Keys to the Kingdom (11 page)

‘What’s your real problem with me?’ Rosinski asked. ‘Do I threaten your manhood or something?’

‘Yeah, or something,’ Gilman picked up his cigar and drew hard on it. He blew a stream of acrid smelling blue smoke towards Rosinski. ‘I’ve been with the ‘Company’ since I left college in ‘75. Back then the only women runnin’ around Langley were the ones who spent their days typing reports and memos. The ‘Company’ was a male thing and that’s how it should have stayed. Broads are okay for compromisin’ some poor fucker by gettin’ him laid but that’s where it stops. I don’t need nobody on my staff who’s gotta spend five days a month lyin’ around in a darkened room. Nobody asked you to put your balls on the line, Rosinski. You did and now the ‘Company’ is about to chop them off. Get back to that jerk you married and fulfil your destiny.’

‘I can see why there’s no Mrs Gilman,’ Rosinski said.

‘For your information, ballbreaker, there were two Mrs Gilmans. I got rid of both when the wrinkles began to show. When I need a broad now, I get one with firm flesh and I get one when I want.’

‘You disgust me,’ Rosinski said and stood up. ‘You have the mind of a cesspool.’ She started towards the door.

‘It goes with the territory, baby,’ Gilman chewed on the end of his cigar and smiled. He’d got to the bitch and he liked the feeling. Maybe the guys in Langley were right to send her to him. He’d teach her a thing or two before they put her out on to the street. They were all the same. Rosinski was no different from the rest, although she thought she was. They try to put on the hard exterior but when you lean on them they crack like thin ice.

Rosinski closed the door behind her and walked back in the direction of her office. She needed a drink and some soothing music but she would get neither for another few hours. People like Gilman convinced her that her sex discrimination case against the ‘Company’ was just. Whether she won or lost she was going to expose the whole rotten nest of snakes who ran the US Intelligence Operation like a boys club where creeps were admitted but no female need apply. Well fuck you fellahs, she thought as she slipped the miniature tape recorder out of her pocket. She rewound the tape for half a minute before putting the recorder to her ear and pressing play. Gilman had come over loud and clear.

CHAPTER 16

Antwerp

‘We’re set,’ Michael Vonk said into the phone. ‘Your order has been filled.’

‘That’s the boy,’ Gallagher’s thick Northern Irish accent came over the line. ‘When and where?’

‘You’ve got transport?’

‘Yeah.’

‘From the centre of the city follow the signs for Brussels,’ Vonk tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. This was going to be his biggest collar. He had circulated the photofit of Gallagher but it was too soon for anything to come back.  ‘Just before the Ring you’ll see a sign white on blue with the word ‘Haven’ on it. Follow the sign. The road winds along the port area. Keep straight on until you see a large billboard with the words ‘de Witte Trading’ on it. Turn into the compound and go to the last warehouse in the line. That’s where I’ll be.’

‘When?’

‘Ten o’clock to-night.’

‘Why so late?’ Gallagher had already wasted enough time in Europe. Things were about to get hot in Saudi and that was where he should be.

‘Relax,’ Vonk said. ‘We’ve located your merchandise but we need to pick it up. Ten o’clock to-night at ‘de Witte Trading’ and don’t forget the money.’

‘Don’t screw up,’ Gallagher’s voice hardened. He didn’t know why but this business was beginning to smell. ‘And don’t try to double cross me. You and de Wolfe wouldn’t like it if I got angry.’

‘See you to-night,’ Vonk said pushing the ‘end’ button on his mobile phone. ‘
Rotzak
,’ he said as he slipped the apparatus into his pocket. Vonk was one of the toughest cops in Belgium but his stomach shifted a little when he’d heard Gallagher’s threat.

‘Problem,’ Geskens sat down at the desk across from him.

‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Vonk smiled. ‘That bastard is coming across like Rambo. Says we’ll all regret it if we fuck with him.’

‘Anything on the photofit yet?’ Geskens asked.

Vonk raised his thin eyebrows.  ‘You joking. We’ll be lucky to have something back a week from now. The European wheels work but they work damn slowly.’

‘I don’t like the idea of putting one across on someone we don’t have a make on. Maybe we should re-think this whole business. This guy could be dangerous. How many men will you have with you?’

Vonk pushed back his chair and put his large feet on his desk. He liked Geskens but sometimes his boss pissed him off. Geskens wasn’t a real cop. He’d been in administration before taking over the squad. If you wanted to be a chief in the GCSU, you had to spend one Thursday every month wearing a little leather apron. That wasn’t Vonk’s style. ‘Two. Piet and Maurice.’ He saw Geskens’ frown deepen.  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll all have Uzis and the poor Irish shit is probably unarmed. He turns up at de Witte and we nail his ass to the wall. If he resists then we’ll have to hurt him.’ He thought about the way the buyer had handled the skinhead in Het Roode Leeuw. Deep down he knew the guy would not go quietly. But Piet, Maurice and he would be a different proposition.

‘Then take more men.’

‘No need,’ Vonk said looking at the ceiling. ‘Anyway, there’s a football match to-night and I don’t want to fuck up anyone’s evening.’

Geskens could never understand Vonk’s nerve. He was glad that he hadn’t joined the opposition. ‘And you’re the guy who’s talking about Rambo. What’s that they used to say every episode of Hill Street Blues. Be careful out there. You get any problems or bad feelings then I want you to scrap the operation. De Wolfe will have a long and productive life as our man. There’ll be other Irishmen to nab.’

Not like this one, Vonk thought, not like this one.

Belfast

The British Airways Boeing 737 banked steeply to line up with the runway at Belfast International Airport exposing the Black Mountain with its cap of rain laden clouds to those sitting on the right hand side of the aircraft. Through the window Worley could see the warren of Victorian streets speed past beneath him as the pilot gunned the engines on their final approach. Even as he boarded the British Airways shuttle at Heathrow, Worley was stung by disbelief at his actions. The engines howled for one last time and the undercarriage heaved as the wheels touched the tarmac of the runway. The plane taxied to the gate and some of the passengers, ignoring the instruction not to leave their seats until the aircraft had come to a stop, were already collecting their luggage from the overhead lockers. Worley sat and wondered why he had launched himself on this second possibly fruitless quest. He had already wasted six months of his life tramping the mean streets of Belfast and searching the glens of South Armagh for the man who was purported to have pulled the trigger on his brother. Maybe he wasn’t so much Captain Ahab as entering his midlife crisis. Patrick Joseph Gallagher might be his ‘trip around the world’. If so then he would have been better advised to buy a Porsche. Perhaps the sighting of Gallagher in Riyadh had been a hallucination like the spectres that visited him with monotonous regularity. The plane came to a complete standstill and the passengers milled about in the gangway. Worley watched the front doors open and the line of passengers began to shuffle forward. He didn’t really want to move but he pushed himself slowly up as the last of the passengers passed in front of him. He needed corroboration and that was why he had flown to Belfast. He wanted someone to tell him that Patrick Gallagher was alive and that the man he had seen in Execution Square hadn’t been a figment of his imagination.  He knew that there was little or no chance of getting what he was after but he had to start somewhere. Despite the trite sayings about the world being a small place, Worley knew it was immense in the sense that if someone wanted to hide then they could very easily do so. Gallagher was a wanted man. He had been sought by the very cream of the world’s anti-terrorist police and they were all satisfied that he was lying in a grave in the Afghan desert. He reluctantly tagged himself on to the end of the queue, said ‘thank you’ to the hostess and exited the aircraft. The taxis were drawn up opposite the exit. Worley strode to the first black cab in the line and opened the door.

‘Good morning, sir,’ the short stocky cabdriver said from underneath a soft cloth cap. ‘My name is Sammy.’

Good old Belfast, Worley thought settling himself in the back of the cab. No matter what the circumstances and the location the passing of the message was all important. Anywhere else in the world Sammy was simply a pleasant individual giving his name. In Northern Ireland he was also indicating his religion. There were no Catholics named Sammy just as there were precious few Protestants with the name Liam.

‘Good morning, Sammy,’ Worley said pleasantly as soon as he was settled. ‘Cullingtree Road, please.’ He saw Sammy’s thick eyebrows rise beneath his soft cloth cap. The address he had just given was deep in the Republican area of West Belfast. ‘You have a problem with that.’

‘No problem at all, boss,’ Sammy said starting up the diesel engine.

The heavy clouds above threatened rain as the cab moved off in the direction of the city. Despite the breakfast on the plane Worley’s stomach was unsettled. A kind of peace had come to Northern Ireland since he was last in the Province but like many others he would never be able to forget his particular contact with the ‘Troubles’. Twenty-five years previously he had arrived in Northern Ireland looking to find both his brother’s killer and his body. He had failed on both counts. It had always affronted his Catholic upbringing that Robert’s body lay buried on some grassy hillside rather than beside his mother. The murder itself was a heinous crime but the refusal to let the family bury their dead inflicted a wound on the living that would never heal. As the cab moved into the city, Worley was struck by the absence of the police and the army. He wondered whether the new Northern Ireland would be willing to hand up the dead of the past. Sammy drove steadily from the airport and they soon reached the outskirts of the city.

‘You know where you’re headed, boss,’ Sammy said as they entered the Victorian streets of inner Belfast.

‘I do,’ Worley said.

‘Then you’ll be wanting me to wait for ye. I wouldn’t like to leave a gentleman from the mainland like yerself among the Taigs.’ 

‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ Worley saw that they had turned onto the Falls Road. The Divis Flats towered over them to the left.

Sammy turned left into Albert Street. ‘What number in Cullingtree Street?’

Worley gave him the number of the Gallagher household and saw the bushy eyebrows rise towards the heavens again. Off to their right was the warren of Victorian side streets that constituted the Catholic Ghetto. Across the Peace Wall to the east a mirror image of narrow streets housed the city’s Protestants.

‘It’s your funeral, boss,’ Sammy said swinging into Cullingtree Road. He drove carefully through a children’s football game before pulling up at the house that Worley had indicated.

Worley pulled a £20 note from his wallet and without looking at the meter handed it to Sammy.

‘You’re sure that you don’t want me to wait?’ Sammy took the note. There was a look of genuine concern on his face. ‘No waitin’ charge.’

Worley opened the door. ‘Thanks. I appreciate the offer but I’ll be fine.’ He got out of the car and walked to the door of the Gallagher homestead. When he had checked in London whether the Gallaghers still lived in Cullingtree Road, he had been surprised to find that they were still in residence.

Sammy sat immobile in the taxi while Worley pushed the bell situated to the side of the door.

‘Yes.’

Worley stared into the face of the woman who opened the door. She was somewhere in her sixties but her face was lined and cadaverous to the point of extinction. He guessed that she must have weighed no more than seven stone. She wore a pullover above a pair of tight black trousers that accentuated the thinness of her legs. She wore a patterned scarf around her head.

‘I’m Leo Rosen,’ Worley lied. ‘I called you last night from London.’

‘Ah yes, Mr Rosen,’ she opened the door wider. ‘Come you in now.’

Before entering the house, Worley glanced over his shoulder and saw his protector slipping his black cab into gear. Sammy, like every good Protestant, had done everything possible to ensure that his fare from the mainland was safe among the heathen Catholics.

‘I’m Mary Gallagher,’ she said as they stood in the small hallway dominated by a staircase rising on the right hand side. ‘And what kind of a name is Rosen then?’ She looked into the face of the man standing before her. He was handsome in a fragile kind of way. His blond hair had receded but was still substantial enough to cover his pate. He was neither thin nor fat and he wore a three quarter overcoat over a tailored jacket. Although she was not up to date on the prices of men’s tailoring she could see that his clothes were expensive.

‘It’s Jewish, Mrs Gallagher,’ Worley said affably in his best Golders Green accent. ‘And please call me Leo.’

‘Not Mrs, just simple Miss. I never married.’

‘Neither did I,’ Worley said. ‘So we at least have something in common.’

A smile lit up Mary Gallagher’s face turning it from something resembling a skeleton into something of beauty. ‘And maybe we should all be Jews in Belfast, Leo. Wouldn’t that be the elegant solution to all our problems?’ She chuckled at her own joke. ‘I must say that you don’t resemble the caricature of a Jewish gentleman. You said that you were a journalist?’

‘That’s correct,’ Worley looked around the small hallway that was typical of any working class house in Great Britain. The floral wallpaper and the autumn coloured carpet were equally faded with age but were spotlessly clean. A flight of three china ducks was attached to the wall along the stairs, a sign of a bygone age. ‘I’m doing some research for a book on terrorism. I’m sorry but your brother’s name has come up in several places. I’m pretty clear about the bullets and the bombs, the escapes and the fire fights. But that’s not what I’m about. I’m interested in people, Miss Gallagher. I want to know what made your Patrick tick. I want to know where he came from and how he got to where he ended up.’

Mary Gallagher opened her mouth to speak but before she had an opportunity to say anything Worley continued. ‘I’m not a tabloid journalist.’ He waited for a reaction. There was none. ‘I’m not going to dramatise or judge your brother’s life. I want to tell his story and the story of other terrorists from their point of view.’ He looked into her angular face. Mary Gallagher must have been attractive in her youth.  He wondered why she had never married. Her grey eyes shone with life and intelligence. He could see that she was wondering whether to believe him or show him the door. Patrick Joseph Gallagher’s sister was nobody’s fool.

‘Do Jews drink tea, Mr Rosen?’ There was a half smile on her lips.

‘I think they do,’ Worley said returning her smile.

‘Then take yourself into the parlour,’ she indicated an open door on the opposite side of the staircase. ‘I’ll put the kettle down and I’ll be along in a few minutes.’

Worley entered the small front room of the house that measured barely ten feet by ten. A sideboard ran the length of one wall and on the other side of the room were two stuffed armchairs with a small coffee table between them. He was drawn to the sideboard whose top was covered with a mass of framed photographs. There were family portraits showing the Gallagher parents surrounded by their five children and a series of individual and collective photographs. Patrick Gallagher was in every group shot and there was one photograph that Worley recognised from the MI6 file. In the photograph, Gallagher was a handsome strapping youth of nineteen. A head of thick black thatch covered his head and his face had an earnest intelligence about it. As Worley examined the photograph, he thought of his younger brother. It was the kind of photo that would have been taken of Robert at the same age. Both exuded the manly football-playing good health of youth. But above Gallagher’s smile was a set of hard determined eyes. Beside Gallagher’s photograph was that of a young girl who bore a striking resemblance to him. So much so that they might have been twins. Even the way they had faced the camera was the same. The young girl also bore a remarkable resemblance to her mother in her wedding photograph. Worley ran his finger along the silver frame of the wedding photograph. There was a similar photo in his collection at his house in Kew. He removed his finger quickly aware that he was the quintessential voyeur.