Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (35 page)

The upshot of all this is that we are leaving Italy slightly ahead of schedule, in a flurry of recriminations and tears. A settlement for the child’s future well-being has gone some way to ameliorating everyone’s temper other than Andrei’s, who has shown a sudden streak of sentimentality about this future offspring of his. Considering that he has no intention of marrying Gina, nor of taking up olive farming on a Pisan hillside, I have pointed out that the sentimentality is somewhat misplaced, not to mention late. But a Russian sodden with vodka grief is not open to pragmatic opinions.

I put him to bed and now I sit, having packed and made arrangements to leave, knowing our absence and the settlement, will go farther to lessen Papa Martelli’s fury than will our presence and false promises.

The night is deep and fire-lit and even here in this sun-laden land I can feel autumn’s approach, a chill thread amongst the bright-flowered tapestry of summer. It is so quiet tonight that the sound of pen against paper is a loud scratch. Even the sea is quiet, as if it broods, as I do, upon something which has no answer.

I have a sense that something has ended here in Italy, and that all things will be changed in the autumn. I can’t put my finger on why, only that I feel restless and at the same time there is a strange void in the normal framework of my world.

Though my soul has sojourned here this summer with Shelley and Byron, it is with Rilke’s words that my thoughts now lie. For indeed, the summer was immense, the fruits were full heavy, and the sweetness of the grape beyond compare. But it is time now to go home. But oh, how I long for just two more ripe southern days…

‘For he who is alone, will remain alone… as the leaves begin to blow.’

Part Four
Bandit Country
Ireland – December-February 1974

Chapter Twenty-four
December 1973
The Contact

“Ye do pick the oddest places for yer assignations,”
Casey grumbled, seating himself on an upturned cask of whiskey and promptly lighting a cigarette.

David gave him a pointed look, and Casey sighed, taking a long drag before stubbing it out.

“This is the only bloody time I can have a smoke in peace. Pamela keeps confiscatin’ the damn things on me. Besides, I don’t think my wee cigarette is goin’ to blow us up, man, unless there’s some strange bog gas leakin’ out of the walls down here.”

“There isn’t, but I don’t think it wise to take risks either,” David said, sounding rather prissy.

They were seated in the cask room below Kirkpatrick’s Folly, where Jamie’s own private reserve of Connemara Mist was held. The space was dry and cool, and, most importantly, extremely private as well as accessible from a location to which only Jamie and David were privy.

“So, why are we here?” Casey asked, his eyes roving around the casks that lined the walls. “Does the boy have more names for me?” He was referring to the list of names that David, via Billy’s sharp ears and nimble fingers, had been passing along to him over the last months.

“Yes,” David said, “only two this time, but it’s two more that will be saved. But that’s not the only reason I asked you here.”

That got Casey’s attention. The dark eyes swivelled back in David’s direction. “No? Then what exactly are we doin’ here?”

“I have a proposal for you and I’d like you to hear me out before you say no.”

Casey raised a dark brow at him. “That’s not the most promisin’ beginnin’ I’ve ever heard.”

David ignored the cynicism and began to speak before he lost what was left of his nerve.

“Look, here it is—Jamie’s extended absence has left a bit of a hole in our communications. No one has his connections within the Nationalist community and the British establishment. I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t know when I say he was the man bridging the very precarious divide between the two communities. So as not to slide completely backwards, we need to fill at least one side of that equation. In short, we need a contact man who has strong ties within the Republican world. Your name is the one that came up over and over again.”

“That wouldn’t be because ye brought it up yerself, now would it, David?” Casey said caustically.

“I wasn’t the first to mention your name as it turns out. Believe it or not, Casey, I do not take every opportunity to place you in harm’s way.”

The man actually looked shamefaced for a moment. “I know ye don’t. Only ye’ll forgive me, but trusting any deal the British put on the table is a bit like kissin’ a viper an’ hopin’ it doesn’t bite ye. Why me? Last I checked they were wantin’ to either put a bullet in me or stick me in prison for the rest of my natural life.”

“Because the Provos trust you—for the most part anyway. You understand that world, you know which expectations are realistic and which aren’t. The truth is, the government is at sea about this. They don’t understand the issues that matter to the Republican community but they want to put feelers out a little further because they would like to start the process of disengagement.”

David felt a frisson of smugness when Casey’s jaw dropped.

“What?” Casey mimed digging at his ear, as an indication of his disbelief. “Did ye actually say ‘disengagement’ in regards to the British Army?”

“I did,” David said, his voice quiet. “It’s not generally known, and they haven’t even advanced the idea to the Provisionals, because that’s what they would like you to do, and then set up a series of face-to-face meetings so that both sides can hammer out a timeframe and plan for making this a reality.”

Casey took a moment to absorb the impact of the words. “Yer certain it’s not some kind of trick? Something to make the Provos declare a ceasefire an’ then draw them out on what their plans are? It wouldn’t be the first instance of double-dealin’ or sleight of hand for yer men in London.”

“I believe they’re in earnest, and I am not especially gullible, particularly when it comes to my own government. It’s very hush-hush at this point. Even the Northern Ireland Secretary doesn’t know this offer is on the table.”

“An’ yet yer tellin’ me?” Casey gave him a shrewd eye. “I’m not entirely comfortable with that sort of knowledge.”

“They simply want you to get the lie of the land, see what the Provos are willing to compromise on, and what they absolutely won’t.”

“That’ll depend a great deal on which ones I talk to,” Casey said. “There are some that have a long view an’ some that most assuredly do not.”

“Talk to the ones that you believe understand what implementing a peace process will mean. The others will get swept aside in the torrent should this take hold.”

“If this gets out—an’ it will have to eventually—those others could become the torrent. Ye know that, right?”

“They are aware of the risks and that this may all blow up in our faces without any forward movement or resolution, but I think we have to try. Don’t you?”

Casey nodded, shifting on the cask. “What about the Loyalists? The army is never goin’ to be able to withdraw slowly enough for them an’ it’s not goin’ to be able to move quickly enough to please the Provos. It’s a bit of a rock an’ a hard place, is it not?”

David laughed. “This whole island is a bit of a rock and a hard place, not to mention its people. All I can really tell you is that the government wants to deal with the Republicans. They aren’t putting this offer out to the Loyalists—probably because they know what the answer would be. They know the real change has to come from the Nationalist/Republican side of the divide.”

Casey sighed and stood, large frame restless within the confines of the room. David knew it was likely the man wasn’t entirely comfortable being in Jamie’s house. He knew enough of their history now to realize that while they held each other in a certain esteem, neither man had gone out of his way to seek the other’s company. For, he knew, quite obvious reasons.

“Look,” Casey said. “I’ll do it, but it will have to be on my own terms an’ in my own time. Because I’ll be honest with ye, Pamela would have my bollocks for breakfast if she ever got wind of this. I made a promise to her to stay out of trouble, an’ to be entirely honest with her. An’ I’m pretty damn certain this isn’t information I can whisper to her across the pillows at night.”

“Fair enough,” David said crisply, “but they would like the first approach to be made within the next two weeks.”

Casey raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m thinkin’ ye don’t quite understand what ‘my own terms’ an’ ‘my own time’ means here. David, I don’t have as tight of links with the IRA as ye seem to think, an’ there’s more than one within the organization that would be happy to see my head on a pike in front of City Hall, so tell yer superiors to have a bit of patience. We’ve put up with yer presence for eight hundred years. I think ye can give me a month, no?”

“A month then,” David agreed. “We’ll meet here again. It’s the safest place.”

“Why is that?”

“Because Jamie had it swept every week and I have kept up the tradition in his absence.”

“Well, no one could accuse ye of an absence of paranoia, leastwise,” Casey said dryly. “Here it is then. But heaven help us both if Pamela catches us colludin’ in the cellar. She is, to all intents an’ purposes, the mistress of this house right now.”

“Maybe for good,” David said.

“D’ye know somethin’ the rest of us don’t?” Casey asked.

“No, and that’s what troubles me—we can’t track him down, and there are people trying. People who can find anything or anyone, given the time.”

“Perhaps they only need a bit more of that particular commodity. Would ye not say the man is the sort to escape all notice, no matter how professional, if he should wish to stay off the radar?”

“Not even Lord Kirkpatrick is quite that good, modern-day Percy Blakeney that he might be.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Casey said. “He usually manages to surprise people when they least expect it.”

David left then, trusting that Casey could find his own way out of this malted underworld.

Instead of heading straight back outside, Casey wandered a little further down the dark corridor, the top of his head brushing the ancient beams. If his bearings were correct, the first tunnel that branched off when he came down the ladder led straight under Jamie’s study and looked to be a newer addition than the rest of the corridors. He had a good idea of just what its uses were.

There was a warren of rooms underneath the house, most with obvious uses, some merely empty and gathering motes of dust and silence. He poked his head in a few and found more casks—these empty—shelves of decorative bottles and undecorated ones as well. Cobwebs abounded, unlike the cask room where everything was clean, dry and orderly.

Suddenly he could hear his wife’s voice as though she were standing next to him. He looked up, eyes roving the ceiling. It was likely the room was vented to keep it properly dry. It must have a grille in the kitchen for he heard the clink of pottery and the slow rumble of a kettle put on to boil. Conor was winding himself up. The laddie liked his meals on time and made his wants known in no uncertain terms. Casey might have been standing in the kitchen with them, the sounds were so clear. Old houses were like this sometimes, the acoustics performing strange and wondrous permutations so that you could hear a conversation one floor down and three rooms over as though it was right next to you.

Pamela was singing to Conor now, distracting him until his food was ready. Her voice was soft, bubbling with laughter at the edges. He stood and listened, his heart suddenly aching and full with love for his wee family. His wife, his son, all that was most precious to him, right there, singing and laughing in the kitchen above his head.

It came to him then that when you are lucky, when you are redeemed by love, when you have in your life a full measure of goodness, of happiness, that you have to try, at least, to set other things right. You have to extend a bit of faith and hope for, if not believe in, miracles.

He left the room a moment later to walk back up the tunnel and out into the smoke and fog of the winter woods.

The conversation with Casey recalled to David
one with James Kirkpatrick. They had been sitting in his study late one night, curtains drawn and fire lit, whiskey at hand, chessboard laid out and a game in mid-play. David had made a comment—light enough in itself—about the labyrinthine nature of any sort of dealings in Ulster, both political and business. Jamie had laughed.