Cathedral (3 page)

Collins stepped up to the van and struck the rear doors with his rifle butt. "Guardst Yoifre surroundedl Open the doors and you won't be harmed!"

Maureen knelt in the road, her rifle across her knees. She felt her heart beating heavily in her chest. The idea of freeing her sister had become an obsession over the months and had, she realized, clouded her judgment.

Suddenly all the things that were wrong with this operation crystallized in her mind-the van riding very low as though it were weighted, the lack of an escort, the predictable route. "Run! Collins-"

She saw Collins's surprised face under the glare of a streetlamp as the doors swung out from the RUC van.

Collins stood paralyzed in front of the open doors and stared at the British paratrooper berets over the top of a sandbag wall. The two barrels of the machine guns blazed in his face.

Flynn watched as his four men were cut down. One machine gun continued to pour bullets into the bodies while the other shifted its fire and riddled the sedan with incendiary rounds, hitting the gas tank and blowing it up.

The street echoed with the explosion and the chattering sound of the machine guns, and the night was illuminated by the fire of the burning sedan.

Maureen grabbed Flynn's arm and pulled him toward their truck as pistol shots rang out from the doorway where the guard and driver had disappeared.

She fired a full magazine into the doorway and the shooting stopped. The streets were alive with the sounds of whistles, shouting, and running men, and they could hear motor vehicles closing in.

Flynn turned and saw that the truck's windshield was 25

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shot out and the tires were flat. Fitzgerald and Devane were running up the street. Fitzgerald's body jerked, and he slid across the cobblestones.

Devane kept running and disappeared into a bombed-out building.

Behind him Flynn could hear soldiers jumping from the RUC van and racing toward them. He pulled Maureen's arm, and they started to run as a light rain began to fall.

Donegall Street entered Waring Street from the north, and they turned into it, bullets kicking up chips of cobble behind them. Maureen slipped on the wet stone and fell, her rifle clattering on the pavement and skidding away in the darkness. Flynn lifted her, and they ran into a long alleyway, coming out into Hill Street.

A British Saracen armored car rolled into the street, its six huge rubber wheels skidding as it turned. Tle Saracen's spotlight came on and found them. The armored car turned and came directly at them, its loudspeaker blaring into the rainy night. "HALTI HANDS ON YOUR HEADSP'

Behind him Flynn could hear the paratroopers coming into the long alley.

He pulled the cardboard tube from his trench coat and knelt. He broke the seal and extended the telescoped tubes of the American-made M-72 antitank weapon, raised the plastic sights, and aimed at the approaching Saracen.

The Saracen's two machine guns blazed, pulverizing the brick walls around him, and he felt shards of brick bite into his chest. He put his finger on the percussion ignition switch and tried to steady his aim as he wondered if the thing would work. A disposable cardboard rocket launcher.

Like a disposable diaper. Who but the Americans could make a throwaway bazooka? Steady, Brian. Steady.

The Saracen fired again, and he heard Maureen give a short yell behind him and felt her roll against his legs. "Bastardsl" He squeezed the switch, and the 66mm HEAT rocket roared out of the tube and streaked down the dark, foggy street.

The turret of the Saracen erupted into orange flame, and the vehicle swerved wildly, smashing into a bombed

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out travel agency. The surviving crew stumbled out holding their heads from the pain of the deafening rocket hit, and Flynn could see their clothes smoking. He turned and looked down at Maureen. She was moving, and he put his arm under her head. "Are you hit badly?"

She opened her eyes and began to sit up in his arms. "I don't know.

Breast."

"Can you runT'

She nodded, and he helped her up. In the streets around them they could hear whistles, motors, shouts, tramping feet, and dogs. Flynn carefully wiped his fingerprints from the Thompson submachine gun and threw it into the alley.

They headed north toward the Catholic ghetto around New Lodge Road. As they entered the residential area they kept to the familiar maze of back alleys and yards between the row houses. They could hear a column of men double-timing on the street, rifle butts knocking on doors, windows opening, angry exchanges, babies wailing. The sounds of Belfast.

Maureen leaned against a brick garden wall. The running had made the blood flow faster through her wound, and she put her hand under her sweater.

"Oh."

"Bad?"

"I don't know." She drew her hand away and looked at the blood, then said,

"We were set up."

"Happens all the time," he said.

"Who?"

"Coogan, maybe. Could have been anyone, really." He was fairly certain he knew who it was. "I'm sorry about Sheila."

She shook her head. "I should have known they would use her as bait to get us. . . . You don't think she . . ." She put her face in her hands. "We lost some good people tonight."

He peered over the garden wall, then helped her over, and they ran through a block of adjoining yards. They entered a Protestant neighborhood, noticing the better built and maintained homes. Flynn knew this neighborhood

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from his youth, and he remembered the schoolboy pranks-breaking windows and running like hell-like now-through these alleys and yards. He remembered the smells of decent food, the clotheslines of white gleaming linen, the rose gardens, and the lawn furniture.

They headed west and approached the Catholic enclave of the Ardoyne.

Ulster Defense League civilian patrols blocked the roads leading into the Arodyne, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary and British soldiers were making house searches. Flynn crouched behind a row of trash bins and pulled Maureen down beside him. "We've gotten everyone out of their beds tonight."

Maureen Malone glanced at him and saw the half smile on his face. "You enjoy this."

"So do they. Breaks the monotony. lbey'll swap brave tales at the Orange lodges and in the barracks. Men love the hunt."

She flexed her arm. A stiffness and dull pain were spreading outward from her breast into her side and shoulder. "I don't think we have much chance of getting out of Belfast."

"All the hunters are here in the forest. The hunters' village is therefore deserted."

"Which meansT'

"Into the heart of the Protestant neighborhood. The Shankill Road is not far."

They turned, headed south, and within five minutes they entered Shankill Road. They walked up the deserted road casually and stopped on a corner.

It was not as foggy here, and the streetlights were working. Flynn couldn't see any blood on Maureen's black trench coat, but the wound had drained the color from her face. His own wound had stopped bleeding, and the dried blood stuck to his chest and sweater. "We'll take the next outbound bus that comes by, sleep in a barn, and head for Derry in the morning."

"All we need is an outbound bus,.not to mention an appearance of respectability." She leaned back against the bus-stop sign. "When do we get our discharge, Brian?"

He looked at her in the dim light. "Don't forget the IRA 28

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motto," he said softly. "Once in, never out. Do you understand?"

She didn't answer.

A Red Bus appeared from the east. Flynn pulled Maureen close to him and supported her as they mounted the steps. "Clady," said Flynn, and he smiled at the driver as he paid the fare. "The lady's had rather too much to drink, I'm afraid."

The driver, a heavy-set man with a face that looked more Scottish than Irish, nodded uncaringly. "Do you have your curfew card?"

Flynn glanced down the length of the bus. Less than a dozen people, mo '

stly workers in essential services, and they looked mostly Protestant-as far as he could tell-like the driver. Perhaps everyone looked like Prods tonight. No sign of police, though. "Yes. Here it is." He held his wallet up close to the driver's face.

The driver glanced at it and moved the door lever closed, then put the bus in gear.

Flynn helped Maureen toward the rear of the bus, and a few of the passengers gave them looks ranging from disapproval to curiosity. In London or Dublin they would be dismissed for what they claimed to be-drunks. In Belfast people's minds worked in different directions. He knew they would have to get off the bus soon. They sat in the back seat.

The bus rolled up Shankill Road, through the Protestant working-class neighborhood, then headed northwest into the mixed neighborhoods around Oldpark. Flynn turned to Maureen and spoke softly. "Feeling better?"

"Oh, quite. Let's do it again."

"Ah, Maureen . . ."

An old woman sitting alone in front of them turned around. "How's the lady?

How are you, dear? Feelin' better, then?"

Maureen looked at her without answering. The citizens of Belfast were capable of anything from murder and treachery to Christian kindness.

The old woman showed a toothless smile and spoke 29

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quietly. "Between Squire's Hill and McIlwhan's Hill is a wee valley called the Flush. There's an abbey there-you know it-Whitehorn Abbey. The priest, Father Donnelly, will give you lodgings for the night."

Flynn fixed the woman with a cold stare. "What makes you think we need a place to stay? We're headed home."

The bus stopped, and the old woman stood without another word and trundled off to the front of the bus and stepped off.

The bus started again. Flynn was very uneasy now. "Next stop. Are you up to it?"

"I'm not up to one more second on this bus." She paused thoughtfully. "The old woman . . . 7"

Flynn shook his head.

"I think we can trust her."

"I don't trust anyone."

"What kind of country do we live in?"

He laughed derisively. "What a bloody stupid thing to say, Maureen. We are the ones who helped m;1ke it like it is.,,

She lowered her head. "You're right, of course . . . as usual."

"You must accept what you are. I accept it. I'm well adjusted."

She nodded. With that strange logic of his he had turned the world upside down. Brian was normal. She was not. "I'm going to Whitehorn Abbey."

He shrugged. "Better than a barn, I suppose. You'll be needing bandaging .

. . but if the good rector there turns us in . . ."

She didn't answer and turned away from him.

He put his arm around her shoulders. "I do love you, you know."

She looked down and nodded.

The bus stopped again about a half-mile up the road, and Flynn and Maureen moved toward the door.

"This isn't Clady," said the driver.

"That's all right," answered Flynn. They stepped off the 30

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bus and into the road. Flynn took Maureen's arm. "That bastard will report us at the next stop." They crossed the road and headed north up a country lane lined with rowan trees. Flynn looked at his watch, then at the eastern sky. "Almost dawn. We have to be there before the farmers start running about-they're almost all Prods up here."

"I know that." Maureen breathed deeply as they walked in the light rain.

The filthy air and ugliness of Belfast were far behind, and she felt better. Belfast-a blot of ash on the green loveliness of County Antrim, a blot of ash on the soul of Ireland. Sometimes she wished that the city would sink back into the bog it grew out of.

They passed hedgerows, well-tended fields, and pastures dotted with cattle and bales of fodder. An exhilarating sodden scent filled the air, and the first birds of morning began to sing.

"I'm not going back to Belfast."

He put his arm around her and touched her face with his hand. She was becoming feverish. "I understand. See how you feel in a week or two."

"I'm going to live in the south. A village."

"Good. And what will you do there? Tend pigs? Or do you have independent means, Maureen? Will you buy a country estate?"

"Do you remember the cottage overlooking the sea? You said we'd go there some day to live our lives in peace."

"Someday maybe we will."

"I'll go to Dublin, then. Find a job."

"Yes. Good jobs in Dublin. After a year they'll give you the tables by the window where the American tourists sit. Or the sewing machine by the window where you can get a bit of air and sun. That's the secret. By the window."

After a while she said, "Perhaps Killeen . . ."

"No. You can never go back to your own village. It's never the same, you know. Better to go to any other pig village."

"Let's go to America."

"No!" The loudness of his own voice surprised him.

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"No. I won't do what they all did." He thought of his farnily and friends, so many of them gone to America, Canada, or Australia. He had lost them as surely as he had lost his mother and father when he buried them.

Everyone in Ireland, north and south, lost family, friends, neighbors, even husbands and wives and lovers, through emigration. Like some great plague sweeping the land, taking the firstborn, the brightest, and the most adventurous, leaving the old, the sick, the timid, the self-satisfied rich, the desperately poor. "This is my country. I won't leave here to become a laborer in America."

She nodded. Better to be a king of the dunghills of Belfast and Londonderry. "I may go alone."

"You probably shoul~d."

They walked quietly, their arms around each other's waists, both realizing that they had lost something more than a little blood this night.

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lane led into a small, treeless valley between two hills. In the distance they saw the abbey. The moonlight lit the white stone and gave it a spectral appearance in the ground mist.

They approached the abbey cautiously and stood under a newly budded sycamore tree. A small oblong cemetery, hedged with short green plants, spread out beside the abbey wall. Flynn pushed through the hedge and led Maureen into the cemetery.