When all three poles were ready, I picked up my coffee and gulped it back in one. We had to get moving.
He'd watched me fuck about with broom handles and cutlery with a look of deepening gloom. I slapped him on the shoulder, trying to cheer him up a little. 'He might be like a fucking Predator, but we've got some tricks up our sleeves, you and me.' I grinned.
Although we'd have the PIRA weapons, I wouldn't want to risk using them immediately. If we killed the men who came after us, their information would die with them.
We'd have to be a bit careful with my homemade tasers for the same reason. The commercially manufactured ones contain a step-up transformer that produces a short burst of high voltage to catapult a small amount of current. The domestic electricity supply uses a much higher current, pushed by a lower voltage. Tasers aren't designed to kill, but ours easily could. We'd be wiring our targets into the mains.
'A two-second prod will be enough to drop anybody.' I headed for the door. 'Another two seconds and they won't get up. It'll fuck them up worse than a badly earthed fridge.'
Dom hesitated at the island. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the edge of the worktop.
'I know you're worried about Finbar, mate. But that ain't going to get him back. Come on. She's waiting.'
98
We sat in the lobby of Jury's Hotel with three nice frothy cappuccinos. We'd taken a cab back to Bertie's Pole, then continued on foot, doing anti-surveillance all the way. We'd wandered through a shopping precinct and bought two pay-as-you-go mobiles, circled a block, stopped in the middle of a couple of streets and doubled back on ourselves. We'd ended up in a florist's, bought a big bunch of red and white roses, then left by the rear exit. The Yes Man could get his eyes back on us later. For now, we didn't want anyone to see who we were meeting.
Kate was sitting next to Dom on the sofa. She was even more excited to be out of the office doing something secret for him than she had been with her flowers. This was her chance to prove she could make it.
She handed me a folder. 'The file is on Councillor Connor McNaughten. I called his office first thing, and told them about the new programme.'
'What's it called?'
'Dublin Let's Go. That's what I told him, anyway. His office phoned back within the hour saying yes, he'd be delighted to be interviewed. I said one thirty — is that OK?'
She looked at Dom, but I jumped in. 'Great job, Kate. When you get back to the office, could you ring them back and say there won't actually be any filming today? Dom just wants to come over and talk round the idea, get it fixed in everyone's heads. We'll probably bring the cameras along on Friday, at some city location. You know, dramatic backdrop, that sort of thing. Can you do that? I don't want them expecting men with furry microphones and all that shit.'
She nodded and drank the last of her cappuccino.
Dom handed her the flowers. 'Katarzyna, Moira doesn't need to know what's happening yet. It must stay completely secret until we have the foundations of the story. Once that's done, I'm going to make sure you're on my team and not sitting at her beck and call any more.'
She smiled her thanks to us both. The thought of not working for that bitch must have been the best news she'd had in weeks.
I stood and shook her hand. 'Thanks, Kate. You've been fantastic.'
She left and we sat down to finish our brews.
Dom's brow furrowed. 'What's the score if we didn't shake them off? Aren't we putting her in danger?'
'Even if they follow her back to the station, all they'll want to know is what she handed over. They're not going to compromise themselves by lifting and threatening newsroom staff. They're pond-life, mate. They'll want to keep all this down in the weed.'
He took another sip and wiped the froth from his scabby top lip. We still looked like a couple of crash victims but, fuck it, there was nothing we could do about that. And on the upside, it meant Dom wasn't getting recognized every time he turned round.
'What now?'
I flicked through the printouts in Kate's folder. Judging by the number of representatives they had on the city council, Sinn Fein must have pulled out as many stops down here as they had up north. Connor was thinner and greyer than he had been when I'd last seen him. His picture showed him in the classic shoulders-at-forty-five-degrees-to-the-camera pose. He was doing his best to look like everyone's favourite uncle, and his best wasn't good enough.
It was no surprise to me that he'd switched careers. Former terrorists were turning into statesmen everywhere on the planet. Israeli bombers killed British soldiers on the streets of Jerusalem and were rewarded with invitations to dinner in Downing Street. The ANC was a proscribed terrorist organization, then went on to run South Africa. Even Hamas was now the voters' friend. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before bin Laden became secretary general of the UN.
The Peace Process had produced the same result in Ireland, but that didn't mean everything in the garden was rosy. Even before 9/11, when the Americans had their first really big taste of the realities of terrorism, the IRA hadn't just raised funds in Boston and New York from tenth-generation Irishmen who thought that PIRA were freedom-fighters who played the fiddle in pubs in their spare time. They'd also made a fortune domestically from gambling, extortion, prostitution and bank robbery.
But their biggest earner had always been drugs. The police and the army were too busy getting shot at and bombed, so there had been no one around to stop it. The IRA kneecapped drug-dealers periodically as a public-relations exercise, but only as a punishment for going freelance.
Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley might now be having a kiss and a cuddle at Stormont, and Martin McGuinness might be the Minister of Education, but deep down in the belly of the island, old habits died hard. There was just too much money at stake and they didn't want anyone else muscling in. Drugs were their big thing. They'd been running the trade for the last thirty-odd years. And it was even easier to cross the border now the army checkpoints had gone.
I closed the folder. 'First you buy me some decent clothes, then we clean ourselves up here, bowl along to City Hall and ask Councillor McNaughten to help us find Finbar.'
'Easy as that? What are you going to ask him? Why don't you tell me, Nick?' Dom's frustration was plain to see. I hadn't told him what I was planning, and I didn't intend to.
I smiled. 'Connor and I go back a long way. He'll help us, believe me.'
'But how?'
I stood up, ready to go. 'Whichever way I want him to. Come on, let's get sorted out. It'll give whoever's following us time to pick us up again.'
99
We were being followed. The green Seat MPV was three behind us, but I couldn't tell Dom yet. If the driver of the cab taking us towards Donovan O'Rossa Bridge was the excitable sort, he'd either drive us off the road or pull up by the first cop he saw.
It was very shoddy surveillance. The two of them bobbed about non-stop, trying to see where we were. They buzzed in and out of our lane to check we were still ahead. They couldn't have been more obvious if they'd tried. In fact, they were so amateur I wondered if they were doing it to scare us. I didn't care: it was good news either way.
I leant towards the driver. 'Tell you what, mate, if we pass a newsagent, could you pull over?'
He stopped almost immediately outside a Spar. I nudged Dom. 'I'm getting a paper, mate. You coming in?'
I didn't bother to look at the Seat as it passed. Dom was soon up alongside me. 'What's happening?'