Rain on the Dead

She returned with their drinks on a tray and served them, and Sara thanked her. There were three double miniatures on Dillon’s small tray, a glass, but no water. ‘That should make you happy,’ Sara said as she poured her tea. ‘It’s almost as if she knows you.’

Dillon had opened his first miniature as she spoke, poured it, and tossed it down. ‘Maybe she does,’ he said as he opened another.

‘I don’t understand you, Sean,’ Sara said. ‘You were fine earlier when you came to tell me you’d had a word with Roper and so on, but now you’re in another place.’ She drank some of her tea. ‘You seemed okay when you went off to have a walk on the beach, but since then, not even a smile. What’s wrong? Are you upset about something?’

‘You mean like shooting a guy three times in the head last night? Why should I let a little thing like that bother me? You, on the other hand, the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.’ He picked up the third miniature, started to open it, and slammed it down.

Sara reached over and put her hand on his. ‘What is it, love? This isn’t you. Just tell me. It’s what friends are for.’

‘Damn you, Sara, for being so bloody nice. I’m truly sorry, but let’s leave it. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the toilet.’

She sat there thinking about it, thoroughly worried, then he returned fifteen minutes later, a fresh face on him, hair combed. He smiled. ‘If I do that again, punch me in the mouth. I don’t usually stress up that easily, but I seem to have done so this trip.’

Not that she believed him, but she couldn’t take the matter any further when the young man appeared from the back room and told them that Cazalet wanted to see them.

It was comfortably furnished, some chairs clamped to the floor, a desk, a large television screen, a computer. Cazalet sat behind the desk, Ferguson to one side. Ferguson said, ‘We’ll be in New York pretty soon, so this is the last chance for the four of us to discuss what’s happening. Sit down.’

Which they did, and Cazalet said, ‘The President has decided to be guided by the CIA in this matter, and their advice is this. They agree that the attack was sponsored by Al Qaeda, but they want to keep it under wraps. They’ll immediately start investigating, but want to keep Al Qaeda off balance by not saying a word about it publicly. All they’ll know is that I’m obviously alive and walking around. Al Qaeda won’t know what to make of it, won’t know what did occur.’

‘Only that their two assassins have gone missing?’ Sara nodded. ‘That makes for an interesting situation.’

‘Well, they love their martyrs,’ Ferguson said. ‘We all know that, so handled this way, it denies AQ the oxygen of publicity.’

Cazalet said, ‘Maybe they’ll slip up, make a mistake, try to communicate with each other. That’s helped us before.’ Cazalet smiled grimly. ‘And we have a lot of drones.’

‘Which still requires us to know where the bastards are in the first place,’ Dillon said. ‘To be able to score.’

There was a slight pause. Sara glanced at Dillon, then said, ‘Thank you for being so clear, sir.’

‘Very weird.’ Dillon shook his head. ‘We were in New York at the UN to discuss the Husseini affair with the British ambassador, then got yanked out for an evening with you, and it was that which screwed up Al Qaeda’s plan. I’m surprised they didn’t get wind of our trip to Nantucket. The UN’s a sieve, all those countries crammed into that building on the East River. Don’t tell me Al Qaeda doesn’t have its fingers in that pie.’

‘That may be,’ Ferguson said. ‘The point is how we handle it now. I’ve had word from London. It seems the President has spoken to the Prime Minister, who has agreed to all this but with some reluctance. So that settles it. As far as the public is concerned, none of this ever happened.’

He turned to Dillon. ‘Have you anything to say? You usually do.’

‘About the dream I had last night? It’s fading rapidly.’

‘Go on, back to your seats. We need a last few words together, don’t we, sir?’ he said to Cazalet.

Dillon and Sara turned to go. He had his hand on the door handle when Cazalet called, ‘Just a moment, you two.’

They turned, and Sara said, ‘Yes, sir, was there something else?’

‘Yes.’ Cazalet was smiling. ‘Very private and between us. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the CIA. Thank God you were there last night. It’s people like you who guard the wall for all of us, and I, for one, am extremely grateful.’

There was a silent moment as his words sank in, and then Sara smiled and said, ‘It’s been a privilege to serve, Mr President,’ and she followed Dillon out.

Later that day, in the Gulfstream heading home, Ferguson stayed towards the front of the cabin video-conferencing while Flight Lieutenant Parry moved along from the cockpit, visited the kitchen area, and came out with coffee.

‘We’ve got some storms threatening in the mid-Atlantic, so make sure you belt up if you go to sleep. And’ – he looked a little uncomfortable – ‘could you advise Dillon to watch his drinking?’

He and Sara exchanged a look, then he moved back towards the cockpit. She reached up to a locker and found a couple of blankets, and Dillon, who’d been to the toilet, returned with a glass in one hand. She tossed one blanket to him and draped herself in the other.

‘I’d be careful with your booze intake, Sean,’ she advised. ‘Rough weather forecast.’

They sat with their backs against the rear bulkhead on either side of the aisle, and he touched her. ‘Just the one, and then I’ll probably have a sleep.’

‘So you’ve still got problems?’

‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about what Cazalet said about people like us guarding the wall.’

‘That was a fine thing for him to say, but then he’s a fine man.’

‘I agree, but it made me feel ashamed.’

She frowned. ‘But why should it do that?’

‘Oh, not living up to the image, in my case allowing a mental aberration to cloud my judgment, but I see sense now. I’ve been wrong, but at least when you see you have, you can put it right.’

‘Are you going to talk to Ferguson about it?’

‘Eventually, but I need to consult Roper first.’

Ferguson switched off the screen, turned, and called to them, ‘That’s it for me. I’m taking a pill. With any luck, I’ll sleep through to Farley Field,’ and he pulled out a blanket and settled down.

Sara lowered her voice. ‘Come on, Sean, what’s going on?’

‘Well – I believe I know the identity of two people involved in the Nantucket business.’

She was astonished. ‘But you haven’t said a word of this to anyone. Why not?’

‘There’s an Irish connection, a question of mistaken loyalty to family on my part. It has to do with the death of my father in Belfast in 1979, when he blundered into a firefight with British paratroopers and was killed. I can see now I was wrong. It will be put right, that’s all that counts. God knows what Ferguson will do, but I’ll take that as it comes.’

‘Sean, what are you talking about?’

‘Well, if you’ll shut up for a while, girl dear, I’ll tell you,’ Dillon said. ‘In my early years in Collyban, my father in London trying to make a place for us, I was raised by my uncle, Mickeen Oge Flynn. His son Tod and I were like brothers. We tackled the old upright in the front parlour together, learned to play passable barroom piano, accompanied by our friend, Tim Kelly, on clarinet. A boy with a real gift, believe me. Then I went to London and got involved with the theatre, as you know.’

‘Sean, what on earth has this to do with anything?’

‘It has to do with everything,’ Dillon said. ‘Be patient. What with the Troubles, we just kept in touch with the family by phone from London, and I knew that Tod and Tim Kelly had made something of their music, played in bars and clubs, and it was Uncle Mickeen who phoned me with the news of my father’s death. He said that nobody from Collyban would be going up to Belfast for the funeral, as it would be too dangerous.’

Sara said, ‘And I imagine he thought the same for you.’

‘I suppose so, but I told him I’d be there, and he said he ought to warn me that Tod and Kelly, who were going to take care of the funeral, were Provisional IRA and on the run as far as the army and police were concerned.’

Sara shook her head. ‘So, needless to say, you went?’

‘A rushed flight, Belfast greeted me with pouring rain. Taxis were available, though expensive. I was dropped at St Mary the Virgin Church in Samson Street near the docks. Three vans had men standing around them under umbrellas, watching. I hurried through a decaying graveyard and entered the church.’

‘And what did you find?’

‘It was like most of them, half dark, burning candles, an effigy of Mary and the Christ child by the door. I remember putting my fingers in the holy water – habit, I suppose. There was the aisle between the pews towards the altar, a closed coffin on trestles, an old priest in a cassock, no vestments. Tod stood there, obviously startled by the door opening, a Browning ready, and Tim Kelly was opposite, a clarinet in his hands.’

‘“God in heaven, you’ve come.” Tod stepped forward and gave me a hug.

‘“It’s where I should be,” I told him, “But there are vans outside, and we seem to be attracting attention.”

‘“UVF Protestant bastards,” Kelly told me. “They’d hang the lot of us if they could.”

‘“Never mind that now,” Tod said. “Father Murphy’s done with his prayers and will see to the burial with the sexton after we’ve gone. It only remains for Tim’s tribute.”’

‘Tribute?’ Sara said. ‘What was that?’

‘My father had a favourite old Irish folk song, “The Lark in the Clear Air”, and the sound of that clarinet played in the Gershwin style, soaring up to the roof, was the most poignant thing I’d ever heard, has remained with me forever. There were voices outside, but the music stilled them. There was a moment of silence as Kelly finished – then a brick came in through a window. Tod pulled a Smith & Wesson revolver out of his pocket and pushed it into my hand. I’d done a training course on the use of weapons on stage.’

‘Which was your only experience of handling a gun?’ Sara said.

‘Exactly. Father Murphy shouted, You know the way out, boys. Don’t worry about me. They wouldn’t dare to harm a priest. The church door swung open, men burst in, the first one already firing a pistol,’ Dillon continued. ‘He hit me in the left shoulder. I staggered back, firing blindly, and caught him in the throat. Tod shot the man behind them, driving the others back, then got an arm around me, hustled me into the vestry, Kelly following, down some steps to a cellar. There was a manhole in a corner, they opened it, and we scrambled into a sewage tunnel, big enough to walk along, all the way down to the docks.’

‘And obviously, you got away,’ Sara said.

‘That part of the city is an underground network of similar tunnels. I remember us surfacing in some sort of large garage full of trucks and vans, and then I blacked out, so I can only tell you what I was told later.’

‘And what was that?’

‘The Provos had the trick of using ambulances they’d got their hands on, manning them with their own people wearing hospital uniforms. Tod told me they had a real nurse pump me full of morphine, then he and Kelly scrambled in the back wearing hospital scrubs and we were away, sailing through every roadblock.’

‘To where?’ Sara asked.

‘Over the border into the Republic, to a charity hospital called St Mary’s Priory run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, a nursing order.’

‘Strictly speaking, that was illegal.’

‘Of course, but how far do you think they’d get putting nuns in court in Ireland? Tod and Kelly left me to it, then came back three weeks later when I was fit to leave.’

‘An amazing story, the whole business, changing your life like that. You were forced into killing that UVF man, I can see that, but why did you join the PIRA and set foot on such a course?’

‘It was nothing to do with the death of that UVF man, everything to do with what happened to Father Murphy. He and the sexton buried my father as he had promised. A week later, somebody ran him down one night, left him dead in the road.’

Sara was distressed. ‘It could have been an accident, Sean.’

‘You don’t believe that any more than I did at the time. But never mind. You’ve been so gripped by my story that you’ve lost sight of why I told it to you.’

‘What are you saying?’ she asked.

He showed her the photo on his phone. She examined it, frowning. ‘Who on earth are these two?’

‘Supposedly their names are Jackson and Hawkins, two Americans visiting Nantucket in a sport-fisherman out of Long Island. I got that photo of them from a nice kid named Henry working out of the harbourmaster’s office. Remember I went for a walk on the beach down to the harbour? I found Henry checking boats and showed him the Chechen photos. He recognized them as having had a row with Jackson and Hawkins the previous evening, told me he was surprised to find that they had already left in their boat, which was booked to stay until Friday.’

‘Are you trying to say you know these men?’

‘I certainly don’t recognize them, but beards and bushy hairdos are a very successful disguise, so I’ve always found. But some things can’t be disguised. What if I told you that Henry’s a jazz enthusiast and heard Hawkins, the one with the white hair, playing the finest clarinet he’d ever heard but didn’t recognize the music. When he asked what it was, Hawkins told him it was an old Irish folk song called “The Lark in the Clear Air”, which he’d played in the style of George Gershwin.’

Her eyes widened as she stared at him, stunned. ‘Oh, my God!’

‘Yes, my love, my cousin and Tim Kelly can disguise themselves as much as you like, but no one could disguise that music from me, wouldn’t you agree after hearing my story?’

‘But what would they be up to?’

‘Obviously I don’t know, but what I do is that they were both released from the Maze Prison during the peace process. I heard some talk of them being in the security business, so called. As we know, that could mean anything. It gave me the greatest shock of my life when Henry spoke to me. It was so strange, brought everything back. My first thought was that I’d have to turn them in. I couldn’t face that, but I’ve got my head round it now. I’ll have to tell the General and face the consequences.’

There was a stirring up in front of them and Ferguson looked around. ‘No need, Dillon, I heard the whole bloody saga – taped it, as a matter of fact. How lucky for me that my pill box was empty so I hadn’t been knocked out as I usually am on these flights.’

‘So it’s the Tower of London, next stop?’ Dillon said.

‘You certainly deserve it. You’ve given me all sorts of problems now. What do I do about the CIA, what will the Prime Minister have to say? I’m going to send it all on for Roper to digest. In the meantime, we have another four hours to Farley. May I suggest we dim the lights and try to get some sleep?’

At the Holland Park safe house, Roper, seated in his dressing gown in his wheelchair in the computer room, was ecstatic and laughing to himself as he reached the end of the recording. He reached for the Bushmills Irish whiskey bottle and poured a large one.

He tossed it back, broke into laughter, and said, ‘God bless you, Sean Dillon. When my day is dull, I can always rely on you to brighten it up.’

Tony Doyle, the military police sergeant on night duty, had just pushed in a trolley with bacon sandwiches and a tea urn, his bomb-devastated boss being unable to drink coffee any longer.

‘You’re a happy man, Major, what’s caused that? Have there been developments?’

He had been in the computer room the previous night with Roper when Ferguson had come on screen from Nantucket to mention the assassination attempt and Dillon and Sara’s part in it. The Holland Park safe house operated outside the normal security services such as MI5 and 6, who hated the fact that, thanks to Roper’s genius, a great deal that passed through his coded computers stayed private except to Ferguson and his people, all sworn to secrecy.

Roper said, ‘You’ve got to hear this, Tony, fresh from the Gulfstream. Pass me a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea. No pictures, just audio.’

When it was finished, Tony Doyle shook his head. ‘That was a bad thing some bastard did to Father Murphy.’

Roper, taking a more sober attitude now, agreed. ‘The Troubles were not only hell on earth, they were disgusting morally.’

‘Yes, but you only realized that by being there,’ Doyle said. ‘Take me. A Jamaican Cockney born and bred in London. I wanted to see the world, so I joined the British Army, and what did I get?’

‘Seven tours of duty in Northern Ireland.’ Roper took another sandwich. ‘And what did I get out of it? This wheelchair.’ He switched on multiple screens. ‘Let me see if there’s anything interesting I can find about the Flynn clan.’

Doyle said, ‘Yes, Major, you really are a casualty of war.’

‘So are you,’ Roper told him, not looking at him but scanning the screens. ‘And so were Dillon and Tod Flynn and Tim Kelly, who marched to the beat of the wrong drum. Hmm. Apparently, the only person in this affair who showed good sense was Tod’s elder brother by ten years, Peter. He avoided the Troubles by moving to the Republic to work for a distant relative on his horse farm and stud at a place called Drumgoole.’

‘A sensible option, I’d say.’

‘I’d agree, especially as seven years later, the relative died of a heart attack and left the farm to Peter and his wife, on the condition that they gave a home to his widowed sister, Margaret Flynn, known to the family as Aunt Meg.’

‘Some people have all the luck,’ Doyle said.

‘Especially when Tod and Kelly were released from the Maze and he was able to offer them a home.’

‘To work on the farm?’

‘Some of the time. It’s also the address of a security firm. Obviously, it didn’t take them long to get down to business.’

‘So you think Nantucket was part of their agenda?’

‘I don’t know.’ Roper was frowning, manipulating his control. ‘Not good,’ he said. ‘That was unfortunate. There’s a daughter, Hannah, who was eighteen in June. Four years ago, on a trip to Belfast, she lost her parents to a car bomb. She was badly injured and in hospital for months. Her father died intestate.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘No will. She inherited everything, but as she was only fourteen, the court appointed Tod and Aunt Meg as joint guardians.’

‘Well, as I wouldn’t trust that Provo bastard an inch, I’m happy the aunt’s around to keep an eye on him,’ Doyle said.

‘There’s some personal stuff here on her Facebook page,’ Roper said. ‘Good news. She must be a real hotshot on the piano. She’s just been accepted as a student at the Royal College of Music.’

‘Sounds like you’re taking a personal interest.’

Roper switched off most of the screens, leaving only one, the emergency cover. ‘Enough already. I could do with a steam, shower and shave and fresh clothes, then I’ll doze until our lord and master appears.’ He was very cheerful. ‘Can you assist me, Sergeant?’

‘That’s what I’m here for, Major,’ Doyle told him, and followed as Roper switched on his wheelchair and led the way out.

And in Ireland, high on a hill that loomed above Drumgoole Place, Hannah Flynn reined in a mare named Fancy as she saw the Land Rover approaching the house in the far distance. It was raining lightly, evening drawing in, and she wore an Australian drover’s coat, a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over auburn hair that framed a calm and serious face. She spoke into a cell phone.

‘They’re here, Aunt Meg.’

Margaret Flynn took the call in the kitchen. At seventy-six, she was a handsome woman still, in jerkin and riding breeches, hair white, face tanned. There was still a hint of the actress she had been in her youth.

‘Wonderful, but when your uncle Tod called from Dublin Airport, he said they wanted to change as soon as possible.’

‘More cloak and dagger again,’ Hannah said. ‘When are they going to learn that the IRA is past its prime and nobody wants to know any more?’

‘Of course, love, Tod and Kelly know that. It’s just security work they do these days. Anyway, I’ve given the stable hands the night off, so you get here when you can. We’ll have dinner a little later.’

There had long been a dark suspicion that the car bomb which had killed Hannah’s parents and injured her so badly had been meant for Tod. Perhaps someone was settling an old score? Hannah frequently remembered that possibility with some bitterness.

She sat there for a moment longer, stroking and patting the mare. ‘That’s men for you, Fancy, still playing games in the schoolyard and then never seeming to learn that sometimes people get hurt.’ She shook her head. ‘Security, my arse,’ and she rode away.

Tod and Kelly showered in the wet room on the ground floor of Drumgoole Place, then set about shaving their beards, which took quite some time. After that, they sat side by side and Meg cut their hair in turn.

‘Will ye watch what you’re doing, woman?’ Tod said.

She cuffed him. ‘You’re in good hands. I learned everything there is to know about hairdressing in my theatre days. I’ll see to the cuts first, then use the right solvents to treat the colour.’

Hannah moved in from the corridor, limping, a walking stick in her right hand. ‘What a couple of beauties.’

‘You show some respect, girl,’ Tod told her. ‘We’ve been away earning a crust. Takes money to run this place.’

‘Where to this time?’

Kelly looked hunted, but Tod said, ‘Nothing much, just inspecting the security system for the company that runs the ferries from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. No big deal.’

‘A pity.’ She tossed some matches into Tod’s lap. ‘I found those in the kitchen. They advertise a café in Nantucket. That would have been much more exciting.’

She went out, and Meg picked up the matches.

‘I wonder where these came from?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ Tod said. ‘I don’t know.’

She said, ‘You told me you were dressing up to put one over on a rival firm for someone you were working for?’

‘So we were,’ he said. ‘Just business, Meg. Is she pleased about the Royal College of Music?’

‘I’m not really sure. It’s not residential, so accommodation is going to be a problem with it being London.’

‘Don’t worry, these days we’ve got plenty of money. Just keep on cutting and bring back my auburn hair.’

Which she did, cut Kelly’s very short and darkened the white to grey.

‘Marvellous,’ Tod said. ‘I feel human again. Let’s have dinner.’

Ferguson’s Daimler and driver were waiting when the Gulfstream landed at Farley. Dillon had left his Mini Cooper there, but Sara had nothing.

‘I’ve decided not to go home tonight,’ Ferguson said. ‘I’d like to have words with Roper sooner rather than later, so I’ll stay in the guest wing at Holland Park.’

Dillon often did the same, and said, ‘I’d like to join you.’

‘That’s fine by me, but I expect you’ll be wanting a lift to Highfield Court to see your grandfather?’ he said to Sara.

‘He won’t be there, he’s touring the lecture circuit. “God and the Mind of Man,” his favourite topic. Everyone wants Rabbi Nathan Gideon these days.’

‘And so they should,’ Dillon told her. ‘He’s a great man.’

‘Actually, I’d welcome your input, Captain,’ Ferguson said, ‘So jump in and we’ll be on our way. We’ll see you there, Dillon.’

When Roper returned from the shower, it was to find that Ferguson and the others had arrived and had gone upstairs to unpack, but he had another visitor waiting.

Dr Ali Saif was an Egyptian with an English grandmother who’d not only sent him to Eton but supplied him with a UK passport under filial law. A brilliant scholar, a senior lecturer in archaeology at London University, he had initially found Osama’s message attractive enough for him to offer his services to the Army of God charity. As with others, one could be drawn into the activities of Al Qaeda without realizing it, especially with the hypnotic tones of the Master on the telephone to guide you.