Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

  Katie turned to Monty and Normie and said, “Are youse sure you want to stay with that wee sprog?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be fun!” Normie assured her.

  So she left for Saint Columba’s school, fairly skipping as she went.

  Monty watched from the street, so he could see Assumpta when she arrived. It was a high-scoring football match, played with great exuberance, until one of the mothers on the street called the boys in for their tea.

  “That’s Barry’s ma. She makes a lovely tea,” Timmy told Normie when the boys came off the field. “She makes gingerbread and cherry cake and lemon bread and she always has the digestive biscuits with the chocolate slathered on the top of them. Dead on! She’s fuckin’ brilliant, she is!”

  “We all are!” boasted a boy of Timmy’s age, with cropped hair almost the same colour as Tim’s and sparkling green eyes.

  “This is Barry himself,” Timmy explained. He leaned forward and whispered to Normie, “Me and Barry are best mates.” Raising his volume, he declared, “We’re going to go to Glasgow and play for Celtic and kick those Rangers’ bums!” He reached out and pounded his best mate on the shoulder, and Barry got him in a headlock. They fell to the ground in a joyful heap, then rose and bounded towards Barry’s house, each attempting to shove the other out of the way in the race to the door.

  Monty and Normie went back to the Flanagan house. About ten minutes later, a car pulled up and Assumpta Flanagan got out.

  “Hello, Assumpta! Katie’s gone to her debating club and she’s left me in charge.”

  “That’s grand, Mr. Collins. I’m so happy she’s stayed with the club. She’s marvellous at it; everyone says so. She has a brilliant future ahead of her. If, well, if she has a future! And I told her I couldn’t stay and visit, so this works out well. I’m off to see Winnie in the hospital. I know she’s having a rough time of it. She’s not a strong woman. But I’m hoping I can encourage her to —” her lips tightened and she searched for the appropriate words “— well, participate a little more.”

  Monty introduced her to Normie, and they exchanged greetings. Then Assumpta handed Monty an envelope.

  “It was Vincent McKeever who saw the car that night just off the Ammon Road. I knew I’d see him walking by on his way to work at the farm. I asked him about it, and he was jittery about it, let me tell you. But I told him that it was my nephew who died that night, leaving a wife and five children, and that any information might help them. He got the picture, and he’s agreed to meet with you. I reassured him that you are not from this area.” Not affiliated with any of the factions here. “You’re to come alone. And he doesn’t want to be seen talking with you anywhere near home, so here’s a map of where he will be — at the edge of the wood! — at two o’clock on Sunday.”

  She pointed to the woman driving the car that had brought her. “Time for our hospital rounds. Best of luck with the investigation.”

  “Thank you very much for your own investigative work, Assumpta.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  Chapter X

  Brennan

  “We have to find out whether he’s in the city.” Ronan was talking about Brody MacAllan, the man Ronan believed had planted one of the car bombs in Dublin in 1974, the man who had the papers to show he was in the United States at the time of the attacks. Brennan was sitting opposite his cousin in the house in Andersonstown. “The lad I put on the case thinks he spotted MacAllan going into a bar across the river. The Iron Will. But our lad can’t go into the bar or loiter outside it — he might be recognized — so he can’t get close enough to make the identification. And it’s far from a sure thing; MacAllan, like the rest of us, is twenty years older now.”

  “Was this just one sighting by your man in east Belfast?”

  “He caught sight of him and then made a point of watching the bar at certain times of the day, from his vantage point in a second-floor flat nearby. Seems MacAllan, if it’s him, drinks in this bar on weekends, arrives early in the evening. Don’t know where he drinks on the other nights.”

  Brennan offered no comment on the assumption that a man drinks somewhere every night of the week. Who was Brennan to talk? All he said was “You’ll have to equip your agent with the proper spy gear.”

  “Ha, should have thought of that. Rob some gear off the Brits. We did spring for a pair of binoculars. But he still couldn’t be sure. And we had to pull him out for other reasons. There’s nobody we can send into the bar. MacAllan sure as hell wouldn’t fall for one of our lads from the Falls tracking him down in east Belfast and chatting him up about a come-to-Jesus meeting in Kentucky or Texas or Tennessee or wherever it was. I’d recruit you for the mission, Father, but somehow I don’t think a papish priest born in Dublin and educated in Rome — and soon to be back in Rome as a choirmaster — would succeed in getting a confession out of a militant Protestant Loyalist paramilitary who’s trying to cover up his role in a massacre in the Republic of Ireland.”

  “O ye of little faith.” Brennan raised his arms and his voice, which was now the voice of a preacher from the American South. “Praise the Lord! Praise Him! Mabel, honey, why don’t you fry up a mess o’ grits for the Sunday picnic!”

  Ronan laughed. “You’d better hope you’re what you claim to be, a representative of the One True Church. Because if you’re not, and the evangelical Protestants are the ones at the right hand of our Lord, and you have mocked those who bear His word, you have just consigned yourself to the smoke and flames of eternal damnation.”

  Brennan gave an exaggerated shrug. “We’ll see in the end, won’t we?” Then he asked, “Where was this evangelical event, though, do you know?”

  “Somewhere in the American South. Hold on, while I look it up.” Ronan flipped through his notes and said, “Right, it was Tennessee. That’s the South, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Ever been there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Pity. I could send you in to MacAllan’s local to talk Tennessee with him if you knew the territory. You’d be a local preacher, over here to catch a fire-and-brimstone sermon or two by the Reverend Doctor Ian Paisley.”

  “Might create a bit of suspicion if a God-fearing, clean-living American minister showed up in a drinking hole.”

  “You’re saying some of them wouldn’t have our taste for whiskey and porter?”

  “Some of them are teetotallers, Ronan. There are churches in the United States, and even in Canada, where they serve grape juice or even the children’s drink, Kool-Aid, instead of wine at communion!”

  Ronan, who no doubt thought he had seen and heard it all in the streets and prisons of troubled Ireland, gaped at his cousin, unbelieving. “You’re havin’ me on, Brennan!”

  “I’m not. There are sects over there that are death on drink.”

  “But Jesus Christ Himself, bless His Holy Name, lifted the cup, as we know. Turned water into wine!”

  “Don’t ask me to explain it, Ronan. I’m as perplexed as you are yourself. Anyway, it might not be all that credible, a southern U.S. minister cozying up to MacAllan on a barstool.”

  “I know, I know. I wouldn’t try to infiltrate you into enemy territory in circumstances like that.”

  “An American tourist could stumble in to the Iron Will, though, looking for a beer and a bit of local colour. Show me his photo again.”

  “Here he is.”

  Brennan studied the narrowed dark eyes, the uncombed dark hair resting on the man’s collar, the flat, uncompromising face. It was a face he would not soon forget.

  * * *

  Brennan had made plans to meet Monty and the MacNeil, she being Maura MacNeil, on Royal Avenue Friday evening, so he said goodbye to Ronan, went out, and hailed one of the black taxis that served the people of west Belfast. The old London cab already had three passengers but they made room for Brennan, and he squeezed h
imself in. When the taxi got to the Falls Road, Brennan saw two grey-green armoured vehicles pull out of a side street and rumble off in the direction of Andersonstown. British Army, still here after more than twenty-five years. His fellow passengers barely accorded them a glance. A few blocks later, he watched as a squad of British soldiers moved along the pavement in a sort of diamond formation. They wore camouflage fatigues and berets and carried assault rifles. The residents of the Falls ignored them.

  Brennan’s friends were waiting in front of the CastleCourt Shopping Centre when he arrived. Orla Farrell was looking after their two children, they said, and it looked as though the kids would have reason to be pleased when their parents returned home. Maura had a shopping bag that was overflowing, and Brennan could see the nose of a toy airplane, which their little boy Dominic would love, and when he peered into the bag he spotted a xylophone, which would be for Normie.

  “You’re the fearless wee colleen, aren’t you now?” he said, eyeing the big new glass and steel shopping emporium.

  “What do you mean?” Maura asked him.

  He gestured to their surroundings. “Going into a glass building in Belfast.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Maura replied.

  “Don’t be concerned, my dear. I don’t believe it’s been bombed lately.”

  “But it has been . . .”

  “Several times. Prime target for what is sometimes referred to by Republicans here as a ‘routine commercial bombing.’”

  “Imagine getting to the point where something like that is routine!”

  “Oh, it got to that point a long, long time ago. Just as everyone got used to the ‘Ring of Steel,’ those massive security gates surrounding the city centre here. All just part of everyday life in Belfast.”

  “Makes me want to scurry back to the safety of a university campus. After all, universities are often mocked for not being part of the real world. That may not be a bad thing after all.”

  “Just don’t look for refuge in the Celtic department at Queen’s here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Irish language — the native language — to some of the Loyalist paramilitaries is like a full moon to a rabid wolf. They attacked the department several times in the 1970s, so there’s no neon sign advertising the department now. But let’s not dwell on any of that.” He regretted making light of the tensions in the city, the atrocities committed by all sides, and he reflected on the fact that you didn’t have to be in Belfast very long before you got accustomed to the situation and began making quips about it. “We’ll have a quick meal, and go around the corner to Madden’s.”

  So they ate at a nearby restaurant and then walked behind the shopping centre to Madden’s bar. Brennan felt as if he had died and ascended into heaven, the way he always felt when he entered the establishment on Berry Street. The staff greeted him by name, and he saluted them. To walk into Madden’s was to enter a world of Gaelic culture with signs in the Irish language all over the place, tributes to various Republican heroes and organizations, and notices of frequent sessions of traditional music. And Madden’s poured you a decent pint and a fine glass of whiskey.

  “I may not see youse for a while,” Brennan announced when the first pints had been poured and sipped.

  “Why not?” Maura asked. “Are you going to Rome sooner than planned?”

  “No, no, not at all. I’ll be about as far from Rome as you can get.”

  “Where now?”

  He leaned towards her. “I’m going undercover.”

  “Undercover as what, for Christ’s sake? Where?”

  “As an American tourist in east Belfast.”

  “I believe you made the point at Tom Burke’s wedding that you and your kind are not welcome on the east side of town. But that’s as far as I can follow your logic, Brennan.”

  “Good, darlin’. Maybe my target won’t follow it either.”

  “And your target is?”

  “A suspect in the bombing of Dublin in 1974.”

  “Brennan, what in the hell are you talking about?”

  “My dear, it’s very hush-hush.”

  “My lips are sealed. Now, get on with it.”

  “You know there were car bomb attacks in May of 1974 in Dublin and Monaghan.” This met with wary nods from both of them. “One of the victims was a childhood friend of mine. Paddy Healey. The police on both sides of the border have had a list of suspects almost from the beginning. The Ulster Volunteer Force claimed responsibility in 1993, but nobody has ever been charged.”

  “Why the hell not?” Maura demanded.

  “Because of the way things work in this place. Because the people who did it have strong ties to the police and security forces here.”

  “That’s outrageous!”

  “Welcome to Belfast justice, Professor MacNeil.”

  “I know. I’ve received an earful about this sort of thing from my colleagues at UCD. But that doesn’t soften the blow every time I hear about it all over again.”

  “So,” said Monty, “after twenty-one years of inaction, and the forces of the law and secret intelligence and the military arrayed against you, you are somehow going to solve this crime. And your plan requires you to be in costume as a Yankee tourist . . . Help me here, Brennan.”

  “Not a Yank, strictly speaking. Good ole boys from the American South would take umbrage at being called Yankees. Yankees is northerners. But other than that, you’re on the right track. One of the suspects claims to have been in the state of Tennessee attending a religious event at the time of the bombings. I’m going to try and open him up a bit about that experience.”

  “Did he participate in a monastic retreat?” Maura asked. “A seminar on the Virgin Mary? A Knights of Columbus piss-up and devotional weekend?”

  “Em, no.”

  “Didn’t think so. Not a Catholic event. So you, as a papist, are going to get to the bottom of this and then convince the authorities, after all these years, to take this man in and charge him with the bombings.”

  “I am, yeah.” Brennan sank the rest of his pint and said, “But I won’t be a papist when I darken the doorway of the Iron Will bar. I’ll be a staunchly Protestant tourist from — not Tennessee, that would be too obvious — Kentucky maybe.”

  “Oh. Why didn’t you say so? It all makes sense now.”

  “Right.”

  “Brennan, you have the look of a Roman choirmaster. Or a cardinal. You do not have the look of a good ole boy from south of the Mason-Dixon line. I don’t mean that in a bad way, as Normie would say. You could take it as a compliment.”

  “I will look the part by the time I go in undercover. I’ll put a Stetson or a ball cap on and a plaid shirt. Hell, I don’t know. I’ll get it sorted.”

  “And then,” Monty said, “you’ll sidle up to this guy in the bar, and he’s going to start blabbing to you, a man he’s never seen before, who just happened to wander in to his local.”

  “It does need work, I admit. Though my only real assignment is to verify that he is there. The man we have in mind drinks there on the weekends, goes in early in the evening.”

  “It never ceases to amaze me,” Maura said, “that everybody in this country seems to know where everybody else drinks, and when, and how much.”

  “That’s why we have the phrase ‘yer man’s a regular’ at such and such a pub, acushla. Anyway, if I can spot him, I’ve fulfilled my mission. If I can get him talking, all the better.”

  “I can think of one thing that would make you look less suspicious and more like a tourist,” said Maura.

  “What’s that?”

  “A wife.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Monty warned. The humour had gone out of him.

  His wife ignored him.

  * * *

  The following afternoon, Saturday, Brennan made a c
all to an evangelical pastor he knew in New York and asked him if he could think of someone Brennan could talk to about a rally featuring Hiram B. Stockwell back in the 1970s. The man suggested a couple of people who had probably attended, and one was a Baptist minister from Ohio whom Brennan had met at an ecumenical conference a few years ago, Harold Tait. The Reverend Mr. Tait was more than happy to assist. Brennan had to be cagey about why he was making the inquiry, but he said he had to know whether a certain man had been in the United States when he claimed to have been there. He said it was in relation to the “political situation here.” Tait didn’t ask for details. After the preliminaries were over, Brennan asked about the Stockwell rally in Tennessee in May of 1974. Tait said he would look over his notes and call him back.

  “Oh, it was a huge event,” Tait told him later that day. “Sixty thousand people, and it went on over the course of five days. Or the conference did. Hiram Stockwell wasn’t on the stage every day and night, of course. There were other speakers. But Stockwell was the main attraction.”

  “It ran from when to when?”

  “May the thirteenth through the seventeenth.”

  “Now, here’s the hard part, and I’m sorry for keeping you on the line about it. But can you give me a few details I should look out for when —” Brennan didn’t say if “— I talk to the man here? Things that I’d expect to hear if he was really there?”

  Tait gave a quick rundown of the schedule as he remembered it, the size of the crowds, the subjects of the talks, the session with a faith healer. His notes recorded how bad the weather was, muggy and cloudy, with showers and a few real downpours. And the events with Stockwell were outdoors. There was a big marquee where the merchandise was being sold, eight-track tape recordings of his sermons and such. And other tents and marquees but not nearly enough of them to cover the entire congregation. One day, Tait recalled, the sun broke through, and the folks roared their delight. Stockwell had a bit of fun with that, joking that the Lord was showing his approval but didn’t want anyone to get too overconfident, so everybody should expect the clouds to return.