by Bill Granger
At the bottom of the road was the village: There was the steeple of the old, ugly church at the edge of the settlement. He saw the first of the old women scurrying along the same road to early Sunday morning Mass. He felt a nostalgia then, for Mass and his own mother and his own time for church. It had been a long time since he had gone to Mass—unless you counted funerals. He did not. Yesterday’s funeral—he had been scarcely aware there was a Mass going on. He had been looking at the congregation, trying to find any faces that did not fit. It was an old trick and he was always surprised how often it worked.
Faolin.
He saw again the black, glittering eyes in that thin, haunted face. A face too pale for a farmer’s face; the open coat—the farmers wore their best to the funeral, but Faolin had work a dark shirt and no suit, only the old open coat.
Cashel had stared at Faolin across the heads of the kneeling villagers in the church. And Faolin had caught his eye. They had stared at each other for a moment; then Faolin had turned away.
Faolin. He had a name. Gone down to Kerry to see his aunt.
Cashel had telephoned the gardai there; they were looking for him. Cashel had called the police liaison in Belfast and they had checked the unemployment rolls in Londonderry—no easy task on Saturday afternoon. But there had been no Faolin.
No Faolin anywhere, but suddenly this hollow-eyed fellow appears at a funeral Mass in the tiny village of Innisbally, passing through he was, and it happened to be the funeral of a woman caught as a victim in an assassination attempt on the richest man in England and Ireland. A man who was the cousin of the English Queen, titled, owner of a half a hundred newspapers in Britain, Ireland, and Canada, and Lord knows what else.
Cashel walked into the deserted village. He felt thirsty. He knocked out his pipe on the post-office wall. The sparks flickered as they fell and then went damp and dead. He felt the bowl absently with his thumb as he shoved the pipe back into his pocket and looked around. Was there anything as morose as an Irish village on Sunday morning?
Cashel stared sadly at the closed face of MacDermott’s public house across the road. For a moment, his memory conjured childhood’s certainty in wishes. Give me three wishes and the first will be that MacDermott come to the door and open his pub for me. Smiling, Cashel crossed his fingers. And then stared.
There was someone at the door. And it was MacDermott. Opening the door and beckoning to him. The magic was still good. He smiled to himself and crossed the road.
MacDermott’s red, mottled face of the night before was now sober and gray.
“Mr. Cashel,” he said.
“Mr. MacDermott. You’re the answer to my wishes,” said Cashel.
“It is a coincidence I saw yer just now on the road. Yer were on yer way to Mass, was it?”
“No. I was not. Could I trouble you fer a pint of Smithwick’s?”
MacDermott frowned. “Ah, yer a bit done, is it? If I didn’t know yer was a policeman from Dublin, I’d not do it, but since yer a guest of Durkin, I cannot deny you,” said MacDermott as he pulled the policeman inside and shut the door. “Besides that, I was after wanting to talk to you.”
Cashel went to the bar and took the proffered glass of the light ale. There was a time to pay the piper, he thought, but not now. His headache receded.
MacDermott looked at him and then poured himself a small glass of whisky with a shaky hand. He looked up. “Poteen, was it?”
Cashel finished a draught and put the glass down. “You know poteen is illegal.”
“Ah, I do. Yer entirely correct,” said MacDermott.
“You wanted to see me?”
“I did.”
Cashel put down the glass and MacDermott filled it without a word. There was an unspoken understanding that there would be no money changing hands at the moment.
Cashel felt much better. He waited for MacDermott to speak.
“After yer left last evening with Durkin,” the publican began, “another fella comes in. He was not a man of the village. And I know yer been askin’ about that, after Deirdre’s funeral, and wonderin’ about the fella that come down on the walkin’ trip from Derry—”
“A stranger then.”
“An American,” said MacDermott. “He was askin’ after his Lairdship.”
Cashel put down the glass slowly. “He was, was he?”
“Indeed,” said MacDermott, shrewdly measuring the interest he had stirred in Cashel. “Askin’ where his Lairdship was livin’ and all.”
“And you told him where the lord was?”
“I told him where Clare House was, I did,” said MacDermott. “But I said it was a late hour.”
Color seemed to come back into MacDermott’s gray face. “And I told him there was policemen from Dublin there.”
Cashel frowned. “You did.”
“I did.”
“And this American fella didn’t seem inclined t’visit Clare House?”
“No, sir. He did not. He took a room from me instead and had his whiskies and went to bed.”
Cashel nodded.
“He was askin’ after the funeral of poor Deirdre Monahan—God rest her soul among the angels—and he was askin’ after any strangers in the village—”
“Askin’ after strangers?”
“As you were, sur.”
“What did ye tell him, then?”
“Nothing for me. But Old Nap started up with his gob, and before yer knew it, he was tellin’ this American about you. And then about this young fella down from Derry.…”
“Damn.” Cashel pushed himself away from the bar. “And where is the American then?”
“In the back, sur. The best bedroom. Sleepin’ I would expect.”
“And you,” said Cashel. He smiled at MacDermott. “You’re off to Mass, is it?”
“I am. I was just now leavin’ when I sees y’ in the road.”
“All right then. Why don’t you go down to the church? I’ll just have a visit with the man.”
“Ah.” MacDermott seemed to hesitate for a moment and then he slipped into his black coat and pulled on the inevitable cloth cap. “I’ll just go down to the church, then.” He smiled hesitantly.
Cashel smiled in return. A policeman’s frosty smile without mirth.
The door closed.
The public house was still.
The leftover smell of beer and smoke in the bar was as dismal as a hangover. For a moment, Cashel waited and listened and heard nothing but the faint sound of his own breathing.
He reached into the pocket of his greatcoat. He carried a little silver-plated pistol. A friend once said it would not harm a mouse. Cashel knew better, because he had once used it to take a life.
As he held the silver object in his right hand, his hand seemed larger than the gun itself.
The floors creaked as he walked to the back of the public house. He stopped again and listened and heard nothing.
He tried the handle. As usual in these old pubs, the door had no lock. He pushed the door into the room.
The American sat up in the bed and looked at him. He was smiling. He held a large black gun in his hand.
For a moment, the two men stared at each other.
The American spoke first: “Come in. And close the door.”
Cashel entered the room. He held his gun aimed at the figure on the bed. The dull pain in his head returned; he should have been more careful.
The American said, “You don’t look like a man of the village.”
“Nor you.”
“I’m not. Are you from Londonderry, then?”
“Dublin,” snapped Cashel. “And I can tell you that we do not favor guests of the nation to carry guns about with them.”
“Only native sons, is that right? Like the IRA?”
Cashel grunted. “Like the police, is more like it.”
“Are you the police?”
Cashel did not answer.
“You would have identification,” said the man in the bed. “Throw i
t here. On the cover.”
It was absurd, but Cashel had no wish to rush the moment. The black barrel of the American’s gun had not wavered during the brief conversation.
“It’s in my trousers.”
“Carefully.”
Cashel removed the wallet and threw it on the cover. The American opened it and glanced down at the picture of Cashel—a grim, colorless, nondimensional Cashel—and the seal of the country affixed to an identity card. Slowly, the American placed his pistol down on the cover.
Cashel sighed. He realized he had been holding his breath. He still held the silver pistol. “And now that you’ve satisfied yerself, tell me who you are and why you have a gun in this country?”
“Sit down. I want to talk to you.”
“You’re a cool one, you are. Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter about my name,” the man in the bed said. “But it’s Devereaux. Now sit down. We have to talk.”
In the end, Devereaux only told a few lies. He explained he was with the CIA; it was too hard to explain R Section to this Dublin policeman. He told, with almost the whole truth, why he had come down to Innisbally in the west of Ireland.
Devereaux did not tell Cashel about the two dead agents in Belfast because it wasn’t his business. And he did not tell him about Elizabeth or O’Neill. Nor did he speak about his meeting with Terry and about the fruitless day-long search for the man called “Cap’n Donovan.” Cashel would not want to know those things anyway; he was a simple policeman and he had been sent to Innisbally to find out about a murder that had taken place in Canada and to see if there had been an Irish connection.
So Devereaux said he had been sent to Innisbally for the same reason, to gather information for the CIA, because Lord Slough was an important man to both Ireland and America.
Devereaux showed Cashel the proper identification, including a plastic entry card of the type used by agents admitted to the CIA building in Langley, Virginia. It was part of the bag of tricks that Hanley had always insisted agents carry with them; Devereaux had never had recourse to it before.
But Cashel was not a fool and he was not impressed by mere cards. In the end, it was the information traded by Devereaux that finally made him accept him.
Devereaux said the agency was convinced the plot to murder Lord Slough was still on; that the attempt in Canada either was the first of a chain of attempts or was unrelated to the attempts that would follow.
And where had Mr. Devereaux learned all this?
But Devereaux could not tell him the truth; not the truth about the man called Terry and the torture Devereaux had used on him; nor could he tell this policeman why he had killed Terry after he had learned everything. Devereaux did not murder but eliminated. Those were details of the trade and they were of no special importance because they contained no information in themselves. The death of an IRA man in Belfast scarcely twelve hours before was not for trade. Terry, in his fear and agony, had even told Devereaux that a man had gone to kill O’Neill. But that was not information either. O’Neill had ceased to matter.
Devereaux was certain Terry had told him all he knew.
There was a man named Tatty and another named Donovan. They were part of the plan to get Lord Slough and the plan was yet to be fulfilled. He didn’t know about the attempt in Canada. Terry did not know when or where Tatty and his friends would act. Devereaux was finally convinced of that. There was no need to explain how Devereaux became convinced.
Was it brutal? Of course. That made it work. Would he have done the same things to Elizabeth? If she had not told him?
He realized the truth and shrugged it off. He had given Denisov the slip, rented a car, and left Belfast in the early afternoon. He had driven furiously down the unmarked roads and lanes of the South until he had come—exhausted—to the village where Lord Slough lived, Innisbally on the shore of the western sea.
So what he told the Dublin policeman was partly true and that was enough; he needed the policeman’s help to thwart the assassination and to get the further information that would finish the mission; information that Hanley could use to arrange an entrée to British Intelligence; information that would let him—Devereaux—go home at last to the hills around Front Royal where he could forget for a little while Elizabeth and R Section and the rest of it.
He needed the policeman as guide through the unchartered labyrinth of Irish politics and Irish crime and Irish terrorism.
Devereaux displayed each nugget of his information slowly, all the while measuring the policeman’s response. Was he bright enough? Was he going to be useful? That had been the gamble. But, after an hour, Devereaux decided that Cashel would do—that the ridiculous bowler hat and black coat and fierce mustache were merely clownish features masking a subtle mind.
They even had a drink on it, which is where MacDermott found them when he returned from Mass: Cashel with a third glass of mild beer and Devereaux with a glass filled with ice cubes and gin.
“You don’t have any vodka,” said Devereaux when the publican entered and shut the door.
“I do not. I’ll not have Communist drinks in here. And I might say, Mr. Cashel, it’s not opening time yet and I’d lose me trade if the garda saw this sight.”
“I’m the police,” said Cashel. “But you’re correct, Mr. MacDermott. We’ve no further need to intrude on your hospitality.” He rose. “Mr. Devereaux? Will you accompany me?”
And the two men went outside and stood for a moment on the road through the village. A dog loped across the way and urinated on the post-office wall.
“A fine comment,” said Cashel of the dog.
“What’s there to be done?” Devereaux looked up and down the empty road. He was conscious, vaguely, of a deadline; of a need for action.
“D’ya recall this fella I mentioned named Faolin?”
Devereaux waited.
“He was on a walkin’ trip he says from Derry down to Kerry.”
“That’s far.”
“Aye. But not unlikely, Mr. Devereaux. Some of these poor fellas walk hundreds of miles, for visits or for jobs. If you’ve driven this country, sir, you’ve seen few cars and few horses and wagons. We’re not so rich yet that we can afford to forget how to walk.”
“Which way is Kerry?”
“You mean to where he was going, sir? Well, I don’t think that’s important at all.” Devereaux waited while Cashel struck a match and stuffed the burning end into the bowl of the black pipe. “No. I was more thinking of going up the road back to Derry and see what there was t’be learned.”
Devereaux understood. “To see where he left the car, you mean? Because he didn’t walk from Derry if he’s our man?”
Cashel smiled. “Ah, I’m glad yer a bright fella.”
Devereaux frowned; he realized he had already made his judgment on Cashel’s worth but he was not aware that Cashel was judging him.
“There’s my car,” said Devereaux, pointing to the rental Fiat parked on the roadside. It was the only auto on the street.
They drove north slowly, along the winding, narrow highway that skirts the brown hills and roughly follows the shoreline of Galway Bay. There was no other car on the narrow roadway—even in high summer, when the country was full of American tourists, the roads all seemed strangely empty, as though the ancient past of the rural country swallowed up all traces of the present.
They drove by an old cemetery with Celtic crosses catching the pale light of the cold November sun. Beneath the crosses, flowers sat pretty and stiff and dead in the plastic wrappings.
“They buried her there,” said Cashel, pointing to the graveyard.
Devereaux did not speak as he watched the road unwind. The death of Deirdre Monahan scarcely moved him any more than the death of O’Neill.
“D’ya know about a Celtic cross?”
Devereaux did not answer; he looked right and left, for a clue to find the car to find the man who would kill Lord Slough. It was like a nursery rhyme without an en
d.
“They say when Paddy came here—”
“Paddy?”
“Saint Patrick. When Paddy came here t’convert the heathen, he found us worshippin’ the sun. Undoubtedly we worshipped it because we had never seen it.” Cashel chuckled. “Or we seen it as often as we seen God.”
Devereaux looked around at empty fields, fallow for winter.
“So Paddy let them worship their sun, but he put it on a cross, too, so that the circle of the sun formed to make the Celtic cross.”
Devereaux pretended to listen; he wondered why the policeman bothered with this tour-guide monologue. In politeness, he grunted as a period to the anecdote.
Cashel regarded him across the small front seat of the car. “You don’t care about that story,” he said.
“Not very much. He could have put his car anywhere along here.”
Cashel glanced around carelessly at the fields. “Oh? He could do that, but it’s very unlikely. These old Clare countrymen know their land and neighbors. Faolin should know that as well and know the farmers are over every inch of their land every day. Faolin should know it wouldn’t be very smart to leave the motorcar down in a field or a lane because the old countrymen’d be down in the village of an evening, askin’ after a fella who left his valuable automobile sitting by the side of the road. No, I think Faolin would have left the motorcar in the next village, up the road. Perhaps in a garage.”
Devereaux nodded. This was what he had gambled on when he heard the policeman was in the village; his instinct had been to avoid contact, but he had decided against it; the policeman could not be fooled, he would know Devereaux had been around. It was better if the policeman worked for him.
“This matter then. It isn’t much t’you, is it?” Cashel asked softly. For a moment, Devereaux thought he was talking about the Celtic crosses again; he did not know what the question meant. He said so.
Cashel, still softly, said, “This business with Lord Slough and the plot t’kill him, I mean. I suppose you’re interested because your country is interested in everything. But there’s no bloody sense of the matter being urgent, is there?”
Yes, thought Devereaux. There was urgency. But not for the reasons you would know about.
