the Savage Day - Simon Vaughn 02 (v5) (12 page)

'Your present activities.'

'I like a fight.' He shrugged. 'Korea wasn't all that bad if it hadn't been for the bloody cold. And life gets so damn boring, don't you think?'

'Some people might think that was a pretty poor excuse.'

'My reasons don't matter, Vaughan, it's what I'm doing for the Cause that counts.'

We had reached the hall and he put the candelabrum down on the table and took out the handcuffs. I held out my wrists.

He said, 'Thirty years ago, if I'd been doing exactly what I'm doing today for the resistance in France or Norway I'd have been looked upon as a gallant hero. Strange how perspective changes with the point of view.'

'Not mine,' I said.

He looked at me closely, 'And what do you believe in, Vaughan?'

'Nothing. I can't afford to.'

'A man after my own heart.' He turned to Dooley and jerked his thumb downwards. 'Take him back to the others for now.'

He picked up the candelabrum and went upstairs. I stood watching him for a moment, then Dooley put the muzzle of the Sterling in my back and prodded me towards the door.

When I was returned to the cell, Binnie was fast asleep on the cot, his head to one side, mouth slightly open. When the door closed, he stirred slightly, but did not waken. The Brigadier put a finger to his lips, moved to check that the boy was genuinely asleep, then crossed to the table and we both sat down.

'A pretty kettle of fish,' he said. 'What's been happening to you?'

I told him and in detail, for in some way almost everything Barry had said to me seemed important, if only because of the way in which it threw some light on the man himself.

When I'd finished, the Brigadier nodded. 'It makes sense that he would ask you to go to Oban. After all, you're on call to the highest bidder as far as he knows and you couldn't very well go running to the police.'

'He said he'll be seeing me later, presumably to discuss the deal further. What do I say?'

'You accept, of course, all along the line.'

'And what about you?'

'God knows. What do you think he'd do if you told GHQ where I was and they sent the Royal Marine Commandos to get me out.'

'He'd use you as a hostage. Try to bargain.'

'And if that failed, and it would fail because the moment the government gives in to that kind of blackmail it's finished, what would he do then?'

'Put a bullet through your head.'

'Exactly.'

The bolts rattled again, the door was flung open with a crash that brought Binnie up off the cot to his feet. He stood there, swaying slightly, wiping sleep from his eyes with the back of a hand.

Dooley was back again with a couple of men this time. 'Outside, all of you,' one of them ordered roughly.

We followed the same route as before, up through the green baize door to the hall, then mounted the marble stairs to the main landing and turned along the corridor. We paused at another of those tall double doors, Dooley opened it and led the way in.

It was a rather similar room to the old man's although there was no bed, but it was pleasantly furnished in Regency style. Norah Murphy sat in a chair by the fire, her hands tightly folded in her lap. Barry stood beside her, a hand on the back of the chair.

'Good, then as we're all here, we can get started. I should tell you gentlemen that Dr Murphy is being more than a trifle stubborn. She has certain information I need rather badly which she stupidly insists on keeping to herself.' He put a hand on her shoulder. 'Shall we try again? What happened to the bullion, Norah? Where's he hidden it?'

'You go to hell,' she said crisply. 'If I did know, you're the last man on earth I'd tell.'

'A great pity.' He nodded to Dooley, speaking slowly, enunciating the words so that he could read his lips. 'Come and hold her.'

Dooley slung his Sterling over one shoulder and moved behind the chair. Norah tried to get up and he shoved her down and twisted her arms back cruelly, holding her firm.

Barry leaned down to the fire. When he turned, he was holding a poker, the end of which was red-hot. Binnie gave a desperate cry, took a step forward and got the butt of a Sterling in the kidneys.

He went down on one knee and Barry said coldly, 'If any one of them makes a move, put a bullet in him.'

He turned to Norah, grabbed her hair, turning her face up to him and held the poker over her. 'I'll ask you once more, Norah. Where's the bullion?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'You're wasting your time. This will get you nowhere.'

He touched her cheek with the tip of the poker, there was a plume of smoke, the smell of burning flesh. She gave a terrible cry and fainted.

Binnie forced himself up on one knee and put out a hand in appeal. 'It's the truth she's telling you. Nobody knows where the gold is except the Small Man himself. Not even her because that's the way he wanted it.'

Barry looked down at him, frowning for a long moment, then he nodded. 'All right, I'll buy that. Where is he now?'

Binnie got to his feet and stood swaying, a hand to his back, not saying a word. Barry grabbed the unconscious girl by the hair again, the poker raised in threat.

'You tell me, damn you or I'll mark the other side of her face.'

'All right,' Binnie said. 'But much good it'll do you. He's in the old hidey-hole in the Sperrins and there's nothing he'd like better than for you and your men to try and take him there.'

Barry underwent another personality change, became once again the smiling, genial man I'd taken wine with earlier. He dropped the poker into the fireplace and nodded to Dooley.

'Take her into the bedroom.'

Dooley picked her up effortlessly, crossed the room and kicked open a door on the far side. Barry moved to a sideboard and poured himself a whiskey. When he turned he was smiling. 'I wouldn't get within ten miles of that farmhouse. There isn't a farm labourer or shepherd or snotty-nosed little boy in every village you touch on up there who isn't another pair of eyes for the Small Man.'

'Exactly,' Binnie said.

'I know,' Barry nodded. 'But you, Binnie, they'd welcome with open arms.'

Binnie stared at him amazement on his face. 'You must be mad.'

'No, I'm not, old love, I've never been saner in my life. You're going to go and see my old friend Michael for me and you're going to point out the obvious and unpleasant fact that I'm holding his favourite niece. If I get the gold or details of its whereabouts, he gets her back in one piece. If I don't...'

'By God, they broke the mould when they made you,' Binnie said. 'I'll kill you for this, Barry. Before God, I will.'

Barry sighed heavily and patted the boy's face. 'Binnie, Cork's milk and water religion, his let's-sit-down-and-talk, isn't going to win this war. It's people like me who are willing to go all the way.'

'And to hell with the cost?' the Brigadier put in. 'The slaughter of the innocents all over again.'

When Barry turned to him there was a madness in his eyes that chilled the blood.

'If that's what's needed,' he said. 'We won't shirk the price, any price, because we are strong and you are weak.' He turned back to Binnie. 'With that gold I buy enough arms to take on the whole British Army. What will the Small Man do with it?'

Binnie stared at him, that slightly dazed look on his face again, and Barry, calmer now, patted him on the shoulder. 'You'll leave at dawn, Binnie. It's a good time on the back roads. Nice and quiet. It shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours to get there. I'll give you a good car.'

Binnie's shoulders sagged. 'All right.' It was almost a whisper.

'Good lad.' Barry patted him again and looked straight at me. 'And we'll send the Major along, just to keep you company. That public school accent of his should be guaranteed to get you past any road blocks you run into, especially with the kind of papers I'll provide him with. All right, Major Vaughan?'

'Do I have any choice?'

'I shouldn't think so.'

He gave me that lazy, genial smile of his, looking more than ever like Francis the Fourth of the portrait up there in the gallery. I didn't smile back because I was thinking of Norah, remembering the stink of her flesh burning, considering with some care exactly how I was going to give it to him when the time came.

10
Run for your Life

Barry himself disappeared and a great deal seemed to happen after that. The Brigadier was hauled off to his cell. Binnie and I, rather puzzlingly, had our pictures taken by one of Barry's men using a flash camera.

Afterwards, we were taken by way of the back stairs to a bedroom on the next floor. It was comfortable enough, with dark mahogany furniture and brass bedstead, a faded Indian carpet on the floor. There was a familiar-looking suitcase on the bed. As I approached it, Barry came into the room.

'I had your stuff brought up from the boat, old lad. I don't think those sea-going togs of yours will be exactly appropriate for this little affair. Suit, collar and tie, raincoat - or something of that order. Can you oblige?'

'Everything except the raincoat.'

'No problem there.'

'What about Binnie?'

Barry turned to look at him. 'As impeccable as usual. All done up to go to somebody's funeral.'

'Yours maybe?' Binnie said and I noticed that his forehead was damp with sweat.

Barry chuckled, not in the least put out. 'You always were a comfort, Binnie boy.' He turned to me. 'There's a bathroom through there. Plenty of hot water. No bars on the window, but it's fifty feet down to the courtyard and two men on the door, so behave yourselves. I'll see you later.'

The door closed behind him. Binnie went to the window, opened it and stood there breathing deeply on the damp air as if to steady himself.

I said, 'Are you all right?'

He turned, that look on his face again. 'For what he has done to Norah Murphy he is a dead man walking, Major. He is mine for the taking when the time comes. Nothing can alter that.'

Something cold moved inside me then, fear, I suppose, at his utter implacability which went so much beyond mere hatred. There was a power in this boy, an elemental force that would carry him through most things.

A dead man walking, he had called Frank Barry, and I wondered what he would call me on that day of reckoning when he discovered my true motives.

Which was all decidedly unpleasant, so I left him there by the window staring out to sea, went into the bathroom and ran a bath.

I dressed in a brown polo-neck sweater, Donegal tweed suit and brown brogues. The end result coupled with the bath and a shave was something of an improvement. Binnie, who seemed to have recovered his spirits a little, sat on the edge of the bed watching me. As I pulled on my jacket and checked the general effect in the wardrobe mirror he whistled softly.

'By God, Major, but you look grand. Just like one of them fellas in the whiskey adverts in the magazines.'

I had the distinct impression that he might break into laughter at any moment, an unusual event indeed. 'And the toe of my boot to you, too, you young bastard.'

We were prevented from carrying the conversation any further for at that moment the door opened and the guards ordered us outside.

This time we were taken all the way down to the kitchen, where we were given a really excellent meal with another bottle of that Sancerre Barry had liked so much to share between us. It was all rather pleasant in spite of the guards in the background.

As we were finishing, Barry appeared, the formidable Dooley at his back. He had an old trenchcoat over one arm which he dropped across the back of a chair.

'That should keep out the weather and these should get you past any road blocks you run into, military or police.'

There were two Military Intelligence identity cards, each with its photo, which explained the camera work earlier. Binnie was a Sergeant O'Meara. I had become Captain Geoffrey Hamilton. There was also a very authentic-looking travel permit authorizing me to proceed from Strabane to interrogate an IRA suspect named Malloy being held at police headquarters there.

I passed Binnie his ID card. 'These are really very good indeed.'

'They should be. They're the real thing.' He turned to Binnie. The boys will take you down to the garage now so you can check the car. The Major and I will be along in a few minutes.'

Binnie glanced at me briefly. I nodded and he got up and went out, followed by two of the guards. Dooley stood by the door watching me woodenly, his Sterling at the ready. I pulled on the trenchcoat.

Barry took a couple of packets of cigarettes from his pocket and shoved them across the table. 'For the journey.'

He stood watching me, hands in pockets, as I stowed them away. 'Very nice of you,' I said. 'Now what do you want?'

'Binnie is inclined to be a little emotional where Norah is concerned, but not me.'

'I must say I had rather got that impression,' I said.

'As far as I'm concerned she's just a medium of exchange. You make that clear to Cork, just in case Binnie doesn't get the message across.' He turned and nodded to Dooley, who went out of the room immediately. The first sign of anything untoward at all, Dooley puts a bullet in her head.'

'In other words you mean business?'

'I hope I've made that clear enough.'

'And Norah?'

'She's okay,' he said callously. 'When last seen she was giving herself an injection from that bag of hers. Of course she'll have a fair old scar from now on, but then I always say that kind of thing gives a person character.'

He was baiting me, I think, but I played him at his own game. 'Just like a broken nose?'

'Exactly.' He laughed, yet frowned a little. 'By God, but you're a cold fish, Vaughan. What does it take to get you roused?'

That usually comes half way through the second bottle of Jameson,' I said. 'There's this click inside my head and ...'

He raised a hand. 'All right, you win. We'd better see how Binnie is getting on. You haven't got much time.'

The garage had obviously been the coach house in other days and stood on the far side of the courtyard. Binnie was checking the engine of a green Cortina GT when I went in, watched impassively by the guards. He dropped the bonnet and wiped his hands on a rag.

'Where did you knock this off?' he demanded.

Barry grinned. 'According to the papers in the glove compartment, it's on loan from a car hire firm in Belfast, which is exactly as it should be. When they're in plain clothes the Field Security boys don't like to use military vehicles.'

'You think of everything,' I said.

'I try to, old lad, it's the only way.' He glanced at his watch. 'It's just after four so you should be there by seven at the outside. Six o'clock tonight is your deadline. Nothing to come for after that, which I trust you'll make plain to Small Michael for me.'

Binnie slid behind the wheel without a word and I got in the passenger seat. Barry leaned down to the window. 'By the way, Field Security personnel are supposed to go armed during the present emergency so you'll find a couple of Brownings in the glove compartment. Army issue, naturally, only don't try turning round at the gate and coming back in like a two-man commando. That really would be very silly.'

Binnie slipped the handbrake and took the Cortina away with a burst of speed that wouldn't have disgraced the starting line at Monza and Barry had to jump for it pretty sharply.

The needle was flickering at fifty as we left the courtyard and it kept on climbing. The result was that we were skidding to a halt in a shower of gravel at the private gate giving access to the main road within no more than a couple of minutes.

I got out, opened the gate and closed it again after Binnie had driven through. When I returned to the car, the glove compartment was open and he was checking a Browning, a grim look on his face in the light from the dashboard.

I said, 'I wouldn't if I were you, Binnie. He meant it. Dooley is her shadow from now on with orders to kill at even a hint of trouble.'

For a moment, he clutched the Browning so tightly that his knuckles turned white and then something seemed to go out of him and he pushed it into his inside breast pocket.

'You're right,' he said. 'Only the Small Man can help now. We'd better get moving.'

'Can I ask where?'

'He has a place in the Sperrins - an old farmhouse in a valley near a mountain called Mullaclogha. We need to be on the other side of Mount Hamilton on the Plumbridge road.'

'Do you anticipate a clear run?'

'God knows. I'll use what back roads I can. For the rest, we'll just have to take it as it comes.'

He drove away at a much more moderate speed this time and I dropped the seat back a little, closed my eyes and went to sleep. I was out completely for the first hour which passed entirely without incident and dozed fitfully during the next half, so that it must have been somewhere around five-thirty when he nudged me sharply in the ribs with his left elbow.

'We've got company, Major. Looks like a road block up ahead.'

I raised my seat as he started to slow. It was raining again, a slight, persistent drizzle. There were two Land-Rovers, a barrier across the road, half-a-dozen soldiers, all wearing rubber capes against the rain and looking thoroughly miserable, which, in view of the time and the weather, was understandable enough.

I leaned out of the window, identity card and movement order in hand, and called, 'Who's in charge here?'

A young sergeant got out of the nearest Land-Rover and crossed to the Cortina. He was wearing a flak jacket and camouflaged uniform, but no cape. He was prepared to be belligerent, I could see by the set of his jaw, so I forestalled him quickly.

'Captain Hamilton, Field Security, and I'm in one hell of a hurry so get the barrier out of the way, there's a good chap.'

It worked like a charm. He took one look at the documents, saluted swiftly as he passed them back, then turned to bark an order at his men. A moment later and the lights of the road block were fading into the darkness.

'Like taking toffee off a kid,' Binnie crowed. 'I can see now what Barry meant about you having the right manner, Major.'

As a junior officer I once served with an old colonel who had spent a hair-raising three months on his journey to the Swiss border after escaping from a Polish prison camp. Three miles from his destination he paused in a village inn to wait for darkness. He was arrested by a colonel of mountain troops who only happened to be there because his car had broken down on the way through. It seems he had been a member of a party of German officers who had visited Sandhurst in 1934 when the old boy was an instructor there. He had been recognized instantly in spite of the circumstances, the years between and the brevity of the original meeting.

Time and chance, the right place at the wrong time or vice versa. Fate grabbing you by the trouser leg. How could I speak to Binnie of things like these? What purpose would it serve?

The truth is, I suppose, that I was experiencing one of poor old Meyer's famous bad feelings, which didn't exactly help because it simply made me think of him with some sadness, and other good men dead on sombre grey mornings like this.

We pulled in at a filling station which was closed as far as I could see. In any case, according to the gauge there was plenty of petrol in the tank.

'What's this?' I demanded.

'I need to make a phone call,' Binnie said as he opened the door. 'Ask a friend to tell a friend we'll meet him in a certain place.'

He was beginning to sound more like an IRA man in one of those old Hollywood movies by the minute. I watched him go into the telephone-box at the side of the building. He wasn't long. I noticed it was six o'clock and switched on the radio to get the news.

To my astonishment, the first thing I heard was my own name, then Norah Murphy's.

Binnie got back in the car. 'That's all right then. We're expected.'

'Shut up and listen,' I said.

The announcer's voice moved on, 'The police are also anxious to trace James Aloysius Gallagher.' There followed as accurate a description of Binnie as any hard-working police officer could reasonably have hoped for.

He was behind the wheel in an instant and we were away. I kept the radio on and it couldn't have been worse. The bodies of Captain Stacey and Sergeant Grey had been discovered by a farmer during the past hour and the absence of the Brigadier and the three of us could only lead to one conclusion.

'God save us, Major,' Binnie said as the broadcast finished. 'At a conservative estimate I'd say they've got half the British Army out on this one.'

'And then some,' I said. 'How much further?'

'Ten or fifteen miles, that's all. I bypassed Draperstown just before I stopped. You'd see the mountains on the right here if it wasn't for the rain and mist.'

'Have we any more towns to pass through?'

'Mount Hamilton, and there's no way round. We take a road up into the mountains about three miles on the other side.'

'All right,' I said. 'So we go through, nice and easy. If anything goes wrong, put your foot down and drive like hell and never mind the gunplay.'

'Ah, go teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Major,' he said.

The young bastard was enjoying it, that was the thing. This was meat and drink to him, a great wonderful game that was for real. Always for real. He sat there, hunched over the wheel, cap over his eyes, the collar of his undertaker's overcoat turned up, and there was a slight pale smile on his face.