“If there’s even a hint of trouble, you’re to inform them they’re to contact Ed Telford at No. 10 Downing Street. He’ll sort them out.”
To this, Tommy chuckled. “Oh, there’ll be no need to bother him. I know how to make my point with the muppets up here.”
Rather than warn Tommy not to ruffle too many feathers as he tended to do with officials who were proving to be difficult, Andy ended the conversation with a quick admonishment he was to get right on it. Having finished with Tommy, he turned to Spence, who had been listening to his side of the conversation. Reading her expression for what it was, he explained without her needing to ask. “The drugs the police recovered from the container Charlie Mills’ driver picked up in Antwerp were a red herring, a diversion intended to keep the authorities from looking at anything else in the container.”
“The computers, the one’s you’re worried about, what do you think they contain?” Spence asked in a voice that told Andy she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to hear the answer.
Andy didn’t bother to venture a guess. Instead, he merely grunted. “Something valuable enough to lead the people sent to pick up the container to fight for it.”
After staring into each other’s eyes for a long moment without either saying a word, Spence returned to running the old files Andy had transferred from ancient five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks onto the flash drive he’d given her that morning and comparing them to more recent files using the pattern recognition program Tommy had picked up from Vegas and Jenny Garver. In the meantime, Andy turned his attention back to his phone, dialing a private number Ed Telford gave to a select number of people. When he answered, Andy didn’t bother with any of the lighthearted banter the two were fond of. Instead, he struck right to the heart of the matter. “Listen and listen good, mate. We’ve got a problem that can’t wait.”
4
“Well, like my colonel always used to say,” a voice behind Andy called out above the din of the arrival terminal. “You can always tell a Brit officer. You just can’t tell him much.”
Stopping, Andy turned around to find himself facing a bright-eyed ginger who was as near a match in height as he was. That was where all the similarities ended, for while Andy possessed a build that was well proportioned and sinewy with chiseled facial features habitually set in an expression that betrayed nothing, the person greeting him was anything but imposing. Despite being just a tad taller than Andy, now that he’d had a chance to study the person more closely, he imagined he couldn’t have weighed much more than eleven stone, if that. But it was the American’s expression, a lopsided smile, slate-gray almond-shaped eyes, and high, rosy cheeks that were at odds with what Andy had expected to see in an NYPD officer assigned to work undercover amongst the sort of criminals Andy dealt with.
“The name’s O’Conner,” the American declared cheerfully while offering Andy his hand. “Steven G. O’Conner.”
“Webb,” Andy managed to say as he set aside his surprise and reached out to accept the American’s hand. “Andy Webb.”
“Any problems getting that through customs?” O’Conner asked as his eyes darted down at the computer case leaning up against Andy’s leg.
“Not a bit. They did have me turn it on, but that’s all.”
“Bombs and drugs are all they’re interested in,” O’Conner explained. “You’ll find American customs officials are a wee bit leery of scruffy-looking characters coming from the UK who have authentic Irish accents, and not the god-awful attempts some Americans insist on trying out every St. Patrick’s Day, whether they’re Irish or not.”
“Um, yes,” Andy replied warily, well aware of the sadly misplaced sympathies so many Americans had for a land their ancestors had turned their backs on and compassion for a cause few understood. It was a cause that far too many supported financially, and in some cases, with some of the very weapons he and every member of the security forces potentially faced each time they ventured beyond the wire.
“If you’re finished here, I’m parked right out front,” O’Conner announced as he reached out to grab Andy’s suitcase.
Snatching it up before the American was able to get ahold of it, Andy forced a smile when O’Conner’s eyes flicked from the suitcase to his. “I’ve got it.”
“Suit yourself, old boy,” O’Conner murmured evenly. “This way.”
Much to Andy’s surprise, the car O’Conner led him to was right outside the terminal’s exit, parked in a zone that was clearly marked No Parking. When O’Conner saw the way the Brit was eyeing his ten-year-old Ford Pinto, he grinned. “She may not be much, but she’s all mine, fender to fender.”
“I remember reading somewhere that these things are fire hazards,” Andy muttered as he waited for the American to pop the car’s boot, trunk, he reminded himself with a smile. This is America.
“Don’t worry, they only blow up if they’re hit.”
The primer gray paint, covering what Andy guessed to be several pounds of auto body filler used to flesh out a massive dent in the passenger’s door, did little to allay Andy’s concerns that quickly grew by leaps and bounds the moment O’Conner pulled away from the curb and aggressively merged into traffic.
During a wild ride from the airport to the city that left Andy wondering if Steven G. O’Conner was as barking mad as he and his peers assumed all Americans were, or was simply trying to get a rise out of him, the two men peppered each other with probing questions in an effort to find out if the briefs they’d received concerning the other were complete, or if there was some sort of hidden agenda neither was at liberty to share. Andy, who assumed he had the upper hand in this tête-à-tête due to his duties in Belfast, found O’Conner surprisingly forthcoming when he asked why he, an NYPD patrolman, had been picked for this particular assignment. Much to Andy’s surprise, the red-haired New Yorker didn’t hold back, not one bit.
The reason the Irish side of his family had come to the United States was not due to the Great Famine, a calamity O’Conner was quick to point out, his father and grandfather had always blamed squarely on the bloody English. “We’re O’Conners,” he declared proudly as he sped around the right side of a Mercedes that was going too slow for his liking before cutting it off. “It took more than a simple famine to run us out of Ireland.” He then went on to explain that his great-great-grandfather had fought with Thomas Meagher during the Young Irish Rebellion of 1848. “Rather than going into hiding, Patrick O’Conner boarded a famine ship and set out for New York where he, and some of the other lads he fell in with, joined the 69th New York.”
By the time they reached Andy’s hotel, O’Conner had gone through the long and glorious history of the American branch of the O’Conner clan, including a listing of every organization his father belonged to, including the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Knights of Columbus, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “As you can see, when it comes to being trusted by your lot who have taken refuge in the Irish American Community, even though I’m a cop, I’m all but bulletproof with the local branch of the RA, which is why the FBI special agent in charge, who can be very Polish when he wants to be, decided it would be best if I served as your handler.”