Buddy read the article a second time, and then a third. He made a note of the neurosurgeon’s name. Dr Pascale. Evidently he worked at a small private hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Buddy crossed the library to a shelf by the door. There were phone directories for every major city in the world. He found the surgeon’s name. He made a note of his phone number and returned the book to the shelf.
Half an hour later, slightly out of breath, he was back in the ward at the hospital. Jude was reading, a Steinbeck novel, The Grapes of Wrath, the book clipped to a metal frame above her bed. Buddy settled on the chair beside her. Her eyes blinked a welcome. He bent and kissed her. She smiled at him.
“You smell of fresh air,” she said. “Nice.”
Buddy grinned at her. Then he reached in his pocket, and produced a small square of paper, the fruits of his labours, their future together. He held it up, above her head, so she could see. She peered at it.
“Fancy the States?” he said. “For the New Year?”
Connolly sat in the PD, nursing a glass of lager. The PD was a club off the Falls Road, originally set up for Prisoners’ Dependants, a couple of echoing, barn-like rooms, given over most nights to bingo, drinking and live music. Tuesdays featured a group called Crazy Paving, four anonymous white T-shirts, moving slowly in the smoky gloom, curiously detached from the howling guitars in the bank of secondhand speakers framing the tiny stage.
Connolly sat by himself at a table near the door. Mairead had brought him here half an hour earlier, refusing the offer of a drink, insisting she had to get back for the kids. Christmas had come and gone, a litter of discarded wrapping paper, and a new rubber bone for the dog, and a tidy bill at the off-licence down by the Broo. It had been pleasant enough, anarchic games of Ludo on the floor with the kids, quieter times with Mairead in front of the late-night movie, the kids away in bed, but they both knew that something had happened between them, some strange discord. Mairead, when he’d challenged her, had blamed the Rah. “See wee Dermot,” she’d told him, “get it over and done.”
Connolly sipped at the lager, resisting the temptation to stiffen it with a chaser of Jameson’s. Around him, tables of women bent inwards over ashtrays, heads down, shoulders in, scrums of conversation. He listened idly to their chatter. Most of them, he knew, had husbands away in the Kesh or Maghaberry, men behind the wire, ten, twelve years at a stretch. They paid weekly visits, gathering outside the Public Baths in the Falls Road, waiting for the battered Ford Transit with the steamy windows and the leaking roof, complimentary transport out to the prison. There, they’d queue for a while in the rain, waiting for the first of the endless doors to open, the ritual warnings about forbidden objects, the searches, then the precious hour with their men, some meagre compensation for the prospect of half a lifetime spent alone.
In the Kesh, in the early days, the regime had been relatively lax, Republicans treated like prisoners of war, maintaining the upper hand, refusing to wear prisoners’ dress, insisting on establishing some modest control of their lives in open defiance of prison rules. This incessant battle against an authority they refused to recognize was deeply personal, reinforced at odd corners of the day by whispered threats against individual screws. “We know you, so we do,” went the line. “We know you, and we know your wee home, and that’s a nice family you have, so you do.”
The intimidation, the constant war of nerves, had worked. Rules were relaxed, education classes permitted, discipline handed over to IRA commanders within the prison itself. There were even rumours that at least one child had been conceived during one of the weekly visits, furniture stacked against the open back of the interview booth, the warder dismissed with an oath.
These, Connolly knew, had been small local victories, the stuff of street ballads and the huge end-of-terrace murals that decorated the maze of streets off the Falls Road. In the mid-seventies, though, the special category status had been withdrawn for all new prisoners. Henceforth, said Whitehall, all Republican prisoners were to be treated in exactly the same way as any other criminal. They were to do menial prison work. They were to wear regulation prison uniform. Many of the men had refused, lying naked under a single blanket in the H-blocks, rejecting the system, preserving their precious identity.
Over the next two years, the situation had worsened. Warders beat the prisoners. The prisoners, in response, wrecked their cells. The cells were emptied of everything but a blanket and a mattress, the prisoners refusing to step out to wash or defecate, smearing the walls with their own excreta, providing the world outside with a series of lank-haired, Christ-like images, the ultimate symbols of Republic suffering.
It hadn’t worked. Whitehall refused to concede a return to special category status. And so plans were laid for a hunger strike. A first strike was called off after apparent concessions by the authorities. The concessions proved illusory. Then, in March 1981, a second hunger strike had begun, a two-week interval separating each fresh striker.
Two months later, the first hunger striker, Bobby Sands, had died. A hundred thousand mourners attended his burial. The world was appalled. The IRA waited for the expected concessions. Nothing happened. By October, ten men were dead, the victims of a test of political will, not the small bitter encounters between the screws and their grim-faced charges, but a grand, set-piece battle conducted on the front pages of newspapers all over the world. It was a battle the Republicans had to win, fought on territory of their own choosing, against a British Prime Minister whose beliefs and language were no less absolute than their own.
The demands of the hunger strikers were clearly spelled out and well understood, but the battle itself became quickly more important than any specific list of grievances. To stand back, to refuse negotiations, to do absolutely nothing while ten men starved to death showed a certain chill courage. And although each death continued to produce world-wide condemnation, propaganda coups of considerable proportions, Republican leaders were uncomfortably aware that ten more graves in Milltown Cemetery was a very curious kind of victory. The hunger strikers had wagered their lives against a Brit capitulation over their precious demands. They will, went the rationale, they must, give in. But the handful of concessions they’d finally wrung from Whitehall were hardly worth the lives of the strikers who’d died. It was, the leadership quietly agreed, a defeat.
The group on stage paused for a moment and Connolly heard a throat clearing in the tannoy.
“Mr Connolly,” a voice boomed, “a taxi for Mr Connolly.”
Connolly looked round, surprised. Mairead had said nothing about leaving the club. He stayed put for a moment or two, fingering his glass, dry-mouthed. Then a figure appeared at the door, a boy of about seventeen, jeans and a T-shirt, short black hair. He peered into the gloom and saw Connolly at once. He beckoned him towards the door. Connolly felt himself getting up. He left his glass on the table, most of the lager untouched. He stepped outside, through the wire mesh cage, out into the night.
There was a car on a patch of wasteland across the road, an old Cortina. There was a man at the wheel. Someone else beside him. The back door hinged open. Connolly crossed the road and got in, the youth beside him. The car smelled of roll-ups, and someone’s dog. The door closed.
The man beside the driver turned round. It was difficult to be sure under the street lamps, but he looked about thirty. He had a thin moustache and wore dark glasses. He held out his hand.
“You’ll have a driving licence?”
Connolly, off guard, nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
The man said nothing, his hand still outstretched. A big hand. Deep calluses and bitten nails. Connolly fumbled in his pocket, produced a wallet, and extracted his driving licence. The man in the front scrutinized it under the light in the glove compartment.
“29 Mons Crescent? Carshalton?” he queried.
Connolly nodded. It was his mother’s address. He hadn’t bothered to have it changed since moving to Belfast. The man in the front pocketed the driving lic
ence. Connolly looked at the back of his head.
“Why do you want it?”
The man didn’t turn round. “Be nice to know where to find you,” he said, “if you ever leave that other place of yours.”
“What place of mine?”
The man turned round. The smile didn’t suit him. “Up by the University,” he said, “number seventeen.”
They drove for an hour or so, out west, along the motorway. Connolly, whose knowledge of Northern Ireland was mainly confined to Belfast, was soon lost. They travelled in near silence, no conversation, the merest whisper of music from the radio. Deep in the country, the car slowed, and turned left. A minor road, no traffic, a farmhouse or cottage every mile or so. Finally, the car drew to a halt. The driver flashed his headlights twice, peering ahead into the darkness. Connolly saw no response, no answering blink of light, but the driver grunted just the same, engaged gear, drove another quarter of a mile, then pulled sharply right, bumping along a narrow track, flanked by dry stone walls. It was raining now. Only one of the wipers worked. The car stopped outside a low, single-storey building. There was a light on inside. Connolly exchanged glances with the youth beside him. The youth nodded, a gesture that seemed to suggest they’d arrived.
Outside the car, the darkness smelled of manure, and tractor oil, and warm hay. The rain had thinned to a fine drizzle. The ground was soft underfoot. Connolly was escorted to the door of the cottage. Away to the left, he could see the dim outline of a barn, modern, corrugated iron walls and roof. There was a leak somewhere from a gutter, the steady drip-drip of rain onto wet mud. The front door of the cottage opened, and he heard voices. Someone’s name. Padraig. He walked towards the oblong of light, and stepped inside. Only the passenger in the front of the car, the man with his licence, entered with him, pausing briefly before stepping back outside, into the darkness.
The room was small, low ceilinged, bare plastered walls, deep set windows, stone floor, and a one-bar electric fire in the open hearth. Sitting at a long, wooden table was a man in his forties, open white shirt, dark trousers. He had a spare, pale face, grey – almost colourless – eyes, and a slightly clerical manner. His hair was dark, parted carefully on one side. He held himself curiously erect, the posture of a teacher or a bank manager, a man with responsibilities and a certain self-esteem. He was a stranger in the room, wholly alien, a man from elsewhere. He didn’t look remotely agricultural.
He glanced up at Connolly. No warmth. No welcome.
“Dermot?” Connolly ventured.
The man smiled thinly and shook his head. “No.”
Connolly nodded and said nothing. The man told him to sit down. He did so. Someone else appeared from the room next door. Jeans and an old leather jacket. About twenty-five. A soft voice. Somewhere west.
“You’ll be taking tea with us?”
“Please.”
“Milk? Sugar?”
“Both, please.”
The man at the table extended his hands, intertwining his long, thin, white fingers. His voice was as cold as his manner.
“There’s reasons why we asked you here,’ he said briskly. “We thank you for coming.”
“Pleasure,” Connolly said drily.
“You’ll return afterwards. You’ll be taken back.”
“Thank you.”
“But you’ll be saying nothing.”
“No.”
There was a brief pause, the point underlined with the sharpest of glances.
“You understand?”
“Perfectly.”
The man behind the table nodded. He fingered a small mole beneath his left ear, saying nothing, and Connolly began to think seriously about where he came from, what he really wanted. The man was clearly highly placed. His whole manner, the way he sat, his tone of voice, brooked no argument.
“Well?” he said at last.
Connolly, nonplussed, gazed at him.
“Well what?”
“What do you have for us?” He paused. “Danny’s girl talks of a man called Leeson. You know a man called Leeson?”
Connolly studied him carefully, trying to decide exactly where to begin, what to say, what not to say. He’d been anticipating this conversation since Christmas Eve, not quite this setting, not quite this man, but the same opening query. Who’s Leeson? In one sense, without much prompting, he could explain it all: the man’s position, his access to the Foreign Office, his contacts in the diplomatic world, his seat in the Establishment’s Upper Circle. He could talk about his own relationship with Leeson, his foibles, his weaknesses, his fondness for good conversation, and fine wine, and unlimited helpings of interesting sex. He could even throw open the whole of it, his contempt for his political masters, his alcoholism, and the fact that he was ill. In the event, though, he did none of these things.
“You should meet him,” he said carefully.
“Why?”
“Because you might find him interesting.”
“Why?”
Connolly shrugged. “I can’t imagine,” he said, “except that I’m here.”
The other man nodded, accepting the logic of the conversation. The tea arrived, two mugs. They sat steaming on the table between them. The other man ignored them, not taking his eyes off Connolly.
“Your name,” he said, “it’s an Irish name.”
“It is.”
“Are you Irish?”
“Third generation. My great-grandfather was a butcher. In Clonmel.”
“But you follow events?”
“It’s my job.”
“You’re a teacher.”
“I lecture,” Connolly smiled, trying to warm the atmosphere, trying to melt the ice around this man. “Events are my speciality. What they meant then. What they mean now. What they’ve done to us all in between.” He paused. “We Brits call it history.”
“A loose term.”
I agree.
The other man smiled for the first time, a slight inclination of his head, point made, touché. Connolly reached for one of the mugs of tea. The other man’s hand closed over his, an almost apologetic gesture, warmer than Connolly might have anticipated, taking the mug for himself, an act of restoration. Connolly looked at it. It was block-stencilled with the figure of a man with a long-handled scythe, green against the white china. It was the kind of mug you might pick up in a craft shop. Connolly looked up again, smiling an apology, sipping sweet tea from the other mug, glad of the warmth, happy to let the other man make the running again.
“This friend of yours …” he began.
Connolly nodded. “Leeson,” he said.
“How well do you know him?”
“Quite well.”
“Well enough to … arrange a meeting?”
“Certainly.”
The other man nodded. “And would that be in our interests?”
“I’ve no idea.”
The other man nodded. A plate of biscuits had appeared. Connolly tried one. Rich tea. Very stale. He glanced at his watch. Mairead had promised he’d be back by ten. It was nearly quarter to nine. He looked at the other man, and extended his hand.
“You haven’t told me your name,” he said.
The other man reached for his mug and drained it slowly, putting it down between them, winding the conversation backwards, ignoring Connolly’s question.
“If you teach history …” he mused, “you’ll know what we’re about.”
Connolly nodded. “I do,” he said.
“And you’ll know why we do what we do.”
“Yes.”
“Is that the same as saying you sympathize?” He looked up. “Or am I going too fast for you?”
Connolly hesitated a moment. The question had preoccupied him for several years. Meeting Mairead, getting to know her, had sharpened but not resolved it. Soon, he knew, he’d have to form a view. He frowned.
“You think it can work?” he said. “All this?”
“All what?”
“The gun. The bullet
. The bomb.”
The other man shrugged. “Of course.”
“You’re that sure?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The other man looked at him a moment. His elbows were on the table. His fingertips were pressed lightly together. His forehead puckered with the beginnings of a frown. A teacher, Connolly thought. Definitely a teacher. The man glanced away a moment, a gesture of slight irritation.
“It wasn’t our idea,” he said at last. “As you know, Carson reintroduced the gun. Not us.”
Connolly nodded, conceding the point. In 1912, the British had been close to granting a measure of self-government to the Irish. Lord Carson, a Protestant, had threatened a revolt in the north. A hundred thousand men marched and drilled. Twenty-five thousand guns were smuggled in. Only the First World War had averted a blood bath. Connolly leaned forward, engaged.
“But now?” he said. “What about now?”
The other man shrugged again. “We’re well armed,” he said. “Well funded. We fight because we have no choice. We’re an army. They’ll never defeat us.”
“Is that the same as winning?”
“Yes.”
The word hung in the air between them. Total conviction. Connolly leaned back in the chair. “So what do you need from me?” he said. “Why am I here?”
The other man pondered the question. “Access,” he said at last. “Leeson probably has it. If so, we need it.”
“But what do I have?”
“You?” He paused. “You have access too.”
“To what? To whom?”
The other man looked at him a moment. “Leeson,” he said at last.
“Is he that important to you?”
“He might be.”
“And what if I say no?”
Connolly leaned forward, across the table, searching for the heart of the conversation, the answer that might shape the days to come. The man said nothing. His eyes looked beyond Connolly.
There was a movement behind him. Connolly glanced round. The man with the leather jacket had reappeared from the other room. He stood by the electric fire, hands in his pockets, resting lightly on the balls of his feet. He had a quiet attentiveness Connolly recognized from a piece he’d once done for the University newspaper in Cambridge, after a crop of street assaults from the local heavies. He’d spent several evenings at a variety of unarmed combat courses, preparing a student’s guide to DIY survival. He’d watched, as ever, from the sidelines, making mental notes, taking it all in. The best of the instructors had been quiet, like this man, the lowest of profiles, the steadiest of expressions, experts in the disciplined application of extreme violence.
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