‘Skit,’ he said to himself.
The first call was transmitted.
‘This is Quill, eleven-ten, Thursday, 730-037-370. Urgent.’ The second call was almost the same:
‘Quill, eleven fifty-five, Thursday, 730-037-370. Red urgent. One hour.’
Deciphered, that meant Quill had a hot one and needed to make contact with Falmouth within an hour. Falmouth looked at his watch. It was twelve-ten. He had forty-five minutes to get back to Quill.
He had to make a decision fast. Time was running out. Howe had three days left to deliver O’Hara. But if Falmouth failed to call Quill, it could blow his whole plan. His back was against the wall, He decided to make the call.
He dialled the number.
‘Yes?’ the voice answered.
‘Reporting.’
‘Clearance?’
‘Spettro.’
‘Classification?’
‘T- 1.’
‘Voice check.’
‘Jack be nimble, Jack be—’
‘ID number?’
‘730-037-370.’
‘Cleared for routing. Contact?’
‘Quill.’
‘Routing.’
He was on hold for only a few seconds when the cultured voice answered.
‘Quill.’
‘Falmouth.’
‘Is your phone clean?’
‘Yes, it’s a pay phone.’
‘Excellent. Glad you got back to me. I have something for you. It’s a bit dirty, but the price is good.’
‘Yes?’
‘A consultant has been lifted by the Rafsaludi from Sunset Oil in Caracas. They want two million by day after tomorrow. The subject is Avery Lavander. We want to bring him in whole.’
‘Have you a play in mind?’
‘Yes. A variation on the Algerian switch.’
‘That would require a preliminary face-to-face confrontation.’
‘We’ve had a bit of a break in that respect. The plant manager has arranged a meeting between the Rafsaludi and a company rep tomorrow at two. They’re being quite audacious about this, but they’re also a bit stupid. It gives us plenty of time to get in there and set up.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘Are you familiar with the play?’
‘Yes. It requires a team.’
‘Affirmative. But only two men. L understand you prefer to operate solo, but you happen to be.
Quill’s voice seemed to fade away. Falmouth was already considering his options. It would be the worst kind of tactic to turn down a red urgent assignment at this point. But a chill coursed through his body into his stomach. He felt as if he had swallowed an ice cube. The timing could not be worse. And a team play into the bargain. He had made his reputation as a solo. Working alone was something e had learned a long time ago
On the outskirts of Newtonabbey, six or seven miles northeast of Belfast, the grim rowhouses seem to stretch for miles. as if reflected in mirrors. They crowd the cobblestone streets, these dismal clones, caked a monochrome gray by decades of industrial dust that has long since disguised whatever colours the houses once were. One of Tony Falmouth’s earliest memories was that his house and all the houses in this drab infinity seemed constantly to be peeling. The grit-caked paint hung in flakes from window sills and porch railings and door frames, like dead skin peeling from a burned body. In his youthful nightmares, the rains would come and the flakes became soggy and the houses began to melt and son the gutters of the claustrophobic streets were flooded with a thick gray mass of putty, and Tony ran along the sidewalk trying to find his own house in that molten river of gray slime. Then he woke up.
13y the time he was ten, Tony Falmouth had already begun to deal with his identity crisis. He had his Uncle Jerry to thank for that. Uncle Jerry was another persistent memory from his youth, although a much more pleasant one. Uncle Jerry, the wiry, hard-talking little Cheshire Cat of a man, always smiling, always humming some nondescript tune; a man so ugly he was beautiful, with a large warty nose and hands so big he could conceal a pint in his fist.
Jerry Devlin, his mother’s brother, listened to his dreams and his fears and talked to him. Nobody else did. His father, Emmett, crushed under the weight of family and job and assigned by fate to the worst kind of drab anonymity, had very little to say to anyone. Every night he sat with his pint or two of ale, staring out the window, down through the endless parade of slums, to a place where he cu1d just barely see the ocean between the houses. One night, when Tony was nine, his father got up from the chair and followed his gaze out the door, down the cobblestone street, and off into the fog and never came home.
The crisis precipitated by the desertion of Emmett Falmouth was resolved by Uncle Jerry and Uncle Martin. Tony was very bright, so it was decided he would stay in school and Jerry and Marty would keep food on the table and make the rent and keep an eye on the kid.
But there was always the weight. He had watched it bend his father until he looked like a hunchback. And now he watched the weight bow his mother, watched the wrinkles spread across her face like ripples on water, watched the colour fade from her hair and the life fade from her eyes until one morning she could no longer get out of bed. It took her a month, lying there choking on her own phlegm, to die.
When Father Donleavy came to the house, Tony made a confession,. He told the priest he hated his father. Father Donleavy suggested a round of Our Fathers and Hail Marys and told him time would ease the pain. He went to live with Marty, and it was another two years before Tony realized Father Donleavy was full of shit. Time and Hail Marys did not get rid of the anger. Instead, it grew inside him, like a snake coiled in his stomach.
Jerry always came at night. He was always armed. And the only time he spoke with bitterness about anything was when he talked about the British. Marty ‘was different. He was apolitical. He had good friends among the British in Ulster. There was no fight in him and he and .Jerry never discussed the Troubles. Nobody ever told Tony his Uncle Jerry was an IRA gunman, after a while he just knew it.
Once, when Tony was twelve, a military payroll was robbed and there was a great deal of shooting and several men on both sides were killed. That night, Jerry came to the house and they sat at the table in the kitchen with the curtains drawn and Jerry took out a package wrapped in yellow oilskin.
‘Hide this fer me, will ye now,’ Jerry said. And Tony climbed out the window of his second-floor room and hid the package in a vent in the roof. Two weeks later Jerry took Tony out to the fields twenty miles from Newtonabbey and he opened up the package. It was a brand-new Webley .38-caliber pistol.
‘A grand weapon,’ Jerry said. ‘And ‘tis toime ye learn to use it. Do it like yer pointin’ yer finger. Keep both eyes open. Imagine yer shootin’ at the bloody Black and Tans.’
Tony took the gun and held it and put his finger on the trigger and it felt good in his hand and he could feel the energy from it charging through his body. He held the gun out at arm’s length and sighted down along the barrel and the gun seemed to be an extension of his arm and his anger flooded down into his finger and he squeezed the trigger.
Boom!
The gun kicked up high and the power of the weapon made him dizzy with excitement and after that he practised whenever he could, watching the bottles and rocks explode as he squeezed off the shots. Only it wasn’t Black and Tans he imagined shooting, it was his father.
“Tis one thing to know how to use a weapon,’ Jerry said. ‘Just remember, plannin’ is most important. Plannin’ is everything. Always know how to get into and how to get out of a fix. And don’t trust nobody. When ye can, work on yer own. Dead heroes ain’t no good to nobody.’
When they were finished, he would hide the gun back in the rooftop vent. Occasionally Jerry would come in the night and get the yellow oilskin wrapper. And then he would return it a day or two later. Then one day they came to the house and told Marty that Jerry was dead, informed on by one of his own, and tracked down and killed by a new British colonel in Newtonabbey.