Border Angels (5 page)

Even though Easter was early, the sky was blue and the sunshine warm in the hilltop Andalucian village. Ashe relaxed in the grounds of the shrine to La Virgen de Nieve. He watched the Semana Santa parade wind up the dusty track, the heavy crucifixion scenes carried on floats by barefoot pallbearers, the doleful music punctuated with hysterical cries from a straggle of wizened women dressed entirely in black.

He leaned against a holy statue and joined in with the prayerful crowds, their voices echoing across the hillsides, which were dotted with the dark green foliage of orange and lemon trees. The spectacle was more like a mass mourning event than the drunken, noisy fiestas that usually filled the streets of the Spanish village.

Ashe was taller than the other spectators, who were mostly old and infirm. The dangerous muscularity that ran under his dark shirt seemed out of place amid the religious fervor of the procession. In addition, his praying voice was tenacious, practiced and hard. It jarred with the theatrical wailing of his coworshippers.

It was Ashe’s habit to join in the procession every year as part of his journey away from violence. However, sometimes he feared his attendance was simply a means to alleviate the deep disquiet of his soul, which was the totality of all the demons he had invoked during his youth, when he had been a gunman for the IRA. He feared that this disquiet was untreatable, no matter how stubborn his prayers.

When the procession had passed, an elderly Englishwoman in a lavender hat turned round and smiled up at him.

“Good evening,” she said, clutching a palm frond.

There was a frailty about her face that momentarily entranced him.

“Oh. Hello. How are you?”

“Just wonderful. Absolutely.” She appeared pleased to be asked the question.

A man, who Ashe presumed to be her husband, walked up and joined them.

“What are you smiling at?” Ashe asked her.

“The procession,” she replied. “It was breathtaking. At times like this, don’t you think the world is a wonderful place? That we are so close to God?”

Ashe glanced at the remnants of the procession. One of the hooded pallbearers had stopped to steady himself against a stone wall. He wore Nike trainers and was carrying a can of Amstel and a half-smoked Ducados in one hand.

“Your vision is very limited,” he said.

However, the woman did not appear to be listening. Her eyes were fixed on the sweep of his shirt beneath his left arm, where a gun was neatly holstered. Her brow furrowed. Her husband delicately gestured her away, and Ashe went back to saying his rosary. He had been reciting it all evening with weary efficiency. Moments of transcendence were elusive and had to be earned by effort. He knew that. He also knew that the woman was wrong. Try as he might, he did not feel closer to God. Nor was the world a wonderful place. In fact, it was a nest of boundless evil and calamity that made the very notion of goodness seem as out of place as the drunken pallbearer in running shoes.

He put away his rosary beads and walked back down to the village where the familiar evening aromas of coffee and garlic were wafting onto the streets. He had a limping gait and his progress was slow. He shunned the bars and restaurants that were beginning to fill with the crowds released from the holy vigil. He bought a lemon ice cream at a
heladería
. The taste of it was refreshingly real and cold. On his way back to his hostel, a man standing in one of the throngs gave a sudden start and slipped quietly out of view.

Instead of going straight up to his room, Ashe sat on a sofa in the foyer and buried his head in a newspaper. Patches of his journey back from the shrine began to take shape in his mind like a print emerging from a solution. He got an impression that someone had paused behind him earlier in the town.

A waiter walked by, and Ashe ordered some coffee. He finished it quickly. The feeling that there was someone out on the street, very close, grew stronger. Someone was following him, he realized. Several times a year he stayed in this hostel, and almost everything was familiar. The excitement of this new sensation helped fill a little of the emptiness he felt within. He guessed that the person watching him, whoever it was, had a connection with his past, but he was unsure as to what extent the person wished him harm. How should he act? Was he meant to make a run for it and imitate fear? Or would that prolong the suspense unnecessarily? Through the hotel window, he watched a pair of cats scavenge through a heap of discarded tapas wrappers. He leaned forward and stared at the hostel doors. Whatever violence the evening held for him, he was glad that at least he had spent the day in prayerful meditation.

He walked to the doors and looked up and down the street. He was like an animal that needed a den with many exits. He made his way out to the olive and fruit groves that bordered the village, the tension in his body making his knee hurt more than usual. The dogs that lay slumped in the shade of the trees roused themselves to bark at his passage. Along the hillside, water gushed through the irrigation channels, weaving through trees hung with ripening citrus fruit.

He climbed through the terraces and stopped under the branches of a leafless almond tree. A dry spiced scent filled the air. There was little cover beyond the tree. The mountainside turned into a flinty wilderness stretching several hundred feet toward the snow-capped peak. He surveyed the fertile terrain below and caught sight of a familiar figure from his past clambering through an olive grove. Screwing up his eyes, he tried to fix on the details. The man had a severe haircut—or perhaps he’d grown bald—he was too far away to make out. Unfortunately, he had spotted Ashe and was now waving to get his attention. It was too late to evade him.

“What are you doing here?” asked the man as Ashe slithered back down the hillside.

“I came to pray.” Ashe clapped the dust from his hands. “I haven’t finished yet.”

“No amount of praying will undo the past.”

“There’s no mistaking that,” said Ashe, hobbling by him. “If I’d known it was you following me, I’d have made sure you never caught up. I would have slipped town and you’d never have seen me again.”

“You’ve always wandered where you wanted,” replied the man. In spite of Ashe’s limp, he had to run to stay up with him.

“I’m on a journey.”

“Isn’t life a journey? Good or bad?”

“What do you want from me? Why have you followed me here?” Ashe stared at the man’s face, absorbing the detail he had been avoiding, the ugly scarring that pockmarked his cheeks and nose. What he saw resembled a botched plaster-cast mask of the face he had known all those years ago.

“I’ve been sent to offer you a job. We have a problem back home. One that the party bosses are very concerned about.”

“I’ve already done my service. I’ve paid. Many times over. Fifteen years in jail. The best years of my life.”

“Haven’t we all?”

“But I’ve quit the organization, cut my ties. It’s been ten years since I even set foot on Irish soil.”

“Don’t you think I deserve at least a little of your time? After all we’ve been through in prison?” The man’s eyes briefly clouded over. A spasm ran through his facial disfigurement.

Ashe’s mind resurrected images of the cell they had shared, and another darker recollection from the time before—the bombed framework of a building, exposed like a doll’s house, its ravaged contents spilling out onto the street, a dead body hanging in pieces. He felt his life slip slightly out of its axis.

The man noticed Ashe’s reaction. The expression in his eyes changed. “There must be a good restaurant somewhere in town,” he said. “All this mountain air is giving me an appetite.”

“There’s a taverna at the edge of the village,” replied Ashe. “The serrano ham and huevos rancheros are the next best thing to an Ulster fry.”

Ashe hoped that the man smiling up at him would prove a better partner to his conversations than the demons inside his head.

They ate in a small restaurant off a cobbled courtyard hung with geraniums and scented jasmine. In the middle of the courtyard was a fountain surmounted by three rusted iron crosses.

Ashe’s companion surveyed the scene as the waiter brought them beers. “Perfect,” he said. “Catholic guilt never felt so good.”

He shot Ashe a grin. “You’re enjoying life here?”

“I suppose you could say so. I didn’t used to, but I’ve changed.”

“A better life than in Ireland then?”

“Yes, of course.”

“At least the Ireland you remember.”

“I know no other.”

“You can’t imagine how much it has changed, for the better. Have you thought of returning?”

“What’s your point? I’m content here. This place brings me as close to a sense of peace as I ever dared imagine. The only problem is money. Or the lack of it.”

“Bound to be worse now with the recession.”

“Money’s tight everywhere. They say spending’s gone out of fashion.”

The man placed a wallet on the table. “In here is some cash, a credit card made out in the name of Frank O’Neill, and other personal documents.”

“What use are they to me?”

“If you agree to this assignment, I can make you Frank O’Neill. A passport in that name will follow. I have a bank account set up in Northern Ireland to cover your expenses.”

Against his better judgment, Ashe felt intrigued by the offer. For one who had taken the vow of exile, there was something dangerous and exciting about returning home under a new identity. He had been dead to his homeland, but now he saw an opportunity to rise again like Lazarus.

“Frank O’Neill,” said Ashe. “Sounds familiar already.” He flicked through the wallet, sorted the documents and cards. “The only thing I don’t see is a piece of paper with ‘here’s the catch’ written on it.”

His companion allowed himself a brief smile. “That information’s too dangerous to be written anywhere.”

They were edging closer to the proposition. Their voices lowered.

“OK,” said Ashe. “This problem you have. What, or more precisely who, is it?”

“A community organization run by the party has been swindled out of money. Taxpayers’ money from the British government.”

“How much?”

“About three million in peace funds.” The man stared at Ashe, dead-eyed.

“I’m guessing that doesn’t look good for the party’s socialist credentials.”

“We left that ethos behind long ago. We’re all capitalists now, and like all good capitalists we’re desperately searching for the missing money.”

“Who’s in the frame?”

“The community organization was run by an old friend of yours. Jack Fowler.”

“I remember Jack.” Ashe did not know whether to be pleased or saddened at the mention of the name.

“Then you know his style. Jack wheeled and dealed with the best of them—politicians, bankers, developers; he turned them all inside out. No one guessed the financial tricks he was pulling. He diverted some of the peace funds into the account of a consultancy firm he set up. The company was given a wide-ranging mandate, to look at ways to develop the run-down village of Gortin and draw up a set of plans. But, really, its primary interest was property. As it turns out he used the company to buy up every derelict building and inch of development land in the area.”

Ashe thought for a moment. “Sounds like a foolproof scam.”

“Exactly. Investment money to develop a dilapidated village is siphoned off and used to buy up land and buildings. When the investment plans are announced with their promises of jobs and community facilities, the value of property goes up. The land is quickly sold to developers eager to build homes, and the funds are paid back into the community organization’s accounts, minus the fat profits, of course.”

“Jack always knew how to look out for himself.”

“He did. But then the credit crunch cracked open the property market and revealed it for the rotten egg it really was. Property prices plummeted, and the company was unable to sell the land and buildings. So Jack’s scam was exposed.”

Ashe studied the man as he spoke. He observed the listlessness in his eyes, the frozen frown of his mouth, and the scarred skin of his cheek and jaws that made it look as though he was communicating from behind a lifeless mask. A long time ago, they had been imprisoned in Long Kesh during the hunger strike, but Ashe suspected that the real world in the intervening years had been harsher to his old cellmate than any regime in Long Kesh. His companion looked like a man who had been forced to eat his colleagues just to survive.

“What has Jack got to say on all this?”

“Not much.” The man’s frown grew more haggard. “Jack’s dead. He drowned in his outdoor swimming pool two days ago. No suicide note. Only a photograph of his recently acquired mistress.”

“Is that all we have to go on?”

“It may be enough. The mistress is a Croatian woman called Lena Novak. Before he died, he set her up in a new apartment, showered her with credit cards, even made her the director of a holding company. He emptied what was left of the community organization’s entire funds and deposited them in a foreign bank account, which he registered in her name. We found the paperwork in their love nest.”

Ashe watched his companion. He was holding a bottle of Stella but apart from wetting his lips at the start of their conversation, he had not drunk a drop. There was something suspect about his manner. Ashe had the feeling his lines had been practiced and carefully honed. He tried to focus on the silence at the end of his replies. The man’s sentences seemed to finish too abruptly, as though his flow of thoughts kept pulling him back from a dangerous brink.

“The party bigwigs are extremely upset. Especially the new leader, Owen Higgins. He’s taken it the hardest. We’re supposed to be the party of the people for Chrissakes.”

“We used to be an idealistic bunch of terrorists,” replied Ashe. “But look at us now. Property deals, expense accounts, mistresses, and chauffeur-driven cars. How did we become so vulgar?”

“Ambition’s not a sin.”

“But greed is.”

“Listen. The bottom line is we need you to help us find the missing money by making contact with this Croatian woman. We’ve alerted party activists the length and breadth of the country to be on the lookout for her. Discreetly, of course.”