Old Enemies (38 page)

‘Stretch our legs, are you thinking?’ Sean muttered.

‘That is exactly what I am thinking.’

‘Then race you to the gates of Hell, Mr Jones.’

They grabbed their bags and ran. With a shout of alarm, the police officers gave chase, but they had lost a few vital yards, and Harry and Sean disappeared into the crowds of the Christmas market. Every few seconds the policemen’s heads would pop up, peering above the shoppers as they tried to spot the fugitives, but they had almost lost them in the melee when suddenly Sean cried out. His legs were no longer young, unsuited to running from the police and dodging through crowds, and as he tried to avoid an elderly woman dressed in a huge fur coat tugging a reluctant miniature dog he stumbled and crashed into a stall, breaking the strap on his luggage and spilling it. For a moment he looked at it helplessly. Stopping would lose him any chance of getting away, but the bag had everything in it, including his wallet and passport. He had no time to think, the policemen were gaining. With a curse he abandoned the bag and hobbled after Harry.

They turned one corner, then another, losing themselves again in the crowds. Sean’s lungs screamed in protest, his head was pounding, his legs felt like frozen twigs. He couldn’t go on much longer, but as he prepared to dash across an empty road hot on Harry’s heels he glanced over his shoulder and his heart lifted in relief at what he saw. Which was absolutely nothing. They had lost their pursuers. His senses flooded with relief, and he would have shouted with joy if he’d had the breath, but that was also the moment he realized he had done something very foolish. Drowning his moment of celebration was a roaring sound, a horn blaring in protest. He turned as quickly as he could, to discover a delivery van bearing down on him, almost on top of him. He had been looking the wrong way. And it was too late to save himself, he couldn’t move, the van couldn’t stop. The last thing he saw was the look of terror twisted across the driver’s face.

Sean was hit and hurled to the ground; that in itself came as no surprise. What did surprise him was that he knew anything about it, that he was still alive. He was lying in the gutter, winded, but not badly wounded, with Harry on top of him.

For a moment, in shock, Sean’s world stood still. Staring deep into Harry’s eyes he saw flickers of concern mixed with grey flecks of relief, then he saw all the way down, to things that lay buried deep inside the other man. Sean couldn’t move, every physical reaction was frozen as his thoughts tumbled over a thousand rocks before falling like a waterfall through his mind. His fingers seized hold of Harry as though his life depended on it, as a few seconds earlier it had.

‘Luck of the Irish, eh, Sean?’ Harry eventually muttered, prising himself off the other man. ‘Stupid bugger.’

Harry waved away the offers of help as strangers gathered round. Soon he and Sean were left on their own again, with Sean leaning on Harry’s arm, trying to stretch the ache from his limbs. He was still a little unsteady. ‘Come on,’ he whispered, ‘let’s go in here for a moment.’ He nodded towards the doorway of a nearby church – there seemed to be churches everywhere in Trieste, with their bells and colourful domes and pot pourri of religions. As they entered, he was still leaning on Harry, breathing heavily with shock.

The church was dark, its atmosphere almost conspiratorial, rich with gilt, polished wood and incense. A service was in progress, a bell ringing, a priest’s sonorous voice raised in prayer while a scattering of penitents shuffled along behind him. Sean stumbled towards a corner pew and sat slumped, head bowed, automatically making the sign of the cross.

‘Thank you for that,’ he whispered hoarsely, turning from the altar to Harry.

‘I hope you haven’t come here to confess,’ Harry replied, ‘we haven’t got that much time.’

‘I’m trying to catch me sodding breath,’ Sean muttered. ‘Anyway, you feckin’ heathen, last time I took a look I was a Catholic. I think you’ll find this is Orthodox.’

‘I take the word of a true believer.’

‘Me?’ He shook his head wearily. ‘I’m not so much of a believer in anything.’

‘Except things Irish.’

‘My country right or wrong?’ Sean shook his head. ‘Never been that blind. Happy to leave that to the British.’ They were sparring again, but there seemed to be no personal malice in it, they had moved beyond that.

‘Do you hate everything British, Sean?’

‘No, just some of the things they’ve done in my country.’

‘And me.’

‘I don’t hate you, I—’

‘I wasn’t at Bloody Sunday, Sean.’

‘But you’re part of the system that was.’

‘I never shot an Irishman in the back.’

‘There must have been others.’

‘It was a war. People get hurt.’ And there had even been one Irishman, an informer, Harry had shot in cold blood – executed, for want of a better word, and Harry had never found one. The man had been on his way to hand over information that would have resulted in the deaths of many others. Rough justice, some would call it. Murder, according to others. ‘Looking back, it’s easy to think maybe we could have found a better way. But you’re part of a system, you don’t set the rules, don’t get to pick and choose. Perhaps that was one of the reasons I left the army and became a politician. I wanted to set some of the rules, not just follow them blindly.’

Sean was staring at the altar again, his hands still gripped as though in prayer, with a strange light in his eye. Strangely, there were tears gathering, too. The shock, Harry thought, until Sean spoke.

‘You know, Mr Jones, the two of us have more in common than perhaps we’ve a liking for. You get involved, sure you do. You get sucked in, little by little, isn’t that the way? Do your bit for a cause you believe in, that seems so right. There are limits, of course, a line you’ll never cross, you’re not a criminal or one of those crazies, but then . . . Then you wake up one rainy morning and find you’ve already left that line so far behind you that you can never go back, no matter how hard you run. I’d seen that happen – to others. It was going to be so very different for me. That’s why I tried to stick to the money and the scams, claiming for the broken legs rather than breaking them myself, but those hard bastards on the Army Council, men like Adams and McGuinness, they would insist on you taking one more step, doing that little bit more, until it got to a point that you’d lost sight of where you’d come from. All the friends, all the dying. It was too much, we went too far. We ended up killing more of our own than ever you bastards did.’ He turned to stare at Harry. ‘My mother, God rest her gentle soul, used to say it wasn’t important just to see the light, you had to know whether it was a moonbeam or lightning. You had to know the difference, she said. Somewhere along the road we lost all that, lost the moonbeams. Bloody Friday, Bloody Sunday, Bloody Christmas – what was the difference in the end? I wish I believed in God, then maybe he’d sort it out for me. But I don’t.’ He laughed, drily. ‘No, don’t you go looking at me like that, Mr Jones. Sure I cross myself, it’s what we Irish do, but I was schooled by the Christian Brothers and beaten every day for the terrible sin of wanting to write with my left hand, and beaten all the more when I wouldn’t shove that same hand up their stinking cassocks. No, I lost my faith a long time ago, and now I don’t believe in anything much, except for my family. That’s why I’m here, not for God but for Ruari, and if I’m on my knees praying it’s for Ruari, not for myself, just in case there is a God.’ He sighed, as though he was worn out by many things, and he looked once more directly into Harry’s eyes. ‘What’s done is done, Mr Jones. Those people who were once terrorists have got themselves some votes and now we call them politicians. I’m a sharp bookkeeper who became a respectable businessman. And you – well, I told you once I’d never trust you. But I don’t trust most of the other bastards, either, not even myself at times. And as long as you’re here for Ruari, I guess that’s good enough for me.’

A confession? A truce? An offering of peace? Harry wasn’t sure, but it was good enough for him. They had a job to do.

‘Come on, Sean, let’s be having you. There’s a war to fight out there. Time to give me some of that old rebel shit.’

She found her husband on the patio overlooking the garden. It was a place where, over the years and in the summer, he would sit with his papers while he listened to Ruari playing on the grass below, being there for them if not entirely with them. Now the gardens were empty, frost-bare, and he sat wrapped in a thick overcoat and muffler, his face as grey as the tin sky above.

‘I think I’ve done it,’ J.J. said in a strained, reluctant voice, his eyes staring out into the distance, sightless. ‘I’ve got some venture-cap people to give me a loan against the newspaper shares. They buy them if the partners won’t, I pay them back if they do.’ But the lines carved like mountain fissures across his face said there was not a word of good news in the whole affair. ‘Either way we lose the newspaper for a fraction of its worth. And everything else, too.’

Terri stood near to him. It was Christmas cold but she couldn’t feel it, could feel nothing except his pain.

‘Five million. He’s worth it, isn’t he?’ he asked.

‘Of course he is.’

‘But what if . . . what if we don’t get him back, Terri?’

The thought had never left her.

‘And what about us?’ he added.

It was a moment they both knew had to come. Total, brutal honesty. It was what kidnap forced upon families. There could be no hiding place from the truth. This wasn’t just about Ruari, it was about them all. Was it right to destroy everything they had, just for one? It was the question they could no longer avoid, along with many others. His eyes were on her now, fearful of many things.

‘Are you in love with Harry Jones?’

‘You know a part of me has always been in love with him, J.J., for old times’ sake. But that has never, ever got in the way of my love for you.’

‘And now?’

Even at moments of total honesty it wasn’t always possible to answer. She simply didn’t know, wasn’t sure.

‘Are you still sleeping with that woman from the bank?’

He flinched. How did she know? How long had she known? His mind raced, it had never been more than a little game, of no great consequence, it wasn’t the same as Harry Jones. But the more he protested to himself, the more confused he grew. He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not,’ he told her. Then he added: ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me, too, J.J.,’ she whispered. Her hand brushed gently on his sleeve as she left.

Harry and Sean were single-minded men in pursuit of mayhem, and they had preparations to make. They checked out the car where Karim said it would be – a Renault estate with the keys smuggled up its exhaust and two new sleeping bags on the back seat. Sean had nothing but the clothes he stood in, so there were purchases to make, a couple of fresh shirts, a waterproof, underwear, toiletries. Some bottled water and chocolate. And cash for Sean in case of emergencies. ‘Never thought I’d be selling out to the Brits,’ he muttered, stuffing notes into his pocket. But first, and most important, was a new mobile phone for him, an iPhone to match Harry’s. If their mayhem was to have any chance of success, they needed to remain in touch.

By the time they had finished, dusk was beginning to fall. 21st December, the longest night of the year, and the lights of the city began to ignite and multiply along the streets. A change had come over the two men since their conversation in the church; Sean had grown quiet once again, withdrawn, as if he had already said too much. Harry took the lead in making all their arrangements while Sean hung alongside, like a fish swimming into a current, marking time with a languid flick of its tail, refusing to rise to any bait or distraction. He kept looking at Harry, reassessing, both curious and cautious about what he saw.

They rested in the Renault for an hour until darkness had taken full hold. ‘I think it’s time,’ Harry said as the bells on the city clocks began tolling seven. ‘You ready?’

Sean didn’t reply, merely climbed awkwardly out of the car. He was stiff, aching from Harry’s body tackle and his encounter with the pavement. Harry would have preferred to walk, it wasn’t more than fifteen minutes at a stroll, a chance to clear his mind, but watching Sean hobble took the point out of it, so they hailed a taxi and directed it to the Little Balkans. There they began their bar crawl, retracing Harry’s footsteps of the night before.