The Marching Season (13 page)

“So what happened?”

“IRA Intelligence turned Sinn Fein headquarters upside down. They searched every square inch of the place for transmitters and miniature video cameras. They scared the shit out of the staff and the volunteers, and it paid off.”

“What did they find?”

“One of the volunteers, a girl named Kathleen who answered the phones, had been carrying on a friendship with a Protestant girl.”

“Did the girl have a name?”

“Called herself Stella. Kathleen thought there was nothing wrong with her friendship with Stella because of the peace agreement. The IRA leaned on her in a very big way. She acknowledged that she had told Stella things about the Sinn Fein leadership, including Eamonn Dillon.”

“Is Kathleen still with us?”

“Barely,” Maguire said. “Dillon was beloved inside the IRA. He was a member of the Belfast Brigade in the seventies. He served under Gerry Adams. He spent ten years in the Maze on a weapons charge. The IRA was ready to put a bullet in the back of her head, but Gerry Adams intervened and saved her life.”

“I assume Kathleen gave the IRA a description of Stella?”

“Tall, attractive, black hair, gray eyes, good cheekbones, square jawline. Unfortunately, that’s all the IRA has to work with. Stella was a real pro and damned careful. She never met Kathleen in a place with Sinn Fein surveillance cameras.”

“What does the IRA know about the Ulster Freedom Brigade?”

“Fuck all,” Maguire said. “But I’ll tell you this. The IRA isn’t going to sit on its hands forever. If the security forces don’t get this thing under control, and soon, this fucking place is going to blow sky high.”

Michael dropped Maguire at the intersection of Divis Street and the Millfield Road. He climbed out and melted back into the Falls without looking back. Michael drove the few blocks to the Europa and left the car with the valet. Maguire hadn’t given him much, but it was a start. The Ulster Freedom Brigade appeared to have a sophisticated intelligence apparatus, and one of their operatives was a tall woman with black hair and gray eyes. He also felt very good about himself; after a long time on the sidelines he had gone into the field and carried off a successful clandestine meeting with an agent. He was anxious to get back to London so he could get the information to Headquarters.

It was late, but he was hungry and too edgy to stay in his hotel room. The girl at the reception desk sent him to a restaurant called Arthur’s, just off Great Victoria Street. He sat at a small table near the door with his guidebooks for protection. He ate Irish beef and potatoes smothered in cream and cheese, washed down by a half bottle of decent claret. It was eleven o’clock when he stepped outside again. A cold wind was howling through the city center.

He walked north along Great Victoria Street, toward the Europa. Ahead of him was a girl, clattering toward him along the pavement, hands pushed deeply into the pockets of a black leather coat, a handbag over her shoulder. He had seen her somewhere in the Europa—in the bar, maybe, or pushing a cleaning cart down a hall. She looked straight ahead. The Belfast stare, he thought. No one in this town ever seemed to look at anyone, least of all on the empty pavements of city center late at night.

When the girl was about twenty feet in front of him, she appeared to stumble over a grate in the pavement. She fell heavily, spilling the contents of her handbag. Michael moved forward quickly and knelt beside her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” the girl said. “Just a wee spill—nothing serious.”

She sat up and began picking up her things.

“Let me help you,” Michael said.

“It’s not necessary,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

Michael heard a car accelerate on Great Victoria Street. He turned around and spotted a midsize Nissan speeding toward him, headlights doused. It was then that he felt something hard pressing against the small of his back.

“Get in the fucking car, Mr. Osbourne,” the girl said calmly, “or I’ll put a bullet through your spine, so help me God.”

The car skidded to a halt next to the curb, and the rear door flew open. Seated in the back were two men. Both wore balaclavas. One of them jumped out, pushed Michael into the car, and then climbed in next to him. The car accelerated rapidly, leaving the girl behind.

When they were clear of the city center, the two men forced Michael to the floor and began beating him with their fists and the butts of their guns. He wrapped his arms around his head and face, trying to shield himself from the blows, but it was no good. He saw flashing lights, heard ringing in his ears, and blacked out.

CHAPTER 18

COUNTY ARMAGH, NORTHERN IRELAND

Michael came awake suddenly. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious. They had moved him into the trunk of the car. He opened his eyes but saw nothing but blackness; they had placed a sack of black cloth over his head. He closed his eyes again and took stock of his injuries. The men who had assaulted him were not the kind of professionals who could beat a man half to death without leaving a mark. Michael’s face felt bruised and swollen, and he could taste dried blood around his mouth. He couldn’t breathe through his nose, and his skull hurt in a dozen different places. Several ribs were broken, so even a shallow breath caused excruciating pain. His abdomen ached, and his groin was swollen.

Because of the hood, the rest of Michael’s senses were suddenly alive. He could hear everything taking place in the car: the groan of springs in the seats, the music on the car radio, the hard edges of spoken Gaelic. They could have been talking about the weather or where they planned to dump his body, and Michael wouldn’t have known the difference.

For several minutes the car traveled at speed over a smooth road. Michael knew it was raining, because he could feel the hiss of wet asphalt beneath him. After a while—twenty minutes, Michael guessed—the car made a 90-degree turn. Their speed decreased, and the surface of the road deteriorated. The terrain turned hilly. Every pothole, every bend in the road, every incline sent waves of pain from his scalp to his groin. Michael tried to think about something, anything, besides the pain.

He thought about Elizabeth, about home. It would be early evening in New York. She was probably giving the children one last bottle before bed. For an instant he felt like a complete idiot that he had traded an idyllic life with Elizabeth for a kidnapping and beating in Northern Ireland. But it was defeatist, so he drove it from his mind.

For the first time in many years, Michael thought of his mother. He supposed it was because at least part of him suspected he might not make it out of Northern Ireland alive. His memories of her were more like those of an old lover than of a mother: afternoons in Roman cafes, strolls along Mediterranean beaches, dinners in Grecian tavernas, a moonlight pilgrimage to the Acropolis. Sometimes his father would be gone for weeks at a time with no word. When he did come home he could say nothing of his work or where he had been. She punished him by speaking only Italian, a language that bewildered him. She also punished him by bringing strange men to her bed—a fact she never hid from Michael. She used to tease Michael that his real father was a rich Sicilian landowner, which accounted for Michael’s olive skin, nearly black hair, and long narrow nose. Michael was never certain whether she was joking. The shared secret of her adultery created a mystical bond between them. She died of breast cancer when Michael was eighteen. Michael’s father knew his wife and son had kept secrets from him; the old deceiver had been deceived. For a year after Alexandra’s death, Michael and his father barely spoke.

Michael wondered what had happened to Kevin Maguire. The penalty for betraying the IRA was swift and harsh: severe torture and a bullet in the back of the head. Then he thought, Did Maguire betray the IRA or did he betray me? He replayed the events of the evening. The two cars from the Europa, the red Escort and the blue Vauxhall. The two rendezvous sites Maguire had missed, the embankment on the River Lagan and the Botanic Gardens. He thought about Maguire himself—the chainsmoking, the sweating, the long journey down old roads. Had Maguire been jittery because he feared he was being watched? Or was he feeling guilty because he was setting up his old case officer?

They turned from the roadway onto an unpaved pitted track. The car bounced and rocked from side to side. Michael groaned involuntarily when a burst of pain from his broken ribs tore through his side like a knifepoint.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Osbourne,” a voice called out from inside the car. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Five minutes later the car drew to a stop. The trunk opened, and Michael felt a gust of wet wind. Two of the men took hold of his arms and pulled him out. Suddenly he was standing upright. He could feel the rain hammering on his head wounds despite the hood. He tried to take a step, but his knees buckled. His captors caught him before he hit the ground. Michael draped one arm around each of them, and they carried him into a stone cottage. They passed through a series of rooms and doorways, Michael’s feet dragging along the floorboards. A moment later he was placed in a hard straight-backed chair.

“When you hear the door close, Mr. Osbourne, you may remove the hood. There’s warm water and a washcloth. Clean yourself up. You have a visitor.”

Michael removed the hood; it was stiff with dried blood. He squinted in the harsh light. The room was bare except for a table and two chairs. The peeling floral wallpaper reminded him of the guest cottage at Cannon Point. On the table was a white enamel basin filled with water. Next to the basin was a cloth and a small shaving mirror. There was a peephole in the door so they could watch him.

Michael inspected his face in the mirror. His eyes were bruised and nearly swollen shut. There was a deep cut in the soft tissue above his left eye that needed stitches. His lips were puffy and split, and there was a large abrasion across his right cheek. His hair was matted with blood. There was a reason they had given him a mirror. The IRA had studied the art of interrogation well; they wanted him to feel weak, inferior, and ugly. The British and the RUC Special Branch had used those same techniques on the IRA for three decades.

Michael carefully removed his coat and pulled up the sleeves of his sweater. He soaked the cloth in the warm water and went to work on his face, gently wiping away blood from his eyes, his mouth, and his nose. He leaned his head over the basin and washed the blood from his hair. He carefully ran a comb through his hair and looked at the mirror again. His features were still hideously distorted, but he had managed to remove most of the blood.

A fist hammered on the door.

“Put the hood back on,” the voice said.

Michael remained still.

“I said put the fucking hood on.”

“It’s covered with blood,” Michael said. “I want a clean one.”

He heard footsteps outside the door and angry shouts in Gaelic. A few seconds later the door burst open and a man wearing a balaclava strode into the room. He grabbed the bloody hood and pulled it roughly over Michael’s head.

“The next time I tell you to put the hood on, you put the fucking thing on,” he said. “You understand me?”

Michael said nothing. The door closed, and he was alone again. They had imposed their will on him, but he had won a small victory. They left him sitting that way, wearing a hood that stank of his own blood, for twenty minutes. He could hear voices in the house, and somewhere a long way off he thought he heard a scream. Finally, he heard the door open and close again. A man had entered the room. Michael could hear him breathing and he could smell him: cigarettes, hair tonic, a breath of a woman’s cologne that reminded him of Sarah. The man settled into the remaining chair. He must have been a large man, because the chair crackled beneath his weight.

“You can remove the hood now, Mr. Osbourne.”

The voice was confident and naturally rich in timbre, a leader’s voice. Michael removed the hood, placed it on the table, and looked directly into the eyes of the person seated across the table. He was a man of blunt edges—a broad flat forehead, heavy cheekbones, the flattened nose of a pugilist. The cleft in his square chin looked as though it had been chipped away with a hatchet. He wore a white dress shirt and tie, charcoal-gray trousers, and a matching waistcoat. The bright blue eyes burned with light and intelligence. For some reason he was smiling.

Michael recognized the face from Cynthia Martin’s files at Headquarters: a prison photograph from the Maze, where the man had spent several years in the eighties.

“Jesus Christ! I told my men to give you a wee hiding, but it looks as though they gave you a real pasting instead. Sorry, but sometimes the lads get a little carried away.”

Michael said nothing.

“Your name is Michael Osbourne, and you work for the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. Several years ago you recruited an agent inside the Irish Republican Army named Kevin Maguire. You ran Maguire in a joint operation with MI5. When you returned to Virginia you handed Maguire to another case officer, a man named Buchanan. Don’t bother to deny any of this, Mr. Osbourne. We don’t have the time, and I mean you no harm.”

Michael said nothing. The man was right; he could deny everything, say it was all a mistake, but it would only prolong his captivity, and it might lead to another beating.

“Do you know who I am, Mr. Osbourne?”

Michael nodded.

“Humor me,” he said, lighting two cigarettes, keeping one for himself and handing one to Michael. After a moment a pall of smoke hung between them.

“Your name is Seamus Devlin.”

“Do you know what I do?”

“You’re the head of IRA Intelligence.”

There was a sharp knock at the door and a few murmured words in Gaelic.

Devlin said, “Turn around and face the wall.”

The door opened, and Michael heard someone enter the room and place an object on the table. The door closed again.

“You can turn around now,” Devlin said.

The object that had been laid on the table was a tray with a pot of tea, two chipped enamel mugs, and a small pitcher of milk. Devlin poured tea for both of them.

“I hope you’ve learned a valuable lesson tonight, Mr. Osbourne. I hope you’ve learned that you can’t penetrate this army and get away with it. You think we’re just a bunch of stupid Taigs? A bunch of dumb Micks from the bogs? The IRA has been fighting the British government for nearly a hundred years on this island. We’ve picked up a thing or two about the intelligence business along the way.”

Michael drank his tea and remained silent.

“By the way, if it makes you feel any better, it was Buchanan who led us to Maguire, not you. The IRA has a special unit that follows volunteers suspected of treason. The unit is so secret I’m the only one who knows the identities of the members. I had Maguire followed in London last year, and we saw him meeting with Buchanan.”

That piece of news didn’t make Michael feel any better. “Why grab me?” he said.

“Because I want to tell you something.” Devlin leaned across the table with his dockworker’s hands beneath his chin. “The CIA and the British services are trying to track down the members of the Ulster Freedom Brigade. I think the IRA can be of help. After all, it’s in our interests too that this violence be brought under control quickly.”

“What do you have?”

“A weapons cache in the Sperrin Mountains,” Devlin said. “It’s not ours, and we don’t think it belongs to one of the other Protestant paramilitaries.”

“Where in the Sperrin Mountains?”

“A farmhouse outside the village of Cranagh.” Devlin handed Michael a slip of paper with a crudely drawn map showing the location of the farm.

Michael said, “What have you seen?”

“Trucks coming and going, crates being unloaded, the usual.”

“People?”

“A couple of lads seem to live there full time. They patrol the fields around the house regularly. Well armed, I might add.”

“Does the IRA still have the farm under watch?”

“We pulled back. We don’t have the equipment to do it right.”

“Why give this to me? Why not give it to the British or the RUC?”

“Because I don’t trust them, and I never will. Remember, there are some elements within the RUC and British Intelligence who have cooperated with the Protestant paramilitaries over the years. I want these Protestant bastards stopped before they drag us into a full-scale war again, and I don’t trust the British and the RUC to do the job alone.” Devlin crushed out his cigarette. He looked at Michael and smiled again. “Now, was that worth a couple of cuts and scrapes?”

“Fuck you, Devlin,” Michael said.

Devlin burst out laughing. “You’re free to go now. Put on your coat. I want to show you something before you leave.”

Michael followed Devlin through the house. The air smelled of frying bacon. Devlin led him through a sitting room into a kitchen with copper pots hanging above the stove. It might have been something out of an Irish country magazine, if not for the half-dozen men seated around the table, glaring at Michael through the slits in their balaclavas.

“You’ll need this,” Devlin said, taking a wool cap from the rack next to the door and placing it carefully on Michael’s swollen scalp. “A dirty night out tonight, I’m afraid.”

Michael followed Devlin along a muddy footpath. It was so dark he might as well have been wearing the hood again. He could see the outline of Devlin’s wrestler’s physique in front of him, marching along the path, and he felt himself strangely drawn to him. When they reached the barn, Devlin hammered on the door and murmured something in (Gaelic. Then he pulled open the door and led Michael inside.

It took Michael a few seconds to realize that the man tied to the chair was Kevin Maguire. He was naked and shivering with cold and terror. He had been beaten savagely. His face was horribly distorted, and blood flowed from a dozen different cuts—above his eyes, on his cheeks, around his mouth. Both eyes were swollen shut. There were wounds on every part of his body: contusions, abrasions, lacerations from being whipped with a belt, burns from cigarettes being ground into his skin. He was sitting in his own excrement. Three men in balaclavas stood guard around him.

“This is what we do to touts in the IRA, Mr. Osbourne,” Devlin said. “Remember this the next time you try to convince one of our men to betray the IRA and his people.”

Maguire said, “Michael, is that you?”

Michael moved forward carefully, slipping between Maguire’s tormentors and kneeling at his side. He knew there was nothing he could say, so he just wiped some of the blood from his eyes and laid a hand gently on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Kevin,” Michael said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “My God, I’m so sorry!”