Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  “What now?” he said.

  “Open the boot.”

  Gus shook his head, disbelief. Then he got out and opened the boot. The boot was empty. Buddy got in. “Stop on the motorway once we’re out of the city,” he said. “Preferably where there’s no traffic.”

  He curled himself into a ball and Gus shut the boot. Buddy heard the slam of the driver’s door and the cough of the engine as Gus turned the ignition key. There was a smell of exhaust, and then they were moving again, slowly at first, and then faster, back onto the dual carriageway. Buddy felt the roundabout come and go, then the car moving at speed, Gus shifting down into overdrive, the tyres drumming on the road, the darkness almost total, a familiar sense of isolation, less than twelve hours old. After a minute or so, the car began to slow again. Then Buddy felt a change of road surface as it pulled over onto the hard shoulder, and stopped. He heard Gus get out. He listened to his footsteps on the road. The exhaust smell was back, and he was glad of the fresh air when Gus opened the boot again.

  “OK?” Gus said.

  Buddy looked at him. “Fine,” he said, getting out and shaking the stiffness from his limbs. “Where were we?”

  Back in the car, Buddy told Gus about Dublin, the offer from the Irish charity, the trip across with Jude, the drive to the middle of nowhere, his wife bumping away in the back of an ambulance, God knows where, at the point of a gun. Gus followed the story without comment, munching his way through the pork pies, shaking the crumbs of pastry from his lap when they settled briefly on the stretch of dual carriageway heading east, towards Chichester. When Buddy had finished, he glanced across at him. He’d made it sound like a game of forfeits.

  “So what did you have to do?” Gus said. “To get her back again?”

  Buddy hesitated, regretting that he hadn’t managed to string the story out longer. Just beyond Chichester, at Goodwood, there was an airfield. There were charter companies there, people who’d fly you places for the right price. He’d used it before, getting down to Falmouth in a hurry, a repair job on a tanker that had run aground on a shoal and damaged its rudder. Only on that occasion someone else had picked up the tab. He looked across at Gus. In half an hour or so he’d have to ask him for a sizeable cheque. He owed him at least a little of the truth.

  “They had a job,” he said, “they wanted me to do it.”

  Gus frowned, wondering where the Special Branch fitted in, beginning at last to understand Buddy’s reticence. “Underwater?” he said.

  Buddy nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Big job?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Difficult?”

  “Very.”

  “Dodgy?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a pause. Question and answer. Gus frowned again, no closer to the truth. “You gonna tell me,” he said, “what it is?”

  “Was.”

  “You’ve done it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go OK?”

  Buddy said nothing. Then he smiled. “No,” he said softly, “I fucked it up.”

  They got to Goodwood at two fifteen. The airfield lay inside a motor racing circuit, a wide ribbon of concrete that twisted and looped through the flat Sussex countryside. They drove in through a tunnel, under the racetrack, parking beside a low line of Portacabins. Gus wound down the window. Buddy could hear the howl of high performance engines, away to the left, near the pits area. Ahead of them were a couple of hangars and a wooden control tower. There were small private aircraft everywhere, parked in neat lines. The windsock beside the grass runway was limp. The place looked dead. Gus finished the last of the light ale and stowed the bottle under the dashboard. “What now?” he said.

  Buddy reached for the door. “We hire a plane,” he said.

  They walked slowly along the line of Portacabins. Each one housed a business, either charter or a flying school. Three were closed, yet more victims of the recession, but a door at the end opened to Buddy’s knock. He stepped inside. A big man sat behind a desk. He was wearing blue overalls. He had curly, close-cropped hair. His hands were huge, toying with a newly sharpened pencil. There were line drawings on the desk, a pile of them. Even upside down, Buddy could recognize the familiar lines of a Spitfire. The man looked up at him, a direct appraising stare, not unfriendly.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “I need to charter a plane.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Where to?”

  “Southern Ireland.”

  “Whereabouts in Southern Ireland?”

  “Waterville.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “South-west. Kerry.”

  The man smiled, and looked at his watch. He picked up a phone. He had a brief conversation. The details sounded mechanical. He put the phone down and reached for a map, and a calculator. He did some measurements, rule of thumb, using the pencil on the map. He wrote down a column of figures. He added the figures up. Then he smiled for the second time.

  “£490,” he said. “Plus an overnight for yours truly.”

  Buddy looked at him for a long moment. “Are you serious?” he said. “You’ll do it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “Money up front, of course.”

  Buddy nodded, looking out of the window. Gus was outside, standing on the grass, his hands in his pockets, still eating the crisps. Buddy grinned.

  “OK,” he said, “done.”

  Ingle stood on the beach, two in the afternoon, waiting for the tide to go out. He had a very clear image in his mind of the moment the diver had thrown the thing away. It was black, plastic probably. It had a long cable with something on the end of it. It looked like a radio of some kind, and he’d let it fall into a white plastic bag, and wound the bag tight at the top, and whirled it around a couple of times, and let it go. Ingle had watched it rise and fall, marking the splash, lining up the spreading circle of white bubbles with marks on the Round Tower, away to his right. Looking at it now, the tide already half way out, he reckoned it was no more than a metre or so from the water’s edge. Ten minutes, he thought. Fifteen at the most.

  Ingle dug his hands deep into his pockets, looking for something to eat. The beach was nearly empty now, the crowds gone. There’d be no more warships today, no more flags, no more excitement. The big carriers were already out in the Channel somewhere. Soon, tomorrow maybe, or the next day, there’d be more farewells. They were talking about the QEII, and the Canberra. They’d be sending the big fleet tankers, and the new Type 21 destroyers, and anything else they could get their hands on. For a country that had trouble keeping the trains on time, or delivering a letter the next day, it was an impressive performance. All the more reason, he supposed, why someone had taken so much trouble to try to wreck it all.

  Ingle found a packet of Polos and slipped one into his mouth. Kee, he knew, had sealed off the yacht across the harbour. He’d managed to patch himself through on the local force radio. He’d asked for forensic and a proper scenes of crime search. Odds on, they’d find traces of explosive, and probably a pile of gear as well. The job had obviously been a bit special. It would have needed careful planning, professional skills. Thus the diver. Quite how they’d recruited him, he didn’t yet know. The article was part of it, had to be, the poor bastard on his uppers, his wife in a mess, an open door for the boys from Belfast. Over the radio, he’d issued a description – height, build, colour of hair, age, the usual details. Under normal circumstances, he knew they’d be lucky to find him. But Portsmouth was built on an island, only three roads out of the city, and if the man was silly enough to move at once, then they might – conceivably – get a result.

  Ingle frowned, staring at the water. A passing ferry had sent a line of waves up the beach. As the water surged back, he’d glimpsed a small, black object, about the size of a decent box of cigars. It was covered again now, but he’d fixed the location in his mind’s eye and he glanced at his watch
, toying with getting his feet wet again, then changing his mind as the last of the Polo dissolved, and his fingers dug into his pocket for the rest of the tube. Lunch, he thought wistfully, retreating up the beach and finding a patch of dry pebbles.

  Buddy took off from Goodwood at half past two, climbing steeply over the housing estates and market gardens that separated the airfield from the city of Chichester. The pilot, who’d finally introduced himself as Rick, had settled on a twin-engined plane, a six-seater Seneca. The plane added another £250 to the price, but it had the speed and range to make the west coast of Ireland by nightfall, and Gus hadn’t grumbled at the extra cost. On the contrary, he’d written the cheque on the spot, and given Buddy another four hundred quid cash for “expenses”. What the latter was supposed to include, Buddy hadn’t enquired, but Gus had already asked enough questions to know that his mate was in deep trouble, and when they said goodbye, beside the aircraft, he’d put his arm round him.

  “Ring,” he’d said, “for fuck’s sake.’

  Buddy had nodded, telling him to stay at the cottage as long as he liked, but Gus had simply smiled, saying nothing, watching him climb into the plane, alongside the pilot, pulling the door shut behind him. The last Buddy had seen of him, as they turned onto the runway after the engine run-ups and the power checks, was an arm raised in salute. He knows I’m not coming back, Buddy thought as the plane lifted off. He knows I’m away for a while.

  Now, level at three thousand feet, the airspeed indicator showing a steady 145 knots, the pilot swung out over the Isle of Wight. Buddy, with the course already plotted on the map on his knee, queried the detour, and the pilot glanced across at him, a briefly reassuring hand on his arm.

  “Task Force,” a voice said in his earphones, “something to tell the kids.”

  Buddy looked at him for a moment, nodding his assent, then peered forward through the Perspex, the sun in his eyes. The long curve of Sandown Bay was already sliding under the nose of the plane. They crossed the south-east corner of the island, running down over Ventnor, the pier, the soft rise of Niton Down, and then the nose dipped and the plane began to lose height as they left the island behind them, off to the right, the sheer cliffs that ran out to the Needles clearly visible.

  The pilot dipped a wing and eased the plane into a banking turn, and Buddy gazed out, down to the left, seeing nothing at first, not quite sure how high they were, how low, then suddenly the turn tightened a little, the plane standing on one wing, and there she was, Invincible, the weekend’s waking nightmare, bigger than he’d anticipated, closer, moving at speed now, the Sea Harriers echeloned down her flight deck, the Sea Kings nesting in their carefully painted white circles, the water foaming back from her bows, the big spreading “V” of her wake, her private furrow in this otherwise empty ocean.

  The pilot went round for a second time, looking for Hermes, but finding nothing, and then they were back again, a little higher, flying a farewell circuit around the new carrier. Buddy was transfixed by the sight, remembering the rough touch of her hull, the big ochre wall he’d found in the dark, the obscene little pimple he’d attached, safe now, unless they played games with the sonar frequencies and touched the thing off by accident. He twisted in his seat, keeping the carrier in sight, wanting a final glimpse, a final picture for the years to come. The plane levelled off, and picked up the heading chinagraphed on the map on Buddy’s knee, but Buddy was still looking back, still had the ship in sight. Already, a mile distant, she looked like a toy in the ocean. There was a crackle in his earphones, and the pilot came through again.

  “Make your day?” he said.

  Buddy nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said, smiling.

  They droned west, over Dorset. They hit the Bristol Channel near Ilfracombe, the plump green cliffs of North Devon folding into the sea. Then the land had gone, and there was nothing but this huge expanse of sea, and Buddy knew that he’d be safe. He’d no idea where the man on the beach had come from, who he represented, what kind of powers he had. But he knew that every event had a consequence, that nothing was for free, and that his own crazy flirtation with law and order had come to an abrupt end. They were out to get him. That was their job. They were probably very good at it. And he didn’t blame them in the slightest.

  He sat back in the co-pilot’s seat, the sun warm on his face, his senses dulled by the steady beat of the engines. A minute or so later, to the amusement of the pilot, he was asleep.

  Davidson heard about the Portsmouth incident at half past five. He took the call at his desk in the Cabinet Office. There was a small television set in the corner, installed against his better judgement, and he was watching the lead story on the news. The pictures from the south coast were excellent. The Prime Minister, he knew, would be pleased. The crowds, in particular, had exceeded expectations. The selfless pursuit of a democratic principle did, after all, have a human face.

  Davidson lifted the phone. The afternoon, so far, had been a good deal less bloody than he’d anticipated. He gazed at the screen, recognizing the Director-General’s voice. The D-G, a model of self-control, talked for two minutes. Davidson listened carefully, watching the big carriers disappear into the mist. The D-G came to an end. Davidson lifted a pencil and made a note on the pad at his elbow. The man, as ever, was right. In the world of Intelligence, his experience was unequalled.

  “I agree,” Davidson said drily, “publicity wouldn’t help.’

  *

  Buddy awoke four thousand feet above Kenmare, a small market town at the head of the Kenmare River. The sun was low now, out to the west, where the mountains of Kerry rolled down to the sea. The mountains cast huge shadows. The light was soft, pooling in the long valleys. Buddy gazed down. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

  They flew down the river, gradually losing height. The river began to widen, the water a deep blue, shading to indigo in the shadows. Ahead, where the river broadened into an estuary, he could see the last long fingers of land pushing out into the Atlantic. He glanced down at the map on his knee. To the south, across the water, lay County Cork, more mountains, tiny islands off shore, sudden outcrops of rock, bitten by the wind and the long swells rolling in from the ocean.

  The pilot reached forward and throttled back, pulling the plane into a long, slow banking turn. They were out beyond the last promontory now, and looking back, Buddy could see a series of bays, crescents of white sand, pastures of sudden green, low stone walls casting long shadows in the last of the sun. Directly below them, as the turn began to tighten, Buddy found himself looking down at the end of the last promontory, a tumble of rock, cliffs falling sheer into the sea, tiny pockets of tussock and lichen, seagulls everywhere. His finger found the promontory on the map, and he glanced at the pilot, seeking confirmation. The pilot glanced down quickly, thumbing the button on the control column that accessed the intercom. “Lambs Head,” he confirmed. ‘We’re nearly there.”

  Buddy nodded, gazing out of the window again, watching the waves breaking on the sheer black rock, the explosions of spray and spume, the water boiling at the foot of the cliffs. This is it, he thought, the furthest west you can go, the very edge of Europe. Beyond here, out west, an immeasurable distance, lay America, the New World, Jude’s world, the world she’d so often talked about. Buddy closed his eyes a moment, thinking about it, the endless rollers, the nothingness beyond.

  The plane straightened again, and the land dropped away, a huge bay, another perfect beach, bigger this time, then a mountain, shouldering down to a carpet of fields, and beyond the mountain, a town. He consulted the map again, knowing the answer before his finger found the end of the chinagraphed line.

  “Waterville,” the voice said in his earphones, “on the nose.”

  They landed ten minutes later, a rough country strip eight miles to the north. The pilot taxied to a small hangar by a dirt road, whitewashed breeze block and rusting corrugated iron. He pulled the plane around to the west, into the prevailing wind, and shut
off the engines, one after the other. His fingers raced along the banks of switches on the panels overhead, going through the closedown checks. Buddy eased the earphones off and replaced them on the hook beside his knee. His head still drummed with the noise of the engines. He fumbled for the door. The air smelled fresh. He could taste the sea. He got out and stood on the wing. There was a faint sigh of wind off the ocean. Two hundred yards away, smoke curled from a row of coastguard cottages. He jumped off the wing and stamped the stiffness from his legs. He gazed around. He couldn’t believe it. The peace. The silence. No one had been here for a thousand years. He’d stumbled into paradise.

  They phoned for a cab to get into Waterville, making the call from one of the cottages. The cab, an ancient Toyota, arrived within minutes, from where Buddy didn’t know. He sat in the back with the pilot watching the landscape roll past, the sea off to the right, the mountains ahead. Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the Skelligs Hotel. Buddy paid the driver, and walked into reception.

  The hotel lobby was empty. He went to the desk. A girl appeared. He smiled at her. The evening had become quite unreal. He asked for Connolly. She nodded, recognizing the name at once. She lifted a phone. The pilot found a registration form and began to fill it in. A door opened. A man appeared. He was wearing jeans and a baggy sweater. He had glasses. He was looking weary. Buddy knew at once it was Connolly.

  They went through to the bar, a big shadowed room, picture windows, a view of a lake, ghostly in the last of the light. Connolly led him to a table in the corner. There was a glass of Guinness, half empty. Connolly asked him what he wanted to drink. He shook his head.

  “Where is she?” he said.

  Connolly looked at him for a moment, then suggested they sat down. Buddy shook his head. There was a silence. Connolly sat down, reaching for the glass. Buddy closed his eyes, counted to three. Then he, too, sat down. “She’s dead,” he said quietly.