Keys to the Kingdom (13 page)

‘You should at least buy decent whiskey,’ Gallagher said from the door of the living room.

De Wolfe whirled at the sound. His heart began to race and he thought it was going to burst out of his chest. He had never felt such a rush of raw fear.

‘What the...!’ de Wolfe staggered from the pain in his chest. ‘You trying to kill this poor old man. What are you doing here?’

‘We ran into a small problem this evening,’ Gallagher said sipping the whiskey in the glass he held before tipping the rest onto the marble floor. ‘Turned out that everybody at the meeting except me was a policeman. And the Semtex didn’t show up either.’

De Wolfe sucked in great gulps of air in an effort to control the excessive beating of his heart. ‘They forced me to help them,’ he wheezed between breaths. ‘It was either that or jail and I’m too old to be fucked in the ass by some Moroccan.’ He pulled in another giant gulp of air. ‘You got away that’s all that matters.’ He pulled himself up to his full height. ‘Now get the fuck out of here and leave me alone.’

‘No can do,’ Gallagher said moving closer. He continued until he was standing chest to chest with de Wolfe. He could see the beady black eyes staring at him from behind the bottle tops.

De Wolfe’s eyes opened wide with recognition. ‘You,’ he whispered under his breath and his body slumped. ‘It can’t be.’ His heart was racing out of control again and he was having difficulty breathing. ‘You’re dead,’ there was a rattle in his throat. Suddenly de Wolfe was aware that he was a dead man. He might still be capable of walking and talking but he had just brushed the Angel of Death and in a very short time he was going to be called to account for his life. The thought filled him with renewed fear.

‘Not exactly,’ Gallagher said. ‘I’m very much alive and you’ve just tried to screw me.’

‘I didn’t know it was you,’ de Wolfe’s voice was collapsing. The pain in his chest was like a vice squeezing every organ in his body. He tried to think of something to say but his brain was suddenly blank. He struggled for breath but none would come.

Gallagher watched as de Wolfe’s face went puce and then black. De Wolfe’s hands clutched his chest and he keeled over onto the marble floor.

‘Help me,’ the words seemed not to come from de Wolfe’s mouth but from somewhere deep inside him.

Gallagher watched as the life ebbed from de Wolfe’s body. He felt no anger that nature was cheating him. De Wolfe had tried to screw him and for that he would have to die anyway. The how and the where were immaterial. The only thing that was important was that de Wolfe should know before he went why he had to die.

De Wolfe rattled and expired. Gallagher bent and felt his pulse. There was nothing.

‘Fucking bastard fink,’ Gallagher said under his breath. Three days wasted and nothing accomplished. It was about to go down in Saudi and he was sitting in Antwerp with a handful of shit. He was getting too old for this business. One more night like this one and he would be joining fat Carlos in prison. Gallagher stood up and kicked de Wolfe’s prone body. He threw the glass in his hand onto the marble floor shattering it into minute fragments. There was only one road now and it was the one road that Gallagher didn’t want to travel.

CHAPTER 18

London

Geoffrey Burfield tilted his office chair back and put his feet on his desk. The voice of Doctor Leo Grayson, the doctor of preference for the Service came over the speaker of Burfield’s phone. The good doctor was reporting on his findings regarding the health of Arthur Worley. Normally a patient’s communications with his doctor were private but that rule was waived in the case of employees of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. ‘No doctor, you were right to inform me,’ Burfield’s mouth was on autopilot. As Head of the Middle East Section, by far his most onerous task was keeping tabs on every aspect of the lives of the members of the Service dependent on his Section. The meeting with Arthur Worley had greatly bothered him and now the doctor was confirming what he himself had concluded. Arthur was burning out. He supposed it was to be expected. The life expectancy of the average official in the Service was somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years. Arthur was already beyond that. Add the difficulties of his obsession with his brother’s death and you had a perfect excuse to suggest that Arthur take up tending roses in Kent or trying to write the great British novel in his house in Kew. It wouldn’t be so bad. The pension was more than adequate especially since Arthur didn’t have, like Burfield, twenty something year old children still clinging to their parents financially. He wondered whether Arthur had any hobbies and realised that he knew very little about the private life of a man he had called his friend since they both joined the Service. It was a strange definition of friendship. ‘Just one point of clarification,’ Burfield said forcing his brain into operation. ‘Does this burn out thing affect the mind of the sufferer?’

‘What exactly do you mean?’ Grayson asked. ‘Are you asking whether Arthur’s mental faculties are affected?’

‘Not exactly. What I’m really asking is whether it may have created illusions in his brain? Might he see things that are not there? If you know what I mean.’

‘He’s under considerable stress,’ Grayson said. He had searched his soul long and hard before he had called Burfield. If Worley was going to be a damn bloody fool about his reaction to further tests then perhaps his superiors might force him to take the appropriate action. ‘However, the pressure could lead to some level of brain dysfunction. There have been cases where individuals suffering from burn out become paranoid.’

‘Then what do you suggest that I do?’ Burfield asked.

‘Oblige him to take some time off. If that doesn’t improve the situation, perhaps you should suggest early retirement.’

Burfield had already come to that conclusion. ‘It would be important that I had this opinion in writing.’

Grayson smiled. ‘That might pose some ethical problems.’ 

‘I understand. However, I assume that we both have Arthur’s best interests in mind. I could make the suggestion to Arthur but I doubt he would comply. I must therefore have ammunition for an administrative action.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Grayson said quickly.

‘Then I would like to thank you for being so frank with me.’ Burfield replaced the handset on the phone and withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and then picked up the teacup that lay on his desk. The tea was pale. It had been over doused with milk. He replaced it on the saucer, stood up and walked to the window of his office. He stared across the Thames at the buildings of their sister organisation across the way.

What the hell was he going to do with this gem of information?  He knew that he should pick up the telephone and pass the burden of what to do along to the person who was paid to carry such burdens. People in HR were trained to deal with issues like this. Passing it along would mean that he had washed his hands of it. But this was Arthur Worley he was talking about. Telling the hierarchy that Arthur was burnt out would be the equivalent of pushing him out the door himself. The fact was their man in Saudi Arabia was suffering some form of mental breakdown. He decided to Google ‘burn out’ as soon as he had some spare time. Maybe the Gallagher episode was simply the first manifestation of Arthur’s delusions. And what was going to happen to Yamamah, the arms deal of the century?  What the hell impact would Arthur have on Yamamah if he went around blabbing that the end of the world as the Saudis knew it was nigh? Burfield had barely survived the Al-Masari business. It hadn’t been his fault that Al-Masari had come to live in the United Kingdom and had set up his bloody Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights in London. He had advised the Minister to run the ingrate out. They still owned a couple of Caribbean islands where Al-Masari and his coterie could relax with rum punches and a few dark-skinned maidens. Then the bloody do-gooders got behind Al-Masari and the press weren’t far behind. Suddenly the man was a bloody saint, not somebody who was trying to undermine the Al Sauds. What the do-gooders and the newspapers didn’t know was that they were fooling around with British jobs. With Al-Masari ensconced on some Caribbean Island, the Saudis would have been more than willing to pour additional billions into good old British military technology. The balance of payments would improve, jobs would be saved and the directorships of various Tory Grandees would be assured. Everybody would have been happy and the Ministerial sun would have shone on Geoffrey Burfield. Instead, Al-Masari had been painted as a martyr, the Saudis had punished them by deflecting an order for fighter planes to the Frogs and Burfield had been warned that if he left his wicket unprotected again that he would spend the rest of his life in the pavilion. And now Arthur. He stroked his short beard. What to do, what to do? He really should pass this one upstairs and let Arthur take his chances. That wouldn’t exactly be cricket. He’d let it stew a while. Maybe the situation would simply sort itself out. He walked slowly back to his desk and sat down heavily.

THE BOSTON GLOBE

US Businessman Seeks $100 Million in Lawsuit Against Saudi King

A Boston businessman, Mr Luke Timms, has lodged a suit with the District Court of Massachusetts claiming damages of $100 million alleging conspiracy, slander, libel and invasion of privacy against the Ruler of Saudi Arabia.

‘They stole my money and then held me prisoner for three months until I signed a document exonerating them from prosecution,’ Mr Timms said at a press conference held in Boston yesterday. ‘I was just a simple small businessman trying to make an honest buck. They ruined my business and took my passport when I went after the money they owed me. And the State Department didn’t do a damn thing when I reported it to them.’

Mr Timms alleges in his suit that the King was personally aware that his passport had been confiscated and that he was being held against his will in Saudi Arabia by his former partners, senior court officials who are related to the King.

These allegations come hard on the heels of a series of suits being brought by US businessmen to reclaim funds they allege have been illegally retained by former Saudi partners many of whom are directly connected to the Royal Family.

In the past two months, US Courts have also been inundated by claims from US women for the return of their children, many of whom are US citizens, who are illegally held in Saudi Arabia by the women’s husbands.

The State Department has declined to comment on this rash of cases against a government that has consistently flaunted human rights conventions while at the same time pursuing a staunchly pro-US line in the Middle East. However, these multiple legal actions and the move in Congress to reclaim $9.3 billion the Saudi government owes US contractors will undoubtedly create diplomatic strains between the US and Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman for the Embassy of Saudi Arabia refuted Mr Timms claims and said that the action would be vigorously contested. He added that the many claims against Saudi citizens currently before the courts were an example of a growing xenophobia in the US towards the international community. ‘I am sure that the US government is aware of the pivotal role the Government of Saudi Arabia and the Royal Family have played in the search for peace in the Middle East. We are also the custodians of the Holy Places of Islam and as such have a significant voice with our Muslim brothers. It would be a pity if this role was undermined by this sordid attempt to soil the name of Saudi Arabia and fan the flames of hatred.’

Since the end of the Gulf War, the US has made several attempts to move Saudi Arabia towards a more participative form of government. The Ruling Family, the Al Sauds, have resisted this pressure and continue to run the country as their own personal fiefdom. All the major government and Army positions are held by the Al Sauds or their kinsmen and the country still has the legal and governmental establishment of a sixteenth century Italian Republic. The corruption of the Al Sauds is legendary and cases such as that brought by Mr Timms will only serve to highlight these abuses that should be condemned by the relevant US authorities. We will follow with interest the progress of Mr Timms’ action.

CHAPTER 19

Belfast

The old woman sat by the window in the front room of the house in Cullingtree Road. She put her knitting down and stared at the Gallagher house directly across the street. The scene was quiet except for a loud football game being played by a group of urchins further down the road. This neighbourhood has certainly gone down, she thought to herself. It wasn’t like that when she and her husband had first moved there. That had been before the Troubles so she supposed she shouldn’t make comparisons. The Troubles had changed everything. Well they’d changed everything for her. The Troubles had driven her son away. The fanatics, like the Gallaghers, wouldn’t understand that the only job Kevin could get was in the British Army. As far as they were concerned her son, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, was a traitor. He had been beaten senseless on his first visit home and been told that the next time he wouldn’t be so lucky. He knew the boys that had beaten him. They’d all been part of Gallagher’s mob. Kevin had never been back after that. And then he had died in Afghanistan in a place called Helmand Province, that she couldn’t even find on the map. The Gallaghers had driven her only son from her home and she would never forgive them for that. She looked across the room at the picture of her son in his dress uniform. Such a lovely boy. His father had died of a broken heart and left her alone. She looked out the window and saw a tramp making his way along the houses. He wore a heavy Crombie coat tied about his waist with a piece of rope. Beneath the Crombie she could make out the collar of a second coat. Johnny Forty Coats they’d called tramps dressed like that when she was a girl. She turned her attention to the battered pram the tramp pushed. It was filled with plastic shopping bags and old newspapers. Probably the old man’s belongings and his bed, she thought. The financial crisis had put a lot of people on the roads. The old man had knocked on a door. The door opened and one of her neighbours stood in the opening for several minutes before retiring inside. The old woman watched as she returned with a black purse in hand and dropped some coins into the tramp’s waiting hand. She continued to watch the tramp’s progress. At some houses he received a few coins, at others the door was closed in his face. Charity was sadly missing in difficult financial times. She watched until the tramp finally sat on the edge of the footpath with his feet in the gutter and removed a bottle wrapped in brown paper from the pram. She decided not to open the door if he knocked.

Patrick Gallagher tipped the bottle to his lips and tasted the tepid Coca Cola. He wanted to immediately spit it out but he swilled it longingly in his mouth before swallowing it. Always play the part, he told himself. This was Belfast and there was a more than even chance that someone somewhere was observing him. They might be wearing British Army uniforms and spying from towers or they might be wearing housecoats and peering from behind curtains but they were certainly there. Above his head the dark clouds began to spit the first signs of rain. It wouldn’t have felt like Ireland if there hadn’t been rain. He put his hand beneath the coat he’d bought from the tramp the previous evening and scratched what he assumed was a flea bite on his left nipple. The clothes and the pram were necessary props. Nobody cared about tramps. Tramps had no status. Even in religion mad Belfast, it was assumed that tramps were religiously neutral. He finished scratching and tipped the bottle to his mouth again. Where the fuck was Michael. As he had turned the corner into Cullingtree Road, he’d prayed that Michael’s car would be sitting outside the house but he’d lucked out. He would have to wait. Shit. Why couldn’t it have gone down easily in Antwerp? It had been a monumental fuck-up. But at least he had cleaned up after himself. He had been in and out and nobody was the wiser. Or so he hoped. Fuck-ups were like lies. The more you tried to cover them up the more you stood a chance of fucking up next time out. Murphy had been right on the money when he had coined law number one. If anything can go wrong, it usually does. What were the chances that De Wolfe was going to be turned just before he showed up in Antwerp? The son of a bitch had been supplying arms for forty years or more and he has to roll over just before he arrived in town, coincidence and bad luck. It was important to stay calm. Somehow it was all going to come together. He didn’t want to come back to Belfast. The city was bad news for him. Belfast was the place where it could all come unstuck. It had been more than twenty years since he had ventured onto British soil and he’d sworn that he would never set foot in Northern Ireland again. He should have listened to the old adage ‘never say never’. He didn’t know how or why but standing with Nasrullah in Swat, he’d had a premonition that somehow he’d end up in Belfast. That thought hadn’t brought him any pleasure. Being lifted by the authorities in Belfast was a nightmare that dogged him. The Brits would put him in their biggest stinkhole of a prison and throw away the key. It would be that or a bullet in the back of the head. Christ, but this rotten city stank of bad karma. He had managed, with a little help from his friends, to make himself dead. There was a sudden shout from the end of the street. The football game was reaching a fever pitch of excitement and a goal had just been scored. Gallagher smiled beneath the grime he had carefully lacquered onto his face. Some days he wondered where it had all gone wrong. His life had been lived in the maelstrom. For him it seemed like yesterday that he had stood in the morgue and looked into Rose’s lifeless eyes. Yesterday he had been one of those small boys playing football at the same end of the street. Then, he’d wanted to be the next George Best and to play for Manchester United. He wanted fame and fortune and a way to get away from the poverty and the hate and the squalor of the Falls. But then again so did everyone. That was before he was sucked into the maelstrom. His life since Rose’s death had a dynamic of its own. Now it had come full circle. He was back in the streets where his life began. Only now if he were lifted by the police he would spend the rest of his life in jail and the operation would go belly up. That wasn’t going to happen. The rain was increasing in intensity. It was what the locals called ‘soft’ but unless Michael turned up soon it would drench him to the bone. He thought of the sun beating down on Belize and sighed. That was where he wanted to be. He needed to take his new family to a restaurant and watch them smile as they murdered some hamburgers. He loved to see them smile. But the Al Sauds were maggots that gnawed at his stomach and he would never know real peace until he had eradicated them from the face of the earth. He heard the sound of a powerful motor and he looked up as a blue BMW 320 swept past him. It pulled up outside his sister’s house and Gallagher pushed himself up slowly from the footpath. Michael was doing all right for himself, he thought as he returned the bottle to the pram. He watched as Michael’s minder alighted from the driver’s side of the car and took a quick look around. A man who could have been his double stepped out of the car and went quickly into the house. Gallagher smiled as he looked at his cousin. The wee bastard, he thought, every inch the Godfather. As soon as the door closed on the two men, Gallagher continued his passage along the street. This was no time to slip out of character so he begged at every house. By the time he reached his objective he had collected five pounds. It was a testament to the generosity of the good people of Belfast. The door to the family home stood as a solid barrier to the outside street. Three sets of locks were arranged along the side and Gallagher knew that the door itself was probably six inches thick. Many a man in Belfast had lost his life because their front door had failed to withstand a blow from a 14-pound sledgehammer. He pushed the doorbell and stuck his grimy face directly in front of the peephole.

The old woman dropped her knitting and concentrated on the tramp. He was at the Gallagher door. She moved the lace curtain a little so that she had a better view. Her MI5 handler had told her to note every arrival at that door and he had emphasised the word every. She had seen Michael Gallagher enter and had pressed the button beside her chair that took the picture and sent it directly to her handler. She had no idea how the equipment they had installed in her house worked. She only did what they told her. Since the watchtower at the end of her street had come down in 2008, she had been receiving £200 a month as regular as clockwork for keeping an eye on the Gallagher house. She pushed the button and took a picture of the tramp for good measure. You never knew what would interest the Brits.

There was a shuffling behind the door before a faint female voice said ‘Piss off’.

‘Ah com’on, Misses,’ Gallagher called loudly and pressed the doorbell again.

There was a further noise behind the door and Gallagher heard the turning of locks. Half a white face topped by a scarf appeared in the opening.

‘If you know what’s good for ye, ye’ll piss off like ye were told,’ the woman said sharply.

‘Ah Mary,’ Gallagher said putting on his most roguish smile. ‘By God and you haven’t changed in twenty years. You have a wicked tongue on you. ‘

The door opened further and a pair of wide green eyes stared at the dishevelled tramp. ‘Paddy?’ Mary Gallagher said incredulously.

‘In the flesh,’ Gallagher said quickly. ‘Don’t make any sudden moves, woman. The Brits are probably keeping tabs and we wouldn’t want them to find out that their most wanted IRA man had returned from the dead.’

‘What do ye want me to do?’ she asked breathlessly. What little colour there had been in her face had drained completely away.

‘Invite me in but don’t be too effusive about it now. And make bloody sure that I leave my pram on the street. Nobody with half a mind would allow that lump of shit into their house.’

Mary slowly opened the door and beckoned the tramp inside. She made a fine act of insisting that the pram be left outside.

‘Jesus, Paddy,’ Mary threw herself at him when she’d bolted the door. ‘Ye almost put the heart across me. And you smellin’ worse than the city dump as well.’

‘I would have called ahead, Darlin’,’ Gallagher hugged her hard before removing the rope holding the brown Crombie coat in place. ‘Except that I’m tryin’ desperately to avoid runnin’ into a battery of British soldiers.’ He tossed off the heavy coat, dropped it in the hallway and looked at his sister. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. Mary had been the apple of his and many a man’s eye when they were growing up. She’d been a true trooper during the Troubles but the cancer had ravaged her. He held her again and bent to kiss her forehead. He hoped that he had hidden the shock from his face but although he could lie with the best of them this was his sister and she deserved more.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘It won’t be long now and you don’t know what it means for me to see your lovely face before I die.’

‘It’ll never happen,’ he said using all his control to keep the tears in his eyes.

‘We’ll not talk about it,’ she moved back to examine him. ‘You’re more handsome than ever.’ 

‘What the fuck!’ Michael’s Gallagher’s minder stood in the open door of the kitchen and stared at the tramp and the dropped clothes in the hallway. His hand disappeared automatically beneath his jacket.

‘Peter,’ Mary said sharply. ‘Go you now and get Michael. I have a wee surprise for him.’ She turned to Gallagher. ‘I have the feelin’ that ye’re bringin’ a wee bit of trouble with ye.’

‘Rest yourself, woman,’ Gallagher pulled off the sweater that he was now sure was the home to at least six million fleas. ‘I’ll bring no grief on your house.’

‘Jesus Christ Almighty,’ a voice boomed from the end of the corridor. ‘I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.’

Michael Gallagher strode towards his cousin with tears of joy streaming down his ruddy face.

‘Paddy, a Mhach,’ he grasped Gallagher in a bear hug that nearly crushed him. ‘God, Paddy, I only realise how much I miss you when I see you again.’

Gallagher returned his cousin’s hug. If there was any one man on earth that he loved more than his cousin Michael, he hadn’t yet met that man. He wanted tears to run down his cheeks as freely as they did down his cousin’s and he wanted to tell Michael how much he missed him but neither the tears nor the words would come and somehow Patrick Gallagher felt himself less a man because of it.

Eventually Gallagher eased his cousin away from him and looked him up and down. ‘You’re beginning to look like a man of substance,’ he laughed and pushed against his cousin’s ample stomach.

‘We’re all politicians now,’ Michael said wiping the tears from his face. ‘And like your ould man said, all politicians have to be fat. God, Paddy, I can’t get over seein’ you like this.’ A look of concern came over Michael’s face. ‘There’s nothin’ wrong is there?’

‘Divil a bit,’ Gallagher said realising that he was slipping easily back into the Belfast vernacular. Nearly thirty years out of the place but he would be a Belfast man until the day he died. ‘Just a wee bit of business to transact then I’ll be away, out of your way. How’s your Ma?’

‘Never better,’ Michael said. ‘Do you still take a drop?’

‘On special occasions,’ Gallagher said.

They entered the large kitchen at the rear of the house. The room ran the width of the house and was perhaps fifteen feet deep. The back door also had a steel inner door and a set of heavy shutters covered the back window. A bright ceiling light illuminated what would otherwise be a dark room.

‘We won’t be needin’ all this shit much longer,’ Michael said motioning at the steel door and the shutters. He removed a bottle of Jameson and two glasses from a pine dresser and laid them on the table. ‘If we could stop toppin’ one another for more than a couple of months, we could start livin’ like normal human beings.’ He poured two large measures and offered one of the glasses to Gallagher.