Jig (41 page)

Something else crossed his mind now. It was the two M-16A2s he had inside the house. It was no
major
deal, but about six months ago he'd come into possession of the two automatic rifles as well as a half dozen Fabrique Nationale assault rifles, those lovely Belgian babies, from a gun dealer he'd met at a survivalist training-camp in the Poconos. The dealer, who was the kind of man Linney ran into at these camps, where quiet machismo and boastful innuendo were the common currency of conversation, claimed he had a shipment of a hundred guns he was interested in selling to any interested party, if such a thing could be arranged. Linney, with more bravado than prudence, had allowed – with a small show of self-importance – that he was at least in the position of
exploring
the possibility of sending the guns to a buyer he knew in Ireland. He offered to transport the two automatic rifles and the six FN weapons as samples and if there was interest he'd get back to the dealer. All this was discussed discreetly, and it had intrigued Linney enormously to be involved in the clandestine business of running guns.

He'd taken the weapons, and sent the FN rifles to the address of an acquaintance in Cork, but he'd kept the M-16A2s for himself because they were prized weapons and difficult to acquire. Linney had paid cash for all the guns and hadn't heard from the gun merchant again. Nor had he been surprised, because those kinds of deals fell through more frequently than they ever came to fruition. But the thing that worried him slightly now was the possibility of this business coming to light. He hadn't done anything dishonest. He'd simply kept the guns he wanted for himself and sent the rest. And he hadn't screwed the Irish out of any money to do so, which was something he'd never dream of doing. But they were a sensitive, touchy crew in the old country, and if they heard that two precious samples of the M-16A2 had been diverted, they could quite possibly be upset. When it came to The Cause, the people in Ireland hated the idea of anybody fucking with it. And Linney's decision to keep the two guns could be interpreted as interference. It wasn't much – but it bothered Linney. What if they'd heard over in Ireland about the two samples they never received? What if, in the murky world of gun-dealing, information had come up? What if the gun-dealer asked some Irish acquaintance
By the way, what did you think of the M-16A2s?

It wasn't likely. But Nicholas Linney's mind had a twist that often exaggerated possibilities. He had the thought that if they found out about the two guns, they could leap to the conclusion that Linney wasn't altogether loyal – and that could perhaps lead to more stinging accusations. Such as the hijacking of a small ship. The idea of being falsely accused filled him with a certain little jolt of excitement. It wasn't going to happen that way, of course, but the possibility was enough to increase the voltage of his adrenalin.

‘More contributions are conditional,' Rasch was saying. He beamed as if he were pleased with his mastery of English. ‘One, your security measures in the future we must approve.'

‘In triplicate?' Linney asked.

Rasch didn't know the word so he ignored it. ‘And two, no more money will be donated until you have catched the criminals and they are very punished.'

Nicholas Linney pulled a sliver of mint leaf from his glass and rolled it between his hands. How could security plans be submitted to some fucking committee in East Berlin? Apart from the fact that such a process would take forever, Linney realised that with so many people involved agreements could never be reached. The whole business of raising money would become bogged down in forms, those fucking forms of which the East Europeans were so fond and which seemed to Linney the paper foundation on which all Communism was built. If the Arab patrons were going to be as difficult as the East Europeans, you could practically kiss everything off. Linney sniffed mint on the palms of his hands. He was suddenly very impatient and restless and more than a little annoyed by the way things were turning out.

Rasch settled back in the chaise-longue. ‘I must know if you are soon catching the pirates. Is expected of me.'

‘That's a police matter, Gustav.' Even as he said this Linney knew that no American agency, neither the FBI nor the cops nor the Coast Guard, gave a flying fuck about a ship with Liberian registry and an Irish crew that had been attacked in international waters.

‘No,' Rasch said. ‘Is a matter of your own house being in order, Nicholas.'

Linney said nothing. He was thinking of the two M-16A2s he had in his study.

Your own house in order, he thought.

He looked down over the tennis-court at the willow trees that marked his property line. There was an iron fence beyond the trees. It wasn't going to keep anyone out who was determined to get in, such as this Irishman old Harry had mentioned. Let him show his face around here, Linney thought.
Let him try
. He had enough weapons stashed inside the house to keep a goddam army at bay for days. And for quite some time now, in fact ever since he'd been rejected by the draft board for Vietnam because of fallen arches, he'd been frustrated by the fact that all he ever got to shoot were watermelons and cantaloupes and plastic bottles filled with water. It was time to ponder a different kind of target.

The Irishman
. Linney had spent some time trying to imagine the guy's state of mind. He'd reached the conclusion that the Irishman was going to treat each one of the Fund-raisers as a suspect. He wasn't going to come off like some tightly-wrapped detective with a few penetrating questions to ask and leave it at that. No, this fucker was going to be hard and menacing, which was a prospect Nicholas Linney enjoyed. Besides, Linney didn't put a whole lot of faith in the value of the Fundraisers' anonymity. Secrecy always had a weakness in it somewhere. And the weakness here was the priest, Joseph Tumulty, who was the liaison between the Americans and the IRA. Sometimes Linney got the impression that Tumulty knew a little more than he ever said. He'd always meant to get rid of Tumulty and strengthen that weak link in the chain, but he'd never quite done it – and he knew why. It was simply that he
liked
the vulnerability in the chain because it gave everything a delicious edge, a little tinge of danger in the otherwise mundane chore of delivering large sums of cash. He enjoyed that. It provided spice during the cold nights when you were skulking around Maine with briefcases stuffed with dough.

Nicholas Linney finished his drink.
This Irishman is going to suspect everybody
, he thought.
Including me
. Let him come here. Let him show his face.

He turned to Rasch and smiled. ‘Let's go indoors,' he said. ‘We can talk about all this later.'

Rasch stood up hastily. ‘I have been waiting.'

Linney draped an arm loosely around Rasch's shoulder as they moved across the terrace. Sliding glass doors opened into a lounge the length of the house. It was furnished in pastels, the minimalist look, lean chairs and low-slung coffee tables and a couple of sparse paintings of the Anaemic School. Linney liked understatement. He had no taste for the brash. He liked clean lines and crisp angles. Even in his politics he favoured simple alignments and economy. His activities on behalf of the Fund-raisers, for example, served two purposes at once. They satisfied his Irishness, handed down to him from his father, Brigadier Mad Jack Linney of the IRA, a dashing figure with a black eye-patch who had been shot to death in Belfast in October 1955, and they created useful bonds with the Arabs and the East Europeans which helped in his other commercial enterprises. He often steered foreign capital into foundering Western businesses threatened by either bankruptcy or takeover. It was amazing sometimes to Linney how much Eastern European money had been used to help pump new blood into the arteries of capitalism.

Passing a large salt-water fishtank in which a variety of exotic species flickered back and forth, Linney walked across the floor to a door on the other side of the room. It opened into a very large bedroom. Two girls, neither of whom was more than fifteen, sat listening to rock music. They were easily corrupted, Linney thought. When he first brought them to this country, they had been shy and retiring, delicate little things who understood nothing about Western ways. Now Linney wondered how long he could keep them before they wanted their freedom, a Western concept that, like rock music and whirlpool baths and TV, they'd grasped all too quickly.

Linney indicated for them to come out into the lounge. They wore simple pastel dresses, so that they were coordinated with the room they entered. Their hair, shiny and black and long, lay in an uncluttered way over their shoulders, exactly as Linney liked it. Each girl was long-legged and lithe and small-breasted. When they smiled they did so in a shy manner, turning their dark brown eyes down. They were beautiful and still acquiescent in a way one rarely found among Western girls these days.

‘Ah,' Rasch said. ‘Supreme.'

‘I'm glad you approve,' Linney said.

‘Will they undress?' Rasch asked.

The girls took off their dresses and stood in white underwear that made their skin seem starkly ochre.

‘They have names?' Rasch asked.

Linney shrugged. ‘I call them Dancer and Prancer.'

‘Pardon?' Rasch said.

‘Not their real names. I bought them in Phnom Penh.'

‘A fine purchase,' Rasch said. ‘Very fine. Is no problem to bring them to United States?'

‘There were visa considerations,' Linney answered.

‘Paperwork.' Rasch looked as if he understood the labyrinthine requirements of bureaucracy.

‘Which one do you favour?' Linney asked.

The East German strolled around the girls, nodding his head. This was precisely what he had come to Nicholas Linney's home for, the satisfaction of appetites that went undernourished in East Berlin, where he had a wife who resembled a Sumo wrestler. He weighed a delicate breast in his hand, fingered a fine hip, patted a lean buttock. The girls didn't move. They were accustomed to being assessed by Linney's associates, men of Western culture who regarded them like oxen.

Rasch turned to Linney with a grin on his face. ‘Such pretty little birds,' he said. ‘I like them both.'

Patchogue, Long Island

‘It's not Jig's style,' Frank Pagan said. ‘For one thing, he
never
claims he's made a kill on behalf of the Irish Republican Army. He never says
anything
like that. If he had reason to kill somebody in Albany, why would he change his usual message?'

Zuboric, sitting in the passenger seat of Pagan's Cadillac, had his hands clenched tensely in his lap because he didn't like Pagan's idea of driving, which was to occupy the fast lane at around ninety-five miles an hour and keep a leaden foot on the gas-pedal, ignoring anything in his way. Pagan was a fast man on the horn, thrusting his palm down and holding it there until the driver in front switched lanes.

‘If it wasn't Jig, who was it?' Zuboric asked.

Pagan shrugged. He had the alarming habit of not looking where he was going. He forced the Cadillac up to a shaky eighty-five and turned his face to Zuboric. ‘I don't have an answer to that. None of it makes sense. I can't imagine some local IRA cell in Albany doing anything like this. I can't even imagine the
existence
of a cell in Albany. Christ, what would they do anyway in the middle of New York State? Hold jumble sales to raise funds for weapons? Coconut shies? Sell little flags you can stick in your lapel?'

‘Watch the road, Frank,' Zuboric said.

Pagan banged his horn again, and the car in front, a canary-yellow Corvette, moved into the slow lane. ‘Another thing that bothers me is the connection. An old FUV man turns up dead in Albany at the same time as Ivor McInnes is here in New York.'

They don't have to be connected,' Zuboric said. He favoured the Jig hypothesis plain and simple. It was the only logical one and besides he was tired of bird-dogging Pagan. How sweet it would be to have a quick wrap on this whole business and be rid of Frank fucking Pagan once and for all. Then he could go back to the tangled affair that was his own life.
A topless bar, for Chrissakes. Shaking her wonderful tits for all and sundry to see. Drooling men with hard-ons under their overcoats
. Zuboric couldn't take any of this. He had to get Charity away from that life.

‘Maybe not,' Pagan answered.

‘Jig had time to kill a man in Albany and then get to New York.'

‘He had time, certainly,' Pagan said. ‘I don't know why he'd want to kill Fitzjohn, though.'

‘Consider this.' Zuboric opened his eyes. ‘Jig finds out this character Fitzjohn had something to do with the missing money. Fitzjohn won't tell him anything. Jig kills him.'

Pagan was unconvinced. ‘Why kill somebody who might have information you want? What sense does that make? If Fitzjohn knew something, Jig wouldn't kill him. He'd try everything he could to get the information out of the man, but he wouldn't kill him. That would be a sheer waste of resources.' Pagan rubbed his eyes, taking both hands off the wheel to do so. Zuboric sat straight forward in his seat like a drowning man looking for something to clutch.

‘Frank, for Chrissakes.'

Pagan returned his hands to the wheel. ‘It just doesn't add up. Jig came back to St. Finbar's for two reasons. One was guns. The other was a name. And Tumulty only knew one name. Nicholas Linney. He said he'd never heard of Fitzjohn, so he couldn't tell Jig that one.'

‘Maybe Jig brought the name with him from Ireland,' Zuboric said. He felt weary. It seemed to him that the whole Irish situation, at least so far as it had been imported into the United States, was too complex to contemplate. Complicated allegiances, obscure motivations. He understood it was best to keep it all simple in his mind. It was Catholic against Protestant, basically. Any side issues, any sudden tributaries, were not worth exploring if you wanted to retain your sanity, a possession Frank Pagan had almost relinquished.