Run Before the Wind

by Stuart Woods

  “They were kind enough to sign their little note,” I replied, waving my glass at the paint above the fireplace.

  “Now listen to me, both of you. First of all, there is no Provisional IRA in Cork. Some republican organizations, sure, but all they do is drink Guinness and talk about the old days.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Annie asked.

  “I thought something like this might happen; I’ve done some asking around. Finbar’s an old republican, you know. He knows the lay of the land hereabouts.”

  “You think of this as just a practical joke?” I asked. “Those are gunshots in the walls, there. Suppose one of us had been here, what would have happened then?”

  “One of us was here,” Annie said tightly.

  “If there had so much as been a light on, they’d never have come close,” Mark said confidently. “And they used a shotgun, double-barreled, I’ll bet.”

  “It sounded that way,” Annie said, “as if they stopped to reload.”

  “Every Irish farmer has a shotgun. Now, if they’d sprayed the place with automatic weapons, I’d be worried, but this was nothing more than some overpatriotic drunks.”

  “Even if that’s what they are, I still think we should have the police on them,” Annie came back.

  “Then we’d buy ourselves a pack of trouble,” Mark said, his voice rising. “They’d never find out who it was, but it’d be in the papers, and Peter-Patrick Coolmore would want us out of here quick-time. The Belfast thing would get published again, probably hopelessly distorted, and then we might start having problems with local suppliers. Don’t you see what could happen to the whole project if we overreact to this?” He was very worked up, now, angry, but not with the people who had done this—with us, who he perceived were about to endanger his project by going to the police.

  Neither Annie nor I said anything.

  “I agree with you about what the publicity could do to us,” I said finally, trying to calm him. “Maybe you’re right, maybe we shouldn’t go to the police, but what if these guys are the real thing? Don’t we have to consider that possibility?” “Willie,” Mark said, shaking his head, a bit calmer, now, “does the Ku Klux Klan still exist in your Georgia?”

  “Yeah, they’re still around. They still have rallies and burn crosses now and then.”

  “Do they ever do anything, though? Do they still lynch blacks?”

  “No, it’s all talk, they bluster and hand out leaflets, that’s about it.”

  “Exactly. The IRA in the South of Ireland is just like your Klan—all talk. Oh, up in Galway and Tipperary you hear about some farmer who’s been arrested for making bombs out of chemical fertilizer and shipping them to the North, but they don’t go out on raids in the Republic.”

  “That’s true, I guess.”

  “Yes, but what about these threats?” Annie asked, pointing at the message over the mantel.

  “Look, the real Provos don’t go around overturning lamps and making threats. They snipe and ambush and plant car bombs, and they don’t give warning.”

  “Well, you’re right about the car bombs, anyway; have you seen this?” I tossed them the Evening Standard. They read it in silence.

  “Willie, have you ever told anybody that Thrasher was my sponsor?”

  “No, you asked me not to.” I reflected a moment. “Well, my folks know. We had dinner with him in London. And I told Connie.” I looked at him sheepishly. “I’m sorry about that, Mark. I shouldn’t have, but Connie’s on our side; she know’s that’s confidential.”

  “It’s all right, Willie; I don’t think Connie would give that away. So there’s no way for anybody to connect Thrasher with us or the yacht; one of his companies may be having Provo problems in the north, but the bomb in London and what happened here tonight aren’t connected; it’s purely coincidence.”

  “I think you’re right about that,” I said. “There’s just no way that information could have got around. Derek, himself, is too secretive for it to have leaked from him, and we know everybody else who knows about it.”

  “So what’s your plan?” Annie asked. “Business as usual?”

  “Absolutely,” Mark said, “but with some prudent precautions. You two see what you can do about straightening up here. I’ll be right back.” He got up and left the cottage. In a moment I heard the dinghy being dragged across the shingle at the river’s edge outside our front door and oars splashing.

  Annie and I began to right furniture and lamps. By the time Mark got back the place was looking surprisingly normal. Except for the shotgun gouges in the walls, the damage was superficial. I could patch the holes tomorrow. Mark came back into the cottage carrying something heavy wrapped in plastic sheeting. He set the package on the floor and unwrapped it.

  “Good Lord, Mark!” Annie exclaimed. “Where did you get all that?”

  In Mark’s package were a short-barreled, pump shotgun and an American forty-five-caliber automatic. There was another, small gun I didn’t recognize. “Call it liberated matériel; this is the sort of stuff we found in weapons caches during searches of houses in the Bogside in Belfast. I hung on to some of it, that’s all.”

  “But where was it hidden?” I asked.

  “Aboard Toscana. You don’t want to know where.”

  “You mean we brought all that past customs when we sailed into Ireland?” I was aghast. “Do you know what they would have done to us if they’d caught us smuggling weapons into the country?”

  “No problem, was there? And now I think we’ll all sleep a lot better knowing it’s here.” He tossed me a shotgun and a box of double-nought shells. “That’s an Ithaca riot gun,” he said. “American. Loads in the ordinary way but holds twelve shells. You can sweep a street with it.” I held the shotgun as if it were a reptile.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the smaller weapon, a blunt, ugly instrument that looked like some sort of overgrown, science-fiction pistol.

  Mark picked up a thick, black tube and screwed it onto the barrel of the gun. “It’s an Ingram machine pistol,” he said. “Latest thing. Can’t imagine how it got to Belfast.” He slammed a long clip into the butt and got to his feet. “Come outside for a minute.”

  We walked to the front door together. Mark brought the weapon up, cocked it and suddenly fired it into the night. I flinched, expecting a loud roar, but there was only a muffled whumping sound. I could hear the bullets tearing into the brush on the opposite bank of the river.

  “Silenced,” Mark said. “Fires five hundred rounds of forty-five-caliber ammunition a minute. Serious weapon.” He was grinning broadly, and his eyes were bright.

  I didn’t know whether to be more concerned about our “Provo” visitors or about Mark. It bothered me that, once he had convinced Annie and me not to call the police, he had seemed to enjoy the whole incident. I went to bed that night with the Ithaca riot gun under my bed, loaded, just at hand. I was very tired, but it took me a long time to get to sleep.

  19

  AT CORK HARBOUR BOATYARD the next morning, I found that the hull of the yacht had come along nicely during my absence and was ready to accept the new stainless steel fittings I had brought back from London, but nothing else had changed. Finbar still worried over each minute operation; his son, Harry, still did fine work while watching his father’s every move; and Donal O’Donnell was cheerful and friendly, while his twin, Denny, hardly spoke.

  “Morning, Willie,” Donal chirped as we gathered our tools and approached the hull. “How was merrie old London?”

  “Not bad,” I grinned back at him, “Not bad at all.” And I turned to see what Finbar had in mind for me for the day. Then I stopped in my tracks and willed myself not to turn and stare, instead, remembering what I had seen. A few moments later I allowed myself a quick look and confirmed my memory. The O’Donnell who had spoken so pleasantly to me was wearing a half-buttoned work shirt which exposed an untattooed chest; he was Denny, not Donal.

  Denny’s astonishing goo
d cheer persisted through the morning and at lunch. Donal, who often brought his lunch over and sat with me, kept away, lunching with his twin on the quay of the boatyard. I could see Denny jabbering away as they ate, and Donal looking depressed, even angry. I could think of nothing that would make Denny O’Donnell this happy except trouble for me; he seemed a prime suspect for the events of the previous evening.

  When I had finished my sandwich I got up and strolled around to the side of the shed nearest the road, where all the cars were parked. There was no Volks among them. Denny and Donal, I knew, drove a newish Ford Escort. I spent the afternoon’s work trying to think of some way I might associate the O’Donnell twins with the ransacking of the cottage. I got nowhere. All I had to go on was the sight of the light green Volkswagen at some distance, containing four men who had been nothing more than shapes in the dusk. I had not seen the number plates.

  At the day’s end I left Mark conferring with Finbar, as usual, and got into the Mini-Cooper. I had a grocery list to fill for Annie, and I turned in the opposite direction from my usual route, toward the Cork suburb of Douglas and its supermarket. I had been on the road for less than a minute when I glanced into the rearview mirror and did a double take. A light green Volkswagen was driving forty or fifty yards behind me, keeping pace. Another glance revealed four passengers. The Volks seemed suddenly to speed up, closing the distance between us.

  I kept looking into the mirror, my heart pounding, trying to get a look at the occupants of the front seats, then I realized that I didn’t really want to be that close to them. I accelerated. The car kept pace. There were some miles of country road before the village, fairly deserted road. The car began to close on me again, and I pressed the accelerator further. I was doing seventy by now, with images running through my mind of the car overtaking me and a shotgun protruding from the window; then I saw a sight that would ordinarily have given me a jolt at this speed, but that now looked very inviting indeed. A car marked Gardai, Irish for police, was parked alongside the road. I quickly slowed and pulled over a few yards from the two policemen. My impulse was to run to them, pour out my story, and shout something like, “Follow that car!” But Mark didn’t want the police in this. Instead, I got out a roadmap and pored over it for a few seconds, while the Volks drove past, cutting its speed because of the police. I caught a glimpse of the front-seat passenger, a large man with red hair and a beard. He seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

  After a moment I pulled back onto the road and continued at a moderate speed until the Gardai were out of sight behind me, then jammed the accelerator to the floor. We were on the outskirts of Douglas, now, and I wanted to find out where the Volks and its passengers were heading. Soon, the car appeared ahead of me, slowing for a four-way stop sign. I pulled up behind it but could see little of the passengers through the small rear window. Then something happened that made me feel very foolish. As I stopped, two other cars drove up to the intersection from other directions. Both were light green Volkswagens.

  Mark had been right. The country was full of them, and here I was, overreacting to the sight of just one. The odds against three nearly identical cars approaching the intersection at the same time were probably high, but certainly lower than for any other sort of car. The Volks ahead of me turned right toward Cork. I glanced at the number plate, and after a moment I turned left, toward the supermarket. Part of the plate’s number stuck in my mind; the letters OOP. The three following numbers I forgot.

  I was relieved to see lights in the cottage on my return. The place looked warm and inviting. Mark was not home yet, and Annie gave me a hand with the bags and boxes. We stood in the kitchen, unpacking and stowing my purchases.

  “Annie, I’m a little worried about Mark.”

  “How so?”

  “I can’t get the picture out of my mind of him standing there last night, firing that machinegun. He looked … well, a little crazy. Do you think there’s a chance that he might really use that thing on somebody?”

  She laughed. “Well, you’re right about one thing; Mark is a little crazy. Anybody who’d live the life he has, who’d be doing what he’s doing now would have to be a little crazy. It’s one of the things I love about him.”

  “What about the machinegun, the Ingram?”

  “I’m not worried about that because I agree with Mark’s assessment of the situation. I think what we have here is the Irish equivalent of a few of your American rednecks, just like the ones you see at the cinema. People like that are cowards. They’d never even have come to the cottage if they’d thought anybody was here. That’s why they didn’t search the place and find me, cowering in the bathroom. They were in a big hurry to leave their little mark and get out.”

  “So you don’t think we’ll have to shoot it out with them.”

  She laughed again. I loved the way she laughed. “Oh, no. But there’s something else you have to remember about Mark. He’s had a lot of training in how to deal with violence. Part of an officer’s responsibility is to choose the appropriate degree of response to violence. If Mark ever decided to use that machinegun, you can be sure the circumstances would warrant it. He’s too proud of his competence to let himself go off half-cocked or to overreact to a situation.”

  That made sense, and I felt comforted. “Buy you a drink?”

  “A small scotch would be lovely.”

  We took our drinks into the sitting room, and I lit a fire. We sat on the floor, leaning against the sofa, and gazed into the flames as they grew and spread through the kindling to the oak logs. “Where’d you go?” I asked.

  “Oh, out and about. I popped in on Mummy for a bit.”

  “Pity I didn’t know you were in London; you could have met my folks. Still, I must have been among the last people you would have wanted to see. I knew you were feeling down, and I’m afraid I wasn’t much help.”

  She put a hand on my knee and squeezed it. “Oh, no, no, Willie; there was nothing for you to do. It’s just ….” She hesitated for a long time; I had the impression she was deciding whether to tell me the truth. “I was just a bit fed up, stuck out here all the time. I’m not accustomed to having so little to do. The yacht is Mark’s project—yours and his. I had nothing of my own, and I was feeling a bit useless and cooped up.”

  “Useless? You? Don’t you believe it. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you.”

  She looked at me, surprised. “Why, Willie, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” She reached over to kiss me on the cheek as I turned toward her, and the kiss landed on the corner of my mouth. It was a fuller, wetter kiss than a peck on the cheek might have been. “I’m going to have to watch myself around you.”

  “You’d better,” I said back, smiling at her, “or I’ll get you.”

  “Promises, promises,” she said. We both jumped at the sound of a car door slamming outside. “There’s Mark,” she said, getting up. “He’ll want a drink.” She paused. “Willie?” “Yes?”

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen Connie?”

  “A week or so. Not since before London.”

  She leaned over and scratched the back of my neck with her long nails. “Maybe you’d better give her a call.”

  20

  ON SATURDAY I drove to Kinsale and had lunch with my grandfather. He was a bit miffed that my mother and father had not visited him on their trip but mollified that they planned to be in Ireland at Christmas, something I suspected my mother had planned as a surprise, for she had not mentioned it to me.

  After lunch I drove to Summercove. I hadn’t seen Connie since London. The memory of my night with Jane Berkeley lingered on, her glamor and aggressive sexuality making my relationship with Connie seem rather pale. Connie’s car was at the cottage, as was a van. I was annoyed that she had visitors; I wanted her alone. I could hear a lot of girlish giggling through the door as I knocked, and Connie answered with a Guinness in her hand. For a moment I thought I had surprised her with another fellow
, but as the door swung open I saw the nun I had met a while back, slouched in a chair, looking very un-nunlike, somehow.

  “Ah, Willie, me boy!” Connie cried, planting a large, wet kiss on me. I found myself blushing. I had never kissed a girl in front of a nun before.

  “Sister Mary Margaret, how are you?” I asked, disengaging myself from Connie.

  “Ah, she’s Maeve, still, in my house,” Connie giggled, before the nun could answer.

  “I’m very well, Willie,” she said, laughing at Connie.

  I still didn’t know what to call her. I had almost never been around a nun at all and hardly thought of them as women. They were simply faces protruding from a lot of black clothing. This face, though, was quite a pretty one, not seeming to miss makeup. The eyebrows were a reddish color, and I assumed that whatever hair she had was, as well. How much hair did nuns really have, anyway? Was it shaved to the scalp, or long and wrapped, as under a Sikh’s turban?

  “Not letting this one corrupt you, I hope?” I said, nodding at Connie, who was pouring me a glass of wine.

  “Ah, she tempts me constantly, she does. One of these days, who knows?”

  “Careful, Maeve,” Connie said, “He’ll have his hand under your skirt in a minute.”

  “Jesus Christ, Connie!” I was appalled.

  “And watch your language in front of a nun!” Connie came back. Both women collapsed in laughter.

  I laughed in spite of my embarrassment. “What is going on, here? Are you both pissed?”

  This caused further gales of laughter. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” the nun was finally able to say. “If Mother Superior were here now, I’d be shipped off to foreign missions tomorrow.

  “Ah, you’ll have a lot to confess, you will,” Connie said, and they burst out laughing again. It was contagious, and I laughed mindlessly with them. Connie came and sat on my lap, wriggling about. “And what’s that I feel, sir?” More riotous laughter.