Jig (59 page)

One of the men below stood against the hood of the car and smoked a cigarette. The other wandered round the side of the house, then returned. They stood together, both now leaning against the car, and they presented an impenetrable obstacle between Cairney and the house. Cairney rubbed his eyes. He focused on the house, the two men, but still the landscape wouldn't yield up an easy way to get inside that place down there.

Think. Think hard. The money might be inside that house and you're lying up here wondering about your father and your thoughts won't make a damn bit of difference whether he lives or dies.

His truant attention strayed again, and he was thinking about Roscommon once more, seeing Celestine sit by the sick bed of his father. Maybe she spoke softly to the old man. Maybe she was reading to him. Or perhaps she just sat there watching him motionlessly, her hands in her lap and her lovely face expressionless and her hair pulled back so that she looked gaunt and distressed and prepared for the ultimate grief.

Cairney focused on the men below. His head pounded now, and his hands, when he lowered the binoculars, shook visibly. He sat back against the side of the hollow, wondering at the responses of his own body. It was as if strange blood flowed in his veins and the heart that pumped so loudly in his chest were not his own. He was seized with the feeling that he shouldn't be here in this place at all, that he should never have been sent from Ireland unless it was to kill a specific target, a certain individual. Unless it was to do the very thing he did best, better than anyone else.

Why didn't you send somebody else, Finn? Was your precious Jig the only candidate?

He crawled to the lip of the hollow. From where he stood he could see almost the whole length of the hills. Slopes swooped down into shadows where the sun didn't go. These shadowy places, like sudden pools of unexpected water, troubled him. He wasn't quite sure why.

And then, because he understood how to read landscapes, how to tell human movement from the motion of the wind, how to feel when a landscape had been subtly altered, he knew.

New York City

At ten minutes past two, the Reverend Ivor McInnes entered the office of a car rental company on East 38th Street. He spoke to the clerk at the desk, a young man with red hair arranged around his skull like a corona. McInnes reserved a 1986 Continental because he liked the idea of travelling in some comfort. He looked at the desk-clock as the clerk filled out the various papers. He was glad it was one of those digital affairs. He didn't think he could tolerate the idea of watching the agonising movements of a second hand. It was twenty past two by the time the young man completed the copious paperwork. McInnes said he'd pick the car up around six. He had to return to his hotel first and pack.

He left the agency at approximately two-thirty. He thought of Seamus Houlihan and the others as he stepped out on the street. They'd be taking up their positions by this time.

He walked slowly along the street, looking now and then in the windows of stores. He felt the way he had done before White Plains, except it was heightened somehow.

In about twenty minutes, if the information he had received was correct – and he had absolutely no reason to doubt it, because of its reliable source – the vehicle would be making a turn into the isolated stretch of road where Houlihan and his men were waiting.

Twenty minutes.

Twenty long minutes.

McInnes reached the intersection of Thirty-Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. He looked in the window of a jewellery store. Rings, necklaces, bracelets. It would take his mind off it all if he went inside and lost himself in browsing through the glittering array. Nineteen minutes. He wandered between the glass cases, tracked by a sales clerk who insisted on pointing out the merits of this or that stone.

McInnes stopped in front of an emerald ring. He asked the clerk to bring it out and show it to him. The clerk said it was an excellent piece and any woman would be
delirious
to have it. Ivor McInnes held the stone up to the light. Its greenness was stunning and deep. McInnes closed his hand over the ring. The stone felt very cool against his skin.

‘I'll have it,' he said.
Eighteen minutes
.

‘Excellent choice,' the clerk said. ‘Cash or credit card?'

‘Cash.'

The clerk, who was a small man with eyes that themselves resembled gems, smiled. ‘Is it a gift, sir? Shall I gift-wrap it?'

‘Why don't you,' McInnes said. As he watched the clerk cut gift-paper with long scissors, he stared across the floor to where there was a clock display. All kinds of timepieces hung on the wall, every last one of them showing a different time. The effect was of stepping outside the real world and into one where the passage of seconds and minutes and hours couldn't be measured with any semblance of accuracy. McInnes had to look away. Real time was important to him now.

Seventeen minutes
.

He tried not to think about time. He tried to put it out of his mind. But it kept returning to him and his nervousness increased. Sixteen minutes.

Sixteen minutes and it would all be over. And by tomorrow, if everything went as planned, he'd be out of the country entirely.

New Rockford, Connecticut

John Waddell crouched in the shrubbery. He held an M-16 against his side. He glanced out across the clearing at the place where Rorke and McGrath were concealed, but he couldn't see them. He felt Houlihan tap him lightly on the shoulder and he turned. The big man was offering him something, and it took Waddell a moment to realise it was a stick of chewing gum. Waddell shook his head.

‘Helps you relax,' Houlihan said.

Waddell looked through the barren trees. He had the odd feeling that he wasn't here, that some other entity had been substituted for him and that the real John Waddell was back in Belfast, strolling across Donegal Square and wondering where he'd stop for a pint of Smithy's. But Houlihan nudged him, and the illusion disintegrated.

‘Are you all right, Waddy?' the big man asked.

‘Fine,' John Waddell said.

‘Gun loaded?'

Waddell nodded. He looked down at the M-16 in his hands.

Seamus Houlihan, who also held an M-16, tapped his fingers against the stock. This drumming increased Waddell's anxiety. He looked up at the sky. Clouds drifted in the region of the sun.

Houlihan looked at his wristwatch. ‘Two forty,' he said. ‘Ten minutes.'

Waddell tightened his grip on his gun. What he hoped for was that something unexpected might happen and that the exercise would have to be postponed. A freak storm, for example. Or the appearance of other people. But this was such a damned lonely place he couldn't imagine anybody coming here by choice. And what kind of vehicle could it possibly be that made a stop here anyhow? He tried to slacken his grip on the gun but his fingers remained tight and stiff.

Houlihan made a sniffing sound. He wiped the back of his sleeve over the tip of his nose and cleared his throat. Waddell thought for a moment that he detected a certain jumpiness in Seamus, but he decided he was wrong. The big man never showed any unease at times like this. He was always cool. Always in control. Chewing gum, looking composed – Jesus, Seamus might be contemplating a stroll on a Sunday afternoon. Waddell felt a branch brush his face, and he was startled.

‘You're a twitchy wee fucker,' Houlihan said.

‘I'm okay,' Waddell replied.

‘Look, there's nothing to be nervous about. Point the bloody gun when I tell you, and fire. That's all. Nothing to it.'

Ten minutes, Houlihan had said.

Waddell wondered how long ten minutes could be. He glanced at Seamus, then he looked through the trees. ‘I wish to God we were out of here,' he said. ‘Out of this whole bloody country.'

‘Soon.' Houlihan removed his chewing-gum and flicked it away.

‘How soon?'

Seamus Houlihan, keeper of secrets, didn't answer. He checked his gun, traced a finger along the barrel. What did it take to be that relaxed? Waddell wondered. What kind of ice-water ran in Seamus's veins?

‘Five more minutes,' Houlihan said.

Eternity. Waddell wanted to urinate. He concentrated on his weapon, wishing it was lighter, less of a burden. The weight of the thing made it all the more menacing.

‘Four,' Houlihan said.

By Jesus, he was going to count the bloody minutes down! Waddell tried not to listen. Houlihan could keep his countdown to himself. Waddell preferred to hear nothing.

‘Three.'

Waddell saw McGrath's face briefly across the clearing. Then it was gone. Momentarily a cloud masked the sun.

Two
.

In the distance there was the sound of a vehicle.

‘It's early,' Houlihan said, swinging his weapon into a firing position. ‘Get ready.'

The sound grew. Waddell held his gun at his side and waited. The vehicle seemed to strain, gears clanking and grinding, as it came closer. Waddell stared beyond the clearing but he couldn't see the vehicle yet because there was a bend in the road. As the motor laboured and whined, the noise grew. Waddell gripped his gun tightly.

‘Ready,' Houlihan said.

Waddell shook his head. No, he thought.

No.

‘Ready,' Houlihan said again.

Waddell – baffled by the sense of unreality he suddenly felt, almost as if time and motion had ceased to exist and the whole world had frozen in its flight-path and he was the only person left alive – stared at the vehicle as it appeared in front of him. It was a big yellow schoolbus, and it was coming to a dead stop in the clearing, and the faces pressed to the windows were those of children, and they were smiling even as Houlihan stood up in the shrubbery and levelled his weapon at them.

Frank Pagan drove two miles from the house of Kevin Dawson, then turned the Oldsmobile off the road and down a dirt track that led between the wooded hills. When the car would go no further, when the track had become too narrow and rutted and overgrown with weeds, he got out, taking his gun from the glove compartment. It had been a long time since he'd climbed any hills and he wasn't sure his physical condition was terrific, but he was going up anyway. He went between the trees, straining over fallen logs and mounds of wet, dead leaves that had been buried under snow since fall. Here and there patches of old snow, hard as clay, still clung to the ground.

Halfway up the hill Pagan had to stop and catch his breath. He leaned against a tree trunk. The sun, trapped between spidery branches, was a frozen, listless globe. When he'd been staring at these hills from the window of Kevin Dawson's living-room, Pagan had imagined that this landscape was the perfect one for Jig. There were pockets in which to hide, trees and shrubbery for cover. If Jig wanted to observe the Dawson household, what more suitable place from which to do it? He knew that if
he
were Jig, this was the kind of spot he'd have come to without hesitation. But that was only a guess. Just the same, Pagan felt he had nothing to lose by climbing up here, save perhaps the future use of lungs and legs.

He climbed again. There were no tracks, no pathways, only the sullen trees pressing against him and crisp twigs cracking underfoot. His breath hung on the air like cobwebs. Up and up and up. Any higher, he thought, and he'd need an oxygen mask, a Tibetan guide, and dried food for a week. He could see the road below and, off to his left about a mile, Kevin Dawson's house, which looked isolated in the landscape. Ahead of him, running the entire length of the range, was more woodland. He paused, looking down the slopes. There were a thousand places where Jig could hide and wait for the right time to make a move on Dawson's house.

Pagan blew on his hands for warmth. A gnawing wind had begun to rush across the slopes, carrying smells of moss and dead-wood and rotted leaves. He moved through the trees, gazing down every so often. From certain places the Dawson house couldn't be seen because trees obscured the view. But here and there, in clearings, every detail of the structure could be observed in miniature. Windows, eaves, smoke rising from a chimney.

It was a lifeless landscape, almost morbid in its quiet and lack of colour. He walked a little further, then stopped again, wishing he had paid more attention to the art of tracking and reading signs when he'd been a Boy Scout. How many stories could a crushed leaf or a broken branch tell you if you knew how to interpret the damn things? A decent Boy Scout could find a whole bloody library of information in this place. But Pagan, a city boy, had never had any great affinity for rustic places.

He kept moving. The wind came up, blowing directly into his face and shaking all kinds of sounds out of the trees. Pagan turned his face away from the fullness of the blast, which whipped his hair and his coat.

Then the wind died and the place was still again.

Pagan moved quietly. Underfoot, dead leaves crackled, frail wood popped. It was impossible to stir in these woods without announcing yourself.

He came now to a hollow in the land, a scoop masked by crisscrossing branches. Somebody could conceal himself successfully in such a place. Pagan looked beyond the hollow. There, immediately below on the other side of the road, was Kevin Dawson's house. The perfect view. But the hollow was empty and still.

He went down carefully, his gun held forward.

He didn't register the noise he heard. It was a whisper on the far edges of his awareness. He thought it might have been an animal, a rabbit emerging from a thicket. He was about to turn his face around when he heard the voice say, ‘Toss the gun a few feet to your side, Pagan. If you don't, you get a bullet in the back of your head.'

Pagan threw the gun a couple of feet away. He saw Jig come forward to pick it up.

‘I heard you coming. I heard you coming for the last twenty minutes.'

Pagan stared at his own gun in the man's hand. Fool, he thought. You should have finished reading Baden-Powell's
Scouting For Boys
. You should have studied tracking and bent blades of grass and little heelmarks in the soil and all the rest of it.