by Declan Burke
‘For shame, Tom. Anyway,’ he nodded at the paperback, ‘Rendezvous at Thira is set on Santorini, during the Second World War. There’s a British spy on his way to the Greek mainland from Crete, the Germans get wind of it, they run him to earth on the island. But they can’t find him.’
‘Go on.’
‘The Germans, they round up a crowd of kids, threaten to shoot them all if the locals don’t hand over the spy.’
‘Shit.’
‘Except then the kids are bundled into this tiny church, which is set on fire.’
‘Fuck me,’ I said.
‘Can do,’ said Martin. ‘Although it looks like I could be waiting a while for my turn.’
SIX
Shay Govern opened his hotel-room door dressed in a white towelling bathrobe and a Red Sox baseball cap, still chewing.
‘I’ve got jet-lag,’ he said. ‘What’s your excuse?’
It was early. I’d got to the Reception desk at the Shelbourne just after 7.30 a.m. and asked the guy in his natty purple hat to put me through to Shay Govern’s room, it was urgent.
Shay told me to come on up, he was still eating breakfast.
Now he waved me through. ‘There’s coffee in the pot, Tom. Help yourself. Or do you need to eat?’
He went back to his breakfast, grilled kidneys and sausage and toast, orange juice and coffee. His table was in the bay window overlooking St Stephen’s Green, the sun streaming through. I was still struggling to cope with too many vodka-tonics and about four hours sleep the night before. The smell and sight of the grilled kidneys turned my stomach.
‘Coffee will do it,’ I said, taking the seat opposite him. He poured me a cup and gestured to the sugar and milk, apologizing for the fact that there was no creamer.
‘I take it black,’ I said, and sat back in the seat, angling myself so that my line of sight bisected the messy plate of kidney and sausage and the daggering sunlight.
‘So you’re early, right?’ he said. ‘Or did I get the time wrong?’
‘No, I’m early. But listen, I need to apologize because I can’t travel this morning. I got a call late last night, a commission I can’t turn down from a client I’ve had for years, and the deadline’s this afternoon. But I can follow on once it’s filed, fly up to Derry airport. I should catch up with you by eight, nine o’clock at the latest.’
‘No problem, Tom.’ He forked home a mouthful of grilled kidney. ‘You could have just called, though. There was no need to come see me.’
‘Actually there was. Is, I mean.’
‘Oh, yeah? What’s up?’
‘Well, I wanted to confirm, in person, that I’m taking on the book.’
‘Great news, Tom. Carol will be delighted to hear it. Of course, it’s all contingent on her approval, you understand that.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘But I’d be very surprised if you two didn’t hit it off right away. She’s an amazing woman.’
‘I’m looking forward to meeting her. But Mr Govern, there’s—’
‘Call me Shay, Tom. I’m not usually that formal with people this early in a hotel room.’
‘Sure. Well, I wanted to talk to you about this personal situation I need to deal with. As in, a financial situation.’
‘Right.’
‘So I was hoping, and this is presuming that Carol gives us the green light, that we click together, like you say, that—’
‘An advance, right?’ He laid the knife and fork on his plate, crossed with the tines down. ‘A retainer.’
‘Something like that, yeah.’
‘Before we even sign contracts?’
‘Sure, it sounds off. But what I’m asking for is a post-dated cheque. For next week, say. If it turns out Carol doesn’t want to work with me, then you just cancel it.’
‘So this financial situation, it’s not an immediate one.’
‘No.’
‘And if I cut you a cheque right now you’re not going to run off to the race-track for the afternoon.’
‘I’m not much of a gambler, Mr— Shay. I never really got the thrill of making bookies rich.’
‘Richer,’ he said. Then the right corner of his mouth twitched, and he relaxed. ‘Me neither,’ he said. He gave his hands a cursory wipe with the cotton napkin and dropped it on to his plate. ‘Tell you what, Tom. You tell me why you need the money right now and if I think it’s a good enough reason I’ll write you a cheque for the first five grand. That sound fair?’
It was a lot fairer than I’d thought likely.
‘Sounds reasonable to me.’
‘OK. Shoot.’
If you want to be cynical about it you could say that writing a post-dated cheque for five grand wasn’t exactly a grand gesture for a man worth ninety million bucks, give or take, on paper at least.
Still, I thought it was pretty decent of him.
And now things were getting a little bit tangled.
The last thing I wanted was to betray Jack Byrne, as dirty as his scheme was, mainly because Jack had pulled in a few favours with some of his ex-colleagues when I was still trying to clear my father’s name.
I’d said as much to Martin the night before, when we came to the conclusion that the similarities between Gerard Smyth’s eye-witness account of a war crime on Delphi and Sebastian Devereaux’s Rendezvous at Thira made for a remarkable coincidence.
On the basis that it wasn’t a coincidence, that left us with two options. One, Gerard Smyth was a pathetic fantasist, an old man so desperate for attention that he’d ripped off a tragedy from some forgotten thriller and passed it off as his own experience.
Two, Gerard Smyth was genuine, and Sebastian Devereaux was the one who’d appropriated a real-life tragedy and used it for a novel.
Martin, being a fan of Eoin McNamee and James Ellroy and David Peace, found it all fascinating.
I took his point, and sure, the second option could make for some very interesting conversations with Carol Devereaux at some point in the near future. But I was about as interested in the literary implications as Jack Byrne. Because Jack didn’t care if the story was true or not, if Gerard Smyth was a senile old fart or the last living witness to a horrific crime. All Jack cared about was Smyth’s story standing up strong enough to imply that Shay Govern had somehow benefited from the massacre of six young children, and persuade Govern of the merits of shovelling hush money into Jack’s pockets.
The trouble there, leaving aside for a moment the morality or otherwise of helping Jack to sting Shay Govern, was that it was now in my best interests, or Emily’s interests to be precise, that I protect Shay Govern’s name.
‘So that’s us,’ Shay said, handing me the cheque and recapping what looked to be an unusually understated Montblanc fountain pen. ‘Five thousand euro, post-dated and made out to Emily Noone, as requested. Don’t spend it all in the one shop.’
‘I really appreciate that,’ I said, folding the cheque and tucking it into my wallet.
‘OK, so I’ll see you later this evening on Delphi. Although, Tom, you might want to double-check the ferry times. I don’t know how late they run.’
‘Will do. Listen, Shay, there’s one more thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Jack Byrne.’
‘Jack? What about him?’
‘I know him, we’ve worked together before. Anyway, he came to see me yesterday evening. Said you hired him to find an old friend of yours.’
A bleak smile. ‘Friend would be putting it a bit strong. So what’d he say? He told me yesterday morning he reckoned he had a good lead on the guy.’
‘Well, he’s found him. Gerard Smyth.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘Yeah. Jack brought me to meet him.’
‘Sounds nice. Meanwhile the cheapo fuck’s charging me by the day.’ Govern pushed back his chair, stood up from the table and cinched his bathrobe tighter. ‘Where’s my phone?’
‘Hold on a second, Mr Govern. There’s a bit mor
e.’
‘Spit it out, Tom.’
‘Jack had Gerard Smyth tell me his story. About this massacre on Delphi back in 1940. A Nazi war crime, he’s calling it. Six kids burned to death in a church.’
He was nodding as I spoke. ‘Yep,’ he said.
I’d wanted him to rubbish the story, or say he’d never heard of it. But he just stood there with his hands loosely tucked into the pockets of the fluffy bathrobe, waiting for me to continue.
‘So Jack’s under the impression,’ I said, ‘that you left for the States not long after it happened.’
‘That’s a matter of historical fact, Tom. Is that all?’
‘Not really. Jack’s running a theory that the two things are connected. That you left because of what happened on Delphi.’
‘Come on, Tom. Cut to the chase. What’s Jack’s plan?’
‘Well, with the gold mine and everything, the publicity, Jack reckons you might be happier if the story stayed buried.’
He was nodding again, his eyes flinty. ‘A clown, this guy.’
‘Who, Jack?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I warn you now, Mr Govern, that he’s very serious.’
‘Well, I do appreciate the warning, Tom, and I told you already to quit calling me Mr Govern.’ He took one hand out of the pocket of his bathrobe to tug on his nose. ‘And our friend Jack can be as serious as he likes, but he’s still a goddamn clown.’
‘So he’s got it wrong.’
‘Wrong?’ He considered that. ‘Until I hear what Gerard Smyth has to say, if our friend Jack ever brings him around, I can’t say for sure. But the broad strokes? What you’re telling me now?’ He shook his head. ‘No. He’s right on the money.’
A man worth ninety million dollars, on paper at least, is not put together like everyone else. If he was, we’d all be billionaires.
He’s got something most people don’t, like a relentless drive or a ruthless streak a mile wide. Or luck. Or maybe his brain isn’t wired right, and the only people he feels comfortable with are dead and famous enough to get their portraits on rectangular pieces of paper.
For Shay Govern, the intangible was survivor’s guilt.
Aged fifteen, he’d been considered too old to qualify as a child.
‘So they round up these kids,’ he said, ‘and they line them up in front of the church.’ He was sitting on the bottom of the unmade bed, legs splayed, his feet in fluffy white flip-flops, horn-nailed toes peeking through. It was his feet he was addressing, not me. ‘What freaked me out at the time, still does, I get nightmares on and off, night terrors …’ He paused then, looked up. ‘These days I’d go straight into therapy, right?’ He tried a grin but it didn’t take, slid away. ‘Not a lot of therapists around back then.’
I was guessing that this was the story Iggy had heard in the confession box.
‘Shay …’
‘No, it’s right you should know. This way, if Jack Byrne starts cutting up, you’re ahead of the game.’
‘That’s not my issue.’
‘You were going to hear all this anyway, Tom, once you were locked in and committed to the book.’ He tried a smile this time, a sad one, and this time it stuck. ‘Carol has her own reasons for wanting it written,’ he said, ‘and I have my own. And this is mine. We on the same page now?’
‘It’s your call. Mind if I record this?’
‘Knock yourself out.’ He waited until I’d got the digital recorder out, then started talking again, in the slightly stilted way people do when they’re aware their words are being preserved for posterity. ‘So yeah, I was telling you about what was spooky, I mean at the time. It’s these kids, OK, they’re worried, standing there in their nightclothes, it’s the middle of the night, they’re shivering – but it’s not like they’re terrified. Not like they’d be if they were you or me. I mean, sure, they’re crying, some of them calling out for their mothers, what you’d expect from kids, they’ve been dragged out of their beds and lined up facing these guys wearing balaclavas. Right? Pointing these big machine guns at them. You’re three years old, OK, but you still have a pretty good idea this isn’t the way things are supposed to be.’
‘So they’re scared but they’re not terrified?’
‘I guess it’s because they don’t know enough to take it too seriously. Like, they’re kids. Even if they’d done something wrong they don’t realize yet, the way it sometimes goes when you’re a kid, they’ll get a smack on the ass, maybe a crack across the ear. Right?’
‘I suppose, yeah.’
‘You’re five years old, six or seven – you’re not expecting at any time to get ripped apart by machine guns. I mean, one of them, one of the little boys, he pisses himself, he’s standing there with a puddle at his feet, it’s steaming because it’s so cold – this is when he starts bawling. Because now he knows he’s in trouble, pissing himself in public in front of the church, all the grown-ups looking on.’
I’d heard some strange stories in my time, conducted a couple of interviews that qualified as fully bizarre. But sitting in a suite of the Shelbourne listening to a millionaire talking about a kid fouling himself in front of a church during a Nazi massacre on Delphi Island in Lough Swilly, Donegal, on the night of 4 April, 1940 pretty much topped the bill.
His account was consistent with virtually everything Gerard Smyth had said. Which meant, of course, that it also tallied with Martin’s bullet-point account of Sebastian Devereaux’s Rendezvous at Thira. German soldiers, coming ashore from a submarine in pursuit of a British spy. A group of children herded into a church, which was then set on fire.
‘So we’re talking an actual war crime,’ I said.
‘What we’re talking about,’ Govern said, ‘is kids being murdered.’
‘And this is the story you want to tell.’
‘That’s right.’
All evidence to the contrary, Shay Govern was insane.
I said, ‘Mr Govern, I’m from Sligo. Originally.’
‘Oh, yeah? So we’re both from the northwest. Originally.’
‘Sure. But what I’m saying is, if a Nazi death squad had come in off a submarine and massacred Irish children in 1940, in Donegal, I’d probably have heard about it before now. That kind of thing, it gets talked about.’
‘It was covered up,’ he said. He was looking at me now like he didn’t want to be the guy who had to point out the straw in my hair. ‘Obviously.’
‘Who’d want to cover that up?’
‘Jesus, something like this? Who wouldn’t?’
‘Well, I’m thinking the parents for starters.’
‘You’re making it too personal, Tom. Not factoring in the times, the place.’
‘You said it yourself, children were murdered. I’d imagine that was pretty personal for the parents, the families.’
‘Sure, yeah. Except this is 1940, right? April. The Germans are blitzing through Europe, Churchill’s over in London sweating on the Nazis crashing in through Ireland, his back door. Especially with De Valera cocking a snoot, telling Churchill to take a running jump, eight hundred years of oppression, no way the Brits are getting back in even if it’s to keep us safe from Hitler’s boys. Right?’
‘That’s hardly the—’
‘No, wait. The kids get murdered on Delphi, OK. What’s De Valera going to do, tell the world how the Germans can just swan in any time they feel like it, shoot whoever they want? Next thing you know Churchill himself would’ve been steaming up the Swilly, planting Union Jacks all over. And then there’s the Germans. Why would they go shouting about an atrocity like that? So Churchill spreads himself a little thin taking back Ireland, the ports? Maybe. But is that worth crapping on the Irish-American lobby in Washington, get them screaming about the murdering Hun, with Roosevelt already doing his level best to stay out of Europe?’
The problem I had, the main problem, was squaring away what sounded like the ravings of a lunatic with the fact that the guy had made himself ninety million dollars.
Not many loonies get to amass that kind of fortune from construction and mining. Inherit it, sure. Happens all the time. But I had to presume Shay Govern was a hard-headed businessman. And that kind of man isn’t generally given to flights of fancy, especially when they involve incriminating himself in the cold-blooded murder of children.
He was eighty-one years old, sure. But the guy was still as sharp as his suits.
And anyway, why would he want to make up something like …
‘So what do you say, Tom? Think you can handle it?’
‘If it’s been covered up this long, it’ll be a tough one to prove.’
‘That’s where Gerard Smyth comes in. Jack tell you where this guy can be found?’
Shay Govern, fifteen years old, slipped on board a merchant ship in Belfast and arrived in the United States of America on 15 August, 1940. Gets processed and tells them he’s eighteen, otherwise they won’t let him in. He’s a minor, unaccompanied.
No one waiting to vouch for him, to say Shay’s their own, they’ll put a roof over his head. So he gets put in uniform, sent off for basic training.
‘Which wasn’t the plan but not really an issue, not at the time,’ Shay said. ‘It’s a job. And there’s no way Roosevelt’s going to war. Like, no one’s even heard of Pearl Harbor at this point.’
Shay, he was already talking. I was there with my digital recorder, so he decided to have a fresh pot of coffee sent up to his suite, then settled in for the long haul. Ten minutes later I was wondering whose story I’d been commissioned to tell, Sebastian Devereaux’s or Shay Govern’s.
‘So they train me up,’ he said. ‘I’m a killer, they send me to Sicily.’
Three confirmed kills on Sicily, nothing in Italy, one more in southern Germany.
‘I took a couple of bangs myself, shrapnel, but you’ll have to take my word for it. I’m too old to be showing off scars.’
‘That’s no problem.’
‘So anyway, we get back Stateside and there’s the GI Bill. Which is, I’m taking the long way round, but you asked how I got into construction.’
‘You take your time. This is all good.’
1949: Shay graduates as an engineer.
1950: Shay marries Marie.
