FUGUE "Peter Mahr please report to the Aer Lingus ticket counter. Peter Mahr to the Aer Lingus counter please." Danielle searched for her brother in the throng meeting the plane. Anxious, expectant faces glanced back and moved on, searching for their own travellers, changing into smiles and calls when the travellers were found. Her own smile felt plastic as she wrapped the earphones around the Walkman and the Bunttu's Cainte tapes --Dia Duit, Dia's Muire Duit, Sla'n agat, Sla'n leat, . . . Hello, Hello; Good-bye, Good-bye . . .-- She'd heard the language tapes so many times that the Irish on them seemed to flow like a chant or like a song, putting her to sleep with the familiarity of it and doing nothing for the comprehension of it. But Peter had said, when she had asked, that he "was functional in it," in Irish. "And what does that mean?" she had asked. "Why," he laughed, "it means we can catch the gist of a story and laugh at a joke in the Gaeltacht." So not to worry, he'd take care of it. But Peter wasn't here. Mentally she practiced "Dia Duit, Dia's Muire Duit, Sla'n agat, Sla'n leat." She was carried by the surge to the baggage belt and tried to look like an experienced traveller. The crowd fragmented into chattering groups of two's and three's, as they dragged their bags across the terrazzo and out to where cars waited in the dark. "Peter Mahr please report to the Aer Lingus ticket counter. Peter Mahr to the Aer Lingus counter please." The airport was nearly deserted. A few men loitered in the fluorescent glare, one hunched over a phone in the corner. A woman in a yellow and black uniform was doing her nails under the Hertz sign. The other car rental booths were empty. The Aer Lingus clerk and a thin man leaning across the counter interrupted their conversation to look in her direction. The clerk said "I could call his flat again for you Miss, but he isn't answerin' his page." -1- She shook her head and smiled to hide her unease. "I called. He must have been delayed in traffic." "No traffic here, Miss. Not at this hour, not with the season about over. What with the storms taking on so, and the troubles, you'll be havin' the country to yourself. It's the best time of year, since you ask me. The weather is still beautiful, once it stops raining, and the tourist hoards have migrated. Excepting yourself, of course. Your brother's been delayed, or the man forgot." "He wouldn't forget." "Sure, he wouldn't. Do let me call you a cab then." "I'll just leave him a note, in case he shows up after I've left." "Grand idea." He gave her a pen and paper and read while she wrote and handed it back to him. "Miss Mahr?" She turned to face a wizened man in rumpled tweeds. The smell of wet wool, tobacco smoke and liquor enveloped him. Drops of rain jiggled on his shoulders, and his beard lay like mildew on his jowls. He didn't look directly at her, but squinted and twitched to the left and right, while he mauled his cap with both hands. His lips pursed and pouted in alternating wrinkles over his nearly toothless gums. "Yes?" she said uncertainly. "I'm Walter Tween," he rattled and grabbed her suitcase. "Mr. Mahr sent me to find you. I'm a bit late, so we had best be on our way." He slapped the cap on his head and lurched for the exit. "Since when are you in the taxi business, Walter?" The thin man moved to the counter beside her with his quiet question. He tapped a cigarette on its pack and lit it and squinted through the smoke at Walter. Walter spun around, dropped the suitcase, and whipped his greasy cap off his head in one spastic motion. "Kelley," he whined. "When did you . . . I'm here to pick up . . . Mr. Garg, he said . . . I'm only . . ." The man watched Walter crumple the cap. "You'd be better getting that cab, Miss," he said softly. "Yes, I think I will." She pulled the suitcase back to the safety of the counter. "Thank you anyway, Mr. Tween," she said. -2- "Listen Kelley, I'm supposed to pick up Miss Mahr here." "She's taking the cab, Walter." His arm rested on the counter, as if he were too tired to support himself without leaning on it. "Garg won't like it. Not one bit, he won't, I tell you. You boys ought to get together if anything is to be done around here. And your brother will be upset too, Miss. I won't be the one to tell him. Not on your life. It's your head Kelley, not mine. I only do what I'm told." He slapped the cap on his head and took it off again. "It's your head, Kelley, not mine," he said again. He was still muttering when the doors closed behind him. The man leaned against the counter and drew on his cigarette as he watched Walter disappear into the dark and rain. "Thank you," she said, "and what was that all about?" It took a long time for him to respond. He cleared his throat and studied her through cigarette smoke. "Walter wouldn't be counted among our better drivers. You'd be safer in a regular cab. We wouldn't want you to get the right impression of our motoring too early." He smiled for the first time. His teeth were white and even, except a front one had a sharp chip missing. Dark hair and beard were shot with grey, grey eyes and face looked haggard. "I still don't understand why my brother would send him." He straightened up and shook his head. "Mitch here will have a cab at the door in a few minutes. Have a nice vacation, Miss Mahr." He turned to the clerk behind the counter. The man in the phone booth watched them. Finally he released the hook, and when the tone sounded, he began to dial. ---------------------------------------- "It's Carson. I'm at the airport." ---------------------------------------- "Peter Mahr has a sister. She's here. Arrived tonight. And who does she appear with? It could have been Michael Kelley; the guy called him 'Kelley.' Christ! Pierce talked about him; I thought Michael Kelley was a myth, or long -3- dead. I never knew him. An old guy recognized him, called him by name, mentioned Garg too. I guess maybe he could fit the description, but I'll need a photograph to confirm it. I was cleaning my glasses when I heard the name, and by the time I got them on again, he had his back toward me." ---------------------------------------- "Well, a five-year-old photograph is better than nothing. Send it along." ----------------------------------------- "Nothing that I could see. Nothing was passed anyway. Check out that Mahr woman, would you?" ----------------------------------------- "I suppose she's mid-twenties, five-seven or so, nice looking if you like very slim. Blond hair cut straight across at the shoulders. Expensive haircut, expensive clothes - kind of conservative - not real flashy, and not a lot of make-up, for all I know about it." ------------------------------------------- "Christ! That's the best description I can give you. I was halfway across the airport from them. I didn't see the color of her eyes. She's just normal-looking-nice and well-dressed, that's all." ----------------------------------------- "Well, by the time she left here, she looked REAL tense, I tell you, though she was covering it pretty good." ----------------------------------------- "Well, I don't know. It wouldn't be like Mahr to drag her into it, but she talked to the two of them, Kelley and the old guy, right here in the airport, bold as you please. Maybe she does take after her brother after all. Whatever the arrangement, evidently she expected him to be here, and she was one very unhappy lady when she left alone. Sounded like she knew where his flat was, though. She'll be disappointed that he's not there either, won't she? Does anybody know where he is?" ----------------------------------------- "There was an argument. The old guy staggers out and the woman catches a cab. Kelley disappears. Mahr, Peter Mahr, never did show up. We're still looking." -4- ------------------------------------------ "Yeah, I know time is running out. The rumors are thick. Christ. We're doing our best. Pierce didn't leave us much, you know." ------------------------------------------- "O.K. O.K. You'll get back to me with that information on her and the photo of him by tomorrow?" ------------------------------------------- He slammed the receiver down and pushed his new hat back on his head. He took thick glasses off and rubbed the indentations on the bridge of his nose and sighed at the deserted Aer Lingus counter. The taxi took Danielle to a neat white house surrounded by flowers. She told the driver to wait while she stood on the porch in the rain and rang the bell. A television drama blared through the closed door. Through the window she could see a woman in a bathrobe and curlers reluctantly put down her needlework and rise to answer the door, walking backward, her attention focused on the TV. The woman pulled open the door and tilted her head back and frowned at her through frameless half-glasses. "Yes?" she said sharply. "Mrs. Marion Hurley?" Danielle asked. "Yes.--Why Danielle!--Where's Peter?" She lowered her head to let the glasses slide down her nose. She squinted over them to focus through the rain at the taxi, then tilted her head back to look at Danielle through the bottom half of the glasses. "You look just like your picture," she said. "But where's Peter?" "I don't know. I--" "Well never mind. Get rid of that cab or he'll be up here asking for more money." Danielle turned around to wave the cab on. When she turned back, Marion was watching the TV again. "See, the wife is accused of murdering her mother-in-law to get control of the estate, because she and the husband's best friend are having an affair. Filthy rich they are. The husband himself is a fop, I don't blame her, I'd have murdered him." She turned back to Danielle. "Peter never met your flight?" she asked skeptically. "No, I--" -5- Marion clicked her tongue and shook her head. "That's not like him," she said. "That's not like him at all. Never mind," she said, "The flat's all ready, of course. It's right around back. I'll just get my raincoat and the key." She turned and stood focusing over the half-glasses at the drama on the TV. "I could let myself in, couldn't I?" Marion turned to face her again. "I bet it was the husband himself that did it," she said. She stood for a second as if she were trying to remember why Danielle stood in her doorway, and what it was she just said. "If I had the key, couldn't I let myself in?" Danielle asked. With something like relief, Marion nodded her head sharply. "You certainly could. Tell Peter that two gentlemen were here to see him--yesterday--or was it the day before? Tell him that they didn't get one bit of information from me. No sir. They wanted to see the flat, but no sir. They didn't leave their names. Follow the drive around back. The stairs are on the outside of the building, to the right of the garage doors." She tilted her head back and looked through the glasses at a row of keys dangling from shoelaces by the door. She thrust a key at Danielle. "It's all ready for you," she said. "He had me put in groceries and everything, and of course I cleaned it up, just like I do every two weeks, whether it needs it or not." She pressed the key and its shoelace in Danielle's hand. Her voice faded as she turned back to the TV and the door closed between them. ". . . so you see he didn't forget after all--not that I'd ever think he would, not him--everything is all ready for you. He was expecting you." Peter's flat was the second floor of a carriage house-turned three car garage. She unlocked the door, pulled her suitcase in, and locked the door behind her. Two bedrooms, one of them set up as a study, a bathroom, a galley kitchen and a sitting area were decorated in no particular style. The furnishings looked used, worn even, without being shabby. A floor lamp and a pile of books stood next to a large creased -6- leather chair and ottoman in the sitting room. A vase of fresh flowers stood on the dresser in the bedroom. She put her suitcase on a low bench in there and slowly unzipped it. She was well into her second twenty-four hours without sleep. The six hour time change, plus the seven hours on the plane, plus the anxiety of not making the connection with Peter added up to a massive jet lag-stress test. A few of his clothes hung in the closet with a number of empty hangers. She fumbled with the buttons on her dress and hung it up. She kicked off her shoes, pulled on a robe from the suitcase, and wandered around the flat. The food in the refrigerator was fresh, new, untouched. The bottle of French Chardonnay in there was unopened. She uncorked it and poured herself a glass. There were no newspapers, magazines, clutter. Nothing in the medicine chest in the bathroom. In the second bedroom, a desk stood next to the bed. It held a few books, some stationary supplies, pens, a few phone bills marked "paid," and a slim leather-bound book which looked as if could be a diary or an appointment calender. Or a pair of 8x10 photographs. She stood the folder on the desk, took another sip of wine and sat on the bed. Like an opened book, the pictures stood together, framed and bound in embossed leather. The one on the left of a big muscular man and a slim woman in swimsuits, astride the deck of a sailboat. Peter and her, back then. He, barechested, one hand holding onto the shroud, the other arm around her shoulders. She, with both arms around his waist, laughing up at him. They were windblown, suntanned, sunburned, sunbleached hair flying wild in the wind, bodies braced against it, laughing with each other, laughing at the camera. And the other photograph. She drank some wine. A family picture. She was the photographer. Peter, in a suit and tie, with one arm around Bonnie, holding two year old Joe on the other. Joe's delighted face was pressed against his, and he was giving his dad a mighty hug around the neck. Bonnie, her dark hair -7- catching the light, shared a intimate look of love and pride with Peter. They were smiling and happy. It would last forever. Should have. She poured another glass of wine. She was part of the family, Joe's biggest fan. Bonnie and she were best friends, closer than sisters. The whole happy picture shattered in one thirty-second horror. Memorial Day in the car, tired and happy, sunburned and sticky from the beach. A DWI crashed into them broadside, and ended the whole thing. She survived with a broken arm and lacerations. Peter, after they cut him out of the wreckage, ended up with a neck brace and a cast on his leg for months. And a great magma of anger inside, ready to erupt at the slightest provocation. A terrifying, destructive, self-destructive rage. But the casts frustrated his vengeance. When the casts were off, he said, the days slid into a quagmire of lost weeks. Self-pity, hate, contempt for those who were fools enough to be happy, despair left him an empty shell. In the beginning, he stopped coming home after work at all, and went to the Third Street Bar & Grill instead. Most nights then, he'd delay the indifference of the empty rooms, and the disappointment of having no one there til he was sufficiently numb to ignore it. There was no one to yell "Hello" to, he said. His things were exactly where he left them. No little surprises like dinner cooking, or flowers on the table, or toys on his chair, or Bonnie's coat tossed over the railing, or fingerprints low on the front window greeted him when he walked in. And the swingset in the yard made him cry. There was no way to get even, he told her. She harangued, and argued and drank, and kidnapped him back from the depths of his loss. With desperation and great holes in her logic, she wrestled him back to the living, because she loved him and owed him and he was all she had. Peter sold the house and went to Nam with the Marines, and she thought it was a good thing, because he would take revenge if he stayed. After a while she realized her wine glass was empty again. She left a light on and went to bed. -8- The next morning it was clear and cool. Danielle left messages for Peter, called hospitals to check for him. She wandered into a church cake sale and bought cream cakes for tea with Marion. She went to the gardia. They gave her nothing but reluctant promises to look for him--"Look Miss, he's a grown man havin' all his faculties, and his landlady told you he stays away from the flat for weeks at a time. Are you sure you're not seein' a problem where none exists?"-- So in the afternoon, she trudged up the hill loaded with camera, art portfolio and raincoat, armed with directions from Marion. --"The stones? Of course the stones are around here. Hardly a mystery about them, since they're all over the hill, big as life. No one knows what they're about, but any school child can show you where they sit. But they're not the cursing stones, Danielle. We don't have the cursing stones around here, you know." Marion marched across her kitchen with a forward lean to her body and set the kettle on the stove with a clang. Some of the water spurted out of the top. "The cursing stones?" Marion pursed her lips in a lemon sucking way, and it was hard to tell if she were annoyed at the ignorance of the question, or if she disapproved of the cursing stones. "Though there are times when we wish we did," she added. Or if she disapproved of the ancients' not placing them in the neighborhood."Clocha Breacha, the cursing stones. On the altar over in the cashel at Inishmurray." Danielle shook her head. She gave Danielle a sharp frown, decided that she could be trusted with more information, and continued. "They are old, very old, older than the Church. Sure the monks, in their time, took over the altar, and put crosses all over it, and all over the stones themselves, mind you, but everyone still calls the Inishmurray altar the Clocha Breacha, "the cursing stones." And the monks themselves were known to be very good at using them, pagan stones or not. Some people say--and it's only hearsay, mind you--that the stones are used today. There's no question but they do work. There are stories enough to make a believer out of anyone. It's a bit of a trick to -9- invoke their curse, don't you know. And the man that does it, better do it right, or the curse he sets, will set upon him." With a nod of grim satisfaction, she placed the cups and saucers on the table with a clatter. "And what is it the storytellers say?--`That's my story, and if there's a word of lie to it, why be it so. It wasn't I who invented it.'" She nodded again, in confirmation, and put teabags into the teapot. "The stones around here, though, are just the old stones, some plain, some fancy. No one knows what they were for. What do you want with them?" And Danielle had explained about the plans Peter and she had made, perhaps materializing in a book about pre-Christian art, about trekking through the country, tracking down the stones, the gallery graves and the dolmen, taking photographs and rubbings with chalk. So Marion gave her directions for finding them. "Mind those clouds now. There's a storm brewing over those hills, it'll be getting dark early now," she warned.-- At the crest of the hill Danielle could see the valley, with its stone walls and white cottages. Overhead the sky was an improbable blue; beyond the valley it was dark. Peat smoke and lazy mists snuggled between the hills. Around her the grass rippled in a breeze. Three people climbed purposefully up the hill. A massive dolmen carved with twisted spirals stood overlooking the valley. A colony of ants used the indented patterns as highways. She brushed ants and rock dust away, then taped paper to the granite. As she rubbed chalk over the surface of the paper, the swirling pattern emerged. The breeze grew into a wind which snatched a corner of the paper and rattled it in victory. She held it down with one hand and fumbled for the roll of tape. "Danielle Mahr?" Danielle jumped and laughed. "You startled me, I didn't hear you come up," she said to the doughy faced woman who stood behind her. "Danielle Mahr?" the woman asked again, as if it weren't really a question, as if she already knew the answer. "Come with me. Now." "Wait a minute." She stood to face the -10- woman, and the freed paper sprang off the rock and escaped with the wind. "Who are you?" "Come." "I think no. Don't be ridiculous." She stepped away and her heel scraped rock. She turned to go around the dolmen but two men, as drab as the woman, grey and big as the rock, blocked the way. Danielle pulled in a shaky breath. Nothing was said for a long moment. "O.K.," she said, "I have to get my things." She bent to gather her belongings, keeping her eyes on the three who emerged from the rocks like trolls. They watched her, motionless, silent in their shapeless grey coats. "What do you want?" "That's enough," the woman said, "Come." "My papers!" "You won't need them." The wind whipped the grass around the rock as the four started down the hill. "At least you could tell me where we're going." No response. "This is crazy. There's been a mistake. I don't even know anyone here. No one knows me." They gave no indication of hearing. They scanned the hill.Danielle stopped. "This has gone far enough. Who are you?" One of the men nudged her onward, the others didn't alter the pace. Her anxiety rose another notch. She lapsed into silence and desperately searched the hillside. Someone was a tiny speck, coming closer. She almost prayed. The troll on her right glanced at her and slipped his hand into his pocket and they veered away from the speck. Danielle swung the camera bag in his face and screamed. The troll on her left grabbed her above the elbow and pivoted her around to land on her knees at his feet. He crushed her arm until she cried, while the other two surrounded her. She pried at his grip with frantic fingers, then hammered on his chest when that didn't work. That didn't work either. He shook her impatiently. "No more tricks." They resumed march. The woman plodded behind with the gear, the men escorted Danielle with a grip on each elbow to a black sedan at the edge of the village. The woman got into the back -11- seat. Without releasing his grip, one man pushed Danielle in and followed her. The other slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. She tried to pry the fingers off her arm. She screamed and whirled to see a needle being withdrawn from her thigh. She flailed out wildly, scratching and kicking. A face, a sleeve, a knee. She scrabbled at the door handle. It dwindled smaller and smaller, its chrome glinting down a long tunnel. She tried to climb out of the floor. The car shot forward and the handle slipped away. A soft leathery smell drowned her in a crimson spiral. The ammoniacal stench of horse sweat, urine and dust stung Michael Kelley to consciousness. He lay face down on a slatted wooden bench. His head hurt, throbbed with insistent rhythm. He moved each limb, barely changing position. Nothing broken except my head, he thought. He lay motionless and listened to silence. A wooden wall was on one side of the bench, his arm hung off the other side, knuckles scraping the ground. He slowly extended his fingers to feel dirt, straw, concrete. With huge deliberate effort, he raised himself to sitting. Feet planted firmly on the floor. Hands gripped the edge of the bench. Solid planked walls and a slice of a ventilation opening filtered back through the rusty haze. "What the hell?" The sound of his voice made him wince. He remembered a drink at The Bull's Breath. One drink, alone. He remembered the sound of his skull, like the sound of a dropped pumpkin, under the blow. And he remembered them, whoever they were, catching him before he fell into the mud and oblivion. If they couldn't arrest him with proper reason, or intern him without one, they'd do it another way, but it was a strange place here. It wasn't Long Kesh or the like again. It smelled like a stable. The stall was about nine feet square. He sat on the bench and gauged the effort it would take to get to the door. He stood and slowly crossed the space. The door, with its eye-level barred window, was locked tight. Its rough wood offered no fingerhold, the crack between it and the door jamb wasn't even fingernail thick. When -12- he grabbed the bars and pulled, it didn't budge. A bulb way down the corridor was the source of dim light. A black cloth bag lay in the dust next to the door. Sounds of wind and rain came through the ventilation slit in the wall. The pockets of his scarred leather jacket and jeans were cleaned out, not even a crumb of tobacco in the seams. He slid to the floor, back against the door, and stared at the black cloth like it was a snake. "Anyone here?" he shouted, then grabbed his head as his own words echoed against his ears. The internment camps, Long Kesh and Magilligan, were monochromes of concrete and metal smelling of urine, sweat and disinfectant and too many men, but not of horses. Things there couldn't have changed so drastically in the time he'd been out. As much as the Brits hated him, protocol was a priority. At least it used to be. He'd felt things--a tension--escalate toward a climax. He'd been too active because there wasn't much time. Very quiet, but people knew, or thought they knew. Talk. Rumors. A length of old straw snapped between his fingers. He was debating the effort of crossing to the vent when a door slammed in the building. He scrambled to his feet and pressed against the wall to see two men through the door's window. A rancid miasma surged down the corridor with the first, a huge man. Dark bristles spiked out from his great jowls. Small eyes glittered over the slabs of cheek. His undershirt, grey-green from unwashed wear, bulged over his suspender-supported buttonless trousers. The other was anonymous and grey in a rain spattered coat. He sidled through the narrow passageway, carrying a woman. Michael edged closer to the window for a better look. She was young, slim in jeans and a cabled sweater, Bass written on the ankle of her hiking boots. Shoulder length blond hair swung away for a moment--honey blond hair that swung all in one piece, like a length of silk--to let the meager light catch a facet of an earring. A fractured rainbow flashed on the dusty wood wall. Her limp hands were manicured, the nails polished with pink and dusted with chalk. "In here," the fat man said. He opened the -13- next stall and the other edged in with the woman. A moment later the men locked the door and left without her. Michael sat on his bench and listened to silence. It was the Mahr woman Walter called for at the airport. What was she doing here? What was he, for that matter. The stable was a goddamn hotel. Footsteps clodded past the door and the fat man unlocked the next stall and entered. Slats on the other side of the wall creaked. The shrieking began. The woman's screams pierced the wood as if it had not been there. Michael clenched his forearms around his head and curled over to keep them out. The struggle, the squeaking slats and the screams ricocheted within his skull. Finally--it seemed hours--abruptly, they were muffled. He relaxed his arms in uneasy thankfulness and backed away from the wall. Low chortles, almost tender murmurs, and the other door shut. The key grated in the lock. The screams became sobs. He trembled in the center of his cell. Romper Room, RUC style. Variations of a theme. The few violent minutes ignited nightmares. Then it was the terrifying, disorienting, screaming, hissing machine. Eagle spread. Fingertips against the wall. Black hood. Stretch. No sleep. Constant noise. Stretch. Hissed screams. Suffocating black hood. No sleep. He'd stood it for almost five days, or so they told him afterwards. It was a stretch of eternity. They strung it out with hypos of something when sleep was inevitable. There wasn't much left when they were through. He would have told them anything they wanted to know, but they went too far. By the time they came around to the right questions, he was beyond answering. They couldn't throw him back on the street like that. They kept him. And kept him. The interrogation techniques etched lines in his face and grayed his hair. It was months before he walked without a stoop. He swore at himself and at them. It wouldn't take much today. They'd have everything they wanted soon enough. Sweat poured down his face. The woman slowly pounded the wall. Her -14- wracking sobs were further apart. Terror by proxy. A woman's screams instead of a tape recorder. They probably saw us talking at the airport, whoever they are. Poor thing. Or maybe she's in on it, a set up. The whole thing staged for my benefit, he thought. "Well, you bastards," he whispered to the ceiling, "you'll get what you want eventually, but I'll not be handing it to you. It won't be as easy as that. And I'll not be spilling it to the lovely next door." Devious set up. Advanced dramatics. Give her a medal for realistic performance of the year. The cell was bare except for the cloth bag and the bench. There was no hardware on the ventilation slit that he could use for a weapon or a tool. The vent itself was the size of a business letter, way to small to even think about crawling through. There was no hardware on the door. The slats of the bench were screwed into the supports. He tried prying them apart but they didn't even creak, much less move. His fingernails were in shreds from trying to unscrew them. He settled on the bench and picked splinters off the wall to use as screwdrivers while he listened to the sobs subside into silence. It had been quiet for a little while when he rapped on the wall separating them. He heard her gasp. A long moment passed before she spoke. "Who are you? Where are you?" "Right next to the wall. Speak lower, they'll be listening." "Please let me go. Please." "I can't." "The door's locked." "So's mine." "Oh," very small, flat. She seemed to return from a distance, checking the door again. "Who are you?" he said. "Danielle . . . Danielle Mahr. Do you suppose they want ransom?" He gave a short harsh laugh. "If they do, they've got the wrong man here, I'll tell you." "I've money in an account back home, but that would hardly be worth their efforts, do you suppose? In Italy . . ." "This isn't Italy. Don't be naive ." "There's no one to pay it for me anyway, -15- even if I had money." "No other reason for your being here, that you can think of?" "None. If they wanted . . . There are surely more attractive women to . . . They didn't have to pick a tourist if they wanted--" She tried again. "It would cause less fuss if they had taken a local. I don't know anyone in this country except my landlady. I've never been here before." She was silent for a while. "I don't know your name." "Michael Kelley." A space of silence. "You spoke to me at the airport yesterday." "The same." "You don't think it's for ransom. Why are you here, then?" "I've no idea," he lied. Again silence, an accusing silence. Her voice was bitter. "You're one of them." "By god, I'm not." He didn't want to lose her, not yet, not until he found out what their angle would be. "Listen, are you all right? I mean after . . . ?" "Fantastic. Just great." He smiled at the venom of her reply. At least she was talking to him. "So you were vacationing?" "The American tourist. Your Bord FFa'ilte could plan a better itinerary. Lousy staff. Probably literally." Her brittle humor gave way to tears. He shook his head and immediately regretted it. He was stretched out on the bench, picking slivers off the boards of the wall, breaking them in the screw heads. A loud sniffle and a shaky sigh carried through the wall. "Someone here must know me. They asked if I were Danielle Mahr before they made me go with them today. I thought it was a horrible mistake, that they were really looking for someone else, anyone else, but that's not right. The were looking for me. They made sure it was me. They knew me." She continued in a much lower tone to herself. Michael leaned closer to catch the words. "I spoke to the lady next to me on the plane. She didn't know my -16- name, I don't think. Then at the airport, the man behind the counter took my message for Peter. I had signed it. And Walter Tween knew it there. . . . And you." "I heard Walter call you by name. That's how I knew it." Mutual disbelief lay thick in the silence between them. "Who's Peter?" he asked. "Don't you know that too?" "Listen," he began, then swallowed his temper and asked again. "Who's Peter?" "My brother," she finally answered. "He was supposed to meet me, but he never did. He would have arranged something if he couldn't be there." "Walter?" "Maybe I should have gone with him. Even so, Peter would have been in touch with me by now. I'm afraid something's happened to him. I'm afraid . . ." "What's he doing here? Does he live here?" "He's an engineer. He's lived everywhere, but he's been working in Ireland for a while now. It was supposed to be a vacation. He was supposed to tour Ireland with me. We were going to look up all the old stones, all the dolmens. We were going to photograph them and take rubbings. He never would have let this happen, any of it. It was supposed to be a vacation! It was supposed to be fun." "Well, nobody brought me here for fun and games, for sure." "Well why, then?" He didn't reply. "If it's Ireland, its political," she said. Are you in politics?" "In a matter of speaking." "Well I'm not, and I don't see how it would apply to me at all." The disinterest in her voice left little to elaborate on. She began to speak very softly again. "He's very awful, isn't he." "Who?" "The fat man. I wish I had been still out." "Still?" "I was pretending. The shot they gave me -17- wore off. I pretended to be unconscious so they wouldn't give me any more. I thought maybe I would hear something, but they didn't talk." A door slammed in the building. He went to the window. "Speak of the devil. Your friend is coming back." "Oh god," she cried. "Help me." Michael snarled obscenities at the corridor. The big man chuckled and thumbed his suspenders off his shoulders. "You'll get yours, sod, don't you fear," he said. Still leering, he twisted the key in the door of the next cell. He pulled the door open with one hand and held up his trousers with the other. The door crashed against him and Danielle darted into the hall. She pushed off the opposite wall to race down the corridor. The fat man lunged at her, grabbed her with both hands and flung her back into the cell. His trousers dropped around his ankles and he sprawled on the floor. There was a splintering crash. The round wooden top of a stool rolled drunkenly into the corridor. Its one leg and the fragmented remains of the others revolved slowly as it weaved pass Michael's door. Danielle shot into sight again. eyes wide with fear, cheeks streaked with tears. She paused to glance up and down the corridor and saw him. "For god's sake, lock him in!" She hesitated then pushed the hairy white legs into her cell, slammed and locked the door. She ran back to Michael and fumbled the key into the lock in his door. "It won't turn!" In desperation and rising panic, she withdrew it and rammed it in again. Again it jammed. "It's no use! It's not the key!" "Go to the tack room. See if there are keys hanging about. Quickly." He had no need of the last. She slipped away. Was she part of a scam? Or a pawn in a ruthless game? Maybe this was a 'killed while escaping' routine. No official arrest. They would have killed him right off if they wanted him dead now. A ploy to ingratiate herself in his confidence. Go with her and tell all. Simplistic, and it might work. Lord knows that scene shook him up. He'd do anything to avoid a rerun of the years' old nightmare. Someone knew a lot about it, about him. Where was she? What was taking her so -18- long? She saw a door and kept going. Sensible thing to do if she were on the level. He watched the doorway without any real hope. Danielle raced back, key in hand. "You found it!" She shook her head and scattered tears. She scraped the key across the lock, only to have it stick again. "There weren't any keys there." "He must have it on him, in his pockets." She backed away. "I can't! I won't go in there with him!" "He's out. Hit him again." "No, I don't care! I won't!" She shook her head from side to side, retreating until her back was against the other wall of the corridor, ready to run as if he could force her to go back to the cell. "I'm afraid. I won't go in there. You don't even know if he has it with him." He bowed his head until his forehead pressed against the door. Luck and hope and all the rest of it were dead and bitter. He had known terror; she had done what she could. It would do neither of them any good if she were caught now. "Will you get help? Tell my friends where I am?" On the outside chance she was straight. She nodded dumbly. "The Bull's Breath Pub near Enniskellin. The barman. He'll pass it on. They have a phone there, you can call them." She nodded. "Bull's Breath Pub near Enniskellin." She tried the key again. "And throw that in a stream." "Yes. . . . I'm sorry." "And stay away from cars on the roads." "I'm sorry," she whispered, hesitating. She looked back at the other cell and down the corridor to the door and back to him. "Go," Michael said and turned away. He crossed over to the vent and stretched to see out. Nothing but hard rain, abysmal black. Hope she makes it, doubt she will. She had courage enough to come back without the key. Not enough to check fatty's pockets though. Mechanically he slapped his own flat pockets for cigarettes. He sagged against the wall, his hands covered his eyes and he willed himself endurance. And courage, maybe just a little courage. -19- Danielle stopped just outside the stable door. Nearby house lights twinkled through the rain and she ran away from them. She lost any sense of direction. Stone walls separated fields, meandering aimlessly. Following one wall often brought her back to a spot she had crossed earlier. The vision of wandering all night in a huge circle to end at that stable haunted her. Hours twisted upon themselves, briar hedges and stone walls punctuated time. She grasped the relative sanity of a shrub-lined road and walked steadily. She shivered in the wet sweater and dove behind a hedge when the milk wagon passed. Cold and sodden hiking boots dragged down each step. Dawn came grey and weak as the rain lightened to drizzle. A road sign in Irish and English tilted over the lane. Patriots had scratched through the English so both words were illegible. All right, a road to somewhere. Just get to the gardia and call that pub for him and go home. Go to Peter's flat. The morning began to stir. The road became wider as it rounded a bend and crossed a bridge to a cluster of buildings. No reason to be afraid of everyone, there will be someone up and about. She stood at the edge of the bridge and tried to fluff out the hair plastered to her head. No police, just the phone call and go home. She continued across the bridge. A group of men loitered at the corner to meet the milk lorry. What were they to think of her? Should she say a cheery "good morning" and pass by, or ask for help, or what? Weariness smothered the questions and their answers. She just stood there. One man approached her. Walter Tween. "Morning, Miss," he said. "Morning." "You should'a come with me before, Miss." "I probably should have, Mr. Tween." His face, if not too reassuring, was at least not threatening. And Michael knew him, and Peter. "Michael Kelley is in trouble. He told me to . . ." "We know. That's why we're here." "He got word to you?" -20- "He did." "Then he must be all right." "You might say that, though the man has his troubles, bad enough." "He told me to tell the bartender at . . ." "It's all taken care of." "You're sure he's all right, Mr. Tween?" "Would I be standing here, talking to you, if he weren't?" he glanced left and then right over his shoulder. "I guess not. I must get to the gardia, Mr. Tween." "Ach, Miss. Michael himself told me to watch out for you." He wasn't mauling his cap now. "You don't want to be telling them all about that business, now, do you?" "But that monster is still . . ." "That will be taken care of too. Don't you worry now, there's nothing to be gained by going to the gardia. And worrying won't do a bit of good either, now will it?" That seemed reasonable, nothing would be gained by going to the police. "Mr Tween, do you know where my brother is?" "I haven't seen him for a few days, miss, but I'll tell him where you are. You're to be coming with me." "Oh that's not necessary. If you'll tell me where I can find Peter, I won't be bothering you anymore. I'll just go home." He pulled his cap from his head and slapped it against his leg. "And give those thugs another chance? And what would I tell your brother, that I didn't take care of you when you had your troubles? I couldn't face the man, I couldn't. Miss, Michael himself told me to watch out for you and that's what I'm about to do. He'd be beside himself, he would, wondering what's become of you and if they got back to you before he could find out who they were. He didn't know who they were, did he?" She shook her head. "No." He was talking too fast. Words and thoughts flew past her brain, dropping hints, not meaning. There was no reason not to trust Walter Tween, she didn't have to like him. He did look like a chicken, all sharp beak and darting glances. She tried to be business-like and tuned in to his prattle. -21- ". . . to a friend's house, a safe place where you can stay while this gets straightened out." "Peter . . ." "He'll be told, you can be sure. You have my word on that." He straightened his cap back on his head. Michael was right about Walter's driving. The narrow, rust-freckled van jounced and veered around the slightest curve. He used the horn rather than the brakes, if there were any. Every vehicle in front of them was driven by an anatomically impossible idiot. Others were damned to hellfires with a menagerie of their relatives. Her fingertips dug through the cracked vinyl into the crumbly foam underneath. Springs pushed against the thin seat cushion. She braced her feet and shut her eyes. That was worse. "Where are we going?" she managed to squeak. He darted another glance to her. She wished he'd keep his eyes on the road. "Fermanah Lake Area," he said. The van careened to the right, now back left, taking its half of the road from the center. A twiggy branch squabbled against the windshield and poked through the open window at her shoulder and snapped back outside with a cracked complaint. A farm cart, overloaded with hay, loomed in front of them. Walter spewed a variety of obscenities and took the truck through the ditch without touching the stone wall or the brake pedal. Miraculously they emerged on the road in front of the cart. "Mr. Tween," she breathed, "are we in a big hurry?" He looked surprised. "Why no, Miss. There's no hurry at all." "Do you think--I mean, if it isn't too much to ask--maybe you could slow down?--Please?" He wrinkled his face together in bewilderment. "I always say, Miss, if you are going to get somewhere, you go and get there, and leave sightseeing to the tourists." Then he smiled and the wrinkles changed direction. "You want to see the county, is that it?" She nodded. Anything. -22- He tried. They moved at a sedate pace for a while, until his foot grew heavy on the pedal. He assumed the role of guide, to explain his favorite places, or more enthusiastically, others not nearly so nice. By looking straight at her, he made sure she was listening as he gestured at the sights. The van seemed to drive itself. The needle on the speedometer climbed determinedly over the row of nines. "Mr Tween! The road!" He scowled. "Miss, I've been driving for thirty years, "he sulked and dropped the tour guide role. "One thing Kelley didn't mention, Where was this place?" "I don't know. It was so dark, I couldn't see a thing. I wouldn't recognize it if we passed it. I was so lost last night, I don't even know what direction it was in." He nodded and gummed his lips. They swung off onto a tree-lined lane. Two white pilasters announced a residence on the left. The truck screeched to a complete shuddering stop, then crawled around the horseshoe drive. "The man does get upset when I roar in," Walter said. The house stood at the apex of the driveway, big square, sedate. Marble steps led to a door flanked by two fluted pillars. Windows glistened everywhere. Dark ivy spread up the dun colored stone. Thick manicured hedges lined the paths and the driveway. Scarlet and yellow roses nodded beyond them in a formal garden. The Lough sparkled in the back. Walter hopped out, ran up the stairs and reached for the bell. The door opened before he touched it. He whipped the cap from his head. Clenching it, he mumbled "Miss Danielle Mahr--Mr. Bruce Creighton." Bruce Creighton was clean-shaven and had dignified regular features,--a strong jaw, a narrow straight nose, a pleasant smile. His silver blond hair, blond eyebrows, and pale eyes went with his pale, pale skin. He was stocky--solidly built, not fat--and dressed in flannel slacks, a fine light sweater and a well-tailored sport coat. Danielle smiled an apologetic "Hello" to him as he offered her his arm. "I really don't understand why . . ." -23- "Don't worry about a thing." Creighton led her into the house. "A friend of Michael Kelley's is more than welcome in my home." He turned and stopped Walter at the threshold. "That will be all, thank you," he said. "But, uh, I thought . . ." mashing his cap. "Yes?" "Nothing." Walter snapped the cap back on and stamped down the stairs. The van's tires squealed and spat gravel across the walk as he drove away. "Mr. Creighton," she said, "I can't impose upon you like this. Walter brought me here. I had no idea . . ." "Call me Bruce. I owe it to Michael. After your experience . . ." "Does the whole world know of 'my experience,' as you so tactfully put it?" He put his arm around her. "Not at all, not at all. it's comfortable here. Stay for a few days until we can determine what is going on." "Where is Michael now? I understood he'd be here." "He couldn't make it. You do look exhausted. Mrs. Burns!" He smiled at her. "My housekeeper, a gem. She runs the place and me too, if I'd let her." "Bruce, I really appreciate this." "Nonsense. I welcome the company." A heavy woman trundled across the foyer to them. "Mr. C! She will catch her death standing around wet like that." She enveloped Danielle in a huge towel. Bruce winked at Danielle and grinned. "What did I tell you. Danielle will be our guest for a few days." "I'm aware of that. And don't you worry about a thing, we'll have you fixed up in no time, Danielle. A fine way to welcome a guest, Mr. C., having her stand here and shiver." Danielle allowed herself to be embraced and persuaded with promises of a warm bath and bed. Sunlight peeping between the drapes awakened Danielle the next morning. Her clothes, freshly laundered, were folded on the bedside table. The dark posts at the corners of the bed -24- rose almost to the ceiling. The dresser drawers were empty except for the fragrance of lavender and a spare woolen blanket. Large mauve flowers on yellowed paper lined the walls. There were lighter rectangles on the paper where pictures once hung. White ceramic tiles covered the adjoining bathroom. A stack of thick towels stood next to the tub, and a brand new toothbrush, still in its glass tube, rested on the pedestal sink. She bathed and dressed. When she pulled the drapes open, she could see the Lough. The white bow of a boat bobbed next to the dock. Closer to the house, paths of a formal garden formed geometric patterns of grey against dark green foliage. Bruce cupped a rosebud in his hand, inspected it, and gently clipped it off. The smells of cinnamon and baking led her to the kitchen where Mrs. Burns stood over the stove. The faded print of her apron stretched across her ample figure as she bent to pull a pan of cinnamon buns from the oven. "Good Morning," she boomed. "These buns are pure heaven, if I do say so myself. Have one with your tea. Mr. C. will be in to join you in a moment, I'm sure." She brought a half empty cup to the table, replenished it, and sat down with a sigh. "You look a bit better today. What you need is a decent breakfast." She started to rise. Danielle rested her hand on the woman's arm. "Just talk to me and have your tea." Mrs. Burns sank back into the chair. "Don't mind if I do." With the back of her hand, she pushed a wisp up to the mass of auburn hair. "You're feeling better, I hope?" "Much, thank you." "You have lovely underwear." Mrs. Burns' already florid face blushed deeper pink. "I couldn't help but notice when I laundered your things. Satiny lace and all. And under blue jeans, yet." Her bosom heaved with a sigh. "I'm afraid I'm putting you to a lot of extra work." Nonsense. When I see those advertisements in the magazines, I promise to buy myself some. Someday I will. Isn't that silly now, for a woman my age." "Buy some what?" -25- "Underwear, the fancy kind, lingerie." Her voice caressed the word. "I don't suppose they make it in my size now, do you?" "I'm sure they do." "My whole life I've looked at those advertisements, and never dared to send away for any. Suppose someone opened the package? What would they think? They'd have me put away." She was silent for a moment. "Do you think it's too late?" Danielle saw Mrs. Burns as she must have been years ago, before the hands reddened and swelled, when the teeth were pretty and the auburn tresses swirled up in a soft halo. The dreams of a vain and pretty young woman lived bittersweet with the knowledge they would remain forever dreams. "Mrs. Burns, you're going to receive a house gift." "But this isn't my house." "Bruce wouldn't look good in a satin slip." "Pink?" "Pink, with at least six inches of lace." Mrs. Burns giggled a young girl giggle. "And a camisole and shorts." "Lace on them too?" She could see them in her dream's eye. "Naturally. Decollete'." "Size forty-two?" The whispered number might burst the dream. "Of course. From Bloomingdales', in New York." Danielle promised recklessly, and they giggled together. "I see you ladies are getting along nicely." Bruce entered the room and handed Mrs. Burns four thornless roses. She blushed scarlet and leaped up. "Your breakfast will be on shortly." She shot a warning glance to Danielle as she bustled away. "Rested Danielle? You slept nearly twenty-four hours." He seated himself across from her and poured tea. "Quite rested, thank you. I ought to call my landlady and tell her where I am and that I'm all right." He frowned. "Of course. Yes, that's a good idea. It's still early, I'll send a man down for your luggage." Mrs. Burns set breakfast before them and -26- placed the roses in the center of the table. "Aren't you going to eat with us, Mrs. Burns?' "I'm not this morning, dear," she patted her shoulder as she walked out of the room, "I have to feed the others now." "Getting men to work the grounds is easier if meals are included with the job," Bruce said. "So you're interested in archeology." "Pre-Christian art," she replied mechanically. "How did you know that?" "Michael must have mentioned it." He hurried on. "Pre-Christian Art--Is that primarily an interest area, or do you manage to make a living out of it back in the States?" She laughed. "A little of both. My degrees are in art history. I'm on the staff of the Museum and I own a small gallery in Minneapolis. But there really isn't much of a collection there in the Cities. I think I see a niche for a book, basically a photographic essay, of Irish Pre-Christian Art, Celtic and earlier. Since my brother is in Ireland, we planned to combine a vacation with the project. We'll hike through the country, and track down the stones, and dolmens and the gallery graves." "And where is your brother now?" She frowned and shook her head. "I don't know. We seemed to have missed each other at the airport, and now--all this . . . " "Well," Bruce said briskly, "don't you worry. We'll take care of it. It will work out all right, you'll see. We'll get word to him." he patted her hand. "Meanwhile, there are some fascinating stones on the islands right here in the lough. Perhaps we could make a day of it, and get a start on your project? I've wandered around a bit, I could find some of the better ones. You might explain them to me. You will need a jacket if the wind picks up. Sometimes it does, out of nowhere. Would you like to see the house? I could give you a tour of the house and the grounds." He laughed. "Forgive me, I'm getting carried away. I don't often have visitors, especially not such attractive ones." "Especially no ones who are dragged in like drowned rabbits." "We'll save the grounds for another day. -27- We can't use everything up at once." "Have you lived here long?" she asked. "It would have been seventeen years come December." "'Would have been' sounds as if you intend to move." "I should have said 'will be.' This is my home. I have no intention of moving." He scraped his chair back. "Allow me to show you my home." He offered his arm with a flourish and a dazzling smile. Of the twenty-some rooms, a half-dozen were in use. Bedrooms and sitting rooms on the second floor were retired under sheets and behind closed doors. He dutifully opened them so Danielle could peek in. Gesturing toward rooms at the end of a hall, he said "Those are Mrs. Burns'. When my wife was alive, everything was open. She loved to entertain; we would have guests for weeks at a time." He gently closed another door. "She passed away some years ago." "I'm sorry," she said. "We keep open what we need to live comfortably, Mrs. Burns and I. There's enough work for her as it is. She's been with us, me, since the beginning. Seventeen years. It's as much her house as it is mine. Downstairs, you've been in the kitchen. I take breakfast and dinner there, the evening meal in the dining room. It's easier for her that way." The sitting room with a fireplace and a book-filled study looked used and lived in. The other rooms on the main floor were cold and uninviting. "I'm glad you're here," he said. "I'll have Mrs. Burns see about a basket lunch and look up a jacket for you." While she waited for him, Danielle wandered into the music room. It had been beautiful. French doors looked out upon the rose garden. The panes of glass sparkled, but the furniture was shrouded in sheets. The once elegant wallpaper was faded. She ran her fingers along the keyboard of the grand piano. Discordant notes echoed through the room, a parody of music filled evenings. She left the room quickly. She telephoned Marion from the phone in the foyer. While she waited for the operator to -28- connect them, Bruce appeared from the kitchen, smiled at her, then moved back to the study. "Hello Marion?" Marion's reply was cluttered with static. "Danielle! Where in the world are you? I've had the Gardia over here two days in a row now, listening to their clever remarks about `the landlady of the missing persons.' That gets old quickly, I tell you. Evidently, they remembered you inquiring after Peter. But what happened? Where are you?" "I'm in the Fermanah Lake Area--" "How did you get there? Are you all right?" "Yes, I'm OK now. I'm staying at a friend's house." "Well, you could have let me know." Danielle could almost see the set of Marion's lips. "I called the gardia right away after you didn't come back for dinner. I didn't know what to think, with Peter not showing up either. You might have told me." "I'm sorry , Marion. I--" "And your brother too. You would have saved him a lot of worry. You missed his call," she reported with some satisfaction. "Peter called?!" "He did. A very strange call it was too. If you had bothered to tell me your plans, you would have eased his mind too, I tell you." "But--" "I think something very odd is going on. I said so myself to the gardia, never mind their protests. And to Peter. I've never seen the like. Your brother called--it was right after I rid myself of the gardia, because they were here most of the evening when you didn't come home. They were here so long that I missed my show entirely. I called them, of course, when you didn't come back from seeing the stones, and then they wouldn't leave for asking questions that made no sense whatsoever, and then, when they finally do have the decency to leave, Peter himself calls. He tells me that you wouldn't be visiting after all! Can you imagine? When I said that you had been here--stayed the night, in fact--he was speechless. `And where was he when he promised to meet his sister at the airport?' I -29- asked him. The Mahr's certainly haven't shown any talent for making vacation plans, and that's a fact. I lay it all at his feet, I did, this whole mix-up, and told him as much. If he had met you like he was supposed to . . . Anyhow, he kept asking to put you on, to talk to you, and where were you. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. The man sounded very confused, in general. And then I had to tell the poor soul that I didn't know where you were. That you had disappeared, and just this evening too, just before he called, it was. You should have heard the silence. Finally he says,--very slowly, he says to me, "Tell me." "And so I told him everything I told the Gardia, and more and better besides--all about the stones you were interested in, you see, and the gardia looking for him, don't you know, and about the two men who called for him the other day, and then came back again just before the gardia arrived. In fact, I almost mistook them for the gardia men at first. They certainly scuttled away when the saw the gardia, I tell you. And I'm afraid I went on and on for quite some time, but he didn't interrupt me, not once, or say anything at all. Finally, when I ran out of things to say, he asked a question or two, and thanked me, and hung up. "He's a worried man, Danielle. A body could hear his worries over the phone. If he should call me again, or show up here, give me where you are and the number there so he can talk to you. And speak up, I can hardly hear you." Abruptly the static became worse and the connection went dead. Danielle tapped the phone, but to no avail. Bruce strode into the foyer with a linen covered basket and jacket over his arm and a smile. "Did you phone your landlady?" he asked. "Yes, and she had received a call from my brother, Peter, saying I wouldn't be arriving. No wonder he didn't meet me at the plane. I wonder where he could have gotten that idea?" Bruce shook his head sympathetically. "The connection was bad, we could hardly hear each other, and now the phone seems dead." "The telephone service is abominable. When it's bad, its bad for several hours at least. -30- They'll probably blame it on the storms. You may as well wait until we get back to try again. Everything is ready." He held up the jacket. "This will be too large, but it will keep the wind off. We'd best get going. The weather report has us in for another storm and more cold tomorrow. I do want you to see some of these stones. We may not get out again for a few days. I hope it won't be too much for the roses." They passed a wooden stable on their way to the dock. "Do you keep horses?" Danielle asked. "The former owners had them. We just use the building for storage. One of the groundsmen has his apartment there." He helped her into the boat. The powerful inboard purred them across the Lough. Spray shot off the bow into their faces. They investigated natural harbors and trudged through grass, pushing aside gorse and heather to find the carved stones. Stubby columns with notched edges stood planted firmly in the soil, centuries of weeds braided around them. The air was sweet with heather, the wine sweet with the picnic lunch. They flirted with each other and talked of light things. It was dusk when they returned. Bruce smiled down at her as he snuggled the jacket closer around her. "Go on up to the house before you freeze, Danielle, I'll be up in a moment," he helped her out of the boat and handed up the picnic basket. Danielle hummed to herself as she made her way to the back of the house. She wondered what he did for a living, or if he inherited enough to lead a pleasant life without working. "Well, don't just stand there in the dark! Come in!" Mrs. Burns called from the kitchen. She shuffled her slippered feet between stove and sink. Her back was toward Danielle. "It was just talk, wasn't it, this morning? About getting those things?" she asked too lightly. "I'm going to see to it the minute I get back, Mrs. Burns. You and Bruce have been very hospitable. He seems to have everything he wants, but I will surely get those things for you. I promise." The woman turned to make sure Danielle was -31- serious. Satisfied, she continued to slice carrots into nickel-sized pieces. "Your suitcase arrived. I put it in your room." "Thank you. That was quick." "That's Mr. C. for you. He's a man to get things done. He could laugh a bit more for my tastes, but you can't have everything. He's a good one to work for, even if he is foreign. Been here so long, he'll start thinking like the rest of us, if he doesn't watch out. But he's a thoughtful one all right. Why, do you know," she said, waving her knife for emphasis, "that he scrapes the thorns off my roses every morning? My own husband never gave me a flower in his life, god rest his soul." "You've been with him a long time." "That I have. And quite a job it is too, this house and the Mr. himself. He does like everything just so." She brushed a damp curl back from her cheek. "A pity, him being alone in this big place." Danielle drifted with the lilt of Mrs. Burns' monologue. There was no need to reply except to smile or nod when a break seemed to demand it. She studied the faded plaid of the worn slippers. "Is he happy?" Mrs. Burns' hands rested. "Funny you should mention that, now. A week ago I'd have said 'yes, no question, in his own way.' But lately, no. It's something that's bothering him. He's not one to confide in me. I don't know what's on his mind. Maybe the waiting for you. But you're here, and he's still down. Worse even, begging you pardon." She shook her head and resumed cutting the carrots. "I don't know." "You were expecting me?" "Oh my yes. There was great excitement around here, I'm telling you. The room to be readied, and this thing and that just exactly so. I wondered if he were fixing to get married again. And then he was so upset when you were late." "Well it wasn't Walter's driving that made me late. Michael must have told you." "It was Mr. C. himself, it was, that told me. I've been hearing the name Michael Kelley, but I don't know any Michael Kelley around here." -32- She stopped slicing carrots for a moment and stared at the wall before her. "There used to be a Michael Kelley, but he's gone, God rest his soul." She resumed slicing. "Now I have a cousin by that name in Ballydooley. That's in Roscommon. I don't guess you've heard of the town though." "He may have come to the house when you weren't here." "That Michael? Nobody comes to the house that I don't know of. That rascal Walter tries to sneak in, but he has to get by me. I can't have riffraff like that bothering Mr. C.. Not that your Michael is riffraff, you understand, but I haven't seen him either." Mrs. Burns counted on the tips of her fingers with the point of the knife. "It would have been Monday. Wouldn't you be knowin' that though?" "You were expecting me before yesterday? -33- It must have been my brother Peter." The sound of the inboard motor dragged Michael to the vent opening in the cell. He saw the blond guy smile and stroke Danielle's hair. He saw her laugh with him and saunter up to the house with the picnic basket on her arm. So much for trust. His shredded lips tightened in bitter resolve as he watched the blond coil lines on the dock, and check his watch, then walk over to the stable and seem to look right in the vent before he disappeared around the corner of the building. Michael hugged his ribs and turned with his back against the wall. He tried to focus on the door. Another door opened and shut in the building. Two sets of footsteps thudded down the hall to his cell. A key grated and turned and the door opened wide. They weren't concerned that he would make a run for it; he was having trouble leaning against the wall. The blond sidled in with a pistol pointed at him. The fat man carried a highbacked wooden chair which he set next to the bench, and a plastic pail of water, which he put next to the door. "Glad to see you're up and about, Kelley. It'll save my friend some trouble." The fat man grinned. Michael snarled at them and pressed the wall. "Aren't you the fuckin' brave captors? There's the pair of you, or maybe four, you've half killed me, and you still can't face me without a gun?" "I'm not taking any chances with you, Kelley. The blond pointed the pistol at Michael's chest. "Strip," he said. "You didn't bring me here just to shoot me." "You're familiar with kneecapping, I believe." He aimed at knee level. Strip, or my friend will help you." The fat man grinned wider so the bristles -34- on his cheeks formed black ridges around his mouth. His teeth were as grey green as his shirt. He stood with his legs astride and his fists on his hips. Michael looked from one to the other and slowly removed his clothes and let them drop. Jacket and sweater, jeans and boots fell in a pile next to the wall. His belt buckle, flattened and twisted from being used as a screwdriver, rang against the floor. He stood with his arms wrapped around his ribs and waited. The blond guy gestured with the pistol. "Sit in the chair." He did. He watched dully as the fat one produced two sets of handcuffs. The blond picked up the black cloth bag. Michael yelled "No!!" and charged with a desperate energy. He connected with a kick to a knee and a fist sliding off a bristled jowl before they brought him down. They shackled his wrists together behind the chair back and his left ankle to the bench leg.The blond smiled as he pocketed the pistol and took out a roll of three inch wide adhesive tape. "Trouble with you, Kelley," he panted, "is that you don't know when you're dead. Grab his hair," he said. He screamed and bucked and kicked with his free leg as the fat man pulled his head back. They pressed the tape, temple to temple, across his eyes and slid the black hood over his head. He screamed and twisted and writhed in a paroxysm of terror. "You ought to tape his mouth too, his screamin' will wake the dead." "No, he'd suffocate. You've smashed his nose. The hood will be enough. He won't be able to waste his air on screams for long. Stuff his sweater in the vent." Footsteps clodded to the wall and back. It was the fat man's voice. "Just one time?" he said. Michael felt the mass next to him and heard a grunt before the strike smashed into his abdomen. His head snapped back with another blow to his face. He sobbed, trying to breathe through nausea and pain. -35- The key grated in the lock. Footsteps thudded away down the hall. Another door open and closed. He strained his ears against the black heat of the hood and the silence and his own ragged breathing. Not even the sound of the rain came through the vent opening. -36- Bruce came into the kitchen smoothing back his hair and brushing dust and straw off his slacks. "We were lucky we got back when we did; it's getting nasty out there." "Why Mr. C! You're limping!" Mrs. Burns exclaimed. "I took a fall out by the stable and banged my knee. Nothing serious, but I could do with a drink. Scotch, Danielle?" "Not right now. I think I'll call my landlady before dinner. I didn't finish talking to her earlier." He followed her to the foyer. "Will Michael be coming back here soon?" she asked. "Now, now, it's always 'Michael, Michael.' I'm becoming rather curious about that fellow." "Oh really, I don't even know him. I just wanted to thank him, that's all." "Thank him for what?" "For one thing, for introducing me indirectly to you." "Well, that's more like it. Shall we have a cocktail in the library before dinner?" She laughed up at him. "You are thirsty. I'll be there in a moment. I just want to tell my landlady where I am, and find out if she knew where that call from Peter came from." His face hardened into a scowl as she picked up the phone. He gently took the receiver from her hand and replaced it on its cradle."I can't let you do that," he said quietly. Several seconds elapsed. "I'll pay for the call--" she began. "That's not the point." "I called her before, you didn't object to that. I only want to tell her where I am. She'll worry." "I don't want her to know where you are. I don't want anyone to know." She stared at him, perplexed and stunned. ". . . But why?" He looked away from her, down to his hand still on the receiver. "You didn't stop me before. I could have told her then if we weren't cut off." He nodded. Wordlessly he dialed the 'O' back and forth on the phone. "Shall we have a -37- glass of sherry before dinner?" he said. Without waiting for an answer, he escorted her into the sitting room. Light refracting off the facets of the crystal stopper made green and gold patterns dance on the walls. He grasped the decanter and poured two glasses half full. "You made things very difficult for yourself." He handed one glass to her and raised the other in a slight salute. There was genuine regret in his tone. "Why didn't you go with Walter from the airport? All of this would have been avoided." "I didn't like him, and Michael told me not to. But what is going on?" "Michael again. So you did know him." "No, I told you I didn't." He sipped his sherry. "You may be in this more than we know." "I'd like to know. Who's 'we'?" "Danielle you have a choice. Be my house guest or be my prisoner." He shook his head. "I should have used a less offensive word. It's up to you. Either way, you are staying here a week, maybe a little longer." "But why?" "Try your sherry, it's quite good. It wasn't supposed to go this way. You were to come right to the house from the airport, and wait for Peter here. You wouldn't have had to know any of--this other. We could have had a lovely week together." He looked into his glass. "An error, a serious error in judgement on my part. I was too cautious about having my name, my face associated with--um--this. I shouldn't have sent Walter. I could have convinced you. You would have come with me, wouldn't you? And all the rest could have been avoided. Now I need to hear that you will be my guest." She kneaded the knuckles on one hand and then the other. "I'll be your guest," she said in a very small voice. "Good. Everything will be much easier, much more pleasant for both of us." "What does Peter have to do with this? How do you know him? He thought I changed my plans. He said that to Marion. He must have something to do with all of it, doesn't he?" "Peter is to perform a certain small task -38- for us. It seemed prudent to have insurance, as it were." "Extortion." "If you care to put it that way." "What will happen after you no longer need insurance?" He smiled, "Why, you'll both go home to the States, everything being accomplished." "What's to prevent us from reporting you?" She wished she hadn't said it, after it was out. "No. No, you won't do that. Peter couldn't afford to, and you won't say anything because of him." "What is he going to do?" Any answer would be ominous. She was almost relieved when Bruce changed the subject. "We can still do all the things I've planned, Danielle." "I have a lot of questions." "You don't want any of the answers," he said gently. His glass, empty now, spun slowly between his fingers. The swirling patterns of fragmented light on the rug seemed to mesmerize him. The scornful laugh she tried came out a croak. "What are the rules?" "Just your word you won't try to get away, or telephone. I could have the phone disconnected, but we would need it to contact Peter, if you wish." She nodded. "Could I talk to him? Can you reach him?" "Of course you'll be watched, but you won't be restrained. The house is yours. You probably won't want to walk the grounds. I don't think you ought to go over by the stable. Gregory isn't very pleased with you." Her hand flew to her throat. "Here?" she whispered. "Gregory is an animal. I need him to do certain things I don't care to do myself." He met her eyes. "The fools brought you to the stable instead of to the big house. I had no idea you were there until I finally heard his bellowing, and you were long gone. I don't know if I could stop him if he saw you. I'd have to kill him," he said matter of factly. She took a sip of sherry. She never liked -39- sherry. "Michael?" He sighed. "Michael again. I tell you I'm getting tired of him." He massaged his knee. "He's more trouble than he's worth. You're sure you don't know him?" "No." "Hmm. Well, Gregory took him apart the other night. Stupid. He was in such a rage he would have killed him with his bare hands. Just about tore the door down to get to him. It took two of us to finally pull him off." He shook his head. "I've never seen anything like it. It was almost too late when we finally got him away." "Too late? Is he . . .? "Kelley's coming out of it somehow. I need him alive." "Where was the key?" She covered her face with her hands. "Who are you? Why are you doing this?" "Call it a commitment." "But why? I have nothing to do with anything over here. Aren't you risking an awful lot? Your position, Everything? "There will be little risk. Nothing will be changed for me, and everything will go right." "Is Mrs Burns in on this too?" "She's my housekeeper." "I know, seventeen years come December." "What do you mean by that?" "It sounds as if your project will be completed by then. You'll leave." He leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped around his glass. "Seventeen years. One puts down roots, forms attachments in that time. It's my home." "She said you'd start thinking like an Irishman." He laughed harshly. "Never that. It's the weather. Soft, as they say. If it's not done today, or if it is, why it'll be waiting for you tomorrow, or it wasn't meant to be done. A philosophy like that is seductive, but the 'tomorrow' finally became today." He flattened his lips in a mirthless smile. "I hated it when we were first here; nothing is organized, the weather. Ingrid--my wife--she loved the hunting and the parties and the talk. How she loved the stories. The more outrageous the talk, the -40- better the party. She showed me the fine things. How to enjoy the life. And then she died." "I'm so sorry," she said, and meant it. He looked at her curiously. "Why didn't you leave if you hated it?" She asked. "No, I was established here by then. I had a life. Pleasant, idle if one wished." "And you're throwing it away." He straightened up in his chair. "You see, I won't take any chances on throwing it away. This is what it was all for in the first place. There's no risk to either of us if you co-operate. Peter will co-operate. Kelley will co-operate. I won't tolerate disobedience or noncompliance either from you or from your brother. Make no mistake about that, Danielle. I'm fond of you but I'm not about to lose." Danielle sat very still. No matter what he said, no matter how charming he was, he would never let them go. Ever. He wouldn't take the chance of being disclosed. Whatever he held over Peter would be insignificant compared to his potential ruin. He was a very careful man. She drained the glass of sherry. "You'd probably like to talk to your brother." He walked before her to the phone, saying over his shoulder, "I'm right next to you. Any mention of my name, or where you are, or anything like that, and you're cut off. No more calls; you're both dead. Understood?" She nodded humbly and grasped the receiver with both hands as if it were a precious thing. "Tell him you're all right. He wanted proof." She couldn't see the number he dialed. The phone on the other end gave half a ring before it was snatched up. A deep voice answered "Mahr." Just the sound of it was reassuring. "Peter." "Danny! By god! I'd almost given up. Are you all right?" "Yes. No. Yes. Oh, Peter, what's happening?" "I'm sorry Danny, I had no idea they'd drag you into this. Everything was quiet; nothing was going on, there was no danger at all. Now all -41- hell is breaking loose. Sunday night I got a cable saying you had to visit a friend instead of coming over here. An emergency, you had to leave right away. By the time I got the cable, you'd be gone. That was OK. You have to do what you have to do. A disappointment, but it would work for us another time, you know?" She nodded mutely. His familiar voice gave her strength, no matter what the words said. "It was their message. They've kept us running around here since then, and it was Tuesday night before I called Marion, found out you were here--somewhere--, then I got the second part of their message Wednesday." His voice dropped even lower. "I can't get you right now. Tell me you're OK, that they aren't mistreating you." She sobbed into the phone, "Don't . . ." "I'll handle it, Danny, no matter what it takes. It won't be long--a couple of days, three max. Then it will be over. I can't--They're around me like bees around clover. Is there someone with you right now?" "Yes, right here." Then with fatalistic calm, "And Peter?" "Yeah? What's his name? Let me talk to him." Bruce stopped drawing circles on the tabletop with his finger and looked at her with narrowed eyes. She clutched the receiver and screamed into it. "Don't do what he wants, Peter! It's Cr--" Bruce broke the connection. She flew at him in screaming fury. He grabbed both flailing fists and transferred them to one of his hands, while he calmly replaced the receiver with the other. He drew her close to him, holding her tight to his chest, both arms around her. Her sobs were muffled in the wool of his sweater, her breath warm through the fabric. When she ceased struggling, he stroked her hair. "He won't do what you want," she hiccupped. Bruce stroked her hair. "Of course he will. He'll have to. He cares about you, and can't get you back any other way. He isn't god, you know, Danielle," he replied gently. Mrs. Burns had hustled to the foyer from -42- the kitchen. She stood for a moment watching the two of them together, then turned away smiling. Danielle pushed away from his embrace. She sniffled and wiped the tears from her cheeks. He held out his folded handkerchief. She hesitated for a second and took it. "You are so considerate, so nice. I like you. Why are you so horrible too? I hate you. I think you're more terrible because you're so nice." She scrubbed her nose with the handkerchief. He looked at her thoughtfully and didn't reply. A rueful smile touched his lips and his eyes. "Better go wash your face. Your things came today; you might want to change before dinner. It will be in the diningroom in--" he consulted his watch. "--twenty minutes. I understand Mrs. Burns went all out tonight. Silver and crystal and linen. It'll be nice." His voice dropped to almost a whisper, "Go on." A yellow blaze in the fireplace warmed the parlor after dinner. Bruce sat in a leather wing chair, angled, so he could look at her. She wore a silk blouse, open at the throat, and a long tweed skirt. Golden strands in her hair played with the light. "Your ears are pierced," he said, "but you're not wearing earrings." "They're gone. I lost them. He must have taken them." She examined her manicure. "Aren't you lonely, always by yourself?" "I hadn't thought so. And I'm not always by myself. I don't live the life of a monk, you know." Another of the evening's long silences came between them. "Tell me about your brother." She crossed her legs and rearranged the folds of her skirt. There was nothing he should know about Peter. A little piece of information that could only come from her could convince Peter she were still alive if she weren't. It would keep him under their control. "Very well," he said. "Danielle, I have your word you won't try -43- to leave." She nodded. "I have to be sure you won't try to leave at night. I have to sleep; I can't watch you all the time, and I don't want the . . . others in the house here." "I won't go." He walked through to the study to unlatch a cabinet built into the wall. Grotesque masks in the elm burl leered at her as the door swung open. The surrounding marquetry faded into the shadows of the corner. "I'm going to give you something to relax you. Something to help you sleep; then I will sleep." "I don't want it. Don't." He crossed to where she remained sitting. A hypodermic syringe with a plastic cover on the needle lay in his palm. "You have no choice," he said, sitting next to her. "Are you going to kill me now, with that?" "Whatever gave you that idea?" He laughed. "It won't hurt you. It's a most popular drug in the States." "What is it?" "A tranquilizer." "What is it?" "I won't hurt you." He unbuttoned the cuff of her blouse and slid the silk up along her arm. She watched dispassionately as he bent over her. His left knee almost knelt on the floor. His fingers found a vein and stopped. He glanced up and gave her a reassuring smile. As if he were tying up my ice skates, she thought. I could hit him right on his silver head and maybe make it off the sofa. She felt the stick of the needle. The charade of impeccable manners was exhausting and disarming. This shot is taking forever. "See? That didn't hurt, did it?" The syringe had disappeared. He gently rubbed her arm and buttoned her cuff. She hadn't moved. "Are you going to do that every night?" "It seems like a prudent thing to do." He remained next to her, looking at her intently until she turned away. -44- A lazy summer afternoon swarmed through her. Bare feet, laughing, sailing before the wind, sunburn, swinging on the swing, watermelon pit-spitting contests, picnics with sand in the beer. He poured two crystal glasses of Grand Marnier and handed one to her. She didn't take it, so he set it on the table next to her. "Tell me about Danielle and Peter," he said. She shook her head and rearranged her hands in her lap. She began to speak. "I used to crew for Peter in the summer on Lake Minnetonka, when he didn't have a friend with him. Once, we were way out in the middle--it's a big lake--the boat flipped over and turned turtle. The wind was blowing so hard that the boat kept drifting farther and farther away from me. Every time I'd open my mouth to get a breath or yell, a wave would slap me in the face. I was exhausted trying to catch up to the boat, not even getting close enough to help turn it over. Afraid he wouldn't take me with him anymore if I wimped out and called for help. Afraid I'd drown. He saw what was happening anyway, and swam over and pulled me back, and gave me a vest and got the boat up and everything. He never said anything about it afterward. He wasn't mad. He took me with him again. I never thanked him for anything." The corners of her mouth drooped. "I'd think you and Peter were alike in some ways, if I didn't know you were so ruthless." No matter, he knew it. Nothing mattered. There were no decisions to make. A relief, impunity of a sort. "Danielle and her brother Peter. Tell me what's so special about him, Danielle," he suggested softly. She shrugged, bewildered. "What does he do?" "He's an engineer." Bruce snorted in disbelief. "Well he is!" Then the words tumbled over each other to make him understand about Peter. If he understood, he wouldn't hurt him. "He's ten years older than I am. When our folks died, I was twelve, in the summer. That September I would start high school. he just finished college and had his degree in -45- engineering. See? He had some nice position lined up in Argentina or South America someplace but he came back home and got a job in Minneapolis and stayed there the whole time I was in high school. It must have cramped his style something terrible, but he never mentioned it." "No girl friends?" "Oh he had plenty of girl friends,--and then Bonnie and he--" "Who's Bonnie?" Bruce asked quickly. She shook her head and ignored it. "--lots of friends; people like him. But he was always there when I needed him, whether or not I thought I did at the time. We had awful rows, mostly about my boyfriends and hours." She smiled ruefully. "He was right about that too, even after--" "After--?" "After I was a grown woman," she said. "He's a good cook too. He can do anything, I guess. "Then there was Viet Nam. He joined the Marines after--. He brought back those foam-lined suitcases that they kept guns or bullets or something in. He put his camera stuff in them. He came back bitter, restless. He tried to get himself together, back into the old role of being the one responsible, being allowed his own solutions, not having to follow orders. Started traveling a lot. He likes to travel. He's had jobs all over the world." "I bet," Bruce said quietly. "What?" "I said, 'We're all made to do things we'd rather not, at some point in our lives.'" She shook her head sleepily. "No, I don't think so. If you are willing to accept the consequences, you will do what you choose. People are what they choose to be; they do what they choose to do." "That's naivee, Danielle. It doesn't always work that way." "Naive. He said 'Don't be naive.'" "Peter?" She shook her head no. "Bruce? This is pretty heavy for a lady who is half asleep." "Feeling groggy?" he laughed. -46- "And dry. Talking your ear off." He stood in front of her with a glass of water before she realized he had even left the room. "Peter took good care of you up to now." She took the glass and drank. "Yes, he always did." "Doesn't it seem--unusual--to you that you should choose to go on a vacation tour with your brother rather than, say with your husband, or with a boyfriend?" She looked at him trying to comprehend what he was insinuating. "Am I supposed to take offence at that statement?" she asked mildly. "Of course not. Not at all. What I really meant was,. . . Why aren't you married?" She shook her head. "But--" "Did he object to your having boyfriends at all? Maybe he wanted you just for himself?" She stared at him and started to giggle. "Perhaps no male could measure up to his standards? Or compare to the image of him that you built in your head?" She laughed at him, covering her mouth with her hand. "You really don't know anything at all about Peter or about me, do you?" she laughed, and she could hear the relief in her voice. She wanted to explain, she started to explain, but then she was so tired. "-- Bruce?" He was slouched down in the leather chair, serious, thoughtful, studying her. His hands were clasped in front of him, the index fingers straight, pressed in a steeple against his lips. "Umm?" "Are you sure you didn't give me too much of that?" "I didn't." There was a long way to go. This room, the foyer, then the staircase. When she stood up, he was next to her. The stairs loomed ahead of her, seemed to rise forever and climb out of sight. He lifted her effortlessly and carried her up. She rested her head on his shoulder, her arms around his neck. He set her gently down on her bed, took off her shoes and floated the duvet over her. Tilting her chin up, he kissed her. "Good night, Danielle." -47- She traced the side of his smooth cheek with one finger. "Janus," she whispered. Her dreams, triggered by the events of the past days, tumbled over themselves in technicolor replays. She kissed Scott goodnight and they agreed to make the final arrangements tomorrow for their wedding. She watched him climb into his BMW, and wave good-bye once more, and drive out of the parking lot. Then she returned to her condo. The dishwasher was humming in the kitchen, clean pots were sitting on the stove, everything was in order, no sign of the bustling activity of an hour before. Peter poured the rest of the wine into her glass, and snapped the cap off a bottle of beer for himself. He settled down on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. The cool smell of the summer evening came in through the open patio doors. "Nice party," he said. She settled across from him on the couch. "Well?" "I like your friends," he said. "All of them. They're a great--assorted--bunch. A drummer, a philosopher, a pediatrician, numerous art-world types, various others." She laughed. He'd been staying with her the past couple of weeks, flew in to be at the wedding. From South Africa, he said. He fit in easily and the crowd immediately included him into the flurry and spirit of activities. "Didn't Harry tell me that you and he were an item for quite a while? He says now you're his best friend." "Well? What do you think of him?" she asked. "Harry? He's a super guy, even if he is a drummer. We had a great -48- time--" "Scott! Isn't he wonderful?" "Yeah." He drank his beer and looked out at the dark on the other side of the patio door. She wasn't really surprised. "You don't like him, do you?" He kept looking out into the dark. "I want you two to like each other. What's wrong with him?" Peter took another slug of beer. Finally he burst out, "There's nothing wrong with him. That's what's wrong with him. The guy looks like a male model, is built like a gymnast, is intelligent and witty, never looks like he needs a haircut or a shave, drives a BMW, doesn't smoke, doesn't drink and doesn't say he doesn't drink. He doesn't screw around, swear, or do drugs. He probably doesn't even sweat. Harry says he's never seen him angry. For god's sake, he's not even vain. There's nothing at all wrong with him. The man doesn't sound human, Danielle." "Harry's a drummer. He's done all of the above." "He says that it seems like Scott never really joins in. Like he's some kind of god, sitting up there, being faintly amused by the going's on of all the rest of us. `Whatever "the going's on of all the rest of us" means,' he said." "That sounds like one of Harry's Three-AM analogies." "As a matter of fact, it was three-AM. . . . But Harry's your best friend. Maybe he's seeing things you can't." "Maybe he's jealous. How would you feel if I were marrying Harry?" With an awed look at the thought, Peter shook his head and said, "Jesus," and tilted the beer -49- bottle back to his lips. "Maybe he's an android." "And maybe you've been in Harry's stash." "I like the rest of your friends. What do they think of him? I even like those art guys--Elliot and Lou. Lou says Scott just doesn't fit in, that everyone is--uh--concerned, but that you won't listen, so--" "Elliot and Lou are jealous." "They're jealous too? They're gay." "Jealous of me, silly." "Look, what kind of a guy wears white pants to a barbecue-pasta party, and even helps clean up, and never gets a spot on him?" "Scott." "Exactly." "Peter, you're not being reasonable." "What do you want, Danny?" "I want what . . . what you and Bonnie had. I want to be a family like you were with her." He took his feet off the coffee table and set them on the floor, and rested his elbows on his knees, and studied the label on the beer bottle. "Yeah," he said. "Don't we all." They could hear the cicadas chirping through the dark. He smiled at her. "I'm not your keeper, Danny. I just want you to be happy. I'll do whatever it takes to make you happy. If you want to marry Scott, then you have my blessing, whatever it's worth." "I want you to be friends." "I'm not a complete barbarian. I can be civil." "More than civil. Be nice." He took a drink of beer and nodded. "I can be nice. And if he's not good to you, I'll break his fuckin' face." -50- She tossed and turned and tangled herself in the covers. She half woke up with a sense of loss that was almost as sharp as it had been two years ago, two years into the marriage. The memories were getting dusty. Most of the time now, her memory of Scott was the photograph in the drawer. And an indelible, visceral disappointment. Peter, through that almighty grapevine of his, had turned up when things couldn't get any bleaker, and set her back on her feet, and pushed her in a reasonable direction. She took her name back, gathered up the shards of her life, and went on, and Peter left again, after promising her that he wouldn't touch Scott. -51- Michael heard two voices enter the building. The first was a deep rumble, not loud, but that filled the hall like a thunder. The second voice belonged to the blond. There were other footsteps with them. "How is your guest doing?" rumbled the one. "Resistant. Amazingly resilient, I'll give him that," said the blond voice. "Did you follow my suggestions?" "As best we could," answered the blond. "There were complications." "No drugs? I don't know what else he's got on board. I want him thinking clearly." "No drugs, but that's no guarantee about the other. He went berserk, totally decompensated, when he saw the hood." "That's the whole idea. It won't take long if he's ready." The key screeched in the lock, the door swung opened with a sigh, two sets of footsteps entered the cell. The first moved in like a cat. His sounds disappeared as soon as the other passed the doorway. The second man went behind the chair and pulled the hood off, then continued on to stand by the vent. The blackness of the hood yielded to a lighter blindness. Michael sucked cool air in greedily. Heavier footsteps stopped beside the chair. The sense of him was of a big man, to go with the voice. "Shit. You run a truck over him?" he rumbled. "There were complications," said the blond voice. "Took him apart. It wasn't necessary, the hood would have done it. It was stupid; I told you I'd handle it." "It was another matter. My man was enraged." "He could have killed him. Stupid." "I agree." There was a silence. "Well, give me the keys to those handcuffs. We'll let you know when we're done." Keys clicked together in the space between the two voices. "I'll watch," said the blond. -52- Another silence. "Your choice," rumbled the voice, "Stay over by the corner out of the way." It changed direction. "Is he ready?" The strike came out of nowhere; no grunt, no rustle of fabric, no intake of breath, just a flat palm burning the side of his head. He yelled as he jumped, half stood, rocked the chair back on one leg, tried to get away from it. A big hand on his shoulder pushed him back down, righted the chair. "Looks like you're ready, Mike," the voice rumbled behind him. It had changed. It was a priest's voice, or how he wanted a priest's voice to sound, soothing and deep and confident. It filled the cell and settled around him like a blanket, like a shroud. The voice was next to his ear. "I have just a couple of questions, Mike." The strikes stung like silent hornets. Face, chest, ribs, gut. He couldn't twist away from them, couldn't hear them coming, couldn't get ready for them. "Just a couple of questions, Mike, then it will be over." And the cat toying with his prey. He heard himself say "I told you before." "Tell me again, Mike." "It's The Bull's Breath, Enniskellin. I sent--" He heard the lunge from the corner, felt his gut explode, then his head. He heard himself scream, blood and vomit in his mouth, as he and the chair went down in a welter of other bodies and arms and legs and curses. The voice roared over it all. "Goddamn it, man. Control yourself. Play on your own time. If you get your kicks from watching, watch from the corner. Keep out of my way." Water poured down his head face across his shoulders down his chest into his lap down his legs. The voice rumbled out of black pain. "Come on, Mike. Are you in there? Answer me." "Yes," he finally whispered. "It's like this. You've got blood in your vomit and blood in your urine and that's not good, is it. Answer me Mike." He shook his head. "No. Talk to me, Mike. I want you to hear -53- your answers." "No," he whispered. "I don't want to hurt you, Mike. I just want my answers. Three questions, that's all. I don't want to kill you to get them answered. Are you listening real hard?" He nodded then remembered. "Yes." "Listen." It was quiet except for his own breathing. Close in front of his face there was a single click. He tensed. His gut contracted. "Knife," he said. "My friend is going to lay it across your lips so you'll feel how sharp it is." Michael waited. "Numb? Try this then. Mows hairs off your leg just like a razor, doesn't it?" He felt the blade scrape up his thigh. He went rigid, not breathing at all. He nodded. "Answer me!" "Razor." "I see now that I've got your attention." The blade slowly cut three shallow X's on the top of his thigh, the first by the knee, the third by his groin. "I'm going to ask my little box of questions again," rumbled the voice, "and if I don't like your answers, my friend here is going to shorten two or three fingers for you, and if I still don't like the answers, then he'll shorten your main member." The blade scratched a grove across his pubes. "You're listening real hard, Mike." He swallowed and nodded. "Yes," he said. The big hand was on his shoulder and the voice was close by his ear. "You set up a meeting for the main lads and some selected others. Now, what I need to know is just three things: where it will be, when it will be, and exactly who will be there. That's not a lot to ask, is it. Where will it be?" "No." There was nothing for a space, as if they were still waiting. Then the voice said, "I'm sorry to hear that, I really am." They unshackled his wrists. They pressed -54- his left hand flat along the edge of the bench, then curled the rest of the fingers away so the little finger was alone. The man standing under the vent came over and stood behind the chair. "Last chance." He shook his head. Four big hands bore down on his shoulders and arms. He felt the blade rest against the knuckle, heard the thud of it against the wood, heard the gasp from the corner then pain. Pain ignited and blew everything away in his scream. The voice was next to his ear. "Same questions, Mike: Where's the meeting. When is it. Who's going to be there." He shook his head. "They trust me. Friends." The blade drew another line across his abdomen. Four big hands on his shoulders and arms pressed him into the chair. Other hands flattened the fourth finger against the wood of the bench. The blade rested against the knuckle of that finger. "Come on Mike." He shook his head and heard his own shriek, and passed out when the blade hit wood. Water in his face. Another scratch across his pubes. Third finger flattened on the bench, blade resting on the knuckle. Four hands holding him up in the chair. Rumbling and roaring by his head. "For god's sake, Mike! Come on! He shook his head. "Come on man!" He sobbed and whispered "Sunday." A sudden complete hush. "Again, man." Even the whisper rumbled. "Sunday. Evening. Eight o'clock." "Where?" in a whisper. No one moved. Almost a full minute of silence. "The old chapel. Dublachadh Castle ruins. Donegal." "And who?" Tears ran under the tape and down his cheeks. "Who, Mike?" very softly. It came out like a groan. "The man,--" He sobbed and bowed his head. "The lads. Garg. -55- Mitch. Thom. Pierce. Daithi." Names and names and names. After a while the three men stood up. The knife clicked shut. The litany of names ran on. "That's it," the voice sighed. They unlocked his ankle and lifted him to the bench. He lay curled on his side with his knees drawn up to his chin. They wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and tucked it next to his chest. Still the names came. "Aren't you going to write down those names?" asked the blond's voice, still from the corner. "It's talk. He's blathering. It's everyone he's ever known. Most of those names are dead." They covered him with his jacket and sweater. The big hand rested heavily on his shoulder. The voice rumbled orders above him. "His boots have laces in them; throw them in the hall, and the belt. Get the chair out of here. Fill that bucket again and leave it. Cut the handle off." "He's not thinking of suicide," from the corner. "He will." rumbled above him. "I'll be back. I don't want you--or your man--to touch him. I may need him again if the information isn't good." "There isn't much time til Sunday." "All the more reason." They locked the door and trooped down the hall and left him babbling names in the dark. -56- The next morning, Bruce was finishing his tea when Danielle entered the kitchen. He poured a cup for her. There were fresh roses on the table. "Good morning, Danielle," he said. "You were awake a long time before you came down stairs." "Morning Mrs. Burns," she said. "Morning yourself. I'll be back in a moment." "She's taking breakfast to the men," Bruce said. Danielle stared at the cup of tea. "Grumpy?" He was laughing at her. "My mouth feels wooly. I slept in my clothes. I talked too much last night." She stood next to the table and spooned sugar into her tea. It sparked and disappeared in the black brew. She couldn't see the bottom of the cup. "My passport and wallet are gone. Do you have them?" "Yes." "Why?" "A deterrent." She held the cup in both hands. "May I go outside?" "Of course." It was brisk by the roses and the hot cup felt good in her hands. She stood at the edge of the garden. From her bedroom window, she had seen the whole layout, but right next to it, on the same level, it was hard to see any straight paths through the maze of hedges and roses. The hedges were high enough to prevent an overall view. Twisting paths and shrubbery gave the impression of enormous intricate space. She sat on a stone bench facing the roses. It's coldness sent chills through her. "You're angry with me this morning." "I am your hostage." "There's no reason it should be unpleasant." He pulled a clipper from his back pocket and snipped a rosebud, then drew the stem through a notch near the hinge of the clippers' jaws and handed the thornless rose to her. "This is what I mean." She waved the rose -57- at him. He sat next to her. "What is?" "Kidnappers are supposed to be holed up in shabby rooms, being mean. You're on an estate, giving me roses." "Want me to be mean?" He laughed at her again. "No!" she said quickly. She twisted the stem between her fingers until it bent and gave way, the two pieces attached only by their green skin. "It's hard not to like you. Hard to get my feelings organized against you. Hard to realize what you are doing to us, to Peter and me. When Walter first brought me here, I hurt. I hurt, and I was scared and exhausted. And you took me in. I mean--you put your arm around me and told me everything would be all right." She glanced at him, then quickly down to the rose. "I thought you cared, I thought I could see it. I let down my defenses, whatever I had left. And it was nice. You were right: it would have been better if I never knew all the rest of it." She twisted the stem around her fingers. "And maybe because you were the way you were, I . . . But it isn't nice anymore. Everything shattered. You turn around and the smile is gone and there's a damned gargoyle, all the more horrible because he used to be beautiful, and it's the same man. And you turn around and you're beautiful again. "You've been kind to me. You didn't have to be; it's the way you are. But you're the other way too, absolutely ruthless. It terrifies me. I don't know what you're doing. I can't divide myself up to like half of you and hate the other half. I don't know which you really are. You have a sword hanging over us. The only thing that's going to happen is that it will eventually drop. There isn't any other way for it to be, is there, Bruce?" "Why no . . . of course . . ." She didn't want to hear that. She knew the answer, but she didn't want him to confirm it. Quickly she held up the bent-stemmed rose. "Look at this. Thornless. You are so god-damned thoughtful." He took the flower and snipped the ragged -58- length of stem off before returning it. "My brand of thoughtfulness is only anticipation of what might cause difficulty, and removing it before it does." He changed position on the bench to study her. "On the subject of anticipation . . . " She looked at him in surprise. His tone had changed. "Your almighty brother, formidable as his talents may be, is something of a chauvinist or a dupe. We didn't know much about him--hardly anything at all. He's been in the country for a while, but there's very little talk about him. Those men who are close to him, they don't say much and neither does he. We didn't even know you existed until a couple of months ago, when the two of you started making these, uh, vacation plans. Then the way he talked about you--fondly, but it led us to believe--perhaps we preferred to believe--you were a charming, extravagant, helpless piece of fluff. We were mistaken, it seems. I think you've been playing a lovely convincing role with him all your life. You're something of a charlatan. I wasn't expecting . . . As it was, his affection--can I use the word love?--for you was the only chink in the armor he's built around himself that we could use. We had to use him; we had no choice but to use you too. I regret it." He shook his head and stared at her. "God, I regret it." She studied the bud in her hand. "Then you do give thorns with your roses. You can keep your psychology lesson. Know all about me in two days, do you?" "I'm just beginning to know you. I can't trust you, Danielle." His voice dropped lower and he shook his head. "I'm sorry." She pulled the petals off the blossom, slowing unwinding it. "What does that mean?" "It means I anticipate trouble from you and I have to avoid it. I won't have you organized against me. Last night wasn't so bad, was it?" No reply. "I won't give you as much. Not enough to make you sleepy or groggy. Just enough to . . ." "Make me a helpless piece of fluff." ". . . relax you. And everything would be the same. We'd both be more relaxed." -59- She dropped the denuded stem under the bench. "There's little I can do about it. You're not asking permission." "No, I'm not, but I want you to understand why--" "Mr. Creighton!" Bruce turned toward the big man who lumbered around the hedges. "It's Gregory. You'd better--" He turned as the kitchen door closed behind her heel. Petals littered the ground in front of the bench where she had been sitting. When Bruce entered the parlor, he found her staring into the cold fireplace. He shrugged into his topcoat. His face was drawn and tense. "I have to go out. There are men all over the grounds. You'll stay in the house. Help yourself to any of the books in the library." She nodded. The front door closed quietly behind him. She drew the curtain from the window and watched the Mercedes purr around the drive and through the pilasters until it disappeared. Men stood in groups of two's and threes. 'Stay in the house,' indeed. Any attempt would have to be made soon, he didn't trust her. She walked to the foyer and picked up the phone. Dead. He didn't trust her at all. Mrs Burns clattered in the kitchen. Seventeen years; no help there. She bit at her thumbnail until it was ragged and watched the men move about outside the window. She looked at her ravaged thumbnail. "I need a file," she muttered to herself. The door to Bruce's bedroom was locked. He was a careful man. Nail dust flew from under the file as she sawed away at her thumb. Peter wasn't coming; he didn't know where she was. There were so many of them, so many of them outside. It was all going Bruce's way. The library was well stocked. Panelling gleamed between the bookcases. The parquet floor surrounded the subtle colors of the Persian rug. His desk was locked and cleared except for a mute phone. Political science, history, and technical -60- books lined the shelves, no fiction. No whimpering heroines, no dashing buccaneers, no clashing swords, no rescuing heroes. She pulled the brightest covered history book down, and a slender grey volume came with it. The Ulster Cycle. She took it too, and started to leave. Twin demons grinned from the elm burl. The cabinet was built right in the panelling. There wasn't a handle or a hinge to give it away, just a hairline crack between the door and the surrounding marquetry. The tiny keyhole under the molding was too small for the file to fit in. She forced the nail file in the crack next to the door and slid it up until the point of it scraped against the lock bar. Going by sense of touch, she wedged the bar back a little bit, then pressed the point of the file into the metal and slowly pushed it away as she tried to pull the edge of the door open. As she released the point of the file to move it back, the lock bar clicked back into its slot, and the door snapped shut. She tried again, gouging the wood with the file, and digging her fingernails into the edge of the door. She wedged the bar back a little, then a little more. With a sigh, the lock bar slid against wood, and the door swung open. Tel-E-Ject disposable syringes lay in a box for ten. Valium, Roche, Diazepam; there were seven left. She stuffed the lot into her pockets. There were stacks of papers in the cabinet also; she left them. She pressed the bar flat into its socket with the side of the file and slid the cabinet closed. She licked the pad of her finger and rubbed the gouge alongside the crack until it no longer shouted "look at me." In her bedroom, she emptied the contents of the syringes into the toothbrush testtube, and set it in the glass with the toothbrush on the sink. The empty plastic syringes went between the bottom sheet and the mattress. Bulge. Between the mattress and the box spring. No bulge. The wizard Cu Roi was off on a visit to the Scythians in the little grey book when a blast of cold air and a slammed door announced Bruce. -61- Enchanted swans and one-eyed ex-kings drifted back to their yellowed pages as she looked up to his stormy face. "Dinner early, Mrs. Burns. I have to go out again," he called. He stood directly in front of her chair. She couldn't swing her legs down off the arm of it, he was so close. He glared down at her. She hadn't seen his anger before. It was a narrow eyed, tight lipped pale wrath. She held her breath and tried to make her face expressionless. He wheeled and took the stairs three at a time. "In the kitchen, Mrs. Burns." Danielle hurried to the kitchen. "Let me help you with something, since he's in such a hurry." The evening's dishes were in stacks on the sideboard. Mrs. Burns stirred something on the stove. "The table has to be set," she said. "I have to take dinner to the men, and I have to finish this custard sauce for the jam sponge. Thank God that's done." "Just tell me what to do. I'd be glad to help out." "Would you now? That's very good of you. There'll be the three of us at the table here." She pointed a spoon in the direction of the dishes. "And would you mind taking the trays out to the men?" "Ah . . . What if I set the table and stir this sauce instead?" "Here's the spoon. There are two eggs in that bowl. Scratch them together and put a dollop of sauce in on top of them." Ham fell away in thick slices as she orchestrated directions with the tip of the carving knife. She looked up to check Danielle's progress. "That's fine, now add that to the pot with the milk in it. Stir. Stir all the time and or it will be scorching. When it coats the spoon, when it's that thick, it's done. Keep stirring. Now where did that other tray go? I bet they never brought it back at all, the rascals. Take it off the burner when it's ready, then the vanilla can go in. It's their favorite sauce, Mr. C's and -62- the boys. They could have cream with the puddings, but all they ever want is the custard sauce, especially when I put a good pour of rum in it." She beamed and clattered through the pantry muttering about trays. Danielle took the pot off the burner. She ran out of the kitchen and passed Bruce on the stairs. "Where are you going in such a hurry?" "Bathroom," she replied truthfully. She was back to stirring the sauce, and the empty toothbrush tube was in the trash when Mrs. Burns emerged from the pantry with a tray in her hand. "Gracious child, you don't have to stir that custard until its in their mouths." Together they prepared two trays. Mrs. Burns buttoned her sweater and tied a scarf around her head and pushed the door open with her hip. With the two trays stacked in her arms she said, "I couldn't have done it without you, Danielle." Danielle fiddled with the napkins and silverware, then wandered into the parlor to retrieve The Ulster Cycle. Was that stuff heat tolerant anyway? The custard was hot. Maybe it didn't work by mouth, maybe you had to inject it, maybe they wouldn't notice it, maybe they wouldn't know she had done anything. It was all gone now, she had dumped the whole tube of it into the custard sauce. She leaned against the mantle. A fat tear spattered the ashes on the hearth. "Danielle, Danielle, it's not as bad as all that." His hands were on her shoulders. She didn't want to face him, something might show beyond the tears. "I'll give you a shot now; it's only to relax you. You're very upset. I won't give you much." She spun around. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. "No! Please . . . Please wait . . ." Anxiety and something else too tangled up to sort out showed. He looked into her eyes, trying to read behind them. "I wish I never got involved with you Danielle." -63- "Is it too late? Couldn't you stop it?" He shook his head. "Peter's gone. Slipped away like a shadow, his men with him. He'll get word to us when it's done. There's no way to get to him until it's all over. Time was stacked against you from the beginning. Years against five days." "What could you want with an engineer?" Gently he pushed a tear off its track with his thumb. "You naive fool," he said softly. "Peter's a mercenary; he fights for money." "He's an engineer." "He earns his money, plenty of it, fighting others' wars. And other things." "I don't believe you. . . . And it doesn't matter; It doesn't change him to me." "I didn't think it would." He held her shoulders. "You cry a lot." "I never do." He smoothed away another tear. "You're crying now." "Only when I'm around you." Abruptly he pulled her to him and kissed her hard. "Damn you, Danielle." He pushed her away. "It wouldn't change anything anyway." Crystal rang against crystal as he poured himself a drink. Mrs. Burns sang gaily in the kitchen. A dish crashed. A giggle. The singing continued. Bruce gestured toward the kitchen and followed Danielle. He seated her in the chair next to his. "Been in the sauce, Mrs. Burns?" he said lightly, covering his other emotions with a smile. "Just to scrape the pot, Mr. C. There was a bit that wouldn't go in the bowl, and just so it wouldn't go to waste--Ah, you mean the whiskey. Now you know better than that." She waved a playful finger at him and sat down with a grunt. He raised an eyebrow in amused disbelief. Danielle looked at her plate. Mrs. Burns continued to chat comfortably throughout the meal. "Do you suppose black would be more appropriate, Danielle? Pink is for the very young, isn't it?" She started to get up and -64- sat back down again, hard. "My! I don't know what's come over me!" "Maybe you'd like to lie down for a while until it passes," suggested Danielle. "I'll help you to your room." "Don't bother yourself. Look now, you haven't touched your dessert, and after all that stirring too." "No bother, Mrs. Burns. Let me help you." She looked to Bruce. He was lost in thought. His fingers, first one then the other, traced the inside curve of the teacup's handle while he focused on something out the window. He was in the same position when she returned wearing a turtleneck under her sweater and jeans and carrying her jacket. "Cold snap for October. Buds won't open nicely; might even lose a few," he mused. She sat across from him. "You're not going to eat." "No," she said. "You're not hungry." "No." "You're not upset anymore." No reply. "Why are you looking at me like that? Like you're waiting for something." His eyes snapped alert. He tried to stand and staggered. Both hands grabbed the edges of the table and he slowly lowered himself to his chair. Barely audible curses streamed under his breath. "What did you do, Danielle?" Very tired. "The Valium. You didn't leave me any corner to run to." Tears filled her eyes. "You're crying again." "I know, damn it." "How much?" "All of it." He blanched. "She had nothing to with it at all. She's an innocent woman, Danielle." "So was I." He tried to get up again and almost fell. She leapt to avoid him, then to help him. He waved her away with an angry impatient gesture. "What's Peter's number, Bruce?" "It would be imprudent for me to leave the phone connected with you in the house." "What's Peter's number, Bruce?" -65- He told her. "He's gone. I told you. You're too late." The phone was dead. Bruce glared at her, willing himself to remain conscious, knuckles white with gripping the edges of the table. She glanced at the clock. "What are you waiting for? To see me under? Keep waiting; I'll be around long enough for someone to find you. You'll be sitting right there staring at me, and they'll just walk right in. And then where will you be?" He grinned a skull's grimace. His nails dug grooved arcs in the wood. "It won't do any good, Danielle; you're too late." "For what? Tell me what you're making him do." "Too late for everything. --Me. --Peter. The whole thing." She shook her head. "And you called me ruthless." "Bruce--you didn't give me any way out. I would have run, done anything for you. I still . . ." She blinked away persistent tears. "I have to have my passport and some money. You took mine. Where is it?" He glared at her. "I'm going to take yours, Bruce. She approached him slowly. His eyes followed her, rage smoldering at his impotence. He lunged, clamped his hand over her wrist as she reached across him, and slammed it down on the table. An eternal minute later, he shuddered and let it go to grip the table edge. She lifted his jacket lapel and took the wallet. A small pistol was concealed under his arm. She took that too and stood next to him. He shook his head impatiently. "I didn't want to . . . ." She fled. He closed his eyes and slowly lowered his head to the table. -66- No one was around or the dusk hid them. She pulled on her jacket and tried not to walk too fast. Follow the road, avoid cars. No idea which way to go, nowhere to go, no one to ask. The stable was cloaked in shadow. Michael fit into this somehow. He was connected to Bruce and to Peter. And to her. She pressed against the rough boards next to the door. No sound from inside the building. She nudged the door open with her toe. Nothing moved inside. Still there was no sign of movement on the grounds either, or they were watching. The thought of entering the stable turned her mouth to cotton. Staying outside was as bad. Michael meant nothing to her. She owed him nothing, but he tried to warn her about Walter. He was a link to Peter because Bruce controlled them both. She slipped just inside the door. In the dark, the stable smelled worse than before. Moments passed before her eyes could pick out shapes. The formless mountain on the floor assumed the identity of Gregory. She backed away, halfway through the door again, but he remained motionless. The two trays she had helped prepare were on a scarred desk. One meal was eaten, the other untouched. Keys glinted by a sheaf of newspapers. She stepped carefully around the mountain and slid the keys into her hand. Gregory groaned and twitched. She watched, statue still, holding her breath, and pressed her hand hard against her mouth to keep the whimpering inside. He didn't move again. She made a wide circle around him, entered the hall and closed the door behind her. In that rancid pit of silence, her heartbeat sounded like a marching band. She swallowed hard against the bile rising in her throat. What if Michael weren't here, what if they had taken him somewhere? If he were dead? Any vindication she felt in getting the keys vanished. If he weren't here, the risk was worth nothing, less than nothing. She still had to get out again, past Gregory again, past whoever waited outside again. Her breath came fast and short and shallow, with tiny whimpers mewing at the back of her throat. There was a belt and a pair of boots in the -67- hall. She crouched next to the wall. "Michael?" she barely whispered, and cringed, biting her fist at the word, against the sob that followed it. Perhaps a slight shuffle beyond the door, but no answer. Stretched on tiptoe, her nose pressed against wood, she could just see through the barred window of the door. His face appeared two inches from her own. If her fist hadn't been forced against her teeth the scream would have come out. "Michael?" She recognized the hair, the grey of his eyes, his beard, that was all. He stared. "You did come back." She nodded, searching his face, then quickly looked down the hall. She turned the key and pushed the door open. "The fat man's on the floor. He's out, but not very far out. There are lots of people around. I don't know where we can go. Hurry," she whispered. Halfway down the hall, she looked back. He was cramming his feet into the boots. His left hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief and pressed against his stomach, seeping a red stain on his sweater. His eyes followed her with an intensity that betrayed his disbelief. He hobbled after her to the tackroom. She turned to him again before the outside door. He was rifling through the papers on the desk. His left hand was still pressed against his stomach and a knife was in the other. Gregory rose to half crouch. With groggy determination, he lunged at her. "No!" she screamed. Michael whirled. His backhand slash caught the fat man at the side of the neck. Blood spurted like a fountain down the grey shirt. He thudded to the floor at her feet. A renewed jet of red froth spewed the wall and across the front of her sweater and jeans and spattered on her cheek. It pumped weaker and weaker into the spreading pool on the floor. She wiped her face on her arm and gagged. Frantically she tried to brush off her clothes. It made her hands gluey red. She looked at them and retched. One hand against the wall held her up. She vomited then slipped in the oily pool. -68- Scrambling, she made the outside door. Michael cried "Wait!" in a harsh whisper, but she ran, leaving a full red handprint on the wall. The stable door slammed behind her when she was a few steps from the building. A man stepped out of the shadows. "Going somewhere Miss?" His forearm hooked under her chin and wrenched her off her feet. "A bit bloody, aren't you? And up to no good?" His arm crushed her throat. She couldn't breathe. With both hands she scratched and pulled his arm. He yanked her closer. The point of a knife was sharp at her ribs. She arched her back to get away from it. Suddenly he let out a yell and lashed out and down with his knife. Another curse of pain. He twisted and fell backward and dragged her down with him. Michael lifted the dead arm away. He listened to sounds in the dusk while red streamed over his right leg. "The boat," he said. She ran after him toward the dock. She jumped into the boat and turned the key in the ignition. He pulled the lines from the dock and half leapt, half fell in the boat himself, and lay curled up, gasping on the floor. As the inboard roared across the lough, the dock, stable, and elegant house shrank in the dark. Lights twinkled through the windows of the house. She headed the boat for open water. Her hands were sticky on the wheel. She looked back at him. "Are you . . . ?" He muttered through clenched teeth. ". . . a bit more time. I'll--" "It's Lower Lough Erne," he said a few minutes later. "We'll head north and west to the far tip of it. The road there will get us to the coast. It will be dark soon now. We won't be risking the lights until we have to." His voice was low and steady, as if nothing had happened. His calmness, his acceptance of the violence, as much as the horror of it itself, branded him and repelled her. She handed the wheel over to him -69- and huddled at the far edge of the boat, as far from him as she could get. They traveled in silence. Her hands were brown in the fading light, sticky, caked, crusted brown, with white lines running through the palms. When she spread her fingers, the brown cracked like crazed pottery. She leaned over the side and plunged them into the cold water. It curled up around her wrists in elaborate cuffs, soaking her to her elbows. She scrubbed her hands and face, and rinsed her mouth with handfuls of clean water. The blood-clotted jeans lay heavily on her legs. She didn't look at them, didn't touch them, didn't try to brush their darkness away again. Michael glanced at her. She looked straight ahead. "Can you bandage this up?" he said. The gash on his thigh had soaked his jeans brick red. Her stomach twisted. She swallowed hard and looked for something to serve as a bandage. The boat had been meticulously clean until they had smeared and spattered over it. She pulled off her jacket and sweater and turtleneck, then put the first two back on and zipped up the jacket. The knit of the turtleneck held when she tried to tear it with her fingers or her teeth. Michael held out the crusted knife. She looked at him for the first time since the stable, and hardly recognized him now either. She looked at the knife and back to him. Finally she took it and slit the shirt from hem to neck. She cut the denim of his jeans away from the gash and cleaned the wound with lake water and tied the folded shirt around his thigh. She handed the knife back and returned to huddle in the other seat. "You did come back. I didn't believe you would." No reply. He shrugged and navigated toward the pinpoints of lights that marked the road on the far end of the lough. Finally the boat nosed through weedy growth on the shoreline. She got out and he turned the boat so it headed for open waters. For a moment she thought -70- he was going to leave her there. He backed in as close as he could without beaching it, then pulled the throttle full back just before he jumped. His leg gave out as he landed in knee-deep wash. The boat roared off into the dark. He slogged through the water and fell down on the rocks, gripping his thigh in agony and rocking back and forth, not daring to breathe. After a while he relaxed; his shoulders sagged and he breathed deeply and shook his head. Then he grinned up at her. She brushed her hair back from her face with nervous hands and didn't know how to respond. The ditch next to the road gave them a sense of direction without exposing them to traffic. The fluttering of helicopters threw them face down at some predawn point. A convoy churned after the choppers. They stumbled and rested and walked. Once she said "I can't go on." "We have to," he replied. "Go without me. I'll stay here. I'll hide and find my way in the morning." He shook his head. "Whatever your motives for releasing me, I'm not about to leave you. I might as well throw a baby bird to a pack of dogs. You can't stay; they'll find you and take you back, and you can't go back. You'll tell them where I went." She shrank from his voice, from the expression in his eyes, from the stooped shadow of his silhouette. "I wouldn't tell them where you went," she whispered. "They couldn't make me. I can't go on anymore." He laughed, a harsh and terrible sound. "There's nothing to do but go on," he replied. The coast appeared with the dawn. Danielle trudged, wooden-tired several yards in front of him. At times she had forgotten he was with her. "Walk along the water's edge," he gasped. She turned and waited for him. His face wasn't any better in the growing light. He staggered and hunched over his left arm as if he were warding off a blow. The crimson stain grew -71- on his sweater where he kept his hand pressed to his stomach. His pants leg and the shirt around it were bright red. "Tide's coming in," he said. "We have to get there before the tide comes in, or it will be too late." As he spoke, he scanned the strand with the obsession of fever or madness or the last limit of endurance. Their footprints behind them filled with water. Up ahead, the sand ended at a tumbled ridge of boulders. It was if a thousand dolmens had been thrown from the cliffs at their right. Or a giant cairn had tumbled into the sea. Or monstrous granite eggs had breached the cliffs themselves, had been spawned across the sand into the water. Some of them were twelve feet high, ovoids as big as rooms, tons of stones leaning on each other. "There's nowhere to go, Michael," she said softly. "The rocks, we have to get to the rocks." She looked at him with sadness and dread. His grey eyes glowed like embers as he studied the rocks. She hesitated, then slipped under his right arm. "Lean on me," she said. The tide drowned their footprints as they made their way to the boulders. The ridge of pockmarked boulders dwarfed them when they stood next to it. It started at the cliff and disappeared far out into the water. Michael waded into the sea. "It's here. I know it's here," he said, almost as if to reassure himself. The water came up to his knees as he sloshed around the rocks, peering into crevices. He waded further and further into the sea. "Michael!" she screamed. "What are you doing?! Where are you going? Don't go out there! There's nothing out there! Don't leave me!" "Come on!" he yelled, now hip deep in water, "The tide's coming in! We don't have much time! I know it's here!" "Michael! You're delirious! You're mad! Come back!" In ankle deep water herself, she held onto a boulder for balance. He leaned over a rock. "It's here all right! Come on!" -72- "No!" she screamed. "Come back!" He turned to shout at her. The surf thundered around him, drowning his words. "I found it! It's here! Come--" A wave rolled in behind him and pushed him against the rock. He staggered forward and threw his arms around it. Danielle screamed and splashed out to him. "Come back!" she screamed. Waves crashed around them. Foam splashed up against the rocks and down on them. "No!" He grabbed her hand. She looked back at the beach then at him. His hair and beard, stiffened with seaspray and tipped with salt, stood out from his skull in barbaric spikes, and he was laughing. "I found it!" he laughed, gripping her hand. "No, Michael!" she cried. She tried to pull away from him, tried to pull him toward the beach. "It's OK. Look! I found it. Hurry now!" They lurched against the waves as he pulled her behind the boulder. They bent double to duck beneath the rock resting on top of that one. Bent over, their faces were inches from the surface of the water. Out of the wind, it was calmer, darker. The surf crashed behind them, broken by the rock. Waves thudded against their backs. Before them a tunnel of sorts, not quite pitch black, led between and beneath the rocks, led into the ridge of boulders. He pressed her hand against the stone to their right."It's OK," he said. "Trust me," he said, his ruined face touching hers. "Trust me." With a sob and a look over her shoulder, she nodded yes. "We have to crouch and beat the tide through the tunnel. The storms--it's coming in fast; we have to hurry. Hold onto me with the one hand and keep the other on the wall. Keep close behind me. It's deep in the middle and slippery on the rocks. Take care not to fall between them. Keep close to the wall. It's OK," he said. It wasn't a cave as much as it was a space where the rocks didn't fill in. They followed the wall, or the rocks under their right hands, -73- as it made a sharp right turn. Gradually they could straighten up and move faster. The water under their feet became shallower until they clambered over boulders covered with damp sand. The sea followed them in. "How did you know?" she whispered. It seemed like a place where you whispered. It had a stillness and a coolness independent of the outside. The space had a density about it that made her voice seem frail. It wasn't quite dark. The morning's sunlight glittered through the triangular spaces between the rocks massed above them. "It was a popular arms' cache," he said over his shoulder. "until a storm wiped out a delivery worth sixty thousand pounds." She looked behind her to see the last slice of daylight obliterated as water reached the roof rocks back at the tunnel entrance. At the end, they crawled up onto a boulder about seven feet long and four feet wide. The tide began to swirl around the base of it. Danielle flung herself down on it. "Are we safe here?" He stretched out next to her and with a sigh, closed his eyes. "Until the next storm." She looked at him, distrusted him, pitied him, feared him, was repulsed by him, and fell asleep next to him. The sea filled the tunnel behind them, and battered their rock, and the space pulsed to the movement of the waves -74- A sound, a shuffle, awakened her. Danielle continued to lie still with her eyes closed. Her eyes stung with salt; her lips tasted of it. The sand was gritty on the rock beneath her. It smelled of sea and damp stone. Waves thudded on the rocks outside like distant heartbeats. Suddenly there were voices above them. Sand caught the light as it sifted down from the spaces between boulders. A hand wrapped in cloth clapped over her mouth. It smelled of blood. Her eyes flew open in absolute terror. Michael knelt over her, bad leg stretched out straight behind him. His knife blade caught the feeble light. He pressed the index finger of the knife hand to his lips for silence. When she nodded compliance, he withdrew the other hand from her face. She scuttled to the furthest corner of their rock. He focused on the nave of their sanctuary, his head cocked as he listened to the voices on the rocks above. They gradually drifted away. He pulled himself to sit with his back against the wall, wrapped his arms around his ribs, and studied her. "Fishermen," he said. Morning light bent through the seawater-filled neck of the cave and transformed it into a surrealist blue-green world. The rocks above them reflected green. It was like sitting at the bottom of an empty Coke bottle, looking out the wavy sides. Bottle green foam eddied around their boulder. Silence. "What the hell's the matter with you?" She stared at him. Her fingers closed around the pistol in her pocket. "Aren't you going to talk to me? We're going to be here for a while," he said, gesturing to the sea-filled entrance, "til the tide runs out tonight." "I . . . I'm afraid of you." It took some time to register. "You are." He passed his hand over his eyes and the deformed contours of his face. "Yeah. . . . Well. . . . I wouldn't hurt you." He tried a smile. -75- She pressed back against the rock. Finally she said, "You killed Gregory and that other man. Just brutally killed them." He nodded. "I did. And glad to do it. He just about killed me. My god, he was the one who raped you. What did you want me to do--hold a wake for him? How can you--" His eyes grew cold. They looked like ashes in his face. She cringed against the rock, newly afraid. "'Gregory,' is it? The fat guy?" He shook his head and stared at her. Her fingers tightened around the pistol. "So it was all theater, performed just for me." "No!" she cried. "Bruce told me--" "Bruce? Who the hell is Bruce?" "Creighton, he's the blond--" "SweetMotherofgod! Are you on a first name basis with the whole crew of them? It's a high price you're paying, whatever you're after. What's the matter? Did it backfire? Why don't you just shoot me now with that gun you're holding and get it over with?" He glanced at the rocks overhead as he leaned toward her with an dreadful grin. "You'll probably not bring the whole thing crashing down on our heads, but what the hell, it'll be the biggest cairn in the country." "Go to hell," she said. He laughed and leaned back against the wall and looked at her levelly. "I've been there. I'll not be going back, thank you." She glared at him. After a while she glanced at the rock above her and withdrew her hand from her pocket. "It was . . . real," she said. "I wasn't with them." He shrugged and gasped at the pain it caused. "I was at the house--" "I saw you." "Bruce told me--" "Sure, what did he tell you? 'Go spring that fool and see if there's anything left in him'? Did it get out of hand? Did you lose a couple of playmates?" "I got away. I got you out--" "And how did you get away if you weren't in -76- with them? They don't seem like such a soft lot to me. Maybe you just curtsied and said 'I don't want to play anymore, pardon me now' and waltzed out the door." "You like your own stories better than the truth. Make something up that amuses you," she said between clenched teeth. "What do you expect me to--" "And shut up," she said. He gave a short laugh. "That's a pip. Your friends spent the last--however many days it was--getting me to talk, and here you are telling me to shut up." He laughed again and caught his breath. His eyes turned glassy, and his face went grey and sweat stood out on his forehead. His breath came in short cautious gasps. Finally his shoulders sagged and he slumped back against the rock. "Jesus!" he whispered. She looked down the watery passageway. "If you're thinking of leaving," he said, his voice revealing his exhaustion, "there's forty-some feet of tunnel to swim through, and the rocks and waves once you get out, and a quarter mile of surf to wade through before the beach." She glared at him. They sat in hostile silence. He leaned his head back against the rock and closed his eyes. She scraped pink polish off her fingernails and pushed the chips in a neat pile on her leg. After a while he spoke with his eyes still closed. "Why did you come back for me--Danielle, isn't it?" She didn't answer right away. Finally she said "You'd help me find my brother." He shook his head. "I don't know him." "Maybe you do. His name is Peter Mahr." Michael opened his eyes and looked at her. "I don't know the name. Sorry." "But you have to!" He smiled. "But I don't. Whatever gave you the idea that I would? Not that I mind, if it prompted you to get me out of that hell hole." She leaned toward him and talked rapidly. "Bruce said that you two. --He needed you and Peter was--that Peter had to do something -77- terrible--that was why they took me, to force Peter to do what they wanted. That Peter was a mercenary. --That's ridiculous, of course, but just in case, I thought that you, being--you might know him. Bruce said he needed you alive. It was all together, you and Peter and him." He sat up. "Stop," he said. "Start again. Slowly, from the beginning. After you ran from the stable, what did you do? Did you just walk up to the big house?" "What's the use of talking with you?" "Well how did you get back to the place?" She looked at him warily. "I'll just listen," he promised. "In the morning--I walked all night--I crossed this bridge to a town and there they were, waiting for me. Walter Tween was there. I don't know how they knew, but they were waiting for me." "I told them." "You! Why? I was trying to get help for you!" "Your fuckin' fat friend Gregory beat the shit out of me, that's why. I would have told them anything, given them everything they wanted." He rubbed his eyes. "Eventually I did." "Bruce said he pulled Gregory off." "He lied. Or if he pulled him off, he took his own sweet time about doing it. I was past noticing." "You have big holes in your thinking. Wouldn't they have known where I was without beating the shi--, beating you if I were in with them? "It was just an excuse. They needed to soften me up for the others." "Gregory?" "No, --others. Your Bruce was there though." "The 'your' business is wearing thin. When did the others--? "Last night we ran; it was the night before that. . . . I think." "I was at the house and snug in bed by then. What did they want?" He shrugged, winced, lifted his bandaged hand. "Go on with your story." -78- "Walter Tween drove me back to the estate." "Walter? He's not worth a curse." He swore softly and shook his head. "I don't understand," he said. She told him the rest. "So you dosed them with Valium, and made a run for it." He stretched his leg grimly and lay down, his arms around his middle as if he were holding himself together. She nodded. "The old woman with the trays too?" She nodded. "If the fat guy got enough to floor him, you probably killed her." "No! She can't be--! I never meant--I promised to send her fancy lingerie." "What the hell does fancy lingerie have to do with anything?" "She can't be. I never meant to--" He gave an ugly laugh. "Intentions don't count. It's brutal to knife someone, but it's all right to drop them with drugs. It won't be so offensive to your delicate sensibilities. Is blood the determining factor? You're in it with the rest of us, right up to your pretty neck." "No! Stop it!" She huddled on her side of the rock, her forehead resting on drawn up knees, arms around her head. "Mrs. Burns was good to me. I liked her. I wouldn't hurt her." He didn't say anything. "If she's dead then I'm a murderer and you . . . you don't even care do you? Men like you--you're used to it. Well I'm not. It's not my world." "'Men like me,'" he murmured. "Look at the both of us, look at yourself. We're both covered with blood." She pulled her sweater away from her body. "This isn't my blood!" she cried. "That's not fair!" "No it isn't, is it. Welcome to God's world." After a while he said softly "I still haven't figured out your part in all this. Who are you working for?" "I don't work for anyone. It was supposed -79- to be a vacation. It's been a briarpatch ever since I got off the plane, ever since I talked to you in fact. I feel like Alice in your not-so-wonderland. You can keep it, and your war, and the whole damn business. I'm trying to get to Peter and get home in one piece." She rummaged in the pocket of her jacket for a kleenex. A couple of Halloween-sized Hershey bars fell out. She hurled one at him. "And you don't even know Peter." He shook his head and ate the chocolate. "God, I'm thirsty," he said. "The problem with this place is that there's no water." She pulled the money out of Bruce's wallet and his driver's license and an ID card fell out. She tried to read them in the dim light then slid them back in the wallet. She counted the money, then counted it again into two stacks, and handed one stack to him. "What's this for?" He thumbed through it and stuffed it into his pocket. "You'll probably need some too, I guess." "Where did you get it?" "Bruce." "Steal it?" "No, I took it." "There's a difference?" She didn't answer. "It's cold in here," she said. "The pistol come from him too? With his blessing, no doubt. If we get picked up and you're armed, that's all they'll need to detain you in the Curraugh, Yank or not. Guns make them nervous." "The Curraugh. We're in the Republic, then. Why should we be picked up?" "Donegal, in the Twenty-Six Counties. We would be picked up, my friend, because--" "I'm not your friend either." She watched as he passed through another spasm of pain. "Because the Dublin government is quaking scared the whole mess will erupt right in its own streets. They worry the Brits will launch a 'peace keeping' maneuver across the border into the Twenty-Six Counties itself, and sixty years of incompetence and self-deception will go down the drain. They set a price on the heads of the IRA, nasty bunch of hooligan rabblerouser -80- Republicans that they are. They're not as forthright as the Brits or the UDL, but they are determined. And their jails have to be fifty years behind the times." He flashed a grin at her, his broken tooth odd and sharp in the light. "Experience." "You are in the IRA. Surely they don't know everyone, do they? They couldn't be cruising around looking at every face." "They know mine, or knew it." "Oh," she said. "You're someone important to them then. "Well, they won't recognize you now; I hardly did. You won't be carrying the gun and we won't be together anyway. It's a pity you don't know Peter. I'll try to trace him from that telephone number Bruce told me, if I can remember it right." "You're not inconspicuous yourself, with blood all over the front of you. It's not as if you're dressed to go calling. Creighton could have had the gall to report those killings--the three of them--to the gardia. He wouldn't say anything about me. The gardia may be looking for you though." She played with the Hershey wrapper, glanced at him and quickly away. "Why not you too? Why wouldn't he say anything about you? What did they want? Why did they do that--" she glanced at him again, "--to you?" "I don't know," he lied. "Who were they, Michael, back there?" "RUC, UDL, Brits?" He shrugged and spoke looking at the rocks above his head. "It wasn't a British maneuver. Besides, if they wanted me back, they would have thought of something more proper. They're not that creative. The RUC is a good bet; it's their technique all right. Those boys would just as soon see my head roll. But why didn't they just pull a trigger and save themselves a lot of time? Maybe they're getting too clever for the likes of me. Maybe that brother of yours will have some answers for you." He turned his head to watch her mold the aluminum chocolate wrapper around her finger. "You think it might have been someone who knew you?" she asked. "Must have been. They sure knew the -81- techniques all right. It wasn't that long that I was--out. I just happened there, in the Bull's Breath. I was having a drink, and then a dent in my brain outside the place and I wake up in a goddamned stable." "Why?" He shrugged. "Walter is involved somehow. You know him. He's one of yours, and he works for Bruce Creighton--At least he does errands for Bruce Creighton. Do you suspect your own people?" "I've been away for years. People change." After a while she said "I don't believe you, you know," as she lay down and curled up to sleep. He laughed and closed his eyes. "You don't," he said. "That makes us even." The triangles of light had slowly revolved on the rocks above them. It grew colder as the light faded. The surf sounded louder. The sand at the base of their rock was no longer covered with water. She awoke with his arm around her. She was lying with her head on his chest, pressed close against him for the warmth he radiated. She jumped away. "I'm sorry. . . . I--" He pushed himself up to sit with his back to the wall and looked at her with a curious sadness. "You were feeling the chill." He stared at the waves sloshing in the tunnel. "You don't want to let them catch you again, Danielle. They won't be kind this time." He spoke so softly the words were almost lost in the sounds of the sea. "How will I find him?" "Peter? You can't go to the police. There's the two dead men and the blood all over you, and your story about Peter, against the word of a monied and established gentleman, whatever the hell he does." "How do I find out about Mrs. Burns?" He shook his head. "Don't ask about her." "But Mrs. Burns . . . ." "Could go either way, both against you. If she's dead, you killed her, and if she's not, she'll go with Bruce's version. If money -82- couldn't buy Peter to do whatever it is, if they needed to coerce him into it, it's nothing good that he's up to. When all hell breaks loose, they'll know exactly who to pin it on--him, because you named him." "There's you. You killed those men, and after what Bruce did to you, I--" "They won't believe you. Mentioning me won't help your credibility any, quite the reverse. I've been long gone; disappeared. No, you've got to stay away from the police." "How am I going to find Peter?" "I'll get you on your way home--back to the States--and I'll find your brother for you." "You said you didn't know him." "And I don't, but I know some like him. There's the grapevine talk, the ads; I'll find him." "Why?" "I owe you my life." "You promise too easily. You just want me out of the way because you're afraid I'll mention your name somewhere." "Ah Danielle. Such trust." He smiled at her. "And after you've slept with me too." "You! It's freezing in here and you're burning up with a fever, and I was asleep anyway. I didn't know I--" "And who's the lucky man you thought you were budging up against, that's what I'd like to know." "That's none of your business! You! --You--hooligan!" He laughed. "That, and more. We'll be out of here in an hour." He glanced up at the graying triangles. "It'll be almost dark by then; there won't be much traffic on the road. You can take it south to Glenford. I used to know the Father there. He'll help you contact your embassy for you, and he'll know of any strangers asking questions too. Best avoid them." As he talked, he unknotted the shirt tied around his thigh and peeled it off. It came away and hung from his hand in a stiff and clotted arch. Even in the dim light, the wound underneath was ragged and angry, a green slime bubbled at the edges, the center was deep and -83- dark, brown. A smell, almost the sweet smell of grape gum, filled the space around them.He swore. She said "You need a doctor." "Or a priest." He held the shirt out to her. "Would you rinse this for me?" "That's not going to get any better, washing it out in seawater." "It's been soaked before. It's all I have, and it's too stiff to wrap tight as it is." She took it with two fingers and climbed down from their rock. She rinsed it and wrung it out and refolded it, brought it back and wrapped it around his leg. "That one around your hand needs to be retied too. It's almost coming off." He looked at his left hand as if he were afraid of it, as if it were apart from him, as if it didn't belong to him. He shook his head no, and let her take his hand and untie the handkerchief around it. When she peeled the cloth away, she almost let his hand drop. In silence, they looked at the stumps that had been fingers. "Why?" she cried. His lips were pressed together in a thin grey line when he shook his head. She rinsed the cloth and retied it. "I could see outside when I went up there," she said. "It won't be long," he said. "Danielle, the priest is Father Durnien in Glenford. It's only a few miles, maybe five. Don't say my name to anyone but him. If he isn't around, and won't be back, they'll still be able to get you on your way, but don't mention me." "Where will you be? I thought you were going to come with me." "No." He held his breath and tensed until the spasm passed. "You could find a doctor there." "I think not." "Why not? What are you telling me?" "I'm telling you to get rid of that wallet and the gun and find the priest at Glenford and go back home." "What about you? What about Peter?" -84- "I'll find Peter." He looked across the wet tops of boulders lining the tunnel. "Just in case . . . The simplest way for you is to run an ad in the personals of the papers. Have them keep running it for a couple of weeks, whatever you can buy. A short ad--'Peter, I've gone home, call me. Danielle'--That sort of thing. Have the priest do it, or the embassy." "Is that what you would do?" "One of the things, yes. And another thing. Danielle, I know you tried to help me before, and it only brought you back into this mess, but I'm asking one last thing of you." "Why are you talking like this? What are you telling me?" "Here, take this money back. Use it to run an ad for me. It has to be tomorrow, the earliest you can get it in. There isn't any time at all. Pay them extra, whatever it'll take to get it in tomorrow. Just have it say 'Michael Kelley cancels the Meeting.' Don't answer any questions about it, just have them run the ad exactly like that. For god's sake, don't leave your name or let it be traced to you in anyway. I can't have you on my soul again." "There's a risk, then." "A very great risk, to a great number of people, and especially to you. I wish to god I didn't have to ask you, of all people, to run it." He gave a forced laugh. "Ah, I'm only telling you this so you'll have something to work with. The cancelling is the most important thing. It has to get in the papers tomorrow." "You're not going to go with me." "It doesn't look that way, does it?" "Where will you go? You need a doctor." "I'll not be getting one in Glenford." "Why not? You said it was only about five miles south--" He shook his head, and she knew the answer. The mewing of the gulls drifted in across the wet boulders. Between the overhead rocks, the triangles of light disappeared into grey. The footprints behind them melted into the wet sand as they emerged and faced the cliff. Monoliths, like sentinels, dotted the lonely beach. -85- "It's a nice secluded cove," he said. "Pretty." They walked across the sand toward the cliff. "Do we have to climb those rocks?" "There's a well-worn path up through them." "Gun runners?" "Lovers." At the top of the ridge, by the road, he rested against a boulder with the one leg straight out in front of him, the other taking his weight. "We're in Donegal, near the county line. Follow this road south," he gestured with his arm, "and there's Glenford. It's a fairly good sized town. The fathers have little enough to do; they'll get you on your way all right. Don't be talking about the estate. You left a big bloody print on the wall. I smudged it out; I don't know how well. There were probably others. No need to direct inquiries that way. You will put that message about the meeting in for me, won't you? My friends' lives depend on it." "I will; I said I would. I wish you were coming with me. You know this Father Durnien." He shook his head. "You can slip in easily enough. Durnien's a good man, but he's bull-headed. There'd be a doctor, or a clinic, inquiries, and talk, then. . . . No." "Where are you going to go?" He tilted his head in the direction opposite Glenford. "What's there?" The shadow of suspicion crossed his face. "Ah trust, Michael, and after--. It's the Gaeltacht, isn't it. What's in there for you except lying in a ditch by the road?" "Mainly that they wouldn't be giving an outsider the time of day, much less information on one of their own." "This damn secrecy business. You're just giving up, aren't you. You're just going to lay down and die rather than risk--being found again, aren't you." He smiled at her. "I'll not go back there. I won't be forgetting you, Danielle Mahr. I'll find your brother for you." "Your words are hollow, Michael Kelley. -86- You're not seeing beyond tonight." "Slaa'n leat, Danielle Mahr." He hadn't moved from his place against the rock. "Sla'n agat, and to hell with you, Michael Kelley." She started down the road and marched perhaps a hundred angry yards before she turned around and came back to where he leaned against the boulder. "The newspaper offices are closed by now. I'll get to them first thing in the morning. I can call. Wherever we're going, we'd better get started, or you'll be dead before we get there." They walked through the drizzle and the dark. "Why do you keep coming back to me?" "Let's see, you're a killer, a smuggler, and in the IRA." "Don't forget hooligan." "Hooligan. You look like hell, you're just about dead and probably mad. Just luck, I guess. Peter will have a fit." "But I could find him." "You said you would." "I did, and it's worth the chance?" "It's worth the chance." "And who's probably mad, Danny Mahr?" They hitched a ride from a couple in a smoke-sweet van, stretched out in the back between amplifiers, keyboards, and guitar cases. He held rambling conversations in Irish with the grubby and slightly stoned couple in the front. He told her it was about the symmetry of the road and the sounds of sunset. It was midnight when the van left them at the chute of a rutted lane. Its edges were guarded by briars and rock walls, studded with hawthorns. Rain draped their shoulders with wet capes. Time stumbled on. They slogged through the mud, bent against the wind. Water the color of whiskey ran in rivers down the road. The mild euphoria of the van had long since evaporated. "How much further?" she asked. He sank to the earth next to a wall. He was febrile, septic, freezing. She huddled to him for the heat he radiated. He hugged her -87- close to keep warm. "Michael, you must trust me! Tell me how to get there." He heard her, knew her voice, comforting, untranslatable. Doubts swarmed through his head like clouds of gnats, but he told her and begged her to cancel the meeting. He heard himself warn Daithi and Pierce about it, begged them to forgive him. They wouldn't take him in. He couldn't make it. Danielle would leave him. This night would never end. Daithi and Pierce were gone. Danielle would leave. Danielle would leave. That's what she was saying. "No!" he roared, and held her with all the force he had. She was talking to him again, explaining something. Rationally, he supposed. There was nothing left at all. He heard himself giving her directions. He knew when she did leave; the soft source of warmth was gone. He drew his knife and waited curled against the twisted rock wall. -88- She found the cottage, though there was nothing to distinguish it from the others looking like thatched marshmallows in the rain. Light flickered yellow through the window. She rapped on the door and stood in front of it, immobile with exhaustion. A dog barked inside. "Ce' ata' amuigh ansin?" A man's voice through the closed door. "John Kelley?" over the barking of the dog. "Ta' se'." "I'm a friend of Michael's," she said to the weathered wood of the door. He's hurt." A murmured argument in Irish and the barking beyond the door. A long silence, then the door opened slowly. The light streaming out silhouetted the old man and his wife and the growling dog next to them. It was a collie mix, mainly black even in the light. "Mi'chae'l?" the woman said. Danielle nodded. "He's badly hurt. Down the lane. Will you help me--him?" They shook their heads and murmured to each other in Irish. His hand was on the door, ready to close it. They were back lit, two dark shapes hunched together in suspicious, unintelligible whispers. The dog, its hackles and the ridges on its muzzle raised, pulled back its lips and growled continuously at her. The door started to close. "Wait! "Please!" She reached to keep it open. The dog advanced with its teeth bared, snarling. She stood utterly still, then slowly took a step backward. The couple was silent, watching. The dog was so close she could see a white ring around the amber of its eyes. Its next step would bring its muzzle against her knee. Suddenly it stopped mid-snarl and cautiously stretched to sniff the denim of her jeans' leg. It whimpered and came closer to sniff her clothing. It whined and trotted around her, sniffing. It yelped and barked and wagged its tail furiously and leapt up against her and ran around her and splashed everyone with mud and water. It followed her scent back down the road and lost it in the rivers of rain and raced back and barked -89- joyously at her. "Tim!" the man said, and the dog ran barking to him then around her again. Without a further word between them, the woman helped the man on with a slicker and handed him a blackthorn stick. He came out and stood beside Danielle in the rain. "Mi'chae'l's dog," he said. He wasn't much taller than she was, and so slightly built that the wind threatened to whisk him away in the billowing slicker. A cap slouched forward over his eyes, almost touching the unlit pipe clamped between his jaws. They found the dog whining next to Michael by the rock wall. With the dog leading the way, they carried him between them. The door to the cottage stood open, light streamed out into the rain. They took him into the house, into a bedroom, lay him on the bed. Danielle left them. She shut the front door against the hurtling rain, and sank to the floor in front of the fireplace. The smells of wet wool, peat and tobacco hung like a haze over the flagstones. The fireplace was set in the side wall of the main room, which was both kitchen and sitting area. A big worn chair with its stuffing flattened, a rocker with a wool throw on it, and a braided rug lay in front of the hearth. Rimless eyeglasses kept the pages of a book open on a small table next to the chair. A crucifix with strands of palm curled around it was nailed over the mantle. The mantle itself was cluttered with a stone dog, a print of St. Patrick in a gilded frame, a ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary painted blue, and a china saucer with buttons, needle, and a spool of thread. A clock stood off center, its glass missing, the hour hand a broken stump, and none of the three hands moving at all. To one side stood an framed old photograph of a young couple. His suitcoat was buttoned high on his chest, and he smiled down on his partner as she held a bouquet of daisies against the breast of her frock. A curled snapshot of a family of four, and another of two half-grown boys laughing at the camera were taped to the front of the glass. On the other corner of the mantle stood a bottle -90- of whiskey, two blackened pipes and a pouch that said "Mick McQuaid Shag." There was a bedroom at each end of the house and a bathroom in an alcove built next to the kitchen. A range and refrigerator stood on curved legs, the white enamel of them chipped to black. There was a wooden table with straight chairs in the middle of the floor, a sink, and that was all. Very slowly, the mud clotted laces of her boots yielded to her fingers. She put the boots close to the heat. Scraps of Irish melted together and flowed from the bedroom, the man's voice, his wife's higher, and Michael's murmur. "JesusMaryandJoseph!" the woman wailed. The man, still wearing his slicker, rushed across to the fireplace, grabbed the bottle from the mantle, closed his eyes and drank. Then he looked at her as she sat shivering on the hearth. "John Kelley." "Danielle Mahr." His eyes were sea-bleached blue, filled with unspilled tears. Thorny brows perched over them. Permanent smile or squint creases etched themselves around his eyes and almost toothless mouth. "You all right?" he asked. She nodded. "Michael?" He took another drink. "He's still breathing, I think." The woman cried from the bedroom. "I'm on my way, Maggie." he said. He pushed the bottle at Danielle, looked at her, looked at it, then looked around the room and found a glass, splashed whiskey into it and gave it to her. She took a drink and started coughing. He grabbed the glass back, hurried to the table. From the teapot sitting there, he dumped tea into the whiskey, and a couple of spoons of sugar on top of that. "You'll be able to drink that," he said. "I'm leaving now, Maggie!" he called to the bedroom and picked up his stick. "Doctor," he said to Danielle as he slammed the door. -91- The doctor stayed a long time. When he left, Danielle bathed and put on a faded flannel robe that the woman had given her. They sat around the wooden table in numb silence, eating raisin bread with butter, drinking tea and whisky. "Maggie, get the extra blanket. Put her in with Mi'chae'l. We'll sort this out in the morning." "With Mi'chae'l! But John--" Her thin grey hair was pulled back to a bun at the nape of her neck. The rest of her was bent and spare, like a weathered board. His brambled brows lifted a fraction. "Where else would she sleep, Maggie, with me? " There was an exchange in Irish. Maggie rose from the table in tight lipped capitulation and went to get the blanket. He looked at Danielle. "I want to thank you for bringing my son home. You'd be a close--friend of his." "I don't know him at all." "Indeed. Do you now?" He looked surprised, disbelieving. She shook her head. Whatever Michael wanted to tell them was enough. "What did the doctor say?" she asked. "That he's bad enough, Mi'chae'l, that is. Bowie shot him full of the antibiotics and gave him the other shot to put him under so he could work on him. He was wrapping gauze enough for a shroud around him when I left the room. He said he'd be coming back tomorrow, today that would be, and do it all again. That damn Tim won't get out of the room." He tossed back the rest of his drink. "I've seen enough of this day to last me, I tell you." "Danielle!" "I thought Bowie knocked him out," John Kelley said as they scraped their chairs back and headed for the bedroom. "You'll do it? You promised?" Michael said groggily, trying to get out of the bed. The dog whimpered at his feet. "Tomorrow, Michael, first thing," she said. "There's no time left at all," he said. -92- "We can't stay here," he said. John pushed him gently back into the bed. "You're raving. Have you lost your senses completely?" "Ah Dhaid, they'll be after us. They'd rather us dead." "Damned near had their way, by the looks of you. Leave now, and you'll be doing their work for them." "They'll leave nothing--" "You and your woman are safe here for tonight. We'll have to trust our luck that they're not right behind you, but Maggie will be saying a rosary to waylay them in any case. We'll talk in the morning." Michael sank back against the pillow. "She's not even my woman. There's no time left at all," he mumbled as he closed his eyes. John stood by the bed, his eyes focused somewhere beyond his son. After most of a minute he murmured "So you say." -93- It was morning when Michael felt the backs of cool fingers stroke his cheek with the age-old gesture, the woman gesture. Danielle. Danny. She had been there all night, through a fevered drugged haze he remembered her. Once in a while she said something. He didn't know what; it didn't matter. Once in the night, he had seen the blanket-draped back in the other bed. He heard himself whisper "Daithi," in the dark. For a moment he felt a flood of relief, gratitude, that his grief, the grief that had been a major part of him for so long, had only been part of a nightmare. For a moment he let himself believe, hope, that the reality of it had been just a bad dream. But it wasn't Daithi. The name died in his throat. In the morning, he opened his eyes to find her sitting on that bed, in the faded robe, looking at him. Tim raised his head and thumped his tail on the floor. "Feeling better? The fever's down." she said. He nodded and smiled at her. "You didn't get much sleep last night. I'm surprised Maggie put you in here. It goes against the grain." The dog put his head on the bed and kept his eyes on Michael."John decided. There was a discussion." She fumbled with the hem of the blanket while she spoke without looking at him."Michael, I'll be leaving today. I'll put your announcement in the papers before I do anything else. I've got to find out about Mrs. Burns. I hope you--I hope whatever it is you've been working for is worth--all this." "What about your brother?" "I do what you said. I'll put a message in the papers. I'll get to that priest of yours and have him help me to the embassy, make up some story about kidnapping and rape, which is true enough, and how I need to find my brother, which is also true enough. Have them find him, or maybe the priest knows someone." "Peter? They won't touch his kind." "We don't know if Bruce made all that up. I know Peter is an engineer; I only have a liar's word he is the other." "It's not as if the country's a Mecca for engineers, Danny." She looked at him. "And it is for the other. Whatever he is, he'd always be there when I needed him. He's all I have." He bit his lip meditatively. "It's worth everything--. Maybe it's not too late to stop whatever they are having him do. If he knows I'm out of their hands, he can get away from them too. They'll destroy him. I'm at the very edge. I'm afraid." "Give me two--three days, I'll find him. I know I'll get a least a whisper about him. They brought in a man they call the 'Bushmaster' to train the lads. I haven't seen him yet, but I will. He'd know the professionals in the country, he's been here a while. I'll ask him, he'd talk to me. You'd never be able to get near him, much less have him tell you anything. I can." "You will if you want to, Michael, but I'm going today. It'll be easier for you to hide here when you're alone. I make you and your family conspicuous, having me here with you. There'll be talk, and some of it will get out. And--whoever they are--will find you again." "Listen, you came back for me because you thought that whatever Bruce had Peter doing had to do with me too, because it was all tied together someway. Isn't that right now?" She nodded. "Well, I know--," he closed his eyes and swallowed, then looked at her again, "I know lives are at stake, a lot of them, because--" he swallowed again, "because of what happened in that stable. I know I have to stop that meeting. I don't believe in coincidences. That stable was Bruce's party. If he's playing with Peter too, then Peter is involved with that meeting." "You can't be sure." "I want to talk to him. I have some part in this. The government, your embassy, or the church--none of them has a prayer of finding him. He's not an organization man. He'd talk to me if -94- you were there with me, and not at all if I were alone." "I just heard the mirror image of this argument. And you're in no shape--" "Give me a couple of days, that's all. Stay with me. Then I'll put you on the plane myself, I swear." She bowed her head. Her blond hair swung forward and hid her face, when she whispered "No." "Then by god, I'll start today." He rolled over onto his right shoulder to get out of bed. She reached across the bed to pull him back. He rolled onto his back again, gripping her left hand with his right. His other hand against the small of her back pressed her to him. She was stretched diagonally across his chest, her face touching his. He grinned in victory. "I would have made it all of halfway to this door," he said, then gaped at the terror in her face. "Don't be afraid of me, Danny," he pleaded. His voice and hold softened. "Two days, that's not a lifetime." He stroked her hair away from her eyes and kissed her and felt her convulsive shudder as she bowed her head. He held her close and smelled the sweetness of her hair. "It's hard to remember to knock in my own house," John Kelley growled from the doorway. Danielle murmured and tried to push away from Michael. He held her wrist and asked questions with his eyes. Rather than fight him, she remained sitting at the edge of his bed, and tightened the belt of the robe, and avoided John Kelley's eyes. He scraped a chair to the other side of the bed. "Move, Tim. You're doing better, I can see," he said to Michael. He tossed Danielle's jeans and jacket, with her underthings wrapped in the jacket, on the bed, and tucked the newspapers he carried underneath his arm. "Maggie's gone to Mass. Half the women she knows would be up here bringing cakes and the like, thinking she was sick or dead if she missed, so she went. Those things you washed out last night; they're dry now. Maggie said she figured God would forgive -95- you, seein' as how you brought the man back." "Forgive me for what?" "Well, for one thing, for wearin' those bits of lace as underwear." Danielle giggled. Michael laughed. "Fancy lingerie," he said. John glared at him. "'Lawngerahy', is it? You have little cause to be puttin' on airs, Mi'chae'l." He turned back to Danielle. "For the other thing, killing Bruce Creighton." Danielle stared at him, horrified. "You couldn't wash the blood out of the sweater; it stained the wool. It wasn't all mud, like we thought." He threw the wallet on the bed. "You've got his wallet with plenty of his money in it, and a pistol, and your clothes are soaked with blood. Now what am I to think?" Tim whined and wagged his tail uncertainly, looking from John to Michael. Michael stared at his father. "Are you covered with Creighton's blood?" John's voice was dangerously calm. "No!" she cried. "I'll not be harboring criminals." She was transfixed by his look. "I . . . am . . . not . . . a criminal." "It's his wallet. It's not your blood, and there's too much of it even to be Mi'chae'l's." "A dhaid, leave her alone, John." Michael's voice was soft, as forced calm as the old man's, his steady stare challenging the angry blue eyes. "By God, Mi'chae'l, no matter what Maggie says, not even for my own son. If you're a murderer, I'll turn you in." "No!" Danielle cried. "It's not Creighton's! It was a man who--raped me. He tried to kill Michael--" "It's not Creighton's," Michael repeated quietly. "I wish to god it was. It was the one who--" He waved his hand in a tired motion toward himself. "He tried to stop us when she got me out. I killed him. I don't regret it," he added in soft defiance. For two full minutes, they studied each other. There wasn't a sound in the room except for the uncertain thump of Tim's tail against the floor. -96- "Are you telling the truth?" "I don't lie to you, John." The old man sighed and pushed back to lean against the back of his chair. He popped a match with his thumbnail. "I had to ask," he said, glinting over the flame. His concentration shifted to lighting the black pipe. He drew deeply and crossed his legs. His knee pulled deep folds in the baggy trousers. He blew a great cloud of blue smoke. "Bowie will be up in a bit, I expect," he said. "We've got to leave. We can't stay here, John." "Don't be more of a fool than you are, Mi'chae'l. Bowie can't tell what's broken or bleeding inside of you without an x-ray, and he figures you wouldn't want to be going to the clinic for that, so you're just having to wait and see if you get worse, and then you'll have little choice in the matter. The man's doing what he can, to accommodate you, against his better judgement, I might add for him. The truth of the matter is, you've got to mend yourself, and that means staying out of trouble for a while. "Bowie's all right, you know. The man's delivered more babies no one outside the mother knew about, than any other doctor in the county. Most of the women go right on living in their own town, bringing up 'their cousin's child' with no one the wiser, thanks to him. Delivered you and your brother." "Just the same, John--" Michael said. "You've made your point, not that we haven't thought of it, Maggie and I, when you were taken . . . They'll be looking for you here soon enough." He blew a cloud of smoke and gestured with the stem of the pipe. "You remember Pa'draig McCluskey? The one who built the house on the hill, thinking it would sweeten the pot when he asked little Betty Hart down the road to marry him? Well, she wanted no part of him, with or without the house. He did try asking some other girls, so I understand, and not a one was desperate enough to take him. And a fairly nice house it was too. Anyway, he left the country, and good riddance, -97- and the house went all to hell. "The roof is still tight, though it's been some time since I looked in there. There was a bed and a table and a few chairs still standing, if someone hasn't trashed the place by now. More than likely there are mud wasps in the chimney, but they'll be quiet enough with the weather we've been having, and the smoke will drive them out or do them in anyway. It's a good enough place waiting for you." He smoked his pipe and looked at Tim. "It almost killed Maggie, you know," he said softly. "First your brother, and you on the run, and then when they took you. We had this plan for when you came back. If you came back." Very quietly Michael said, "I've been gone a long time, Dhaid." John nodded. "That you have. We thought forever. We had this plan," he said. "They'd been here before, looking for you. Ripped the place apart the first time they did, even the flagstones off the hearth. The second time they were as nice as nuns out of school; 'Sir' this, 'Sir' that. There was a paper for me to sign when they were through, saying nothing had been broken or taken without my permission. I signed it right enough. They broke every goddamned thing in the house on their way out." He sucked on his pipe and studied the dog. "Tim's full of dried mud, you know, don't let him up on the bed. You must have been a thorn in their sides, to hear the talk. I hope to god you are. "When they took you . . . when you were interned, they left us alone. Nothing for years now. In the beginning the lads at McCarty's would have news of you--not that it was good, mind you, but just the same--. Pierce, he'd get word to us. He'd come by and stay with us, just like always. "You do seem to get along with the Yanks now, don't you. Anyway, Pierce would see that we got whatever news there was. And then there wasn't anything at all for years, we didn't even know where you were, or if you were alive at all, but still he'd come by with his stories. The man's a good storyteller, I'll give him that. He's been over here so long he believes them -98- himself, bless his soul, but don't tell him that. "Which reminds me, he was here about three weeks ago, all upset with looking for you. For more than two years now, we were all thinking you were probably dead, Pierce included. Maggie didn't believe it, or so she tells me last night, but she even had a Mass done for you, so it came as something of a surprise that he should be looking for you." "I've been looking for him," Michael said. "Have you seen him since?" "Not since then. When did you get out?" "It was about then, three weeks ago. I can't get word of him." John shook his head. "After you were interned, they left us alone. Our mail is still opened when we get it. I don't know what they are expecting to find in it, maybe the money from your mother's cousins in New Jersey, though that's still in the envelope." "Who's 'they', the gardia?" Danielle asked. "The Military Reconnaissance force is who it is, the undercover organization attached to the Thirty-Ninth in Ulster. They slip over the border, pull their dirty tricks, slip back, and no one's the wiser. A few weeks ago, it was a bakery truck they had." "You're sure," Michael said. "Indeed." He gummed his pipe thoughtfully. "Your bunch are no better. McCarty pays them a tidy sum each week for protection. Protection from what, I ask you. The Little People? He'd be doing better to lay new milk on the doorstep for them. And word is, you'd better not flaunt your money around for fear of your wife's or son's or daughter's life. We haven't had much of that around here though; no one has two scilling to rub together. Those lads have been here too, asking their questions. It's not that we've told them anything. Don't know anything. Wouldn't tell them if I did." "Recently?" "There are times I think maybe New Jersey might be better." "Were they here recently?" Michael asked again. "Not long after Pierce, come to think of -99- it." He uncrossed his legs and pulled the newspapers from under his arm. "I was down meeting the milk lorry, like I do every morning, so I picked up the Irish Times and the Belfast Newsletter." "Both of them?" "I was thinking there might be mention in one of them about you, that is if they're looking for you in the open."He unfolded one paper. Michael leaned over for the other. He propped himself up and Danielle inched nearer to him to read it. He opened the Irish Times with a snap and murmured, "Never thought I'd see the day when the Belfast Newsletter was inside this house." A great cloud of blue smoke rose from behind the other paper. "It does pay to know how the other side is thinking, though it may turn your stomach. I do catch a glimpse of it now and again down at McCarty's. I don't bring it home. Maggie starts in at me as if I wrote the damn thing." The six pages of the Irish Times were strewn with two inch paragraphs on the death of the beloved this one, and the joyful announcement of the birth of that one, seventh child of the other. prayers for the day, announcements of services to be held at St. Bertram's, St. Cecelia's. Inarguable sacred mottos for every occasion, debates in the Fail, incidents in Derry checkered the fuzzy sheets until the sports pages' straight hard facts and rumor . "Nothing." Michael handed the paper to Danielle and leaned back and closed his eyes. There was no Mrs. Burns in the Obituaries. Danielle continued to read the static little articles in the personals columns. "Sewing done, vry rsnbl." "Bridget all is forgiven. Please come home." Suits and countersuits. The Belfast Newsletter cracked smartly into octavo form. "There's nothing in this tripe either. The wonderful Philip Graven has condescended to visit the Twenty-six Counties this week. All manner of doomsday predictions on the repercussions of the trip. 'End of Ulster,' my God! Look at the fish in this picture." He slapped the paper with the back of his hand. -100- "The man wants to catch a salmon before the season's over." Two virulent puffs of blue smoke punctuated his statement. "Who's Philip Graven?" asked Danielle. The Belfast Newsletter was lowered enough to let his shrewd blue eyes peer over it at them. "The man is the prime mover in the Six Counties. He's the first one they've brought in who has a chance with both sides, and the British to boot, and he isn't even one of their's. Many's the issue I'd argue with him, but the man's a worker, I've got to say that, and about the only one onstage who has a breath of a chance to cool things down before they erupt for good. He may even get some sort of settlement. I wouldn't give you odds on it, but I wouldn't put it past him either, not on that one, not when his career is riding on it." The old man looked at Michael's face and handed him the paper without comment. He leaned back and sucked on his pipe, his gnarled fingers curled around his suspenders. "This is Graven with the catch?" Michael asked. "It is," John said. Michael took a deep painful breath and slowly let it out. Then he read the article and scuffled through the pages and let the paper float to the floor, and stared at it. "Someone you'd be knowing, Mi'chae'l?" He met his father's look. "Thought as much," the old man said. Michael turned to Danielle. "It's tied together some way for sure. There's too much for chance, and with Peter too. It explains why they got both of us now, just before his trip." A snort of blue smoke. "Your old man is a bit slow. I'd like to know the connection myself, and who the hell is Peter? What the devil are you talking about using such god-fearing tones?" "A dhaid, Long Kesh isn't closed. I was there, among other places, not at Magilligan. After--the first--they'd cart me wherever they wanted to. It got to be a ritual, I'd be blindfolded and led to a truck and jounced about in the dark for however long and then led back to a cell, and it would smell the same as the one I -101- just left, but it would be a different one. A man tries to leave his mark, you see. The sounds would be different sometimes. Anyway, it didn't matter. I didn't know if they moved me across the country or across the corridor, I didn't know where I was, or have much of an idea how long I'd been there. No window. Never any sun. Just an electric bulb to mark the days. When they switched it off, it would be night, blacker than hell. In the beginning, after the interrogations, there were people around, I could smuggle word out. But then they started moving me, and changing the guard who brought the food if he as much as said `Good Morning,' or talked to me at all. They were afraid of the talk. No papers or magazines, nothing with a date on it, even an old one. There were books though, that I read, even chap books." "You escaped?" Danielle said. He waved his hand in the tired way. "I didn't escape. The few times I tried, they didn't care for it a bit, and they let me know it. No. This time they let me go. --On condition. "I don't think I ought to be telling you this. It'll just get you both into trouble." "I'll be the judge of that," John grumbled. "Just try not telling me, and we'll see who's in trouble." "You're a tough fellow, John Kelley." The pipe bobbed in agreement. The stem directed him to continue. "I was led through the whole routine, the truck, the blindfold and handcuffs, to end up before this man. --Graven, as it turns out, seeing his picture now. He had a deal. It seemed he had word I did have some influence in IRA terms at least." "He probably heard Pierce's stories, everyone else has," said with a cloud of smoke. "He wanted me to run a message to the cell leaders. I told him to find another man, I was no one's errand boy. He said no one else could get through to them, to enough of them, and have them listen, that anyone he had in the ranks had no access to authority other than his own cell leader. He didn't want to be bothered with small fry. He didn't want his message spread all over -102- the Six Counties or the Republic because that would squelch any chance his plan would have. "`Too bad,' I said. I told him I had no official authority any more, after all the time inside. Like Old Finn, once you've been maimed, you can never be king again. It's a good rule." "You lost those fingers a day or so ago," John said. He looked at his gauze-wrapped hand, spread the thumb and two fingers wide. "This is just ugly. It's pain and weakness. It's the being inside that's the being maimed." "Maybe it is, Mi'chae'l, Maybe it is. Go on." "He didn't want official authority, didn't want a politician. I guess one is all the arena will hold. There were some involved already, and he had had enough of them to gag him, he said. He wanted someone who had to keep out of the limelight, who had nothing to gain by sweeping publicity, but someone the men would listen to. My name came up, and someone in his office thought I was still alive. He checked it out. "I told him that probably wasn't the case anymore, either, the listening-to part either. He wouldn't hear me." He became silent, as he replayed the conversation in his head. "Keep talking, what did Graven want you to do?" John said. "He'd let me out, with no official declaration of any kind. No pardon, nothing. If I were caught I'd be returned, if I weren't lucky enough to be shot, and he never heard of me, just as if I'd escaped. But there'd be no warrant either. If I persuaded the men, the leaders of the different factions, to see him, to at least sit down and talk with him, in an amnesty-peace talk situation, then after it was all over, whatever the outcome of the talk itself, I'd get an official pardon." "Pardon for what? What were you charged with?" Danielle asked. Michael spread his hands and shook his head. "He could dangle that carrot in front of your nose for the rest of your life, and you'd be ending up nothing but his lackey," John said through pipe smoke. -103- "He wanted me to give him a chance to make his offer to the lads. He said he would give them a bundle of social concessions--economic things, education benefits, jobs and job training, housing, amnesty,--in exchange for a cease-fire. Just for a while tolerate the political situation while his people negotiate it. The benefits would start immediately. I said I had no authority to give him an answer for them, I wasn't promising anything for them. He said he didn't want the answer from me. All he wanted me to do was give him the chance of making his offer to the lads." Michael's shoulders lifted and fell. "I liked the man. I thought I could trust him. And I didn't have an option the other way." "Maybe you'd be liking the devil himself if he offered you a way out of there." "How much longer did you have?" Danielle asked. Michael studied his hands. "They never say," John said. "He wasn't charged. They could write something up in short order, I wager, and tack something else on, or he could be a free man tomorrow, or never." "Indefinitely?" "Internment isn't a prison sentence." John spoke to his pipe. "Maybe you couldn't handle a normal life, Mi'chae'l. Maybe the years on the run have changed you so you can never go back." He raised his eyes to look at his son. "Were you able to do it?" she asked. "Did you talk to them, and were they willing to sit down and listen to whatever he was selling?" "I thought I did, only to listen to the man, not to get them to agree to anything he proposes. He knows any agreement has to have the cooperation of every faction. It would abort if just one group started laying the plastic around; everything would go up, the whole island." "I wonder what the Paisley bunch think of him. And the meeting," Danielle mused. "Ah those gentle folk." "The paper didn't say anything about a meeting, it mentioned a visit," Michael said. "Innuendos screamed 'meeting,'" she replied. "True enough," said John. "So your whole -104- bunch will listen to him." "For god's sake! They're not my bunch." "They were." "Well they're not now." "Who's are they?" "I wouldn't know. Maybe Garg, though I can't confirm that even. I know who's training them, --an independent they call the 'Bushmaster'. He's hired to do it. He's gotten rid of the drinkers and most of the sociopaths, trimmed it down from a group of parochial romantics to a formidable force. And I know where the money is coming from, --from Libya and the Arabs and East Europe and Boston and New Jersey." "Sure, and so do I. From McCarty and the banker's wife in Kerry. We've our own private mafia now, isn't that grand? Where do you stand, Mi'chae'l? Are you betraying them?" "I am not." "Are you with them?" Pause. "Sure I am." "Are you a cabaire?" "I am not!" "What then?" "The Army, for all its new success and ample finances and new men, lost the people. They'd get them back with a peace effort, even a short one. They can always cry 'foul treachery' and call it off as we did before, if it doesn't go our way. You don't need many men in a guerrilla situation, but you do need the people behind you. Without them . . ." he shrugged. "you've become something else." "And they'll listen?" John persisted. "Sure they'll listen. That is, all but Garg, and he was bullied to go along with it too, just to listen." "Ach, that Garg. He's a snake, if there ever was one. I wouldn't trust that one to bring a half jar of flat Guinness across the room. "They haven't been able to penetrate the Army since the Brigades and battalions. Graven couldn't have reached them, the decision makers, except through you. Watch it Mi'chae'l, your own lads would have done this to you and worse. They'd crucify you if they believed you'd sold them out." -105- "They know I wouldn't." "Do they now. Do you?" John studied the rafters through his pipe smoke, rocking on the back legs of his chair. "If Graven does manage to pull it together-- mind you, I'm not saying that he will--but if he does, he'll find himself the biggest thing in the nation since Saint Patrick. To tell the truth, everybody's had about as much of the business as they can take. And we've been saying that for four hundred years." "There would be a lot that wouldn't go for a settlement, but breaking the meeting up before it happened wouldn't change anything at all. On the other hand, assassination would blow everything wide open," Michael said. "Sure it would raise hell. Graven's drawing a huge fanatical following on both sides of the border, not that he doesn't deserve it. Maybe he's shooting for the Nobel Peace Prize, he working hard at it. And it would sure raise holy hell if he were knocked off. But you'd be given the credit for that one, Mi'chae'l, no matter who pulled the trigger." His pipe massaged his toothless gums. Suddenly he slammed his chair upright and stood up. "Bowie will be here soon, then we'll be getting you up to the McCluskey house." Danielle said "I have to find a newspaper office." "Well, get yourself dressed and I'll take you there. We'll walk down to McCarty's, and beg a ride to Gweebarra Bridge from there. Some one will give us a lift. Now put some decent clothes on. Daithi has sweaters in that bottom drawer there. He wouldn't be minding if you wore one of them." -106- The cottage had four windows with pieces of cardboard boxes wedged over them to keep the light from shining out, and people from seeing in. Turf blazed in the fireplace. A bed's iron headboard, shedding layers of yellowed paint, was shoved against a wall. A scarred table had a kerosene lantern on it, and a chair with missing spindles sat next to it. Spiders had woven long webbed tunnels where the walls met rafters. Tim lay before the fire with his head upon his paws, watching Michael. Michael hobbled from chair to bedstead to window and back again, cursing steadily under his breath. "Where is she? That's what I'd like to know," Michael said. Tim thumped his tail on the hearth. Michael picked up the pistol from the table. "She's walking around with the safety off." He checked the cartridges and set the gun back on the table and picked up the wallet. Driver's license; Bruce Creighton, no restrictions, expires next year. Plastic identification card; Belfast, government security clearance, Bruce Creighton, picture of the blond staring at the camera, magnetic strip along the back over his signature. He set the wallet next to the gun and hobbled to the window again. Peeling back a corner of the cardboard, he squinted at the black outside then pushed the cardboard back. He was limping from window to bed to table and back when Tim went to the door with his head cocked to one side and his ears perked up. Michael stood next to the table with his hand over the pistol. She knocked. "It's me," she said, and pushed open the door. He smiled at her because she came back. "You're moving about," she said. "No, I'm in a hurling match, what the hell does it look like I'm doing?" Her mouth was downturned and her feet dragged across the floor as she placed a box of groceries on the table and looked at him. "Your face is grey and you can't stand up straight. It looks like you're killing yourself. You'll really make Bowie mad if you do." He glared at her, then collapsed into the -107- chair with a laugh. "True enough. I suppose the whole county could hear his harangue this morning. I have to be moving or I'll stiffen up worse for sure. There's no time to lie around for a few days, no matter what he says." He watched her warm her hands in front of the fire. "It's late," he said. "Did you have any trouble?" She shook her head. "John and I bought a ride back and forth from McCarty's. The driver was glad to get the money. Before we came back, we let Bruce buy groceries. Maggie sent up something to eat. It's in the box." She dug in her jacket and tossed a pack of Players to him. "Michael, it's not going to work. I paid them double, both the papers, and they said they would try, but they wouldn't promise, and those announcements won't make the papers tomorrow anyway. And by Sunday it'll be too late. I called Graven's office and warned them that the meeting was going to be a trap. She said she didn't know of any meeting anywhere, and even if she had, she couldn't get in touch with Graven, because he 'was travelling, and was unable to be reached,' which means she wouldn't try if she knew how to get to him. I sent telegrams to him at his office and his home. I called the papers again, to put it in as a news article--I know they can get those in at the last minute--and they placated me as if I were some kind of crank, especially when I mentioned your name." "Don't say I didn't warn you." Shadows ringed her blue eyes, pulling them larger. Fatigue made the tissue under her eyes seem thin and fragile. She fell across the bed and cushioned her head on her sweater's double rolled cuffs. "What are we going to do, Michael? How will we ever start?" He pulled the cellophane from the cigarettes. "There'll be some lads down at McCarty's tomorrow. I'll find them, find my friends, spread the word. I'll get word to that Bushmaster through them. What did you say in Peter's message?" "'Peter. The Finn's tomorrow. Danny.'" "The message is clear enough. I'd be surprised if the whole place isn't surrounded. -108- It's just as well it won't be in by tomorrow. But how were you knowing about the Finn's?" "We passed it on the way to Gweebarra today." "Of course. It's a good enough place, not too far to get to from here, yet far enough to keep trouble away from Maggie and John. I'll have the lads ask that Bushmaster to be there too. If he'll meet us there, then we can keep an eye on the place for Peter at the same time." He lit his cigarette and watched her. "That friend of yours, Pierce," she said into the wool of her sweater, "is an American, isn't he? He might know Peter." "Indeed he would, and this Bushmaster too, more than likely. Pierce knows everyone, knows everything that goes on, or makes it up if he doesn't." "Well, where is he?" "I wish I knew. I've been looking for him myself these past three weeks, and not a word of him." "Is he a relative? Maggie and John talk as if he were part of the family." Michael laughed and blew smoke. "Might as well be. Pierce and I go back a long time. A man couldn't ask for a better friend. We've been in and out of scrapes together since I was sixteen. He's gotten us in and out of more trouble with that mouth of his, you couldn't begin to know." She looked up at him. "He's an outsider here. Why is he--accepted? Why do people talk to him?" "He's got the tongue, Danny. The Gaelic. He knew it when I first met him, and now you can't tell him from a native speaker. Yes, he's an American, but he's forgotten that. And there's another thing. It's a silver tongue that he was born with. He's the storyteller. He knows all the old tales, and tells them well. And I sure wish he were here," he said. After a while --"Michael?" "Um?" "What happened to Daithi?" He blew a long stream of smoke before he tried to answer. "He's my brother, two years the younger. He's dead. Because of me. He and his -109- girl were killed to get at me, for what I was doing. They were having dinner at a restaurant in Derry. A bomb went off. They shoveled the both of them into the same black plastic bag." "Your--involvement is mainly vengeance." "It deepened that way." After a while her eyes closed. He watched sleep soften the vertical lines between her brows, part her lips, let her hand fall slack. He sat in the wooden chair and smoked cigarettes and watched her for a long time. "Now how am I going to get any sleep at -110- all, with you like that?" he said. -110- McCarty's pub was dark, its woods seasoned by the smoke of innumerable pipes and by the froth of countless pints. It was segregated. The main part was the domain of men, rooted by their elbows to the dark wood bar. The smaller section was in high-backed booths. The partition separating the two was low enough so each could observe the goings-on of the other. Each had its own entrance, one to the left, and the other to the right in the front wall of the building. Tim sat patiently by the door to the bar. When Danielle stood at the doorway by the booths, there was a silence at the bar. The row of regulars, seven of them hunched over their beers, swung their heads a few inches to look at her over their shoulders, then back again without a change of expression. Michael, deep in conversation with another man, smiled a chip-toothed welcome and nodded when she indicated a booth before he turned back to the man. McCarty sauntered over to the booth and gave the table a swipe with his towel. "Dia duit a bhean." "Dia's muire duit tusa," she replied. He nodded seriously. "It could be worse. It'll be coming along any time now. Are you in for lunch? The roast beef isn't bad today. And where would your friend John be?" The roast beef sandwich would be fine with a Coke, and she hadn't seen John today. The man Michael was talking to tossed back the rest of his drink and hurried out. Michael himself started toward the booth. He abruptly stopped at the corner of the bar and resumed his position, hunched over his beer. The row of heads at the bar again turned their few inches, checked out the new man arriving without a change of expression. Silence replaced the undercurrent mumbling. The man in the doorway wore tortoiseshell glasses and a new hat. He made straight for her booth and sat down across the table from her. "Danielle Mahr?" He unbuttoned his trench coat and leaned across the table in conspiratorial intimacy, pushing his thick glasses back on his nose. "Danielle Mahr," he said again with more confidence. She nodded and dared not look at Michael. -111- "We've been wondering where you were. We've been looking for you for days," he said. American. "What for?" she said. He pulled a card from his wallet, offered it across the table. It had an official looking seal embossed through his photograph and a squirrely signature; Richard Carson, Central Intelligence Agency. "Sure you are," she said and handed it back. "You've been a missing person, Danielle." "Not to my knowledge. Your card's very nice; a Bloomingdales charge card looks nice to me too. I have no idea what a legitimate ID from the CIA looks like, and I can't imagine why they, or whoever you really are, has any interest in me." Carson leaned over to answer, then looked up and checked himself as McCarty set the sandwich and coke in front of Danielle. The bench she was sitting on shuddered as someone sat on the other side of it, in the booth behind her. "Now, here you go. Is everything all right here, Miss?" "Yes, fine I think. She slid a bill out of Bruce's wallet. Carson said "I'll have a pint myself, and pick up your tab." He held a bill folded lengthwise out to McCarty. "No thanks, I don't know you. I'll pay my own way." She handed McCarty her money. "Very good miss, I'll be right back with your change and your pint, sir." Carson twisted his bill between his fingers. "Where is your passport, Danielle?" "I lost it. Did you find it?" He shook his head. "You seem to have very protective friends." She wished it were true. She glanced around. The regulars were quiet, staring at the wall in front of them with expressionless faces. Michael was gone. "Listen! --For Christ sake!" McCarty set a frothing mug in front of him, took his bill, and went back to the bar. "Listen." He pushed the glasses back on his nose. "We had occasion to check you out. -112- There are some questions we like to have the answers to. About your brother." She bit into her sandwich and tried to look tough. "We looked you up, rather we tried to look you up. You'd left, or as the local gardia and gossip had it, were kidnapped. We didn't know what to think. You'd been checked out and your background seemed clear--except for having Peter Mahr as a brother of course--then yesterday, we get something from over in Gweebarra. Whether you know it or not, you're in pretty murky waters." He extended his legs under the table and sipped his beer. A hulk of sandwich was wedged somewhere about the level of her sternum. She drank the rest of the Coke. "What is your interest in me?" "Information, that's all. Of course, if your brother as an American national, were to be involved in the politics here, he could cause an international--embarrassment, shall we say, and that is to be avoided at all cost." She started for the door. "Hey! Wait!" He grabbed her elbow as she passed him. She wrenched it away and kept going. McCarty appeared at his side. "Your change, sir," he said. "Oh for Christ sake--" Carson gulped the rest of his beer, snatched his hat and followed her. Michael sauntered out the other doorway and lounged against the corner of the building, next to Tim. The man caught up with Danielle. She was shaking her head. The two were arguing too far away for the words to reach him. McCarty saw the card too, and said it looked real enough to him, for all he knew. The couple in the street parted, and the man with the new hat brushed past Michael on his way to the bar. Michael followed him in. Danielle strode down the road. The regulars left ample space on either side of Carson. Michael shouldered next to him and signaled a couple of pints. Full glasses appeared before both men. After a while he spoke into his glass. "Argument with your girlfriend?" "Hell no. Damned unfriendly bitch she is. -113- Spent the better part of the week looking for her. Finally found her, and she doesn't even appreciate it." He took a gulp. "She's in trouble?" "Doesn't know the half of it. I don't think she does anyhow. You know her?" "Looks like a Yank, by the size of her." "She is. They said she'd been abducted. That's how we got into it. Doesn't look abducted to me. Don't know what to make of it." He took a long pull at his beer, and with a sideways look to Michael, he pushed his glasses back up. "She's been seen with that Michael Kelley. Do you know him?" Michael took a sip and stared at the wall. "I've heard the name." The regulars looked straight ahead with expressionless faces. "Well, he's in one hell of a spot, and she's in a hell of a spot if she's with him." "He has a problem too, does he?" "Damn right he does. You watch out for yourself if you know him. Kelley, and anyone who's close to him has a problem staying alive. They end up on somebody's hit list." Carson faced him. "Listen, do you think you could talk to him, maybe get him to talk with me? Maybe bring that Danielle along too?" "Why should they be talking with you?" Carson's fingers skated around the top of his glass. "Some hard cases are after both of them. She has nothing, no luggage, no money, no passport. They took it all from the room her brother rented. I could arrange a trade. Passport and money to get home in exchange for what she knows." "And Kelley?" "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Or as my friend used to say, 'Hero, martyr, fool.' Kelley will be interested in hearing what I have to say. And I'll make it worth your while too, if you can arrange it." Michael turned to look at him. "Your friend said that, did he?" Carson nodded. "His very words. Listen, do we have a deal?" Michael finished his beer, jammed his hands in his jacket pockets and headed for the door. -114- "If we do, I'll be in touch." Tangle his life with deals. "It has to be soon!" Carson shouted after him. He tossed back the rest of his drink and signaled another. "Christ!" With Tim trotting beside him, Michael covered the road in long uneven strides. He cradled his left hand against his stomach, his right pressed against his leg. He shot desperate questions to the few people out walking and followed where they pointed. Danny; find her, keep her, find Peter for her. Do anything for her. Slip through this whole web with her, let it knot itself to eternity without his help. Danny. Where was she? Don't leave me now, he almost prayed. She led him out of hell. She led him to dare hope for things he never risked imagining before. Sanity. To want to see beyond the night. . . . She was down the road talking to someone in a car. He gritted his teeth, clenched the leg, lengthened his stride. Tim ran ahead. They had stopped talking by the car. The driver leaned out his window and they watched him, a man running down a deserted street and no one could be seen chasing him. They waited for him. He reached the car and sagged against it, fighting for enough breath to talk, his jaw tight with the struggle of ignoring pain. His heart pounded with the effect of his effort, with finding her again, at all, ever. "Danielle. --Come back with me, Danny." She glared at him. Her voice cracked with anger. "Dinner at McCarty's! I suppose you let that guy know I was going to be there too. Where would you have me brought this time, Michael? I trust you. I keep thinking I can trust you. Well I'm sick of your games. That man knew a lot, too much. How did he find me so quickly? You must have--" "I didn't--" "Why should you admit it? You set it up." "I didn't--" "And if you didn't, where were you? You disappeared. You just left me there alone when he showed up. Left me there to deal with it by -115- myself. Well, if I'm going to deal with this by myself, I'm going to be by myself. And you can go to hell." He reached over and pulled her to him. "Danny," he said, "I was right there, right with you. If you had put your hand behind you, you would have touched me." "Behind me? In the booth? But Carson would have seen you!" "He did. The point is, I didn't leave you." He gently stroked her hair away from her eyes. "I wouldn't. I won't." She buried her face in her hands. "I've never been so constantly afraid. How did they find me here? Did you tell him?" The driver looked from one to the other, following the conversation. "Not on your life, he didn't," he said. "I did not. You and John went over to Gweebarra yesterday. That's a fairly good sized town, and it wouldn't take a detective to follow you back here. The fastest way to get the feel of a place is at a pub. It was just bad luck you were there when he came in. You can't run every time a stranger says 'Hello,' Danny." The driver shook his head in agreement. "Come back with me Danny, no more running. We're through with the running." He smoothed her hair away from her face and gently kissed her lips. "What about Carson? What about Peter?" "Peter's a big boy, he can take care of himself, right enough. But we'll find him through that Bushmaster. I've sent a man already. As for Carson . . . Maybe it wasn't such bad luck after all. We can use him." "That's a two edged sword, Michael." "You wouldn't have to say anything you didn't want to. If he is what he says he is, he can get you a passport. Carson might be the fastest way to find out what the hell is going on. Card-boy followed you here because of Peter, don't forget, not me." They held each other. Her eyes searched his face. "You're pretty anxious to find him," she said, doubt lingering still in her voice. "I told you I'd help you." "But why do you want to?" -116- "For you. And to stop him from killing Graven, for that's what this thing adds up to. Our lives, Peter and mine, are tied up with Graven's. If he's assassinated, I'd be hunted down, and Peter with me, not to mention our names being shit until time itself stops. If Peter does manage to get away after this, they--whoever they are--won't stop until they get him. And I could hardly go back and explain that I carried out my part of the bargain, that Graven himself set it up, and that it wasn't my fault Graven got himself killed, or that most of the Army leaders were blown away with him." . . . For us . . ., Stay with me, Danny, I'm begging you, he said in his heart. "Stay with me, Danny, I'm begging you," he said softly. The driver nodded. "Go on now, the both of you, and let a man be on his way, unless you're still wanting that ride," he said. Danielle nodded and looked at Michael. "Yes," she said, "we do." He turned to the driver, "We'll both be taking that ride, if you're still going." "And about time. Get in with you now." He let them out at a little town several miles further on. Michael knocked on a paint-shingled door and a stout woman in a print apron answered it. "Mrs. Bolger? Would Thom be in? Tell him Mi'chae'l Kelley would take a minute with him." "You don't have to be introducing yourself to me, Mi'chae'l, but I wouldn't recognize you if I didn't know you. You're a far cry from the lad who used to chase the cats through my garden with his brother." She turned to a pudgy adolescent peeking around her. "Nora, run get your father. It's Mi'chae'l Kelley that would have a word with him." She turned to him. "It's about Thom and the others, isn't it." "Did he tell you?" "I've been married to the man most of my life. He said little enough. Do you think this will be an end to it?" -117- "Not tomorrow night, it won't." Unsurprised, she turned and went back to her kitchen. Her husband appeared, wiping his hands on his ample belly. "Dia duit, a Mi'chae'l." "Dia's Muire duit, a Thom. It's off, Thom. There'll be no meeting Sunday. Disregard anything you hear, and keep away from the place." "Just like that." "Just like that; it's a trap." "Who?" "I don't exactly know what they're calling themselves. We have to get word to the others." "JesusMaryandJoseph, they're scattered through the whole country." "There's nothing to do but get word to them. I wish Pierce were here. I talked to Mitch; he's casting his net. You'll do the same?" "I will. But I really had my hopes set on this one, especially since you thought it had a chance. Maybe I'm getting too old for this sort of thing, Mi'chae'l." "Maybe we both are Thom, but we can't retire tonight. I'll be out at the place to steer off any of the lads we might miss telling." "You'll be needing help." "I'm not wanting any. Stay away, and tell the lads to stay away, it's not their lark. I won't be reading name tags in the dark." The older man regarded him thoughtfully. "Someday Mi'chae'l, we'll have a jar, and you'll be telling me the whole story, or more likely Pierce will." "Someday," he said, with a cheerless smile, "if you're buying the jar. Sla'n agat, old friend." McCarty's was quiet when they got back. The regulars were stolid as the wood against the bar. "A pint for the both of you?" McCarty asked. "It's time we don't have, Mac." Carson stood alone at the corner of the bar, his face puffy as he studied the foam pattern on the bottom of his glass. His hat was perched on the back of his tousled head. The -118- trench coat was rumpled, new stains mottled the sleeves. Michael walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. Carson removed his tortoiseshell glasses and rubbed the indentations on the bridge of his nose. "Christ! I about gave up on you," he said. "We'll be outside when you're ready," Michael said. He and Danielle walked out to the wall by the edge of the road. Tim trotted next to them. Carson hurried to catch up. "I'm glad you convinced her to talk to me," he said. Michael hoisted himself up to sit on the wall. Danielle inched closer to him, distrust clouding her face. "I didn't," he said. He reached into his jacket pocket for cigarettes. Carson grabbed at the bulge in his trenchcoat pocket. Michael froze. With exaggerated deliberation, he withdrew the green and white pack of Players. He smiled grimly and put a cigarette between his lips. "I'm putting them back now," he said. He did, slowly and carefully. Carson flicked a lighter and held it out. Michael threw his head back and exhaled. "You're a bit edgy." "Christ! It's been a long day. You didn't tell her?" "I told her. She hasn't decided to trust you." "You're here," he said to Danielle. "To listen to what you have to say." Carson turned back to Michael. "And you couldn't get Kelley to talk to me. Well," he sighed, "let's go somewhere where we can talk without the whole town listening." "I don't know that we will. You're quick as a ferret with that pistol in your pocket. I think we'll be sitting right here on this wall in plain sight of everyone. They won't be getting close enough to listen. Danielle needs a passport and money enough to get home. We haven't got all day. Get to it." "How do I know you'll reciprocate?" Michael shrugged, then grimaced at the spasm of pain. "This was your idea, if you don't like it, that's fine too." He pushed off the -119- wall. "No, Wait! Never mind, I'll start." Michael sagged back against the rocks. "You OK? You don't look so good." "Certainly, I'm just grand." His annoyance flashed to alarm. "If this is some sort of ambush--" "No! Nothing like that, I swear." Carson sighed again. "OK, listen. This is the way it looks to us. Correct me when I go wrong." He pushed the glasses back on his nose. "Danielle Mahr talks to a man tentatively identified as Michael Kelley at the airport, she's reportedly kidnapped within twenty-four hours, disappears, then turns up on this side of the country. The agency had long since regarded this Michael Kelley as dead, but a friend of mine recently indicated he was around, said that he had been buried alive in the prison non-system. In fact, this friend was convinced the man was being set up, that an agreement Kelley was rumored to have--probably with Graven's office--was a long shot at best, and more probably a set-up. I thought it was just talk, but he was adamant about it, and asked me to check it out through my sources." "The 'hero, martyr, fool' friend?" Michael asked. "Yes. That one. Only there was nothing to confirm it from our usual sources. Nothing to contradict it either. Then we start hearing about this Michael Kelley from all over, so it looks like my friend was right again. Whatever the deal was, it involved the leaders of the IRA. Mind you, we can't pin Kelley down, no hard evidence. Just rumor, lots of it, from all over, North and South." "None of this is news, Carson. You're wasting our time." Carson turned to Danielle as if he hadn't heard. "Peter Mahr has been on our files for a while, ever since we intercepted a message to him when he was in South Africa. The details are irrelevant to us here, except that it was an offer of employment. We had the sender under surveillance. Evidently he accepted the offer, because he turned up here, with the Provos. Then he disappeared, about the time you arrived. -120- We've got to know where he is and what he's doing, Danielle." "Why?" "I can't tell you that. Believe me, it's important." "I haven't seen him." "Come on, Danielle. He's got nothing. The man overestimates his own importance." Michael started to walk away. "If you care about your brother, Danielle, you'll help me." Michael turned on him. "For god's sake, man. Say something that we can't hear in every pub. Give me some names." "You? Why should I bother talking to you? I'm talking to Danielle. Here's twenty pounds for you. Go take a walk, and when you come back with Michael Kelley, I'll give you twenty more." "Keep your forty pounds." He leaned back against the wall and smoked his cigarette. "Does Graven know about Peter?" Danielle asked. "We can't determine that." "Well who hired him?" she asked. "A Provo. Name's Garg. Been a Marxist for years. That's nothing new of course. My friend thinks Garg set up Kelley four and a half years ago. No proof there either, not even any evidence, just his intuition." "Does your friend have a name?" Michael muttered as he ground out the stub of his cigarette under his heel. Carson glared at him. "I'm getting a cigarette," Michael said as he reached into his jacket. Carson nodded, and watched him pop the match with his thumb nail and light it. "What is your friend's name?" Danielle asked. "We don't usually reveal our sources . . . But in this case . . . Pierce, Jamie Pierce." Michael turned his back to them and leaned on his elbows on the wall. "Why did this Jamie Pierce think Garg set up Michael . . . Kelley?" Danielle asked. Carson looked at her carefully. "You do know him, don't you. Well, to hear him tell it, it was politics. Politics that backfired. It -121- seems that Garg was in some sort of a power struggle with Kelley for control of the whole Army, except that Kelley didn't play by the book. Didn't play at all, in fact. He, according to Pierce now, just said that the men would decide who they would follow, not the other way around. And they always chose him. They would follow him through hell if he asked them to, or even if he didn't ask. Garg couldn't out-maneuver him, couldn't discredit him, could hardly kill him off outright without being fingered right away, so what he did was, he set Kelley up. You see, once one of them is inside for any length of time, they're considered 'maimed,' compromised, and they can never hold a position of authority again." Danielle cast a downward glance at Michael's bandaged hand. Carson continued. "Well Garg's plan worked well enough at first, but then it kept going one hundred eighty degrees and accomplished exactly the opposite of what he intended. His worst nightmare. "Kelley was captured all right, brutally interrogated and put away. Nothing new there either; that should have done it. Word leaked out on all this, of course. People knew the story. Then there was nothing. Nothing. Limbo. It was generally accepted that they finally killed him, but there was no proof, you see. The guy became a legend. Oh, most of the stories can documented, all right. He did enough in his life to give Belfast night terrors, but this stuff was embellished in the telling. He was an adequate hero to the men who knew him anyway, and the people who didn't know him believed the stories, so he was a hero to them too. And when they killed him in prison, of course he became a martyr, which is right next to god in this country. "Now he's resurrected, so to speak, or someone who is damn good at convincing people that he's Kelley is roaming around. The hell of it is, the people who knew him aren't surprised at all. After all, this is hero stuff, this is what a hero is supposed to do, isn't it? They believe in the Little People here too, though they won't come out and admit it. Yeah, they'd -122- follow him through hell, all right, without a flicker of hesitation. All except Garg. He's foaming at the mouth, but raving in private, because he's scared someone will tumble to the fact that he set Kelley up in the first place." "And Pierce, he works for you?" Michael asked the wall he stared at. Carson turned to Danielle. "It's your turn." She looked at Michael's hunched shoulders and back to Carson. She handed him Creighton's ID and licence. "Bruce Creighton? This is a government security clearance. Who's he?" "We--I don't know. He seems to run most of this, I think. He had me kidnapped to force Peter to do something. He had Michael--" "Michael? Kelley? It is true then; you were with him. Where is he now? I've got to talk to him! And your brother too, where is he?" She shook her head. "I can't find him," she whispered. "What do you know about Creighton?" "Nothing. He grows roses. He seemed nice." "Nice! For God's sake!" muttered Michael with his back still turned to them. She smiled sadly at it. "He was handsome, extremely polite, thoughtful. It's hard to reconcile my impression of him with the things he was doing to us. I can hardly believe it was the same man." "Anything at all? Anything?" "He'll be here seventeen years come December. His wife died some years ago. He lives on an estate on Lower Lough Erne. Something about a commitment." "What makes you think he's anything more than another pawn?" "No. . . . He knew exactly where to get in touch with Peter. I talked to Peter on the phone, and Bruce wouldn't let me say his name to him. And he was there when Michael was inter--"" "Danielle--" Michael growled. "I told you to keep out of it," Carson said. He turned back to Danielle. "He let you go?" "No," she whispered, "we escaped." -123- "We?" She nodded and kept her head down. "You and . . ." "Michael," she whispered. "Kelley? You sure it was him? Not just someone who said--? Here, take a look at this." He dragged a photo out of his pocket. "Here he is. It's about five years ago, before his internment, but this is Kelley. Is that what he looked like?" Danielle took the photo he held out. The man in the picture had his back half turned as he laughed over his shoulder at the camera. His hair was dark and so was his beard. His eyes were merry and grey and as he laughed, his teeth were white and even, except a front one had a sharp chip missing. "No, he didn't look like that," she said, and passed the photo back to him. "Can you find your Kelley?" "What would I tell him?" "That I need to talk to him. Desperately. I need to find the details of the deal he cut with Graven. My friend said--Pierce said it was bad cess, to use his term. He'd been right before; I've no reason to doubt him now." "What about your storytelling friend Pierce?" Michael spoke with his back still turned. His voice was stifled and angry. "He seems to have all the information. Where is he now?" Carson shook his head and sighed. "No," he said softly, "Jamie Pierce got himself killed." He looked at the photo in his hand and shook his head. "He was a fine man, too. I shall miss him," he said. Michael turned around. "Not Pierce," he said, shaking his head, "Not dead. Not Pierce." His voice cracked with anguish. His face was drawn and grey. Carson looked up at him. "You knew him too." He slowly folded the photo in half, then in smaller and smaller halves, then unfolded it and refolded it against all the creases, so the image was covered, obliterated, by fine white lines. "Silenced," he said. "How?" Carson started ripping along the softened -124- creases. "Oh, it was an auto accident in Belfast. Hit and run, that's what they said. Officially. But that wasn't it." He shook his head and watched tiny squares of ripped photo drift one by one into the grass. His eyes, when he looked up at Michael, were bright and full behind the glasses. "I had to identify him. When he was hit, about three weeks ago, he didn't have any ID on him. They classified the dental work as American and we get a listing of that sort of thing, with the general description. I got to it just the end of last week, and went over and identified him." He shook his head. "I hope I never have to do that again. He must have known it was coming. His family, when I reached them, said he wrote them a little while ago saying he wanted to be buried here. That's why I'm here. He must have known someone in this town, someone who knew what he wanted." He threw the last pieces of photo down angrily. "But nobody will talk to me. Christ!" Michael stared beyond Carson, his expression hardening until his eyes looked like pieces of grey ice. He turned to Danielle. With his hands jammed into his pockets, his shoulders hunched and his head down, he turned and walked away. Danielle said to Carson, "They'd want him to be here too. If you'll be at McCarty's tomorrow, I'll have someone find you." "I'd appreciate that." "I'll need a passport." "I can arrange it." "I'm trying to find my brother. Whatever happens, they're going to accuse Michael Kelley and Peter of it, the both of them, whether they had any part in it or not. Remember he was coerced. Make sure they--whoever the powers are--they know that he was forced to do it." "What is he going to do, Danielle?" "We don't know yet. Whatever it is it won't--" "--be good. Yeah, I can bet on that. I can help you find him." She shook her head. "There is a meeting. --There is a rumor of a meeting between Graven and leaders of various factions--I don't know who. -125- It is supposed to be Sunday night. Michael warned everyone to stay away, because he believes it's a trap. Graven's life--" "Christ! That would set the whole country up in flames." "I don't know details. Maybe you're in a position to be listened to by Graven's office. They wouldn't listen to me." "I can try. Peter's involved, I take it. Nothing good. Christ! We can't have an American involved-- I'll pull strings or do whatever I have to. Will you see Kelley again?" She looked at him. "When you do," he said, "will you tell him, from Pierce through me, to keep his back to the wall? --And watch the wall too." -126- Inside the cabin it was cold and black when they returned. "Why don't you just get out of it?" "Any suggestions as to how?" he murmured. She lit the lantern and turned the light low. She sat on the bed and unlaced her boots and took them off. Dying embers glowed like rubies from the fireplace. Michael crouched before it and placed turf on them. He stared into the first flames. "What are you thinking?" she asked as she knelt next to him and held her hands to the fire to warm them. "Oh . . . things to cross your fingers and smile a dream on.""I need some of those things too, tell me." He smiled at her and shook his head sadly. "Ah, Danny . . . ." He smoothed her hair and traced her lips with his fingers. "I don't dare. Some dreams are far too fragile for the tellin'," he said. "But we might watch the colors of the Twelve Pins at Clifden. Boat to the islands, to Inishbofin, Inishark--it's a small place, only one god there, --to Inishturk. Tramp Dun Aengus on Inishmore, and talk of Firbolgs. Anyplace you'd heard of, we'd go, and what I didn't know about it I'd make up." "I don't need a Jamie Pierce . . . creation." "What then, Danny Mahr?" he said softly. She didn't answer right away, but looked into the fire, and then at him. "Not to think about tomorrow." She touched his cheek. He pressed her hand against his lips. "To be warm with you," she said, and held his face and kissed him gently on the lips. He put his arms around her and pulled her close. "To smile with you," she whispered, and pressed against him. Her fingers grasped his hair. He covered her face with kisses. "You, Michael. You," she murmured. She ran her hands across his shoulders, down his back, felt his heartbeat against hers, held him to her. He embraced her gently, intensely. With caresses as light as whispers, he touched her -127- under the sweater, beyond the lace. Her tongue explored his lips and the sharp corner of the tooth and into his mouth and they breathed together, moved together. Without breaking their kiss, he lifted her and carried her to the bed. It was Tim's growling that woke him. He and Danielle were twined together in the old bed. The fireplace glowed dull red through black, and Tim was a shadow with bared teeth snarling at the door. "Danny," he whispered. "someone's out there. Get down! Keep your head down!" With a startled whimper she rolled off the mattress and hugged the floor next to the bed. Michael scooped up the pistol and flattened himself against the wall next to the door. The door burst open. A figure with a knit ski mask pulled over his head crashed in and sprayed the room with automatic rifle fire. Bullets shot through the blackness like comets and shattered the lantern, rang against the iron of the bedstead, thudded into the mattress. Bits of glass and paint and feathers and cotton stuffing caught light for a second as they showered over everything. Michael shot him in the head with the pistol. With a curse, a second figure, close behind the first, used his rifle like a stick and slammed it across Michael's chest then it careened against the side of his head. He was sliding down the wall at the edge of consciousness when he fired the pistol into the ski mask. He crossed and recrossed the border between pain and oblivion while Tim whined at his ear. Beyond that there was silence. "Danny?" Silence. "Danny!" He pushed up to his hands and knees and swayed there, hawked cords of blood from his nose and mouth, and spat on the floor. -128- "Danny." He crawled to the far side of the bed. She lay still. Her body looked pale, almost silver, in the moonlight admitted by the open door. A dark blotch seeped through her hair and down her cheek. Michael cradled her head against his chest. He sat on the floor with his back against the bed and held her tight, and rocked and cried and cursed and prayed and bargained and willed her not to leave him, not to die. It was a long time, it was almost grey out, before she sighed and stirred in his arms. He found the van the intruders came in, and piled them back in it. He drove miles away from the cabin,--he guessed twenty-five or so--and dumped the bodies in a ditch next to the road. He was back before dawn and he left the van, with the weapons in it, beyond the cluster of cottages. Doc Bowie answered the door in his pajamas and robe. He looked at the both of them and silently turned and led them to his office. "A quarter inch more, and you'd be dead," he said when he dressed her wound. He treated Michael without one word more, turned on his heel and left the room. They put some of Bruce's money on the desk and let themselves out the back door. The milk lorry passed as they caught up with John Kelley. Much ado getting the pipe relit. He squinted down the road. "You look like you tumbled through hell, Mi'chae'l, and took Danny with you." Cloud of blue smoke. "Keep it up and there will be nothing worth saying hello to." The waver in his voice was covered with a scowl. "Was anyone bothering you last night, John?" "No one I'd care to mention." "And you and Maggie are all right? You're sure?" "Sure I'm sure. Maggie's at Mass, then she'll make arrangements for Pierce at the church. We'll put him next to Daithi, they always get along well. And I was on my way to meet the milk lorry, which I've missed by now. I'll be down at McCarty's, Danny, to find your -129- fellow with the new hat about bringing Pierce home." He blew smoke. "Damn thing." "We're leaving now, tell Maggie good-bye for us." "Just as well she doesn't see the face you're wearin'. Either of you. A couple of them, including that Garg, were heard to be looking for you last night. I imagine he found you." "He did. Garg won't be bothering you about me anymore. Take Tim, he won't let any of them slip by." "Ah Mi'chae'l . . ." He shook his head. He raised his pipe in salute. "Come along, Tim." His shoulders sagged and his stride faltered as he walked down the road with the dog trotting next to him. Michael watched his father go. "He's right, you know," he said quietly. "Carson was right too." Then, "We'll get on with the matter at Finn's this morning, see if anyone shows up there at all, then you go south--Cork would be big enough, far enough away to wait for Carson and your papers. You've got to get away from here, away from Donegal, from me. I'll play this business through at Dublachadh tonight, then I'll meet you Monday, or . . . or later." She looked at him skeptically. "They won't leave you alone, not if you're with me. I can't lose you Danny. I can't take the chance of losing you. And they won't stop." ". . . 'Losing you'. . . Either way. That's no solution. There must be a way-- . . . There's nothing to say, is there, Michael." He shook his head. "Nothing," he said, and put the van into gear. -130- Finn's corners looked like it was under siege. A group of men, their shirts buttoned to the collars, their jackets matched to their trousers only in bagginess, their caps slung low over their foreheads, sat on the stone wall and smoked and watched the pub fifty yards away. No one entered or left the building. The Finn, with his apron around him, appeared to be holding court on the street. Michael and Danielle approached the gathering. "Waiting for the milk lorry?" she asked. "Too late," he replied. "Look at the two by the door." A small man with sharp features and dark hair slipped around the corner of the building. A tall Black lounged against the doorway. "Who are they?" "Not local lads, for sure." "What if it's not that Bushmaster? What if it's a trap? What if it's Bruce?" Michael kept his eyes on the building. "Danny, I made a deal last night," he said slowly. "I promised that if you lived, I'd get you away from here. Make sure you were safe, out of the whole damn country, if that 's what it takes. No matter what happens I'll keep that promise." "Who did you deal with this time, Michael?" He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders and smiled sheepishly at her. "Any god that would listen." They joined the group in the street. Michael lit a cigarette and watched the pub. The Finn pulled out his pocketwatch and glanced at it. "Thirty minutes more," he said. "And none too soon at that," one of them said. "A man could die out here." "New business hours?" Michael said. "You might say that, or say that greed got the better of the Finn's judgement." The man in the apron turned to Michael. "I've been tellin' him. It's economics, it is. The man offers to rent the place for two hours, and he gives me more money than I'd take in a week with these one-jar-a-morning-boys. And I'm supposed to turn it down I ask you?" "Don't be giving yourself a swelled head," -131- another said. "It was fear, not your financial acumen that landed us in the street. You would have agreed to rent it to him for five pence if that's what he offered you. No one's going to argue with that one, least of all you, Finn." "Who is he?" Danielle asked. They looked at her. There was a pause before one of them replied. "It's a Yank, and a big one at that." "Fat is he?" one of them said. "Not a bit of it. Has the shoulders of a bull, he does. Maybe he's one of their football players." "What would a football player be wantin' with your place, Finn?' "And how would I know? Why don't you go ask him, Pauli, since you're the smart one, knowing all the answers to everything." He turned to Michael. "They were waiting for me when I came to open up this morning. The three of them. The big one does all the talking. The other two just keep watching, it seems, the street, the hill, walking around the building. It's not that the Yank--the Black's a Yank too, by the walk of him--it's not that the Yank, the big one, was at all threatening, except for the size of him that is, but a sane man wouldn't argue with him just the same." The small man appeared around the other side of the building, glanced at the group in the road, and disappeared through the door. "Just the three of them? No one else showed up?" Michael asked. "Not a soul." He turned to the crowd around him. "Did they? They shook their heads in agreement. "And he doesn't say why he wants to borrow the place?" "I wasn't about to ask, I tell you, but he did say something about wanting to talk to someone in private." "Well, it's a funny time to throw a party for sure. How much longer Finn?" "Three minutes less than before, Pauli." Michael turned to Danielle, ground out his cigarette and spoke low. "I'll go in first. If it's who we think it is, I'll come back to the door. If not, if you don't see me again, then it -132- went down wrong. Get the hell out of here. There's nothing more you can do. Drive back to McCarty's. Get rid of the truck far away from the place and walk the rest of the way in. Then get Carson to escort you home--fast." He looked at her carefully. "Understand?" She nodded and gave him a weak smile. "You made a deal. Be careful." He kissed her. "Careful yourself." He smiled at her and kissed her again, slowly. "Say, you're not thinking of matching fists with him are you?" one of them asked. "Not if I can help it." "No one here would give you odds on it if you were." They watched in silence as he walked to the building. The Black in the doorway straightened and slid his hand in his jacket pocket. Michael raised his arms and laced his hands behind his head, and walked slowly to stand in front of him. The man frisked him and showed him inside and resumed his post at the door. The inside of the Finn's place was shadowy and mostly bar, a great mahogany slab running the length of the room, curling in to the bottle-lined wall at either end. The sun streamed in one window and laid a bright square, like a blanket of light, against the wood. The slight man lounged in that space of sunlight, cleaning his nails with a switchblade. He paused for a moment when Michael entered. A peculiar expression slid across his sharp features then was gone. He watched as Michael went behind the bar and pulled a glass of ale, walked to the open doorway again, then took a place at the end opposite from him. His eyes flickered to the third person in the room and to Michael, then back to his task with the blade. Michael stood against one end of the bar, the man in the sun at the other. Between them, with the great lengths of wood on either side of him, the third man hunched over it. His shoulders strained the rough grey wool of his jacket as he stared down before him. In the shadows he seemed as immovable and as massive as granite. He slowly raised his head and looked over at Michael. With a humorless smile, he shook his -133- head and lowered it again to stare at the empty bar in front of him. The small man darted glances between the two of them. No one said anything. Danielle entered, silhouetted in the doorway for a second until her eyes adjusted to the gloom. "Peter!" The big man whirled as she rushed to him, and enveloped her in his embrace. Michael started a surprised smile and raised his glass to his lips. Danielle was laughing and crying at the same time. She almost disappeared in the big man's hug. "Thank god, Danny," he rumbled into her hair. "They wouldn't tell me. They wouldn't let me talk with you. I thought you were dead." Michael's smile slid into shock. He lowered his glass and stared at the man's back. The voice rumbled around Danielle's, both voices were muffled in their embrace. The man in the sun watched Michael and met his glance. He touched his blade to the side of his forehead in a wary salute. Michael drained his glass. He went behind the bar and splashed it half full of whiskey and tossed it back and poured another. He considered it and muttered "I don't have time to get drunk," and poured it out and threw a crumpled bill next to the bottle. He leaned against the bar by his empty glass and heard the voice again and watched the big man and Danielle together. "Michael," she said, with her back to him, "You did it." She held her brother at arm's length and smiled up at him. "You said you'd find Peter, and you did. We don't need to wait for that Bushmaster after all. How did you know?" "Two or three birds with one stone," Michael mumbled in a voice he didn't recognize as his own. He gave a short ugly laugh-sob and tipped his empty glass to his lips. "Michael," she said, smiling up at Peter, "this is my brother Peter, Peter Mahr." Silence. She watched Peter's face as he looked over her head across at Michael. She whirled around -134- to look at Michael. Silence. "What's the matter?" she cried. "What's wrong?" The man in the sun was tense against the bar, his eyes flicking between Peter to Michael, the knife ready in his hand. "What's wrong?" she asked him. The Black stuck his head in the doorway. "The whole bunch of them coming this way," he said. Peter said, "Raleigh, you and Dom meet us around by the lake. Grab a couple of Harps for yourselves." He reached across the bar, slipped a bill under a glass and gripped bottles of Coke and beer between his fingers, and led the way through the back door. They sprawled on the leaf-littered bank of the lake. Peter addressed the water. "So. I found you," he said, and opened a Coke. "Danny," he said, "this is Dom," and he waved the Coke bottle toward the man with the knife, "and this is Raleigh," he said, and waved the bottle toward the tall Black. Michael stared at the water and beyond. Raleigh handed Bruce's pistol back to Danielle. "You'd better keep the safety on, if you're going to carry this around," he said. "Is it on now?" "Yeah, right here, that little lever." "For God's sake, Danny!" Michael said. "You've been carrying that thing around all this time with the safety off." "I didn't know about it, Michael." "You could have shot yourself. It could have gone off a dozen times, with all the running and--" "What are you doing with a gun?" Peter demanded. "It seemed like a good idea to take it, in case they followed us. If we didn't have it last night--" Peter lashed out at Michael. "What did you get her into, Kelley? Even you should have more sense--more decency than to involve her. You know it's a death warrant. She knows nothing of . . . " -135- "I didn't give the thing to her." Danielle said "What's the matter with you two? We've been looking for Peter for days, Michael. You'd think you'd be happy that we finally found him." Michael laughed and stared across the water. Peter looked at her and growled, "What the hell are you doing with him?" "Michael . . ." "I know the name," he rumbled, getting louder. "What the hell are you doing together?" "I was kidnapped and was being held at the estate where they held Michael. --What's the matter Peter?" "Nothing, go on." His face had gone white. "They had him in the stable and beat him to find out--" "He knows all that, Danny," Michael said. She looked from one man to the other. "--And we escaped," she said slowly. Peter said, "You've got more lives than a cat, Mike. I'm about to believe the legend myself. When I got the message to meet you at the Finn's, I figured someone was using the name. You could have knocked me over with a feather when you walked in." Danielle said "You got the message? Peter, are you the Bushmaster?" "I owe you for getting Danny free," he said to Michael. She turned to Raleigh. "Is he the Bushmaster?" Raleigh nodded and tipped a beer to his lips. "You have it backwards, Mahr," Michael said, "Danny got me out." "Creighton had her too?" "You didn't know that?" He swore. "I'll break him in two." He turned to Danielle. "You were at the estate? Right there the whole time?" He sounded dazed. She nodded. "Why do they call you the Bushmaster?" "I was a couple of hundred yards from you?" She turned to Raleigh. "Why--?" "It's the name of the automatic he favors," Raleigh said. "That, and it's the biggest -136- poisonous snake in South America. Some wag put it together when we were in Argentina, and it stuck." He shrugged. "Follows him around. Could be worse." "I was right there with you and didn't even know it?" Peter said. "What are you saying Peter? "Did you do that to Michael?" "We needed the information he had. It was business. I didn't like it. I didn't know he was a friend of yours." "Would it have made any difference if you knew?" Peter drank his Coke. "No," he said, "no difference at all, not if it was the only way to get you back." "You nearly killed him!" "Hey Danny," Dom said, "we didn't do all of it. He looked like that, almost, when we got there. We're more efficient than that." "Oh my god!" she said. "It was the only way they'd let you go." "It's barbaric! My own brother! I can't believe it. I can't believe you'd ever think of such a thing, much less--. How could you?" "It was the only way they'd let you go." "That puts the burden on me! I don't want to be responsible for it. I'd rather--" "The hell you would," Michael said. "Look, if they didn't nail Peter, they'd have found someone else. I'd have done the same thing in his place." "You are leaders! People listen to you! Why do you have to--" "You're an incurable idealist, Danny." "Michael, I've heard the men say you--" "Entertainment. You dream a man into a hero, and then you're outraged when he has clay on his feet and blood on his hands." "Then you don't hate him?' "Not much, I don't," he muttered. He peeled foil off the neck of his empty Harp bottle. "One thing, Mahr. Why didn't you figure your boss was holding Danny, since he had me there, and was forcing you to do the dirty work. He was with you in the cell; I heard him. Why didn't you take him apart right there and save us all a hell of a lot of trouble?" -137- "My boss?" "Creighton." "I don't have a boss, Kelley, certainly not Creighton. I told him what to do." "You set all that stable thing up?" Peter nodded. "All of it? The--techniques? The whole set up? The whole thing from the beginning?" "Yeah." He nodded again. "They had Danny. They would kill her if I didn't go along. They told me what they wanted, what they needed done, and I told them what they had to do to get it from you. After a while, someone--Creighton--called me and told me where to find you, that you were ready. He was just another lackey as far as I was concerned." "For a man I never met before, you know a hell of a lot about me. Knew exactly which buttons to push. . . . Everything. How?" "The legend, Mike. A friend of mine knew all the stories. We've all heard them. I just used them." "Pierce." Peter laughed. "Yeah, Jamie Pierce." "That traitor." "No, the opposite. He loves you Mike. Tried to do everything he could, and some things, a lot of things, he couldn't, to get you out of whatever hole you were being kept. He talked to the devil himself to spring you." "He worked for the CIA." "The hell he did. Like I told you, he talked to the devil himself to get you out. And he just talked a lot. Period. Everyone knew the romper room stuff they pulled with you. What people didn't know was how you could possibly have lived through it, or if you had. 'Resilience,' Creighton said. 'Hero, martyr, fool' was the Jamie Pierce phrase. He had all the good words. If Pierce found out I used that routine on you again, even if it was the only way to get what we needed, he'd have my head, no doubt about it." "You needn't be worrying about Pierce. The storyteller's dead. Someone killed him. --Or maybe you knew that." Peter's face hardened into a thoughtful mask. "No. I didn't know that. When?" -138- "Three weeks ago. When I got out." Peter drank his Coke. "Your plan was shit," Michael said. "It worked." "To what ends? You don't know the half of it. Your buddy Creighton had a little refinement on the RUC pattern." Michael stood up and threw his beer bottle in a long slow arc into the lake. "You've had a lot of practice doing that," Dom muttered. "You told him about the noise machine," Michael said. Peter nodded and stood to face him. Dom and Raleigh got warily to their feet. "Michael don't--" Danielle started. "Yeah, I told him," Peter replied. "It was part of the method." "Creighton didn't use a scream box. Oh, he liked your plan all right, but he used Danny's screams instead. He had a guy rape her in the next cell." Peter roared like a wounded lion and lunged at him. Raleigh and Dom sprung between them. Raleigh, eye to eye with Peter, struggled against him, forcing him back. Dom grappled with Michael. "What's the matter with you, man?" he panted. "Are you trying to get him to murder you?" Peter roared over Raleigh's shoulder, "You lie! I'll kill you, Kelley!" Raleigh drove him backward, separating them. Dom shoved Michael back. "You already have, Mahr. There's very little left," Michael muttered. Peter twisted away from Raleigh. He turned to Danielle. "It isn't true." She nodded. "Yes," she said, "it is." He turned away and walked down to the water's edge. He hunkered down on his heels, bowing his head on his folded arms. Danielle went over and knelt down next to him and began talking quietly to him. Michael pushed away from Dom and held up his left hand in a bandaged peace gesture before he collapsed on the bank again. Raleigh and Dom -139- settled down by him. The three watched Peter's broad back and listened to Danielle murmuring to him. Dom drank his beer and belched. "Warm beer is heresy." "The three of you always work together?" Michael asked, his eyes on Danielle. "Nope, not always. Been together a long time, though," Raleigh said. "It's worth a lot to have someone guarding your back, someone whose judgement and reflexes you can trust. Worth even being in a damn dreary country where the sun doesn't shine for days at a time," Dom added. "Why are you here then?" "Money." He belched. "And we owe him, life-debts, both of us owe him." "More than once," Raleigh said. "Life-debts you can't repay very often. He's strung out, not thinking real good. And he knows it, won't even touch a beer til this thing is over. A dead end job. No way they'll let him out of this one alive. His back is vulnerable. You lose perspective when the work gets personal. Judgement impaired. And he's handy in getting out of a hot spot, even when his head isn't screwed on real straight. We might need him ourselves, further on down the road. "Besides, he--all of us, know a lot about the Army and who's who in it. There was a question before, about our--uh, discretion. They're paranoid about it. We managed to convince them we didn't give a shit one way or the other, and they were satisfied. But with this going down--. They need him, but someone'll try to get rid of us all as soon as it's done. We cover each other." "He's not looking good right now--Worse than I've ever seen him. Look at him," Dom said. "Your latest damn near destroyed him." "Pity," Michael muttered. "It was Creighton all along? Looked like a fuckin' sissy to me. Too pretty." Dom's laugh, hardly louder than the click of his knife, sounded like the snarl of a cat. It was fifteen minutes before Peter and Danielle walked back to them. Danielle sat next to Michael with Peter next to her. They both -140- looked drained and exhausted. "You killed the guy who did it. --That Gregory," Peter said. Michael nodded. "Now what?" "I have only the one thing to ask you, Mahr, then . . . take Danny far away from here, keep her safe, keep her from getting killed in this mess." "--Away from you, Mike." Michael nodded. "--Away from me," he said softly."Michael. . . " Danny started. "No, he's right--." "Stop it Peter!" She challenged Michael with urgent whispers, her face nearly touching his. "Is it because I'm some kind of liability, Michael--like Bruce said? Is getting close to someone a responsibility you can't afford? Is--affection--only a chink in your armor that's to be taken advantage of? Something to guard against because it's something to be used by your enemy? A weakness? 'I can't afford it. You make me vulnerable. Good-bye, Danny.'?" "It's not like that, Danny--" "It is like that, Michael. It's what they held over Peter. Bruce used the word love. I was the only thing they could use to get control of Peter. To make him do what they wanted." He put his finger on her lips. "Since knowing you . . . I grew to thinking we would have a chance. That somehow, we could be together. Have a life, perhaps. That we . . . But that's not the real world, Danny. It's not to be. The prospects of a long and happy life here are pretty dim for either of us, especially if we're together. You are right, though. I can't accept responsibility for getting you killed. Go with Peter. It's the only way." "You just don't--" "Seems to me," Dom interrupted her to speak calmly to his knife blade, "that the guy's just trying to save your life, Danny. Bad things happen to people who get close to him--who love him." "Daithi," Peter said. "Pierce," Raleigh said. Danielle shook her head, unpersuaded. "What's your question, Mike?" Peter asked -141- wearily. "Whatever you have lined up for the Dublachadh meeting. Forget it. Don't do it. Undo it. Just get everyone out of here." Peter shook his head. "Can't do. Except the last, of course." "Why the hell not? Danny's here, she's with you. They don't have a hold on you anymore. It's my people up there tonight--my friends. You've worked with most of them. You've nothing against them. Why set them up?" "You set them up, Mike." He shook his head again. "We will take care of Creighton. The rest is done, nothing more to do about it. There's a plane waiting for us on the coast, all we have to do is get there. You got Danny back. She told me . . . . She wouldn't have lasted twenty minutes with that bunch after her, if you hadn't. . . . There's room for you. Come back with Danny, if she'll have you. Come with us." Michael laughed and passed his hand across his face. "Sure--'a man like me'--I could be giving MBA's lectures at Harvard in two weeks." "Michael that's not fair. Come back with me." He smiled at her. "It's something to dream on." "You're never going to leave it, are you?" He shook his head. "The men will be up there because of me. I wouldn't leave them." "Some of those men up there set you up, Michael." "And most of them didn't. I won't abandon them." "You'll be killed up there with them. "What good will that do anyone?" "It's not something that can be left, Danny." He smiled again at her, then looked at Peter. "Exactly what did you set up at Dublachadh?" "A little Libyan plastic and other things. Elegant stuff, but we're not about to tamper with it again." "In the chapel?" Peter nodded. "It'll go. Anyone there will go up with it." "I'm familiar with demolition devices, I -142- could . . ." "Yeah, Camp Friendship on the Black Sea is a long way from Petrol in a Guinness bottle. Forget it Mike. You're not killing yourself on my instructions." "Graven?" "If he's there, he'll die. Why would he be there? You didn't . . mention him." Danielle said, "A CIA man--Carson--who is looking for you, Peter--said Pierce convinced him that Michael was set up by Graven or someone in Graven's office. Maybe that was why Pierce was killed--to stop him from getting to you to warn you, or to Michael--among other things. Bruce had a government security clearance. Did he set Graven up?" Peter shrugged. "Graven's got ambitions. Maybe he really wants to orchestrate a peace in this country. Maybe he sees that even a near thing will give him enormous political clout and the public's support. Or maybe he sees that peace more easily without the leaders in the Army around to botch it up and complicate things. But he's ambitious, if he's anything at all. So Creighton grabs the opportunity and gives him a way to fulfill those ambitions." "Michael." "Yeah. Mike. The hero himself. And thank Pierce for that. He talked to everybody to get him out, tried to bargain with anyone, not to mention the stories. Now Mike's got a lot of altruistic motives--he's proven that. And he sure would like some kind of movement on all the stuff they keep harping on--what they say they're fighting for. But Mike's also got some powerful incentives to try and deal himself out of hell. Whatever he really thinks of the risks or chances of success of the whole maneuver, he'd rationalize it to breathe free air for a while. He's a wild card though. No one's really sure how much fiction and how much fact lies in the stories, so Creighton has to keep him under close watch--without him knowing it of course, or else he'd just disappear--have some kind of control ready to spring as soon as he sets the whole thing up--" "Us--You," Raleigh said. "Through me," Danielle said. -143- Peter nodded. "Yeah. Pierce and Kelley and Mahr. The fools. Creighton dangles the carrots, wields the stick. We show him the way, what to do, do the work. Then before he kills us, he lets us see what we've done--lets us hate ourselves, destroy ourselves, welcome fuckin' death as relief." He looked at Michael. "Right Mike?" Michael smiled bitterly at him. "Poor Pierce," he said. "The fools." "Did Bruce set Graven up to be assassinated? Would Graven set up his own assassination?" Danielle asked. "We were supposed to call in with our final arrangements to get you back," Raleigh said. "Graven, or whoever, would know what to avoid." "And he'd have a miraculous escape." Peter shrugged. "Or not," he said indifferently. "Either way--Graven dead or alive--the effect would be the same." "He'd be coronated a hero, the main lads would all be gone, and the country would still go up flames, and Creighton manipulated it," Michael said. "Yeah, you people do have a thing about revenge. And it will be your name and mine that will be tagged to the whole thing." "Have you called in?" Raleigh grinned at him. "We sort of did." Dom said, "We needed Danny, and we needed space to get away with her, so we just said the job was done, not exactly what it was. Complete information upon receipt of a live, happy Danny." "Get your lads out of there, Mike." "We tried to tell them, Peter. Michael warned them it was a trap, to stay away." "And--?" "To a man, they said they'd be there early, armed and with their edges sharpened, to help me out." He swore. Peter laughed. "Pierce did his job very well." Silence. After a while Dom looked slyly at Michael. "Going to do something heroic?" "You know as well as I do that the man who thinks himself a hero is a fool." -144- They nodded and smiled. "Is that another Jamie Pierce?" "No, that's a Michael Kelley." "This must have been one hell of a place," Dom muttered as they trudged again up the path, around the boulders, to the castle ruins. "You'd think they had something more than fuckin' rocks and rain to protect." Half of the walls and turrets of Dublachadh still loomed over the edge of the sea, the rest--great grey blocks of stone--had fallen on the cliff below, and into the crashing waves that relentlessly assaulted the place. The other face towered over the winding path that they climbed. Set against the western sun, the ruin's jagged silhouette cast a cold shadow over the boulder-strewn hill. "Anybody, even half asleep up there, could hold off an army--or a navy. No surprises. You chose well, Kelley." "It was the monks that did, some eight hundred years ago. You've seen that round tower, or the stump of it. Those scholars had such a good record of hurling rocks down on Vikings and rival monasteries that a local king took over their place." Peter said "It must have been built onto in the centuries since, because it sprawls all over the top of this hill." "When the kings ran out of luck, the ordinary people moved in and used the castle stones and the wall itself for their houses--it being easier to build three walls instead of four. Parts of buildings are everywhere, but there's always been an altar where the chapel is--even before the monks. It's one of those 'holy places' that each succeeding religion takes over and builds its brand of church on. The chapel's the most recent, and that's over three hundred years old. There is talk of a tunnel to the sea. Unlikely, since it's solid rock that hold the -145- place up." Raleigh joined them. "No one's been here since we left, Peter. None of the tell-tales we left around have been moved." "What I like is no surprises," Peter said. "It must be a mile from where we left the car, and there's no other way up. Tunnel to the sea or not, no one could get a boat or scuba through those rocks to find it." They passed through a ruined gate in the outermost wall and the hilltop and tower still lay four hundred yards above them. Cleared of all but a few enormous boulders and protected from the unceasing wind, the area was green with the shrubs and grass that grew among the blocks of stone. Small trees grew to wall height and then grew horizontally in deference to the wind. Michael stared at the chapel nestled amid the stunted trees. Peter watched him silently for a while. Then he said "Don't even think about it, Mike." They had carried lanterns and planks through the compound to a ruined house by the main tower at the top. The planks they set upon stone blocks for a table of sorts. Sea spray whistled over the walls above their heads, and clung to shrubs growing out of the rocks. "It's a relic, and there's no roof to it at all--a shame--, but the walls are high enough. They'll be so mad about the rest of it, they won't notice that it's not the Hilton boardroom." The four men each had a pair of night-sight goggles slung around his neck, an automatic rife, and a radio. Michael spoke into the radio. "Danny? Can you hear me? Are you settled in?" Her voice came back clearly. "Yes, to both questions. I can see the road a good way in either direction. I'm well hidden myself in a cluster of boulders down here, but it's not exactly cozy." She laughed and betrayed her nervousness. "Tell Peter that he should have provided heated socks with all the rest of this state-of-the-art equipment." "Fuckin' cold, all right," Dom muttered, "and it's going to get worse." He melted into the darkening shadows. Peter talked into his radio as he scanned -146- the hill. "Mike's early bird helpers could be appearing any time now. The minute you see anything at all on the road let us know. We're all tuned in to catch you. We're spread thin up here. We need you--counting on your pair of eyes. You'll be OK there. You're safer there than you would be wandering around the country with Creighton's cronies--or the police--looking for you. We'll leave as soon as this is over, Danny, but don't move out of your hidey-hole for anything. If someone is too close for you to risk whispering, just push that button along the side of the radio. One click for someone new and steady pressure for trouble down there. You're far enough away from the road and path that they won't hear you whisper. We can hear you fine. Don't worry about that, but we won't acknowledge. --If . . . Remember you have the keys to the car. And you know where the plane is. The pilot will be ready. At daybreak head for the coast, with or without us." He looked at the others moving through the ruin and among the boulders. "We're taking our positions now, we'll be moving about for our escort service. Stay low. Be careful. --Good luck." Raleigh's voice came over the radios. "Keep the safety on." "We'll waylay them just inside the wall here, out of sight from the path, and escort them up to the house," Michael said to Peter. Peter nodded. "Raleigh," he said into his radio, "after the first group, you chaperone them up at the house there." "Right." on the radio. "Your friends won't all arrive in one bunch, Mike. I hope the bunches don't get here too close together. They'll see what's happening, even in the dark." "The lads from Derry will probably be together. Mitch and Thom will each have a few with him. The Ulster group will stick together, paranoid and armed to the teeth. Watch our backs with that crew, I'll tell you. And Graven--" he shrugged, "alone? With help?" He shrugged again. "Not many, altogether though." "You'll have to watch your back with Garg too. I think Pierce was right about him too." -147- "Garg won't be making this meeting." "You mentioned him in the stable. He knew about it. He said he'd be here." "He won't be here, Mahr." "Hmm." Peter looked at him closely, then nodded. "No loss there." He said, "While this place is practically unassailable, we're inviting the other side in, not to mention the booby-trap I set myself. You might be able to hold off an army with a few men, but that won't do us much good with everyone on the inside. I'd just as soon we don't have too many guests. --Dicey." "Keeps it interesting." Danielle's whisper came over their radios. "A car is driving down the road. . . . It's pulling over now. Two men. Rifles. . . . Looking up at the castle. . . . Looking around. . . . Starting up the path." The two slipped through the gate, and pressed against the wall with their automatic rifles ready. Michael watched them. "Couldn't stay away, could you Thom?" he said from the shadows. Thom and his companion wheeled and swore with their rifles pointing at different shadows. "Mi'chae'l?" he said uncertainly. "It is." "We've come to give you a hand." "I can see that." "Well, where the divil are you?" "Close enough to see your fingers on the triggers. Put the guns down, lads." "Mi'chae'l! It's Thom Bolger you're talking to!" "Put the gun down Thom, and you too, Richie." "For the love of God, Mi'chae'l! It's Thom Bolger. Come out and talk to me like a man, not some damn ghost. We came to help you, for God's sake!' Peter's voice rumbled out of the darkness from another direction. "The man said, 'Put the guns down!'." They slowly lowered them to the ground, looking around. Michael stepped from the shadows. "Sorry Thom, Richie. I didn't want you -148- here. It's been set up as a trap, you see. I wanted you to stay away. Now you'll have to do it my way. It's for your own safety. You'll be carrying more than the rifles. Put the rest of it on the ground. My companion has a gun pointed at your backs." Thom shook his head and swore as they emptied their pockets and threw their pistols and knives on the grass. "If being inside has changed you so much, Mi'chae'l, it would have been better to have stayed dead, and never to have come back at all. You've just now broken my heart, you have, and made me a bitter man. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd say that to Mi'chae'l Kelley, but there it is." "Ah, Thom, don't be so quick to deny me. There's a meeting here, true enough, with all the lads, and it turns out Graven himself. The problem occurred when someone of us--found out--and put a bomb in that little stone chapel there, where you would all be sitting together. So we just moved the meeting up to the old house on the hill. That's the story of it, and trying to keep the lads away from the chapel. It's good that you are here first, you can explain to the rest of them up at the house." "Why sure we can! And take care of the traitorous bastard to boot." He reached for his rifle again. "Don't!" rumbled from the blackness. He stopped, half stooped over. "Mi'chae'l! You can't suspect me!" "It's not you I don't trust. But which of the others? I don't know--someone--in our group and on the other side too. We can't take the chance of this turning into a slaughter, no matter that the politician's talking's only that. Everyone will be disarmed." Danielle's voice came over the radio. "Go on up to the house, Thom," Michael said. Explain to the others when they get there. Calm them down." He stepped back into utter darkness again. "Sure I will," Thom grumbled and swore as he and Richie started the walk up, "sure I will, while I'm still boiling mad myself." He raised his voice again. "For sure you're the one buyin' the jar, Mi'chae'l Kelley!" -149- Punctuated with Danielle's voice over the radios, a lot of swearing and several scuffles, they shepherded men to the house. Peter's voice over the radio. "How's it going up there, Raleigh?" "Fuckin' cold and wet, that's how. They're not going to wait much longer. They aren't the sweetest-tempered crew to begin with, and they haven't gotten any better. Thom Bolger managed to calm them down when they got here, but the coffee's all gone now and they're at it again. Christ! They can't even agree with each other on anything. This place is like a hive of wet hornets--I don't see how Mike got them to even agree to come here--much less make any sort of policy concessions." "What's the main beef?" "Besides being cold and wet and having their toys taken away? Accusing each other of sabotage, funneling money wrong. Feeling that they were either set up by Mike or stood up by Graven, or suspicions that maybe Mike isn't the same man. Maybe not altogether sane, either, to think something like this had a chance. Some are saying that he'd have been better to have left his name untarnished rather than be coming back and muddying it like this." Thom Bolger's voice shouted over the background din. "Him muddying it?! It's these fuckin' idiots that are spreading rumors and lies! They're stirrin' themselves into a proper panic, they are!" A roar of protest in the background. Raleigh continued. "--That maybe he pulled a fast one because the Brits broke him when he was inside." Michael's voice. "I'm on my way up." Thom shouted "And it's about time, too!" Danielle's whisper. "A car pulled over down where the road curves around the hill to my left, but it's just sitting there with the lights off. No one got out. I think he must have turned the motor off because there's no exhaust, but no one's moving." Dom's voice. "I'm halfway there." Danielle, a minute later. "Another man's walking around the curve now, toward the car." She gasped. "It's Bruce Creighton." -150- Peter. "How close are you, Dom?' "Not close enough. What can you see, Danny?" Michael. "I'm up to the left in back of you Dom." Peter. "If he shoots Graven . . . Raleigh, can you handle the situation up there?" "They're fuckin' quiet now--trying to listen. Yeah, it's under control, but they won't be here a minute if I leave." "Stay with them." Danielle. "I can see both of you coming down the hill. Veer over to your right and you'll come out just above the car. The slope drops off there, right down to the road. Creighton is standing next to the car now. Now he's bending over and talking in the driver's window. The man is getting out of the car. Leaning against it. Shaking hands with Bruce. Both of them are looking up at the castle--Get Down!!! They'll see you!" Michael, whispering. "Is the driver Graven?" "Yes." "Creighton shook his hand?" "Yes. Don't move. They are still looking up at the castle, right above your heads, it looks like. Graven has his hand on Bruce's shoulder. They are laughing." "Tell us when to move, Danny." Michael's voice sounded flat, dead, over the radio. "Not yet. They're shaking hands again. Looks like they're saying 'Good-bye.' Bruce is walking away, back down the road. He must have a car around the curve where I can't see it. They've turned away now. You can move without being seen from the road if you keep down." Michael caught up to Dom and they crouched behind boulders above the car. "Cover me?" he said. Dom nodded and Michael switched off his radio and left him. Peter's voice. "Mike? Where are you? What the hell did he do that for?" Dom. "He's trying to get down by Graven without getting his head blown off. And they're listening up at the house." "Where's Creighton?" -151- Dom. "Round the bend. Radio silence til I break it." Graven stood by his car smoking a cigarette. He wore a grey suit, a white shirt and a tie, covered by a trenchcoat. He looked up at the looming walls of the ruined castle and seemed lost in thought. "The meeting's up at the castle, Graven, not on the road," Michael said from the shadows. Graven jumped and reached into his trenchcoat. "That idea will get you killed right away. Take the gun out and toss it on the ground." "Kelley?" He pulled the pistol from his coat with two fingers and gingerly set it on the ground as he tried to locate the source of Michael's voice. "Who else were you expecting" "Why, no one. Least of all you. --Where are you?" "As I said," Michael continued, "the lads have been waiting for you in the castle, and unless you're expecting something--someone else down here, we'd best be getting up there." "No, of course I'm not" he stuttered. "Yes, by all means." He nervously smoothed his lapels and glanced at the road. "You're sure it's safe?" Michael stepped out of the shadows and shrugged. "The lads? They're vocal but unarmed. Nervous?" "It's just that . . ." He looked up at the walls of Dublachadh. "Such a desolate place, isn't it?" "You wanted this meeting, Graven. Here it is, all set like a dinner party ready for the host. It won't keep forever. They've waited long enough as it is. Is there some reason you've changed your mind?" "Of course I haven't." He smoothed his lapels and glanced down the road again, and then stared at Michael. "Kelley?--" "You're stalling." "No! No, it's just--I didn't--I wasn't sure I recognized you. You look--different--" "Yeah. My hands aren't cuffed behind my back this time." -152- "No. You look--different--even accounting for the goggles. --Are you sure it's safe?" "I'm not, but you knew there would be risks when we set it up. --Unless now you have some new information that would make you hesitate to go through with it. Maybe you didn't think it would get this far, Graven." Graven pulled on the sleeves of his trenchcoat and looked around. "You did your job, Kelley. I'll see that you get your pardon." "Sure you will, and nomination for sainthood while you're at it," he said bitterly. "You're not going to bring any papers or a briefcase or anything up there with you?" He watched Graven fidget with his cuff links and shake his head. "Do you have any proposals, any plan at all what you'll say to them? . . . Do you have anything at all to say to them?" There was a moment of admission on Graven's face before the politician resumed control. "Of course I have!" he protested. Michael's harsh laugh sounded like a bark. "What was Bruce Creighton doing here?" "Oh, you've met him?" "I have." "Creighton's my senior advisor. My right hand man." "He is. And you expected him tonight?" "He isn't to be at the meeting, but there's nothing unusual in his seeing everything is going according to plan beforehand." "And if he knew the fuckin' plan, why was it necessary for him to get it from me?" "I beg your pardon?" "Creighton. You told him all about this meeting." "I did not. Not a word." "How did he know to be here?" Graven smiled a polite smile. "Bruce and I have an ongoing game, Kelley. Don't let your paranoia run away with you." "A game." Very flat. "Yes, we've been doing it for years. It's something on the order of that American Poster during World War Two: Loose Lips Sink Ships.--Something like that. Bruce has always contended -153- that our security measures are ineffective--in fact, something of a joke. We have to keep checking our systems of course. I frequently elect to keep, or to classify, some information secret even from him. Meetings, this sort of thing. The proportion of this data that he finds out about, even though it is classified and ostensibly not for his information, reveals the level of our security effectiveness. His meeting me here tonight was a dramatic way of telling me that, again, he was right. He found out about it despite security efforts. He won again. We had a good laugh about it even. The security in government is abysmal. But no, I wasn't the one who told him about the meeting. You said he got it from you. Evidently it was you." "Evidently. And he had nothing new of any merit to tell you, I suppose." "I don't like the tone of that! What do you mean?" "According to Creighton, is our confidential and secret meeting going according to your plan?" "You're implying a breach of faith on my part, aren't you? Bruce Creighton has been a trusted member of my office for many years, and is privy to the most sensitive and intimate details of its operation. And yes, it is . . . proceeding according to plan." "He didn't mention a sabotage attempt?" "No, he didn't. --Do you know of one?" "Nothing that Creighton doesn't know, didn't plan." "Are you suggesting that he'll try to disrupt--? Am I supposed to take the word of some--some fugitive--who's scrambling for his life against the word of a man I've worked with for almost seventeen years?" Michael stared at him. Finally he said, "Well then, it's your plan. It's your game. What are you nervous about? Let's be on with it. You can come right up and put the proposals you don't have on the table and negotiate them all night, and not be the loser, can't you. Let's be on with it. The path's over to the left." Graven hesitated. "Wait a minute. If there is a--" Michael looked at him steadily. "It's all -154- right, Graven," he said. "No. I--" Two vans swung around the bend and caught them in the beams of their headlights. "Down!" Michael pushed Graven to the ground and crouched next to him. He switched his radio on. "Danny?" Graven's eyes narrowed. "How many did you bring with you?" Danielle's voice on the radio. "It's the press. The station letters are on the sides of the vans. They're lugging lights and video cameras out." Peter. "We'll handle it. Dom?" "No problem." Peter. "Is anyone left in the vans? Are they all going up?" "No one's staying that I can see." "At your invitation, Graven?" Michael whispered. "Documentation of a miracle?" "At the very last minute, I assure you." "Well then, don't squat there hiding, invite them up." Into the radio he said, "Can you catch them before they get their cameras going? We don't want to be in it." "Gotcha," Dom said, and he and Peter appeared on the road behind the camera crew. "Let's go, Graven." "No. I--" Michael pulled him to his feet. "Smile. Cameras are rolling. You're the host of this goddamn game show. It's what you do best. Smile and lead them up to the castle." Peter and Dom were frisking the cameramen. "Security. You understand," they murmured. "You can start your cameras. Keep them on Mr. Graven please." Michael, Peter, and Dom faded into the shadows and boulders next to the path. The lights cast bizarre shadows and flattened the perspective, and made the ruins look like a movie set. Graven, with a last desperate look at Michael, advanced with his hand outstretched and a big smile on his face. Shaking hands and whispering welcomes to the camera, he led the group up the path, through the castle gates and hesitated. -155- "To your left and keep climbing. The ruined house with the lights shining through at the top. Keep away from the chapel," called Michael. Immediately the floodlights hit the chapel and lingered there. "Raleigh? You out of there?" on the radio. "Gone." The cameramen clustered at the door of the house while Graven stood in the silence by the make-shift table. Closed and distrustful faces stared at him from either side. He stood with his arms apart, fingertips just reaching the planked tabletop, and scowled back. One of the press gestured helplessly for some action.Just then, in back of the press, Thom Bolger grabbed Michael and gave him a huge bear hug. "What have I been tellin' them all along?" he said. "It's not over yet, Thom." The cameras swung around and zeroed in on Thom's grin. "But you're buying, Mi'chae'l, a pint for each and for all of us. It's like I was telling them, 'A better man than Mi'chae'l Kelley you'll never see'." "Mi'chae'l Kelley?" murmured from the press crowd. The lights and the cameras swung to point at him, to find that the back of his head and the back of his jacket were all that were visible from Thom's bear hug. They caught the back of his head again as hands reached across the table to shake his hand, to touch his sleeve. And above it all, Graven's scowl changed to a thoughtful frown. With a wide and brilliant smile, he cleared his throat and announced, "Gentlemen! I believe this meeting is about to begin." And the lights and cameras pointed at him. Michael ducked out of the house. Danielle's voice over the radio whispered "Somebody went through the castle gate! Michael?! Peter?! "Dom? Raleigh?" "They're not with us. Haven't seen Peter since we came through with the cameramen. We're just about blinded by those fuckin' lights. Can't see a damn thing." Raleigh said "Mike just slipped passed me. You're sure no one else is down there?" -156- "No, it's quiet. But Bruce--" "Yeah, well we'll take care of him, if Peter hasn't already done it. Be careful. Get the car and bring it to the bottom of the path. Stay in it with the motor running and wait for us." "Make sure you're not seen," Dom added. "And take the safety off," Raleigh said. As the radio whispered, Michael saw the movement by the gate. Brilliant light flooded from the house windows behind him and threw gaping shadows past the boulders in the keep. His own shadow was an elongated giant, grotesque and twisted as it fell across blocks of stone, over grasses and shrubs and down the slope. The light bounced off the mist blowing over the walls, so it seemed that the castle was wrapped under a pall of cloud. It gave a closeness to the space, distorted the perception of sounds, betrayed the senses of distance and depth and direction. There was a man standing by the gate. He entered the chapel. Michael ran, stumbling through shrubs and over stones, chasing his fading shadow down the slope into the chapel. "Carson!" he swore, and grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out with a dive-roll number, through the chapel door again, and knocked the pistol from his hand. "You!" Carson fumbled in the grass for the pistol and finally stood up. "What are you doing here?" Michael said. "Danielle said . . . I thought I could help prevent--" "It's taken care of. Get the hell out of here." "Is Mahr--?" "Get out of here, Carson." Dom and Raleigh appeared out of nowhere. Carson looked at the three of them. "Did Kelley show up?" They returned the look, expressionless. "Hate to say it, but you triggered the damn thing in there," Raleigh said to Michael. "Escort him to his car, wherever it is." Dom nodded. "We'll wait for you down on the road. Danny'll have the car there." "No listen--" Carson said. -157- "I'll make one last loop up here and join you," Michael said. "Bushmaster's somewhere," Raleigh muttered. "I'll bring him back." Michael watched the three of them trudge through the ruined gate. "Mahr?" he asked the radio. No answer. He walked the inside perimeter of Dublachadh's enclosure next to the wall, then walked outside along the wall until he came to the cliff edge. The wind whipped the sea spray around him. Looking up he saw the refracted glow of lights on cloud. He could hear the cadence of the politician's voice, but the politician's words--the meanings of those words--were lost in the basso profundo of the surf beneath him. Looking down he stared at the swells seething around black crags. Finally, with a sigh he reluctantly turned away from the cliff and walked back toward the path. He saw Peter enter the castle gate. Creighton, his blond head appearing over the boulders, followed Peter. He whispered into the radio as he ran. "Mahr! Creighton's behind you." The press lights went out. The keep was plunged in shadow, except for the lantern glow floating in the windows and dying in the dark. "Damn fool turned his radio off so he could sneak up on the guy who's following him," he muttered and ran crouched double, through the gate. For just a second he stopped, until a movement showed him Peter climbing toward the house. Creighton stood by the door of the chapel in a wide legged stance, both hands on the pistol, aiming at the back of Peter's head. Michael yelled "Mahr!" and threw himself at Creighton just as the pistol spat flame. The momentum of the impact carried them both into the chapel. Peter spun around and fell to the ground. Wrestling in the dark and the dirt, it wasn't an even fight. Michael heard the breath whistling in his throat mingle with Creighton's -158- grunts. It was just a back alley scrabble in the end. He wouldn't give Creighton room enough for a full technique, couldn't dare try to push off and get away, didn't have the strength to deliver a finishing blow, didn't know where the pistol was. It was just a matter of holding on, and of bracing for the other's close techniques, and trying to protect his ribs and hand and leg, and swallowing pain and delivering what might work with his knees and fist and head. And there was the goddamn plastic. It wasn't the way he would have chosen to do it. It wasn't the way he would have chosen to go. And then there was an explosion right next to his head, and tissue and blood and the rest of it spattering across his face. Danielle , Dom and Raleigh were standing by the car at the bottom of the path when Michael's warning to Peter came over the radios. The three of them, followed by Carson, ran back toward the castle. They just started on the path up when the gunshot echoed in the mist. Inside the walls, bright camera lights strobed the area, and figures stood silhouetted in the windows and doorway of the house and a second shot reverberated throughout the keep. Raleigh jerked his head to see the crooked little trees next to the chapel shudder. Almost lazily, a puff of smoke rose from the chapel to join the lighted cloud above the walls. Raleigh and Dom pushed Danielle to the ground and fell across her, covering her from the flying debris as the chapel exploded. As if in slow motion, its blocks of stone rose in unison before they burst apart in the eruption. A great gaping fissure appeared in the outer wall of Dublachadh nearest the chapel. Stones rocked loose from buildings and from the wall, and went rolling down the slope. The roar rumbled within the walls, muffled under the cloud. It seemed to hang in the mist, punctuated by the crashing and splitting of rocks. Dust settled back in the crater. When it was over, when it was quiet, Dom and Raleigh and Danielle cautiously stood up. An acrid smell of cordite and rock dust and something bitter in the air made them cough, made -159- their eyes tear. They slowly walked through the pile of stones that had been the chapel. Dom rolled away a block with his foot and picked up a twisted rifle and a flattened radio. He swore. Danielle looked at him, at the things in his hand and shook her head, afraid. "Mike's," he said. Danielle shook her head again. "No." She looked at Raleigh. "It's one of our's," he said. "And Peter carried the Bushmaster." She shook her head again -- quickly -- convulsively -- as if to erase his words. The crowd plunged noisily down the hill from the house, curiosity overcoming discretion, the course lit by the bright erratic lights of the cameramen. Carson, picking his way over the rubble of the chapel, bent over and held something up to the light. "Oh Christ!" he moaned and immediately dropped it and wiped his hands on his trenchcoat, and straightened his glasses. He hurried over to Dom. "Do you know what that was?" he demanded. Dom, holding the flattened radio and the rifle, looked at him dully. "Someone died in there!" Carson said, and wiped his hands on his coat again. Dom nodded. Raleigh crouched by the chapel remains and examined a dark blot in the grass there. He touched it, and smelled his fingertips, and followed the trail of splotches up through the grass. "Dom?" he said quietly when he picked up a blood covered radio on the slope. Danielle and Dom hurried over to him. He held out the fifth radio. "Trail goes into the chapel," he said. "Shit." Dom unleashed a stream of curses. Danielle shook her head frantically. "No!" They can't be!" she cried. "Not both of them!" She turned to run back to the chapel. Raleigh caught her. "Danny, don't-- No one could survive that. There's nothing left in there that you want to see." Carson looked at the radio and said "Is -160- that--?" "Yes!!" Dom screamed in his face, and spewed invective at him. The crowd, quiet now, and the lights gathered around them. Thom Bolger, red faced and panting, asked "Was there anyone in --?" Raleigh nodded his head. "Not--?" Dom turned away. Raleigh nodded again. Thom turned to Danielle. "Not--" She looked back at him in grief and anger. "Ah Mi'chae'l," he said softly. "You've really done it this time. There's no coming back from this one, lad." Graven and the crowd looked at the debacle in awe. None ventured too close. Raleigh whispered to Danielle, "Time for us to leave." She put her hand on his arm, and kept it there as if to steady herself. Then she turned to Graven. "Bruce Creighton was responsible for that bomb." "You have no proof of that," he said. "Bruce Creighton worked for your office," Carson said. "Records show that he was part of your staff for years." "Bruce Creighton was responsible for this, and he was part of your staff, Mr. Graven," Danielle said. The cameras and the lights focused on her and Graven. Thom frowned and looked to Raleigh for confirmation. Raleigh said "True." She turned to Thom. "Creighton set up Graven's assassination attempt. Whether it worked or not, you men would have been killed and blamed. And Michael-- When Michael found out about the bomb-- When he couldn't stop you from coming here--he had to make sure you were safe, and Graven was safe, even if it meant--" "But Kelley wouldn't go in there," Carson said. "He knew there was a bomb in there." "He fuckin' well went in to pull you out of there!" Dom hissed, and turned on his heel and walked back toward the chapel ruin. Carson's mouth dropped open. He wiped his -161- hands on his trenchcoat and stared at Dom's retreating back. Danielle said to Thom, "I wanted you to know--people should know." Thom and others in the group nodded. "Aye, we knew him." He hooked his thumbs in his belt and hitched his pants up under his belly and heaved a sigh. "It's just like the man. It's thanks to him that the gulls won't be pickin' bits and pieces of ourselves off these walls. We--the lads and I--we'll be back in the morning and move those stones back, Mi'chae'l, and raise a cairn for you over that very spot. Beannacht leat, old friend." he whispered. "I'm no Jamie Pierce," he said to Danielle, "but the people will know." He hitched his pants up again. "Now, you boyos are here at the invitation of Mr. Graven," he said to the cameramen, "and he's been in your spotlights this whole evening. It's time, in the interest of the public forum, to shine your cameras on a humbler man. I'm a lot less eloquent than your Mr. Graven. It won't take long." "Point the fuckin' cameras at Bolger," someone said. Raleigh edged Danielle out of the crowd. Thom looked right into the camera. "We lost a good man and a dear friend tonight at this meeting," he began. "I can't get over such treachery right in my own office," Graven said, and the cameras swung to him, then back to Thom. Thom eyed him speculatively. He continued. "We agreed to come here and listen to proposals for peace and civil legislation and amnesty. We agreed, because we had Mi'chae'l Kelley's word that it might be the real thing--that it might lead to the real thing. No deals. No promises. Just hope, just listen. Well, Mi'chae'l," he sighed and looked back at the camera, "We kept faith with you. We're here. We listened. And we're going home now. You're dead. They've played you for the fool, and all we've heard was a politician's stump speech. I just want the people to know . . . It was a long shot, and the price was high . . . but it would have been -162- grand, wouldn't it? I just want the people to know that it wasn't us who put the kibosh on it." There was a little quiet when he finished and turned away, then a murmuring in the crowd. "Are you running for something, Thom?" someone asked. "No! Wait!" Graven shouted and glanced at the cameras. "It wasn't supposed to go this way!" The men looked at him coolly. They started to drift away. He glanced at the cameras watching him, and then at Thom watching him, and fiddled with his cufflinks. "Mr. Bolger! We might have something to talk about." "We're chilled, Mr. Graven. We've been here a long time and we have to be back here in the morning to move those stones." "But the--" he gestured toward the presscorps. Thom smiled. "That's your problem. It's your media. You handle it. You invited them." Graven took a deep breath. "There are things we could talk about." "There are. We thought so." "We could . . . try." "We could." "--Hammer something out. Perhaps." "It's the talking that's the beginning." "Are you willing to really talk?" "Just talk, just listen, not to speeches though. That's why we're here, Mr. Graven." Danielle and Raleigh met Dom at the gate. "Let's get out of this cursed place," he said as they ran down the path. He opened the car door to toss the rifles in and burst into a volley of joyous swearing. Michael and Peter grinned at them from the back seat. They were both smeared and spattered with blood, and covered with rock dust. Peter' shirt was drenched in his blood. Michael, looking grey under the rock dust, was stuffing compresses against the wound in Peter's shoulder. "Let's go," they yelled. Dom slid in next to them. Danielle crawled -163- across the front seat and knelt on it, leaning over the back of it. Raleigh slid behind the wheel, started the car, and floored it. "Jesus. I'm a believer, Mike," he said. The car raced down the road while Dom packed gauze on Peter's wound and swore at him. "How?--" Dom was wrapping Peter's shoulder. "Are you hurt, Mike?" "I am," he said. "All over." He was leaning back against the seat with his eyes closed and his arms wrapped around his middle. "Where are you hit?" Michael laughed and shook his head. "Where'd all that come from?" pointing at his blood soaked clothes. "For once, most of it's not mine," Michael said. "You're out of it, Michael," Danielle laughed. She grabbed his head between her hands and kissed him. "Ah, Danny Mahr . . . Am I out of it? I must be dreaming." He smiled at her. "And you're an angel, Danny Mahr." Raleigh said, "I stop this car right here--plane or no plane--unless you two guys let us in on it. What happened? How--" Peter sighed and talked with his eyes closed. "Mike comes up just as Creighton is taking a bead on me and slams into him, and I catch one in the shoulder instead of having my head blown away. "Then Mike, who can't even take a deep breath without wincing, has the judgement to wrestle with him in the chapel, so I crawl in and put a bullet through Creighton's head." "Judgement! You nearly blew my head off." "Hell, Mike." He looked over at him. "Creighton was killing you anyway. And the plastic would go in a minute. You had nothing to lose. "He can hardly stand up, and I can hardly keep from falling down, but we drag each other out of there and collapse under those little trees. It's not even long enough to catch our breath when the ground begins to shake and the chapel goes. Thought those stones wouldn't ever quit falling. Then the wall opens up--never even -164- saw it go, it just sort of roars and disappears, like a door swung wide open or a theater curtain pulled back, and bingo, there's the outside. Anyhow--we're not asking questions, we just run for it--" "We crawled through it on our hands and knees, Mahr." "--dodging falling blocks. Couldn't see a damn thing for the dust, blood running down into our eyes, noise everywhere, but here we are." Peter leaned back and closed his eyes again. "Yeah Danny," he said with a smile, "He saves my life, and I keep him from killing himself. Yeah, I'm a believer, Mike. -- What do you do in real life?" -165-