The telephone rang and he cursed softly.
“Answer it, it may be important,” she said, welcoming the momentary respite.
The conversation heard only from her end was terse, accomplished mostly in one word sentences.
“Excuse the interruption,” he said only a minute later. “It seems my bid to cast myself into the political ring has been accepted.”
She gasped and looked at him in shock.
“The look on your face isn’t terribly flattering. Though perhaps you have to be forgiven for supposing I would let the fair Reverend have his way with my father’s old district. I had, however, planned to get off the fence in all manner of ways today. I suppose though, considering recent developments, this will have to suffice.”
“Congratulations,” she said, through a throat that felt suddenly tight.
“Congratulations to you as well,” he said, “and I mean that. I hope, if this is what you want it will make you happy.”
She nodded, “Are we saying goodbye then, Jamie?”
A long moment stretched between them, sundered by sunlight and dancing dust motes, before Jamie replied quietly and in a tone of voice she was accustomed to, “I rather think we must, don’t you?”
She reached up quickly, touched the side of his face and said, “God go with you wherever the journey may lead.”
She fled the room and was gone before she could hear him say, in perfect and unfettered Arabic, “And also with you, my love.”
From under his desk, where he’d lain in atypical good behavior throughout the whole miserable interview, Montmorency emerged. He padded over to Jamie and laid his head against his leg, wagging his tail in commiseration. Jamie reached down and patted his piebald head.
“Well Monty, we have the consolation of trying. And trying, as they say, at least requires action.”
In answer, Montmorency walked slowly over to the study door, lay down, put his muzzle upon his brindled paws and sighed a thoroughly heartfelt, heartbroken canine sigh.
“My thoughts exactly,” Jamie said.
Chapter Thirty-two
Sinking Ships
For a man who’d no great fondness for water Casey Riordan seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time in it. Submerged up to his neck, the hour somewhere on the wrong side of midnight and not a damn boat in sight.
“Where in Christ is he?” he asked through clenched teeth and blue lips.
“Do I,” Seamus spit a duck feather out of his mouth, “look as if I have any fockin’ idea?”
“Rhetorical question,” Casey muttered and hugged himself tighter against the frigid water.
“Five more minutes?” Seamus asked hopefully.
“Ten,” Casey amended, “we can’t afford to miss this shipment.”
“Christ I’m like to freeze my balls off in eight,” Seamus sniffed for emphasis.
“Think warm thoughts,” Casey said unsympathetically.
Silence reigned for the next two minutes, during which time Casey thought many dark things about the absent boat and its absent skipper and Seamus stifled an overwhelming desire to sneeze.
“How’s the wife?” he asked sotto voce.
“The wife,” Casey said, “is fine.”
“Are ye happy then?”
Casey turned and threw a black look in Seamus’ general direction, “What the hell is this, highschool confession time?”
“Just tryin’ to make conversation,” Seamus said with an injured sniff, “yer mighty touchy these days.”
“Mighty touchy? I’m up to my damn neck in freezin’ cold water, a boatload of guns is late an’ if it doesn’t show up in the next five minutes it’s likely the both of us will be spendin’ the next twenty years in prison.”
“Shh—” Seamus grabbed his arm suddenly, “someone’s watchin’ us.”
“What, where?” Casey instinctively dropped lower, until there was only a hair between his nose and the water.
“I don’t know, it’s only a feelin’, the back of my neck is creepin’ like a caveman’s with a sabertooth tiger behind him.”
Casey, ignoring his own discomfort, focused on the back of his own neck and felt the small hairs rising. Seamus was right, someone and not too distant, was watching them.
“Yer right, I can feel it too.”
“We’re trapped,” Seamus said with a grim finality.
“No we’re not, I’d rather die than go back to jail,” Casey replied just as grimly.
“What do ye suggest we do?”
“We turn around slowly, very slowly an’ then we assess the situation before we do anything.”
“Right,” Seamus sounded less than convinced of the genius of this particular plan but took a deep breath and began to turn with Casey. The feeling of being watched intensified with each second that passed. Were there guns trained on them? Would they open fire first and ask questions later? Casey closed his eyes as he made the last step that turned him a full one hundred and eighty degrees. He then opened them and had to fight the desire to laugh. In front of him, floating serenely, heads cocked in curiosity was a three-man flotilla of ducks.
“Ducks,” Casey said just as Seamus sneezed.
“I’m allergic, just the thought of them damn feathers is enough to set me off,” Seamus said and sneezed again, a strange gurgling noise as he’d lowered his head into the water.
“Stop that would ye? We’ll get caught for certain.”
“I can’t help it,” Seamus said, “I’ve always been allergic, my Auntie Kate,” sneeze, “who lived in Canada,” sneeze, “sent us a down quilt,” sneeze, “when I was a boy,” sneeze, “an’ we all shared the same bed,” sneeze, “the four of us, head to toe,” sneeze, “It was the height of luxury,” sneeze, “an’ the thought of sleepin’ under it,” sneeze, “was like heaven itself had floated,” sneeze, “down onto our bed,” sneeze. “I almost died under the,” sneeze, “damned thing. Nearly squeezed my lungs shut.”
“Bless ye,” Casey said darkly, fluttering the water near the ducks in an effort to shoo them off. They merely cocked their heads in the other direction and happily rode the waves he caused with his hands.
“Move.”
Both he and Seamus sidled away from the ducks, trying not to leave the cover of the overhanging willows whose branches trailed along the water’s surface. The ducks followed. By now, Seamus had dissolved into a flurry of sneezes, one following so close upon the last that he sounded as if he were alternatively choking and drowning.
“Hold yer breath,” Casey said.
“For what?” Seamus managed to gasp out between paroxysms.
“For this,” Casey replied and placing a large hand on Seamus’ head shoved him under water. After a last gasping wheeze, Seamus subsided under Casey’s hand.
He listened carefully to the night around him, the ducks were silent behind him but he’d heard something under Seamus’ sneezes or perhaps he’d felt it. It came again just as Seamus emerged from the water, took a breath and plunged under once more.
Casey stilled himself, forcing his heartbeat to slow and his breath to become even. There was a definite throb in the water, a gentle susurration that was too rhythmic to be made by nature. It was the feel of an engine slicing through water. He filled his lungs with air and bent his knees down until only his eyes were above water, with measured and agonizingly slow movement he walked forward through the screen of branches.
He could see at once that something was strange because the boat moved all wrong. Erratically and too fast, pushing with great speed toward them. He stepped back through the water, reached down and grabbed Seamus by the hair and moving as fast as the water would allow, ran for shore.
They hit ground on their knees. Seamus, understanding only that something had gone awry, bolted to his feet and ran with Casey.
Behind them
the boat struck the shore and halted with a grinding crunch, then there was only time for a heartbeat and thunder split the air forcefully with a great cracking boom followed by a flash of light that temporarily blinded the two of them.
Casey turned back to see long flames cleaving into the darkness, burning deep in violet and blue tongues.
“Oh Jesus,” he whispered, “Jesus—the guns.”
“The guns?” Seamus said incredulously, “Someone just tried to kill us. An’ what about the pilot of the boat.”
“Already dead,” Casey said harshly, “saw him tied on deck, couldn’t see clearly but it looked as if his throat were slit.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Seamus was still low to the ground, his head bobbing around in an effort to scan the area.
“We don’t move just yet,” Casey whispered, “they may think we’re dead in the water right now but if we start movin’ they’ll know for certain we’re not.”
Seamus nodded his agreement. They’d hung onto some small luck and landed in a hollow of land, bumped and ridged around them, unpredictable enough to make them seem no more than another knobbly bit of grass and rock. Or so they hoped. Behind them a large hill rose, close enough to provide them some cover and not allow anyone to sneak up on their backs.
A chill wind played across the valley, drying clothes stiff and icy, forming bits of ice in hair. They each lay on their bellies, flat to the ground, hands parting tufts of dry and brittle grass so they could see the lake and the flames that still shot twenty feet high into the night.
Hell must be like this, Casey thought to himself, ignoring the cramping in his legs and the numbness in his fingers, able to see the fire but unable to partake of its warmth. In his mind’s eye he could see the guns, gone now, money the Brotherhood didn’t have and certainly couldn’t afford, drifting down in the form of carbolic ash. A haul of fifty AK-47’s, Kalashnikov rifles named for the Soviet who’d designed them. Two hundred pounds of ammunition, sharp-nosed 7.62 mm bullets, designed for the dark barrel in single shots or fully automatic spray. Simple to operate, easy to maintain, the Arab who’d sold it to him, had said. The weapon of choice in North Vietnam at present. Inferior only to the M-16 which had proved too pricey and far too risky to obtain. Gone, if indeed they’d ever been loaded onto the boat in the first place. And a man dead, one he’d never met, paid well for his averted eyes but not, in the light of events, well enough.
How long they lay in the grass Casey never knew, he was only aware of an iron-edged cold creeping up into his bones, and a terrible lassitude falling through him that warned of impending hypothermia. Seamus, thankfully, had stopped sneezing and lay silently beside him eyelids fluttering closed every now and again. Casey would reach over and jostle him before sleep actually set in. Casey didn’t see morning come, didn’t see it creep, chill-fingered and softly frosted over the hills, tumbling slowly down into the valley and putting a heavy breath over the lake. He only woke up when he felt himself being eyed so intently that the hairs at the base of his neck rose up. It took a moment to place his bearings, to focus and find himself staring eye to eye with one of their feathered friends from the previous night.
“G’morning,” Casey said blearily. The duck ruffled its feathers and quacked.
Seamus was nowhere to be seen. Casey shot a quick look over the surroundings. A fine, scudding smoke still rose off the boat here and there, parts of it already sunk and gone. The area was still, a faint light soft as talc drifting down between the bare branches of the trees, the grass crystallized and brittle. Spring’s early promise had been premature. He tried to get up on his knees and found his shirt had frozen to the ground and was now unwilling to part with it. His mind was sharply clear and from this he knew the dreaded nibbling fog of hypothermia hadn’t settled in.
“Seamus,” he hissed, loudly as he dared.
“Present an’ accounted for,” came a voice behind him, startling him into rearing back and half tearing the buttons off his shirt.
“Christ, are ye tryin’ to give me a heart attack,” Casey said irritably, moving his fingers to see if the cold had done permanent damage.
“Yer too young an’ fit for a heart attack,” Seamus replied dryly tossing Casey a warm bun and then passing over a steaming cup of tea.
“Why the hell did ye let me fall asleep, I could’ve died of hypothermia,” he accepted the stream of liquid into his tea that Seamus poured from a small hip flask.
“Ye’ve been asleep for an entire fifteen minutes.”
“Where’d ye get the food?”
“Shop ten minutes trot back that way, noticed it on our way in yesterday.”
“An’ no one mentioned the explosion?”
“Not a word, I think the hills kept the sound localized.”
“Well it’ll be discovered soon enough, we’ve got to get clear of here.”
“Ye think it’s safe now?”
“As safe as it’s goin’ to get. I still can’t believe ye left me there freezin’ to death.”
“Ye were puttin’ out heat like hell’s own kitchen, yer daddy was the same, warmth to spare.”
They ate their buns and drank their tea quickly, grateful for the small glow of warmth the brandied tea provided, however temporary.
Casey polished off the last of his drink and rose, stamping his feet to put some feeling back into them.
“Ready?”
“Aye.”
He set off downslope towards the lake, morning mist picking at his clothes and settling on his skin in clammy sheaves.
“Wrong way, man,” Seamus said uneasily.
“Not leavin’ here without checkin’ for the guns.”
“They’ll not have survived the explosion.” Casey continued down into the water, ankle deep in it in the frigid morning.
“Daft bugger,” Seamus muttered and then followed.
Little remained. Charred hunks of wood, the steering shaft, melted and twisted into grotesque sculpture had been thrown to shore along with a piece of rope liquefied until it resembled a blob of plastic.
Seamus saw that Casey had removed his shoes, socks and pants and left them on dry ground, he was stripping his shirt off now, tossing it back where it floated down like a blue cotton cloud onto the shoes.
“What the hell are ye doin’?” Seamus demanded, the small heat the brandy had given fading already.
“Humor me man, this’ll only take a minute.” Casey dove under the water, leaving only a faint ripple in his wake. He was under a long time and Seamus could feel his nerves begin to jump in protest. Twice Casey’s head emerged and twice it went back down again. Minutes ticked by and Seamus felt the prickle of imaginary eyes on his back. On the third dive Casey stayed down so long Seamus began to think he’d have to go in after him. However just as he was taking his shoes off Casey emerged, streaming and blue with cold, skin marbled in the gray morning light.
“Well?” Seamus’ voice was tight around chattering teeth.
“Well nothin’, which is what I thought.”
“What the hell do ye mean?”
“Nothin’, no goddamn guns to be found. There weren’t any on the boat to begin with.”
“How can ye be certain of that? The explosion an’ the fire could have melted them down.”
Casey eyed him with a bemused look. “Ye must think me a rank amateur. I gave very specific instructions that the guns were to be crated in a box that was to be built into the boat, so that should something unforeseen happen,” he paused to yank his pants up over goosebump stippled legs, “the guns would stand a chance of survivin’ or not bein’ discovered. The box is there alright, but it’s empty an’ always was.”
“Christ,” Seamus said in a whisper that sounded like the last of the air hissing from a balloon. “All that money.”
“Money’s fine,” Casey said giving his shoelace a vici
ous yank, “it’s in place with a middleman who wasn’t to move with it until I gave the go ahead. We’ve got bigger problems than that now. The gentlemen who sold us the guns will be expectin’ the money for goods delivered, regardless of who has the weapons in their possession.”
“Do ye mean to say—” Seamus stopped, horrified suddenly at the scenarios that seemed to be presenting themselves.
“Aye, the question we need to answer is who has those guns, how did they find out we were expectin’ delivery on them an’ why exactly did they want to kill us?”
“Christ,” Seamus said again, the full ramifications of the situation threatening to drop him to his knees where he stood.
“Aye,” Casey did up the last buttons on his shirt, “ye’d best say all the prayers ye know Seamus, because we need any help we can get. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
They followed a rift between two hills whose tops were shrouded in mist. Seamus cast a glance over his shoulder to where the fog still rose in vertical lines off the face of the water, for a moment it seemed as if some of it clung to the air, took form and drifted towards them, shifting, shaping, warning. He shivered, a convulsion of nerve-endings that had nothing to do with the cold. But when he looked back again, it was only fog.
Chapter Thirty-three
Well but Not Wisely
Sedition, Jamie had long ago decided, was a most exhausting business and the complexities of it were best followed by a glass of whiskey, a volume of Keats and a stretch out on the sofa by the fire. He was barely thus employed when the long and annoying peal of the doorbell rang through the house. The staff was off for the night and he himself expecting no one. He resolutely closed his eyes, intent on unconsciousness but the bell continued to toll. He glanced irritably at the clock, just the wrong side of midnight, hardly the hour for innocent doings, which only made it the more likely that the business that lay on the far side of the door was of a nature he most devoutly wished to avoid.
Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series Book 1) Page 55
