by Declan Burke
We ordered some sandwiches and coffee, and then I strolled across the square and up the steps for a closer look. By the time I got back Kee was already tucking into her soda bread sandwich, wolfing it down. I guessed she hadn’t eaten too regularly in the last twenty-four hours. I gave her time to finish, then said, ‘OK, you’re up.’
She’d been preparing a speech of sorts, I guess, because she went straight into it, pausing only to brush some crumbs from the corner of her mouth. ‘Do I need to mention the Official Secrets Act again?’
‘No, but well done, you’ve mentioned it anyway. Crack on.’
‘I’m serious, Tom. You need to understand that no matter what happens from here on in, it’s all under wraps. There will be no published account about anything that has happened in the last four days.’
‘What about Gerard Smyth?’
‘If he’s lucky he’ll get an obituary.’
‘Where do I stand there? Am I still a suspect?’
‘You’re still a person of interest, yes. While we’re waiting for the results of the autopsy.’
‘That’ll tell you how. Not who, or why.’
‘Depends on the how. If it involved violence, and the assailant left behind traces, we get an angle on the who. Then, maybe, the why. Unless you have any ideas, after reading his testimony, that could save us some time.’
I sucked down a mouthful of latte. It was good, sharp and bitter. ‘First tell me a little about you,’ I said. ‘More to the point, tell me about this “us”.’
She took her time, hedging this and qualifying that, context-ualizing everything, but eventually she got it out. She was a cop, all right, with the SDU, the Special Detective Unit, which specialized in counter-terrorism and counter-espionage. She almost choked on the word espionage, and needed a couple of sips of Americano to soften the blockage in her throat.
Once that was out of the way, though, it was plain sailing. A couple of years back she’d been seconded to a working group, an intelligence-aggregating unit that functioned as a kind of spider’s web composed of operatives – a little hiccup over that one – drawn from the ranks of the SDU, the Criminal Assets Bureau, the Departments of Finance and Foreign Affairs, the Coastguard, and G2, aka the Irish Army’s Directorate of Intelligence. Known to those involved as – cough – EirTel, the group didn’t officially exist. There was no structural hierarchy, and all intelligence received was filtered back through the web to the appropriate authority. The group received no direct funding, and no records or minutes were kept. EirTel, she said with only the faintest of blushes, was the ghost that kept the machine honest.
She sat back then, waiting for my reaction. The moment was crying out for Quis custodiet ipsos custodes but I’ve never been sure of the pronunciation, so instead I settled for, ‘Black ops?’
‘If called for. But more shades of grey than black.’
‘So if an old guy was running around shouting about a massacre, say, and then conveniently fell into a canal, that’d be more shades of grey than black.’
‘More black than grey, I’d say. But that wasn’t us.’
It was Jack Byrne they’d been watching, ever since he’d hacked into the Department of Social Welfare in pursuit of Gerard Smyth.
‘It raised a flag; he wasn’t particularly clever the way he went about it. And Jack Byrne, his reputation precedes him.’
‘So you go after Jack.’
‘Go after,’ she said, ‘is probably putting it a bit strongly. It’s not like we have infinite resources. But yeah, the hack was traced back to source, and one of our guys data-mined Jack’s email accounts, his online searches and so forth. Anyway, long story short, Gerard Smyth was one of the names that popped up. When that went back into the mixer, red flags were popping up all over.’
‘Because he’s contacted the embassies.’
‘His submissions were officially logged, sure. Standard practice.’
‘Logged and ignored. Well, officially ignored. Except Smyth got an unofficial visit from our friends the spooks.’
‘Which we knew nothing about, obviously.’
‘Obviously. So why the red flags?’
‘I told you. Nazi submarines and Delphi Island.’
‘I know that. I also know he made his allegations eight months ago. So how come people are suddenly taking him seriously?’
She used the tip of her forefinger to dab up three or four chunky crumbs from her plate and popped them in her mouth. ‘This is still covered by the Official Secrets Act, Tom.’
‘Go on.’
‘OK. So you know Smyth made three submissions, to the Department of Foreign Affairs and the British and German embassies. Making, like I said, serious allegations of unprovoked aggression by a foreign power.’
‘The Germans, yeah, back in 1940.’
She nodded. ‘Right now isn’t the best time for us to be squealing about German aggression.’
‘I wouldn’t imagine they’d be pleased to hear about it any time. But Smyth’s story checks out. So far I have one witness who corroborates his—’
‘This,’ she said, ‘would be a particularly bad time.’
‘How come?’
‘What do you know about international banking, Tom?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re about to learn more than you’ll ever need. Between you and me, and according to our friends in the Department of Finance, we’re fucked.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘The country, Tom. The economy. We’re running on empty and about to blow a gasket. That soft landing the politicians keep talking about? It’s not going to happen. We’re on our way down fast and this time there’s no parachute.’
She gave me the bullet points, some of which I was vaguely aware. Sub-prime mortgages and the US property bubble. The credit crunch. An Irish economy wobbling on a foundation of sand, spit and next year’s hopes. Irish banks leveraged to the hilt and beyond to German lenders, Fritz and Karl already calling in their markers. The bods in Finance on their knees with the bowls out, begging for credit extensions. The IMF on speed dial.
‘So the last thing we need right now,’ she said, ‘is some kind of diplomatic incident about Nazi atrocities giving Karl and Fritz the hump.’
‘You’re serious.’
‘Why don’t you try asking Gerard Smyth,’ she said, ‘if I’m serious.’
It made sense, of course. A perverse kind of logic. The kind that fuels your most convincing nightmares.
I sat there in the sunshine outside the café with the remains of our lunch on the table and tried to wrap my head around how normally the world went on. The tourists wandering around the square. The fly mooching along the handle of the spoon in the saucer. Watched, as if it were a movie, as Kee caught the eye of the waitress and ordered another brace of coffees. I should have been feeling something on behalf of Gerard Smyth, that most pathetic of pawns. But all I felt was stunned. No – stunned and useless, and relieved that Emily was long gone.
‘Can I take it,’ Kee said as she cupped both hands around a fresh cappuccino, ‘that we’re not flirting any more?’
She was needling me, sure, reminding me of how far out of my depth I was, and had been from the start. But if it was petty insults she was after, I was game.
‘So brass tacks,’ I said, ‘with all this crap about EirTel and shared intelligence malarkey, what you’re really telling me is that you’re working for the German banks.’
She didn’t flinch. ‘Suck it up, Tom. In six months’ time we’ll all be working for the German banks. If I was you, I’d been doing a little work on my umlauts, finding out where they go.’
I’d have plenty of spare time in which to do it, too. Given the delicacy of the situation, there was no way Shay Govern would be allowed to tell his story.
‘He can build as many gold mines as he likes,’ she said, ‘and the more the merrier. Christ, if he can find a way to tow the whole country across the Atlantic, anchor it off New York,
the guy’ll be a hero. But that story stays buried. The massacre, submarine, the gold, the whole shooting match. For now, anyway.’
‘Until our new German overlords say otherwise.’
‘Until,’ she said, ‘it no longer has the potential to disrupt any possibility of preventing the country going bankrupt and millions of lives thrown into chaos, yes.’
‘And what if he tries?’
‘We’re hoping he won’t. That he’ll be reasonable when presented with the new political paradigm.’
‘And if he isn’t reasonable?’
‘Then someone he trusts,’ she said, inclining her head at me, ‘will need to persuade him otherwise.’
‘Me? I hardly know the guy.’
‘You’re his link to Gerard Smyth, Tom. You have Smyth’s testimony, you’re the man he told his story to.’
She didn’t have to join the dots. ‘You want me to discredit Smyth.’
‘Well, you could be less …’ she searched for the word ‘… emphatic, for example, when representing the story Smyth told you. Let it be known that you might have doubts about Smyth’s mental health, or the accuracy of his memory. That you have questions you need answered, like you told me yesterday morning, that Gerard Smyth is no longer in a position to provide.’
Black ops in shades of grey.
‘So I go back to Shay Govern,’ I said, ‘and tell him sorry, it just occurred to me that Gerard Smyth was a senile fantasist.’
‘You might want to be a bit more subtle than that,’ she said. ‘But yeah, we’re talking about undermining Smyth’s story so it doesn’t stand up. At least for now.’
‘Won’t work. Govern only wants Smyth’s story to corroborate his own eye-witness account. I mean, the guy’s already told me he’s doing all this to clear his conscience.’
‘I understand that. But there has to be a good reason why he needed Smyth’s corroboration. Why he went to all the trouble of tracking him down in the first place. Which means, without it, he’s back to square one.’
‘Without it?’
‘Sure. You haven’t given him Smyth’s testimony yet, right?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Great. So all he has is your word that Smyth’s story backs up his own. And if you’re telling him that you can’t stand behind Smyth’s version of events, that you need more information, then he’s stuck. Right?’ She dabbed up a few crumbs on the tip of her forefinger, sucked it dry. ‘Look, Tom – we’re not stupid. We know something like this, if Shay Govern really wants it to come out, it’s only a matter of time. Especially given what happened to Gerard Smyth.’
‘It didn’t just happen to him, Kee. The guy was drowned.’
‘Right now we don’t know that for sure. And you really shouldn’t be shouting the odds about it either, because you’re still in the frame. No, wait.’ She held up a hand, palm facing me. Earnest now. ‘This is an incredibly sensitive time, Tom. We’re looking at the worst crisis this state has ever faced, and between you and me there’s serious people already talking about economic treachery, certain prominent individuals being hauled in to face charges. Trust me, it’s going to be a shit storm and you don’t want to get caught up in that, even in a minor way. This story, we know it’s going to come out. Something this juicy, there’s no way it can’t. Right?’ I nodded. ‘So what we’re engaged in is damage limitation, delaying it until after the worst is over. I mean, think about it. The country goes to the wall, held to ransom by German banks, and in the middle of it all this story surfaces about a Nazi atrocity? It’d be carnage.’
Again, it all made sense. Except the last thing I could afford to do was obstruct Shay Govern. Franco was already putting the wheels in motion to get Shay out of the country, and the longer the book was delayed, the less likely it was that I’d get paid. And if what Kee was saying about economic collapse and the IMF wandering in was even remotely close to the truth – it all sounded a bit far-fetched to me – then it sounded like I needed to bind myself to Shay Govern rather than blow him off.
I explained as much to Kee. ‘If I go fucking with this book,’ I said, ‘I’d be shooting myself in the foot.’
She shrugged. ‘Better that than a double tap to the back of the head,’ she said. ‘I mean, they’ve already taken out Smyth. And if they think you’re stepping up to take his place …’
‘Christ.’
‘Be smart, Tom. You want to do this book because of Emily? OK, I get it, she’s a sweet kid and she’s the only one you’ve got. But if you ask me, I’d imagine Emily would rather a father she didn’t get to see all that often to one she had to visit in prison. Or, for that matter, a cemetery. Wouldn’t you?’
I didn’t answer. She took that as an affirmative. ‘Martin has a copy,’ she said. ‘Of Smyth’s testimony.’ I nodded. ‘And there’s the copy taken from your apartment yesterday morning, the original. And you have a copy, the one Martin emailed you. Is that all of them?’
‘Far as I know.’
‘Great.’ She reached behind her, into a pocket of her coat. Came up with a USB drive, slid it across the table. ‘What you’re going to do now is put your copy on to that, then delete the file. Then, when Shay Govern gets in touch, you’re going to tell him that you’ve had a good scan through it, come up with some anomalies.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know, Tom, I haven’t read it yet. But you’ll think of something.’ She patted the table. ‘Tom? Let’s go. We don’t have all day.’
I did what she said. When I’d copied Smyth’s testimony on to her USB drive – for some reason she’d encased it in a little plastic yellow tiger – she watched as I deleted the file from the hard drive, then emptied the trash basket.
‘I’ll see you back at the room later,’ she said. ‘I need to get this into the system, see how they want to play it. And call me if you hear from Govern.’ She dug into her pocket, came up with a twenty, tossed it on the table. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Lunch on the taxpayer. I hope you enjoyed it, because there won’t be many more of those unless you’re thinking of emigrating to Berlin.’
Then she leaned in. I drew back, half-expecting another right cross to the jaw, but she took my face in both her hands and kissed me long and lusciously. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but we’re supposed to be on honeymoon.’ She straightened up, reached across the table to unhook her bag from the back of her chair, and strolled away across the square.
NINETEEN
I sat for a few moments, stunned in an entirely different way. Kee knew her way around a kiss, that much was for sure. Everything else, for those few moments, was a little hazy. The faint taste of a slightly sticky mint gloss and the lingering scent of a delicate citron perfume didn’t help.
I could only imagine it had been for the purpose of cover. Or maybe Kee was the kind of woman who, once she’d bludgeoned her man into submission, couldn’t resist trying to revive him. I tasted the mint gloss again while I thumbed the swelling beneath my eye and acknowledged, with no more disappointment than was strictly called for, that Kee was in the business of black ops in shades of grey: confusion, diversion, distraction.
Thank Christ Emily hadn’t been around to see that.
To get myself back on track I rang Shay Govern again, and got his voicemail again. This time I didn’t leave a message.
I killed time scribbling a few notes, descriptive material about the square and the church, the cafés and shops. It seemed bizarre to me, literally incredible, that this sun-splashed plaza had once been a place of torture and murder. And yet, if Gerard Smyth was to be believed, this was where it had taken place.
Just before four o’clock the church bell began tolling, a deep and resonant tenor amplified to something portentous by the cliff face behind, and the square grew busier. Older folk mainly, emerging from the side streets and alleyways, shuffling up the church steps, greeting one another with the easy diffidence of people who meet every day, here a hand laid softly on a forearm, there a peck on the cheek. A quiet
, gentle people. Grandparents, probably, or most of them at least. I wondered how quiet and gentle their own grandparents might have looked as they were driven up those steps by the awful imperative of searching the smouldering ruins for their dead children. It was even possible that some of the grey-haired grandmothers and stooped grandfathers were survivors of that night, children who had been shoved into coal cellars or hoisted into cramped attic spaces, who had lain there in deathless silence, hardly daring to breathe, quailing at the piercing screams.
I tried to picture myself in one of those rooms, pushing an uncomprehending Emily under a bed, shushing her with a finger to my lips, then barricading the door. The terror when the banging came. The horror of not being able to protect your child. And then the unimaginable grief of picking your way through those smoking ruins and seeing something small and human and charred curled up on its side just—
The phone rang. I went scrabbling after it through the detritus of lunch, the caller ID flashing a number I didn’t recognize.
‘Mr Govern?’
‘It’s me, Tom. I’m on Peter’s phone.’
‘Oh. Hey.’ Rachel. Shit. ‘How are things there?’
‘Grand. Or as grand as can be expected, anyway. How’s Emily?’
‘She’s fine, yeah.’
A pause, and then it all came in a rush. ‘Listen, Tom, I need to ask a favour. The funeral’s been delayed for twenty-four hours, Peter’s sister is flying in from Hong Kong and there’s some issue with her flight. So I’ll need you to take Emily for an extra night. Can you do it?’
