The South Lawn Plot (3 page)

A
LITTLE OVER FOUR HUNDRED MILES
to the north west of Blackfriars Bridge, a man who knew a thing or two about big stories was savoring at close hand the power of the Atlantic Ocean.

He had checked the light, estimated the wind speed and, as best he could, the time lapse before the next squall.

The man decided that the light was his most immediate concern. It was changing so rapidly that taking the right shot would be mostly luck, regardless of the sophistication of the equipment he had balanced precariously on the stony shingle.

It was, he decided, all rather exquisite. If only it wasn't so damn bone chilling.

He pulled aside the waterproof cover and placed his right eye to the viewfinder. Through it he stared intently at the plumes of spray being blown off the tops of the waves. The rollers were six or seven feet at least, despite the sheltering headland at the northern end of the bay and the great mountain looming over its southern approaches.

He closed his right hand into a little ball in an effort to restore some feeling to its extremities. He slowly wrapped his fingers around the trigger and squeezed his forefinger lightly against it.

The Leicaflex whizzed and clicked.

Steven Pender raised himself. He was in better physical shape than he had been in months, but his back protested. He looked to his left and right, taking in both ends of the deserted stone beach. Had he the advantage of a gull's eye view he would have seen a spit of land not unlike a cocked thumb. He was standing at the end of it, where the stones and shingle fell into the bay.

Pender fired off the camera a few more times to bring his day's work to a close. He well understood that all his efforts might be for naught. The difference between good and outstanding was not really in his hands on a day like this.

He had lodged his backpack and camera bag behind an outcrop of rocks about a hundred yards back down the beach. Folding his arms about the tripod and nestling the camera under his chin, Pender began to make his way back to the rocks. They seemed to be miles away. His mind wandered ahead of his feet. It embraced memories of Africa and the steamy heat that had made him dream longingly about places like this: the Lake District, the Shetland Islands, west of Ireland. Somewhere in the world, he thought, there just had to be a happy medium.

Pender reached the rocks and slumped against the largest of them. It offered some protection from the wind though not the rain, now more intense than the earlier drizzle. Pender tucked his head as deeply into his upturned collar as he possibly could and corkscrewed his rear end into the stones.

Every fraction of an inch counted. Quickly, and expertly, despite his numbed hands, he broke down the tripod, packed the camera into its bag and pulled both backpack and bag to each side of him. He was facing inwards, towards the land. The alternating shadows and shards of light raced over the shoreline on the far side of the channel, upwards over the stone walled fields and beyond them up the bare slopes of the mountain.

Pender scanned the channel's landside beach, a sandier affair than the one on which he was huddled. His eyes rested at the point where the path began. It snaked its way through rocky outcrops before ending abruptly at a line of stunted trees, the grizzled sentinels marking out the garden.

He narrowed his eyes against the wetness and could just about make out the house. The lights were on. Or at least one was, in the living room, the one with the big window.

Pender picked up a gray colored stone about the size of his palm and turned it over. It would probably be still here a hundred years from now, he thought.

He tried to keep his thoughts focused on the stone, a simple thing. But it was useless of course. Jonas Sem was close by, his body all twisted and bloodied.

They had taken no chances with Sem. At least half a dozen AK47 magazines had been unloaded into the room. It was as if the bastards were trying to kill the entire building.

Pender's photos of the assassinated rebel leader had been sensational. Not surprising since the man's blood was still flowing when he had taken them. The shots had appeared in just about every significant newspaper and
magazine on the planet. They had sealed his growing reputation as the man who got the big ones.

Prizes and awards had followed. Someone else always had to collect the bronze cameras and framed certificates on his behalf, because Pender was invariably lost in some war-crazed hellhole, daily witnessing death so seemingly casual that it had become just that.

Sem had been the start of the casual phase. He had no regrets. The bastard had died too quickly, really. And his death had probably saved hundreds of lives, maybe thousands. It had been a good thing. So why was he thinking of it again now? Here in this rain purified place.

Pender shivered, stood up, gathered his gear and began to walk back to the house. Fifteen minutes later he stood in the doorway gazing into the main room of the cottage.

There was no sight or sound of Manning. He had, Pender remembered, mentioned something about a walk up the mountain. And they laughed at mad dogs and Englishmen, he thought.

Figuring that he had a few minutes to himself, Pender walked straight to the writing desk against the far wall. Manning kept a diary. Over the past couple of nights Pender had noticed that the last thing that the Irishman did before bed was to write for about three or four minutes in a leather-bound journal.

Pender flicked through the pages. Most of them referred to mundane events in Washington. There were, as was to be expected, frequent references to his host's wife and daughter and several to his work at the embassy. The first secretary and political officer at the Irish Embassy was, by dint of his own words, clearly a little restless. Promotion to ambassadorial level, it seemed, had not quite come quickly enough.

Pender opened the pages for the last couple of days. Manning referred to his presence in the house, but there was no indication as to how he felt about his English guest. No criticism, no praise, no pithy observation. Perhaps he expected his visitor to spy. There was, at various points in the diary, mention of a man named Michael who appeared to be linked to the cottage in some way. Pender had met no one else since his arrival. He rubbed his palm over his chin as his eyes fixed on the stranger's name. He needed a shave.

Pender closed the diary and placed it back exactly as he had found it. He had noted that it had been placed with the text facing out from the desk, so upside down from his perspective. It might have been nothing, but he had
employed tricks himself from time to time when he wanted to be sure that eyes were not prying. One of them was to place an object at a particular angle, or in a specific position relative to others.

He walked across the room to the wall that served as a picture gallery. Here there were several dozen framed photographs arranged in what appeared to be chronological order, oldest on the left and most recent on the right. This had been only one aspect of the overall order and neatness that Pender had observed seconds after his arrival in the cottage. But he also had the sense that it was someone else's order. Manning's late father.

The oldest photographs were of Victorian ladies and gentlemen staring at the lens as if it were the barrel of a gun. There were several of soldiers dressed in British uniform, the bellhop variety. They were from the ranks though one appeared to have been a junior officer. Moving to the right, Pender crossed the threshold of the twentieth century.

One of pictures was of a group posing with an early model automobile. And then there were more uniforms, a couple still British but several of stern young men in the dress of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Before he was posted to Northern Ireland, a time when the place could dish up dramatic photos as if on a conveyor belt, Pender had taken a crash course in Irish history. It served him well now as he could distinguish between the IRB boys and a lone member of the Irish Citizen Army.

The photos to the right of the soldiers were all of civilians, family groups and the occasional individual. There were three photos of a man in barrister garb. The father. Pender knew of him, or at least of him. Manning senior had been famous, or infamous, for his ability to get IRA men off the hook, even in the non-jury special court in Dublin. His death, fortunately for many of his likely future clients, had come after, and not before, the Provo ceasefire.

Pender's version of a sixth sense told him that something had changed in the room. He turned and stiffened. A man was standing in the door, an old man. He was bareheaded and wore no coat. He looked at least eighty though he had a thick and wavy head of white hair.

But it was the eyes that Pender was drawn to. They did not betray age. They were a grayish-blue and not in the least bit inquisitive.

“You must be Michael,” Pender said with a half smile. The old man said nothing. The nod was barely discernible. The old man was carrying a couple of plastic bags. He turned, and with surprisingly agile steps, went into the
adjoining kitchen. Pender glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes shy of four thirty. The old man had apparently brought dinner and, from the banging of pots now coming from the kitchen, was also intending to cook it.

“Splendid,” Pender said to himself. “A batman for the old legal eagle.”

He decided to pour himself a small whiskey to warm up his damp bones. This entailed stepping into the kitchen and retrieving both the bottle and a glass from an old pine dresser.

“I was down on the beach taking photographs and the damp went right through me,” Pender said by way of making conversation.

The old man was holding potatoes under a thin stream of water flowing from the faucet and scrubbing them with bony hands.

“I'm going to have a drop; fancy one yourself?”

“Later,” said the old man.

There was no arguing.

Pender was determined not to retreat. A high stool was backed up against the wall at the opposite end of the narrow kitchen from where the old man stood.

Pender poured himself a generous measure of whiskey. He reached into the ancient refrigerator's icebox and chipped out a couple of cubes. He sat on the stool and watched the old man who was now cutting up a thick piece of steak he had taken from one of the plastic bags.

“Making an Irish stew?” said Pender.

The old man was cutting the steak into squares. “Just a stew,” he said.

Pender stared into his glass.

“Eamonn must have gone for a walk up the mountain,” he said.

“Mr. Manning likes his walks,” the old man replied, more quickly this time.

The old man was cracking a bit, Pender thought.

“I suppose his father liked to walk the mountain as well,” he said.

“Did,” came the reply.

That was about it. The old man made a fuss of digging out a large cooking pot from the space below the sink.

Pender decided to retreat into the living room. He stood and considered the kind of job he had been given. If it required the use of a diplomat based in Washington he imagined that his target would be either political or diplomatic; hopefully not his host but, of course, what could one do if it was?

Then again, it might be a business type. Diplos met all sorts of people. Manning would more likely be the means of access and introduction, the Trojan Horse.

Would the horse have to be disposed of at the end of the operation? He stared intently at his hand holding the glass. Not a tremor. The liquid was absolutely still. He was curious as to what was coming next. But for now he would just relax and enjoy a little Irish hospitality.

M
ANNING STARED THROUGH THE WINDOW
. His guest was somewhere out in the murk. The ambassador had asked him to entertain Pender. And so he had, for two long days.

It wasn't that Pender was dull, or uneasy company. But Manning had not flown the Atlantic to socialize.

He had planned the visit to the house for months. It was to be a final immersion in his father's private space before the place was put on the market. But it hadn't been so simple. He had been foolish to think that simply because of his father's death the old man's presence would somehow evaporate. Adjourning to the town and considering matters from the safe distance of a hotel would have been an alternative.

But now there was Pender, lost somewhere below in the gloom.

Still, Manning thought, his guest would be gone tomorrow and he could manage to wangle another couple of days leave from the embassy, time enough to make final plans. And besides, there was the sudden complication. The thought of it made him look again at his watch. What the hell did they want now?

He tried to clear his mind by thinking of other things, of Rebecca, Jessica, even work at the embassy. But he had found solace only by turning his mind back, to his father, here in this place, and earlier still to the boarding school in the midlands, the one with the farm, ivy covered walls and scholar monks who were either three quarters genius, or two thirds mad.

The place had been his home for six years. There had been days of late when he wanted to be back there, closeted behind the muscular traditions and the embracing certainty of history essays and Latin preparation.

But thoughts of schools days had faded, and Manning was again staring out of the window towards the bay and its hidden islands and islets.

His hands were in his pockets. His father would have scolded him.

Hands were tools, weapons, Joe Manning would have said. You could turn a jury, sometimes even a judge, with the proper use of hands.

A sudden flash of sunlight banished thoughts of the father and focused the son's eyes on the world outside. One by one, the islands in the bay below the house were popping into view. The squall, easing now, had been the heaviest of the day. It had unleashed itself over the bay, smacking its turreted edges with great sheets of water. But now the rain had galloped inland and was soaking the upland bogs and walled fields of Mayo's wild interior.

A wood pigeon glided across the lawn on a collision course with the hedge. Just before the crash, the bird's wings began to flap furiously. It rose over the top before dropping down the far side. Flying away and vanishing had its merits, Manning thought.

He walked around the pine dining table that doubled as a work desk and sat himself down. His tea, stewing away in the chipped mug, was still warm. He picked up the cup and swallowed a gulp of the stuff. His eyes rested on the table and the assortment of items that were the afternoon's primary concern.

Before him, neatly arrayed, was a stack of papers, a leather-bound diary, a radio with short wave capabilities, Japanese make, and a pistol.

It was an old gun, a Browning of considerable vintage but still in good working order. His father had taken good care of the weapon. The wily senior counsel, friend of the politically oppressed, one side anyway, had his enemies. He was presumed to be a target for loyalists from the North. This had been his personal protection firearm though Manning had been unable to find a permit.

The gun's presence in the house had been a secret for all the years that his father had used the place as his refuge. Not that there had ever been much chance of someone finding it. Old Joe had kept even his law library cronies at a distance. The house was his world and his alone. His mother had only been in it about three times in their entire marriage.

About three days before his death, Joe had muttered something about hidden treasure under the floorboards. Manning had only to rummage for a few minutes to find it. There were four bullets. It was hardly much of an arsenal, but Manning well remembered the times when his father's life had been threatened and he had gone to bed only after spending endless minutes staring out his bedroom window into the darkness. More often than not, a police car was stationed on the street outside the house. But the fear remained. It had been the price for his father getting so many hard men on one side off.

Manning fingered through the papers and letters, looked again at his watch. He took a pencil in hand but just as quickly put it down. The clock
chimed. It was two o'clock. His appointment, if it could be described as such, was at three. The bastard could wait in the rain, he thought.

He sat back in the rickety chair and swallowed another mouthful of tea. Would he miss the place if he went ahead and sold it? Sure he would. But he had never quite felt that it belonged to him. Even now, with his father gone, it could never be really his, or his mother's. It would always be Joe's retreat, or the hiding place of a complete stranger, someone who could start from scratch and, like his father, invest an entirely new thirty years of contemplation, scheming and late night solitary tippling behind its foot-and-a-half thick walls.

Manning shivered. He rose from his chair and stretched out his arms. On wet days such as this, he always felt his bones shrink a bit. It was the inescapable bloody damp. He walked the few paces to the fireplace. The turf fire in the iron grate was in need of immediate replenishment.

Dropping to his knees, he took a sod from the basket and threw it on the still glowing ash. He loved the smell of burning turf.

He grabbed a second sod and threw it on to the now reviving fire. A cloud of turf dust exploded in the grate and an ember reached his eye. In the few moments of pain he was back in history class, final year in school and old Clinch rambling on about the Fenians and Pearse. The teachers who marked the exams were all patriots, he said. They all spelled their names in Irish and wanted to see good students pay homage to Ireland's martyred dead. He had laughed at Clinch, they all had. But, as it later turned out, neither the martyrs nor their propagandists were to be so easily dismissed.

He got up and stepped slowly along the wall crowded with the framed photographs, old Joe's hall of family fame.

Long dead relatives stared at him from their formal poses. One was dressed in a uniform, British army. He was a family legend from his mother's side, a token amid all the Manning greats. Great Uncle Willie. Lost up the Khyber Pass. Dead at the hands of the Pathans. Never seen again. But mentioned in dispatches. Brave Uncle Willie.

Uncle Willie stared down at Manning. Manning stared back. God bless Uncle Willie, he thought. Died for king and country, they had said. But really, as his father has never failed to point out, it had been the king of another country. He needed air. He covered the few steps to the door and pulled down his father's battered Barbour coat. Even at close to six feet tall and over 200 pounds, Manning still swam in the rainproof. His father had been larger than life, and large in it.

Throwing on the coat, he opened the door and stepped into the drizzle. He sucked down a deep gulp of saturated air and zipped up the Barbour as far as it would go. He would walk up the mountain, find out what they wanted and tell them to go to hell. Get it over and done with, see Pender off in the morning and make his final decision on the house. It was simple, really.

Then he saw her again.

Manning had been unable to sleep much despite the cool evenings and the ocean air. He had remained awake into the early hours thinking of his father, dearly departed, more or less, a year now.

But it wasn't just that. There was the matter of the young woman, her smile, her puzzlement, the question in her eyes, the moment of absolute realization. And there she was now, standing by the gate, waiting for him, smiling.

She watched Manning as he hunched his shoulders. He did his best to ignore the apparition but slowly turned his eyes. She smiled, looked puzzled, concerned and then fixed him with the question. Manning rubbed his fingers into his eyes and stamped his feet. She was gone. He comforted himself with the thought that at least the ghost, memory, vision or whatever it was, was confined to his native soil. She, it, had made no appearances in Washington. No visa, he thought, and laughed out loud.

He covered the few steps to the rusty gate and pulled it open. To the left, the stone pocked lane ran down the hill to a point where it met asphalt. To the right, it became narrower as it cut through a run of fields surrounded by stone walls before giving way to heather and tussock covered upland and the upper reaches of the mountain.

Manning turned right and walked past dripping fuchsia and hawthorn bushes towards the mountain track. One more day, maybe two, and he would head back to Dublin, stay with his mother for a night and catch a flight back to the States. There was no need to consider any longer. He had a wife, child and career to take care of. What was past was past.

As if to confirm the soundness of his plan, Manning quickened his pace. The thicker vegetation gave way to open pasture in which a few soaked sheep nibbled at grass that was already reduced almost to the roots. His father had often lectured the idiotic animals on the evils of overgrazing and had complained of the negligence of farmers who seemed more phantom around these parts than human flesh.

These hills had been his father's personal court, nature his judge and jury. As a younger man, a boy, Manning had, on those rare visits that included his
mother, walked behind the great man as he jabbed his finger at a meandering seagull or scampering rabbit.

Not a few cases had been won in court with arguments perfected on walks from the house to the top of the mountain and back. Manning could hear his father now, loquacious even in his isolation, hammering home the final nails into the prosecution's coffin as twelve angry rabbits looked on from a safe distance.

Manning made quick time up the slope. He was in his early forties but that, he would remind himself almost daily, was merely his extra late thirties. He still managed to get up a head of steam over the last half mile of his twice- weekly five-mile run. And now he was pumping his arms and pushing against the stony track with quads honed hard on muddy football fields. He could still do it, he thought, the mountain in one continuous stretch, no rest stops.

He was close now to the top and paused only momentarily at the flat rock that topped the Hag's Tailbone, a slope that fell about a hundred feet and then curved upwards briefly only to give way to nothing but air and a straight plunge to a jumble of rocks another three hundred feet below, rocks that had been in place since the death throes of the last ice age.

The track turned to the left and was now a clearly visible strip of trammeled earth leading all the way to the summit, its rock pile and the small white wooden cross that was painted every summer, and replaced every four or five, for as long as any of the locals could remember.

Manning poured it on. His heart was doing double time. But this was good, a needed purgative. His father would have approved of the tempo, if not the silence of the climber.

A final few yards, a last push and he had reached the summit. This was not a high mountain by world standards. It looked big because it rose its almost 2,000 feet starting from sea level. Its summit afforded an uninterrupted view north to the bay and the distant town, south towards Galway, east towards the uplands of Mayo and west, well, west was America, his home for almost two years, and at least a couple more.

It was on this piece of ground that Manning had once stood motionless and at rapt attention as his father recited, word for word, Robert Emmett's speech from the dock, only to follow it with the Gettysburg Address and the best lines from Kennedy's inauguration speech.

The last time they had been together here, Joe Manning had spoken of history. Consider, he had said, if the theory about the butterfly flapping its
wings on one side of the world and causing a hurricane on the other was applied to history. Consider an action in one century and its possible effects in another. What if someone had been in the book depository and had disarmed Oswald? What if someone had shot Hitler dead in Munich? The key thing, he had said, was in the knowing that someone, or something, was destined to have significant historical ramifications. You had to spot history's titans while still in chrysalis form.

“And then what?” the son had asked the father.

“Just get out of the bloody way,” his father had replied.

The son's mind had wandered just as it was doing now as a cloud rolled in from the ocean and wrapped itself around the summit. Manning wanted to believe that this moisture on his face was a gift from nature, but he could not for long ignore his tears. He had held it in for all the months. But they were coming freely now, his very own Atlantic squall.

Manning allowed himself the release though he knew that not all his tears were for his father. He bowed his head and quickly rubbed his eyes dry when he heard the cheerful salutation from behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder. The bent figure of the man was traversing the last few meters of the mountain's south slope.

Looking north again and down towards the house, Manning could just about make out another figure approaching the garden gate. Pender.

He lifted his eyes and stared at the horizon, visible again after the shower.

But if one squall had passed another was about to hit. This one, he knew, would not be born over an ocean, though it would most assuredly spring from a sea of troubles.