The Killer II (10 page)

‘Liam, my boy, please do not be in such a hurry.
The timing is of the utmost importance here so if you would kindly read the full dossier in front of you rather than just staring at the photo, I would be much obliged.’

‘What can it say in here that I don’t already know?
I gave you half the information on him to start with.
I know where to find him in Belfast, everything.’

‘And there, Liam, is the very point.
You know, there are several people who have spent quite some time gathering that information and I have spent many hours compiling it.
It is rather impolite of you to ignore my hard work if I might say so.
Read the file and consider one thing.
Would we
really be sending you back to Belfast?
You might be Liam O’Neil to me, but you’re still the Butcher over there – and you’re dead.’

‘Ah, you do have a point there,’ Liam agreed.

‘Not only that, old bean, but we couldn’t do anything to him in the north anyway.
Not even by, shall we say, more legitimate means.
The British government can’t very well be seen to be sending British soldiers into a friendly foreign country with the sole purpose of eliminating one of their own nationals, now can they?
It would look very bad in the newspapers and would upset people at their breakfast.
Besides, the Irish government may be more than a little ticked off too.’

‘So it has to be me and it isn’t to be in Belfast, then?’ Liam asked.

‘
Mr.
O’Neil, read the bloody file,’ Turner said in exasperation and the profanity from his lips, mild though it was, finally did the trick.

For the next hour Liam studied the papers in front of him.
In a few days’ time Larry O’Brien would be attending a conference in Waterford.
It was all to be very secret and Liam was surprised that it would happen at all.
O’Brien never left the north.
‘You sure about this?’ he asked at one point.
Turner just looked at him.
‘Okay, okay, I know.
I’ll read the file,’ Liam added hurriedly.

Eventually he had the background and the two men began talking tactics and plans.
A few sandwiches and cups of tea saw them through the day until they decided they had everything covered and Turner rose to leave as the evening drew in.
‘Don’t you have any more whiskey for me, sir?’ Liam asked at the door.

‘Now now, lad, you bought yourself quite a stock at that little off-licence yesterday, didn’t you?’

‘Holy Christ,
Mr.
Turner, is there anything you don’t know?’

‘Only how to stop you blaspheming and cursing so much.’

‘I’ll try harder,’ Liam promised as they arrived at the door, ‘and
Mr.
Turner, thank you for this.
I won’t let you down.’

As the door closed and Liam O’Neil disappeared from his view, Turner walked sadly to his car.
Ah, the eagerness of youth.
It was one of the things he relied on, and, with this particular young man, the passion, the hatred and the desperate need for vengeance.
But oh, how the whole thing sickened him.
He really was starting to feel too old for all of this.
One good thing was that Liam had proved himself in America, a few slips aside, and was now being sent over to Ireland.
That meant the close monitoring was coming to an end and he, too, could make the trip back home.
He had been in England too long and he was anxious to return to his little antique shop in Dublin and pick up his cover as the quiet, sad English gentleman to whom no one paid much attention.

1
2

The Republic of Ireland

Liam had spent the last three days reading and re-reading the detailed dossier.
Turner’s work was meticulous.
He was to be in and out of Ireland in the space of just a few hours and his departure time had arrived.
As he was climbing aboard the private civilian helicopter he paused for a moment and glanced over his shoulder.
The older man waved to him once and then drove away in his Mercedes.
Liam took his seat and buckled himself in.

‘Off back to Ireland then are you Paddy?’ the man sitting opposite asked, and Liam took an instant dislike to him.
There was no uniform, but he was so obviously a British soldier and Liam had never really come to terms with the fact that they were now on the same side.

‘It’s
Mr.
O’Neil to you,’ he snapped, and that was the end of the conversation.
For the rest of the short flight the soldier turned his heavily scarred face to the window and stared into the night while Liam fingered his own, solitary scar, and went over his mission plan in his head.
He was really looking forward to this one.
Turner wanted a bloody affair, something that looked like the work of a maniac and not a government assassin.
‘Maniac I can do for you, Mad Dog,’ he thought with relish.

Eventually the helicopter landed in a small, private airfield.
Waterford Aero Club, the sign announced.
Liam waited for the rotors to die down a little and then began to climb out but a hand grabbed him by the shoulder, yanking him backwards.
‘Hey,
Mr.
O-fucking-Neil,’ the soldier snarled.
‘This flight leaves at 2am sharp and if you’re not here by then you ca
n fucking swim back.’

‘You don’t like me much do you mate?’ Liam suggested as he pulled himself free of the man’s grasp and jumped to the ground, reaching into his pocket as he did so.
‘The feeling’s mutual.
Here, catch.’

The soldier reacted instinctively with his right hand and looked at what he had caught.
‘An AK round, what about it?’ he asked, inspecting the bullet as he
rolled it between his fingers.

‘If you’re not here waiting for me, the next
one’ll
be coming a lot
fuckin
’ faster,’ snapped Liam with
an unblinking stare.

The soldier looked from the Irishman to the bullet and back again, but said nothing.
Liam turned and, as the rotors finally died to nothing, he thought he caught the words ‘Orders are orders,’ as he walked away.

A car slowly approached him and drew to a halt.
‘
Mr.
O’Neil?’ smiled a pretty face as the rear window slid down.

‘Aye, that it is.’

‘Here are your car keys sir.
It’s that blue Ford Granada right at the far end of the park.’

‘Thanks
darlin
’, he grinned at her as he took the keys.
The car moved a few yards forward to the chopper to deal with whatever business was necessary there and he walked across to the Granada.

He carried out his usual security measures and, when he was confident that everything was safe, he went to examine the contents of the boot.
Turner had assured him that he would be well provisioned, but his eyes widened in amazement at what he saw.
‘Fuck me, there’s a bloody arsenal in here,’ he muttered as he carried out a quick stock-check.
A Colt .45 automatic; a snub nosed .38 revolver; a short stock AK 47; two fragmentation grenades; a very large and evil looking bayonet and, last but not least, an
Armalite
AR-18.
‘A
fuckin
’
Widowmaker
,’ he exclaimed as he noted each weapon strapped neatly into individual foam containers and a collection of multiple clips and associated boxes of ammo to complete the arms stash. ‘Jesus Christ
all-fucking-mighty
, what’s Turner thinking?
I’m
gonna
start World War fucking Three?’

He took the .38, checked its ammo and pocketed it.
The .45 auto, two spare clips and one of the grenades went into the glove box where he also found a torch.
Handy.
He then loaded the AK, placing it along with several
mags
in the passenger foot-well.
The
Widowmaker
, clips, ammo and bayonet he left where they were.
‘Hopefully I won’t be needing any of those fuckers,’ he thought as he slammed the boot closed.
He climbed into
the driver’s seat and, after utte
ring a final ‘Jesus Christ,’
drove from the park and out onto the main road.
He checked the clock on the dash.
It was just gone 10pm and he would be in position in less than five minutes.

The Hotel, the Targets

and
the Drunkard

Liam sat on the bench with his back to the river
Suir
.
He had a good view of the hotel and he watched with envy as couples and families ate their meals in the
brightly-lit
dining room.
They looked warm and comfortable in there and he pulled down his cap and pulled up the collar of his coat to keep out the cold March night.
He wished he could have stayed in the car, but there wasn’t a park close enough for his surveillance, so the bench it had to be.

There was no sign of his target yet, but he hadn’t expected one.
Mad Dog was hardly likely to take a window seat and put himself on display.
Turner’s intelligence had this as friendly territory for the cause and Larry O’Brien’s face was not well known outside of his own community, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have taken safety precautions.
The dossier had detailed a side room as the likely meeting place, but a blueprint of the hotel showed that the only way back to the hotel accommodation was through the main restaurant area.
So Liam fought the cold, waited and watched.

This was taking an interminably long time.
As 11pm came and went, he wasn’t too worried, but as midnight approached and all the regular clientele had left the restaurant he started to become as concerned as he was cold.
A waiter moved into view to clear the last table and the dining room lights dimmed.
Bollocks.
With less light he couldn’t be sure to identify the target and he was considering moving closer when a group of men could be briefly seen walking through the restaurant and past the window.
He counted seven, at least three of whom had that unmistakable bodyguard bearing.

Finally.

He couldn’t see clearly enough to identify faces, but it had to be them and he hoped they were going straight to their rooms.
Two of the men emerged from the hotel and walked away down the street, leaving five inside.
He checked his watch in the glow of a street lamp and saw that he had only half an hour for the next stage of the plan.
He waited for ten more minutes and then walked across to the hotel and into reception as he prayed that Turner’s information would continue to hold good and that a certain man with a facial scar had suffered an unfortunate stomach complaint earlier in the day.

A girl was alone at the desk and Liam thought she looked quite pleasant.
From Turner’s information that she “wasn’t too bright” Liam had expected a gormless expression.
As he walked towards her he
could see through to the bar area which seemed deserted.
Thank Christ.
‘Can I help you?’ the receptionist asked politely.

‘I was supposed to be at a meeting here tonight, but I didn’t make it.
Can I leave a note for one of your guests please?

‘Certainly sir,’ she said, passing over a pad and pen before cautiously looking over her shoulder.
Lowering her voice she added, ‘I hope you have a good excuse.
That
Mr.
Murphy was most displeased when you didn’t show.’

‘Ah, yes, Murphy,’ Liam offered, feigning familiarity with the name, ‘he does have a bad temper.’

‘I didn’t like him at all,’ the girl continued confidentially.
‘Patrick Murphy my eye.
As if I don’t know a false name when I see it.
Er
, not that it’s any of my business,’ she added hurriedly.

‘Don’t mind me,
darlin
’,’ he smiled at her.
‘I’m just the hired help.
Anyway I’ll be leaving the message for Leonard
O’Barry
, if that’s OK.’

‘Of course, of course, sir.’
She took the note quickly and scolded herself.
She wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone from that meeting.
They were not officially here and she had been unhappy earlier in the evening when that horrible Murphy had spoken to her in a very off-hand manner and demanded that if a man with a scar on his cheek turned up, he should be shown through immediately.
She wouldn’t like to be in this
man’s shoes, she thought as she placed the note in pigeonhole twenty-nine.

‘Thank you,’ Liam said politely and walked back out into the night.

It was freezing, but at least he could go back to his car now for the rest of the wait.
He was only just within schedule and the dossier showed the staff change in fifteen minutes.
He figured an extra quarter of an hour beyond that to be on the safe side.
He couldn’t let the girl who had seen him up close also see him head to the rooms.
So far the timing had proved tight but everything else seemed to be just as Turner had predicted.
A guy missing from the meeting, particularly one with a
scar,
had given him the excuse to find out Larry O’Brien’s room number.

‘How can you be sure one of them will have a scar?’ Liam had asked.

‘Dear boy,’ Turner had replied wearily.
‘How many people do you know in your old circles who don’t have scars of some description?’

It was a good point, Liam had to admit, and Turner had assured him that, of the three men due to attend the meeting from the local area, two of them would be described as men with scars.
‘We plan to inconvenience one of them with a laxative,’ he had explained.
‘Then you go in when it’s too late for the meeting and it will just be assumed that you are the missing man with the scar.’

‘Why don’t you just have him killed?’

‘
Mr.
O’Neil, really, we can’t just go killing people off
willy
nilly
now can we?
Our targets are carefully selected.
They have to be high enough up the chain to matter but not so high up in political circles that their deaths would cause an outcry in government.
The man with the scar is simply a Waterford local who helped to facilitate a meeting.
It would be quite unseemly to take him out, as I’m sure you can appreciate.’

No, in all honesty, Liam couldn’t appreciate that at all.
All these little niceties were completely beyond his comprehension and he knew he would never get his head round it.
Still, it was nothing to do with him, and “inconveniencing” unsuspecting men with laxatives was not his business.
What was his business, though, was ascertaining the whereabouts of one Larry-Mad Dog-O’Brien and the last page of the dossier had given the cover name Leonard
O’Barry
.
‘How can you be so sure he’ll use that name?’ Liam had asked.

‘Oh, the intelligence is very good there,’ Turner had assured him.
‘Plus it makes perfect sense.’

‘It does?’

‘Oh, but of course.
People go to the trouble of assuming false names, but they usually stick with their own initials.’

‘Does that mean your real initials are A.T. then?’ Liam had wanted to know.

‘M.T.’

‘What?’

‘
Mr.
Turner to you lad.’

Liam considered the whole initials thing while he waited in the car and it prompted the obvious question.
Who, then, was Patrick Murphy?
One equally obvious answer suggested itself – Peter Moore, but there had been no mention of his presence in the file.
Had Turner missed something?
If so, should he do anything about it?
He would dearly love to.
Peter Moore was at the top of the Committee Belfast and if anyone was ultimately responsible for his mother’s death, then it had to be him.
He felt his anger building and made a deliberate effort to control his breathing.
First Mad Dog as per orders, he decided, and then he would consider what to do next.
He checked his watch.
Twelve forty-five.
Time to move.