The Hostage (34 page)

‘Who are you?’ Hank said.

‘What do mean, who am I, you eedjit? You know who I am or I wouldn’t be here.’

‘I’m sitting on the floor with my hands tied to a pole and a hood over my head,’ Hank said.

The man was silent for a moment. When he spoke again the aggression had gone from his voice, although suspicion remained.

‘You a prisoner?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is that an American accent?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you’re toid op with a hood over your head?’

‘Yeah, I’m tied up.’

There was a long silence again, both men trying to figure out the other.

‘What’s an American doing a prisoner with these people?’ he asked.

‘Case of mistaken identity,’ Hank said.

‘That right?’ the Irishman said sardonically.‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘You must be FBI or DEA. You were doin’ one of yer arms deal stings and the boyos caught yer.’

‘Nope,’ Hank said.

‘Then it’s CIA, or maybe you’re INS?’

‘Nope.’

‘Ah, it don’t make a dick of a focken difference what you tell me, fellah. I’m for the focken tip anyway.’

‘Tip?’

‘You’re talkin’ to a focken dead man,’ he said. ‘They’re gonna focken clip me, so they are.’

The comment filled the small space and the air took a while to clear.

‘What are they gonna do with you?’ the man asked.

‘Don’t know.’

‘I shouldn’t think it would be the smartest thing in the world for the IRA to clip a Yanky fed. Last thing they’ll want to do is make it personal with your people.’

‘I’m not a fed.’

‘Oi give op then. What are yer?’

‘I’m not law enforcement,’ Hank said tiredly.

‘Then what the fuck are yer doin’ here?’

‘I told you. Case of mistaken identity.’

‘Bollocks . . . Look, if you don’t want to tell me that’s fine. Like oi give a focken shite. Got me own focken problems anyhow. Just makin’ conversation . . . You’re probably the last focker I’ll talk to, that’s all.’

Hank wanted to talk to the man, find out about him, but a lifetime in Special Forces was urging him to be cautious.

‘Why’re you here?’ Hank asked eventually.

The Irishman didn’t answer.

‘Hey, you were the one who said it didn’t matter and wanted to talk,’ Hank said.

‘I’m a tout,’ he said.

Hank knew the term. ‘You IRA?’

‘Well, now that’s an interesting question . . . Since I’m a tout I s’pose I’m focken technically not IRA.’

‘You work for the British?’ Hank asked.

‘Brits? Fock off. I work for meself.’ He cleared his throat and nose, hacking loudly, then groaning with pain immediately after. He took a moment to recover, undoubtedly in a bad way.

‘Focken bastards gave me a good pasting last night. I thought that was it. Kicked me focken stupid they did.What I’d give for a focken aspirin. Me head is focken splittin’.’ He cleared blood and mucus from his nose and throat again and held his breath to ease the stab of pain the effort caused him. ‘Focken bastards,’ he said softly as he exhaled. ‘So what the fock you doin’ here then if you ain’t nothin’ to do with law enforcement?’

Hank kept silent.

‘Oh, roight. I forgot. Mistaken identity. Excuse me focken brain but it’s a bit loike mashed potato at the moment . . . So who is it they mistook you for then? Prince focken Charles, was it?’

Hank expected his captors knew who he was. In two weeks or whatever, no one had asked him. If they weren’t curious that suggested they knew. If they never gave a damn, why were they keeping him? They would’ve searched him when he was unconscious and found his US Navy ID card. That would’ve surprised them, especially if they thought they had a Brit spy in the bag. In two weeks he would’ve expected the IRA to be able to find out who he was. Perhaps he was already in the newspapers as a missing American serviceman.

His thoughts went to Kathryn again and how she no doubt went ballistic when she found out. He wondered if they had told her it was the IRA holding him. That would confuse her already confused politics. He was going to get an earful when he got home no matter what. Hank fully expected to be repatriated once the Brits and Americans had sorted the mess out between them. It would be an embarrassment for all concerned, and the IRA had no use for him surely. What the hell, he decided. He wasn’t giving anything away they didn’t already know.‘I’m US Navy,’ Hank said.

‘US Navy? Navy intelligence?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, for fock sake. You’re doin’ my head in, man. What the fock would the IRA want with an American focken sailor?’

‘I was working with the Brit military . . . observing. Something went wrong and I got snatched by these guys who thought I was a Brit.’

‘Is that right? What were you observing?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

The Irishman started laughing gently and then winced with the pain it caused him for his troubles. ‘The American sailor got picked up watching the Brits watching the IRA. That’s focken sweet, that is.You tell a grand tale, so you do, Yank.’

‘How’d you end up here?’ Hank asked.

‘I got shopped . . . The snitch got snitched on. It was the Brits, I know that much. Focken IRA didn’t have a clue about me. They’re nothin’ but a buncha focken eedjits. It had t’av been the Brits. I was too bloody careful.’The man took a moment to get through a stitch of pain. ‘I know why they did it though,’ he continued after a moment. ‘It was me own fault.You went a wee bit too far this time, Seamus, so you did,’ he said. ‘Too bloody tempting though it was.’

‘What was?’

‘I shoulda got out a year ago,’ he said, ignoring Hank’s question. ‘Got a wife and a kid, yer see.That makes yer push it, you know. When yer single you push it for the crack. When yev a family you push it for the money . . . I sold guns to the IRA and I sometimes sold the people I sold them to to the Brits, when I knew I could get away with it. And a good living, so it was.’

The Irishman went silent, then there was a sniffling sound, softly with each intake of breath. He was crying.

Hank let him to himself and they sat in silence for a long time.The man seemed genuine enough and he wasn’t unusually interested in Hank.

‘Where do you think we are?’ Hank asked, breaking the long silence.

The Irishman cleared his throat, bringing something up, blood or mucus, and spitting it into his hood. ‘Fock. I can’t cough any more. The pain is murderous. I must have at least half-a-dozen broken focken ribs,’ he said, adjusting his position carefully. ‘Either the Med or the Atlantic. If we’re on a river we’re not far inland. I heard seagulls as they brought me aboard. They picked me up in Munich and we must’ve drove ten hours at least but not much more. It was loit when they picked me op and loit when I got here and I didn’t sleep on the journey. That’s the best I can make of it for yer. Not that it makes a flying fock of a difference.’

‘What were you doing in Munich?’

‘About to get focken paid,’ he said.

‘Paid for passing information?’

‘No. Running weapons. At first I thought the fockers were stitching me op, trying to take me goods without paying.When they started beating on me they explained the real reason and that me time was op . . . Bastards.’

‘You really think they’ll kill you?’

‘Oi’ll be the first focken tout in four hundred years to walk free if they don’t. Oi’ve a sneakin’ feelin’ oi’m not going to be that locky,’ he said. ‘Anyhow, I recognized one of the voices when I came on board. A murdering bastard called Brennan. The Executioner is one of his nicknames. Bastard gets a kick out of it. Likes to take his time too. Taunting bastard, so he is. Brennan’ll have some fun with me before he does the business.’

Hank believed him. The man certainly sounded like it was going to happen. It suddenly felt strange, being in a room with a man about to die.

‘What did you mean earlier, when you said you went too far?’

‘What?’

‘You said you went too far.You think that’s why the Brits shopped you. You were greedy.’

‘Oh, yes,’ the man said, then took a while to answer again, and this time not just because of his discomfort. Hank could almost hear him thinking. ‘Do the Aral Sea labs mean anything to you?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘It should. The Aral Sea is in Kazakhstan. It’s a big lake really, mostly dried op. The other soide of it is Uzbekistan. In the middle of it is an island, and on that island are the labs that used to churn out some of the deadliest biological weapons the world has ever heard of. That was back in the Cold War days . . . If yer know the right people, for the right price yer can buy a pint a pure death . . . Did yer know eight kilos of a chemical that oi don’t even know the name of could kill two and a half million people in a city as big as London?’

‘You saying you tried to buy some of that stuff?’ Hank asked.

‘Not troid. Oi’m sayin’ oi bought some . . . “Virus U” they call it. About two cupfuls for a hundred grand. The so-called experts talk about how much damage some a these biological weapons can do, but for the most part they don’t have a focken clue. A Pepsi can full could wipe out a small town and then spread and wipe out several cities. Oi don’t know what two cupfuls of Virus U’ll do, but oi wouldn’t want to be within a thousand miles of it when it’s released.’

‘Who did you buy this stuff for?’

‘Who do yer bloody think?’

‘The IRA?’

‘They’re me only client.’

‘And they have it?’

‘A course they have it.’

‘Would that be the IRA or the Real IRA?’

‘What’s in a bloody name?’

Hank was suddenly stunned as the implications of what he had just heard sunk in. ‘Are you out of your friggin’ mind?’

The Irishman didn’t answer. Hank wondered how out of touch he was with the IRA situation. He never would have believed they would be into biological terrorism.

‘Have the IRA ever bought anything like this before?’ Hank asked.

‘Not as far as oi know. This was a special request. It took me a year to set it op.’

‘What do they want it for?’

‘They don’t exactly include me in their top-level mission briefings.Tell you the truth, oi wasn’t going to let it happen. Oi’m tellin’ the truth. Dead men don’t tell lies . . . I was going to shop them to the Brits soon as oi got paid the money. It would’ve been me last job sure enough. Oi’d’ve got a few sheckles for that kinda information. The joke is the Brits’ve shot themselves in the foot by shopping me. You can’t expect me to feel sorry for ’em. They’ve focken killed me and that’s that.’

‘The Brits don’t know?’

‘Sure they know. I’d made me contact and said as much as the boyos have a bottle of bio . . . I think it was a case of the left hand not knowin’ what the right was doin’, I mean in British intelligence. Obviously they would’ve wanted to know where that stuff was. They were gonna give me a fortune for the information. Some eedjit shopped me before I could complete the transaction. Maybe it was that focken IRA mole they’re always talkin’ about. Now that oi think of it, that would make more sense than anything else.’

It was this last comment that flicked a switch in Hank and made him realise he was very much a part of all of this and not just an observer. It was the RIRA mole they were after in Paris. ‘Where is this stuff now?’

‘Don’t know. But they’ve got it. And some of the mad bastards I know in the Real IRA’ll use it too. They’re just as fanatical as the focken Muslims.They won’t lose any sleep over killing a few hundred thousand Brits, I can tell yer that much.’

Hank could only think of one thing. He had to escape and tell someone.

Suddenly the engines revved hard and the entire boat shook. There was a jolt, as if the boat had been pulled by a tug, and then a sense of floating movement.

‘We’re off,’ the Irishman said. ‘Soon as we’re out to sea that’s me for the chop.’

Hank no longer cared about the man’s future. He had committed an ungodly act by providing a handful of terrorists with the means to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Hank twisted his hands inside his bindings. They were firm and impossible to wriggle out of. He was going to have to do something more than just wait for an opportunity to escape. He was going to have to create one.

 

Kathryn walked into St Mary’s church and looked about. It was quiet. The single great room was bright in the centre but the many alcoves and corners were dimly lit and shadowy.

No service was taking place. A handful of people knelt or sat in silent prayer, a couple placed candles on a rack where dozens already burned and one lady stared blankly ahead as she sat outside the confessional box, situated against the far right wall under a row of stained-glass windows.

Kathryn felt an urge to genuflect as she moved across the centre aisle, even though she had not done so since her mother used to practically drag her here most Sunday mornings all those years ago. She chose not to and walked slowly behind the back benches and to the side wall, subconsciously hiding in a corner.

The church had not changed much as far as she could remember. The altar was clean and bare and the wooden tabernacle unimpressive.The candleholders looked cheap and plastic flowers in their plastic baskets adorned a nativity scene set up on one side of the altar. Anything of value that had not been stolen over the years was locked away.The church continued to be a target for thieves until it was well known there was nothing of value left in it. The police told Father Kinsella they thought it was the act of drug addicts. Kathryn remembered how shocked she was then. It didn’t seem so shocking any more. The evil was a part of life now.

The confessional box opened and a young boy stepped out and went towards the woman waiting in the pew close by. Kathryn watched as Father Kinsella, dressed in a black cassock, stepped out the other side of the box to have a chat with the pair of them. He smiled and patted the boy on the shoulder, shook the woman’s hand warmly before she and the boy turned and walked away. Father Kinsella followed them with his eyes until his gaze fell upon Kathryn watching him.