by Finn Óg
“He’s choking Sam, put him down.” Charity was at my back. But I couldn’t shake the knowledge that the Belgian had volunteered my daughter as leverage, and I wanted to damage him.
“You might need the little shit,” I heard the twin say, as he began to expire. She was right. I dropped him.
Ten minutes later we were sitting in a studio, surrounded by monitors and stacks of servers, cables pouring out like meat from a mincer. Lots of little dots flashing.
“Cool,” said the twin, admiring the Belgian’s set up. I gave her a look. She reciprocated, with interest.
“You’ve a choice to make,” I told him, and he rubbed the back of his head and looked up at me in fear. “You tell us what we want to know, or, in return for you betraying my child, I kill you.”
Charity was looking everywhere but at me, or him. It probably dawned on her what she had commissioned in the past.
“If I help you, they will kill me,” he said, which sounded like a reasonable assumption.
“Well, if you give me enough information, I’ll deal with them,” which was all starting to sound a bit ridiculous, but at that point, it was exactly what I intended to do. In any case, he had little choice, die now, or die later.
“Just tell him, please,” Charity pleaded. She had heart, and had evidently inherited the compassion gene in the womb.
Her less sensitive sister was already playing with the computers. “I reckon I could give this a crack if you want to just do him,” she told me.
I leaned forward and caught him by the hair and began to drag him towards the door of his den.
“Please no,” said Charity. Between the sisters, they made a bloody convincing pair.
“Ok, ok, ok,” he screamed, “ok ok.”
I gave him a kick, and dragged him up to his desk. It half encircled him. I leaned forward to speak into his ear. “If, at any point, you tell me a lie, I will make sure that this ‘circle’ knows where I got my information from. Some of the questions I am about to ask, I know the answers to. Some I do not. If at any point you piss me around, I let her do the work,” I nodded my head at the twin, “and then you and I will take a walk, OK?”
“I’m not for fucking around,” he said, “I get it, I get it.”
“Who is the American?” I said.
“He is dip-lo-mat,” he said, “he, umm, makes business for Nortzen Ireland, for econ-om-y,” he said. I found his delivery mildly irritating. He’d been clearer on the recordings. Perhaps it was the fear.
“Where is he from?” I asked, establishing his commitment to the truth, as old agent handlers had taught us, years before.
“He is not so important,” said the Belgian. “He is academique, from Boston. He is living in New York.”
“Who is the Englishman?” I asked, expecting a quick answer.
The Belgian looked terrified. “Whish Englishman?” he said, his eyes fluttering all over the place.
“This one, you fucknuckle,” the twin said, thrusting the iPad in front of him. His jaw muscles clamped when he saw the screen grab from the recording.
“I donno,” he muttered. “I not joking you, I do not know who he is.”
“But you know where he is don’t you?” said the twin, who seemed to me to be making a better job of this than I was. The Belgian gently rocked his head as if to say, maybe, maybe not.
“You had a hook-up with him. You have the kit here to trace his IP, or at least the one he used for the call.”
Again, the Belgian remained silent, staring up at her with real fear in his eyes.
“I’ll find it myself,” she said, turning to the middle of two keyboards, and hammering away.
The Belgian leaned forward to begin protest. He evidently didn’t like the idea of someone looking through his files, particularly when his system appeared to be live, and therefore open to interrogation.
But the Brit wasn’t my main concern. “What about my daughter?” I asked him.
He turned to me, and cowered at the same time, like a dog that knew it was about to be get the stick. “The Englishman has made arrangements to send someone to find her,” he said.
“Who?” I shouted.
“The Keeper, they call him,” said the Belgian. “But,” he held up his hands, “I don’t know, I don’t, I don’t know,” he was emphasizing every word, “who this Keeper is.”
I believed him.
“Where has he been sent?” I asked.
“All I find was your parents’ phones register to a mast. They make no calls and they do not answer calls.”
“Where!?” I screamed at him.
“L’Estartit,” he said, ducking his head as if expecting a slap.
“France?” I inquired, genuinely shocked.
“No, is Spain.”
The twin was working on one of the other keyboards. “Costa Brava,” she said. “Very nice. Your folks, they must be using some pretty old devices, yeah?” she asked.
“They don’t have smartphones,” I confirmed.
She pulled up a map on a screen. “You didn’t get very close did ye?” she turned to the Belgian, then back to the screen. “Sim-based tracking is pretty shitty,” she said. “He only got to within a few miles.”
Which seemed far too bloody close for me.
“So, when was the Keeper sent?” I rounded on the Belgian.
“Three hours ago,” he said.
I made to leave, but two things occurred to me.
“These women will be needing your Jeep,” I said. “Get all you can from that computer, then destroy everything,” I told the twin.
“OK,” she tuned back to the screen. I looked at Charity.
“I’ll leave you a rucksack. There’s a grand sterling in it. Get yourself somewhere safe, and I’ll send you an e-mail when all this is sorted.”
She had the countenance of a car wreck.
“You,” I looked at the Belgian, “where was the Englishman’s IP? Where was he, when he dialled in?”
“I have it here,” said the twin.
When I looked at the screen, I understood why he was so terrified.
Twenty-Four
Three hours was a hell of a head start, particularly given that I was four hours’ drive away from the Dublin airport. Depending on what flight he caught, that gave the Keeper as much as seven hours’ grace, but I had three things in my favour. I knew my parents’ habits, I had a friend called Mini Marine, and I would know the Keeper when I saw him.
I cursed myself for not getting Charity or her sister to book me a flight before I left Achill Island. I then debated whether to stop and buy a phone, or to push ahead and get to Dublin airport. In any event, I badly needed fuel, but the bloody garage didn’t sell mobile phones.
Three hours and twenty minutes later I abandoned the hire car in the same spot where I’d fought with a pimp almost one year before, and ran into Terminal One. I scoured the departure screen for a flight to Spain, and racked my over-exhausted brain for a sense of the geography. There was a flight to Barcelona, which seemed like a good option, and another to Girona, but I had no idea where that was. The woman at the Ryanair desk showed me a map, and I paid in cash.
Seven hours and forty minutes after I left Achill, I stood in the warm heat of Girona Airport. It was dinky, but it had everything I needed, including cars for hire with integral GPS. Twenty miles later I had set up a Spanish sim pay-as-you-go cell phone. Dog-tired, I called my old base at Faslane, and asked for Mini.
“Where have you been, pal? I’ve been trying to reach ye.”
“I had to ditch my old phone, Min.”
“Y’lright?” Western Scots, like the Irish, manage to weld all their words into one.
“Yes, mate, how did you get on with tracking my folks?”
“Aye, we have them. They’re in a Spanish toon near the Iles de Medes.”
“LEstartit?” I cut in.
“Aye?” He sounded surprised. “You’re way ahead of me are ye, Sam?”
“I’m le
ss than an hour’s drive from there as we speak. I need a fix though, Min.” He could hear the desperation in my voice.
His voice lowered, and became softer, apologetic, “They’re no GPS phones, pal.”
“Min, I know, just give me your best, please.”
“Looks like a wee peninsula, round the corner from a beach, kind of private like.” He began to sound frustrated and I could almost see him shaking his head. “It’s about a mile long, and there’s coast to the east so no masts at sea to triangulate for sure. The phones hav’nie moved in hours, mebbe even days.”
He read me the co-ordinates he had, and I punched them into the GPS.
“Thanks Min. Really mate, thank you.”
“Let me know how you get on, when you can, like.”
As I drove, I debated calling the Spanish police, but I didn’t know what I could say to them. Two Irish adults, one child, at risk from an unidentified person? Can’t tell you who, can’t say whether that the person is definitely even there. Can’t tell you who I am, or anything about the background. Can’t even speak Spanish. Besides, the real issue nagging at me was what would happen afterwards? Think ahead Sam, I told myself. It’s not just the next move, it’s the move after that.
If the Spanish plods did manage to arrest the Keeper, I would become material to a case that could not be proven. That would mean Isla and I would never have peace, because I’d know the truth. The Brit’s location when he made the hook-up calls confirmed a nagging fear, and I knew that if the Keeper made it into custody, he would be protected. The Circle would not rest until the evidence, i.e. me, was destroyed, which would make an orphan of Isla. I chewed the whole situation over for so long that I arrived in L’Estartit before I’d made up my mind.
The GPS took me through a bustling little town, shortly after siesta time. My impatience was pointless. Nothing would move more quickly for my frustration, so I zoomed in on the little screen, took a mental map of the peninsula Min had referred to, abandoned the car, and started running.
I glared into the face of every person I passed. I listened for the three voices most familiar to me, as I raced past the restaurants and bars. Awnings were being wound out, and tables set for evening service. I prayed like I’d never prayed before, that my Mum would be following her usual routine.
I must have stood out like a snowman on a beach as I raced through the town, while everyone else sauntered at a retirement pace. Life in L’Estartit was obviously generous. Nobody showed any urgency. I began to panic that I’d become disorientated, as I had been expecting to see the masts of a boat marina before now, but as usual, the flat visual of the map confused the actual size of the place. Eventually, I saw the tips of rigging as I emerged from a pedestrian street, and kept heading towards the rocks. I was adding things up in my head; the previous flight had been from Belfast, an extra two hours’ drive from Dublin for the Keeper. That made him three, maybe four hours ahead of me. But for all he knew, I was still in Ireland, and I was banking on his lack of urgency to see me through.
I ran along a road, about five feet above a short beach. My parents are predictable in some ways. They like a drink in the evening, just one, before dinner, and they like to feel like they’ve earned it. That might involve a walk, some work in the garden, or when the sun is on their backs, a swim in the sea. I scoured the sand for them, but it was crowded with broad white floppy hats, and broad white floppy British bellies. They’ll not go for that, I reckoned. They like their space. So I kept running.
Beyond the sand there appeared to be a road that rose slightly, and curled around a bend. Above and to my left were apartments, beautifully appointed, stylish, with generous sun covers and sand shutters. I wondered if the phones were sitting inside, on a table, charging merrily. I closed out notions of the three people I cared about most, lying face down, dead upon the marble floors.
That image made me desperate, as I hammered up the incline, cursing myself for believing that I would find them alive and well. My legs began to burn and slow as the optimism wore off, and I cast around more in desperation than confidence. The place was all but deserted, apart from two local kids clambering onto bikes at a bridge, their day fishing off the rocks evidently over. I grabbed the timber railing and lowered my head between by shoulders to catch my breath. My chest heaved, and I became acutely aware of my increasing vintage, my lack of energy, and my fear. I looked up slowly, the sweat steaming my vision.
And then I saw her.
She was standing, with a plastic rake, in her swimsuit and crocs, less then forty feet below me. She looked amazingly happy, and brown, and was pottering about with sand stuck all over her. I hunted for my parents, and saw a woman swimming in the cove further below. I could tell by the stroke it was Mum, chin high, short, strong strokes. Then I found my dad, in his shorts and sandals, twenty feet to the right of Isla. The relief would have been enormous, if he hadn’t been standing there talking to the Keeper.
**
It was a desperate situation. Dad, as usual, was just shooting the breeze with what he must have thought was a fellow Irishman abroad. He would not have given a second thought to the fact that the man was wearing city shoes in a rocky cove, or that he had jeans on and a fleece round his waist, despite the heat being above 30 degrees Celsius.
I was too far gone, and made yet another mistake. Had I managed to get some proper sleep in the preceding week, things might have worked out better.
My approach was too fast. I don’t know to this day whether it was excitement or desperation that took me down that rocky cove, but it was stupid beyond words. I skipped over the rocks, and bounded and slid down the incline. I should have predicted Isla’ reaction; she looked up and became over-joyed.
‘Daddy!’ she yelled, thrilled. Then confusion crossed her face, as I ignored her completely and made for her grandfather and the man beside him.
My dad looked up then, and began to form a baffled smile, and then realised something was very, very wrong. I was still too far away when the Keeper turned to face me. He immediately and with determination reached for the pocket of his fleece. I screamed out. ‘Dad, get out of the way!’
But dads are dads, no matter what age they are. And children are more important to them than anything, no matter how old they might be. My father realised that the man he’d been chatting to was no friend, and as the Keeper produced a short knife, my dad reached to grab his arm. And then I heard Dad wretch, exhaling as if throwing up.
Dad took the puncture to the chest, but he didn’t let go of the Keeper. His protective instincts gave his old arms strength, returning to them the gorilla-like power he’d had when he was my age. I saw his enormous freckled forearms lock around the keeper’s wrist and elbow, gripping him as he tried to wrestle the knife free.
I had no choice; I had to flatten them together. I left the surface about eight feet above where they stood, and hit them mid-ships, toppling them down onto the sharp rocks below. The fall could have done as much damage to my dad as the knife wound. I have never seen a cove so jagged.
I never wanted Isla to witness another death. I never wanted her to see another violent act. Her recovery from the death of her mother was far from complete, and yet here she was on the cusp of watching her grandfather die too.
Dad was panting to my left, reaching for air, but God bless him, he still had his hands around the Keeper’s wrist. I grabbed the free arm and twisted it backwards to open the assailant’s rib cage, then fell on it with my knees.
It felt like time paused as I wrenched him around and stared into the shock of his eyes. Under me, terrified, was the Counsellor.
I took both his ears, lifted his head, and smashed his skull onto the rocks beneath him.
**
I was patching Dad’s entry wound when the Counsellor came-to. I already knew what I was going to do with him. Isla was in a desperate state, heaving with tears and wanting to hug me, but I was quickly soaked in dad’s blood as I worked on him. Mum was a star, having cut
her feet to slices by tearing from the sea, and running up the rocks. She was as calm as Dad had been, and saw the sense in keeping Isla turned away, while doing exactly what I asked of her, to keep Dad alive.
“Daddy, stop shouting at Granny,” Isla said, as I barked directions at her.
There was a puncture in his left lung for sure, but the sticky flap from a pack of wet wipes allowed me to make sure it didn’t fill with blood, and drown him. By placing the flap above the entry wound, it acted like a draught excluder, sucking flat to the chest on the breath in, but blowing out to allow the exhale. There was no catastrophic bleed. The messiest wound was on the back of his head from the fall, so I packed that, and then turned to the Counsellor.
I found his phone in the pocket of the fleece, and handed it to Mum, who has great Spanish, and knew exactly where we were. I couldn’t put Dad over my shoulder because of the wound in his chest, and when I lifted him, he even managed to speak. “It’s OK, I can walk son.”
I laughed at that, but I appreciated his hardiness. The tough never show the depth of their resolve until it is required. It was a lesson I’d learned during Marines selection in Devon, and again later with the SBS in Poole. The most gentle of people often turned out to be the ones who not only survived, but who pulled the others through, when the going got tight. I prayed Dad’s age would not overcome his gristle.
Mum, too, was unbelievable. Isla was far too heavy for a woman her age. Regardless, Mum swept her up and with a piggyback and in bare feet, took her to the bridge. There I laid Dad, and explained what needed to happen. “You’re not going to like this, but it’s the only way,” I said to Mum.
Isla stared up at me, and I addressed her first.
“Look wee love, you need to listen to me really, really carefully ok?”
Her big eyes were still filled up with fluid, and she nodded.
“I have to leave you…”
“No, Daddy,” she cried.
“Just for a little while, I promise. Not like last time, not for days and days. Just for as long as a movie, ok? Just for as long as Ghostbusters. I pinkie promise.”
