Vagabond

by Seymour, Gerald

  There were old truths from his military time: ‘Better to be asked than not to be asked’ and ‘Better to be volunteered than to be ignored’. Danny Curnow was desperate to sleep, but not with the nightmares. He was far from home and the few for whom he cared – and knew where he should have been.

  Dusty stood by the gate. The cemetery was on rue des Fumes, and they were late – the guide had let them take too many photographs on the beach, and then there had been roadworks outside the line of fast-food outlets, which had been closed at the end of the season. Dusty had done some smooth talking and slipped the curator a fifty-euro note: the gates would stay open for another fifteen minutes. It was a place Danny Curnow liked – he could find a little calm there, shed some of the burden. He found space among the headstones.

  Most of the time the burden was crippling.

  Dusty smoked a cigarette and the memories came to haunt him. Not that he had had direct responsibility: if he had, the burden would have felled him. A couple in the village of Ardboe, a Republican family, were seemingly uninvolved in politics. They lived quietly and the husband was in work. Then a traffic accident – he was drunk, in his van. He would lose his licence and his job at a time when jobs were precious. He was in a cell, weeping, when the door clattered open and a man was standing there, with short hair, jeans, trainers and an anorak; a holster was visible beneath the coat. It had been easy enough for Danny Curnow to pull that one off, and the man was almost blubbering his gratitude. He kept his job, wasn’t charged, and a hundred pounds a month went into his pocket. In return he offered the back bedroom of his house to the Organisation.

  The couple went to the coast for a weekend, leaving the house empty for a night. The FRU brought in the bugs people. They heard good stuff, week in, week out, but never acted on it. The couple were lovely. Dusty saw them at each meeting – always so polite. They didn’t know it wouldn’t last. There was to be a hit. A chief inspector of police would be going to a country church in Fermanagh for his great-nephew’s christening. The service was cancelled. Not all the congregation had been warned – people were milling about in the rain by the gate into the churchyard, and the team was there, weapons on the floor, but had no target. Danny Curnow hadn’t known that the detail for the hit was talked about only in the back bedroom. Another team arrived, security, and the couple sat on the sofa downstairs as the back bedroom was ripped apart.

  A bar outside Ardboe put on country-and-western every Friday. There was always a big crowd and the car park was full. Danny used to meet them there, while Dusty sat in the Gough car with an H&K across his knees, two magazines taped together in the soixante-neuf position. They’d stayed away that Friday, and the next, and every Friday.

  It had been three days after the final ‘no-show’ that the couple turned up. He’d been shot first. She must have freed her hands – there was blood under her fingernails – and then she had been shot. The military and the police in Fermanagh had been told to look for a guy with tram-line scars down his face.

  Danny had told Dusty that the couple had come up with little of any importance. It had been an aberration for the Organisation to brief so comprehensively for a hit inside a single room. A full ‘relocation programme’ couldn’t be justified – ‘Very pricey, Dusty,’ he’d said. The chief inspector was unlikely ever to have known what his life had cost. Dusty didn’t know how Danny Curnow bore the guilt, or Captain Bentinick.

  The cemetery always shocked the tourists. They might have been to First World War burial grounds but they were now almost historic. This was tangible and most of the visitors would have known men who had fought in the conflict – fathers, uncles or grandfathers. The guide would fill in the core detail at the start: there were 4,500 graves with ‘unknown warrior’ carved on the headstones and 600 for named dead. The cemetery was beside a busy main road. Many of the graves were of pilots who had attempted to give air protection over the evacuation beaches, British, Polish, Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders. Some visitors might be in tears as they hurried in the failing light back to the minibus.

  The flight was called. Malachy Riordan waited for the surge to build, then strode towards Departures. It had been a complicated journey to Dublin.

  Brennie Murphy had moved him up the Pomeroy road. Bridie had met him in the car park of the town’s Gaelic Athletic ground and had brought him his bag of basics. There had been a brief hug, and she had told him to watch himself. Another car, engine idling, had been waiting in the shadows of the pavilion and he’d been driven off on the next leg.

  They had gone down the mountain, leaving behind the territory of the ‘rapparee’, whose fights with Crown forces were familiar to every child brought up on the hills dominating Dungannon. Malachy knew each stage of the man’s persecution, rebellion and success. He knew, too, about his death and in which lough his body had been dumped.

  A woman drove. She said nothing to him but had nodded when his belt was fastened and driven towards the fast roads running south, for Armagh City, the border, then on towards Monaghan in the Republic. At first he knew the roads well – and saw the lane to Mossie Nugent’s home. They careered through old battle sites: a crossroads where his father had twice fought paratroops, a culvert near to a primary school where a bomb had tipped an armoured police car on its side, injuring two of its passengers seriously – his father had done that – and a whitewashed farm where his father had sat motionless in a ditch for thirty hours and shot dead the farmer’s son who had gone to get pigs’ fodder in Cookstown and was a corporal in the Ulster Defence part-timers. He could still see, smell, feel the touch of his father. He couldn’t escape him, could only strive to match the expectation his father would have had for him.

  Malachy had seen his father before the coffin had been closed. His mother had tugged him forward and he had seen the holes in the forehead, throat and upper chest. All his life, from the day of the funeral, he had yearned to hear his father’s praise.

  There were places where Malachy had killed, at a stone bridge over a wee stream, at the back of a transport depot, at the entrance to a neat housing estate on the Middletown road. And places where he had failed to kill but had wounded, where the weapon had malfunctioned, or the device had failed to detonate because the Semtex was old. Then, he had thought of his father’s disappointment in his boy. His mother had been a handsome woman. She had owned land and a business but had never looked at another man. She had kept the spirit of her husband alive, and flowers beside his photograph. There could never be an escape for Malachy.

  In Monaghan they had stopped at a service station. She’d motioned for him to stay in his seat and parked away from the pumps, then gone inside to the toilets. She hadn’t offered the facility to him. He supposed he could tell her to stop in any farm gateway where there were no cameras, but he didn’t. They went through Castleblaney and hit the motorway at Dundalk – where big men, in the old days, had plotted and where jealousies had ripped apart friendships. The woman had the look of a housewife. She could have walked past him in any town he knew, anywhere in Tyrone, Fermanagh or Armagh, and he wouldn’t have reckoned her as committed to the struggle. She wore a wedding ring. He wondered if a husband was minding the kids, doing homework with them, making a meal for them, and wondering how late she would be.

  She had stopped well short of the airport terminal, rummaged in the glove box and produced the passport, Irish, with his photograph in it. She showed him the name, which he repeated twice to himself, then a strip of paper on which was written an address in Drogheda, which they had bypassed a half-hour before. She took the paper back and screwed it up.

  She reached across and opened his door. She didn’t wish him luck. He took the bag off the back seat, climbed out and slammed the door.

  Malachy knew nothing of the woman, had taken her on trust. He could not know whether she would go home to her husband and kids, whether she would be off to a meeting with her handler or whether she would do it on her mobile. The Organisation was rotten w
ith them. That was why he had demanded that the trip to the Czech capital took place immediately so that others, presently outside the loop, wouldn’t hear of it. That was also why he had allowed Kevin and Pearse, kids, to do the bomb on the policeman, Eamonn O’Kane. He could take precautions, as his father would have, but at the end there had to be trust. Who to trust?

  He had gone into the bright lights of the terminal. His passport was glanced at and handed back. He was in the flow and walked towards the gate.

  Pearse drove a short-handled spade into the grass, eased it forward and backwards, making a V six inches deep, then moved sideways, on his hands and knees, and repeated it. Kevin would drop the cable into the V, then close the indent with his hands and put the grass back. A slow job. They would not have dared to rush the work, risk failure and incur Malachy Riordan’s wrath. It was dark and they were close enough to the house to hear, when the wind gusted, the television programme those inside were watching. A hoarse whisper from Kevin: it was the same hospital programme his ma would be in front of.

  Pearse responded: ‘Fuckin’ crap. Who wants to watch hospital misery?’

  The exchange marked their nerves. Neither of them had been given such responsibility before. The house was up a lane, a hundred yards from the minor road. The end of the cable would lie ten yards from the road where there was a thin hedge.

  They had walked the last quarter-mile. An owl had hooted as they’d approached the lane, then floated away to hunt. They’d gone as still as statues when the man of the house, Eamonn O’Kane’s dad, had put the dog out of the front door and had stood on the mat to smoke a cigarette. The dog hadn’t gone far enough to pick up their scent.

  It was good that Malachy had faith in them. They’d do it right and show that his faith was well placed. They would kill a policeman who would come back for a party to celebrate his parents’ golden wedding anniversary. It was said that the policeman, O’Kane, was hard, a Catholic, a man who hated them. Neither Pearse nor Kevin had ever seen the body of a man killed by a bomb.

  They would on the night after next. They were sure of it.

  He could see her. She was at the front and Ralph Exton was at the back. It might have been the first time he had seen her out of her uniform of jeans, T-shirts and anoraks: she wore them year-round. He didn’t know whether she was reading or asleep. Himself?

  A few things in his life needed sorting out. The right time to order his affairs would be the day after he got back from Prague: mortgages, bank overdrafts, school fees, the dentist, and finding something that would give him a more regular income. The biggest issue he had to sort out involved the Irish, and linked to them was Gabrielle, eighteen rows in front. It might just mean a visit to an estate agent, who would laugh at the prospect of flogging a semi-detached house that was almost within the boundaries of the royal village.

  Nearly there. He could see lights below. Last time he’d raised the possibility of quitting, Gabrielle had laughed. ‘We decide when you walk out, Ralph. It’s not your shout. We’re taking good care of you, and national security needs you in place. This is not the time even to think about it. Put it out of your mind and let’s go back to work.’ A little tap on the hand had followed, implying that he was a reasonable man, receptive to clear logic, and they were friends.

  What was there to look forward to? Not a lot.

  Ralph Exton was the eternal optimist, the sort of man who’d bank on fixing cheap motor insurance, then writing the car off, faulty engine and all, on an icy road and getting a payout for a new one. Always an opportunity around a corner. The landing gear was coming down. His old friend Timofey Simonov, now a multi-millionaire.

  They hit the ground. Who did he play for? Whose shirt did he wear? Timofey’s, Gabrielle’s, or that of the boot-faced bastard who’d have used the drill on him? He came off the plane. He could always seem relaxed, at ease, even when his knees were knocking. He thanked the girl at the door. Gabrielle was ahead of him. She hadn’t turned and caught his eye.

  It had been quiet on the flight – but it wasn’t a no-frills airline: the boozers would have been scared off by the prices. He fished his passport out of his pocket and headed for the formalities. She was through.

  It was about guns. Guns and death jogged alongside each other, and there’d be pictures on TV of coffins being carried and denunciations. He checked that his bag was on the correct shoulder and straightened his tie.

  She recognised him. He wore the orange and green striped tie, the sort that rugby guys at Queen’s might have worn on a half-formal night, and had a bag on his left shoulder – most men would have carried it on the right. She had been told he was a lynch-pin for the Organisation. He raised money through cigarettes and had a lengthy contacts list in Europe. He knew a man. He walked lightly, carelessly, as though nothing threatened him.

  Frankie McKinney had been at the airport for an hour. She knew all of the menu tariffs at the fast-food places. She had felt, without reason, that she stood out. Her throat was dry. She had arrived as drunken British kids were arguing in the taxi queue, had had two coffees and had seen the cameras that covered the concourse. She had been told by Maude that she should watch carefully when he came through for tails on him. There were three possibilities, but Maude had dismissed them: he was a tout and worked for the intelligence service; he was honest in his dealings with them but had aroused suspicion and was therefore being watched; he was clean, had no tail and was to be trusted. Her hotel was out to the south of the city, massive and impersonal, and her room had a view of the bridges that spanned the Vltava river; the man from Tyrone, the fighter, had the room booked next to hers for the following night and onwards. She knew his name, Ralph Exton, and readied herself. He would stay in the centre, on Stepanska, but the Radisson was beyond her budget. They had told her how to greet him. She would come forward, holding a newspaper, and look past him. She would seem not to see him and they’d bump into each other. A good enough excuse for half a dozen words. She could see no tail.

  Ralph Exton, to her, was insignificant. She knew about the weapons, and their importance, the difference they would make when imported. Recruiting would climb, and in the wake of it more money could be raised. With firepower the administration would rock, crumble. Maude had talked about it. A big breath. She made the calculation of where, at his pace and hers, they would collide. She began to walk, holding the newspaper loosely. He loomed towards her. She did not know what description he had been given: a black trouser suit, a Vuitton bag her parents had given her, a loosely tied silk scarf, grey, and her hair pulled back. It was the moment they’d meet and—

  Ralph Exton sidestepped her. He did a little swerve and she’d gone past him. She stood alone while men and women, passengers and airport staff, went by and round her, and more flights were announced. She took another five steps. Shit. She turned. Frankie saw his back as he went out into the night. She glimpsed him take a taxi. Her phone – the one Maude had given her – rang. She snapped it open.

  ‘Sorry and all that, just didn’t think it was a good place. I’m a bit bushed. Tomorrow morning, yes?’

  When he had been in the queue a taxi had accelerated past and he had seen Gabrielle’s face in a window seat. He thought his loyalties were fractured, his allegiance uncertain. He had seen Frankie as soon as he had come into Arrivals. A great-looking kid, taut and upright, like a bloody lighthouse – a fair chance that the sharp-eyed Gabrielle would have spotted any contact. God, they were thin on the ground if they’d sent an apprentice in street craft. He owed her nothing, but had protected her. All about self-preservation, Ralph. The taxi brought him into a city clogged with evening traffic and they crossed the river north of Charles Bridge.

  It was quiet at the hotel desk, soft music playing, and the rate he’d be charged was confirmed to him, which made him shudder.

  He went to his floor. Ralph Exton, one-time entrepreneur and prodigious salesman of second-hand and dubious merchandise – furniture, fags, china ornaments, computers, v
egetables, pirate DVDs, and top-label clothing that came from sweat shops on the slopes of Vesuvius – could enter a first in his CV. He had never before tried to broker a deal for machine-guns that fired 50-calibre rounds, Russian-built sniper rifles, warheads that could take out a vehicle with armour plating, modern military detonators, explosives and assault rifles. It was a new world.

  What had he told them when they had threatened him with the drill and the burning cigarette? I need the money. He went past her door and heard the British TV news.

  He came to his room. He wondered where his wife was, and with whom, and where his daughter was, then grimaced and flicked the key card in and out. This job would be a good earner, had to be. His bag landed on the bed, and he kicked the door shut. He dealt with people he regarded as exceptionally ruthless, who would do to him things that were best left without description. All of them were good for business and at the apex of danger.

  Rosie Bentinick had made a shrine at the back of the first floor. It was where she came each evening. She walked into the room at the time when her daughter would have got in from school, a south-west London comprehensive, and later from the college where she had trained as a teacher, specialising in remedial.

  The room was as it had been on the day that her daughter loaded the bulging canvas bag into the car and they had set off for the airport. The parents had seen their girl through the gates, and had watched as they had closed on her.

  He’d gone to work the next morning as if nothing had changed.

  She worked part-time for the British Legion in the heart of the town, a red-brick edifice that sprang to life each autumn with the approach of Remembrance Day. They paid a pittance. She had had time to climb the stairs, go into the back room and tidy it so that when their girl came back it would be exactly as she had left it – except that the bed was made, the washing basket cleared, the clothes ironed and put away, the picture frames dusted.