Cathedral

by Nelson DeMille

  “Hold on.” Burke tried to arrange his thoughts. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that there was more than one game in town today. Where there was an Irish conspiracy, there was sure to be an English conspiracy. After eight hundred years of almost continuous strife, it was as though the two adversaries were inseparably bonded in a bizarre embrace destined to last eternally. If the Irish war was coming to America, then the English would be here to fight it. It was Major Bartholomew Martin’s presence in New York, more than anything Ferguson said, that signaled an approaching battle. And Major Martin knew more than he was telling. Burke spoke into the mouthpiece. “Do you have anything else?”

  “No … I’m going to have to do some legwork now. I’ll leave messages with Langley at Police Plaza if anything turns up. I’ll meet you at the zoo at four-thirty if nothing has happened by then.”

  “Time is short, Jack,” Burke said.

  “I’ll do what I can to avoid violence. But you must try to go easy on the lads if you find them. They’re brothers.”

  “Yeah … brothers….” Burke hung up and turned to Byrd. “That was one of my informers. A funny little guy who’s caught between his own basic decency and his wild politics.”

  Burke left the van and stood in the crowd at the corner of Sixty-fourth Street. He looked at the reviewing stands across Fifth Avenue, thick with people. If there was going to be trouble, it would probably happen at the reviewing stands. The other possible objectives that Major Martin suggested—the banks, the consulates, the airline offices, symbols of the London, Dublin, or Belfast governments—were small potatoes compared to the reviewing stands crowded with American, British, Irish, and other foreign VIPs.

  The Cathedral, Burke understood, was also a big potato. But no Irish group would attack the Cathedral. Even Ferguson’s Official IRA—mostly nonviolent Marxists and atheists—wouldn’t consider it. The Provisionals were violent but mostly Catholic. Who but the Irish could have peaceful Reds and bomb-throwing Catholics?

  Burke rubbed his tired eyes. Yes, if there was an action today, it had to be the reviewing stands.

  Terri O’Neal was lying on the bed. The television set was tuned to the parade. Dan Morgan sat on the window seat and looked down Sixty-fourth Street. He noticed a tall man in civilian clothes step down from the police van, and he watched him as he lit a cigarette and stared into the street, scanning the buildings. Eventually the police, the FBI, maybe even the CIA and British Intelligence, would start to get onto them. That was expected. The Irish had a tradition called Inform and Betray. Without that weakness in the national character they would have been rid of the English centuries ago. But this time was going to be different. MacCumail was a man you didn’t want to betray. The Fenians were a group more closely knit than an ancient clan, bound by one great sorrow and one great hate.

  The telephone rang. Morgan walked into the living room, closed the door behind him, then picked up the receiver. “Yes?” He listened to the voice of Finn MacCumail, then hung up and pushed open the door. He stared at Terri O’Neal. It wasn’t easy to kill a woman, yet MacCumail wasn’t asking him to do something he himself wouldn’t do. Maureen Malone and Terri O’Neal. They had nothing in common except their ancestry and the fact that both of them had only a fifty-fifty chance of seeing another dawn.

  CHAPTER 12

  Patrick Burke walked down Third Avenue, stopping at Irish pubs along the way. The sidewalks were crowded with revelers engaged in the traditional barhopping. Paper shamrocks and harps were plastered against the windows of most shops and restaurants. There was an old saying that St. Patrick’s Day was the day the Irish marched up Fifth Avenue and staggered down Third, and Burke noticed that ladies and gentlemen were be beginning to wobble a bit. There was a great deal of handshaking, a tradition of sorts, as though everyone were congratulating each other on being Irish or on being sober enough to find his hand.

  Burke approached P. J. Clarke’s at Fifty-fifth Street, an old nineteenth-century brick relic, spared by the wrecker’s ball but left encapsulated in the towering hulk around it—the Marine Midland Bank Building, which resembled a black Sony calculator with too many buttons.

  Burke walked in through the frosted glass doors, made his way to the crowded bar, and ordered a beer. He looked around for familiar faces, an informant, an old friend, someone who owed him, but there was no one. Too many familiar faces missing this afternoon.

  He made his way back into the street and breathed the cold north wind until his head cleared. He continued to walk, stopping at a half-remembered bar, an Irish-owned shop, or wherever a group of people huddled and spoke on the sidewalk. His thoughts raced rapidly and, unconsciously, he picked up his pace to keep abreast of the moving streams of people.

  This day had begun strangely, and every incident, every conversation, added to his sense of unreality. He took a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and headed south again.

  Burke stared up at the gilt lettering on the window of J. P. Donleavy’s, a small, inconspicuous pub on Forty-seventh Street. Donleavy’s was another haunt of the quasi-IRA men and barroom patriots. Occasionally there would be a real IRA man there from the other side, and you could tell who he was because he rarely stood at the bar but usually sat alone in a booth. They were always pale, the result of Ireland’s perpetual mist or as a result of some time in internment. New York and Boston were their sanctuaries, places of Irish culture, Irish pubs, Irish people without gelignite.

  Burke walked in and pushed his way between two men who were talking to each other at the bar. He slipped into his light brogue for the occasion. “Buy you a drink, gentlemen. A round here, barkeeper!” He turned to the man on his left, a young laborer. The man looked annoyed. Burke smiled. “I’m to meet some friends in P.J.’s, but I can’t remember if they said P. J. Clarke’s, P. J. O’Hara’s, P. J. Moriarty’s, P. J. O’Rourke’s or here. Bloody stupid of me—or of them.” The beer came and Burke paid for it. “Would you know Kevin Michaels or Jim Malloy or Liam Connelly? Have you seen them today?”

  The man to Burke’s right spoke. “That’s an interesting list of names. If you’re looking for them, you can be sure they’ll find you.”

  Burke looked into the man’s eyes. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  The man stared back but said nothing.

  Burke smelled the sour beer on the man’s breath, on his clothes. “I’m looking, too, for John Hickey.”

  Neither man spoke.

  Burke took a long drink and put his glass down. “Thank you, gentlemen. I’m off to the Green Derby. Good day.” He turned and walked down the length of the bar. An angled mirror reflected the two men huddled with the bartender, looking at him as he left.

  He repeated his story, or one like it, in every bar that he thought might be promising. He switched from whiskey to stout to hot coffee and had a sandwich at a pub, which made him feel better. He crossed and recrossed Third Avenue, making his way southward. In every bar he left a forwarding address, and at every street corner he stopped and waited for the sound of shoes against the cold concrete to hesitate, to stop behind him. He was trolling, using himself as bait, but no one was rising to it today.

  Burke picked up his pace. Time was running out. He looked at his watch; it was past four, and he had to be at the zoo at four-thirty. He stopped at a phone booth. “Langley? I need five hundred for Ferguson.”

  “Later. You didn’t call for that.”

  Burke lit a cigarette. “What do you know about a Major Bartholomew Martin?”

  There was a long silence on the phone, then Langley said, “Oh, you mean the British Intelligence guy. Don’t worry about him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I said so.” Langley paused. “It’s very complicated … CIA …”

  “Tell me about it someday. Anything else I should know?”

  “The FBI has finally decided to talk to us,” Langley said. “They’ve uncovered an arms buy in New Jersey. A dozen M-16 rifles, a few sniper rifles
, pistols, and plastic explosives. Also, a half dozen of those disposable rocket launchers. U.S. Army issue.”

  “Any other particulars?”

  “Only that the buyers had Irish accents, and they didn’t arrange for shipping to Ireland the way they usually do.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  “I’ll say—what are they waiting for?”

  Burke shook his head. “I don’t know. The parade has less than an hour to run. The weapons should be a clue to the type of operation.”

  “Martin thinks they’re going to knock over a British bank down in the Wall Street area. The Police Commissioner has diverted detectives and patrolmen down there,” said Langley.

  “Why should they come all the way here to knock over a British bank? They want something … something they can only get here.”

  “Maybe.” Langley paused. “We’re really not getting any closer, are we?”

  “Too many targets. Too much beach to guard. The attackers always have the initiative.”

  “I’ll remember that line when I stand in front of the Commissioner.”

  Burke looked at his watch. “I have to meet Ferguson. He’s my last play.” He hung up, stepped into Third Avenue, and hailed a cab.

  Burke passed through the open gate beside the armory. The zoo looked less sinister in the light of day. Children with parents or governesses walked on the paths, holding candy or balloons, or some other object that was appropriate to their mission and the setting.

  The Delacorte clock showed four thirty. Brass monkeys in the clock tower suddenly came to life, circled the bell with hammers raised, and struck it. As the mast gong sounded a recording played “MacNamara’s Band.”

  Burke found Ferguson in the Terrace Restaurant at a small table, his face buried in The New York Times. Two containers of tea steamed on the table. Burke pulled up a chair opposite him and took a container.

  Ferguson lowered the newspaper. “Well, the word on the street is that there is to be a robbery of a major British bank in the Wall Street area.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Ferguson didn’t answer.

  Burke looked over the zoo, scanning the men on the benches, then turned back to Ferguson and fixed him with a sharp look.

  Ferguson said nothing. “Major Martin,” Burke said, “is what is known as an agent provocateur. What his game is, I don’t know yet. But I think he knows more than he’s telling any of us.” Burke ground out his cigarette. “All right, forget what Martin told you. Tell me what you think. Time is—”

  Ferguson turned up the collar of his trench coat against the rising wind. “I know all about time. It’s very relative, you know. When they’re kneecapping you in that new way with an electric drill instead of a bullet, then time moves very slowly. If you’re trying to discover something by dusk, it goes quickly. If you were ten minutes early instead of late, you might have had the time to do something.”

  “About what?”

  Ferguson leaned across the table. “I just came from the Cathedral. John Hickey, who hasn’t been inside a church since he robbed Saint Patrick’s in Dublin, was sleeping in the first pew. The old man wears a beard now, but I’d know him anywhere.”

  “Go on.”

  “The four o’clock Mass is ending soon, and there’ll be thousands of people coming out of the Cathedral. Quitting time for most citizens is also at five.”

  “Right. It’s called rush hour—”

  “The counties and the IRA vets are marching now. Both groups are composed of people in civilian dress, and there are people who don’t know each other in each unit. Anyone could be infiltrated among them.”

  “I’m listening, but hurry it up.”

  “I have to give you my thoughts so you can deduce—”

  “Go on.”

  “All right. The police are tired. Some units are going off duty, the crowd is restless, drunk.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Events are moving inexorably toward their end. The gathering storm is about to break.”

  “No poetry, please.”

  “Finn MacCumail is Brian Flynn. Before Maureen Malone’s desertion from the IRA, she and Brian Flynn were lovers.”

  Burke stood. “He’s going after her.”

  “It’s the kind of insane thing a man who calls himself Finn MacCumail, Chief of the Fenians, would do.”

  “At the Cathedral?”

  “What better place? The Irish have a love of spectacle, grand gestures. Whether they win or not is unimportant. Ireland will always remember her martyrs and heroes for their style, not their success or lack of it. So, who will soon forget the resurrected Finn MacCumail and his Fenians when they kidnap or kill his faithless lover at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on Saint Patrick’s Day? No, it won’t be soon forgotten.”

  Burke’s mind raced. “I didn’t believe they’d hit the Cathedral … but it fits the facts—”

  “To hell with the facts. It fits their characters. It fits with history, with destiny, with—”

  “Fuck history.” Burke ran toward the terrace steps. “Fuck destiny, Jack.” He tore down the path toward Fifth Avenue.

  Ferguson called out after him. “Too late! Too late!”

  Terri O’Neal watched the IRA veterans pass on the television screen. The scene shifted from Sixty-fourth Street to a view from the roof of Rockefeller Center. The County Tyrone unit passed in front of the Cathedral, and the camera zoomed in. She sat up and leaned closer to the television set. Her father’s face suddenly filled the screen, and the announcer, who had recognized him, made a passing comment. She put her hand over her face as the enormity of what was going to happen—to her, to him, to everyone—at last dawned on her. “Oh, no…. Dad! Don’t let them get away with this….”

  Dan Morgan looked at her. “Even if he could hear you, there’s not a thing he can do now.”

  The telephone rang, and Morgan answered it. He listened. “Yes, as ready as I’ll ever be.” He hung up, then looked at his watch and began counting off sixty seconds as he walked into the bedroom.

  Terri O’Neal looked up from the television and watched him. “Is this it?”

  He glanced at the parade passing by on the screen, then at her. “Yes. And God help us if we’ve misjudged….”

  “God help you, anyway.”

  Morgan went into the bedroom, opened the side panel of the bay window, and waved a green shamrock flag.

  CHAPTER 13

  Brendan O’Connor stood with the crowd on Fifth Avenue. He looked up and saw the shamrock flag waving from the window on Sixty-fourth Street. He took a deep breath and moved behind the reviewing stands where pedestrian traffic was allowed to pass under the scrutiny of patrolmen. He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke blow southward, over his shoulder.

  O’Connor reached his right hand into the pocket of his overcoat, slid the elastic off the handle of a grenade that had the pin removed, and held the handle down with his thumb. As he moved through the closely pressed crowd he pushed the grenade through a slit in his pocket and let it fall to the sidewalk. He felt the detonator handle hit his ankle as it flew off. He repeated the procedure with a grenade in his left pocket, pushing quickly through the tight crowd as it fell.

  Both seven-second fuses popped in sequence. The first grenade, a CS gas canister, hissed quietly. The second grenade, a smoke signaling device, billowed huge green clouds that floated south into the stands. Brendan O’Connor kept walking. Behind him he could hear the sounds of surprise as the CS gas rose to face level, followed by the sounds of fear and panic as the smoke and choking gas swept over the crowd on the sidewalk and up to the reviewing stands. O’Connor released four more canisters through his pockets, then walked through an opening in the stone wall and disappeared into the park.

  * * *

  Patrick Burke vaulted the low stone wall of Central Park and barreled into the crowd on the sidewalk near the reviewing stands. Billowing green smoke rolled over the stands toward him, and even bef
ore it reached him his eyes began to tear. “Shit.” He put a handkerchief to his face and ran into the Avenue, but panic had seized the marchers, and Burke was caught in the middle of the confusion. The banner of the unit had fallen to the pavement, and Burke glimpsed it under the feet of the running men—BELFAST IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY VETERANS. As he fought his way across the Avenue, Burke could see that their ranks were laced with agitators and professional shriekers, as he called them. Well planned, he thought. Well executed.

  James Sweeney put his back to the streetlight pole at Sixty-fourth Street and held his ground against the press of people around him. His hands reached through the pockets of his long trench coat and grabbed a long-handled bolt cutter hanging from his belt. He let the skirts of his coat fall over the cable connections from the mobile headquarters van as he clipped the telephone lines and then the electric power lines at the base of the pole.

  Sweeney took three steps into the shoving crowd and let the bolt cutter slide into the storm drain at the curb. He allowed himself to be carried along with the flow of the moving mass of marchers and spectators up Sixty-fourth Street, away from the Avenue and the choking gas.

  Inside the mobile headquarters van the telephone operators heard an odd noise, and the four telephones went dead. All the lights in the van went out a second later. One of the operators looked up at George Byrd silhouetted against a small side window. “Phones out!”

  Byrd pressed his face to the small window and looked down at the base of the streetlight. “Oh Christ! Sons of bitches.” He turned back and grabbed at a radio as the van driver started the engine and switched to internal power. Byrd transmitted: “All stations! Mobile at Sixty-fourth. Power line cut. We’re operating radios on generator. Telephone lines cut. Situation unclear—”