“Hello?” Bowman cleared his throat. “Agent Moreno?”
Bowman crossed the room and touched her on the shoulder. She sat up with a start and made a grab for the Colt Anaconda holstered under her left shoulder. Bowman held up his hands.
“My name’s Bowman. Alex Bowman.”
She looked at him and smiled, re-holstering the piece.
“OK. Don’t tell me. You have a double zero rating? Am I right?”
Her accent was purest Brooklyn. She’d never worked with a Brit before. She wondered if it would be fun. She was in her late twenties, six feet tall with a prominent nose, large brown eyes, clear Levantine skin and a wide, promising mouth. She wore chinos, combat boots and a plain white sweatshirt. The Star of David dangled from a chain around her neck.
“Not me,” Bowman laughed. “I’m not even on the payroll.”
“Wow. That’s tough.”
Agent Moreno was not convinced. Anyone who commanded the personal attention of Director Jennings just had to have a double zero rating.
“I’m about finished with the technical stuff. You want me to talk you through it?”
Bowman looked her over. She was tall and slender like a supermodel but with bigger breasts. That might be a problem for Versace, but Bowman thought they were nice. Agent Moreno caught the vibe, blushed, smiled, and blushed some more.
“I’m sure I can work it out.”
“You’re right,” she said, “it’s really not that complicated. This is a PC and this is a cell-phone. They’re both secure. You shouldn’t have any problems. If you need me all my numbers are loaded in the directory.”
“You have any idea what this is all about?” Bowman asked.
If she did, she certainly hadn’t grasped the seriousness of the situation they were in. Maybe Jennings hadn’t brought her up to speed. Maybe he was right. The fewer people knew about this the better.
“I know you’re looking for somebody. I know who but I don’t know why. Maybe it’s better that way. Leaves me free to concentrate on the electronics. But this is how we’ll catch him.”
She patted the PC as if it were her pet dog.
“Satellite intercepts are ready to roll. Your man can’t order pizza without me knowing which kind. But if I did know why you’re looking for him it might help.”
“How come?”
“All I have is a name. If I had some key words I could set up an automated sniffer system. Scan the airwaves twenty-four seven and come up with a match. You’d be surprised how careless people can be if they don’t know they’re being listened to.”
“Bloke I’m looking for is Irish. You could tap into anything that has to do with Noraid and the Irish Republican Army. Telephone numbers. Bank accounts. Credit card transactions. As for key words… you could try knife, blade, detonator, bomb. And every kind of explosive you can think of.” Bowman didn’t mention nuclear material. “How’s that for starters?”
Agent Moreno made notes on her iPhone.
“He sounds like a real nice guy. You certainly move in interesting circles, Mr Bowman.”
She stood up, ran a hand through her soft brown hair and began to gather up her things.
“Talking of moving in circles… ” Bowman decided to try a minor move. “Do you have a name? Other than Agent Moreno?”
“That’s classified,” she smiled. “But in the interests of Anglo-American relations and given you’re our closest ally, it’s Calista.” She touched the Star of David on her neck. “Bu people call me Cal.”
“You free for dinner, Agent Moreno? Cal?”
“Don’t think that’s a very good idea, Mr Bond.” She looked him squarely in the eye. “But if anything technical crops up, be sure to give me a call.” She pushed the cell-phone towards him across the desk. “I’m available twenty-four hours a day, every day. Just not for dinner.” Her smile was friendly but dismissive. “If you need me I’ll be back at the office, monitoring the airwaves. Anything else I can help you with?”
Bowman recognised rejection when he saw it and Agent Moreno’s defences looked pretty much impregnable. Pity. She had such a promising mouth.
“A Browning GP35FA would be useful. Had to leave mine in Florida. You know what airline security is like.”
“Sure, no problem, long as you sign for it. I’ll send one over with a couple of boxes of ammo.”
***
The series of catastrophes Cal Moreno and her fellow techno-spooks had helped avert since 9/11 was impressive; from the seizure of bomb making equipment in Brussels to foiling a plot to infest the American Embassy in Rome with cyanide gas. These triumphs belied the technical difficulties involved. But the alternative, the penetration of tight-knit militant communities by agents who combined unquestioned loyalty to the United States with fluency in Arabic or Pashtu, bordered on the impossible.
Agent Moreno did not think Bowman’s Irishman should present any particular difficulty. Director Jennings had provided a complete psychological profile and full personal details and Cal had access to the shadowy international computer network known to a select few practitioners within the intelligence community as Echelon. A system so secret the government denied its very existence, and with reason. Echelon contravened America’s own domestic laws.
Much of the work had already been done. The entire Noraid membership was routinely monitored as it had been since President Clinton got involved in the peace process. Irish Republican activists on both sides of the pond were on the Echelon register, their every communication intercepted, logged and analysed. The problem with this guy O’Brien was that he would be constantly on the move; but if he used a fax, a phone or the Internet it was only a matter of time before Moreno caught him. But chances were O’Brien knew this and would confine himself to public phones and Internet cafés, keeping his communications brief. And he would use cash, not credit cards.
So the best chance of catching him was to screen the people he might contact. In the States that meant engineers with known Irish Republican sympathies and ready access to explosives - people who worked in demolition, mining or the military. On the other side of the pond it meant his friends and family. Cal reckoned at most a couple of day’s computer time using existing Noraid data. She would monitor each phone call, email and bank transaction, sniffing out the key words Bowman had provided. It was only a matter of time before the Irishman broke cover. And when he did she’d catch him.
***
28
Declan O’Brien sat contemplating his shrinking options in a bar in North Miami Beach. Using his contacts in the Irish Republican community was out of the question now. He had made the mistake of telling McGuire what he was up to and that option was definitively closed down. The IRA and Noraid wouldn’t touch him. Worse, they’d probably turn him in. Maybe even put a bullet in his back. The Loyalist alternative had come to him in the middle of the night. He wasn’t even thinking about the problem at the time, it just happened, the notion jumped straight out at him, uninvited. But the more he thought about it, the more he liked the concept. The Protestant Loyalists would know about the IRA’s dealings with the FARC, the whole world knew by now. But not about the Dirty Bomb. They’d be out of that loop completely.
O’Brien’s quandary was he had no point of entry into the Loyalist community. No names. No contacts. No background. The Loyalists had a presence in the States, not on the scale of the IRA, but a presence nonetheless. Problem was, how to find them. But there are hundreds of small settlements in the eastern United States still dominated by the Irish. The same is true of the Poles, the Germans and a dozen other immigrant groups. To find one where the prevailing sympathies were Irish Protestant was unusual but not unheard of. O’Brien knew the best place to look would be the rural Appalachians; a dirt poor region pockmarked with isolated inbred Celtic communities of both persuasions.
O’Brien paid for his drink, walked to the end of the block
and entered the Internet café on the corner. It was the middle of the morning an
d the place was almost deserted. O’Brien sat at a screen with his back to the room, his shoulders hunched over the keyboard. He selected a search engine and typed the words “Ulster Volunteer Force in America.” in the dialogue box. He spent the next twenty minutes sifting through page after page of garbage before he found what he wanted, the contact details of the UVF chapter in Morgan County, West Virginia. Next he tried “Appalachian Stone Quarries” and followed a number of false trails before he found a full history of the Oriskany sandstone deposits in a place called Warm Springs Ridge at the heart of Morgan County. It was difficult to compare both sets of data without printing out complete pages but with patience, pen and paper, he got the match he was looking for.
O’Brien could not risk renting a car. He had a couple of false passports in his luggage with matching driving licenses and credit cards but McGuire would know the identities Declan customarily used. He hadn’t planned on making the trip and the FBI would be doing routine searches anywhere his usual aliases might crop up. So he took a cab out to the airport and paid cash for a no-frills ticketless flight to Atlanta, Georgia. On arrival he bought a hamburger and a diet Coke at a fast-food counter and paid cash for an onward flight to Charleston, West Virginia. He had half an hour to kill before take-off so he went to a pay phone and dialled his mother’s number.
“Ma?”
“Declan? Is that you darlin’?”
“Sure it is, Ma. How are you?”
“Fine, son. We’re all fine.”
She wanted to ask him what was going on. The papers were full of the arrests in Colombia. It was the biggest news in Dublin since the cease-fire. But she knew better than to mention things like that on the phone.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“I thought I heard a click on the line.”
“I heard it too…”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. She wanted to tell him about the wretched English woman who had come to the house and upset Liam, but she knew there wasn’t time.
“Will you tell Liam I called?”
“I will. But don’t forget to call him on his birthday.”
“Did I ever miss?”
“No, son; you never have. You’re a good boy, Declan.”
Declan hung up the phone and looked at his watch.
“Sorry lads. You’ll need a bit longer than that I’m thinkin’.”
At Charleston O’Brien took the Greyhound and headed north on Interstate 79. His destination was the small run down community of Warm Springs Ridge in Morgan County where high grade Oriskany sandstone had been quarried since before the Civil War and still supplied the local glass making industry. The first thing he noticed on entering the place was the ubiquitous grime. A blanket of fine grey particles covered every available surface, dispersed equally over the poor and less poor sections of town by the impartial westerly breeze. The dust came from the nearby stone quarries that gave the desolate place its miserable living.
O’Brien got off the bus at the north end of Main Street late in the afternoon, carrying a small overnight bag. He was the only passenger to alight at this particular stop. He dropped his bag on the pavement, looked up and down the deserted street and lit a cigarette, flicking the match into the gutter. He’d been travelling for the best part of a day. His joints were aching and his mouth was dry. He was wearing jeans and a loose fitting denim shirt that concealed a sheathed Bowie knife, strapped to his left forearm with brown packing tape.
There were twenty or so shops on Main Street, half of them empty, half announcing huge discounts on goods nobody would buy. The only living thing he saw was a scraggy cat, foraging in a pile of garbage. Canned music was coming from a dingy bar. O’Brien crossed the street to The Red Hand, pushed open the door and walked up to the counter. Inside the place was cool and dark. Sealed windows kept the dust at bay. A malfunctioning air-conditioning unit hummed above the door, surplus coolant dripping onto the unscrubbed wooden floor. White supremacist memorabilia decorated every wall. The red and white Cross of Saint George, prominent above the bar, proclaimed O’Brien was in enemy territory. His stomach tightened. He dropped his bag on the floor and ordered a large Bushmills and a soda water on the side. The stocky overweight barman took a good look at O’Brien and noted the broad Londonderry accent, but said nothing. O’Brien took his drink and his bag to a corner table he could watch the bar and the door from without moving his head. He was the only customer in the place. As he sat sipping his whiskey he felt a distinct tremor under his feet. It lasted only about five seconds but the whole building shook perceptibly. The ceiling light swung to and fro above his head. The glasses on the bar made a merry jangling sound. O’Brien glanced up at the barman but didn’t move his head.“
Boss Murphy’s blasting a new face today,” the barman shrugged. Happens all the time.”
O’Brien nodded, put his glass to his lips and took a little sip.
The barman looked at the stranger, at his big uncalloused hands. There was no dust on his clothes, skin or hair. His shoes were shiny.
“You from around here?”
O’Brien shook his head and raised his glass, like he was making a toast.
“I’m from across the water.”
“Thought so.”
The barman glanced at O’Brien’s overnight bag.
“Travellin’ kinda light, aren’t ya?”
He returned to his chores and continued to talk with his back to O’Brien.
“The men’ll be here soon. They clock off about now.”
He was silent for a while, intent on O’Brien’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Then he said,
“There’s no work in these parts if that’s what you’re lookin’ for. Half the fellas is laid off.”
“I’m not lookin’ for work.” O’Brien flexed his hands.
The barman grunted.
“Is it Boss Murphy you’ve come to see?”
“Could be.” O’Brien emptied his glass, walked over to the bar and ordered another. “Will you join me?”
“Later.”
The barman put some of Declan’s change in a jar by the till.
Declan said,
“Is there somewhere I can put up for the night?”
“There’s Mrs Ahern on George Street, does room and board. Cooks a nice breakfast too, so they say.”
“George Street?”
“Number 32. Turn left at the bottom of Main and first right. Say Eddie sent yer, from the bar.”
“I’m grateful to you, Eddie.” Declan picked up his bag. “And would you tell Boss Murphy I was askin’ for ‘im.”
“I’ll do that.” Eddie went back to his chores. “What name did you say?”
“I didn’t.” O’Brien paused at the door. “Just say I came across the water.”
***
O’Brien walked down Main Street, turned right into George Street and found Mrs Ahern’s a little way along on the left hand side. Number 32 was a detached timber frame house painted white but covered with the pervasive grey dust that blanketed the town. The front yard was littered with dust-encrusted toys. A stack of fresh dog shit lent a little colour to the lawn. O’Brien stood on the porch and rang the bell. He sensed a slight movement in the net curtains in the bay window. Then the door opened and a grey woman in a grey dress stood looking up at him.
“Eddie at the bar said you might be havin’ a room, mum.”
The woman looked him up and down and smiled at the Londonderry accent.
“And how long would ya be wantin’ to stay, lad?”
She was hoping for a long let. She hadn’t had a good long let since the quarries went short time.
“Just the one night, mum. I’ll be on me way in the mornin’.”
“Will you be wantin’ a meal?”
She frowned. She wasn’t prepared for a gentleman’s supper. She’d have to go to the shop.
“Just breakfast, mum, I’ll not bother ya for supper. I have to meet a man.”
> The woman asked him for twelve dollars, including the fried breakfast. O’Brien gave her fifteen, carried his bag to the upstairs room, took off his shoes, closed the curtains and lay on the bed. But he didn’t sleep. The packing tape around his left forearm was pulling at his skin. He heard the creak on the stairs, unsheathed the Bowie knife and went to stand behind the door. It didn’t open. Mrs Ahern tapped and said,
“There’s a man in the yard askin’ for yer. Didn’t say a name. Big fella.”
She knew who the big fella was but she knew better than to say a name.
“That’ll be Mr Murphy,” O’Brien replied through the door. “Tell him I’ll be right down.”
He winced as he stripped off the packing tape and replaced it with new. He checked in the long mirror, making sure the hilt didn’t show below his shirt cuff and went down to the yard.
Boss Murphy was a big red-faced man, a head and a half taller than O’Brien, with broad shoulders, narrow hips and a solid drinking man’s belly. He wore camouflage fatigues, dark glasses and military cap. His calf-high boots were steel capped. An array of hand-tools hung suspended from a belt around his waist. He was chewing gum. He looked O’Brien up and down and smiled at the little man.
“You was askin’ for Boss Murphy?”
He spat the gum out on the ground between them.
“That your truck?”
O’Brien gestured with his head, his thumbs resting in the belt loops of his jeans. The big Protestant peered over the top of his shades and nodded.
“Let’s take a ride,” said O’Brien as he headed for the truck and climbed up into the cab.
The open bed of the Chevy Silverado was a jumble of wires, cables, tools and detonator parts, the trappings of Boss Murphy’s dangerous trade. Half a dozen sticks of dynamite were mixed up casually with the rest.
First Strike Page 15
