7

(BELFAST—JUNE 16, 1:35 P.M.)

Dublin in the rearview mirror. At last. The girl stinking of fear, sweating, not speaking, but that was ok. The journey was only two hours now that the Irish government had gotten millions from the European Structural Fund and finally built a couple of decent roads.

She was a competent driver even with a maniac kidnapper pointing a gun at her. She drove carefully and fast. It was all good. We had a full tank of petrol and in the backseat there was even a water bottle and a packet of biscuits. I ate the biscuits, offered her one, but she refused, giving me a look of utter scorn. I liked that.

The run was quick, easy, and straightforward until we hit Drogheda.

Here things were bollocksed because of a traffic jam on the bypass; the cops were diverting people into the center of town and over the Boyne Bridge. We were moving very slowly and there were about a dozen Garda milling about uselessly. I knew she wouldn’t try anything but I had to remind her.

“Honey, just because you see a lot of cops and the traffic’s slow, don’t think of being a hero. You make one bolt for that door and I’ll fucking plug ya. And don’t think I wouldn’t just because I like you. I’ve killed more people in the last twenty-

four hours than you’ll kill in this and in your next half-dozen incarnations on planet Earth.”

“I believe you. You seem like a bastard,” she said bravely.

“Aye, well, we’ll all live through this and it’ll be something you can tell your wean about.”

“Don’t think I’d tell her anything about the likes of you.”

“You’d be surprised how I can grow on people. Seriously. Peruvians, Colombians, Russians, Americans, I make friends wherever I go.”

We drove over the Boyne Bridge.

The river seemed clean and Drogheda looked better than I’d ever seen it. Prosperity suited the Republic of Ireland. There were new signs up all over the town pointing to Tara, Newgrange, the Battle of the Boyne, and other wonders of County Meath.

“Ever been to Newgrange?” I asked. “No.”

“Should go. Fascinating.”

She said nothing. We drove on for a while. The silence was irritating.

“What you studying at Trinity?” I asked.

“French,” she said, reluctant to give me any information.

“French. Old mate of mine studied French at NYU. Sunshine. He was quite the character. He was always quoting the Flowers of Evil guy.”

“Baudelaire, and it’s Fleurs du Mal,” she said with condescension.

“Yeah, well, had a bit of a sticky end, did Sunshine, although it wasn’t totally unjustified,” I said to myself.

The girl stole a look in my direction.

“Is that what you do? Terrorize women and hurt people?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“I try not to hurt anybody. But sometimes, when needs arise, you have to step on a few toes,” I explained.

“Aren’t you worried about the consequences?” she said. “What consequences?” I replied, genuinely puzzled.

“Hell,” she said.

I laughed.

“Of course. We’re in Ireland. Hell. No. I don’t think about hell. There is no hell. Hell is a place in Norway, halfway between Bergen and the Arctic Circle,” I said and popped a digestive biscuit in my mouth.

“Don’t you believe the Bible?”

“Fairy stories. I suppose they don’t teach you Darwin in the Republic of Ireland.”

“Of course they do, it’s not Iran.” “But you don’t believe him?”

“I don’t see how believing in Darwin and the Bible is mutually exclusive.”

“It is. I mean, do the bacteria in your stomach go to heaven when they die? Eight hundred million years ago, we were those bacteria. It’s just silly.”

She slunk into silence, nodded to herself in the rearview mirror. Whatever else happened today, at least she and me were going to go to different places, even if she was an unwed mother-to-be. Still, all this talk hadn’t been good for me. Morbid thoughts of eternal punishment weren’t the things I needed to have floating through my mind when every mile was bringing me closer to Belfast.

“Is Baudelaire your favorite?” I asked. She pursed her lips, shook her head.

“Montaigne,” she said.

“Go on, give us a burst.” “No.”

“Go on, humor the guy who has a pistol pointed at your kidneys.”

She thought for a moment and turned to face me. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said.

“Ok, I’m listening.”

“I’ll give you a Montaigne quote if you do something for me.” “Ok.”

“That thing is really making me frightened. Really frightened. If you put the gun away, I promise I won’t try anything. I’ll drop you off in Belfast without any fuss or problems at all.”

I put the revolver in my pocket. No one could refuse such a reasonable request.

“Now the other part of the deal. Let’s hear what that Montaigne fella has to say,” I said.

“Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux.”

“Very apt, I’m sure,” I said, although the only word I understood was death.

We got through Drogheda and a bypass skirted us around Dundalk. The border to Northern Ireland, which had once been a big deal with army, police, helicopters, road blocks, razor wire, mines was now only apparent in the roadside markings which changed from yellow to white. We were in Northern Ireland a good couple of miles before I even noticed that.

“We’re in the north,” I said, surprised. “Yes,” she said.

“I thought we’d have to bluff our way through a checkpoint, or at least customs,” I muttered.

“They got rid of all that years ago,” she said with quiet contempt.

We drove through the Mourne Mountains: bleak stony slopes, bereft of trees, people, and even sheep. Next Newry and Portadown—two nasty wee shiteholes unloved by God, the residents, and everyone else. Shit-colored housing estates where men went to the pub, women raised the kids, the TV was always on, and if it wasn’t chips for dinner there would be hell to pay.

Marsh on our left and right.

A few planes landing at the airport. An army helicopter. Ugly cottages and redbrick homes and I knew we were closing inexorably on the city.

“I’ve never been to Belfast,” the girl said. Her first words in fifty miles.

“You haven’t missed out on much.”

“Maybe you should let me out. I’ll only get us lost.” “I’ll tell you where to go when we’re close enough.”

And as we came up the motorway, I began to smell the city. Rain, sea, bog, that burnt aroma of peat, tobacco, and car exhaust.

The sky was gray. It got colder. Then the landmarks.

A place where I’d had a car accident.

A Protestant mural for the Ulster Volunteer Force. A Catholic mural for the Hunger Strikers.

Milltown Cemetery, where a madman had run amok at an IRA funeral, throwing hand grenades. The city hospital, so ugly Prince Charles had been flown in especially to denounce it.

She turned off for the city center. Close enough.

“You can stop the car, just go in anywhere along here.”

She slowed the car and pulled in off the hard shoulder. Got a little bit of a panic attack, started hyperventilating. No doubt the possibility flitted through her mind that I was going to kill her now.

She was looking for an escape route, for witnesses. But the traffic was fast moving and the shoulder was deserted.

I reassured her anyway.

“Take it easy. We’re parting company. I’m not going to touch you,” I said.

She nodded nervously.

“You really pregnant or were you lying to save your skin?” I asked.

“I’m pregnant. Three months,” she said with a blush. “The dad know?”

“He knows, but he doesn’t want to know.” “Your parents?”

“Of course not.” “Keeping it?”

“Think so.”

“Either way you’ll need some dough. Take this,” I said, giving her almost all the money I had in my wallet. Easily ten or eleven grand.

“You can’t give me this,” she said, aghast.

“Oh, I can, it’s not stolen or anything, but don’t tell anyone.” “But you can’t give me all this money,” she protested.

“Yes, I can. I’m an eccentric millionaire. That’s just the sort of thing I do.”

She hesitated still, but I forced it on her. I gave her a look that communicated how impolitic it would be to refuse. She took it word-lessly.

“You see that roundabout up ahead?” She nodded.

“I said, do you see the roundabout?” “I do.”

“Ok. These are the rules. You turn round right now and you head to Dublin and you don’t stop once until you’re there. You park your car in your space and you go about your life as if nothing had happened. You tell no one what transpired here today.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Now go back to your existence. You had to cross the line into my life for a while. But it’s over now. Good luck with the kid. If your folks don’t dig it, I’d say fuck ’em all, go to London and present yourself at social services. They’ll give you a flat and that dough will tide you over.”

She nodded silently.

She opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind, and then finally asked it: “What’s your name?” she managed in a whisper.

“Michael,” I said.

“Wasn’t there a Michel in the Bible, a woman?” “I don’t know,” I admitted.

“It would be a pretty name for a girl,” she mused. “Aye.”

I got out of the car and walked away. She sat there frozen for a second.

“Drive,” I said.

She nodded, put the car in first, stalled it, restarted it, got it going, and headed for the rotary. She exited the roundabout and sped down the other side of the dual carriageway. And I

stood there and almost wistfully watched the car take her back into the land of civilized people.

Sunshine in Dublin. Rain in Belfast. How could it be otherwise? Each place within the city colonized by the greasy empire of Belfast rain. Every timber, stone, neck, collar, bare head and arm. The dull East Ulster rain that was born conjoined with oil and diesel fumes and tinged with salt and soot. Arriving in broad horizontal sheets, as part of the fabric as the city hall or the lough or the furnaces in Harland and Wolff.

I breathed deep. That air redolent with violence and blood. And everywhere the reminders of six years of sectarian cold war, thirty years of low-level civil war, eight hundred years of unceasing, boiling trouble and strife.

They say the air over Jerusalem is thick with prayers, and Dublin might have its fair share of storytellers, but this is where the real bullshit artists live. The air over this town is thick with lies. Thousands of prisoners have been released under the cease-fire agreements—thousands of gunmen walking these streets, making up a past, a false narrative of peace and tranquility.

Until the seventeenth century it didn’t even exist on the maps. It was drained from the mudflats and named in Irish for a river, the Farset, which has since been culverted over and is now part of the sewage system.

Ahh, Belfast. You gotta love it.

I walked down Great Victoria Street to the Europa Hotel. The last time I’d seen this place, all the windows within half a mile had been blown out by a thousand-pound bomb. The Crown Bar was destroyed, Robinsons Bar was still smoldering, and the Unionist Party headquarters was a hole in the sidewalk.

Bill Clinton had been to Belfast three times since then. George W. Bush had come during the mopping-up phase of the Iraq war. With American help, Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern had brought a peace deal between the Protestants and Catholics. A shaky peace deal with many ups and downs, but a peace deal nonetheless. Cease-fires had been declared and all the paramilitary prisoners had been released, and although the two sides hadn’t come to a final agreement, at least they were still talking. There were dissidents on both wings, but there hadn’t been a serious terrorist bombing in Belfast in six years. Enough time for McDonald’s and Burger King to destroy the local food franchises and for real estate developers to go nuts in virgin territory.

The gleaming new Europa, though, was taking no chances. They had a security guard in a booth at the car park and metal detectors installed just inside the double doors.

Metal detectors.

I considered my options for a moment.

I didn’t want to give up my weapon. Gunless in Belfast was like being gunless in Dodge. Next to the Europa there was a Boots chemist.

I entered, hunted around for things that might be useful, and finally purchased a pack of Ziploc bags. I went across the street to the rebuilt Crown Bar. I avoided the temptation to buy a pint and hustled back to the toilets, found a cubicle. I took out the gun and placed it in one of the Ziploc bags. I squeezed all the air out and sealed the bag. I put this bag upside down in another Ziploc bag and sealed it and then put the two bags inside a third bag and sealed it as well. The shells were already in a bag but I didn’t like the look of it. I sealed them up in Ziplocs. I took the top off the toilet tank and placed the gun inside. It floated for a second and then sank to the bottom of the cistern. Well, maybe it would be ok. I remembered reading that in Vietnam the soldiers had protected their M16s with condoms, so perhaps this would work. I chucked in the .38 rounds and they floated.

I closed the tank, exited the pub, waited for a break in the traffic, recrossed Great Victoria Street. Went through the double doors and the metal detector.

The Europa was like any other soulless, dreary corporate hotel, except they were playing up the Irish touches: green trimmings, fresh shamrock plants on the coffee tables, a couple of framed Jack B. Yeats paintings, and spotty, unhealthy-looking people behind reception.

The piped music was the slow movement from Beethoven’s Seventh, which, although not Irish, certainly was depressing enough to create a Belfast ambience.

“Hi,” I said.

“Good morning, sir, welcome to the Europa Hotel, Belfast’s premier city-center hotel, featuring a full range of services and a new Atkins-friendly cuisine,” the receptionist said. A very young brown-haired kid with a gold earring and a slight West Belfast lisp.

“I have an appointment to see Bridget Callaghan,” I said. “The presidential suite. I’ll announce you,” he said.

“Don’t announce me.” “I have to.”

“No, no, I’m an old friend, I’ll just head on up there.”

“Mr. Moran doesn’t allow anyone up to the presidential suite without being announced first.”

I didn’t want to press the point, so I gave him my name and stood there while he made his call.

“Hello, this is reception, I’d like to speak to Mr. Moran…. Yes, Mr. Moran, this is Sebastian at reception, there’s a, uh, gentleman to see Ms. Callaghan, a Michael Forsythe, shall I send him up?…Yes, he’s alone…. Certainly.”

He hung up the phone and nodded at me. “You can go up. It’s the top floor.”

“Thanks.”

I went to the bank of elevators, pressed the up button, and while I waited I admired the plate-glass windows I had helped put in twelve years ago.

The doors dinged.

Two long-haired goons in tailored suits were standing inside the lift. Definitely Yanks, since both looked like rejects from Arena Football or the World Wrestling Federation. One was an ugly-looking white guy, the other an angry thick-necked black man.

“Moran?” I asked the white guy. “Forsythe?” he asked me.

“Aye,” I said, wondering yet again if there would ever be an occasion when I’d be happy to answer that question.

“Dave wants to see you. You better get in the elevator,” he said.

“I’m here to see Bridget.”

“Everyone who wants to see Ms. Callaghan sees Dave first.” “Ok.”

“Can we pat you down?” he asked.

They did a fast, efficient search, found nothing. We all got inside the lift. The white guy pressed the button for the top floor. The black dude gave me the skunk eye.

“Are you eyeballing me?” he said in a completely aggressive manner. It took me aback. Jesus, who did Bridget have working for her these days? Hotheads? Eejits? Not wonder they couldn’t do something as simple as killing a traitor like me.

“Yeah, I am eyeballing you. You look like Barry Bonds on anger-management day. Have you ever noticed that your neck is actually bigger than your head?”

The black guy made a move, but the lift opened on the top floor. With the men on either side of me, I walked to a door just off the presidential suite. They knocked and waited.

“Enter,” another American voice said.

We went in. The blinds were pulled down in a huge room that stank of cigarette smoke. A fat little character wearing a wrinkled red shirt, sitting in a leather chair, poring over documents. He stood. He was about forty, looked about fifty, balding, a leathery expression, evil slits for eyes. I had the feeling that I had seen him before.

“We meet at last, Forsythe. Finally. You fucker,” he said in a Nassau County honk that was so contaminated with fury he was barely able to get the words out.

“You have the better of me, who are you?” I replied.

“You know how many times I’ve dreamed of this moment,” he said more to himself than me.

“Who the fuck are you?” I asked again.

“You bastard, Forsythe. A nod to these two guys and they’ll take you to the roof and throw you the fuck off,” he said, grinding his fist into his hand. An unconscious gesture, but it reminded me so much of other little nut jobs—Napoleon, Caesar, Hitler—I couldn’t help but suppress a laugh. I sat down in the leather chair opposite him. It was an empty threat. If he was going to top me he would have done it instead of blabbing about it. I smiled.

“You’re wasting my valuable time,” I said. “I’m here to see Bridget Callaghan.”

The man stared at me and gestured to the two goons. “You can go,” he told them. I turned and waved.

“See ya. Have fun bench pressing each other,” I said. They left without responding.

I looked at the man.

“Ok, so who are you?” I asked.

“We’ve met before,” he said.

“Have we? I don’t remember. Just tell me your goddamn name.”

“David Moran. Bob Moran was my brother,” he said with grim satisfaction.

I nodded. Yeah. We had met before. And now I understood. I’d killed Big Bob Moran at his house in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Big Bob had been the henchman for Darkey White. He had set me up in Mexico, implicated me in a drugs buy, and gotten me thrown in a Mexican prison, where three of my crew had died. If any fucker on this Earth deserved to die it was Big Bob Moran. I had killed him and in twelve years I had shed not a tear or had one moment of remorse for what I’d done. If Bob’s brother worked for Bridget, so be it. I understood his point of view. You had to pay for blood, no matter if that blood was as vile a concoction as the one that you’d find in the late Big Bob.

“Bob had it coming,” I told Moran.

“We all have it coming,” Moran said.

“I don’t want to start anything with you, I’m here to help Bridget, what’s done is done as far as I’m concerned. It’s past. Over. Dead.”

“Somebody famous once said, ‘The past is never dead, it’s not even past,’” he added.

“Christ, you’re quite the little book of aphorisms, aren’t you,” I said, and gave him my best irritating cheeky grin.

His knuckles went white with fury. His eyes closed. I could see his skin turning the color of his tracksuit. Then after a quarter of a minute, his breathing mellowed and he calmed himself.

“Not only did you kill Bob, but you ratted out the whole operation. A murderer and a fucking rat.”

“Well, you seem to have done ok for yourself,” I said, looking around the room.

“You have no idea how hard it was. You left her with nothing. Just contacts and brains. We had to struggle every day for the first few years.”

“Cry me a river. Where is she?”

“What you did, Forsythe. You should be ten times dead by now,” he said.

“But as you can see, I’m as large as life. And, I’ll tell you, if it’s a choice between death or listening to you slabbering away all afternoon, I’ll take the former.”

He shook his head, rubbed his hands over his chin.

“You’re alive because of Siobhan. You’re alive because of her, although I for one will never forget that you robbed that girl of her father. Darkey White.”

“Darkey had it coming most of all,” I said deadpan.

“In the olden times they would cut out traitors’ hearts and burn them in front of them while they were still alive,” Moran said coldly.

“History expert, are you, too? As well as the Oxford book of quotations.”

“You listen to me, Forsythe. If I had my way, I guarantee you, you wouldn’t leave this room in one piece,” Moran said.

“You’re boring me and you’re wasting my time. I don’t quite know what you do for Bridget but I’m here to help find her daughter. If you killed me Bridget would fucking top you; you’re doing me no favors, so don’t threaten me again, pal, or I’m outta here and you can explain that to your boss,” I told the fat fuck.

He was going to say something else, but he bit his tongue. It gave me a chance to get in a question or two of my own.

“And I suppose it’s you then, in your ham-fisted way, that’s been trying to kill me since I got into Dublin,” I said coolly.

A flicker of surprise flitted across his features. He didn’t need to say anything. He’d told me.

“What are you talking about?”

“Two hit men, two separate hits, one of them a taxi driver, one got me in a brothel. The second hit was more interesting because the madam informed on me, so the word must have gone out somehow.”

“We haven’t been trying to kill you. Bridget, for whatever reason, thinks you can help find Siobhan.”

“And you haven’t taken an independent initiative?” His teeth glinted, he shook his head.

“We’ve been ordered not to lay a finger on you.” “Well, that’s good,” I said.

“I want you dead. There’s a lot of us who work for Bridget that want you dead. But not yet.”

“Ok.”

“But let me give you a heads-up, Forsythe. More of a heads- up than you ever gave Bob. Things have changed radically just in the last hour.”

“What do you mean?”

“A note was delivered to the hotel from the scumbags who’re holding Siobhan. They went ten million dollars by midnight tonight. A third cash, two-thirds international bearer bonds. If they don’t get it, they say they’re going to kill her.”

“Was the note genuine? How do you know it’s not just bullshit?”

“There was a lock of hair in the envelope, the cops have taken the note, hair, and envelope for DNA testing. Bridget thinks it’s Siobhan’s hair, but she can’t be sure.”

“What does the DNA say?”

“That won’t be ready until tomorrow afternoon.”

“So you’ve no choice, you’ve got to raise the ten million.” Moran nodded grimly.

“The note said that they would call with details sometime between nine and midnight. We’re supposed to wait at the Arthur Street police station because they’re going to want specific street closures from the police.”

“Jesus, how long was this note? Have you got a copy?”

“The police have it. That was it. No details. Just the hair, raise the money, await further instructions,” Moran said, sounding tired.

“Can you raise the money?” He nodded.

“The guy who delivered it?”

“Left it at reception, wearing motorcycle leathers and a helmet. Only said ‘Message for Bridget Callaghan.’”

“Belfast accent?”

“Apparently so…. But that’s neither here nor there, Forsythe. You see that now, right? This changes things.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t see how this changes anything for me,” I said.

“Before the girl was missing, maybe she’d run away, now we know she’s been kidnapped.”

“That doesn’t affect my job, what I’m here to do,” I said.

“Yeah, it does. The deadline. Midnight tonight. Either way, if we get Siobhan back at midnight or they kill her, fair warning, pal, I’m coming after you whether Bridget gives me the ok or not.”

He rubbed his hand into his fist again, barely able to contain his hatred for me. I had killed his useless brother and he was going to get me. Bob, who never even fucking mentioned David, or, if he had, he certainly wasn’t a big part of his life. Over the years David had probably blown Bob up into a heroic and sentimental figure. It was pathetic, really. But I had to

reassure him that his little fucking revenge-murder scheme would come to naught.

“Don’t worry, mate, if those fuckers kill Siobhan, Bridget’ll get me long before you do.”

He nodded, got to his feet.

“We understand each other then,” he said. “We do.”

I stood too.

“I’ll take you to her. Please, go gentle, she’s at her wits’ end,” he said.

He led me out of the room and along the corridor to a big set of double doors. He knocked and we entered the presidential suite at last. Belfast spread out before me through the rainy windows. Black Mountain, Divis Mountain, new hotels, new offices, and the River Lagan slaking its way through the mudflats. From up here, you could see down the gray lough to Kilroot and maybe all the way to Scotland.

It was more like a command center than a hotel room. There were several burly-looking guys, a police officer in uniform, a detective, a girl carrying a water bottle, a man with a—

And there she was. After all this time.

The most attractive woman I had seen in a decade. The most attractive woman I had ever seen.

Devastating still.

Bridget. Beyond rhetoric. Beyond words. Describing the shades of green and blue that her eyes took on in different moods could fill the book.

And, yes, she was a woman now, not a girl.

Her hair, the subtlest of copper tints. Her skin like pages from the New Testament. Her body placed on Earth by Lucifer’s

minions to ruin marriages, to start fights, to cause accidents, to send four young men to their deaths in Mexico.

Think Deneuve around the time of Belle de Jour. Kelly in High Noon. Ekberg in La Dolce Vita. Beautiful, almost a little too beautiful. Blondes, but the redheads I could mention wouldn’t come close. Bette Davis, maybe, but Kidman, give me a break.

Bridget was thirty now. At the height of her powers. Every man in the room looking at her. It was impossible not to.

The eyes of a martyr, the lips of a killer, dangerous curves.

You’d run traffic lights on Fifth Avenue to get a glimpse of her. You’d propose to her on the subway.

Her black skirt was quiet elegance. Her low-heeled shoes simplicity itself. The sort of simpleness that cost fifty thousand dollars. The sort of elegance that kept Vera Wang up all night, sewing the thing by hand.

Bridget.

Where have you been all these years?

I never knew how empty I felt until this moment.

The sum multiplied by zero, the shaken Etch A Sketch, the black hole radiating itself to nothingness.

A void, a nonplace. Oh, Bridget.

She saw me. She turned. She’d been crying. She came across the room in slow motion. The sun went behind a cloud.

She opened her mouth. “Michael,” she said.

The room had been cleared. Bridget was sitting at one end of the sofa. I was sitting at the other.

Her hands folded on her lap. Her face drained of color. Her eyes ashen and restrained. She looked knackered. I could tell she hadn’t slept in four nights. She had refused the pills they had no doubt offered her.

She was sitting forward on the sofa, her bum barely on the leather cushion.

A maid brought a pot of green tea with one cup.

She closed her tired eyes, wiped the tear-clotted lashes, mouthed “thank you” to the maid, who couldn’t leave fast enough.

There’d been no hello, no apologies. Just a hand gesture and everyone had fled. She sat, I sat.

She sipped the tea.

We both waited for the other to begin. Bridget broke first.

“Michael, I know there’s a lot of history between us…” she began, her voice trailing off into the silence.

“You don’t even need to say it,” I said.

“I do. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. I have a lot of things I want to tell you, there’s a lot of things I want to ask you. But not now. I don’t want to hear your reasons for what you did. I know you have reasons and I know you believe in them. But I don’t want this to be about you and me. I called you in because of Siobhan. I only want to talk about her.”

Her breasts heaved under her silk sweater. So this was how it was going to be.

What was it Dan had told me? This woman is a killer, a general, an archmanipulator.

I looked at those big hooded eyelids. I don’t recall what color they used to be but now they were as dark as soot. They didn’t

tell me anything. I’d go careful.

“Bridget, I completely agree. I don’t want to talk about the past. I’m sure you did what you thought was right and I did what I thought was right. Let’s leave it there,” I said, not believing a bloody word of it. There were no two sides to this case. Darkey had brought his death upon himself.

Bridget nodded, breathed out. This was the first difficult hurdle dealt with. There was an awkward silence. She seemed almost too exhausted to continue now. How much was act and how much was real?

“You’ve come a long way,” I said, thinking of Dan’s list of corpses; of those frozen faces I’d seen in the newspaper. Any one of them could have been me. And what had Moran said? “We had to struggle in the early years.” I’ll bet you did. You got your hands dirty. You personally.

I waited for her reply, but instead she looked at me briefly, turned away, and chose not to answer.

A different approach.

“I didn’t even know you had a baby,” I said. “The FBI didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

Bridget was shocked.

“Well, they knew. It wasn’t a secret. The DA knew. The feds knew.”

“No one told me. I didn’t notice it in the press, although I avoided reading the press as much as possible.”

“Well, that was me. I insisted that we didn’t mention her. I wanted to keep her name out of the news. My lawyers wanted to use my baby to hurt your credibility. You know, ‘We’re supposed to believe this man who robbed a girl of her father,’ that kind of argument. But I didn’t want Siobhan’s name mentioned at all.”

Bridget wasn’t aware that she was making me angry. I’d thought we weren’t going to talk about the past. I thought we weren’t going to go down that road because, hell, honey, I could give as good as I got in that department.

“Why?” I asked.

“I want Siobhan to have as normal an existence as possible, Michael. I don’t want her name connected to a murder trial. I don’t want her photo in the papers, ever, unless she’s winning the Nobel Prize.”

Bridget paused here. It was a laugh break, and although it didn’t make me laugh, it touched me a little that she was at least trying to be civil. I smiled.

“No, Michael, I didn’t want her connected with that mess. Especially when she was just a little baby. She’s my girl, Michael, and I love her. No one has a right to publish her picture or use her in a court case.”

“I understand that.”

“So you really didn’t know?” she asked with a look of skepticism.

“No. No one told me. I suppose they didn’t want me to feel guilty and retract my testimony,” I said.

“You must have seen that I’d put on some weight after the birth when I came to the trial,” she said, still with a touch of doubt.

“I didn’t notice. You were sitting at the back most days.” She nodded.

“Maybe not that much weight. I wasn’t nursing anyway. My sister, Anne, in Seattle looked after Siobhan for the first couple of years, while all the unpleasantness was going on. While everything settled down. Perhaps that’s why…Perhaps I missed something there, some bond, maybe that’s the reason we fight so much….” Bridget said, her voice guttering into a guilty silence.

“And I’m not sure I would have done what I did that December night if I’d known you were pregnant,” I just about stopped myself from saying.

“Well, all I can say, Michael, is that she’s a blessing. She’s my whole life. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to get her back,” Bridget said.

“And that’s why I’m here and still alive,” I said.

“That’s why you’re here,” she agreed, her tone of voice eager, anxious.

I could tell that she was itching to be done with the formalities, to talk about her missing daughter. She was already a little impatient with me. That’s what happened when you were surrounded by yesmen. When you could click your fingers to get what you wanted. And that’s also what happened when you were the general, up above the action, away from the kill box, away from the rifle sight. You got impatient, you got sloppy, you let your guard down.

And she’d been bloodied now and that not only was bad but it looked bad too.

You should be careful about showing your vulnerable side.

Do you ever cry in front of Moran back there? I wouldn’t. Weakness kills you, Bridget. Word gets around. It’s a vicious circle. And the more you’re fucked, the more you look fucked and the more you are fucked. Moran won’t tell you that. Sure, he seems to care and he probably does care about you and Siobhan, but everyone has another persona and he can’t forget that if you fall, he rises. And then there’s me. What I want. This isn’t just about you. I need my goddamn guarantee.

“Look me in the eye and tell me that if I find Siobhan you’ll never go after me again. I need you to say it and I need you to look at me,” I said.

She put down her cup. Pushed the hair from her face.

“I gave you my word that if you find Siobhan, I will wipe the slate and make sure everyone knows it’s wiped.”

She offered me her hand and I shook. There was no spark between us and her hand withdrew.

I believed her. At least that was the thought in her mind at the present moment. It would be the best I could ever get.

“I’m…” but I couldn’t finish the thought. She had unsettled me with that touch.

Bridget sipped her tea. I had nothing to do with my hands. They were fidgeting nervously. I sat on them. She remembered her manners.

“Thank you for coming, Michael. It must have taken some courage,” she said.

“You’re welcome, Bridget.”

“Moran didn’t want me to ask you, but his men have turned up nothing. And the police have drawn a blank too. You were the only one I could think of. You lived here. You were born here and you know the city. You know the rackets.”

“I do, Bridget, you did right calling me. It was the right thing to do.”

She bit her lip, wiped tears from her eyes.

“Do you really think you can find her? Do you think you can help?”

“Do you still want me to look into it?” “What do you mean?”

“In light of the current developments?”

“Oh God, yeah, that could be a crank, it could be anything. We won’t know a thing until we get that phone call. There was the hair, Michael, but I’ll tell you the truth, I can’t be a hundred percent sure it was hers…. Everyone probably thinks I’m a terrible parent,” she said, angry at herself for being unable to tell what no mother could tell.

“No, no,” I said. “You’re not.”

She shook her head, sobbed, internally beating herself up over that and a million other things that proved she was the worst ma in the world.

“Anyway, yes, I want you to do what you can, despite this new stuff,” she said.

“Well, Bridget, in that case I can tell you this. If Siobhan is in Belfast, I’ll find her. I promise, I’ll find her. I know this city like the back of my hand. I have contacts in the police, in the Protestant paramilitaries, in the Catholic paramilitaries. I even have an old pal who’s a rising politician. If anyone can find her, it’s me.”

She seemed reassured a little. She wiped her cheeks.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened? Why were you in Belfast in the first place?” I asked.

“We come here every year. My grandparents were from Ulster. We usually spend a day in Belfast and then we go to Donegal; I bought a house out there. It’s nice. It’s on the beach, Siobhan loves it. It’s not like the Hamptons. It’s totally isolated. We have horses.”

“So you were in Belfast just for the day?”

“No, this year was a little different. This year I had some business to take care of. We were going to be here for a week and then we were supposed to go to Donegal for another week.”

“What was the business?”

“I don’t think that’s relevant,” Bridget said curtly. Her tone of voice changing, her eyes narrowing, her persona falling back into business mode. Wary, hostile, sure of herself.

“I’ll decide what’s relevant,” I said. I had to remind her that this was my conversation, not hers. I was not one of her employees.

She took another sip from her cup.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked to defuse the tension.

“No, thanks.”

She crossed her legs, rested her hands in her lap.

“Bridget, you’re going to have to trust me. What was the business you were doing here?”

She sighed, looked at me for a half minute. “It’s really not important.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Well, um, ok. This was a bit of a one-off thing. Not drugs, not guns, not passports. Believe me, I’ve looked into it.”

“Just tell me anyway, Bridget.”

“Ok. Fine. Have you heard of a thing called outsourcing?” “No.”

“It’s where they take American jobs and send them to countries where it’s cheaper to do business. A lot of services are moving abroad. You know, dial-up help for computers and things like that. India is a very popular place, but so’s Ireland. It’s got a young, well-educated workforce who’ll take half the pay of kids in America. On this particular trip, I came with the president of our technical services union. I was in town to sign some contracts, making sure all those Irish jobs from American companies were properly unionized.”

“And that those unions were your unions. Right?” I said. She nodded.

“That was the main thing, few other items, some other minor business. It all went very smoothly, I assure you.”

I shook my head.

“You’re bound to have made enemies. Could one of your, um, business associates have arranged to have Siobhan kidnapped?”

Bridget laughed. And for a moment the weeping mother left and the general came back.

“No chance. No chance at all. No one would fuck with me. No one who knew anything about me would touch my daughter. I’d burn their eyes out with a blowtorch. That’s why I thought she was safe, Michael; I’m well known in this town. I checked that angle out, anyway. Moran looked into it, as did the cops. There’s been zero paramilitary involvement. I talked to all my business partners. The heads of all the factions. I brought them up here. No one knows anything.”

“Are you sure about that?” “I’m sure.”

“Ten million is a big incentive.”

“Ten million is nothing, Michael. We’re talking about trade between Ireland and America that’s worth billions.”

“I know, but remember this is Belfast.”

“Moran’s boys have been on it round the clock. The police, too.”

“Ok, so just to be clear, you guys don’t think there’s a paramilitary involvement in any of this?”

“No. I really don’t think so. The head of the IRA and the head of the UDA assured me that they knew nothing about her disappearance; and until we got this note, we all thought she had just run away.”

“Ok. I’ll check it out, regardless,” I said almost to myself. “I’d expect you to.”

“How long have you actually been in Belfast?” I asked.

“We got here last Thursday, Thursday the tenth. We were supposed to be here six days. We were supposed to be going to Donegal today. I had a lot arranged. A lot to take care of and then we were going to spend a nice week doing nothing. I wanted to celebrate and chill out after taking care of business here and getting good news from Peru about y—”

“Me,” I said, finishing her thought.