Salvation Row (2 page)

Unfortunately for Peter McCluskey, the security services had discovered proof that corroborated the suspicion that he had not eschewed his old comrades-in-arms at all. Indeed, he had become even more virulent in his hatred of the British, had turned his back on Sinn Féin, and cast in his lot with the Real IRA, the off-shoot organisation that denounced the Good Friday Agreement and vowed to continue the war. McCluskey had continued to raise money so that they could buy their bullets and their bombs, and Maguire was here to collect that bounty. The decision had been made that those channels of funding must be stopped. The files of Maguire and McCluskey had been passed to Group Fifteen, and Control had assigned John Milton—Number Six—the responsibility for seeing that both men were liquidated.

Maguire was to be the first to go.

Ziggy was a field analyst for the Group, and he had been appointed to assist.

He turned the ignition and backed the Chevy out of the bay. He flicked on the lights and headed for the exit.

LIFE WENT on just as always in the heart of the French Quarter. The bars might have been quieter than they would normally have been on a Saturday evening, but they were far from deserted. McCluskey’s was doing a reasonable trade. It was the same kind of Irish pub that could be found all over the world. The interior was dark and inviting, the walls smothered by images of the Irish countryside, well-toned horses in mid-gallop, revolutionaries at play, a hurling team. The wide space was divided into a warren of tongue-and-groove snugs and seating areas, thanks to wooden partitions and stand-alone walls that were seemingly crafted from old biscuit tin lids and dismantled clocks. The bar was lit by lamps that hung from a ceiling held up by metal beams. Shelves bore dusty hardbacks, jars of sweets, an old slicing machine, Boyne Valley cornflakes, and scales for weighing out tea. There were framed pages from ledger books, the
Chronicle
and the
Sligo
Champion
. Rattan stools were placed along a counter of solid oak that ran the entire length of the rear wall, broken by an arch that led through to a snug. It would have been evocative to the naive, perhaps even persuasive that the drinkers could have been in Dublin or Cork, but Milton had been in a similar establishment in London, and he knew the décor and the atmosphere were just the same there. It was all studied and fake.

He had no time for places like this, but he wasn’t here to enjoy himself. He had a job to do.

Milton took a beer from the bar and positioned himself at a window where he could look out onto the street. He took off the porkpie hat that he had bought at the airport to complete his look, and laid it on the table, twisting the felt brim between his thumb and forefinger. The rain had started again, just as hard and heavy as before, and the wind was picking up. A telephone wire thrummed high above the street, and rubbish from an overturned bin tumbled down the middle of the road as if fleeing the gale itself. Milton saw a working girl in a tight leather skirt, struggling to light a cigarette in the inadequate shelter of a doorway, and in the car parked alongside her, her pimp nodded his head to the beat of the music that was playing in his double-parked sedan.

He finished his first beer and went up for another. The alcohol hadn’t helped with the way that he was feeling. There was a cold lump of ice in his gut and his head throbbed with the start of a migraine, as if a rubber band had been looped across his temple and then slowly tightened.

His attention was disturbed by a group of musicians who were tuning up on a small stage area. There were six of them bearing fiddles, a bodhrán, a flute and a mandolin, and as he watched, they started to sing an old folk song that Milton thought he recognised.

And then he heard the voice in the tiny Danish-made receiver that was nestled, perfectly invisible, inside his ear.

“Six, Watcher. Come in.”

Milton wore a microphone, as unobtrusive as the receiver, beneath the tip of his collar.

“Watcher, Six. Go ahead.”

“He’s coming.”

Milton turned back to the window and saw the lights of a taxi as it turned around the corner of Ursulines and rolled up to the door of the bar. The rain was smeared across the glass, so it was difficult to identify the passenger, but Milton could see money exchanged. The door of the cab opened, and Peter McCluskey hurried across the sidewalk and into the bar that bore his name.

“You got him?”

“Affirmative.”

McCluskey was in his late seventies, but you would never have guessed. He was tall and well built, and he moved with an easy gait that belied his years. His hair had retreated to the back of his head, wisps of white that had been flattened down against his scalp by the rain. He had a large nose and cautious, suspicious eyes. He came inside, took off his jacket and hung it on a hook behind the bar. Then, complaining loudly that the room was stuffy, he opened the door and stubbed a wedge beneath it. The atmosphere was disturbed by a gust of damp wind, and, once again, Milton could smell the briny sea.

Milton watched as McCluskey turned to scout the room. His eyes flicked over him, but didn’t stop. There was no reason why they would; he had never seen Milton before.

He went to the bar and rapped his knuckles against it. The musicians stopped playing and the conversation petered out.

“Good to see you all tonight,” he called out in a strong voice. “A little bit of weather isn’t going to stop the craíc now, is it?” There was loud agreement. “Now then, because I’m grateful you’ve made your way through this filthy storm to my little bar, what do you say we all raise a glass to this fine city and tell Katrina that she’s not gonna go and disturb our fun? On the house.”

He raised his hand to the manager behind the bar and went over to an empty table.

“Six, Watcher.”

“Affirmative.”

“Get ready to party. Here comes Maguire.”

Get ready to party? Milton sighed. Ziggy was taking this too flippantly, as if they had been caught up in a Fleming novel.

He turned back to the window. A man was running down the sidewalk with a leather briefcase held above his head as an utterly ineffective umbrella. He passed beneath a street lamp that was swaying in the wind and hurried into the bar. Milton turned to the door and clocked him: early forties, big and strong. A nasty, brutal face. He had two large earrings in his right ear and a scar across his cheek. Jimmy Maguire had been a professional wrestler in his younger years, but now he was the liaison between the Provos and their American boosters.

He had led them to McCluskey.

And now he had been marked for death.

Maguire took a seat at an empty table, and McCluskey went over to him. He had collected a satchel from the bar and, as he sat at the table, he dropped it at his feet.

“The meet is on,” Milton said quietly.

Milton sat, watching them as discreetly as he could. He finished his beer and went over to the bar for another, waiting there and sipping it so that he could change his vantage point.

The two men were close together, conversing with concentrated, serious looks upon their faces. A combination of the background noise, the music and the howls of the wind outside meant that it was impossible for him to hear anything they said, but that wasn’t necessary. The cellphones of both men had been tapped for the last month, and Milton had read the transcripts. McCluskey had decided to sell three of his establishments, including this one, and he was intent upon donating the million dollars that he stood to make to the Cause. Maguire had been dispatched to thank him, and to sketch out the best way to transmit the money without arousing the suspicion of the authorities.

As Milton watched, he noticed McCluskey nudge the satchel across the floor to Maguire. That was one way, he concluded. Provide Maguire with hard currency and let him worry about laundering it.

Milton returned to his table.

Maguire raised his hand a moment, stalling the conversation, his other hand taking his cellphone from his pocket and pressing it to his ear.

“Are you getting this?”

“Hold on,”
Ziggy said.

Milton’s fingers fretted with the coaster on the table, his eyes on Maguire’s face.

“Shit, Six. They’ve made you.”

Milton turned his head back to the window. “Say again.”

“The call. It’s from McGinn. He said he’s just heard from Dublin, there’s a British agent after him. They know.”

“Dammit. How?”

The Irishman looked up, turned to the room, and before Milton could look away, he found and held his gaze. Maguire turned to McCluskey, said something, and nodded in Milton’s direction.

Ziggy’s voice was fraught with anxiety.
“What do we do?”

Milton bit the inside of his lip as he thought about that. There was no point in trying to continue. If Maguire had made him, there was nothing more to be done. He turned his head away and said, low and fast, “We abort.”

“After all this preparation?”

“No choice. Stand down.”

Maguire collected the satchel and set off for the door. McCluskey stood and started over in Milton’s direction. He glanced over at the bar and gestured with his finger that the barman should follow him.

“Number Six?”

Milton didn’t respond. He took a sip of his beer.

McCluskey reached the table. The barman was close behind.

“Excuse me, sir.”

“Number Six?”

Milton ignored Ziggy and turned to McCluskey. “Yes?”

“I wonder, you mind if I have a quick word with you?”

McCluskey had a solidity about him, a presence. Milton could smell the drink on his breath, the smell of stale cigarette smoke, and the rotten food that had clustered between his crooked teeth. He decided to play stupid and drunk. “What about?”

“Just a quick word. In the office, back behind the bar. Would you come with me, please?”

Milton assessed the second man: younger, heavyset, thick knuckles that were marked with a tattoo that he couldn’t read, sleeves of ink up both arms, a T-shirt that had been cut at the shoulders.

“Maguire’s leaving. I’m going after him.”

Milton gritted his teeth in frustration. He wanted to say no, to order Ziggy to stand down, but he couldn’t very well do that now.

“Sir?”

“I don’t know what you want—”

“See, I ain’t in the business of asking politely.” McCluskey pulled up his shirt tails to reveal the butt of a Glock. “And we know what you are. I’m telling you, get in the back. Why don’t we try to keep it civil?”

JIMMY MAGUIRE walked right past the rental without giving it a second look. Ziggy Penn watched as he crossed the road and got into a mauve Nissan. The courtesy light flicked on and then off, the rear lights flashed red and the headlamps glowed. The car pulled away into the empty road.

Ziggy gave him a head start of a hundred yards before he started the Chevy’s engine and set off after him. He had left the radio on, the volume down low, so that he could keep on top of what was happening with the storm. He turned it up as the announcer repeated the warning that everyone needed to find shelter. He said that anyone without anywhere else to go should go to the Superdome, but that there were already long lines of people who were trying to get inside. The governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, interrupted the broadcast to plead to anyone still left in the city to get to the dome or get out. She said that the storm was enormous, a monster. The words of another official were replayed, the man sounding like he was on the edge of mania, practically yelling out that it didn’t matter that landfall had shifted a few miles to the west. A dead hit wasn’t necessary for a hurricane as big as this. A glancing blow would still kill thousands.

He switched the radio off.

The last streaks of light overhead had been extinguished now. The black clouds were piling overhead, hundreds of feet high. Ziggy could feel the air pressure plunging. The smell in the air, the salt from the sea, now seemed to be mixed with something sulphurous.

Ziggy didn’t notice the Dodge with the blown-out muffler that pulled out and rolled after him.

MILTON FEIGNED drunkenness as he allowed himself to be hauled from his chair. McCluskey had his hands beneath his armpits and the second man, the younger guy, tugged at his shoulders.

“What’ve I done?” Milton stammered out with a mixture of faked bewilderment and fear. His act would confuse them, and it allowed him a moment to make his assessments. They couldn’t be sure that he was the man who had been sent for Maguire. Milton was concerned that the mission had been leaked, but he doubted that he had been compromised beyond that. Very few photographs existed of him. And no one, save Control and Ziggy, knew that he had been assigned this job. That particular inquest could wait.

The bar was still busy, maybe busier than it had been when he had arrived, and the patrons had dispensed with any pretence towards moderation and were plunging headlong into proper drunkenness. The band were playing loud, a series of vigorous folk songs that blended one into the other in a seamless barrage of notes and rhythm. The drinkers at the bar had glasses lined up like dead soldiers, their faces oily and slick. Two stranded Japanese tourists sat at one of the tables, the only people not already two sheets to the wind, sipping decorously at glasses of Scotch.

Not here. Too many witnesses.

The barman came up close behind him and started to pat him down. The P226 was impossible to miss. Milton felt the man’s hand as it closed around the grip, and then the metal, warm now from being pressed against his skin, as it was pulled out from the back of his trousers. Milton was facing McCluskey as the barman revealed the weapon. He saw the older man’s face change from uncertainty to anger.

“Let’s go.”

McCluskey squeezed his elbow and led him into the back. Milton permitted it. The second man followed close behind.

ZIGGY PICKED up the car and kept it within easy sight.

“Six, Watcher,” he said into his throat mic.

There was no response.

“Six, Watcher. Come in, Six.”