“Bring him into the vestry,” Father Tim said. “He needs to sit down.”
As Grace Browning stepped back, she heard a sound, turned, and saw a boy of perhaps ten in scarlet cassock and white cotta. She stood there looking at him, holding the AK-47 across her front. He gazed at her round-eyed as she folded the butt and replaced it in the shoulder bag. She put a finger to her lips.
“Be a good boy now,” she said in an Irish accent, “and be off with you.”
He turned and ran the other way and she went down the spiral staircase.
In the vestry they got Keogh’s jacket and waistcoat off and removed the Kevlar jacket.
“God help me,” the Senator said. “But I feel like I’ve been kicked in the back twice by a mule.”
Dillon showed him the two rounds embedded in the Kevlar jacket. “You could have been dead.”
“Except that you made me wear that damn thing,” Keogh said.
Ferguson shook his head. “Not good enough, Senator. I was responsible and I got it wrong. In some way I got it wrong.”
Sister Mary Fitzgerald, standing listening, opened the door and went out. There were children at the main door, nuns trying to control them in the porch, and Father Tim doing his best to help. Sister Mary Fitzgerald took him to one side.
“It’s incredible. Someone tried to shoot Senator Keogh.”
“The IRA?” Father Tim asked.
“And why would they do that to one of their own? Praise be to God he was wearing a bullet-proof jacket. He’s all right.”
At that moment, the young acolyte from the gallery ran up, sobbing. “What is it, Liam?” Father Tim asked.
“I’m frightened, Father. I was in the gallery and there was a nun there, someone I didn’t know.”
“And what was so special about her?”
“She had a rifle, Father.”
On the other side of the pillar, where she had overheard everything, Grace Browning eased away and slipped out of the church through a side door. Putting up her umbrella, she started up through the gardens. She reached the woods and her car within five minutes, got behind the wheel, and drove away. She felt quite calm. She had tried and she had failed. That was how the script had turned out and there was nothing to be done about it.
“She was here,” Dillon said, “instead of at the bottom of the Thames. The whole thing was a trick, can’t you see? Lang and Curry were dead, so she had to die too to fool us.”
“My God!” Ferguson said. “What a woman.”
“But how?” Hannah Bernstein demanded. “That charade in Wapping. That was only a few hours ago. How did she get here?”
“How did we get here?” Dillon said. “I suspect she did it the same way.”
Ferguson said, “There’s only one important thing at the end of the day. She failed.” He turned and went to Keogh, who sat there on a chair, breathing deeply. “Are you all right, Senator?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“And do you feel up to Ardmore House?”
Keogh laughed, and yet there was a hardness to him. “I sure as hell do. I’ve come this far, so let’s do it, Brigadier.”
Grace Browning drove very fast most of the way through the forest, was at Kilbeg within twenty minutes of leaving Drumgoole. There was nothing to keep her here now, no way of interfering with what was to take place at Ardmore House. The best thing to do was to get out.
She parked inside the shed beside the ruined cottage and killed the engine, then she got out of the Toyota, her shoulder bag in one hand, and walked toward the Conquest, holding the umbrella over her head.
Carson got out to meet her. “Everything okay?”
She smiled calmly. “Couldn’t be better. Coldwater next stop, so let’s get moving,” and she went up the steps in front of him.
In the helicopter Ferguson sat apart from them, the telephone to his ear. Finally he put it down and moved to join them.
“I’ve spoken to Chief Superintendent Hare. He’ll do what he can, but I don’t think it will be much. I mean, what do we have? An eight-year-old boy says he saw a nun in the gallery with a rifle.”
“Not much of a description, a nun in Ireland,” Dillon said.
“Exactly.”
Keogh was drinking black coffee supplied by Hannah from a thermos. “It seems to me there’s more here than meets the eye, Brigadier. Do I get to know?”
“Of course, Senator. If anyone has a right to know, it’s you.” Ferguson turned to Dillon. “You’re the Irishman, the story-teller, so let’s see what you can do.”
When Dillon was finished, Keogh said, “let’s stick with the basics. This woman, this Grace Browning, is what’s left of January 30?”
“That’s right,” Dillon said.
“You last saw her apparently going into the River Thames yesterday. You assume it was she who tried to shoot me. Now how could she have been there and turn up here?”
“We were there, sir,” Hannah Bernstein said, “and we turned up here. A few hours’ flying, that’s all.”
“And I suspect she did the same,” Ferguson said.
“But where is she now?” Keogh asked. “Adrift in Ireland?”
Ferguson shook his head. “I doubt it, sir. If she flew in, she’ll already be flying back.”
“Leaving us with one God Almighty mess,” Keogh said. “The whole Drumgoole thing could hit front pages all over the world.”
“I don’t think so, sir. Most of the children, virtually all of them, have no idea what happened back there. There was one hell of a scrummage. As for the little boy in the gallery – he can be handled. Mother Mary and Father Tim will do whatever Chief Superintendent Hare suggests, I’m certain of that. It’s a remote place and the damage limitation will keep the lid on things in the immediate future. By the time any kind of story leaks out it can be dismissed as fantasy.” He smiled. “This is, after all, Ireland, Senator.”
“My God!” Patrick Keogh said. “After this, events on Capitol Hill will seem like an everyday story of country folk.”
The conquest was heading east fast. Grace Browning changed out of the nun’s habit, carefully folded everything, and replaced it in the suitcase. She had failed. All that effort and she had failed. Strange, because that wasn’t the way the script had intended at all. She opened the thermos, had some coffee, and sat back thinking of Rupert and Tom. She closed her eyes. The man wasn’t there, only the darkness, and after a while she slept.
The helicopter dropped in at the lawn in front of Ardmore House. Two men were posted in the porch on either side of the door, both carrying Armalites, and two men stood on the lawn itself, holding umbrellas against the rain – Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
The helicopter settled and the pilot killed the engine. Patrick Keogh turned to Ferguson. “This is it, then.”
“We’ll wait for you, Senator.”
“Like hell you will. After what we’ve been through, I want you to hear what I have to say.”
The second pilot opened the door, Keogh clambered out, and Dillon grabbed an umbrella. Gerry Adams came forward. “A pleasure to see you again, Senator.” He shook hands. “This is Martin McGuinness.”
Ferguson and Hannah emerged and joined the group. Keogh said, “Brigadier Charles Ferguson, his aide Chief Inspector Hannah Bernstein, and Sean Dillon.”
“We know only too well who Brigadier Ferguson is,” Gerry Adams said.
“Good,” Keogh told him. “I’d like the Brigadier and his people to hear what I have to say.”
Gerry Adams looked at McGuinness, who nodded. “Fine, Senator, whatever you want. They’re all waiting for you. They’ve just been told.”
They walked toward the house, Keogh leading with Ferguson and Hannah behind. Adams and McGuinness took up the rear on either side of Dillon.
“A long time, Sean,” Adams said.