Bloodland

by Alan Glynn

  Gilroy looks at him with a mixture of horror and dread.

  Where is this going?

  ‘So I made a phone call. I found a number for Don Ribcoff and I called him.’

  That’s where.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Day or two later the security guard disappeared. Without a trace. Missing person. End of story. Then Ribcoff called me back, said something about the Wicklow hills, local methods, not to give it another thought.’

  This proves too much for Gilroy, who deflates right there in front of him. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says, ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Conway nods, I know, I know. He feels almost hysterical at this point, unhinged, or drunk, like he could reach out to Gilroy and hug him.

  But then he hears a gentle tinkling of bells.

  A fucking ringtone.

  It’s not his.

  He watches as Gilroy fumbles, reaches into a pocket and extracts his phone.

  Then the shift in expression, the apologetic nod.

  Yeah, go on, Conway thinks, take it.

  ‘Hello . . . Maria?’

  Because I’m done here.

  Except.

  He holds a hand up, waves it.

  Gilroy is flustered. ‘Sorry . . . just a sec,’ he says into his phone, and holds it against his chest.

  This’ll have to be whispered.

  ‘One quick thing,’ Conway says, ‘two . . . two quick things. That security guard? There was a body found in the Wicklow hills a couple of weeks ago, it was in the papers, check up on that. And . . .’ – this is a long shot, his fucking heart thumping now as he realises he hasn’t actually mentioned the second call to Don Ribcoff, made only last week – ‘has anyone had a look at the CCTV footage?’ His mind goes blank for a second. Gilroy is paralysed, staring at him. ‘At the hotel in London, at the what’s it, the Marlow? Look at the CCTV footage.’

  He then nods at the phone and mouths, Go on, take it.

  Slowly, almost mechanically, Gilroy brings the phone back up to his ear.

  Conway steps forward, and around him, pointing, I’ll be over there.

  ‘Maria . . .’ Gilroy says. But it’s the only word Conway hears him say, because he’s not listening anymore. He’s moving too fast. He’s already gone.

  The stairwell is in almost complete darkness, and when he’s halfway up the first flight and looks back he sees nothing, hears nothing.

  He moves on, moves upwards, feeling his way with the metal rail.

  Counting.

  When he bursts through the door and out onto six, he is breathless, but keeps going, muffled voices coming from somewhere, like a chorus deep inside his head. He feels his way along the dark, dusty corridor, tapping the wall until he comes to an open door . . .

  Light floods out of the room, early evening light, a bit muted, but that’s good. It’s enough.

  It’s all he needs.

  He looks around. This is the same room he was in the last time, the bare plastered walls, the damp, acrid smell . . . the sliding glass door to the balcony still open, the way he left it.

  As he crosses the room, a current of cool air ripples past him. He swallows, almost gags, that knot in his stomach tighter now than he can bear. It’s big, and growing, like a tumour.

  He steps out onto the balcony.

  He did feel relief, getting all of that stuff off his chest, it was good, but it was fleeting. It’s not what he’s feeling now.

  You don’t want to know what he’s feeling now.

  He steps forward, and turns. He leans back against the rail, facing into the empty hotel room. He takes out his phone and looks at it. For a second he considers sending a text to Ruth . . . but that would be too much, too appalling.

  He wants to say something, though, to someone.

  He taps out a message, fumbling over the keys. He presses Send, waits, drops the phone.

  He leans back a little further, balancing there for a second. Then loses his balance.

  Surrenders it.

  Falls.

  10

  On the return flight to New York, Rundle sits alone in the cabin of his G650, staring out the window.

  He’s picturing the moment – tomorrow or the next day – when he walks into Vaughan’s office, or his library, or the Modern, and nods, yes, yes, everything’s fine.

  A small gesture of triumph.

  Then – unable to help himself – he pictures another moment, maybe ten minutes later, in front of a bathroom mirror, or the mirror of an elevator car, but a fucking mirror nonetheless.

  The inevitable come-down.

  Elation, followed by self-loathing.

  How do you get them in balance, he wonders.

  Then – perhaps not coincidentally – he thinks for a minute or two about Nora, and in cinematic detail, with credit-card production values, but . . . no joy.

  No lead.

  He reaches for his laptop.

  J.J. will have to do.

  Since the other day Rundle has been obsessively tracking his brother online. He never used to. Not like this. He was always aware of what was going on, always somehow kept up to date, but not like this.

  First he checks his web page, then Facebook and Twitter, but he doesn’t get very far with those. Then he does what he usually does which is look him up on Google News, where he finds there are two hundred and forty stories speculating that Senator John Rundle is about to file papers to form a presidential exploratory committee.

  The fact that it’s speculation must mean it’s a leak – because J.J. wouldn’t do something like this without telling Rundle first, without discussing it with him at least.

  Which doubtless means it’ll be the first order of business when they next speak.

  Rundle closes the laptop.

  In his opinion it’s too soon. He can see what J.J. is doing, cashing in on the publicity from last week, but it’s a risky strategy all the same. The extra attention can only increase the chances that someone will blow a massive hole in the Paris story. It seems incredible to Rundle that the non-appearance so far of the ‘motorcyclist’ hasn’t raised more – or, indeed, any – media suspicion.

  And it’s not J.J.’s exclusion from the presidential race that Rundle is worried about – although, admittedly, he has been getting comfortable with the idea of his brother in the Oval Office – no, it’s the corollary, it’s people asking, well then, what the fuck did happen to his hand?

  And where?

  Rundle turns away from the window, in need of distraction. He glances around the cabin.

  Empty.

  In theory, there could be eighteen people up here, getting served drinks, and . . . what? Cuttlefish, with kimchee, and black radish? Some shit like that.

  The mile-high boardroom.

  But he actually prefers it this way.

  With that thought in his head he drifts off to sleep.

  A few hours later, not long after they land in New York, J.J. calls.

  Rundle wants to tell him about Kimbela, rub his nose in it, but he doesn’t. They talk about the speculation, the exploratory committee.

  Though it’s clearly more than speculation now.

  ‘So,’ J.J. says, ‘next Wednesday morning. Are you up for it? The Blackwood Hotel. It’s a business thing, an address I’m giving, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to make the announcement official.’

  Rundle approaches his waiting car. The driver is holding the door open. Once he gets off the phone with J.J. he’s going to call Vaughan. ‘Yeah, of course,’ he says, rubbing his stomach. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  *

  Jimmy sits at the window of his apartment, holding his third cup of coffee since he got up.

  Staring out at the bay.

  Seagulls squawking and the faint sound of the tide lapping up onto Sandymount strand.

  Early morning traffic streaming past.

  What you might call a semblance of normality.

  Fuck.

  But since he go
t up? Strictly speaking it’s not as if he was ever asleep. He’s been like this the whole time – awake, alert, bug-eyed, like someone on crystal meth – his brain running what happened last night on a continuous loop.

  He didn’t corner him, did he? Didn’t put him in an impossible position? Didn’t push him?

  No.

  Conway more or less volunteered all of that information, and it even seemed as if he needed to. But having volunteered it, he clearly then was in an impossible position.

  At which point Maria Monaghan called.

  In a bit of a state.

  Apparently after Larry Bolger’s sudden death, she felt remorse for the way she’d behaved. What right did she have to expect anything of Jimmy? He’d been offered something better, something more important, and naturally –

  But he had to cut her off there, switch frequencies again, because Conway was walking away, disappearing into the dim shadows.

  Was he leaving?

  Jimmy took a step forward.

  Something wasn’t right. The rushed tone at the end there, packing everything in.

  It was all too –

  Jimmy took another step forward, but he couldn’t see properly, couldn’t see where Conway had gone. It was too dark. So he just stood there, not moving.

  It took him a while to realise what he was doing.

  He was waiting.

  He didn’t know what for exactly and when it came – the dense, resonant thud – he was glad to be facing the wrong way.

  He immediately turned and went outside. The sight of the body splayed on the concrete was both shocking and horribly compelling – the unnatural configuration of limbs, the blood seeping out from the fractured skull – but already a couple of youths on the far side of the square were on their way over. Some instinct kicked in and he ran.

  When he got back to his motorbike on Tara Boulevard he was glad he hadn’t locked it and within a matter of seconds was out on the main road again, heading in towards town.

  After he got back to the apartment, Jimmy didn’t know what else to do except sit around in shock and periodically check for news updates. When the story eventually broke – a few hours ago – he was almost relieved.

  On one site it was:

  Property developer jumps to his death.

  On another:

  Embattled tycoon, Dave Conway takes his own life.

  Then, a little after seven o’clock, one of the presenters on Newstalk referred to 1929 and the pinstriped bankers queuing up to leap from the window ledges of Wall Street office buildings.

  Which meant that a clear narrative was already emerging, and not one with much chance of being influenced or shaped in any way by what Jimmy heard last night.

  When another commentator on Morning Ireland refers to Conway as an unfortunate ‘casualty’ and traces everything back to ‘the fuse lit by the fall of Lehman Brothers’, Jimmy’s impulse is to scream. What he does instead is turn the radio off and go over to his desk. He starts making notes, which is something he should have done hours ago – but it’s all still fresh in his memory. On the back of what feels like a second wind he sketches out an alternative, more complex narrative than the one taking hold over the airwaves and online.

  But when he’s finished and he re-reads it . . . it doesn’t seem that complex after all.

  So before he loses this sense of there being a bigger picture, a comprehensible one, and before his energy levels dip again, he decides to call Maria.

  He checks the time and picks up the phone.

  As it’s ringing, he tries to imagine what he might say to her if she answers.

  He can’t.

  ‘Jimmy.’

  ‘Maria . . .’ He hesitates, his mind blank for a second. Then he rallies. ‘Look, I’m sorry I hung up on you last night, but I had no choice, I was in the middle of something really intense, and not . . . not unconnected to . . .’ He sighs. ‘I think I’ve discovered what happened.’

  He didn’t mean to say that quite so directly – or at all, in fact.

  Not without a bit of preparation, a bit of lead time.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I think I’ve discovered what happened to Susie, to all of them.’

  ‘Jimmy, please.’

  ‘No, listen. I’m not insane. Everything is connected . . . me stopping the book, taking on the Bolger thing, it’s the same people . . . I was put under a lot of pressure, and . . . even that guy last night, who jumped off the building, Dave Conway, have you heard about that? He was there, at Drumcoolie Castle, he –’

  ‘Jesus, Jimmy, stop.’

  He does.

  But not for long. ‘Maria, please, let’s meet. Believe me, you’re going to want to hear what I have to say.’

  There is a long silence. Then, ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy, but you sound deranged.’

  ‘Maybe I do. I’ve been up all night. But listen to me.’ He starts whispering. ‘The helicopter was sabotaged. The target was the Italian guy, Gianni Bonacci. He worked for the UN. The others were collateral damage.’ He pauses. ‘It’s very complicated, Maria’ – he hadn’t been going to say this either, not yet – ‘but you have to understand, it wasn’t Susie’s fault.’

  *

  Unpaid leave.

  Effective immediately.

  If that isn’t code for fuck you, you crazy motherfucker, hit the road and don’t come back, then Tom Szymanski doesn’t know what is. That’s the downside of working for a PMC, no job security, no guaranteed deployment – and no back-up services either, no Walter Reed.

  No tea, no fucking sympathy.

  Just a one-way ticket to JFK and make your own way home after that, thank you very much.

  Fuck you very much.

  He rolls over on the bed and faces the wall.

  But come on, six months of having the inside of your head pounded in the Congolese jungle and you’re supposed to just ease back into civilian life and switch it off ?

  Szymanski himself, though, never actually had it switched on – not over there, that was his thing, his chilled exterior, the quality he was most proud of, like guys who professed to have big dicks or still had hair. But then this bastard Lutz thought he detected . . . what? Early signs of stress, a disproportionate reaction to what had happened? Didn’t want his unit contaminated with any hint of darkness? With feelings of remorse or grief or guilt? Didn’t want anyone having nightmares?

  Good luck with that.

  Asshole.

  The irony, however, is that in the week he’s been back all Szymanski has had has been fucking nightmares.

  With the neat accompanying trick of never actually seeming to fall asleep.

  Chilled exterior, I don’t fucking think so, not anymore.

  He hasn’t told anyone he’s back yet, and isn’t going to either, not for the moment. Instead of taking a connecting flight on to Cleveland he got the AirTrain and then a subway into Manhattan and has been holed up in a hotel here ever since, two hundred bucks a night, and all the junk food, tequila and hookers midtown can throw at him.

  He doesn’t want to go home. That’s why he signed up with Gideon Global in the first place, after his three tours in Iraq – anything to avoid his folks, his ex-wife, his two kids, the ghost of his former life as a solid citizen of C-town.

  So maybe he did react, so what? Watching that poor sap get shot in the head at point blank range was pretty fucking intense.

  Ashes.

  Ray Kroner.

  And then those women and kids he’d just smoked.

  Fuck me.

  What is it, you see hundreds of incidents, roadside bombings, IEDs going off, firestorms, shootings, all sorts of trauma and injuries – plus some of that other stuff in Congo, holy shit – and you ride it out, you even laugh some of it off, as a survival mechanism. But then one thing comes along, a particular incident, and it may not even be such a big deal, if you’re looking at it as a scale of one-to-ten sort of thing – intensity-wise, body count-wise –
but it sticks.

  In your brain.

  And that’s it, you’ve got it for the rest of your life, like a fucking tattoo, this single image that keeps coming back at you – when you close your eyes, when your mind drifts, when the booze wears off, when your cock goes limp again. It’s like what some couples have – our song, listen honey, they’re playing our song – well this is your song, motherfucker, all yours, and don’t you forget it.

  In Szymanski’s case – with due respect to those two women and the three little kids – it’s Ray Kroner’s twisted face lying in the mud, twisted because of how the bullet stretched the top of his head off to one side.

  He’s never going to get that image out of his mind. He didn’t know Kroner that well, and didn’t even like him, but now he’s stuck with him.

  And you know who he blames?

  Szymanski rolls over, gets off the bed and goes to the window. Some view. The back of another hotel, a much taller one, stacked rows of windows and AC units as far up as he can see. Down to the left there’s an alley-way with a thin shard of early morning street action just visible at the end of it – cars passing, MTA buses, yellow cabs, regular New York shit.