Warlord: An Alex Hawke Novel

by Ted Bell

  “Right. Lamb Island, I think. Or, maybe Sheep Island it was. Hell, man, I dunno. Something like that.”

  “Think, Mr. McMahon. I need to know the exact name of that island,” Congreve pressed.

  “Mutton Island. That was it, all right. Mutton Island. Off Sligo.”

  Congreve stood and paid the barmaid, taking the bottle of Irish whiskey from the tray and placing it before the old IRA man.

  “As Mr. Hawke said, if you think of anything else, please call. I will make it well worth your while. Good night, Mr. McMahon.”

  “You two figuring on going out there any time soon? Mutton Island, I mean.”

  “We’re determined to locate Mr. Smith, dead or alive. If, as you say, he lived on Mutton Island around the time of the murders, I suspect it will be the first place we look. I bid you good evening, sir.” Ambrose started to get to his feet. The Irishman shot him a look.

  “Wait,” McMahon said. “Sit down.”

  Ambrose did. “What is it?”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything about this. But I figure this is me only chance. If you gents are willing to pay me some serious money, I’d be willing to part with some very serious information.”

  “We’re all ears, Mr. McMahon,” Hawke said. “This is your one chance.”

  “You fellas heard of something called ‘the Real IRA’?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Ambrose said. “They ambushed and killed two British policemen in an attack on the Massereene Barracks last March. They don’t acknowledge the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the long-standing peace. I’m afraid these people are determined to provoke more bloodshed and I think it is abominable.”

  “Yer afraid with good reason,” McMahon said, downing his whiskey and pouring another. “They’ve got something in the works, y’see. In the late planning stages. And—”

  “Mr. McMahon, with all due respect,” Hawke said, “how are you in a position to know what these people are planning? Ever since their Omagh bombing killed twenty-nine people and injured two hundred twenty others, they’ve been considered a credible terrorist organization both in the United Kingdom and the United States. Believe me, we watch their every move very carefully.”

  “But you ain’t on the inside, are ye, Mr. Hawke?”

  “And you are?”

  “Aye. I’m up to me old tricks. Building fireworks for them. Old habits die hard, y’see. They’re using land mines, homemade mortars, and car bombs now, and I’m privy to a lot of stuff I shouldn’t know about because I keep me ears open.”

  “And now you offer to betray their trust for money, Mr. McMahon. One naturally wonders how reliable such information might be, seeing as how selling legitimate information will place you in a very dangerous position. You know what the IRA does to traitors as well as I do. Why are you doing this, one wonders.”

  “I’ll tell ye why! These bastards betrayed me, they did. Betrayed all of us! They use my skills but there is no respect anymore. They let me take the fall for Lord Louis, spend half me bleeding life in prison. Now they look at me as if I ain’t there. Besides, they’re bringing in weapons from foreigners now, and I’m sure me days are numbered.”

  “Foreigners? Collaborating with the IRA?” Hawke said, leaning forward. “Foreigners from where?”

  “I forget.”

  “Look, here, McMahon. How much money do you want?” Hawke asked, up to here with the man.

  “Enough to leave Ireland for good and start a new life for meself. What’s left of it, anyway. I want to die in a nice warm bed, with the cool hand of a fair colleen on my brow if not elsewhere.” He downed his drink, licking his lips, pouring himself another.

  “Tell us what you know. We’ll bicker later. But if we think your information is valuable and believable, we will provide you with sufficient funds to resettle outside Ireland. Agreed?”

  “Aye.”

  “Well, then?”

  “There’s a safe house. I go there now and then to make product deliveries, if you take my meaning. There’s a huge cache of weapons in that basement. Their arsenal, if you take my meaning. Enough to blow up half of Ireland. For the last month or so, it’s been a bloody frenzy there. People coming and going all hours, day and night, most of ’em masked. Lot of high-level boys talking late into the night. Planning.”

  “Planning what?”

  “I ain’t privy. You’d have to ask the man himself. Smith is in charge.”

  Smith?

  Hawke and Congreve, stunned, looked at each other in shock.

  “Smith?” Hawke said, keeping his voice steady.

  “That’s what I said, didn’t I. Maybe I just signed me own death warrant, but there, I’ve said it, and fuck all.”

  Congreve said, carefully, “Smith is still involved with the IRA? We were under the impression his involvement ceased thirty years ago, after the Mountbatten murder.”

  “Ceased? Why do you say that? Why, they practically anointed him the bloody King of Eire after he pulled that killing off. Mountbatten was just the beginning for our Mr. Smith. He was always in for the long haul.”

  Hawke said, “The long haul?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Hawke leaned forward, making sure he had the man’s attention. “Mr. McMahon, this is a very serious matter. Please try to concentrate. What other acts of terrorism against Britain and the Crown was Mr. Smith involved with?”

  “Too many to recall, to be honest. But I can name a few for certain.”

  “Please.”

  “That Christmas bombing at Harrods in London that killed five and injured almost a hundred. 1983 it was, I believe. That was Smith. The next year, he almost got Lady Thatcher and her entire Cabinet down at that hotel in Brighton. So many others. The mortar round fired into Downing Street back in ’91…”

  “Good Lord,” Congreve said, leaning back in his chair, trying to digest what he’d just heard. Smith, still out there? Still attacking Britain? It was almost inconceivable he could have gone this long without attracting the attention of the Secret Service or Scotland Yard.

  Hawke said, “You say he’s in the midst of planning another operation. What do you know about it?”

  “Only that it’s big, like I said earlier.”

  “A bomb, you said.”

  “Aye. But a bomb like nothing seen in these parts. A Big Bertha of a bomb that will wreak more havoc and kill more people than in all the years since ‘The Troubles’ began is what I hear.”

  “A conventional weapon?” Hawke asked, glaring at the man.

  “I can’t say. I’d tell ye if I knew. Honest I would. Maybe brought in by Smith himself. He’s traveling all the time, and I don’t mean down to Brighton for the sea air.”

  “When is this operation?”

  “Soon. I hear a month or two, but it could be sooner.”

  Congreve said, “This safe house. In order to get your money, you must tell us its exact location. Once we have confirmed that, you’ll be paid. How much do you want?”

  “I was thinking twenty thousand pounds sterling would do me quite nicely.”

  “Think fifteen thousand pounds sterling and you have a deal.”

  “Done,” McMahon said with a smile that revealed stained and crooked teeth. He then poured himself another drink.

  “Where, exactly, is the house located?”

  “Heard of the Dog, a small river in County Sligo?”

  “No.”

  “Not really a river, more like a stream. A tributary that runs off the River Mourne. Follow the Dog to a town called Plumbridge. The house is three miles due north of the town center. It’s an old place called the Barking Dog Inn. A farmer’s sheepdog drowned in that river one night. Some say you can still hear him barking when the moon’s full, under that old wooden bridge. The house stands in a wood, not too far from the bend in the river. It’s due east of the only bridge over the Dog for miles. A wooden bridge.”

  “We’ll be in touch, Mr. McMahon,” Congreve said, ending t
he meeting.

  The famous criminalist stood up and followed his friend Hawke through the crowd gathered at the smoke-filled bar and out into the wet night. Ambrose could not possibly have been more excited than he was at this moment. McMahon was a thoroughly reprehensible character, but, possibly, he had just provided them with unbelievably valuable information.

  Nothing less than confirmation that there had indeed been a “third man” as he and Constable Drummond had insisted from the start right up to the very end. Not only did he exist, he was still very much alive. Active, if one could believe McMahon, in this dangerous New IRA uprising. And he was apparently operating within a few miles of where they stood at this very moment.

  STANDING OUTSIDE, CONGREVE SAID, “WE’VE got our ‘pawn,’ Alex. Smith! It has to be. Still alive after all these years? Astounding. Still functioning? It beggars belief.”

  “We don’t have him yet, but by heaven we may have just gotten a whole lot closer. McMahon’s evidence is all hearsay, of course. No proof of any of it. But if we could prove murder out on Mutton Island, and tie Smith to it, well, then—”

  “Yes, my thoughts exactly. I’m not quite sure where to begin. What do you think, Alex. Mutton Island first? Or confirm the presence of this IRA safe house? The Barking Dog Inn.”

  They started walking through the misty rain to the hired car. An ungainly little beast called a Ford Mondeo. It certainly wasn’t the Locomotive. In fact, Hawke had taken to calling it “the caboose.” Once inside, Hawke pulled a map from the car’s glove box.

  Hawke said, “Mutton Island is only one hour’s drive from here. And not far offshore. Let’s get out there as quickly as possible. Hire a fishing boat. See what’s to be seen, if indeed anything is. After that, we’ll turn our efforts toward an investigation of this bloody Barking Dog Inn. We’ll need time, men, and weapons to set that operation up properly. I’ll have to make all the necessary arrangements with British Army forces in the event it’s determined a full-scale raid on the safe house is warranted.”

  “Quite right. But, still, you must admit it’s a breakthrough. Smith still at it, Alex? In Northern Ireland?” Congreve said.

  “We’ll find out, I suppose, when we check in at the Barking Dog Inn. If Smith is among the plotters there when we take it, and we manage to take him alive, I’ll have some extremely good news for the Prince of Wales.”

  “You’re not going to call him now? With what we’ve just heard?”

  “I think not.”

  “Why? He’ll be jubilant.”

  “I simply don’t trust this fellow McMahon. Throw enough money and booze at him and he’ll say what he thinks you want to hear. This could still be the wildest of goose chases.”

  “I don’t think so, Alex. You know that feeling, when you’ve finally got the bone in your teeth?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, I do. And I’ve got it now.”

  “Good feeling or bad feeling?”

  “For a copper? Best feeling there is.”

  “Can you hold that thought until we get to Mutton Island?”

  “Can and will.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  MUTTON ISLAND, IRELAND

  I REALLY THINK I AM GOING to be sick, Alex,” Congreve said. It was later on the night of their unpleasant but highly intriguing meeting with the bomber McMahon. “And if you think I’m joking, you’re about to see highly visible proof to the contrary.”

  His friend Hawke was at the helm of the ridiculously small and wildly pitching fishing boat. Sheer insanity. A night crossing to Mutton Island in a vessel less than twenty feet in length. Barmy, of course, but then Alex Hawke never gave a damn about weather when it came to boats. Sheeting rain, massive rollers, howling wind. Ideal for night crossing to some godforsaken island, was his view.

  Surely this could have waited until morning?

  Hawke. Just the name was a clue. The man was possessed of a keen sense of every small thing about him, above it all, often seeing what others didn’t, missed opportunity and lurking death. He owned an icy courage that bordered on the bizarre, especially at moments like this. Hawke often reminded Ambrose of Winston Churchill, during the war, going out for his morning battlefield stroll, nonchalantly smoking his signature cigar in no-man’s-land, blissfully ignoring the German bullets whistling by his head.

  Both men mortal, to be sure, but they didn’t act like they were. Not at all.

  “Just don’t get any on my shoes!” Hawke said loudly. You had to shout to be heard over the keening sounds of wind and wave. Remaining on your feet was no small feat, Congreve thought miserably, no pun intended.

  Hawke eyed his friend. In the dim overhead light of the tiny wheelhouse, Congreve’s normally cherubic pink face looked the ugly, varicolored shades of a nasty bruise. He was seasick all right, but he’d be on solid ground soon. Hawke imagined his old friend could likely manage three solo circumnavigations of the earth without ever acquiring his sea legs.

  Ambrose said, “Don’t be crude. Makes no sense to come out on a night like this, Alex. In this disgusting vessel. Every inch smells of fish guts and worse.”

  “It’s a fishing boat.”

  “Well. Don’t they, at bare minimum, these fishing blokes, at least hose them down every other decade or so?”

  “Not usually. No need, really. The stench is part of the charm. Hold on, brave landsman, here comes a fairly sizable roller. Hard a’lee, me lads!”

  They plowed through the huge wave just before it crested, black and white water roaring over the bow, smashing the wheelhouse, the whole damn boat awash. A miracle the window glass didn’t blow out and slash them both to ribbons. Congreve spit seawater out of his mouth and shouted into Hawke’s ear.

  “Can’t you slow down? Or just pull over?”

  “Constable, you cannot just ‘pull over’ in a boat.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, you know what I mean. Just stop the damn thing until this storm blows over.”

  “That is called ‘heaving to.’ It would be much worse to do so, I assure you. Instead of slamming through these waves, we’d be getting slammed by them.”

  “And we’re not now? Why on earth couldn’t we have waited till morning, then?” Congreve asked, staggering on the heaving deck, trying to keep his feet under him and the contents of his stomach out of sight where they properly belonged.

  “Going to get much worse around midnight. This is just the leading edge of the low pressure front. You’ll be seeing Force 8 gales out here tomorrow.”

  “How much farther to the damned island?”

  “Island of the damned, from what I’ve read.”

  “Alex, please. You are not amusing.”

  “Mutton Island is just now coming up on our port bow, actually. Wait for the next lightning strike and you’ll see the cliffs off to our left. I’ve checked the map and found a protected spot to beach the boat. Luckily, it’s in the lee of this wind.”

  “Thank God.”

  “No, thank me. God had absolutely nothing to do with it. Experience has taught me he really doesn’t care for me much. Has it in for me, actually.”

  Ambrose was wise enough to remain silent.

  Finally, Hawke said, “I’ve been thinking about something McMahon said. Odd.”

  “Yes?”

  “He said Smith had an accent. To be precise, he said he ‘spoke like a bloody toff, just like you.’ Meaning me, of course.”

  “An Englishman. Good Lord, that went right by me. More drunken raving, I was probably thinking.”

  “Yes. But what if it wasn’t?”

  “Smith, an Englishman? I suppose he could be sympathetic to the Irish Cause, there’s no shortage of those about.”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, HAWKE HAD run the boat’s bow high up on to the shale beach and secured a line to a formation of rock that seemed to have survived for aeons. Ambrose immediately scrambled ashore, never so happy to plant his feet on solid ground in his life. Once Hawke was satisfied the boat was properly secure
d, he joined Congreve at the top of a rocky ridge.

  “Let me have a look at the map,” Hawke said, snapping on his yellow rubber-coated flashlight. It cast a wispy white beam on the rocks and grassy banks beyond. Both men were wearing black macintoshes and old-fashioned sou’westers on their heads. Still, the cold wind and icy rain were cause for misery.

  Congreve pulled the map from inside his foul-weather gear.

  “All right,” Hawke said, pointing, “here is the Norman watchtower. There are a cluster of old stone cottages just west of the tower. The ruins include an old church and an oratory.”

  “Not to mention a graveyard,” Congreve said, studying the map.

  “Off we go, then!” Hawke said cheerily and marched off in the direction of the tower with the air of a man leading a troop of young sea scouts on an exciting expedition. He soon disappeared through a veil of rain and Ambrose, his stomach at last becalmed, thumbed on his own flashlight, following the wavering beam of the torch up ahead. The ground was quite rocky and you had to mind your step. He had bought a pair of knee-high Wellies for this trip and was damn glad he’d done so.

  It took twenty minutes over rough ground for the two men to locate the ruins of the ancient settlement. The rain had slacked off considerably and visibility was much enhanced. They examined the crumbling tower and the hieroglyphs on the strange obelisk in the middle of the graveyard. They worked in silence, each looking for any hint or trace of human habitation or activity.

  Congreve, who had begun his career at Scotland Yard walking the streets of London before quickly rising to the rank of detective inspector, had long ago hewn to Locard’s Principle, the foundation of all forensic science laid down by Edmund Locard, a man known as the “Sherlock Holmes of France.” Since Congreve was a fanatic Sherlockian, this doubly endeared the Frenchman to him.

  Monsieur Locard’s principle simply stated that “every contact leaves a trace.” Even though the last contact this Mr. Smith may have had with Mutton Island was perhaps thirty years prior, there was the possibility of concrete evidence of his presence to be found here. And Ambrose Congreve meant to find it.