A Betrayal of Butterflies: The Butterflies Trilogy, #3

Dedication

MANY THANKS TO—JOAN Afman, probably the best editor an author could wish for. All the Wings staff who have helped in the creation of the Butterflies trilogy. My wife Mary, as always, for patience and tolerance above and beyond the call of duty.

One

I CAN’T SANCTION THAT, and you know it. General George B. Foster smoothed back what was left of his thinning silver hair and looked at Gordon across the empty expanse of his desk.

Through the window behind the general, the Irish Tricolour flapped wildly next to the Stars and Stripes. Beyond these and the razor wire perimeter fence, the gorse-dotted expanse of the Curragh stretched away to a grey, rain-laden sky.

The screams of drill sergeants and synchronised stamping of feet carried into the room from the parade square below the window.

Gordon wondered whether the general had a family on the base or one back in the States. There was nothing on his desk or on the walls of the office to suggest so. There was nothing to suggest anything—no photographs, pictures, diplomas, trophies. If the man had a life, it seemed not to extend beyond the block of decorations on his starched uniform.

I’m not asking you to sanction anything, he said, spreading his hands. I’m just asking you to be looking the other way.

Me, the Third Airborne, the US Navy and Air Force, the Coastguard, the Marines. Foster looked down at his hand as if he were about to count them out on his fingers. "And that’s only the Americans. There’s also the Irish defence forces, police, Special Branch. What part of, It can’t be done, don’t you understand?"

Keeping his eyes locked onto the general’s creased and weather-beaten face, Gordon rubbed his hand across his stomach and was pleased to see the general flinch away from the gesture.

And don’t try that one. Foster’s expression hardened. Haven’t you killed enough people already?

That hurt. Gordon glared at him, but had to respect his courage.

Monica Rawlings, the Irish policeman. This time the general did count them out on fingers. Miriam—your own girlfriend. Al Fulbeck, Mick Duggan, Nial Hennessey.

Gordon’s brow creased. Al Fulbeck?

The chopper pilot—wife and three kids back in Nebraska.

Gordon looked at the floor.

They’re not sure yet whether your own father will ever walk again.

He’s not my father.

He’s as good as. Now if you’ll forgive me. I’ve work to do.

Gordon looked at him. The empty desk did not suggest that this was true.

Look, like I said before. The only way you are going to get back to England is via San Francisco. Why can’t you just accept that? The general stood, rounded his desk and disappeared behind Gordon.

The door clicked open.

Gordon pushed himself from his chair and turned toward the sound.

I can arrange for you to fly out from Shannon tomorrow. Just let me know.

Gordon stomped down the stairs from the general’s office to the exit from the administration building. The soldier behind the reception desk glanced up from whatever he was doing as he passed.

He kicked open the door and stepped out into a drizzly, overcast morning. The wind had dropped, and the flags hung limp from the tops of their tall, white poles.

A troop of marines pounded the parade square. He skirted it toward the visitor’s parking lot and slipped behind the wheel of his hire car. He hadn’t expected the general to suddenly change his mind, but that didn’t make things any less frustrating.

He’d made a promise to return to England and kill Ahmadzai, and he was determined to keep it. He was also determined not to return to San Francisco until he’d accomplished his mission.

An MP checked Gordon’s papers at the security barrier then waved him through. He drove slowly onto the Dublin road. He had nowhere to go except England, and he wasn’t leaving for there anytime soon. He’d lose himself in the anonymity of the city. No. He banged the ball of his thumb down on the rim of the steering wheel. He didn’t want to lose himself; he wanted to find himself.

He pulled onto the next exit ramp and climbed up to the roundabout at the end of it. Left or right? He studied the signpost at the edge of the circle of green. Blessington was to the right. There was a big lake there; that would do.

The grey of the water mirrored that of the sky. The last time he’d driven that road, both had been blue. He cruised past the last of the empty lakeside parking lots. Perhaps the city was the best call after all. At the end of the lake, he took the road that would lead him into the Wicklow Mountains. If he was heading back to Dublin, at least he’d take the longer, scenic route.

The drive cheered him. The narrow, winding lane required concentration that prevented his mind drifting in directions he didn’t want it to go. At the summit of the final climb, he stopped. Undulating open moorland stretched in front of him. The low ceiling of cloud cover fragmented, revealing windows of blue. He pulled from the road and crunched onto a gravel parking spot. If he had time on his hands, he might as well use it constructively.

A canary-yellow sedan appeared from a dip in the road ahead. Its brightly coloured presence seemed a slap in the face of the landscape. Gordon stepped out of the car. He had to get away from the road.

He walked across the uneven grassland, glancing back constantly and not stopping until he could no longer see the winding ribbon of black tarmac. Grazing sheep dotted the land around him. It was so quiet that he could hear the grinding of their teeth. The grass would still be damp. He sat down anyway. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as he’d expected. He lay back and closed his eyes.

The butterflies were his protection and his weapon, but he needed to be sure of his control. He pulled the front of his shirt free of his jeans and stroked his fingers across the skin of his stomach.

The butterflies swirled comfortingly beneath his touch, as if apologising for the hurt they had caused him.

He thought them into more frantic motion, then released them on a controlled breath and willed them to wrap protectively around him. He sat up and gazed across the moor through a multi-coloured living force field. There wasn’t even a tree that he could target. He looked at the nearest of the sheep. Sorry... Kill it. His protective aura swirled into a spear of power and launched toward its target.

The sheep looked up, startled.

The butterflies swirled around their victim, spinning the creature onto its back. Chunks of wool and bloody flesh showered out from the writhing mass of blues and yellows.

Stop.

The butterflies disappeared.

He turned away from the clean-picked ribcage and exposed inner workings of his experiment. A controlled kill, but now he was exposed until he roused his gift once again. That was no good. He needed their protection back around him after the kill, or he needed enough of them to remain behind to keep him safe. His victim’s companions barely interrupted their feeding. Not only were his butterflies silent killers, but only he could see them. He selected another grazing beast and stroked his multicoloured armour back into place.

When he’d cleared his immediate surroundings of sheep, he stood and stretched the stiffness from his legs. Half-stripped carcasses dotted the moorland grass around him. He wondered what the farmer would make of his training site. They’d probably spend fruitless days searching for the pack of feral dogs that would be the only logical explanation. He couldn’t afford to worry about that; his mission was to kill one of the most evil men in Europe—a few dead sheep was a very small price to pay.

He scanned the surrounding countryside for more potential practice. It there were more sheep, they were hidden in peat hags or behind gorse bushes. Going in search of them was just too much like hard work. He turned and headed back to the car, a bounce in his step and his arms swinging at his side.

He heard the screaming of an engine before he pulled back onto the lane. He waited for the offending vehicle to appear. Seconds later it did, a gaudy red Honda decorated with ‘go faster’ stripes. An arm swung out from its front window and tossed a beer can onto the roadside.

He forced a smile. He wasn’t gong to let one asshole spoil his mood. Taillights flashed bright as the driver hit the first bend too quickly and fought to regain control of his machine. The rear of the car swung left, then right. The driver reached the next bend; beyond that the land to the side of the road dropped away almost vertically to a lake-filled valley bottom.

Gordon shook his head. Asshole. If he’d wanted to he could... No... Stop. Too late. A bolt of butterfly energy flew arrow-straight toward its target. I said stop!

The Honda flipped onto its roof, bounced once, and disappeared from view. He waited to hear the crash of impact. The distance was too great, or perhaps the wind was in the wrong direction.

Why do they always do that, just when I think that I’m in control?

He pulled onto the road and drove slowly to the third bend. Parallel black lines headed diagonally across the tarmac but stopped abruptly before reaching the narrow verge and drop into the steep-sided valley. Shattered windscreen glass sparkled like scattered jewels in the sunlight. He parked on the crown of the bend, obstructing the road, but at least visible from both directions, and stepped from the car.

The wheels of the upturned Honda stuck out from the tranquil surface of the lake. It must have bounced down the hillside, but the tussocks of heather had sprung back into shape to conceal the evidence. If the bouncing descent hadn’t killed the car’s occupants, they would probably have drowned by now in the water of the lough. How many had there been? Two at least, perhaps three, perhaps five, and young. It was unlikely that anyone over twenty-five would need the ego trip of such a machine. Sorry, Gordon said, feeling no remorse, and returned to his car.

He passed other flocks of grazing sheep, but he’d had enough practice for one day. The road widened when open countryside gave way to walled meadows. He increased speed and headed for the city, then through it to the coast, pulling from the road at Sandymount Strand. He parked facing out over Dublin Bay.

He lowered his window and listened to the swishing of the high tide on the beach below the promenade. Joggers and dog-walkers passed in front of him without sparing him a glance. He saw no uniforms, American or Irish. Perhaps they’d been ordered to keep clear of this small stretch of coast to give the locals a taste of a normality that would probably never return.

To his left, the giant cranes of Dublin Port stood idle. He looked back out to sea. Not many years ago, dozens of container ships would be riding the high tide into the mouth of the Liffey. Now, with Western Europe closed, the country had been flipped over. With the only maritime traffic crossing the Atlantic from the west, Galway Harbour and the Shannon Estuary had become the commercial lifeline of the country.

The sea was far from empty though. Farther out, beyond the rocky hump of Howth Head, two American carrier groups stood off in the deep water; their aircraft flying regular patrols up and down the coast. He sometimes wondered why they bothered. With the rest of Europe under fundamentalist control, it seemed like a high price to pay just to keep this little green island free. He sighed. If the tide ever turned though, he supposed they’d need some springboard from which to launch an invasion, and Ireland was all they had left.

He scanned the horizon line, straining his eyes as if the coast of Wales were so close that with increased concentration he’d be able to see it. On a clear day, he’d been told, you could see Snowdonia from the Wicklow Mountains, just to the south. He’d climbed up and tried it, but the day mustn’t have been clear enough, or the locals were lying.

Wicklow. He wondered if the small boat in which he’d made his first crossing of the Irish Sea was still in the small harbour there. There was no reason that it shouldn’t be. He’d recognise its skipper and its crew. They’d made the last crossing for money—why not another one? Money he had; it was the right contacts and influence, he lacked. He slammed the car into reverse and swerved back onto the road.

Wicklow town’s harbour was smaller and emptier than he remembered, and the timber yard and warehouses on the opposite quay more run down and neglected. It wasn’t easy for a small coastal harbour to be drear and depressing, but somehow Wicklow had managed it in spades.

He walked along the inner wall and recognised the skipper of the fishing boat immediately. He looked not to have a care in the world, grinning out from the photograph at the base of a pyramid of roses and carnations. The rest of the crew were there too, not looking as happy, but probably just as dead.

An old woman shuffled up beside him, bent, and placed a cellophane-wrapped bunch of carnations at the base of the pile.

She’d bent to her task easily enough but struggled to straighten back from it. Gordon took her elbow and helped her stand. What happened?

She stared at him, her head cocked to one side, trying to read his character, or to make sense of the question. She could be the mother or the grandmother of one of the crew. Sunk, she said, By the Brits. She pointed an accusatory finger out to sea as if to identify the culprits. Gordon smiled. She looked old enough to have lived through the Troubles, perhaps even the Easter Rising and the Civil War.

I warned them, she said to the lapping water below the quayside. We all did. Money isn’t everything, I said.

When did it happen? Gordon asked.

Oh... She looked at him, her eyes dimming as if trying to slip time back into perspective. It must have been... Let me see.

Gordon patted her shoulder. It doesn’t matter. He turned and walked away, not wanting to know, not wanting confirmation that there were three more to add to the list of people he’d gotten killed. They’d been well paid, and they knew the risk they were taking in getting Gordon to England. If he hadn’t tempted them with envelopes stuffed with supposedly easy money, though, they would probably still be fishing the waters of the Irish Sea.

HE’S APPLIED FOR A travel permit again. Dan wheeled his chair down the newly installed ramp from the indoor pool area into the garden.

Becky swung her legs from the sun lounger and watched his approach. She never thought he’d look vulnerable, but confined to that wheelchair, he did. She forced a smile; at least his disability was only temporary. When the bones knitted, he’d be free of it. He’s not going to give up, you know.

And neither am I, Dan said, manoeuvring to her side and leaning forward to kiss her cheek. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve vetoed it, and still that damn general calls every time he reapplies.

Lemonade? Becky reached across to the round garden table next to the lounger.

Please.

She poured two tall glasses full from a glass pitcher and handed one to him. What does Hillary say?

Am I disturbing, you guys?

Ask her yourself. Dan laughed as the psychologist stepped into the garden. Of course not, come and join us.

Hillary Matheson picked up a plastic garden chair from the stack beside the French window and carried it across the lawn.

Gordon’s applied for another trip to England, Dan said.

Of course he has, the psychologist replied. And he’ll keep on applying. She sat down and crossed her legs. Focussing his hatred on Ahmadzai is the only way he can stop blaming himself for all the deaths.

"If he’s not going to give in, should I give in and let him go?" Dan took a drink.

Hillary looked at Becky and raised