“Somewhere useful to your government.”
“Terms?”
“You let us get the job done first.”
“Who gets killed?”
“Nobody. The Healys get a new house. That’s all.”
“What do you get?”
“Paid. But your new friend in the very high place gets peace of mind. For which he’ll be suitably grateful, I’m sure.”
“Tell me more.”
“First I need to check you have your head on straight. This is not the kind of thing where you make a bunch of calls and get other people involved. This is the kind of thing where you let us do our work, and then when we’re gone, you announce your new relationship as a personal coup. Or not. Maybe you’ll want to keep the guy in your vest pocket.”
“How many laws are you going to break?”
“None at all. We’re going to buy a house. Happens every day.”
“Because there’s something in it, right? What did Gerald McCann leave behind?”
“You got to agree to what I said before. You got to at least nod your head. I have to be able to trust you.”
“Okay, I agree,” the guy said. “But I’m sticking with you all the way. We’re a threesome now. Until you’re done. Every minute. Until I wave you off at the airport.”
“No, come with us,” I said. “You can meet your new friend. At least shake hands with him. Then come back. Vest pocket or not, you’ll feel better that way.”
He fell for it, like I knew he would. I mean, why not? Security services love a personal coup. They love their vest pockets. They love to run people. They love to be the guy. He said, “Deal. So what’s the story?”
“Once upon a time there was a young officer in the U.S. Army. A bit of a hothead, with certain sympathies. With a certain job, at a certain time. He sold some obsolete weapons.”
“To Gerald McCann?”
I nodded. “Who as far as we know never used them. Who we believe buried them under his living room floor. Meanwhile, our young officer grew up and got promoted and went into a whole different line of work. Now he wants the trail cleaned up.”
“You want to buy the house so you can dig up the floor?”
I nodded again. “Can’t break in and do it. Too noisy. The floors are concrete. We’re going to need jackhammers. Neighbors need to think we’re repairing the drains or something.”
“These weapons are still traceable?”
“Weapon, singular, to be honest with you. Which I’m prepared to be, in a spot like this. Still traceable, yes. And extremely embarrassing, if it comes to light.”
“Did Mrs. Healy believe you about Edmund Wall?”
“She believed us about the money. We’re from America.”
The guy from Special Branch said, “It takes a long time to buy a house.”
It took three weeks, with all kinds of lawyer stuff, and an inspection, which was a pantomime and a farce, because what did we care? But it would have looked suspicious if we had waived it. We were supposed to be diligent stewards of the appreciation society’s assets. So we commissioned it, and pretended to read it afterward. It was pretty bad, actually. For a spell I was worried the jackhammer would bring the whole place down.
We stayed in Belfast the whole three weeks. Normally we might have gone home and come back again, but not with the Special Branch copper on the scene, obviously. We had to watch him every minute. Which was easy enough, because he had to watch us every minute. We all spent three whole weeks gazing at each other, and reading crap about dry rot and rising damp. Whatever that was. It rained every day.
But in the end the lawyers got it done, and I received an undramatic phone call saying the house was ours. So we picked up the key and drove over and walked around with pages from the inspection report in our hands and worried expressions on our faces — which I thought of as setting the stage. The jackhammer had to be explicable. And the neighbors were nosy as hell. They were peering out and coming over and introducing themselves in droves. They brought old Mrs. McKenna’s sister, who claimed to remember the baby being born, which set off a whole lot of tutting and clucking among her audience. More people came. As a result we waited two days before we rented the jackhammer. Easier than right away, we thought. I knew how to operate it. I had taken lessons, from a crew repairing Langley’s secure staff lot.
The living room floor was indeed concrete, under some kind of asphalt screed, which was under a foam-backed carpet so old it had gone flat and crusty. We tore it up and saw a patch of screed that was different from the rest. It was the right size too. I smiled. Gerald McCann, taking care of business.
I asked, “What actually happened to McCann?”
The Special Branch guy said, “Murdered.”
“Who by?”
“Us.”
“When?”
“Before he could use this, obviously, whatever it is.”
And after that, conversation was impossible, because I got the hammer started. After which the job went fast. The concrete was long on sand and short on cement. Same the world over. Concrete is a dirty business. But even so, the pit was pretty deep. More than just secure temporary storage. It felt kind of permanent. But we got to the bottom eventually, and we pulled the thing out.
It was wrapped in heavy plastic, but it was immediately recognizable. A reinforced canvas cylinder, olive green, like a half-size oil drum, with straps and buckles all over it, to keep it closed up tight, and to make it man-portable, like a backpack. A big backpack. A big, heavy backpack.
The guy from Special Branch went very quiet, and then he said, “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes, it’s what you think it is.”
“Jesus Christ on a bike.”
“Don’t worry. The warhead is a dummy. Because our boy in uniform wasn’t.”
Carter said, “Warhead? What is it?”
I said nothing.
The guy from Special Branch explained, “It’s an SADM. A W54 in an H-912 transport container.”
“Which is what?”
“A Strategic Atomic Demolition Munition. A W54 missile warhead, which was the baby of the family, adapted to use as an explosive charge. Strap that thing to a bridge pier, and it’s like dropping a thousand tons of TNT on it.”
“It’s nuclear?”
I said, “It weighs just over fifty pounds. Less than the bag you take on vacation. It’s the nearest thing to a suitcase nuke ever built.”
The guy from Special Branch said, “It is a suitcase nuke, never mind the nearest thing.”
Carter said, “I never heard about them.”
I said, “Developed in the 1950s. Obsolete by 1970. Paratroops were trained to jump with them, behind the lines, to blow up power stations and dams.”
“With nuclear bombs?”
“They had mechanical timers. The paratroops might have gotten away.”
“Might have?”
“It was a tough world back then.”
“But this warhead is fake?”
“Open it up and take a look.”
“I wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Good point,” I said. “Gerald McCann obviously didn’t.”
The guy from Special Branch said, “I can see why my new friend wants the trail cleaned up. Selling nuclear weapons to foreign paramilitary groups? He couldn’t survive that, whoever he is.”
We put the thing in the trunk of a rented car and drove to a quiet corner of Belfast International Airport, to a gate marked General Aviation, which meant private jets, and we found ours, which was a Gulfstream IV, painted gray and unmarked except for a tail number. The guy from Special Branch looked a little jealous.
“Borrowed,” I said. “Mostly it’s used for renditions.”
Now he looked a little worried.
I said, “I’m sure they hosed the blood out.”