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'Later, mate, later.'

We passed Flower Street. It was packed.

We drove through the embassy area and past the compound protected by the sangar. I was tempted to stop and ask the big lads hitting the weights inside if they cared to come and ride shotgun.

A couple of Toyota flatbeds screamed past, with four or five police on the back of each, weapons pointing out. None of them gave a fuck about a battered red estate.

We passed the high walls and razor wire that surrounded the British embassy. The barrels of SA80s paraded back and forth behind the sandbags. Nine times out of ten this would have been a safe haven. We could have driven to the barrier, declared ourselves, and the ordeal would have been over. But right now some of the grey men behind those HESCOs wanted us dead. How many? I wondered. How far and how deep had this thing spread?

The estate lurched across a pothole and we bounced in our seats. We came to the main. I turned left, heading north.

Dom tapped the map. 'This parallels the airport road for a while, then veers north-east, then east.'

'About a hundred and sixty K max, right? You might as well get your head down, mate. Fuck knows, those scabs of yours could do with some beauty sleep. But a few things first. Assuming we get over the border, Islamabad's about the same distance the other side. We'll get flights from there. We'll go separately. You take British Airways, I'll take any other carrier I can. It'll make it harder for the Yes Man to lift us both. He has to do that to control the film, and it'll be easier and cleaner for him if he can do it this side of civilization.'

Dom started to settle. 'The Yes Man? The guy talking to me in the cell or the one with Finbar?'

'Both, mate. They're the same man. Listen, I know him. I knew the two Irish guys too. I don't know his name, never have, but I know he's dangerous, smart and doesn't give a shit about anyone.'

He sat up, ready to question me to death.

'Not now, mate. We've got too much real shit to deal with. Now…' I paused as he settled down again. 'Once in Dublin, we'll aim to be at Bertie's Pole at nine a.m. every day for three days. If neither of us turns up in that time, we have to assume the other's been lifted or something's gone wrong. You got that? I'm saying it now in case there's a roadblock round the next corner and we get separated. If we do, then, yeah, it was nice knowing you, too. Who shall I send my invoice to? You or Moira?'

He grinned. 'Moira, definitely. Then me, once she's rejected it.' His grin faded as a new thought came into his mind. 'Nick, there's a real complication to all this. The Yes Man and his team didn't ship their heroin into virgin territory. There's a turf war going on in Dublin, and it's him who sparked it.'

'PIRA won't be liking that one little bit.'

'Haven't you heard, Nick?' He raised an eyebrow. 'PIRA have been disbanded! They've handed in every single weapon they ever had and taken up landscape gardening…'

If his aching jaw had let him, he'd have laughed as hard as I did.

'A turf war is the best news I've had all week. It's going to help us get Finbar back. Now grab some kip. I'll wake you when we get to the border and I need your wallet. It's the most corrupt spot on earth. Last time I crossed here it cost a hundred bucks.'

I wasn't sure he'd heard the last bit. His shemag-draped head was banging against the window and he was snoring like a chain gun.

I checked the dash. The clock said it was midday. We had a full tank, and that was plenty for the distance we had to cover. We'd be going at a fuel-efficient pace anyway because I didn't want to be conspicuous or get involved in even the slightest accident.

There was nothing much else I could do now but resist the temptation to search for Predator-shaped specks on the horizon.

PART FOUR

97

Herbert Park, Dublin
Tuesday, 13 March
1017 hrs

Dom was standing at the kitchen island. He was on his fourth call and his third coffee since we'd arrived at the house an hour ago.

We'd met up that morning at Bertie's Pole, as arranged, then jumped into a cab and headed straight here to flush out the Yes Man.

We still had our coats on. We weren't staying long. I had a fake leather three-quarter-length number I'd bought in Islamabad, a really good pair of rip-off Levi's and a shirt. The whole lot had come to all of about twenty dollars.

'That's no excuse, David.' Dom was in short, sharp, aggressive, don't-bullshit-me-I'm-the- Polish-Jeremy-Paxman mode. He wanted results. 'He's still missing. You said you'd move heaven and earth. I've been a good friend to you and the police in the past, given you good coverage. Now you've got to start helping me.' He slammed his thumb on to the red button. Inspector David of the Gardai was a golf mate — or had been before this call.

Dom had called in another set of favours all over town. He and Siobhan had already hassled every man and his dog to find Finbar; they'd hit drug outreach programmes, fellow reporters, anybody with influence. Now he was calling them all over again. We wanted those ripples to spread. We wanted to spark up the Yes Man and bring him out into the open. The lines would still be monitored, and there'd probably been a trigger on the house from the moment he'd seen we were flying into town. That was just what we wanted. He knew where we were, and now he thought he knew what we were doing.

The only person Dom didn't call was Siobhan. He'd done that from a call box in the city. She was fine and well holed-up, although if she took more than one bath a day it was cold. She must have left the house as soon as I'd called her. There was half a plate of scrambled egg on the side. It was congealed and rancid, but the flies seemed to like it.

Dom put the phone back into the charger, put his cup under the espresso spout and threw in another capsule.

'Well done, mate. He'll have followed us since we took off for Islamabad. Now we're back together and searching for Finbar, he'll show his hand.'

The Yes Man would want us dead, but it wasn't going to happen in daylight on a residential street. Drive-by shootings of prominent newsmen or bundling people into vans without anyone noticing were the stuff of bad TV shows. This wasn't Kabul. He would pick his moment, and it would be soon.

'He's like a human Predator, all-seeing, all-hearing. Any time now he'll aim to take us out. But we'll be waiting.'

'Then what?'

'This story can only have one ending, mate. Even if the plan works and we find Finbar alive, he's never going to stop. You, me, your family, we're in the shit — big-time. So we've got to nail the Yes Man, and to do that, we have to bring him to us.'

I unrolled the first of the three twenty-metre extension leads I'd bought in O'Connell Street. I ran it out to the end of the reel, then cut it away so I was left with the plug at one end and three bare wires at the other. 'Where's your broom cupboard, mate?'

He showed me. I grabbed a mop and a couple of long-handled brushes.

I unscrewed the heads and took the sticks over to the roll of gaffer-tape and six forks waiting on the island.

I scored the plastic sheath of the three-core cable with a pair of kitchen scissors, then peeled away about six inches of the plastic. I left the earth wire intact, but exposed about the same amount of the live and the neutral. I twisted each round a fork, and bound them with tape for good measure. By the time I'd repeated the whole procedure with the other two extension leads, each of the three twenty-metre lengths of cable had a pair of forks dangling from its end.

I grabbed a headless broom handle and taped a fork either side of one end, making sure the heads curved outwards. I didn't want current arcing between them; I wanted it zapping into a target and fucking him up big-time.