produced dark blue, aromatic smoke. In times past he had thoroughly clouded the sitting room. He shrugged. “Millions.” It was no lie.

“How many millions?” one of the sons asked.

Ford cocked his head. “Many. The sum fluctuates, as markets change and currencies vary. But, fear not—it’s safe.” He was hoping Rehm’s avarice would make him unwary. But then, it could as easily have the opposite effect.

“Take a guess. How many?”

“It’s hard to say, but many.”

“Ten?”

“No—more than that.”

“Twenty?”

Ford shook his head. “I couldn’t be sure without tallying what’s invested and what’s still on the island. Much of the cargo, of course, couldn’t be brokered—you know that yourself—and so it remains where I concealed it. But twenty easily. Och”—Ford allowed himself a Celticism—“what am I saying? It’s many times that.”

“In pounds or dollars.”

“Oh, pounds of course.”

“Irish or British.”

“British, mainly. This is such a small country, it would have been foolhardy to have made a show of it.”

There was a pause in which the four others in the small room considered that.

Finally Rehm spoke. “By on the island yeh mean in this form?” Rehm waved the handkerchief that still held Breege’s finger and the ring.

Ford nodded. “As I said, you know yourself, many of the better pieces were far too well known to sell. And why get rid of them when—”