Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (22 page)

"They were killed because the UVF said my da' was a traitor. My mum was Lorna Flynn, a Catholic from Derry. Da' hid me in the backseat of our car under a blanket just before the masked men approached the car. I heard the whole thing. I heard my da' beg them not to hurt my mum, I heard my mum screaming, and then I heard them both being shot. I was eleven years old."

He recounted the story without emotion. For him it was just something he lived with every day and he hadn't felt one way or another about it for years. It was just a fact, a sad part of the story of his life, a life he'd hoped had moved away from death and violence and war towards a successful marriage and a family of his own. He sat down on the edge of the queen bed and waited for her to gather her thoughts.

"So there's more?" she said, finally looking up at him and wiping away tears. "You didn't just lie about where you were born and who your parents were, did you?"

He winced. Her words felt like a razor blade being dragged repeatedly across his conscience.

"Yeah, there's more," he said, after a moment. "After my parents died I was sent to live in a Catholic orphanage in County Armagh. I lived there until I was fourteen. I ran away with an older boy after we intervened in a rape being committed by one of the clergy."

He stopped talking momentarily as Constance's face softened, but she continued to dab away tears.

"On the streets I met up with and joined the IRA as an angry young man who thought revenge for the wrong done to him was all that mattered. I spent nearly ten years in their ranks before I realized I wasn't solving problems, I was perpetuating them."

"So you were a member of a terrorist organization?" she asked. Her voice was full of indignation, but the look in her eyes communicated sorrow, although whether it was sorrow because he'd lied and wasn't who she thought he was or because of the story he'd just told her, he wasn't sure. "Why did you feel like you had to lie to me about it?" she asked, and he took his time forming his reply. He knew exactly how important this was.

"Because I wasn't exactly proud of who I was, who I had been and the things I'd done,” he said, eventually. “I just wanted to move on. I wanted someone to look at me as more than just a sad son of a bitch who'd picked up a gun to solve his problems. I wanted to be someone different, and I was, in your eyes, it seemed. America was my chance to start over. To have the life my da' always wanted his family to have, but never got the chance to give them. Now all of this has happened and I feel like I'm right back on the streets of Belfast."

For some reason that he couldn't put his finger on, Declan was angry. He felt like he couldn't breathe. Pulling his coat on, he opened the door and walked out into the cold mountain night.

Minutes later he stood at the end of the rickety pier thirty yards from the front door of the cabin. He lit a match and placed it into the end of his churchwarden pipe, inhaling the first burst of smoke from the cherry tobacco. He only smoked when something was bothering him. Flicking the lit match into the air towards the black water in front of him, he watched as the orange light moved through the air and vanished with an audible hiss. In its absence he realized exactly how dark it was at night without any street lights nearby.

A brief light broke the darkness again as the front door to the cabin opened. He took another drag from the pipe and exhaled slowly as he felt a pair of slender arms slide around his waist in a light embrace, followed by a head resting against his back. He held the pipe between his teeth and placed his hands over his wife's arms.

"None of this is your fault," she said after several moments of holding him silently. "I didn't marry you because you were a fisherman from Galway. I married you because I loved you, and I love you now. I don't understand everything that's happened, but my feeling is that the outcome would have been much different if you weren't who you are."

One of the things he loved most about her was that she never held a grudge. No matter how angry she got, she worked through it quickly and always had a clear way of thinking about things afterwards. This time, as usual, she was right, whether he liked it or not. If not for his past experiences, the outcome of several situations would have been much different. For starters, he'd be dead, the two goons on the highway would have seen to that, and the other two waiting in the park would have killed Constance. Despite the sins of his past, they were both alive now because he was a trained killer. He silenced the thought that if he hadn't been, he never would have met Kafni and none of this would have even happened. Following such thoughts led a man in circles.

"It's not that I didn't want you to know that I'd done some bad things," he said. "I wasn't running from you, I was running from myself. I'd been running for years. When we met, for the first time I actually dared to believe that I could have a normal life."

"And we do have a normal life," she said, moving around to face him. "Or at least we did."

He snorted a short laugh and said, "Yeah, past tense. Abe's timing has always been an issue."

She hugged him tightly and rested her head against his chest. "How'd you meet him?"

"He was a Mossad agent working illegally in Belfast. He was acting on intelligence Israel had received that Arafat's PLO was being aided by the IRA. The 'ra was helping to train some of Arafat's men in the use of IEDs in exchange for shipments of weapons and semtex. I was on the outs by then, most of the right-wingers I'd run with were dead. I supplied him with some dates and times. Earned myself a right good beating for it, too," he said, tracing his index finger down a small scar beside his right eye. "They'd have killed me that night for being a tout if Abe and two of his men hadn't shown up."

"He saved your life?"

"Aye. Moved me to the Republic that same night, to a Mossad safe house in Galway. The Brits didn't have anything on me so I was able to leave the country on a freighter heading to Boston."

"And once he quit Mossad and came to the U.S. you two met up again," she said.

He nodded. "I worked in Boston doing the only thing I knew how to do, smuggling and gun running. I got wind of an assassination plot that my employer was involved in and found out that Kafni was the target."

"And you saved his life to return the favor he did you?"

"Aye."

Several minutes passed as they stood holding each other in silence.

"What do we do now?" she asked, finally breaking the silence.

Declan shook his head. "I don't know. My mind keeps going back to that FBI agent, the one who interviewed me in the hospital. He was combative from the very beginning and stopped just short of accusing me of being involved. It was his voice on that phone a while ago, I'm sure of it."

She drew back and looked up at him as if she was studying his face to see if he was serious.

"I met him too," she said finally, “in the waiting room last night. I didn't really think much of it at the time, but I got a weird feeling from him. He kept insisting that he needed to talk to you right away, but the doctors and nurses wouldn't let him."

Her voice trailed off and he knew she was thinking the same thing he was. If an FBI agent was involved then they were in a lot of trouble. Not only did it mean that the people against them weren't just some two bit thugs, it meant there was a much wider conspiracy that could involve countless numbers of people. What did they do now? Run?

Declan felt a surge of anger rise inside him as he considered the options. He and Constance had built a life together and if they ran then that life would crumble away into nothing. Sure, they could rebuild somewhere else and probably even live safely, but they'd never be able to stop looking over their shoulders and he didn't want that kind of life. He'd been down that road before and had determined to leave it behind.

"That's why I didn't want to go to the police. If there's some kind of conspiracy going on, then we'd just end up back in the same situation. By coming here, by disappearing, we've got the advantage. We get to decide when and where we surface, or even if we surface."

6:46 a.m. Eastern Time – Sunday

Lynchburg Federal Building

Lynchburg, Virginia

Seth Castellano sat alone in the fourth floor field office his counterterrorism unit had taken over thirty-six hours earlier. The other agents assigned to the case were either out, following the hundreds of leads that had poured in through the FBI's eyewitness hotlines, or had taken a few hours off to freshen up and get some rest. He'd spent most of the night going over ways to spin the fact that Declan McIver had killed the four assassins that had been sent to make sure that what he knew never reached the ears of the public at large.

Castellano had had a pretty good idea that McIver was hiding something when he'd first begun to pull information on the man after learning his identity at the hospital, and the deaths of the four men all but proved it. Now the question wasn't
if
McIver was hiding something, but
what
.

Shortly before 11 p.m. the previous night, Castellano had received word from the Virginia State Police that a vehicle belonging to DCM Properties had been found overturned along a deserted section of a four lane highway between Lynchburg and Roanoke and that two bodies had been nearby. He'd immediately ordered his agents in the field to secure the scene and to prevent any of the local or state police from contaminating it. By the time he'd arrived to have a closer look, he'd also learned that the Roanoke City Police had found two more bodies near a warehouse owned by the same company.

Now, with four suspicious bodies attached to property ostensibly belonging to Declan McIver, he was beginning to feel much better about their chances of success. Even with McIver still on the loose, the bodies meant a huge hit to his credibility and he would have a lot of questions to answer when he was located. In the meantime, Castellano was sure that he could make the four dead men work in his and David Kemiss's favor if he could figure out the right angle.

Castellano's thoughts were interrupted by the bell on the elevator. He turned in his chair to see an agent entering the office. "Good morning, Agent Kelly," he said.

Kelly placed a black computer bag on one of the many desks and took a seat. "Good morning, sir. Have you been here all night?" She was one of the newest agents in his unit, but one of the most experienced investigators on the team, having had many years of prior service in the FBI. She was middle-aged with scraggly, dark hair and a lined face. Not the most attractive person, but certainly one of the most motivated agents he had under his command.

Castellano nodded. "No rest for the wicked, I suppose."

"No rest here either, sir, I spent most of the night trying to locate a lead that I thought you might be interested in, in light of last night's discoveries."

"Oh?"

Kelly zipped open the computer bag and withdrew a tip sheet. "I remembered seeing this yesterday morning and didn't think much of it. At the time it seemed like just another nutjob calling in conspiracy theories, but since those bodies were found near Kafni's former bodyguard's property...I thought maybe there was more to it."

Castellano reached out and took the tip sheet. Looking it over he said, "What kind of name is Lorcan O'Rourke?"

"Irish, I believe, sir."

"Well, let's see if we can get him on the phone, shall we?"

Kelly took the tip sheet back and dialed the phone number listed. Pressing the speaker button, the agents listened as the phone rang on the other end.

"Yeah?" a gruff voice answered.

"Is this Lorcan O'Rourke?" Castellano said, over-enunciating the name.

"Depends on who's asking, boyo." The voice was accented and when the man spoke it sounded as though he was gargling broken glass. Whoever he was, he needed to lay off the cigarettes or else he was going to have a serious disagreement with cancer before long.

"You're speaking with Assistant Special Agent in Charge Seth Castellano, at the FBI. I understand that you phoned one of our tip lines and said you had information on the Kafni investigation, is that correct?"

"Well, boyo, I have some information that might be related to your investigation and it might not be. It's more of an additional direction you could take a look in, besides Islamic terrorism."

"You indicated that your information had something to do with a former bodyguard. Why don't you tell me more about that?"

"Aye. Have you run across a man named Declan McIver in your investigation yet?"

Castellano couldn't believe his ears. Had the man just said Declan McIver? He sure as hell had, and now Castellano was listening intently. "I can't comment on an ongoing investigation, sir. You'll have to tell me what it is that you have and I'll decide from there whether it's something we need to pursue."

"McIver used to be a member of Kafni's security detail back in the late nineties, but before that he worked for me, as a smuggler. Turned out to be quite a lot of trouble, too, and cost me a damn fortune. After thirty years at sea, I can tell you that he's the worst thing I've ever plucked out of the Atlantic Ocean."