by Finn Óg
“Is there some sort of investigation? Cos we wiped most of the stuff.”
“But she knows that,” the opso said. “It was she who requested it.”
“Well, now they seem to want to look at it again.”
The opso said nothing but thought of his own search history. Careful as he had been, if he was under scrutiny, and it felt like he might be, then he would have to find another tighter tunnel through which to communicate.
The message was, well, nondescript: Be good to catch up.
He’d used WhatsApp. Min. Sam’s deceptively unthreatening-looking friend. Min, however, was still in the job – now a vintage marine, and was a ferocious leader with a nut as hard as a farrier’s anvil. Sam didn’t hear from him often but when he did it was normally related to an event – a sports result between Min’s native Scotland and Ireland, or a reference to one of their old colleagues, a death invariably.
Be good to catch up was a new phrase. Subtly unusual.
Sam replied in kind: Where? When?
The hole. Forty clicks.
Now Sam knew something was up. “Forty clicks” was a phrase he would never forget. It was the distance they’d covered to get out of a messy situation in Tamil-controlled Sri Lanka, by boat, on foot and in the end by swimming. They’d been sent on a covert op to extract someone who didn’t deserve it and it had gone very badly wrong. Because of the secrecy of the debacle they’d come to refer to the incident only as “forty clicks” and it had become a byword for urgency. The hole. One of the most stunningly beautiful places Sam had ever been to.
He decided to mix business with pleasure and sent two more messages: I’ll get to it to Min, and then he opened his end-to-end app installed by Áine, used mainly by Sinead. He had been assured to rest confident in its encryption capabilities. Fancy a boat trip?
“What’s that?” the clerk asked.
“A response,” her brother said.
“That’s a response?” she said, staring at the wall of digits scrolling up the screen.
“There’s probably a message in there.”
“It’s like a word search without any actual words.”
“There are words. You just need to know how to read them.”
“You’re a weirdo.”
“We think you lot are the weird ones,” he said.
“We? Who is we?”
“My mates.”
“You don’t have any mates. You stare at this computer for twenty hours a day.”
His special category status made it almost impossible for him to take offence. It was one of the benefits of his condition. “You only think that,” he said, which rather stumped his normally un-stumpable sister.
“S’pose you do talk to the Tesco delivery driver,” she tried.
“Mum does that,” he said. “I just pay for it.”
“How? With bitcoin?”
The brother had learned to ignore elements of what was said to him. He was good at filtering: he subsumed what he needed to understand and left what his sister called humour in the air.
“There are returns,” he said, his eyes flickering and dancing over the code.
“Meaning what?”
“Probability matches.”
“Translate, please,” she said.
“The tool takes the images of the woman. Identifies key trigger points. In her face. Maps eye spacing, architecture. Head. Jaw. Cheekbones. Unique. Facial fingerprint.”
“I’d assumed that kind of thing could already be done.”
“Some off-the-shelf packages manage. Chinese tool maps the eye. Different. Retina recognition works but you need the actual eye. This does it with a photo or a video. Cranks probability to a match even if the pictures are crap.”
“Are they crap? That’s a good phone.”
“They’re crap.”
“So what do the Chinese say?”
He hammered like a side drummer and within minutes had brought up two old profiles, a Bebo account and a MySpace.
“I remember those,” she said.
“Social media’s ancestors. Looks like her?”
“It’s definitely her,” the clerk said.
“Singer,” the brother said. He tried to play one of a dozen videos of a young woman at microphones on a variety of stages but they wouldn’t work. “Expired.”
“What’s her name?”
“Meadow.”
“Must be a stage name – or she has hippy parents. Is there a surname?”
“Gaines. From Kent.”
“Course she is.”
“Is Meadow a real name?”
“It is in Kent.”
“I can’t see Ireland any more,” Isla said excitedly.
The binoculars swung around her little neck, her arms were tucked into her life jacket and she was content to be back at sea. Sinead was partly the reason – Isla had company other than Sam. He was growing to appreciate her needs as she matured, to understand that he alone couldn’t provide all the patter she required.
Sinead had her eyes closed – a good sign, Sam thought. She appeared at ease with the arrangement – incomplete as he knew she felt it to be. They ran before the wind, and Sam toyed with the idea of doing it in one – straight up the outside; the west coast of Jura. More open water, better sailing, less comfort.
“Will I make a brew?” Isla asked, eager.
“Since when did you call it a brew?”
“Sinead calls it a brew.”
“Ok. Careful with the—”
“I know, I know,” she sang. “Turn the gas off after and test it with a match.”
She scuttled below. Sam pulled up a chart on the plotter. They’d been sailing for fourteen hours. They could either go to Gigha for a slap-up feed or gybe and head out into the North Channel at speed. He wondered whether the women could face it – another ten hours probably through an unnerving night.
“Isla?”
“Yeah?”
“Will we just keep going – straight to the monk’s castle and the monastery?”
“Why?”
“Cos we’ll get more time there, then.”
“How long will it take to get there?”
“One sleep and two movies.”
“Ok,” she shouted.
“Fine by me,” Sinead spoke without opening her eyes.
“You sure?”
“I was dreaming of a steak but if you two are happy, who am I to intervene? Especially if I get to watch two movies.”
A smile crept across her face, and Sam pushed away the passing realisation that she was really very pretty.
Her eyelids lifted slowly – giving him time to glance away, yet for some reason he didn’t seize the opportunity and she found him looking. She smiled contentedly. Then she drifted off again, but the curl on her lips remained. Sam held his gaze and tried to force himself to deal with the warmth he felt, to allow the guilt to pass, to imagine a state of happiness after such despair.
“Here you go, Daddy-o.” Isla appeared with his aluminium cup. “And I used two teabags.”
“You’re the best tea-maker in Ireland.”
“In Scotland,” she corrected him.
Sinead’s smile had spread. She was an acoustic voyeur to the patter of a pair who had for so long known no other yet were grateful for her intrusion.
“Giv’us a snuggle,” Sam said, and Isla fell in under his wing on the rail of the boat. There they sat for a half hour, rolling with the sea and supping tea. Sam wondered if things could feel any better given their circumstances.
“What are you doing?” The opso didn’t shout. He knew very well what they were doing. Enormous fingers curled around his armpit, ready to apply pain to his pressure point; a grip he was acutely familiar with. “There’s no need to restrain me,” he said.
“I’m sorry but we’ve been told not to take chances,” said a small man, who the opso assumed was an MP.
He knew better than to fight back. The man was half his age, and if he was indeed mili
tary police, he would be exceptionally able – contrary to appearances. The man on his other shoulder was equally unimpressive looking – which only served to make the opso more wary.
They led him through the doorway as his team looked on in disbelief. He noted that not one of them raised an objection.
“Am I being arrested?”
“Not if you come easy,” the smaller of the small people said.
He was paraded awkwardly down the hall, the little men wheeling him sideways to allow all three to navigate the turns, and then he saw her, crestfallen and confused. Libby lingered in a doorway. She hadn’t been crying, but she wasn’t far off it. Her head gave a barely perceptible shake as he was whisked past. The opso couldn’t work out whether it was a gesture of apology or disgust.
“What’s going on, Libby?” he tried, building the foundations of a façade of ignorance.
She remained silent – as he knew she must.
And then he was marched outside, across the yard and into the intelligence block. Two more corridors, two turns, and then a windowless room, two suits and no smiles.
23
Sam threw out the anchor off Iona and felt the tide haul Siân’s hull against the breeze. He wasn’t confident that the hook would hold beyond the turn, and so cajoled the women into action.
“Right, we’ve got three hours before the tide turns, then we go somewhere special for the night.”
“Ok, Daddy-o,” Isla chanted, the promise of shore and a new place bubbling.
On the quay Sam made a deal with a local fisherman to collect two lobsters on the way back.
“I like the scenery already,” Sinead teased.
Even clad in his wellies and jumper, Sam recognised the man’s aesthetic appeal, but if she was seeking a rise from him, she was disappointed. They walked up a gentle hill towards St Colmcille’s Monastery where Sam hired headsets for Sinead and Isla and they set off listening to tales from the sixth century.
He took the opportunity to ping a message to Min: Hole ten clicks. He received no reply. It could be hours or days before his friend appeared. He caught up with the women and enjoyed watching them sync their eye movements to the stories they were being told through the headphones. Their brows rose and pupils widened at the brutal history of warriors and battles in the preservation of faith.
On the stroll back he waited outside every little shop while countless woollen articles were purchased – never to be worn again. On the quay Isla peered in terror at the lobsters and their arthritic movements, daring to touch an antenna before recoiling immediately. He doubted whether she would eat one later.
“What now, skipper?” Sinead asked.
“Now to one of my favourite places on earth,” he said, and moved forward to wind the anchor up.
They slipped into the channel and headed south towards the Isle of Mull, the current heaving and skiting them sideways. Sam aimed the bow towards craggy pointed rocks and both Sinead and Isla turned quizzically towards him.
“Ehm …” was all the elder could manage, reluctant to question him.
“You sure you know the way, Daddy?” Isla fretted.
“I need you to be very quiet for the next little while and let me work the chart,” he said, lifting a little compass to his eye and taking a bearing, then another.
He reduced the revs and the boat slipped out of the main tidal flow as he consulted the chart. Both Sinead and Isla looked alarmed but remained largely silent as bid.
“I could touch that rock,” Isla whispered to Sinead, whose nervousness bordered excitement.
Sam pressed the bow directly at a wall of rock – his crew now convinced that he’d gone mad and had settled upon scuppering them. In the last moment before the boat touched he threw the wheel over and hit the throttle, spinning the stern around. The boat nestled between two walls of rock cut like coral – its abrasive qualities threatening anyone daft enough to give them a rub and disturb their statuesque silence. Sam pushed on gently; the sun beating down on the wash, its noise amplified as the boat squeezed between the stones. Seagulls could barely be heard above the heave of the sea. And then, again, he threw the wheel – this time to port – to reveal their destination.
“Wow,” Sinead breathed.
“This is so cool, Daddy!” Isla squealed, delighted by the echo of her voice off the atrium of stones.
They were surrounded by a wall of rock – a shelter built by God from ferocious winds and brutal seas, for those with the courage and faith to enter. The water beneath them looked bluer and the rock had a sandy warmth.
“Welcome to Tinker’s Hole,” Sam said to enormous smiles.
Within minutes the anchor was down and ten minutes later all three were jumping or diving off the transom.
“Who’ve you been talking to Rob?” the first suit began. They stood, he sat. Nobody moved very much. There were no cameras - a table and three chairs the only furniture in an otherwise bare room.
“’Scuse me?”
“We’re not here to fuck around.”
“Am I?”
“You’ve been passing information on known terrorists to an outside agent and those targets are being assassinated.”
“So I’m a tout now, am I?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t hold back, mate.”
“We aren’t friends to informers.”
“That’s exactly what you are. Day in, day out, sneakin’ around recruitin’ people. I’ve worked alongside you lot for years. I know how you operate.”
“It’s how you’ve been operating, opso, that’s the issue here. Who are you passing information to?”
“No one.”
“You must think we’re remedial.”
“How have you worked that out?”
“Do you think we’re unable to read?”
“Everyone who goes to Oxford can read, can’t they?”
“Are you intent on making this dreadful situation worse for yourself?”
“Do I need a rep here?”
“This isn’t that sort of interview.”
“What sort of interview is it?”
“The sort where we get answers to our questions and you end up in the glasshouse before you find yourself guilty of some serious civilian offence.”
“Ah, a fit-up.”
“Something commensurate to your actual crime, but not quite our problem.”
“And what is my actual crime?”
“Passing information to a third party to enable people to be killed.”
“What third party?”
“Exactly.”
“Look, lads, I think we’re talking in circles here.”
One of the suits leaned forward and pushed a page towards him. The opso looked at columns of his database search terms, the relevant ones highlighted.
“It’s my job to look into known heads.”
“You do appear to have been taking your job more seriously of late.”
The opso said nothing.
“Extracurricular searches around Deirdre Rushe, Paul Hagan, Sean Gillen. Searches for known bomb makers in County Donegal. Very diligent.”
“I’ve been decorated for this stuff,” the opso said, unable to suppress his irritation.
“We’ve had the search pattern assessed by our very accomplished behavioural analysts. Every keystroke tells a tale – or so they tell me. They determined that your method of rummaging around in the records is symptomatic of someone trying to conceal their real intent.”
“What a crock of shit, mate.”
“Again, not mates. This is really quite an established method.”
“Won’t stand a chance in a court martial, though, will it?”
“There won’t be a court martial, Rob. This is a straight demotion, isolation, humiliation. Two years in the glasshouse and then a long life among ordinary decent criminals.”
“On the basis of me doing my job diligently? I don’t think so.”
“Who did you tell, Rob?”
“Tell what?”
“You gave away the manager. You gave away Deirdre Rushe. You gave away Grim. Four people are dead.”
“Agreed, four people are dead, and we have no idea what’s going on cos you lot are retracting surveillance to cover up that you knew there was a bomb in that car!”
“You’re angry, Rob. You’re so angry you’ve done immeasurable damage.”
The suit’s quiet companion fluttered a hand to silence his partner. A suppressed gesture not lost on the opso.
“What damage?” he clutched at the slip-up.
“You admit you did this?”
“I admit nothin’,” he spat. “What damage has been done?”
The suit shifted uncomfortably. The silent one withdrew the page of search terms and made to rise, and then the pieces fell into place for the opso.
“Ah, I see, I see.”
The two interrogators scraped back their chairs, shuffled past him and left the opso to his isolation, and the realisation that a valuable informer was now dead, or was about to be.
The big dish was landed into the cockpit, claws hanging over the edge dripping in garlic butter.
“I don’t like them,” Isla said, unable to take her eyes off the black beads above the antennae.
“You didn’t try it yet,” Sam said.
“I don’t want to, Daddy,” she said, almost alarmed.
“Just as well I made you ham and cheese spaghetti then.”
“Yesss,” she hissed.
Sinead had just cracked the first claw when the sound of an engine bounced off the walls of their amphitheatre. Sam turned to watch as a huge black rigid inflatable boat came into the hole, drawing its wash behind.
“Ah, that’s a shame,” said Sinead. “Thought we were going to have the place to ourselves.”
Sam stood up. “Someone I want you to meet,” he said, and was rewarded with an intrigued smile on Sinead’s face. Introductions!
The rigging slapped hard against the mast and Isla forked her spaghetti to keep it on the plate, while the large, sinister-looking boat circled around and came alongside. Sam caught a warp. A tall man held the gunwale, while a stocky little bloke sprang up and over the guard rail in one motion.
