“Nice prick,” Henry McGee said.
Brian turned; he was so amazed that his mouth hung up and his hand moved to cover his penis.
Henry slashed his throat ear to ear. Blood filled Brian’s shirt and mouth. He thought he was shouting though no sound came forth. He stood a moment, feeling the life drain out of him, staring at Henry McGee’s dark face and black eyes.
Henry left Brian in the outdoor pisser, crossed into the public house, went out the front, and got into the rental Ford. He had a ways to go.
The second and third were from Kerry and, like typical Kerrymen, they were farmers and simple men of simple wants and pleasures, who had given up the land for a secure job in the Garda. They were assigned to a peaceful district of County Clare out where the burren hills fall down to the rocks that edge Galway Bay. They had stopped their black patrol car behind the public house that was on the edge of the bay beneath the hills. They were on duty and it wouldn’t do to have a patrol car parked prominently in front of a boozer. Besides, they were drinking milk and just wanted a bit of ham and bread to go with it and break the routine of the day.
They consumed lunch and the next thirty-four minutes of their lives.
The driver was Kevin O’Donnell and he wasn’t married because he was only thirty. Irishmen do not rush into such institutions. His partner was John Rochford, twenty-eight.
That’s the way they were listed in the first report in the Irish Independent, which bannered the story across the front page.
When Kevin pressed the accelerator, the ignition circuit was completed and the bomb was detonated. The explosive was one pound of Plastique wrapped around the carburetor.
The bomb blew out all the windows of the public house, the front door, the door to the kitchen, broke 312 glasses in the bar as well as the mirror, and made widows of six women in the village whose husbands had the misfortune to be standing at the bar when the blast came. In all there were nineteen killed outright, three who died later at Galway Hospital, and fourteen severely injured, including a nine-year-old boy who was blinded by flying glass. Two dogs were also killed.
By nine P.M. that night, Wednesday night, Irish troops and the Irish Garda had sealed all roads in Galway and Clare counties. It was just as well that Matthew O’Day had stayed in Dublin because he could not have traveled to Dublin from his farm in Clare without being apprehended. The Irish government did not tolerate attacks on itself by the Irish Republican Army and there was no doubt that some lunatic faction of the IRA or of the even more extreme Irish Liberation Army had lost its sense and decided to kill two of the Republic’s policemen.
Sweeping, brutal roundups all that day and night resulted in the arrests of ninety-four suspected IRA terrorists across the Republic. And Matthew O’Day spent the next twenty-four hours in his room in the Shelbourne, desperately aware of the hunt going on across Ireland, desperately aware of the simple threat of the girl in the bar: He would regret it.
Maureen Kilkenny called him at midnight. He had been waiting for her call. He was a little drunk and his voice slurred but he thought his senses were alert.
“Jesus, Maureen, I’ve been waitin’ on you.”
“Brian was killed. Murdered. Everything’s going crazy. Brian was killed in a public house.”
“By whom? In that explosion?”
“No. That’s the other thing. They came out to the farm and arrested a half dozen of the others. Michael. Deirdre. O’Neill…”
She recited their names, and each name hammered Matthew’s heart. The best of them.
“Brian was cut. Slashed. The bastard even cut his prick off and shoved it in his mouth. What the hell is going on, Matthew? I’m scared—”
“Where are ya, girl?”
“I saw the arrests from the field. I was down at the ocean with the dogs and I saw the cops coming down the road with their fucking lights on and sirens; when they arrested O’Neill he started to put up a fight and it was what they wanted. The bastards’re no better than the Brits. They beat him half to death before they put him in the car. They found the guns, Matthew.”
“Jesus, Maureen, Jesus.”
“Who the hell killed them? The coppers in that car bomb? Who the hell did this? And Brian—” Her voice caught. She once rolled a bomb in a baby carriage into a Protestant grocery and walked out as cool as anything, right across the street, down to the car, got in the car and they drove off just as it exploded. In a baby carriage. She was talking too fast now.
“Easy, girl,” Matthew said, seeing the nameless woman in his mind. He’d kill her. But then, who was behind her? How many were there? They must have a gang, they blew up a police car in one end of Clare and had time to kill one of his boys at the other end. Matthew’s experience told him to be calm now, to think this through. The nameless girl would be killed but in time. Once Matthew could see how many there were. And get some money again. He thought of the loss of the farm and all those weapons, irreplaceable weapons in an arms market suddenly turned upside down. America could supply weapons but that took time and organization to set up. In the meantime, the cells of terror would have to survive on their own. He saw all this in mind while he calmed down Maureen.
“I’m at a public telephone,” she said. “It’s damned cold but I couldn’t make a move until things quieted down. A public telephone someplace in Kerry. I got across on the ferry, I walked for hours, I had some grub in a grocery; then I lit out for the fields. I’m sleeping in the fields.”
“Don’t go back to the farm,” Matthew said.
“What do you take me for? An idiot? Where’s this going to end?”
“You gotta get to Dublin. We can get out of here—”
“I’m fucking across the country from Dublin. Am I getting through to you? The roads are covered with coppers and soldiers.”
Christ. He had to think. A line of sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Matthew?”
“I’m here, Maureen.” He thought about it. “I can’t come to get you, that’s for sure. There’s nothing for it but to hitch or steal a car. Could you steal a car?”
“Thanks, Matthew. I appreciate your help on this.”
“Cut it, girl, just cut it. I got me own problems but I’m working on it. Can you get here by tomorrow night?”
“What if I can? You’ll still be there?”
He thought about the nameless girl and the appointment on Thursday at lunch in the bar. Yes, he’d still be there. He’d be very careful now and not make quick assumptions because the girl was very dangerous and so were her friends. It was absurd but Matthew faced the fact: The terrorists had been terrorized by the same methods used in the trade. But this wasn’t for a cause, this was for money.
Money.
“Jesus,” he said, not to Maureen but himself. He began to see exactly what it all meant.
16
Devereaux stepped painfully onto the walk. He had accepted a cane because he needed it. The shoulder was in a flexible, light cast, which meant it was too inflexible and very heavy. His knees were both bandaged. The day was cheerful and warm in the way that Washington can be in November. He realized that he had not really expected ever to leave the hospital. But here he was, an invisible man in an indifferent world full of careening traffic and hurrying pedestrians, broad streets full of trees, embassies hidden by ornate federal façades. He thought it was the tonic he needed most, to be back in the world, however brutal it was.