Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3) Page 2
Part One
…An Earlier Heaven
Ireland – January 1973
Chapter One
January 1973
Man of Peace
Casey Riordan was stuck in a terrible traffic jam and was going to be late for work. Which was to say that there was a flock of sheep lazing about the road as if they hadn’t wool to grow nor a notion of moving in their wee addled heads, and he couldn’t get around them no matter how much he honked the horn at them.
It was his own bloody fault he was late, and that did nothing to improve his mood. It was his wife’s fault, come down to it. The woman needn’t have pulled him back into the bed when all he was doing was delivering a cup of morning tea to her. He grinned despite the damned sheep still woolgathering in the roadway, for it was hardly a thing about which a man could rightly complain. Once Pamela had gotten over her initial nausea and exhaustion with this pregnancy, her hormones seemed to have gone wild and he swore he found himself horizontal more than vertical whilst home these days. Not that he was complaining at all, at all. In fact, he was half tempted to keep the woman pregnant for the next twenty years or so.
The sheep finally ambled off the road, blatting all the way, sounding purely indignant about having to move.
Casey drove as fast as the narrow lanes allowed, arriving at work some ten minutes behind schedule, his shirt half untucked and a rather wild look in his eyes. Pat was there ahead of him, already busy with a pile of blueprints.
“Yer late,” his brother said and put a cup of tea on the desk in front of him.
“I know,” Casey replied gruffly, hoping to hell Pat wouldn’t ask what had him running behind every morning of late. To judge from the man’s quirked eyebrow though, he had a fair idea. Well, it was likely, Casey thought, that he looked like a man fair depraved these days.
“Bring me up to snuff, will ye?” he said, unrolling a set of blueprints for a holiday cottage for a wealthy American. He had to give the plans one last look over and make a few minor corrections before shipping them off.
Pat sat on the other side of the desk and said, “We’re near to finished the renovations on the Finherty place. The windows were delivered this mornin’ an’ we’re waitin’ on the rock for that retainin’ wall. We’ve still to hear back about the bid we put in for the village center in Whitecross. But no matter that, we’ve got two more projects lined up before we can get to it anyway.” Pat drank his tea down in three long swallows and stood, impatient to get on with the work at hand. Casey rarely managed to have more than a few words with him, and often their conversations consisted of just this, work talk.
“Pamela wants to know if ye’ll come round for dinner sometime this week,” Casey said, not looking at his brother, knowing all too well what the answer would be.
“Ye’ll thank her for me, but I think—no—not just yet. Now, if ye’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get on to Pete Simons about that load of schist he was meant to deliver yesterday.”
Casey watched his brother go out the door, hard hat in hand. Pat had proved invaluable in the start-up of the company. No one worked harder or longer hours, not even himself. It worried him, though, for Pat seemed to have replaced any sort of life with working until he dropped with exhaustion. He understood why, but wished he could find a way to help his brother return to the land of the living. Pat seemed neither angry, nor sad, but rather as if he had turned to some form of stone, stone that moved with a great and restless energy, terrible in its burning. Yet, he was well aware there was little he could do, Pat had to find his own way through his grief, and certainly there were worse ways to mourn your wife than by burying yourself in work. He was grateful the boy hadn’t hit the bottle. Frankly, he could not imagine what he himself would do should something happen to Pamela. He shrugged the thought away as though a cold hand had touched the nape of his neck. It was best not to think such thoughts, lest a man draw the reality into his life.
He stood, gathering his work gloves and tools. He was going to the Finherty place to finish the kitchen hearth. He looked forward to it, as there was a deep peace in working with stone and shaping it into the place within the home that would be its center.
Outside, as he headed toward the lorry, peace was in short supply. He had company. Not for the first time, nor unfortunately, for the last. Inwardly, he cursed and felt the tightening of his gut that always accompanied these visits. Outwardly, he put on his ‘hard man’ face, as Pamela called it, and steeled himself for the next few minutes.
Even the first visit had not been unexpected. A shadow economy was one of the side effects of war, illegal and unrecognized or otherwise. Neither side of the sectarian divide was averse to a bit of old-fashioned extortion, expropriation and a good dose of intimidation to encourage the locals to submit. Both sides already had a heavy grip on a variety of endeavors: drinking clubs, fruit machines, televisions and other electronic goods, moving vans, and electrical contracting, and where it touched him the hardest—cooperatives across sectarian lines that sold protection for construction sites.
His company was only months old, and he wasn’t turning a profit beyond making his payment to the bank each month for both the business loan and his and Pamela’s wee bit of land. He had put in what money they had managed to tuck aside during their time in Boston as well and he had no idea where exactly these bastards, who were strolling toward him thought he was going to find extra money to pay them not to rob him blind.
He didn’t give them a greeting. He wasn’t going to pretend this visit was in any way welcome.
He had christened them Pug and Mr. Spectacles in his mind from the first time he had seen them. The short one was stocky, with bad stubby teeth and small eyes. The tall one stood a good three inches above Casey himself, who was six foot three, and looked in dire need of a decent meal. He didn’t find them particularly intimidating. It was more the notion of who was behind them, because these overtures they kept making had the feel of something personal about them. He wasn’t on the slate for government funded projects, which was where the real money was and therefore worth a thief’s time and effort. Small, private cottages and the occasional new home for a farmer was decidedly not worth the effort. This meant that he might be gone from the IRA, but he was, most unfortunately, not forgotten.
The tall one was the talker, the short one apparently, the muscle. The tall one put out his bony arm as though in cordial greeting.
“It’s not worth the petrol it took ye to get here,” Casey said, ignoring the man’s outstretched hand. “Ye might as well get back in yer wee car, an’ go home, I’ve nothin’ for ye.”
“Now that’s hardly convivial, Mr. Riordan.” The tall one fancied himself a bit of an intellectual and liked to use his manners and a variety of large words to prove it. Casey suspected that the gold-rimmed spectacles he wore were more affectation than necessity. Said spectacles were perched on the man’s rather large nose and gave him the air of a befuddled stork. It did occur to him to wonder where the hell the lower echelons of the Provos were recruiting their enforcers.
“Ah well, pardon me, but I’m a wee bit busy this mornin’ so ye’ll have to forgive me for not rollin’ out the red carpet an’ servin’ ye tea in the good china.”
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Spectacles, “Mr. Riordan, it would behoove us to come at this from another angle.”
“Yer not goin’ to convince me even if ye descend from the sky on a cloud with the Angel Gabriel as yer company. I’ve told ye three times now that I’m not cavin’ in to extortion. I don’t need yer protection, nor that of yer bossman.”
The short man bared his teeth at Casey. Apparently he was the watchdog, brought in to nip anyone who didn’t immediately buckle. Mr. Spectacles lost his own conviviality rather swiftly.
“Yer mighty certain of yerself for a man who is not protected anymore. Yer on the outside on yer own. Even those that counted them
selves yer men a few years ago wouldn’t have yer back now, so I wouldn’t get too brave there, me boyo.”
“I’m not yer fockin’ boyo,” Casey said through gritted teeth, “an’ I can take care of my own damn back. Now get the hell off my property.”
The man put his hands up and smiled the smile of a shark, all teeth and no humanity.
“Have it yer way, but we’ll be back until ye change yer mind, an’ if ye don’t change it, bear in mind we know where ye live an’ where yer wife is at any time of the day.”
“Go anywhere near my wife or my home, an’ make no mistake, I will find ye an’ I will kill ye.”
“Brave words, but ye can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Ye want to bet yer life on that?” Casey asked, a fury inside him such as he had not felt in a long time. He fought to keep his hands relaxed, though they wanted to curl up into fists and smack the smug look on the man’s face right off.
“Oh, ye’ll find I’m a gamblin’ man, Mr. Riordan, an’ make no mistake of it.”
Casey merely crossed his arms over his chest and gave them a hard look.
“We’ll be back, an’ we’ll only get more persuasive as time goes on.”
“Well, until then, gentlemen,” Casey said with no little sarcasm.
He watched them walk away, standing firm until they should be gone from his sight. They would indeed be back, but he knew if he crumbled to them now he would end up paying through the nose until he couldn’t turn a profit on his own business. This grafting off your own people was, in his own humble opinion, beyond the pale. It hardly endeared the general population toward an already unpopular illegal army when they demanded protection money so that one might protect oneself from them.
Mr. Spectacles turned at the edge of the work yard and cocked an imaginary pistol at his own head, miming pulling the trigger, then pointing at Casey and smiling.
It was not easy, Casey thought, to be a man of peace, and he would be the first to admit that it did not seem to be a natural state of being for him.
Chapter Two
January 1973
The Doomsday Plan
Northern Ireland was considered a punishment posting for agents of Her Majesty’s Secret Services, and so when one had royally (pardoning the pun) screwed up one’s mission in said province, it was a bit of a puzzler where to send one after that. As MI6 currently had no need of his services in either darkest Borneo or a frozen mountaintop in Peru, they had settled for the next best punishment. Thus, David Kendall, rogue agent and master of disguise, found himself on a rainy Malone Road, staring up at a huge old Victorian house smack-dab in the heart of god-fearing Ulster. It would have been tragic if it hadn’t been quite so funny. David had long been a victim of a sense of humor that, at times, made him feel distinctly unpatriotic as an Englishman.
He wasn’t laughing at present, however, for it was time to come in out of the shadows and present himself in his new role—that of a young Protestant male, looking to dip his toes into the roiling waters of radical Loyalism. He took a deep breath of the damp winter night and strode up the path in the wake of two stiff-backed Church of Paisley types.
Even Patrick Riordan, who perhaps had known him better than anyone in Belfast, would have trouble recognizing him tonight. His hair, normally a soft butter color and cut short and neat, was long and dark, tied back with a leather thong and hanging down over the collar of an ancient leather flight jacket. The dark hair offset his pale English skin in a manner that made him look years younger. Young enough, he hoped, to pass for an underage boy. If the light were kind he ought to pass for he had always had the problem of fine-boned men in that he looked like a perpetual schoolboy.
At the door he slipped in behind the two stiff-backs, both middle-aged, both looking like good sash-wearing Orangemen, with the hard faces he had become accustomed to during his previous tenure in this city. Behind him were a couple of young toughs, so at least he wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb.
The man who greeted them in the foyer of the large and drafty house was either insane or the savior of hardline Loyalism, depending upon whom one spoke to. David tended to think the two psychoses were not necessarily independent.
Boyd McCarthy had the broad, red face that so many of his compatriots had, a result of too much drink and a hard city that carved the visage of its men in these lines through time. Crazy or not, David knew he was looking into the face of one of the most dangerous men in Protestant Ulster. He was also a compatriot that had worked hand in hand with Morris Jones, the man who had killed Lawrence. Jones might be dead, killed by the hand of a man only slightly less deranged than he himself had been, but his evil lived on within a ring of men. It was the main reason that David was here tonight, and had his bosses at MI6 known that, they would have indeed found him a posting in Peru and left him there amidst the snow and mountain goats for the next two decades. Their reason for putting him here under cover was to flush out the head of a new and extremely radical branch of Loyalism. The thinking went that Boyd McCarthy was close to the man who was striking fear in the heart of the Nationalist community. Three Catholics had been killed in the last month, merely for the great sin of being Catholic and in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the usual hardline Loyalist assassins were rounded up and questioned, they were unusually reticent. Blunt denials were expected. This strange hedging in men that little had frightened since they had graduated out of short pants was something else altogether. Something was afoot in the world of radical Loyalism and David had been assigned to find out what and who was behind it.
He only had time to take the briefest of impressions, of both man and house, before being hustled toward a room to the right of the dark foyer.
It was large and filled with dark furniture, as though it had been decorated during the high Victorian period and not updated in the slightest degree since. In one corner was a Chinese screen, dark blue in color and scattered with an opulent design of gaudy peacocks as well as years of grime. There were already six other men in the room, mostly of the sash-wearing, bowler-hatted variety.
McCarthy directed David to a fan-backed red chair with tufts of stuffing poking out, like an old man dressed in ancient red long johns. David sat on it and hoped that an errant spring wouldn’t un-man him.
There was the usual small chat that preceded most meetings, but David, with his well attuned backbone, sensed a darker underlying mood, a frisson of expectation—but expectation tinged with dread.
McCarthy called the meeting to order, drab olive cardigan making him appear as harmless as a moth-eaten librarian.
“Gentlemen, I welcome ye here tonight with great hope and the expectation of a changed future. You do not need me to inform you of the gravity of the situation the Protestant community of Ulster faces. The responsibility for this situation lies squarely on the lack of political leadership and the splinters and fractures within the heart of our Loyalist brotherhood. The immediate need is for political unity to bring all the broken pieces of our community together under one umbrella. Thus, we can harness the true strength of our populace and face the future united against the evil that exists upon our very doorstep. I have taken the step, therefore, of asking a man to speak to us tonight, a man who embodies the very best of Protestant Ulster, a man who is not afraid to fight and bleed on the front lines in this ancient battle.
“Due to the traitors within our country and the laxity of our police force in protecting their own, allowing evil to flourish unchecked, it is not yet safe for this man to reveal himself. But we are very fortunate that he has agreed to speak to us tonight, for once you have heard his words, I believe you will understand that nothing less than the redemption of our people lies within his hands.”
Boyd stepped back and looked toward the Chinese screen in the corner and David realized that behind it sat the man to whom this odd feeling of unease and darkness co
uld be attributed.
He felt an odd slide in his stomach, a feeling he had encountered before, a premonition that the future was suddenly hovering right in front of him and something very bad was waiting there within its nebulous folds. Then the unseen man spoke and David’s attention was riveted within the present, the voice sliding through his cells like a vaporous serpent.
“Ulster, my friends, stands at the crossroads of history and now is the crucial time for us. We have been betrayed by the state, abandoned by the British, the covenant of 1912 lies in tatters. The enemies of Faith and Freedom are determined to destroy the glorious state of Ulster, thereby enslaving the people of God. We are God’s chosen as we have been since we sacrificed our blood in the service of Britain, on her battlefields.
“The aim of the enemy is the destruction of our Protestant Faith. It is no less than the total annihilation of our people, our traditions, the memory of our blood and sweat which have been poured upon this land and made it the strong nation it once was. Need we any proof further than that of the deal cut with those dogs in Dublin, the purpose of which is to give our power, our very institutions and parliament over to the Irish, the IRA, the Republican filth that insinuates itself everywhere now, from the bastions of Parliament to the secret meetings behind doors conducted by the British to throw us into the gutter of history.”
The man was somewhat accurate, David mused, if over the top about it.
“It is our time now to take the path that leads to glory or to utter defeat. It is time for us to bring Doomsday to the traitorous forces that are thick upon the face of this land. It is time for the blood to run in these streets until the righteous are the only ones left standing, and from the righteous, we shall rebuild our nation.
“Toward this end there are things we must do now. We must embrace our Protestantism as we have not since the darkest and most bloody days of our Faith. We must show the people of this city, of this country, that to be a Protestant means living in a God-fearing, clean, ordered and industrious manner.