The argument had raged in the council itself at that and subsequent meetings. But finally, they decided that Faolin’s plan was the bold move they needed; with the money, they could carry on the war indefinitely; with the hostages, they could redirect their energies against the men of wealth and power and win again the sympathies of the ordinary Irish worker, who was among the poorest-paid in Western Europe. Faolin was right, they agreed at last.
Only the money seemed to stagger the council — one hundred million pounds. Who would pay such a sum?
“That’s not our concern, is it?” asked Faolin then. “D’ya not think that Lord Slough himself — the great provider of Irish jobs — would not think his royal personage worth one hundred million?” And they had agreed.
From that first meeting in August, Faolin had gone forward, carefully constructing his net to catch Lord Slough and the rulers of Britain and Ireland. Two men had been criticaclass="underline" Donovan, who worked for Slough’s Anglo-Irish Lines as an engineer and was being trained to tend the machinery on the new superhovercraft; and Tatty, the quiet leader of the potent IRA operation in Liverpool. Liverpool — where the kidnapping would be effected — was a great seafaring city on the English west coast that contained so many Irish that it was often called “the largest city in Ireland.”
Donovan had not impressed Faolin; he was a slow but loyal man. Tatty, however, had become something of a confidant to a man who had rejected confidants all his life. Tatty and Faolin pieced together the details of the operation. It was not terribly complex:
The Brianna would carry a full cargo on her first journey. In that cargo would be five hundred pounds of gelignite, which could be set off by radio transmitter.
Faolin would carry the transmitter aboard the Brianna. Once out into the Irish Sea, the craft would be hijacked. The demand would be made and the threat that the boat would be destroyed — along with all the important people aboard her — unless the demand was met. The money would be paid the IRA in Northern Ireland and the men of Portlaoish would be freed.
The Brianna would be taken then to Dublin. This was the best part of all. The Irish government would provide an airplane for the hijackers, to take them to Libya — Faolin said he had arranged that already — and they would keep their hostages aboard the Brianna until the plane took off. The transmitter which could set the gelignite off was good to a range of fifty miles.
“Libya,” said Tatty. “Why there?”
“Because they’ll have us,” said Faolin.
“Ah, it’s a far place. I believe we sailed there once, many years ago—”
“Far enough,” said Faolin.
“Oh, aye,” said Tatty. “But it’ll be hard to leave—”
“Only for a time, Tatty,” said Faolin. “We could go back—”
“No, there’s no returning,” said Tatty. “You’ll fool yerself if you think that, lad. You’ll be an exile then fer yer life.”
Faolin had been silent then. In only one respect had he been less than candid with Tatty.
On the getaway.
There would be no plane. There would be no Libya. There would be no exile. These hardened terrorists — even Tatty — were like children when it came to facing what Faolin saw as the unmistakable reality of the moment and the times. Did the IRA think the Irish would just go on to war with the English as before? They would never win — unless the English, in monumental rage at a heinous, irrational act — went berserk. Then Ireland would rally to itself and throw them finally from their shores.
You always had to give children hope, though, to tell them that morning would always follow night, that death was sleep.
Faolin was not a child.
He realized that the money was not enough; that the release of the prisoners was not enough. What was needed was a final, severing act of war from which the IRA could not retreat and which would turn the Irish from children into men.
Faolin would depress the button on his transmitter at the final moment.
And Lord Slough and the Prime Ministers and the entourage from the royal family — all of them, including Faolin and Tatty and Donovan — would be blown to kingdom come.
Elizabeth was in the shower when Devereaux awoke, and he lay in bed, waiting for her. She came out still naked, her head wrapped in one of the white towels that luxury hotels oversupply to mitigate the loneliness of the rooms. She looked at him and shared the smile of the morning after love.
Devereaux forgot to smile in return until hers began to fade.
“Is something wrong?” Elizabeth asked as she went to the edge of the bed. She stood and looked down at him. He looked up at her, up at the gently swelling breasts, at the curls of brownish hair between her legs. He touched her. She did not move. He explored.
“Elizabeth,” he said.
She stood and let him touch her.
“I wonder if it will be another fifteen years,” she said at last.
“No. Not that long again.” He wondered if he meant it. She closed her eyes. He felt her moistness. He pulled her down gently on the bed, next to him. He kissed her on the neck, slowly.
“Where do you live? I want to see you,” Elizabeth said as though there was hunger.
Devereaux smelled her hair, damp and like flowers. “Fifty miles west of the District of Columbia,” he began. “You come to Front Royal. It’s just a town, nothing special, except for the mountains. It’s at the start of Skyline Drive along the Blue Ridge Mountains. Have you ever been in Virginia?”
“Not beyond the suburbs,” she said. “You live there?”
Devereaux kissed her insistently. “On a mountain top. The complete hermit.”
“Can I come to your mountain?” she asked lightly, kissing him in return.
He took her then. Like a cold man reaching for the flame.
First they exchanged the code words and then the identification numbers of the telephone and then Hanley spoke:
“This is a delicate matter, Devereaux. I don’t have to tell you that.” But he did. “We have decided to play a lone hand at the moment.”
Devereaux waited. He did not feel as he had felt twelve hours before. He had been warmed.
“As we told you—” Why the pompous tone? Was the Chief in the same room with Hanley? “We have never established a dialogue with British Intelligence on the same footing as the Langley firm. This is a chance for us to do that and to give the Brits information they could not get from CIA.”
“Could not?”
There was a pause. What was Hanley saying?
“We want you to proceed to Belfast immediately and determine the details of the IRA plan. Get on this man O’Neill and his friends. If we are to make a present of our information to Brit Intell, it must be worth enough to convince them they can cooperate with us fully in other spheres. As you have said, we are not interested in the internal problems of Britain at the moment and we are most certainly not interested in the Irish Republican Army. But this is a chance to help Brit Intell and squeeze in line next to Langley at the English trough.”
Elegantly put, thought Devereaux.
“I raise the same objection I did yesterday,” said Devereaux. For the record. “We don’t know when the IRA plans to assassinate Lord Slough — in fact, we are not totally convinced that they will — and every minute we delay in this matter, it hangs heavier that the assassination will come off—”