Slough started to shed his clothes and said, “Begin.”
Jeffries sat down at a table in the room and began to read the messages. Dictating his responses, Slough stepped, naked, into the shower. Jeffries rose, went to the bathroom door, and continued to read and take notes while Lord Slough soaped himself behind the shower door and dictated. The scene was ludicrous. But the ways of a man with a thousand enterprises demanding a thousand personal touches were suited to himself and not to common behavior. If there was to be time for himself ever, it had to be snatched away from other things.
And there would be time for Deirdre this evening, he had decided.
Belfast had been a lovely city, Devereaux recalled, trying to superimpose the image from years ago on the patched and broken hulk he now saw. Tough and charming, cold and open; a small town as all Irish cities were but with the steely edge of the English and Scots about her, too. Something important always seemed about to happen there. And it had, finally.
The driver pulled up at the Belfast Continental, a grandly named gleaming tower of anonymous rooms and an air of sadness. The hotel was in a bad way, they had apologized at the London booking office, but it was the best in Belfast. They had looked curiously at him. American to Belfast. Then they saw his press credentials. Just another reporter, dragging up the horror of Northern Ireland for readers apparently never sated by the spectacle of bloody fratricide.
He checked in. The immense lobby was nearly empty. An aging bellboy with a bulbous nose and an air of artificial gaiety led him to his room on an upper floor. The room was standard American motel, down to the mass-produced modern painting on the wall above the television set.
Devereaux, who hated puzzles because they were so rarely solved satisfactorily, was in the midst of one. Hanley had ordered him to Belfast to find out what the Boys intended. Information was never that easy to obtain; it was always incomplete — half the truth and half a lie and never satisfying. Jobs like this one gnawed at him, put him on edge.
He sat down in a chair and looked out the window at the brave steeples of the city; beyond lay the wide harbor where once great warships were launched.
Early evening crept across the city below.
He sighed and stood up and reached for a clean shirt.
It was time to find O’Neill.
There was no telephone.
The cab deposited Devereaux down the road — as he had ordered — from the depressing block of council houses. The houses made of red brick and attached to each other by common walls, shared the same architecture; the same stoop fronts; the same flat doors; the same sad, narrow windows. Devereaux walked along the sidewalk, skirting the rubble on the edge of the pavement.
Number 19.
He knocked at the door. After a moment, it opened. A woman peered out into the darkness. A child clung to her skirt, another was held loosely in one arm.
There were sounds from within, more children talking above the noise of a television set. The block was full of such noises; it was dark beyond the little squares of light from the windows; the street lamps appeared broken.
“Mr. O’Neill,” he said. “I’m Doherty. From the firm.”
“Mr. O’Neill,” she repeated stupidly, as though he were a stranger instead of her husband.
Devereaux waited.
“He’s not in,” she said.
“It’s very important—”
“He wasn’t to be at the job, was it?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.
“Oh, no, ma’am. This is special. I’m with the American branch, Mr. O’Neill is—”
“Because if he was to be at the job. Mother of Mercy, he’s not here,” she said. She appeared confused.
“Where is he?”
“Down t’ Flanagan’s,” she said.
“Flanagan’s?”
“A public house. ’Tis his dart evening. He’s with the local’s team, y’know.”
“It’s very important. Where is Flanagan’s?”
“Ah, he’s tole me not to be botherin’ him on his dart night.”
“Very important,” Devereaux mumbled.
“Ach, sure, but it won’t be you he’ll go after,” she said.
“It concerns money. Owed him.”
Money. She pushed away the child at her skirt, sending the dirty-faced urchin reeling against the wall of the hallway that led into the squalor beyond.
“I can take the money—” she said.
“I have to see—”
“It’s me money,” she said. “I’m t’take it, he said.”
“I can’t do that, Mrs. O’Neill,” Devereaux said.
She stared at him and then shrugged. The child she held laughed. “Down the end of this road and then right. Y’ll see it.” She had nothing more to say. She slammed the door on him.
Devereaux turned and started down the dark road. I should write a recruiting brochure on the glamor of espionage, he thought.
Flanagan’s was in an old stone-front building. The smell of stale beer and stale cigarettes coming from the pub lingered in the street outside. The night was surprisingly gentle. There was no wind and only a light, misting rain, like summer.
On the sidewalk, two men in cloth caps and dark old suit jackets stood drunkenly against a fence. The fence enclosed a vacant lot. As Devereaux passed them, he heard the sound of urination; they were pissing into the lot.
When Devereaux entered the public house, everyone turned to look at him. He saw O’Neill at the dartboard; saw O’Neill grow pale.
Going to the bar, he ordered a pint of Smithwick’s Ale. He sipped at the bitter amber when it came.
And waited for O’Neill.
O’Neill approached him, saying, “So it’s you, is it? I thought they’d be after sendin’ someone else.”
“We both did.”
“Well, sir, I’m just back is the short of it. I’ve nothing to tell you—”
“Still have those torn bills?”
“Oh, aye.”
“When will y—”
“Sur, I’d rather y’not come to me local. Let me talk with you some other—”
“I told your wife I was with your company. That I had money for you—”
“Ah, yer daft,” O’Neill said. “That bitch’ll be after me now for it—”
“Y’didn’t tell her about the thousand—”
“Ah, God of Heaven, shut yer gob, man, y’ll be tellin’ half of Belfast—” O’Neill rolled his eyes in exasperation. Ever the clown.
“All right,” said Devereaux.
“After it closes t’night. At yer hotel.”
“All right.”
“In the bar there. I could do with a drink.” In fact, O’Neill appeared a little drunk already.
“Belfast Continental.”
“Ah. Grand. Grand. I’ll be there.”
“Don’t fail,” said Devereaux.
“I won’t. Y’people are at me night and day. I tole the one this mornin’ that came t’the house—”
“Who?”
“The other American was after comin’ to me house.”
“Who was he?”
“Me very words. I says, ‘Who the bloody hell are ya?’ He’s with R Section, he says, whatever the hell that is—”
O’Neill only knew Hastings had been with something called the Section.
“Who was he?”
“How the bloody hell do I know? Me darts. I gotta go to me game.”
Devereaux held his arm.
“Who was he?”
“Ah, wait on it. I’ll tell ya. He tole me his name—”
“What was it?”
“Irish name.”
“What?”
“I fergit now. I tole him I didn’t bloody know what he was talkin’ about—”
“What was his name?”
“C’mon, yer up,” yelled one of the dart players, glaring at Devereaux.
“I’ll be comin’, in a moment. I have to deal with this here gentleman—”