'Have they now?' said O'Neill softly.
‘They want an alliance,’ said Kell.
O'Neill rubbed his hand against his forehead but said nothing while he considered the thought of Kell and the McGlynn brothers running the organisation.
'What do you think?' asked Kell.
‘The same as O'Donnell always thought,’ replied O'Neill. 'If we ever joined with that lot we'd end up losing the sympathy of our own. They are a liability.’
‘True,’ murmured Kell. 'Still it's always nice to know what everybody's thinking, eh, Martin? No harm in listening to what they have to say.'
O'Neill looked at the smile on Kell's face and thought of a spider reasoning with a fly. 'When?' he asked.
‘Thursday. I'll send a car for you.'
O'Neill found Liam Drummond and said that he was ready to return to Cladeen.
As they left Belfast O'Neill sensed that Drummond was itching to say something but was not sure what O'Neill's reaction might be. Eventually he said, 'I told you, didn't I?'
'Yes, you told me,’ agreed O'Neill.
'You can't run the organisation on fear,’ said Drummond.
O'Neill silently declined the invitation to agree.
'I said…’
'I heard you.'
'Are you feeling all right, Mr O'Neill?' asked Drummond with a sidelong glance.
'An hour ago I blew a twenty-year-old's brains out.’
'But that little bastard betrayed you and…’
'Shut up.’
As the miles passed O'Neill began to regret having snapped at Drummond. The man was one of the best; he had been with the organisation for as long as anyone could remember. By way of making amends he said, 'You've heard that the McGlynns want to talk?'
Drummond's reaction told O'Neill that he had been forgiven. The driver threw back his head and snorted. 'These cretins! They've forgotten that Kell has a long memory.’
'What do you mean?' asked O'Neill.
'The bomb,’ said Drummond.
'What bomb?' asked O'Neill.
‘The one that took Kell's legs off. It was made by the McGlynns' father, Seamus. Everybody thought that it was just one of those things, but not The Bairn. He was convinced that McGlynn had mis-set the fuse deliberately. He never said so publicly at the time, but privately he swore to get even one day and when The Bairn makes that kind of promise…’
'What did McGlynn have against Kell?'
'You know how it is when you're young. McGlynn was a hero until Kell came along and started upstaging him all the time. You could put it down to simple jealousy.’
That's useful to know,’ said O'Neill. He was delighted to have found that there was some obstacle to the frightening prospect of Kell forming an alliance with the McGlynns.
‘Is Kell going to speak to them?'
'On Thursday,’ replied O'Neill.
Drummond smiled wryly and said, 'If I were a McGlynn… I'd take a long spoon.’
Kathleen knew that something was troubling O'Neill but did not ask what. He would tell her in his own time as he always had done in the past, she decided, and got on with washing up their dinner things. Despite being several years younger than her brother she had acted as mother to the O'Neill family since the age of fifteen when Mrs O'Neill had died. Apart from Martin, there had been two other children, Maureen and Claire, both younger than herself and both of whom had now married and gone to live abroad, one to Canada and the other to Australia.
The family had been steeped in nationalism for as long as any of them could remember and their father, although more active with a bottle than with anything else during his own lifetime, had never let them forget the exploits of their grandfather who had fought in the Easter Rising of 1916 and had been executed by the British in the aftermath.
Despite the considerable demands put on her by domestic chores and responsibilities Kathleen had not only coped but had achieved academic success too. Three years after her brother had taken his degree she herself had graduated from the same university with a degree in modern languages and, while her brother's political beliefs had become for him the most important thing in life, she had become a teacher and now taught French and German in a Catholic High School.
Maureen and Claire O'Neill had been simple, uncomplicated girls who had sought nothing more from life than husbands, security and children, as indeed had many of Kathleen's contemporaries. It was partly for this reason that Kathleen valued her friendship with her brother so highly; they were intellectually compatible. But it was a friendship that had cost her dearly in terms of lost social life for, as Martin had risen within the IRA, she too, as a loyal sister, had become a legitimate target for harassment.
A friendship with a fellow teacher at the High School that had looked like blossoming into romance and marriage had foundered when an ultimatum had been issued concerning the activities of her brother and Kathleen had refused to disown him. She had lost count of the number of young men whose ardour had cooled on hearing that she was Martin O'Neill's sister.
'I've got a problem, Kath,' said O'Neill.
'Can you tell me?'
‘There's an envelope in my pocket. I took it from the Long House.'
'Do you mean you stole it?'
'I took it from the safe. O'Donnell ordered me to get it before anyone else did.'
'Meaning Kell?'
'Meaning Kell,’ O'Neill agreed.
'What's in it?'
'I don't know.'
'You're not making much sense,' said Kathleen.
O'Neill stopped staring into the fire and turned to face Kathleen. He said, 'O'Donnell ordered me to hand it over to the British.'
'You can't be serious.'
'I wish I wasn't.'
'But why?'
O'Neill shook his head.
'Can't you open it?'
'I'm considering it.'
Kathleen watched O'Neill as he returned to looking into the fire. She said, 'You look as if you have some notion about what's in the letter.'
O'Neill smiled and said, 'You always could see through me. O'Donnell loathed Kell as much as I do. I think he may have been planning to hand Kell to the British on a plate so that we would be rid of him for good.'
'You said yourself that Kell could destroy the organisation,' said Kathleen.
O'Neill nodded and said, 'But betrayal is another matter. He is the commander.'
'And if you hand over the letter you will be a traitor?'
O'Neill nodded.
'You must open it,' said Kathleen firmly. 'It may not be what you think.'
'You're right,' agreed O'Neill. 'Hand me my jacket will you?'
Kathleen laid O'Neill's jacket over his knees and switched on the standard lamp behind his chair. She resisted the urge to help while she watched him struggle to open the sealed envelope by holding it between his knees and pushing his thumb under the flap. She picked up the empty envelope from the floor while O'Neill flattened out the paper with his palm and began to read.
Kathleen saw the colour drain from her brother's face but did not interrupt until the tension became unbearable. 'Is it what you feared?' she asked.
'No,’ replied O'Neill as if in a daze. 'It's something quite, quite different.' He handed the papers to her.
Kathleen felt her jaw drop as she read the contents. Her shock changed to protest. 'But this cannot be true,’ she said, 'We would have heard something. Did you see the date on this? It's nearly three weeks old.'
O'Neill nodded. 'I know, but O'Donnell didn't think it was a hoax.'
'Why did he hide it? Why did he want this to go to the British?' asked Kathleen.
'I'm thinking, I'm thinking,’ murmured O'Neill.
Kathleen poured whiskey into a glass and handed it to O'Neill as he continued to stare into the embers of the fire. At length he said, 'I think I understand. It's too big. If we were to take this on there would be civil war and we would lose. When the smoke cleared and the blood was washed away Ireland would be more divided than ever. O'Donnell must have realised that and decided to keep us out of it. Kell on the other hand… would go for it.’