by Finn Óg
Six months passed, and Isla adjusted. I can’t say that she recovered – I’m absolutely sure that she never will. Her sleeping improved, and gradually, when enraptured by the discoveries of life as any five-year-old ought to be, her smiles, sparingly, returned. Three nights out of four she would sleep in her own cabin. I always offered her the option to bunk in with me, but after a while she seemed to prefer her own peace. That pleased me, of course, but it also left a kind of void.
Back then I had little time to address my own head issues. For weeks, I was little more than a coffee-fuelled, vacant carcass. I filled my time with jobs; sanding, varnishing, servicing the engine, setting the rig. The boat was in beautiful shape, but my mind was a mess.
As Isla edged towards contentment, I found my head occupied by a hostile force, distorted by noise. I remember exactly when it began. I was standing on the cross trees of the mast, twenty feet up and working on something which was working just fine. Perhaps it was the view from up there that did it, like an observation post from high ground, over the plains of Afghanistan. I received a radio transmission in my head, and I damn nearly fell backwards onto the deck below.
“Casevac,” the squelch and the break-up were unmistakable, the volume painful. I swiped at my ear to remove an earpiece that wasn’t there. It struck from nowhere. I had not a thought in my head at that moment about Helmand, or the Corps, or anything really. It was like a cupped hand had hit me hard on the side of the head and shattered my eardrum. I hugged the mast, slid to the spreaders, and sat still for a very long time. Only Isla’ calls shook me from what was becoming a consuming fear.
I concentrated on other things, and tried to distract my mind, as well as my body. I began to take Isla onto new islands. I’d leave her at the highest point, where she could see me and I could see her. Then I’d run around the shore. I belted hard and fast, to the point of puking. She became confused by my vomiting. I told her it was just part of training for muscles. Then I’d force myself into a hundred push-ups while she tried to count for me. She stumbled after thirty, but we got there eventually.
I think my mind softened as my body hardened. I wanted the alertness to subside when I was alone with Isla. I wanted the pain endured in the Afghan mountains to clear from my peripheral vision. At times, it felt that if I looked anywhere other than straight ahead, the horror would be waiting for me on the edges. I kept seeing dust and the charring on the faces of those with whom I had served. The torn lips, the exposed teeth. Men trying to talk through their disfigured faces, unaware of their permanent contortion, or their imminent death. The most frustrating dream was the one in which I was helpless to do any good. The inability to stem the flow of rich, warm blood into the arid earth of a land where no man had any business to be. I think most of it stemmed from what became the longest day of my life.
I hadn’t heard the noise at first. The dust went up like water out of a blowhole, straight and true. I was fifty feet away, and the sound took minutes to break into my head. We were patrolling between two hills, in a line, on our way to deal with two Taliban touts who’d been reporting on our movements for days. Back at the OP, our men scanned the mobile phone signals for Intel. If we could confirm that the two men were sending information to the enemy, we could remove them. Otherwise, we had to let them carry on.
We knew that tracking these men was dangerous, that they could deliberately draw us into fire. My call – carry on regardless. Too many of my men had been shot, my patience with our rules of engagement was exhausted and I wanted some peace. We got anything but.
“Get the doc, get the doc!”
The shouting was mine, but I didn’t feel as though I was talking. I ran forward, and crouched by our lead man, directing others to drop and stop. Two were directed towards higher ground to secure cover for what would be an extraction of the casualty. From then on, it was like a movie. I kneeled in silence, unable to comprehend what was happening. Plume after plume erupted. The noise just wasn’t there. I don’t understand why. I watched in utter silence as mines exploded and threw bits of four more marines into the air.
“Nobody move! Nobody move! Doc, no movement. Triage from where you stand, tell me what's needed.”
How I didn’t die that day is a mystery. The doc hurled me his bag, and within minutes we were out of morphine. I found it remarkably easy to screen out the screaming, as I concentrated on our medic’s instructions, and moved between my men. I packed their wounds, and tightened the tourniquets as they writhed in agony. Then we sat in the sun and waited. It took all day, as we burned and blistered in the dirt. On the ridgeline around us we could see friendlies’ skyline, keeping us covered from secondary attack. I remember wishing it, craving the approach of a Taliban wave. Part of me felt we should all perish in that valley.
When the Casualty Evacuation helos did eventually arrive, they ignored every warning. Their crews appeared with stretchers and stood in the middle of that minefield, and triggered nothing. One by one my men were taken into the sky, all beyond mending. Two died on the way back to Bastion. Two never walked again, one will never utter another word. I got a medal, which would later save me from dishonourable discharge, but I felt I should have got killed.
Jobs came in pretty regularly. The charity woman seemed to have quite a network. I saw parts of Ireland I had never even heard of, as I moved around, plucking women from apartments, flats, houses and even caravans.
I was careful, always, but I knew the risk was increasing. As my confidence rose, so did the potential to unpick that good work. At Dublin Airport I knew that I’d been captured on CCTV, and there were likely other occasions when I hadn’t clocked a camera. I began using an old phone, a Nokia, as my point of contact, which was comparatively safe. But it was still a cellular device and therefore traceable. I acquired credit cards from the brothels as I went and used them to secure hire vehicles. Which was fine, but the cops would eventually catch up with me. All of that had to stop.
The charity woman was receptive to my concerns and had a ready solution in the form of her twin sister. The twin was some sort of tech guru, who worked for one of the multi-nationals which had flooded Dublin in recent years. I didn’t ask too much. I was broadly familiar with the bond and trust between such siblings, so I let her get on with it.
In the end, I was issued a dual-sim smartphone, one for the UK, one for Ireland. I was shown an app on it, which would alert me every time an inquiry was made on a site she had set up on the dark web. The only people who could access that website were those who typed in the exact, complicated URL. It could not be searched for on Google, or any other engine. I tried, and failed. When I opened the site, its message was suitably oblique.
“This is Charlie. For inquiries, leave your details, we will be in touch.”
Charlie, as a name, had resonance. When I was forced to think of a name for my business, I thought of Shannon. That thought took me to a bombed beach in Gaza, and the operation that had taken me there. And our call sign on that operation had been simple. Charlie.
The app on the phone did not provide a banner or an alert. I had to swipe through and check for any new messages. Then I would log in, and retrieve the details. I kept it at a dead drop in Belfast, and took to moving around a lot before I would make contact, sometimes up to one hundred miles. I used the app to make calls, in an attempt to mask the mobile signals, which I knew from up-close experience, were exceptionally vulnerable to interception.
Around that time, I was coming around to the view, poked at by my parents, that Isla should start going to school. She was getting stronger and too much time in my company, especially when my head was so melted, was probably not good. I was just about to leave the phone at the dead drop one morning when I decided the time had come. I fired it up and began searching for enrolment information. I will always remember casually consulting the app. The message meant little at the time. It was just a name, a request for contact, and a number. We needed to get food in, so I decided to make the call from
a supermarket.
At Tesco, I pulled up as far from the doors and cameras as possible, and tapped the number. The accent of the man who answered was unmistakably Dublin, and like many from that city, he was talkative and inquisitive. Reining him in before he said too much, we agreed to meet at a train station in three hours. This seemed to surprise the man, but I was determined not to allow him too much prep time, in case he was a spook, or a cop.
I called my folks and told them, yet again, that a job had come in and arranged for Isla to sleep over. The drive ahead of me would take just over an hour. It was exciting in its own way. This was, after all, my first client other than Charity or Fran. I was a little apprehensive, and a lot suspicious. With good reason, as it turned out.
15
Jerusalem
I hadn’t really expected men to hold hands. Jerusalem was an eye-opener for me. It wasn’t like a normal deployment, where I was surrounded by my own team or unit. In Jerusalem, I was on a one-man mission, a private engagement, inspired by an exchange with a woman I barely knew. This gave me time to inhale the inland air, the strange scents, and to watch the waft and wane of life as it swept, in force, through the streets of that city. Ordinarily my time would have been consumed with briefings and preparation, but I had no kit to check, and no maps to consult. All I had was a name, and an ill-defined outcome to achieve.
Prejudice, preconception, and all manner of undesirable emotions made themselves known to me during that week. I had always considered myself pretty liberal, despite having spent my service surrounded, in political terms, by those to the right of the right. I felt that people ought to be left alone, unless they were causing others harm or hassle. As rules went, mine felt simple and straightforward. I wasn’t aware of any personal hang-ups in terms of race, religion, or romantic inclination. My faith was my own business and I harboured a suspicion that any person who lived a decent and generous life would find their way to God. Jerusalem though, challenged my ideas of myself, and not in a good way.
I’d grown up in Northern Ireland during the conflict, so the notion that people could be hostile towards others without even knowing them wasn’t particularly new. Israel and Palestine though, were on a whole different level. I understand it better now, but I shall never understand it properly.
I felt drawn to the dustier, dirtier, eastern quarter of the city. There seemed to be less order, more madness, and greater animation in speech and mannerism. I found it soothing, friendly and familiar, although I’m not sure why. While eating a Falafel pita on a bench by the old city’s ancient walls, a man came and pissed against the stones, less than a foot from my head.
The more cosmopolitan part of Jerusalem was an austere affair. You might get a handshake, but you were unlikely to receive a smile. Everybody seemed to feel under siege, something I was used to. All inhabitants appeared to be convinced that without a hard stance, they’d be on the cusp of losing all that they had worked for.
I tailed my man for two days, from the U.N. building to his home, from his home to a café, from the café to work. Despite the absence of evidence, I never really questioned my presence there. I trusted Shannon, although I barely knew her. We’d said very little to one another, yet she’d taken up residence in my head, and nestled in between the hard rocks of my heart. I didn’t feel that I needed confirmation of the man’s paedophilic inclinations, but I got it anyway.
He meandered irritatingly around a few bars, sipping feminine-looking drinks from delicate little glasses. This made him a tough tail. I would never normally follow someone alone; I’d be part of a team that would rotate and swap, taking control of the mark. We would keep everyone on the net - the radio comms, up-to-date on every little detail, like a stream of consciousness. In Jerusalem though, I had no radio, no team, and looking back on it now, no rational thought. If I’d followed my training, I would have exploited the woman I’d met in Gaza and got out when the operation was completed. Perhaps my new target wasn’t the only one driven by his desires.
Eventually he went to a small, independent cinema. I waited a few hundred metres away, but not before I checked out what was showing. It was a film for the U.K.’s Channel Four, about the death of a cameraman who had been filming in Gaza. At least my target’s cover was consistent.
Inside there was a reception, with drinks, glad-handing, and air kisses, so I waited outside until it all ended. Eventually, hugs complete and on his own, he made a mobile phone call. He then paced aimlessly for a few minutes before climbing slowly up a steep footpath to higher ground, towards a heath. As dusk fell it became easier to track him. His pace slowed when he entered an ornately paved public area. I checked my phone for location, the Lion’s Fountain, close to Hebron Road. Bushes and trees surrounded it, but through gaps in the foliage the view of the city’s lights was impressive. I didn’t realise what the place was until it was too late.
I lost him in the space of a few seconds. I began to hunt, a little too desperately in hindsight, given that I knew where he lived and worked and could have picked him up the next day. But I was scared that he may have made me, so I speeded up and would have compromised myself, had it not been for an orthodox Jew, and a man in a leather jacket. The Jewish man was standing, loitering for no reason. The man in the leather jacket was looking at me, eager. Even in the half-light, I could make out his excitement, although it wasn’t pronounced enough to cast much of a shadow.
There are some areas of life in which I am considerably slow. The Marines gave me skills few others possessed, but immersion in military life leaves enormous gaps in ordinary knowledge and every-day experience. It took this man to beckon me towards the bushes for the penny to finally drop. I was being cruised.
I ignored the amorous man in the leather jacket and began to hunt through the hedges in pursuit of my mark. Moments later I heard the final grunts of his pleasure, and in the gloom, I saw the face of a boy rising, as he clutched his trousers and secured them at the waist. They’d made enough noise to conceal my arrival and as the kid was being paid, I had all the knowledge I needed. I looked at the boy; he was no older than twelve. The man I was interested in left the heath onto the main street and walked at a heightened pace back towards his home. I decided to get there first.
16
Dublin
My plan had been to watch for the new client’s arrival, to gather a sense of the man, before revealing myself. I stood on the concourse of Dublin’s Heuston station, and waited and watched, but he beat me to it. My eyes fell upon him long after his found me. He had hunted me out.
Perhaps it was no great achievement on his part. At a whisper under six feet, I’m not particularly tall, but if I stand outside a pub, people automatically assume I am the bouncer. Younger ones nod to me with a kind of sheepish deference. If I make my way through a crowd, it parts. I look a little menacing when I’m thinking; Shannon called it my “Halloween face,” and I bulk up quickly if I’m training. I hadn’t thrown weights around since I’d left the service; at forty years old, it seemed pointless to maintain excess muscle that I wouldn’t need outside the Marines. Besides, feeding muscle is expensive. But I did work my own mass, chin-ups, press-ups, and squats, so my shoulders were stacked and my posture probably betrayed me a little. That and the fact that I have always shaved my head, but seldom my chin, and I look like what I am; a salty, over-exposed sailor with cracks round my cheeks and eyes, hands like paddles. I am not pretty, and I dress only for practicality. On reflection my shell jacket, heavy denims and cross-trainers meant that I could not have looked more like a de-mobbed Marine, if I’d tried.
Anyway, this potential client evidently knew who I was, and he bore through me with intensity. Even at two hundred yards, he was an unnerving presence, mentally rather than physically, and he unsettled me from start to finish. He took me to a tall Georgian Terrace and we creaked up old timber stairs to a small room. It was warm, and in contrast to the rest of the building, soothing and pleasant. The conversation, was not.
&nb
sp; “I think you understand evil,” was his opening gambit. I remained mute and immediately shuttered up, convinced that he was going to try to shock me. Despite my preparation, he succeeded. “I have a job for you, if you have the balls for it.”
That irritated me. I don’t feel that I need to have my courage tested, and I don’t like goading. It’s kids’ stuff, and it’s pointless. This fella wanted to reverse the arrangement, to lock me in. I didn’t want to be locked in to anything. I’d spent seventeen years locked in to the Navy, and now I was sailing free, working when I wished. I stayed silent and let him plod through his little pantomime.
“I was once a clinical psychologist,” he said. “Now, I look after the afflicted and tend to their wounds,” he tapped his temple. I nodded. “I want to tell you about a woman I have been counselling for some time.”
I blinked, but otherwise remained motionless. He paused long for effect, but it wasn’t washing with me and he was forced to carry on. If he wanted me to do a job for him, he needed to persuade me.
“Three years ago, this woman escaped, and she came to me and told me about a group of twelve. This circle is massively abusive. It is predatory, and at its root, is the worship of darkness.”
At that point, he certainly had my attention, but not for the reason he had hoped. I was fascinated by what I considered, to be a fruitcake.
“This woman is now in her mid-forties. She is the product of a French mother, and an English father, from a union made here in Dublin.” I began to wonder how she knew where she was conceived, but I let him carry on. “Her mother gave birth to her in France. Her feet were skinned at nine months.”
