Scoundrel: A Novel of Suspense

PART

ONE

AUGUST 1, 1990 WAS MY FORTIETH BIRTHDAY. SOPHIE, MY lover for the past three years, left me for a younger man, the cat fell sick, and the next morning Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Welcome to the best years of my life.

Three weeks later Shafiq asked if I could deliver a boat from the Mediterranean to America. Hannah, my part-time secretary, had taken Shafiq’s telephone call and late that afternoon she came to the fishing harbor to give me the day’s news.

Who called? At first I thought I must have misheard her. I was working in a trawler’s engine room with the motor going. Who called? I shouted up through the open hatch again.

Shafiq. Hannah shrugged. No other name, just Shafiq. He said you know him.

I knew him all right, knew him well enough to wonder just what the hell was coming next. Shafiq! For God’s sake! He wanted what?

He wants a boat delivered.

When?

He doesn’t know.

From where in the Mediterranean? France? Spain? Italy? Cyprus? Greece?

Just the Mediterranean. He said he couldn’t be more specific.

And I’m to deliver it where?

Hannah smiled. Just America.

I shut off the engine. I had been testing the trawler’s hydraulic pumps, making sure that some scumbag hadn’t lowered the pressure by half a ton to disguise a bad valve or a weak hose. I waited for the noise to die away, then looked up at Hannah. What kind of boat?

He doesn’t know. She laughed. Hannah had a nice laugh, but since Sophie had taken off every woman seemed to have a nice laugh. I shall tell him no, she said, yes?

Tell him yes, yes.

What?

Tell him yes.

Hannah adopted the patient look she used when she was trying to save me from myself. Yes?

"Yes, oui, ja, sí. That’s what we’re in business for." Or at least that was what my letterhead said: Nordsee Yacht Delivery, Services and Surveying, Sole Proprietor, Paul Shanahan, Nieuwpoort, Belgium; though in the last few years the servicing and surveying had taken over from the delivery.

But, Paul! You don’t know when or how or what or where! How can I commit you to something so stupid!

When he phones back, tell him the answer is yes.

Hannah uttered a very Flemish noise, a kind of glottal grunt which I had learned denoted a practical person’s scorn for an impractical fool. She turned a page in her notebook. And a woman called Kathleen Donovan called. An American. She wants to see you. She sounds nice.

Oh, Christ, I thought, but what is this? A man turns forty and suddenly his past comes back to haunt him, and I had a swift filthy image of Roisin’s blood on the yellow stone, and I thought of betrayal and of unhappiness and of love, and I hoped to God that if Roisin’s sister was looking for me that she never, ever found me. Tell her no, I said.

But she says—

I don’t care what she says. I’ve never heard of her and I don’t want to see her. I could not explain any of it to Hannah who was so very practical and so very married to her plump policeman. And tell Shafiq I want to know why.

You want to know why? Hannah frowned at me. Why what?

Ask him why.

But…

Just why!

OK! I’ll ask! She threw up her hands, turned, and walked along the quay. I think the cat has worms! she called back.

Give it a pill!

It’s your cat!

Please give it a pill.

OK! She gave the finger, not to me, but to one of the fishermen who had whistled at her. Then she waved to me and walked out of sight.

I went back to work, surveying a trawler that was being sold across the North Sea to Scotland, but my mind was hardly on the boat’s hull or its engine or its hydraulics, instead I was wondering why, out of nowhere and on the very same day, the ghosts of danger past and love betrayed had come back to haunt me. And, if I was honest, to excite me too. Life had become dull, predictable, placid, but now the ghosts had stirred.

I had waited four years for Shafiq to remember me, to summon me back to the darker paths. Four years. And I was ready.

It has been four years, Paul! Four years! Shafiq, indolent, thin, kind, sly and middle-aged, sat on a deep, cushion-rich sofa. He had taken a suite in the Georges V in Paris and wanted me to admire his opulence. He was also in an ebullient mood, and no wonder, for Shafiq loved Paris, loved France, and the more the French hated the Arabs, the more Shafiq approved of Gallic good taste. Shafiq was a Palestinian who lived in Libya where he worked for Colonel Qaddafi’s Centre to Resist Imperialism, Racism, Backwardness and Fascism. At first I had refused to believe any such organization existed, but it did, and Shafiq was on its staff, which was doubtless why he had such a taste for European decadence.

So what do you want? I asked him sourly.

I have never known Paris so hot! Thank God for the invention of air-conditioning. As usual we spoke in French. "Have a cake, please. The mille-feuille is exquisite."

What do you want?

Shafiq ignored the question, instead opening a small, brightly enamelled tin of cachous and slipping one under his tongue. I am pretending to be a Greek. I have a diplomatic passport even, look!

I ignored both the fake passport and Shafiq’s delight in possessing it. Shafiq’s contribution to resisting imperialism, racism, backwardness and fascism was to act as a messenger between Libya and whatever terrorist groups were the flavor of Colonel Qaddafi’s month. At first sight he seemed an unlikely secret agent for he was too childlike, too flamboyant and too likeable, but they were perhaps the very qualities that had let him survive so long, because it was impossible to imagine a man as risible as Shafiq being associated with the polluted wellsprings of political evil. What do you want of me? I asked him again. Whatever he wanted I would probably give him, but after four years I had to play a reluctant role.

You would like a Gauloise? Here! Take the pack, Paul. He tossed the cigarettes to me.

I’ve given up. What the hell do you want?

You’ve given up smoking! That’s wonderful, Paul, really wonderful! The doctors say I should give up, but what do they know? My brother-in-law is a doctor, did I ever tell you that? He smokes forty a day, sometimes fifty, and he’s fit as, what do you say? A fiddle! As a fiddle! You’d like some tea?

What the hell do you want, Shafiq?

I want you to deliver a boat to America, of course, just as I told your secretary. Is she beautiful?

As a rose in morning dew, as a peach blossom, as a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. What kind of a boat? From where? To where? When?

I’m not sure.

Oh, great! That’s really helpful, Shafiq. I leaned back in my overstuffed armchair. It’s your boat?

It is not mine, no. He lit a cigarette, then waved it vaguely about as if to indicate that the national boat belonged to someone else, anyone else, no one of importance. How is your love life?

It doesn’t exist. I’ve just been junked for a married French pharmacist. I got custody of the cat. Whose boat is it?

You lost your girlfriend? Shafiq was instantly concerned for me.

Whose boat is it, Shafiq?

It belongs to friends. Again he gestured with the cigarette to show that the ownership was unimportant. How long will it take you?

How long will what take me?

To deliver the boat to America, of course.

That depends on what kind of a boat it is and how far it’s going and at what time of year you want it delivered.

A sailboat, he said, and soon, I think.

How big a sailboat?

With a big lead keel. He smiled, as though that detail answered all my queries.

How big? I insisted.

He sucked on the cigarette, frowned. I don’t know how big, so give me, what do you Americans call it? A ballpark guess? Give me a ballpark guess.

I cast a beseeching look toward the ceiling’s ornamental plasterwork. Three months? Four? How the hell do I know? The bigger the boat, the quicker. Maybe.

Three months? Four? He sounded neither pleased nor displeased with my ballpark guess. Is she blonde?

Is what blonde?

Your secretary.

She’s got brown hair.

All over?

I don’t know.

Ah. He was sad for my ignorance. Why did your lover leave you?

Because I want to retire to America one day and she doesn’t, because she says I’m too secretive, because she finds life in Nieuwpoort dull, and because her Frenchman gave her a Mercedes.

You want to live in America? Shafiq asked in a tone of shock.

Yes. It’s home.

No wonder you are unhappy. Shafiq shook his head, I think because Sophie had walked out on me rather than because I was an American.

If I’m unhappy about anything, I assured him, it’s because of this meeting. For Christ’s sake, Shafiq, you ignore me for four years, then you drag me to Paris to tell me you want me to deliver a boat, and now you can’t give me a single Goddamn detail of the job.

But it’s business! he pleaded.

After four years? I sounded hurt.

He shrugged, tapped his cigarette ash into a crystal bowl, then shrugged again. You know why, Paul, you know why. He would not look at me.

You didn’t like my deodorant, Shafiq? I mocked him.

He raised his eyes to meet mine. He did not want to articulate the old accusation, but I was putting him through the wringer and he knew he would have to endure the ordeal. They said you were CIA, Paul.

Oh, shit. I leaned back in the chair, disgust in my voice.

We know it isn’t true, of course. Shafiq tried to reassure me.

It’s taken you four years to make up your minds?

We can’t be too careful, you know that. He sucked on the cigarette, making its tip glow bright. Our business is like modern sex, isn’t it? Practice it safely or not at all, isn’t that right, Paul? He laughed, inviting me to join in his amusement, but my face did not change and he shook his head sadly. It wasn’t our side that accused you, Paul, it was the girl! Your girl! What was her name? Roisin? He even pronounced it properly, Rosh-been, proving that he remembered her well enough. She was your girl, Paul.

My girl? She was the office bicycle, Shafiq. Anyone could ride her.

That’s good, Paul, I like it! The office bicycle! He chuckled, then made a dismissive gesture. So you understand, eh? You see why we could not trust you? Not me, of course! I never believed you were CIA! I defended you! I told them it was a ridiculous notion! Cretinous! But they wanted to make sure. They said wait, wait and see if he runs home to America. I guess you didn’t run home, eh? He smiled at me. It’s good to see you again, Paul. It’s been too long.

So this sailboat, I asked coldly, what kind of business is it?

Just business.

Is it to do with Iraq?

Iraq? Shafiq spread hands as big as oarblades in a gesture suggesting he had never heard of Iraq or its invasion of Kuwait.

Is this to do with Iraq? I asked again.

He gave me a smile of yellowed teeth. It’s just business.

The business of smuggling? I asked.

Maybe? He offered me a conspiratorial smile.

Then the answer is no. It was not, of course it was not, but if I yielded too easily the price would be low, and I wanted the price for this job to be very high, so I laid on the objections. I don’t smuggle things, Shafiq, unless I know what I’m smuggling, and how it’s hidden, and why it’s being smuggled, and where it’s going, and who it’s going to, and how much, and when, and who benefits, and who might be trying to stop it, and how much they propose paying me to get it past them.

I told them you’d say that! Shafiq sounded triumphant.

They? I challenged him.

The people who want you to go to Miami tomorrow, he answered coyly, hoping that the mention of Miami would sidetrack my question.

They? I said again.

your old friends, he said, confirming what I had suspected.

They’re in Miami? That did surprise me.

They want you there tomorrow. He stuffed a slice of almond cake into his mouth, then mumbled, They’re expecting you, and I have your ticket. First class even! He made it sound like a treat, like a red carpet into the lion’s den. Not that I needed such an enticement. I had waited four years for someone to rescue me from hydraulic systems and fiberglass osmosis and rotted keel-bolts.

So I telephoned Hannah at her Nieuwpoort home. It was a Sunday afternoon and she sounded sleepily warm and I wondered if I had interrupted the plump policemen’s revels. Cancel this week’s appointments, I told her.

But, Paul…

Everything, I insisted, is cancelled.

Why?

Because I’m going to Miami, I said, as though it was something I did every month and thus no occasion for her surprise.

Hannah sighed. Kathleen Donovan phoned again. She says she’s visiting Europe and she promises she doesn’t need much of your time, and I told her you would be—

Hannah! Hannah! Hannah! I interrupted her.

Paul?

Make sure the cat takes its damn pills, will you? I asked, then I put the telephone gently down and, next morning, flew to Miami.

Little Marty Doyle was waiting for me at Miami International where, despite the heat, he was jumping up and down like an excited poodle. It’s just great to see you, Paulie! Just great! It’s been years, hasn’t it? Years! I was saying as much to Michael last night. Years!

Marty is a nothing, a lickspittle, an errand boy. Officially he works for the Boston School Committee, while unofficially he gophers and chauffeurs for Michael Herlihy. Herlihy never learned to drive because he suffers from motion sickness and his mother always insisted he had to sit in the back of the family car, and ever since he’s ridden about like Lord Muck. These days Marty is his dogsbody and driver. So what the hell are you doing in Miami? I asked him.

Looking after Michael. He’s not happy because of the heat. He’s never liked the heat. Makes him itch. Is that all your luggage? He gestured at my sea-bag.

How much do you want me to have?

I’ll carry it for you.

I lifted the sea-bag out of his reach. Just shut up and lead on.

It’s been years since I seen you, Paulie! Years! You don’t look any older, not a day! That beard suits you. I tried to grow a beard once, but it wouldn’t come. Made me look like that Chinaman in the movie. Fu-Manchu, know who I mean? So how are you, Paulie? The car’s this way. Have you heard the news? He was skipping around me like an excited child.

The war has started? I guessed.

War? Marty seemed oblivious to the American-led build-up of forces in Saudi Arabia. It’s about Larry, he finally said, they reckon it’s healed, see? He’ll be as good as new!

What’s healed?

His heel! He had surgery on it. Marty giggled at a sudden dawning of wit. His heel’s healed. Get it?

I stopped in the middle of the terminal and looked down at Marty’s bald head. I was tired, I was hot, and Marty was yapping at me like a poodle in heat. Who the hell is Larry, I asked, and what the hell are you talking about?

Larry Bird! Marty was astonished at my obtuseness. He missed the end of last season because of his heel. It had a growth on the bone, or something like that.

Oh, Christ. I started walking again. I might have known that the most important thing in Marty’s world would be the Boston Celtics. The Celts were a religion in Boston, but somehow, perhaps because I now lived in a small harbor town on the Belgian coast, my devotions to the old hometown religion had lapsed.

Yet it felt good to be back on American soil, even in Florida’s unfamiliar tropical heat. I had been away seven years. I had never meant the time to stretch so, but somehow there had always been a reason not to fly the Atlantic. I had bought tickets once, only to have the lucrative chance of delivering a brand-new boat from Finland to Monaco change my plans. Nor did I have family reasons to go home for my parents were dead and my sister was married to a buffoon I could not stand, and so, these last years, I had worked in Nieuwpoort and nursed my dreams of one day going home and living a long, easy retirement in the Cape Cod cottage I had inherited from my father. I was saving up for that retirement, and that savings account had been another reason for not spending money on expensive transatlantic air fares. But I had still been away for too long.

Michael’s waiting for us. Marty held the back door of the limousine open for me. And there’s a fellow come over from Ireland to meet you. Brendan, his name is. Brendan Flynn. He arrived yesterday.

Brendan Flynn? That did surprise me, and it chilled me. Brendan was one of the Provisional IRA’s top men, maybe third or fourth in the movement’s hierarchy, and such men did not travel abroad for trivial reasons. But nothing about this odd deal smelled trivial; it was transatlantic air tickets, suites in the Georges V, a white limousine at Miami International. I had walked into it eagerly enough, but the mention of Brendan’s name gave the whole business a real blood smell of danger.

It must be something big, Paulie, for a fellow to fly all the way from Ireland. And you’ve travelled a few miles too, eh? From Paris! Marty was fishing for news. So what do you think it’s all about? he asked as we swung clear of the airport traffic.

How the hell would I know?

But you must have an idea!

Just shut up, Marty.

But Marty was incapable of silence and, as he drove north, he told me how he had seen my sister just the week before, and that Maureen was looking good, and how here boys were growing up, but that was the way of boys, wasn’t it? And had I heard about the New England Patriots? They had been bought by the electric razor man, but they were still playing football like amateurs. A convent school could play better, so they could. And who did I think would be up for the Super Bowl this season? The Forty-Niners again?

Marty paused in his stream of chatter as we neared the Hialeah Racetrack. He was looking for a turn-off among a tangle of warehouses and small machine shops. Here we are, he announced, and the softly sprung car wallowed over a rough patch of road, turned into a rusting gate that led through a chain link fence topped with razor-wire, and stopped in the shade of a white-painted warehouse that had no identifying name or number painted on its blank anonymous façade. A stone-faced man sitting in a guard shed beside the warehouse’s main door must have recognized Marty for I was casually waved forward without any query or inspection. You’re to go straight in, Marty called after me, and I’m to wait.

I stepped through the door into the warehouse’s shadowed, vast interior. Two forklift trucks stood just inside the door, but otherwise I could see nothing except tower blocks of stacked cardboard boxes. The air smelt of machine oil and of the newly sawn timber used for the pallets, or like machine-gun oil and coffin wood. I was nervous. Any man summoned by Brendan Flynn did well to be nervous.

Is that you, Shanahan? Michael Herlihy’s disapproving voice sounded from the darkness at the far end of the huge shed.

It’s me.

Come and join us! It was a command. Michael Herlihy had little time for the niceties of life, only for the dictates of work and duty. He was a scrawny little runt of a man, nothing but sinew and cold resolve, whose idea of a good time was to compete in the Boston marathon. By trade he was an attorney and, like me, he came from among Boston’s two-toilet Irish; the wealthy American-Irish who had houses on the Point and summer homes on the South Shore or on Cape Cod. Not that Michael was what I would call a proper attorney, not like his father who, pickled in bourbon and tobacco, could have persuaded a jury of Presbyterian spinsters to acquit the Scarlet Whore of Babylon herself, but old Joe was long dead, and his only son was now a meticulous Massachusetts lawyer who negotiated trash-disposal contracts between city administrations and garbage hauliers. In his spare time he was the Chairperson of Congressman O’Shaughnessy’s Re-election Committee and President of the New England Chapter of the Friends of Free Ireland. Michael preferred to describe himself as the Commander of the Provisional IRA’s Boston Brigade, which was stretching a point for there was no formally established Boston Brigade, but Michael nevertheless fancied himself as a freedom fighter and kept a pair of black gloves and a black beret folded in tissue paper and ready to be placed on his funeral casket. He had never married, never wanted to, he said.

Now, in Miami’s oppressive heat, he was waiting for me with three other men. Two were strangers, while the third, who came to greet me with outstretched arms, was Brendan Flynn himself. Is it you yourself, Paulie? My God, but it is! It’s grand to see you, just grand! It’s been too long. His Belfast accent was sour as a pickle. You’re looking good in yourself! It must be all that Belgian beer. Or the girls? My God, but it’s a treat to find you alive, so it is! He half crushed me in a welcoming embrace, then stepped back and gave my shoulder a friendly thump that might have felled a bullock. It was rumored that Brendan had once killed an IRA informer with a single flat-handed blow straight down on the man’s skull, and I could believe it. He was a tall man, built like an ox, with a bristling beard and a voice that erupted from deep in his beer-fed belly. And how are you, Paulie? Doing all right, are you?

I’m just fine. I had meant to reward four years of silence with a harsh reserve, but I found myself warming to Brendan’s enthusiasm. And yourself? I asked him.

There’s gray in my beard! Do you see it? I’m getting old, Paulie, I’m getting old. I’ll be pissing in my bed next and having the nuns slap my wrist for being a bad boy. God, but it’s grand to see you!

You should see me more often, Brendan.

None of that now! We’re all friends. He put an arm round my shoulders and squeezed and I felt as though a hydraulic press was tightening across my chest. But, my God, this heat! How the hell is a man supposed to stay alive in a heat like this? Sweet Mother of God, but it’s like living in a bread oven. It was no wonder that Brendan was feeling the heat for he was wearing a tweed jacket and a woollen waistcoat over a flannel shirt, just as if Miami had a climate like Dublin. Brendan had lived in Dublin ever since he had planted one bomb too many in Belfast. Now he dragged me enthusiastically toward an opened crate. Come and look at the toys Michael has found us!

Michael Herlihy sidled alongside me. Paul? That was his idea of a greeting. We had known each other since second grade, yet he could not bring himself to say hello.

How are you, Michael? I asked him. No one ever called him Mick, Micky or Mike. He was Michael, nothing else. When we had been kids all the local boys had nicknames: Ox, King, Beef, Four-Eyes, Dink, Twister; all of us except for Michael X. Herlihy, who had never been anything except Michael. The X stood for his baptismal name, Xavier.

I’m good, Paul, thank you. He spoke seriously, as if my question had been earnestly meant. You had no problems in reaching us?

Why should I have problems? No police force is watching me. I had aimed the remark at Brendan who was a noisy and notorious beast, not given to reticence, and if he had travelled here with his usual flamboyance then it would be a miracle if the FBI and the Miami police were not inspecting us at this very moment.

Stop your fretting, Paulie. Brendan dismissed my criticism. You sound like an old woman, so you do. The Garda think I’m at another of those Dutch conferences where we discuss the future of Ireland. He mocked the last three words with a portentous irony, then began excavating mounds of corrugated cardboard and foam packing from inside an opened crate. I took a flight to Holland, a train to Switzerland, a flight to Rio, and then another plane up here. The bastards will have lost my footprints days ago. His echoing voice filled the warehouse’s huge dusty space, which was lit only by what small daylight filtered past the roof’s ventilator fans. Besides, it’s worth the risk for this, eh? He turned, lifting from the opened crate a plastic-wrapped bundle which he handled with the piety of a priest elevating the Host. Even Michael Herlihy, who was not given to expressing enthusiasm, looked excited.

There! Brendan laid the bundle on a crate and pulled back its wrapping. For the love of a merciful God, Paulie, but would you just look at that wee darling?

A Stinger, I said, and could not keep the reverence from my own voice.

A Stinger, Michael Herlihy confirmed softly.

One of fifty-three Stingers, Brendan amended, all of them in prime working order, still in their factory packing, and all with carrying slings and full instructions. Not bad, eh? You see now why I took the risk of coming here?

I saw exactly why he had risked coming here, because I knew just how highly the IRA valued these weapons, and just what risks the movement would take to acquire a good supply. The Stinger is an American-made, shoulder-fired, ground-to-air missile armed with a heat-seeking high-explosive warhead. The missile and its launcher weigh a mere thirty pounds, and the missile itself is quick, accurate and deadly to any aircraft within four miles of its launch point. Brendan was gazing at the unwrapped weapon with a dreamy expression and I knew that in his mind’s eye he was already seeing the British helicopters tumbling in flames from the skies above occupied Ireland. Oh, sweet darling God, he said softly as the beauty of the vision overwhelmed him.

The Provos had tried other shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. They had used Blowpipes stolen from the Short Brothers factory in Belfast, and Russian-made Red Stars donated by Libya, but neither the Blowpipe nor the Red Star was a patch on the Stinger. The big difference, as Brendan had once told me, was that the Stinger worked. It worked just about every time. Fire a Stinger and there is a multimillion-pound British helicopter turned into instant scrap metal. Fire a Stinger and the Brits cannot supply their outlaying garrisons in South Armagh. Fire a Stinger and the Brits have to take away their surveillance helicopters from above the Creggan or over Ballymurphy. Fire a Stinger and every newspaper in Britain, Ireland and America sits up and takes notice of the IRA. Fire enough Stingers, Michael Herlihy believed, and there would be a bronze statue of a scrawny Boston garbage lawyer strutting his way across St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin.

It will be the most significant arms shipment in the history of the Irish struggle, Michael Herlihy said softly as he gazed at the unwrapped weapon, and if his words were something of an exaggeration, it was forgivable. The Libyans had sent the IRA tons of explosives and crates of rifles, but neither bombs nor bullets, nor even the green graveyards full of the innocent dead, had yet budged the Brits one inch from Ulster’s soil. Yet Stingers, Herlihy and Brendan fervently believed, would scour the skies of their enemies and so shock the forces of occupation that, just as glorious day follows darkest night, Ireland would be freed.

There seemed just one snag. Or rather two: both of them thin, both tall, both dressed in pale linen suits and both with dark smooth faces. Michael Herlihy made the introductions. Juan Alvarez and Miguel Carlos. They were not names to be taken seriously, merely convenient labels for this meeting in an anonymous Hialeah warehouse under the clattering exhaust fans that flickered the dusty sunlight. "Mr. Alvarez and Mr. Carlos represent