“Aye, that lifeboat activity, but. It seems dead violent... And surely ye only invited us outta desperation, like.”
Fionnuala looked on in continual wonder. Paddy must be really terrified of her right now. Or Fabrizio more threatening to his sense of manhood than she suspected.
“I'm sensing a bit of, let me word it so you will understand, biting the hand that feeds it from you, Mr. Flood. If you don't wish to participate, I'm sure another group of four will be delighted to. Let me remind you, while you are playing, your colleagues will be working.”
“And one more thing. Where's this boat off to next? We've a right to know, don't ye think?”
She forced a smile.
“How does Puerto Rico sound?”
“Foreign!” Fionnuala said.
“Go now.”
Fionnuala's face crumpled the moment the door was shut. As rage erupted from her, in some corner of her mind she filed away in disappointment the fact that Aquanetta was nowhere to be seen.
“Fecking jumped up cunt, that Yootha! Every ounce of strength I possess, it took, to keep from reaching across them manila folders of hers and clawing the face offa her! And youse! Useless! A waste of space, the lot of youse! How dare youse leave me alone to fend for mesel—”
She stopped when she noticed the foreign stranger staring at her. She was making a show of herself to someone outside the family. She swallowed the insults and turned to Fabrizio with another fake smile. She had an unlimited supply.
“Nice to meet ye,” she said.
Fabrizio nodded uncertainly. Dymphna wrapped her arm through his. Dymphna had brought Fabrizio along for moral support Yootha had said, but what sense that made Fionnuala didn't know, as her daughter didn't have any morals, and he was probably debasing her on a nightly basis.
He was an alien race, definitely an ex-con, probably a drug addict, and possibly quick with his fists where his female partners were concerned. But Fionnuala nodded approvingly. Better all that than a Protestant. And she was besotted with his biceps. Next to him, her catch-of-a-husband was a pitiful creature. She would postpone the bollocking. Her body trembled as she counted to five and forced a sigh from her body.
“Why does I be cursed with, what do they call it on the telly? An overdeveloped sense of duty,” Fionnuala wondered.
Fabrizio was giving quick, shellshocked, glances at the squirming infants in the stroller. He seemed eager to leave.
“Now I must go.”
“Aye, off ye go, love,” Dymphna said. “See ye tomorrow at three down at the lifeboats.”
The jealous sick rose in Fionnuala's throat as they exchanged a kiss. Fabrizio hurried down the hallway, stumbling into a handrail, and Fionnuala couldn't help but check out his arse as it rounded a corner. They made their way to the opposite stairwell, and Fionnuala was just about to roar abuse at Paddy and Dymphna when her daughter gripped her arm.
“Och, Mammy, Daddy! He's wile lovely, do ye not agree? But...But...I've been trying not to tell youse. But the closer me and yer man get, the more I kyanny keep it to meself. Not a word to a soul, mind, but his grandmammy be's...Myra Hindley!” She whispered the sinful name.
Paddy and Fionnuala exchanged a look of shock as Paddy opened the door. Keanu and Beeyonsay wailed as they were bumped down the steps.
“The most hated woman in the UK?!” Fionnuala gasped. “The wee wane murderess?!”
“Ye're having us on!” Paddy said.
“He be's from Italy, but!” Fionnuala said.
Dymphna shrugged as the stroller pounded down the stairs, and around.
Paddy coughed.
“Ye don't think, ye don't think...what if yer man there has them same sordid urges as his grandmammy Myra? Sexual and sadistic? Preying on defenseless wanes and abusing them like a pedo perv and then slaughtering them? And with wer Siofra gone missing...Do ye think yer fancy man there might've...?”
“Och, catch yerself on,” Fionnuala snorted. “Dymphna's dragged home worse and let them have their filthy way with her, druggies and alkies and whatnot, and all wer wanes have lived to tell the tale. Protestants, she's let into wer house! Orange fecking bastards! Rory Riddell springs to mind. The father of them two half-human bastards, in the true sense of the word, I'm saddled with as me grandchildren. And mind that New Year's Day morning when a beanflicker lesbo surfaced from wer Moira's bedroom? Still makes me skin crawl. Aye, much, much worse we've had round ours.”
As Paddy and Dymphna squirmed with disgust at the memory, as they clambered down deeper and deeper towards the hull, Fionnuala couldn't wait to get to the cabin to finally unleash her rage on them...
CHAPTER 28
“...TEN PERCENT OFF!”
“God bless us and save us! Are ye sure that's all we're meant to do? Sit werselves down in an empty lifeboat? Scraping the barrel with them activities, aren't they? Aye, it'll be a wile craic anyroad, so it will. We can take some photos of us in wer Titanic-type lifeboat. One for the photo album. See ye on the promenade at four, then. And ta for letting me know, Louella, love.”
Feverish thoughts ricocheted through Jed's skull. Ursula's voice at the door roused himself from strange, disjointed dreams of swinging from the Burj Khalifa, diving through the fiery explosions of bombs, but instead of Agent Matcham at his side it was Ursula, grabbing his arm and twittering with fear. Ursula was trailing a kicking, squawking Siofra behind them.
He heard the door close. Then the bathroom door creaked open.
His organs groaned, more in pain than his wakening brain, his body being tossed from one end of the bed to the other as the ship carved its way through the protesting morass of the Atlantic towards the Caribbean. Jed wanted to firmly ensconce himself in the mattress and go back to sleep. But he had to drag himself out of bed. He had his first mission to perform that night as a brand spanking new member of MI-6! He tried to peel his eyelids open. They seemed glued to his eyeballs.
The toilet flushed.
On the backs of those eyelids he saw playing out—like a particularly unentertaining movie—his life before he had met Agent Matcham: bland, dull, plodding, decades spent going through the motions. He had had to enlist in the military, the government had given him no choice, but he had re-enlisted himself again and again for the excitement, the living in exotic locations, the smell of danger and excitement. The only time he had actually fired a gun was on the range during boot camp, he had rarely been on a destroyer, and never been in on the action on the ocean equivalent of the front line; he had been dressed in uniform, but he was a non-commissioned officer confined to an office. And a day spent typing was a day spent typing no matter how war-torn or exciting the location. He heard Ursula turn the shower on.
One of the reasons he had fallen in love with Ursula when he had been stationed on the Naval base in Derry was her exotic foreignness. He certainly hadn't married her for her cooking! Every time she spoke in that strange accent of hers, the weird words she used to express the most mundane things, a thrill had coursed through him. This wasn't true any longer; he had grown used to her accent and her vocabulary. Though...he had to admit, the one exciting constant in his life was Ursula. Or it had been when they were in Derry, at any rate. Some new battle with her family always seemed to be brewing, from imagined slights erupting into drunken brawls to nephews being dragged off to prison, and so on.
Jed's organs moaned as the ship lurched over another massive wave. His bruises had bruises. He thought a rib or two might be bruised. The shower turned off.
His life in Wisconsin the past two years, figuring out what the hottest hot sauces were and ordering them for the store, stocking the shelves of ammunition, paying the bills, listening to Ursula babble on about her family although they were half the Earth away, everything was receding into the past. He thought back to the Indian reservation casinos he visited regularly, the penny slots, cold and hot, the complimentary alcohol, the illegal gambling online...
Perhaps gambling and drinking had been crutches to fill in
the thing missing from his life: excitement? Sure, his heart had skipped a few beats when the federal government had made international gambling online illegal, and when they had sent him the notice that 'they knew' and would be visiting him soon; he had been happy to leave the country to let his ip address cool down a bit. But now he had no desire to gamble, no desire to drink; he had his mission to perform.
Ursula was gargling over the sink. She spat down the drain.
The nape of his neck also ached, but he realized this was due not to Nigel, but from the $1,200 he had hidden there. After Jed had passed Nigel's 'express guerrilla war-fighting test,' as they had termed it, Agent Matcham had pulled his copy of the Official Secrets Act out of her briefcase and Jed, fingers shuddering from pain or excitement, he didn't know, had signed it. Then Agent Matcham had reached again into her briefcase and handed over $1000. She said it was from 'Her Majesty's Treasury,' though Jed was a bit confused as to why the Queen was dealing in US dollars. He had had to sign a release form for the money. Agent Matcham said the assignment would take place the next night, but the money was for the trial run Jed would go through that afternoon. And if he passed this second test, she stressed, he would truly be one of them and be the star agent on the night, though of course a junior one.
There was a smell... He pried his left eye open. And shrieked. Ursula was hovering over him in her nightdress and damp eggplant hair, her eyes brimming with torture. She held out a cup of coffee for him. He was terrified of it scalding him.
“She's here! She's here!” Ursula hissed into his face.
Jed jerked from the pillow. His eyes shot around the cabin, trying to locate 'she.'
“Och, Jed, terrible heartscared, afeared, so I am are. All hours, ye was gone last night.”
He grabbed the coffee. “What's wrong? Who's here?”
She perched herself beside him on the tousled sheets. He winced as her leg brushed against a bruised knee.
“Och, the show I made of meself back on that plane when I thought I caught sight of her, the persecution I put ye through then...”
Jed stared in shock.
“You mean...?”
“Aye! That madwoman from the casino in Wisconsin. Walking down the corridor plain as day, I saw her. In some maid outfit. How could she be here, Jed? How? I've scoffed down that many Xanax tablets, I'm clean out of me monthly supply. And we've a few more days left on this journey of wers. How me brain's meant to handle the stress, I haven't a clue.”
“But—”
“Aye, I know. It sounds mad. It might be me mind seeing her only. Kyanny mistake them nails of hers, but, nor that tattoo of her dead son on her arm. Fearful for me life, I was last night. But now ye're here with me. I feel safe. And I really don't know if it be's her. Just make sure ye stay by me side, is all I ask. And that's the end of the discussion. I'll shut me bake about it now. I don't want ye hauling me off to the mental home, like. I just want ye to know what I thought me eyes clamped sight of.”
Jed took a sip of scalding coffee, feeling disingenuous, and rubbed her fingers in a manner he hoped was comforting. She ran a hand through what was left of his hair. She leaned her face in towards his, and he could see the circles of her contacts.
“Och, Jed, ye're me rock. What would I do without ye, like?”
Jed blinked. He was a man torn. Ursula was relying on him, and wanted him to protect her from the nameless woman who had threatened her in a public restroom a year ago. While he knew her niece Siofra was also on the ship! And that could only mean the rest of her family, maybe even the entire Flood clan, was aboard. He shuddered at the thought. Ursula should know. Forewarned was forearmed. But if he told Ursula about Siofra, he would have to explain how the little girl had seen him getting the lumps knocked out of him by a sharply-dressed jerk in the engine room. And he couldn't; he had signed Official Secrets Act. Wouldn't he be arrested for treason? Even though he wasn't a British citizen? He didn't know. Oh, how his head ached, and for once it wasn't alcohol.
“Them slots must've been keeping ye busy, like. I couldn't wait no longer. I scoffed down some of them sleeping tablets and all and finally passed out. The chemicals that must be pumping through me bloodstream, there must be that many of them me body could be used for medical research. And I've something more to tell ye. I want to come clean. Ye need to know why me and Louella dragged ye on this cruise with us. Something terrible, we've done. On the run from the coppers, so we are. Sleepless nights, it's been causing me, not letting ye in on what we done.”
Jed held his hand up. He now had secrets he could never reveal to his wife, so he didn't want to know hers. Quid pro quo, but in reverse.
“I understand why you didn't want to tell me. And I just want you to know, whatever you’re running from, I’m behind you all the way.”
He moved and winced. He suspected a third rib was bruised. He felt around on the nightstand for his glasses and put them on. Now he could see his wife clearly. Ursula looked a bit put out, her revelation waved away like that.
“What's up with them glasses of yers? They be's cracked.”
Jed peered at her through the fissure in his left lens. She moved the sheet. His pajama top was hiked up over his stomach. She yelped at the sight.
“Where did ye get all them bruises from? Stumbling into the arms of the slot machines? C'mere, the weather's been dead terrible, but was it the sea or the drink? They look wile sore.”
She put her fingers out to inspect them, but Jed waved her away.
“Don't touch! They hurt! Yes, I stumbled and fell into a slot machine. It's this damn ship. I can't walk correctly.”
Ursula inspected his face with concern.
“It was the waves,” Jed insisted. “And that's all I want to say about it.”
Ursula considered for a second, then nodded. “Anyroad,” she said. “Louella was just by. She's suddenly being wile civil to me, and I thank the Lord for that, and the Virgin Mary for that matter. I guess she and Slim had a good night last night. She's signed us up for some activity this afternoon. The Titanic Lifeboat Jamboree, it be's called. We're to get the four of us into an available lifeboat.”
“How can that be an activity? How infirm do they think we are?”
“It's what she said. They need teams of four, so it be's the four of us.”
“Seems easy enough. It'll be a cinch. What time is it at, though? I've signed myself up for the poker tournament tonight.”
Ursula's eyes flickered with suspicion.
“Poker? I've only ever seen ye on the penny slots. And that one time on the roulette wheel.”
“Yeah, um, I decided, uh, to mix it up a bit. See how good I am at it. I do know the rules.”
The suspicion wouldn't leave Ursula's eyes.
“I swear to the heavenly Father, don't ye lay a finger on that $25,000 in wer special account! If I see ye hovering next to that ATM machine on board..!”
“Never. That's for our future.”
He wished he could reveal the Queen of England was paying for his gambling. He had always wanted to share everything with Ursula. Theirs was a real marriage of love and sharing and trust, the rarity of two good people who committed themselves to each other before the eyes of God and stayed true to that promise in a world of fickle and secular hearts. But...that damn Official Secrets Act!
“And the tournament starts at ten.”
“That's grand. The lifeboat thingy be's at four. And don't forget,” she gripped his arm in excitement. Jed grit his teeth from the pain. “We're to be at the captain's dinner tonight at eight! Och, Jed, what a fine life we're leading now. If only it wasn't for that woman from the cas—och, I said I'd never utter her again.”
“I've got to get in the shower,” Jed said.
“Off ye go. Then we can have the breakfast buffet. I'll tell Louella and Slim to meet us in the dining room in half an hour, shall I? And I'll lay yer tuxedo on the bed for the dinner tonight. It's wile lucky we thought this was a black tie opera cruise, aye?”
“Yeah, and, yeah, you do that.”
Under the steaming water, yelping as he ran the soap over his wounds, guilt gnawed at Jed. He felt he was deceiving Ursula. But if the Floods were indeed all aboard, and Ursula never ran into them, that would be the best. He tried to convince himself that there was no reason for Ursula to be unduly worried. It was a large ship, and ignorance was bliss. He forced the knowledge Siofra had seen him into a corner of his mind to think about later, and concentrated on the mission at hand. He scrubbed shampoo into his scalp.
As Agent Matcham had explained, each mission had to be specially tailored to suit the psychological makeup of the criminals involved, and after the home office profilers had conducted much research into the minds of the members of this particularly ruthless terrorist cell, they had identified gambling as their weakness. Either that or leather-clad sex, but Agent Matcham and Nigel (Jed supposed the little shit hadn't earned the title of 'Agent' yet, and he hoped he never would) had decided they would take advantage of the gambling weakness. Jed had been relieved. He lathered his armpits.
To that end, MI-6 had devised an elaborate, winding series of events, much like a Mission: Impossible plot, which had to unfold over the period of a few days on the ship. It would culminate in the terrorists handing over the red mercury to Agent Matcham, and for the three of them being responsible for making the world safe for democracy. They couldn't tell him who their adversaries were, couldn't show him photos. It would make Jed too nervous and unable to perform correctly. Plus, showing him the entire portfolio of all the cell members was too dangerous; such complete knowledge might get him killed, and he was only a junior agent at the moment, after all.
They also couldn't reveal the entire mission at the moment, they could only give him information piecemeal as time went by, 'in dribs and drabs,' was how Agent Matcham put it. But eventually he would understand their whole plan, and the reason that particular game during the poker tournament was important. Nigel had seemed to find this sentence wildly amusing for some strange reason.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 86
