Before: Sam Ireland Thriller Book 4 (Sam Ireland Thriller Series)

by Finn Óg

  “I pay the bills,” Fran replied.

  “So this isnae a work phone? It doesn’t belong to your trade union or anything?”

  “I have a work phone as well if you want that?”

  “No, this is better. It’s harder for them tae get permission tae rip private phones. And it’s contract, is it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, it’s not a pay-as-you-go phone?”

  “No. All paid for, direct debit, every month.”

  “Ok. Well, this is unusual, but I’m gonnie explain to you what you need to do if you’re up for that?”

  “Whatever you say, brother.” Fran smiled.

  Min talked him through the settings to allow the installation of a private app store. Fran took obvious pleasure in learning new tricks and watched as the remote management system wormed its way onto his solid-state memory.

  “There’s only six apps available here?” Fran queried when it had opened up.

  “You just need this one.” Min stretched over his shoulder and tapped the encrypted messaging application.

  Fran watched it begin, supplied his password when prompted, and handed the phone back. The typing began immediately.

  We’re good.

  “Thanks, Fran,” Min mumbled as he made his way back again to the privacy of the control room. The phone began to buzz.

  “That’s us,” Min answered. “So how’ve you been?”

  “Ups and downs, mate. Been grim enough, to be honest.”

  “Hard to find work?”

  “No, well, probably – I haven’t even started that yet. But I lost someone close, which is gonna be hard for a long long time. You know the drill.”

  “I’m really sorry. I heard about your pal. Desperate that she got caught up in it all.”

  “I don’t even know if she did, to be honest, mate. It could just have been a road accident.”

  “It’s bloody tough, I know that.”

  “Course you do, mate. Course you do. Who am I talking to, aye? You know better than anyone.”

  The statement hung between the two men for a moment, then Min shook it off.

  “Look, pal, sorry to cut tae the chase here, but I’m staying with someone. It’s hard to explain who but she’s a relative of someone close to our friend.”

  “It’s a’right, mate. I know where you are and who you’re with.”

  Min sighed in relief. “I’ve been hoping you were the helper he was talking about.”

  “He told you?”

  “He wrote a letter – after he left the island. You know that part ok?”

  “Yeah. What I know is that he got in touch via some bloke in the Windies.”

  Min nodded in appreciation at the description. Both men had been trained in the triggers that cause automated intelligence monitoring to be flagged for review by human ears – names, locations, code words. By mashing descriptions, such pitfalls could be more easily avoided.

  “After I’d made a few checks, we got talkin’. He was keen to know, obviously, who was after him for his last job, and how much they knew.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “Well, I was in a good position on that question, cos there was talk at one stage of putting me through court martial, so I was given a lawyer.”

  “Bloody hell, they were gonnie go the whole hog?”

  “I think they were trying to scare me more than anything, mate. Anyway, my lawyer had discovery on their evidence – everything they had got handed over in advance so we could prepare our defence. I read a lot of the case against me, and they had nothin’, mate, next to nothin’. So when I was released I was able to tell our friend with reasonable confidence that they didn’t even have a sniff of him.”

  “You didn’t do any sneaky checks?”

  “No, mate. See, they suspected I was passing on intel, but they couldn’t say anyone had received it. Without him in the frame, it was clear to them and to me that they didn’t have a case at all. They needed someone at the end of their chain to me to prove anything against me, and they had zip. Nada.”

  “That makes sense. Well, that’s good, cos all our back-end file checks came back negative as well.”

  “He somehow knows that, mate. I reckon that’s why he came to me in the first place. Belt and braces, like. He wanted to come back, you see—”

  “And when did you realise he was on the way?”

  “When he asked me to track some Irish phone, a burner, like. He was really worried for some woman, and he knew her sister had already been beaten shit shaped.”

  “Did he explain how he knew that?”

  “Someone sent him a picture of her lying on the ground bleeding like a slice of liver, mate.”

  Min closed his eyes. “Ok. Well, all that fills a few gaps. Tell me about what you did with the phone he was looking for.”

  “Like I say, it’s an off-the-shelf burner, but with loads of money in phone credit.”

  “And you found it?”

  “Yes, mate. It took a while cos it was on and it was off and the settings kept changin’, and I had to call in a few old favours in a very gentle way, cos I’m not really that well got as things stand in some quarters of the security establishment after what happened. But I’ve still some buddies, so I had a bit of a hand.”

  “We knew someone was looking. It’s a relief that it was you.”

  “Not good for me if you managed to ping me.”

  “Couldn’t tell who it was or why you were looking, but it was a good idea to try those Covid apps to trace it.”

  “Well, when you’re outside the fold you have to find different ways, don’t you? If I was back in the – well, you know what – I’d have all the techs I could ask for working away for me. You don’t half miss that, I can tell you.”

  “Look, pal, something weird happened. We also tracked that phone, to a lock-up north of the city.”

  “Yeah, that’s where it spent most time. Took a bit of finding, that.”

  “I went there.”

  “Did you?” Rob sounded excited. “How did that go?”

  “It’s a kind of … I don’t know what it is.”

  “Industrial unit. Actually, inside it seems to be some sort of photo studio.”

  “Really?” Min asked.

  “Looks that way, anyway.”

  “There were no signs outside saying that.”

  “I don’t really know what’s going on in there, but we’ve been mirroring the searches done via its Wi-Fi and the screens in operation inside. All the usual stuff – watching what they watch on telly, you know.”

  Min remembered well. Covertly roaming the streets of hostile areas, scanning selected houses to see what they were doing, messing with transmissions and televisions just to keep themselves amused.

  “You said we? Have you got someone working with you?”

  “A nephew. He was medically discharged last year. He’s getting there but has a lot to learn.”

  “Ok. So what did you see inside the lock-up?”

  “They’re buying video and camera kit, sending imagery – some of it not so nice. Maybe a photo studio is too generous a description.”

  “Thing is, pal,” Min paused for a moment, “I saw our friend there.”

  “Did you now?” Rob sounded pleased. “He got himself inside, then.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, mate, I don’t know. What I do know is that he showed huge interest in an email that was picked up in the place.”

  “What email?”

  “We traced it to a criminal gang in Bristol that said it was sending someone over to help them.”

  “Help who?”

  “Whoever is working from that industrial unit.”

  “Help them with what?”

  “Dunno. We were too late starting to see any email going the other way and we haven’t managed to get into the server.”

  “But our friend seemed interested in it – why?”

  “Not sure, m
ate. What was he doing when you saw him? How did you see him?”

  “Just standing, in the dark. He came outside with another person last night. He shouldn’t have been able to see me, but I kinda wondered if he had.”

  “That’s a bit weird, mate.”

  “It was. Tell me more about this man who was being sent to help.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, mate, I don’t know. We haven’t been able to get into their emails yet, just the traffic that comes and goes.”

  “So what level of detail did Sam get?”

  “It just said that this helper person would be off the Holyhead–Dublin boat and that someone was to collect him at the terminal.”

  Min thought for a while. “I wonder if the helper was met with a bang on the head?”

  “Possibly, mate. But there was no description of him on the email. Our friend would need to have known who he was looking for at the ferry port. Then he’d need to have extracted some information from the helper to be able to take his place if that’s what you’re thinkin’.”

  “Mmm, it’s a gamble, isn’t it – that whoever was collecting this fella didn’t know what he looked like?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know, mate,” Rob said, “but the fact he’s inside is great.”

  “Why? How does it move him on?”

  “Again, I don’t know. All I was told is that wherever the phone he asked me to track was based is likely a link to whoever threatened the girl.”

  “And are you still in contact with him?”

  “I don’t message unless he contacts me. He’s using this channel. But, to be honest, I think my job is done. He hasn’t been in touch in two days now.”

  “Give us the ping, will ye?”

  “Ok. It’ll come through shortly.”

  “Thanks, pal. Is there anything else?”

  “Not that I can think of, but if there is, I’ll give you a nudge, mate. It’s good to hear from you.”

  “You too, pal, you too.”

  The ping came through just as Min moved back into the apartment’s living space. Fran and Áine looked up at him eagerly but he ignored them for a moment as he deliberated what to type. Both he and Rob had reasonable confidence in the app as a channel to scramble messages and voice calls, but they knew only too well that there were watch lists with alerts attached to phrases as well as places and names. Tech moved so quickly that it was an inevitability that encryptions, no matter how good, would eventually be unpicked. Therefore Min chose his words carefully.

  Right, pal. Need a hand?

  He knew that would be enough to tell Sam who was on the other end.

  “Right, then,” he looked up at the pair facing him, “let’s see if old Sammy boy will allow us to come and play with him.”

  35

  Fran and Min sat on the sofas and waited. Áine had been ordered to bed with the firm promise that she would be woken if any word came back. The two men looked at RTÉ’s News: Six One, stared blankly at the screen through the body count and daily infection rate, and watched the graph of the R number tick upwards. There was no useful comment or reaction to what was happening outside, so as day once more became night, they flicked aimlessly through the channels until it was time to eat again.

  “Will we wake her?” Fran asked.

  “She hasn’t slept well in days. Leave her be, for now.”

  Fran found a bag of rice and frozen vegetables, then hoked about in the freezer until he produced a bag of prawns. He held them up to Min, who nodded acceptance, and then set about defrosting them.

  Min paced along the window a little, looking out into the dark; patient on the outside, while feeling a familiar burn within that something was about to happen. In the same way he’d sensed that Sam had known he was just metres away the previous night, he had that knowledge that they were about to enter the fray. It was something he was well used to – the silence ahead of action, the moments where everyone is ready, just waiting for the go.

  They ate at the table and talked a little, Fran explaining the powers he had, which were of genuine interest to Min. They had both amassed significant experience of boarding ships on which they were unwelcome, but Min had to give it to the little man – he usually did it alone and without an automatic rifle.

  “So you basically politic your way on board?”

  “I use the power of the collective.” Fran smiled. “The membership protects me. If I can get the stevedores to refuse to unload a ship before it comes to the dock, the harbour master will refuse to allow the ship to take up space on his quay and block it to other vessels. The harbour master, then having a vested interest in the situation being resolved, might assist me to board the vessel via his pilot boat. Unofficially, of course, but practical.”

  “Canny,” Min said, nodding. “And all this to get a single crewman off?”

  “All for one, my friend.”

  “Dangerous, all the same. Racing up rope ladders in a big sea in the dark isnae fun.”

  “You’re referring to my age.” Fran smiled.

  “You’re no’ a duckling, anyway. I’m no’ one myself.”

  “Truth be told, it was getting a bit much. That’s why Sam’s so useful. We started doing jobs together, which I enjoyed, but gradually he went on his own. I think he preferred it that way. I didn’t need to know – I just paid him, and not every time.”

  “He did it for no money?”

  “He sometimes said he’d managed his own compensation. There’s a lot of money on some of these ships, so maybe he used that as a sort of punishment for mistreating the poor bastards who worked on them.”

  “I always knew some shipping companies were shits, but I never realised they’d keep men on board against their will without paying them.”

  “And worse than that – barely feeding them. Slave labour, brother. Exploitation.”

  “Sounds up Sam’s street, alright. He always did cut his own path, though. I wouldnae take it personally that he went off on his own. He’s solitary enough sometimes.”

  “Took a while to get into his rhythm, yeah,” Fran said, lamenting fun times past.

  “You know what, we’d better get a bit of shut-eye too. There’s no sense in offering tae help him if we’re zombified. I’ll take the first watch if you wanna get a bit o’ kip on the sofa?”

  “No way,” Fran said. “I made it to my bed last night. You, however, did not, so lie down and I’ll wake you if the phone goes.”

  “Alright, pal. Thank you,” Min said, rising from the table. “And, Fran, you’re a good man. I’m sorry we got off to a bad start. I got the wrong end of the stick.”

  “That you did, brother, but no harm done. Sweet dreams.”

  Min kicked back in the bucket seat, flicked off the monitors, started the breathing exercises they’d been shown in training and raised his feet slightly. The technique had worked wonders during his younger days. He and his unit could kip on a carrier, a heli or even a rigid raiding craft hammering through a sea if they needed to. Full effectiveness was fifty per cent training, fifty per cent physical fitness, eighty per cent mental strength and twenty per cent rest – or so said their trainer. Over and over. He’d been a brutal man who expected two hundred per cent from any special forces operative, and generally got it, until he died standing up and screaming aged fifty from a massive heart attack.

  Min was asleep in minutes.

  Áine, however, was on the prowl. Her rest had morphed into guilt and she emerged from her room with a head full of hellfire and was not amused to find a shift system in operation.

  “Where’s Min?” was her first salvo.

  “Getting some sleep,” Fran answered, shaking his phone at her. “But, fear not, I have the comm.”

  “We’re in good hands, so.”

  Fran wasn’t convinced she meant it. “I hope I’m equipped to convey the arrival of a message or alert.”

  “Didn’t manage to tell us about Sam’s last email until eight or – wait, was it nine days later?”


  “With that I cannot argue, but in all fairness who checks their junk mail – and what system does not bin unsolicited salutations from a dolphin trainer?”

  “Whales.”

  “Mammals from a Caribbean Isle.”

  “You still didn’t tell us everything you knew.”

  “Had I thought it relevant, I would have. But if you prefer that I take my leave, I am at your command.”

  Áine just grunted and clattered with the percolator. She realised that somewhere in the back of her head she was keen to wake Min.

  The buzzer sounded at the door, and, startled, she dropped the coffee bowl onto the counter – off which it bounced before spinning to a shatter on the tiled floor.

  “You alright?” Fran sprang up from the sofa as the control room door opened, but Áine was already halfway across the room and reaching for the handset.

  “What’s happened?” Min shouted.

  “Someone’s at reception.” Fran started looking for a dustpan.

  “Hello?” Áine said into the intercom. She turned to Min with her hand over the mouthpiece. “The Guards are here.”

  “I reckoned they’d decided just to drop it.” Min’s uncertainty was obvious as he looked at Fran, Áine, then the coffee jug and the three places set at the table. Breach, breach, breach. “Look, it’s decision time,” he said.

  Áine spoke into the receiver, “Give me just a minute,” then covered it again.

  Min held out his hands as if they were scales. “We either tell all and suffer the consequences, which could be advantageous – they might send to the site and they might find her with their resources.”

  “Or?” Áine asked, bent a little in urgency.

  “Or they make a balls of it. Sam went in alone, presumably for a reason, when he could have told the cops.”

  Fran interjected. “He does everything alone, said it yourself – that’s his way.”

  “Aye,” Min accepted. “But we need to explain him,” he pointed at Fran while looking at Áine, “explain me, and all the stuff we haven’t told them if we want them tae act at all.”

  Fran’s hand suddenly opened flat against his hip and he withdrew his phone. “It’s vibrating!” he said, waltzing towards Min.