Vagabond

by Seymour, Gerald

  It had been Matthew Bentinick’s idea.

  They had gone past the cobbled space with the sculpture of the half-buried cross. Karol Pilar, who had shown it to Danny, had not remarked on it this time. Danny had followed Bentinick up the steps, into the museum, a relic of empire and grandeur, for a concert.

  He seldom listened to music on the radio and never at the house in Caen, though it would be switched on in the kitchen. He had the car radio tuned to pick up traffic warnings when he was alone. He could not have said what music he liked and disliked. Bentinick had the tickets and the programme.

  The seats were in the front row. There was a pianist; a solo violin – the star; two more violins, a viola and a cello. Danny knew the names of the instruments because Bentinick told him. The programme said they would hear works by Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Bizet and Brahms; the concert would last sixty-five minutes, about Danny’s tolerance limit.

  The double bleep for Bentinick’s phone sounded twice.

  Savage glances were ignored. The artists never spoke. Not that he’d have understood them if they had.

  Bentinick said, ‘Music is good for the soul. It reduces stress.’

  He listened.

  Bentinick said. ‘You’ll enjoy it when we get to the Bach. It’s the Gavotte BVW 1068, an old favourite of mine. Weren’t you accused at Gough of dancing on graves, Desperate? What about doing a gavotte on a grave, putting some welly into it?’

  He thought Bentinick was moulding him, as he would a piece of wet clay. There were the leaders and there were the followers; the roles seldom crossed. They had once, and he doubted the ‘dance’ insult was yet forgotten, ever would be.

  ‘He’s good on the violin. For God’s sake, Danny, you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself – and we go to the countryside tomorrow.’

  His buttocks ached and his stomach was cramping. He sat and suffered.

  ‘You know how it’ll be – one moment quiet, tranquil, and the next all hell breaks loose. When it happens, Danny, I don’t want you mucking about in your head – What do I do now? Go for the jugular. Get him down and disabled and have your boot across his throat. I told my lord and master we’d nail him to the floor, but that’s afterwards. Lovely, isn’t it? Restful.’

  He had led once – when it mattered. Him in the front and Dusty Miller behind. They had gone out of Gough and up the road to Belfast. They had quit and he had led. He’d heard Bentinick’s voice, only time it was ever raised, bellowing into the night for him to come back. Bentinick would have gone inside and told the boys in the bar, and Julie who did the paperwork, that Desperate would be back soon enough. Certainly by the time the bar closed. As Danny Curnow imagined it, the steward would have been kept in the Portakabin half the night. Two empty beds at dawn, and an agent rendezvous that would not be met that day by the man’s handler. Desperate had led.

  ‘Nearly there, Danny. We might get a bite to eat after this. You’ll be all right tomorrow when the pace speeds up. My favourite, Danny, is next. It’s from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, written in 1723. We’re getting Concerto Number Two in G Minor, Opus Eight. It’s Allegro non molto and you’ll enjoy it. Remember what I said. Your boot on the jugular, and later I’ll do the nailing to the floor.’

  A woman clucked angrily behind Bentinick. A man leaned forward and rapped Bentinick’s shoulder. Both were ignored.

  ‘About taking responsibility, don’t expect to be universally thanked. Many said that the Czech officer in exile who set up the killing of Heydrich had the blood of thousands on his hands – those killed in reprisals. But you never looked for thanks, Desperate, did you?’

  He knew that, two or three months later, Dusty had called the steward who ran the bar. The man was a better filing system and intelligence collator than Julia who looked after the card indexes. The steward had told Dusty that the life had gone out of Gough, and the success had stalled. They’d lost people who mattered, and Captain Bentinick was moving on because his FRU command was a ‘busted flush’.

  The musicians completed their programme and were applauded. Men and women scowled at Bentinick, and were rewarded with his smile. Danny understood the purpose of the day’s exercise: he had been withdrawn from normality and put on a pedestal next to the one Bentinick occupied so that he could look down on them and feel nothing. Danny Curnow had no father, brother, best friend, or lover, and knew he would follow this man into Hell. Bentinick said he was hungry, and smiled congratulations to the artists.

  ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘Is “please” not in your vocabulary?’

  ‘I use it where appropriate.’

  ‘And I’m not appropriate?’

  Gaby Davies had not been invited to eat. Matthew Bentinick had a bowl of goulash in front of him and a plate beside it with bread and dumplings. He was drinking a glass of a local wine. Her anger was directed at the ‘blow-in’, Danny Curnow, who had once been Vagabond. He spoke evenly, which inflamed her fury.

  ‘I don’t say “please” when you should be making up for failure.’

  ‘What failure?’

  He shrugged, seemed to tell her it was obvious. Her room and Ralph Exton’s were in a hotel on Stepanska. Cosy: handler and agent on the same corridor. She had no ally. The Czech policeman was by the door, nursing a Coke out of earshot. Matthew Bentinick wasn’t standing in her corner either. The food in front of Danny Curnow remained untouched.

  Her failure irked: she had been unable to answer the questions put to her.

  How much contact did Ralph Exton have with Timofey Simonov? When would they meet? Where? What weapons were required? How many would be test-fired by Malachy Riordan? Would a full exchange take place? When had the relationship started? What drove it? She had no answers.

  She said, to Bentinick, ‘Do I have to repeat what I said? I’m coaxing. It’s a friendship, goes back for ever. All I know is that the Russian was on the floor and our Joe gave him a first step up – it happened before the cigarettes, and before the Irish showed up. They go back. I’m getting to it, but it’s slow. Of course he’s reluctant and – believe it or not – he’s actually quite an honourable man. He wants a pay-day, his marriage is in bits. The truth’s hit him – where he is and why. He has some integrity, which sits well with his considerable courage. I’ll get everything we need and . . .’ She tailed off.

  Danny Curnow was rapping a spoon on the table – the drumbeat of a tricoteuse waiting for the head-lopping to begin.

  Matthew Bentinick wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. ‘Very good – the goulash,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Gaby. Eloquent and put with compassion, except that we are not Work and Pensions. So, would you, please, go to work and unlock him. Soon.’

  It was dark and raining and they wore cheap clothing – military camouflage but not of good quality. They had gone together round the edge of the field and had taken the bomb to the wire’s terminal point.

  They were soaked, their hair slicked down on their foreheads. They had no firearm between them. They had done some practice up beyond Shane Bearnagh’s Seat where the ground overlooked the western part of the county and Omagh town. They might have fired two dozen rounds between them, at twenty-five yards’ range. Most shots had missed the cardboard target Brennie Murphy had brought for them. They were not yet trusted with weapons. Might get to use rifles when Malachy Riordan came back and the new supplies reached the mountain. Unarmed, Kevin watched, and Pearse made the connection.

  Cold wet fingers.

  It looked like nothing that could hurt. Just a can, with bubble-wrap round it. The end shone, where the copper piece was, and there was a light by the outer gatepost, good enough to alert the guests that they’d reached the turning to the track and the home of the O’Kane family. Pearse took his time. Twice, Kevin hissed at him that he should get on with it, but the joining of the wires – twisting them together and keeping them dry with the black plastic sack – was difficult. He couldn’t use a torch, and there was only the light from across the trac
k and the cattle grid. More vans came, the caterers again, the headlights raking through the hedge.

  It was done.

  They went back on their stomachs across the grass and the mud, where the cattle had gathered for cake, to the cover of the trees. They had the wires there, and the battery that would power the signal. It was about doing the terminals, groping under the plastic sheet that covered the battery, and to each of the wires was attached a Sellotaped strip of cardboard, for positive and negative. Pearse didn’t know much about electricity, and neither did Kevin. They knew little of the ideology of the movement, the history of the struggle or the politics of past and present. Both knew about excitement, and the pleasure of having been chosen. When they had done the terminals and the wire ends, it would fire.

  The word was, as Brennie Murphy told it, that Eamonn O’Kane would use his wife’s car, the VW Golf, light green, and they had its number scribbled on paper. They’d have two opportunities to identify it – did it matter that the policeman’s wife would be in the vehicle? Should it? And what if another car was alongside it, arriving at the same moment? Tough. They could identify the car, at a hundred yards, when it slowed to hit the cattle grid and was in the cone of light from beside the gate. There would also be an earlier opportunity: down the lane, near to the trees where they sheltered, was the home of Mrs Halloran, widow, and her daughter; they kept a light on in the porch that fell on the lane. It would warn them, give them time to be ready.

  The darkness cloaked them, rain pattered on them and their fingers were chilled. They heard music from the house, and waited for the guests to begin arriving.

  They were trusted. It was their chance to prove the trust had been well placed.

  It was war. They were soldiers. The biggest comfort to the two boys was that Malachy Riordan had trusted them. Others might not have. Others, with Malachy called away, would have cancelled the hit. But Malachy had placed in them his trust, and they carried its weight.

  He was at a corner of the night operations room, shielded by screens. His computer screen glowed. The evening shift were across the work area, their voices hushed. In his ear the voice grated and was distant. Sebastian, bright young figure in the Five firmament of Belfast, listened to what he was told. He had never seen the source, knew him only by the code given him, Antelope3B8. The calls came regularly, and the cash went to a Gibraltar-based account. He was told what he needed to know, queried it for confirmation, was given it again with emphasis and the connection was cut. He remembered when he had been on the mountain slope beyond the Dungannon to Pomeroy road, and the man he had lain with in the shallow scrape under the ditch. He had chided a man who had played God.

  He went to the machine for coffee. Then, back at his desk, he made a second call and received the curt answer to his question, the same as he had been told an hour before. In an hour’s time, if he called again, it would be repeated. It was going to be a long night.

  Frankie took care. She knew how she wanted to look. He came with a reputation. The contact, Maude, knew of him, and spoke highly of him.

  She did not think she would have been chosen unless she fitted the role offered. It was not for Frankie McKinney – in her room on the eleventh floor of the conference hotel in the south of the city, the castle walls floodlit on the far side of the river – to consider the cause, its origins, aims and end-games. The ideology of the struggle took second place to the excitement. There was nothing better than the exhilaration of having the AK at her shoulder – to hell with the bruising – and feeling the recoil, or the chill in her stomach on going through Passport control with forged paperwork, smiling at the official, ignorant, behind his desk and being passed through. And there had been pleasure in the upstairs room at a house, with a party below, when she’d given herself to a man now in Maghaberry gaol. She might get to fire the grenade launcher if Malachy Riordan agreed.

  She wore good jeans and a white blouse. She had put up her hair, exposing her neck, and had tiny studs in her ears. She thought her look casual, relaxed, in control.

  She shivered. Where would they be, the girls with whom she shared the house in the road opposite the university? In a bar with other students, or at home, talking about their courses? Her parents’ home was up the Malone road, and where would they be? It was Tuesday night: maybe they were at a bridge evening, or her father was at a charity committee, her mother at a Pilates class.

  She waited for him, and was proud to have been chosen.

  It was Pearse who saw the VW Golf go along the lane in front of Mrs Halloran’s bungalow. He had good eyesight and caught enough of the registration to match it with what he had been given. He gasped, and tapped the shoulder beside him. Best friends since each could remember, dependent on each other, they were bonded. It would be the first time for both of them. He had been thinking, lying in the dark with the rain on his back, staring beyond the wall of darkness into the light in front of the bungalow, watching the cars passing – plenty of them now, all turning into the O’Kane home – of Doloures and her invitation, whether he could ask Brennie Murphy if it was possible to miss a Friday night.

  ‘It’s him. It’s the policeman.’

  ‘You sure?’ Kevin hissed.

  ‘Course I’m sure. I saw the number – most of it – colour, make. It’s him.’

  The headlights tracked up the lane. Pearse thought it one of the last cars to reach the party. The driveway was full and cars spilt into the field that stretched towards the small copse.

  ‘You ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  No moon, only low cloud and rain, but a dull light reached them from the front of the house and the lamps strung from trees growing at the hedge that flanked the field. It was enough for Pearse to detect the copper at the end of the plastic-coated cable, divided wires, positive and negative. The battery was mostly covered from the wet by the supermarket bag, except for the terminals.

  ‘You know which?’

  ‘Course I fuckin’ do.’

  An idiot question: the wires had a tag each, one of red paper and one of blue, and the battery top had the same colours stuck to it beside the terminals.

  ‘You going to be good?’

  ‘If you stop the fuckin’ talk, I will.’

  The two wires were, perhaps, an inch from the terminals. Kevin’s hands shook and the wires wavered. Pearse had his head up, then straightened his body. He was kneeling. The car had slowed and would be at the gate to the track, where the light was, within four, five seconds.

  Pearse counted it down.

  They were there because of Malachy Riordan’s trust in them. It was a disgrace that a family from the mountain had a son, a Catholic, who had joined the enemy, was a policeman. He deserved no mercy, nor his wife. He had seen the pattern: each car came to the gate slowly, braked, then went at snail speed over the rattling cattle grid.

  The headlights were on the gate, the bars of the grid, the post, and swept through the hedge where it was thinning. He saw the policeman’s head. A tight haircut, what policemen had, and a flash of blonde from the seat beyond him.

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Kevin, fuckin’ do it!’

  The wires snaked close to the terminals. Blue had contact, then red and—

  Pearse cringed. He screwed his eyes shut.

  He heard silence. Then the noise of the cattle grid’s bars. The VW Golf powered up the track to the house.

  Pearse looked at the bag and the battery. The copper was against the terminals and the colour codes were right. ‘What happened?’

  ‘How’d I know?’

  ‘What didn’t happen?’

  ‘It was him, him and his wife.’

  ‘It was Eamonn O’Kane.’

  They saw the brake lights come on at the top of the track where a place must have been kept by the guy who supervised the parking. Pearse saw the shadow of the policeman’s back and his wife was on his arm. They went in through the door and music spilt out. The door closed
.

  ‘What’ll we do, Pearse?’

  ‘Wait till he comes back and try again.’

  The driver brought Malachy Riordan into the outskirts of Prague. Not a word had passed between them since the roadblock near Wrocław, but often enough, in the daylight and in the evening when oncoming headlights had swept over them, Malachy had seen the curl of the driver’s lip, the sneer.

  They’d stopped at a fuel station. The driver had pointed to the sign at the side of the building. Malachy had needed a toilet but wouldn’t have asked to stop. Once, inside the outer limits of Prague, the driver had pulled over, dug into a map, then pushed on. They went through a tunnel in heavy traffic. He was depending on people he didn’t know who he hadn’t chosen. They drove onto a modern bridge.

  The driver broke the quiet. ‘The roadblock? Thought you were going to wet your trousers. Wanting to know whether there was a shooter in the glove. You know what it was about?’

  Malachy didn’t answer.

  ‘Want me to tell you? They’ve had bank robberies in Gdan´sk and Szczecin – that’s up on the Baltic – and they’re looking for two Albanian boys. They think they’re going south. That’s what the roadblock was for.’

  They went over the bridge, which spanned a wide river, bigger than any he’d seen. He was a man of stature and importance at home, but here he was a stranger.

  A Tuesday night: if Matthew Bentinick had not hunted him down, Danny would have been in a corner of the small bar at a decent hotel in the old port town of Honfleur. He’d have had a Coke or a coffee in front of him. The clients on the trip would have been around him and he’d have completed his stalk of Hanne: some days he successfully erased her name from his mind, other days he failed to. He would already have followed her from the gallery where her work was exhibited. He would have trailed her with the expertise he had learnt on the pavements of Irish country towns, merging with the shadows if she’d paused at a dress-shop window. Much of what he did on Sunday evenings and Tuesday nights shamed him. She never looked behind her. It was to him a mark of confidence in her new life – one without him. The clients, if Danny Curnow was lucky, would keep away from him. He could have found another town further up or down the coast, turning his back on the gallery and the pavements leading to the alleyway where the small terraced home stood. He could have avoided the chance to see the girl . . .