The staircase had been shot almost to pieces.
"Beats me how she got up," said Kilmara. "We'll get a ladder. I'm buggered if I'm going to break my neck at this stage of the game."
Two Rangers brought one of the scaling ladders and placed it against a protruding joist of the landing.
The body of the once-pretty young Italian terrorist — if, indeed, her stated nationality was not as much a lie as her stated name — lay just inside the doorway of the master bedroom. It looked as if it had been hacked and chopped by some sort of infernal machine. The blood from a dozen or so puncture marks in her neck and throat had run together in an obscene halo around her head. Prepared though he was, Fitzduane felt the bile rise in his throat.
Kilmara emerged from the bathroom, a damp washcloth in his hand. "My turn," he said.
He lifted the corpse's right arm and wiped away the thick crust of congealing blood. The body smelled of blood, feces, and perfume. He saw that a grenade fragment or bullet had sliced into the wrist and carved a furrow in the soft surface flesh. He sponged around the rough edges. The light wasn't good. They were depending on external floodlights shining through the window. He removed a flashlight from the right thigh pocket of his combat uniform and shone the beam on the lifeless wrist.
The mark was very small and partially obliterated by the furrow. Nonetheless, most of the small tattoo could be seen: the letter "A" surrounded by what looked like a circle of flowers. He looked up at Fitzduane, and their eyes met. The Ranger colonel nodded and rose to his feet. He tossed the bloodstained washcloth thought the open bathroom door and then bent down to pick up several of the small cartridge cases lying beside the corpse. He put them in his pocket.
They descended the ladder and picked their way through the organized chaos of snaking floodlight cables and departing security force vehicles. Engines roared, and vehicle after vehicle drove away.
"How do you do it?" asked Kilmara. Fitzduane smiled, spread his arms, and shrugged.
"Do you know what Carl Gustavus Jung wrote?" said Kilmara.
"I didn't know he was call Carl Gustavus."
"A rough translation," said Kilmara, "and I quote: ‘There are no coincidences. We think they're coincidences because our model of the world doesn't account for them. We're tied up in cause and effect.’"
"And now you're gonna tell me Jung's nationality."
"Sharp lad," said Kilmara with a smile, "so you tell me."
"Swiss."
They walked across to the Mobile Surgery trailer. Inside, an army doctor was playing cards with a Ranger lieutenant. A bottle of Irish whiskey and two glasses beside them displayed evidence of current use. Kilmara removed two more glasses from a wall rack and poured generous measures, then topped up the glasses of the doctor and the lieutenant. "Souvenirs," he said. "How are you feeling?"
"I've got a sprained wrist, and I'm bruised as hell," said Burke. "It's no fun being shot."
Lucky she was using a Skorpion," said Kilmara. "It uses a piss-poor underpowered pistol cartridge. It'll kill well enough, but it's got little penetrating power."
"There is a lot to be said for being dressed right for the occasion," said Burke, indicating the scarred but otherwise undamaged Kevlar bullet-resistant vest hanging on a hook on the wall. He suddenly went pale and rushed to the adjacent toilet. They could hear the sounds of retching through the door.
"He's physically okay," said the doctor, "but there may be post-traumatic stress involved. He was bloody lucky."
"Jung also wrote: ‘Every process is partly or totally interfered with by chance,’" said Fitzduane. "Not everybody knows that."
"Good grief," said the doctor, and drained his glass.
As Fitzduane and Kilmara left the trailer, the two dead terrorists were carried by on stretchers on the way to the morgue. Fitzduane felt the good mood induced by the banter inside the Mobile Surgery trailer vanish. "A depressing waste," he said soberly.
"I'd feel a lot more depressed if it was us in those body bags," said Kilmara cheerfully. "You've got to see the up side in this game."
* * * * *
They arrived at Kilmara's house at just after five-thirty in the morning. Inside the security perimeter all was quiet until the Saab crunched to a halt on the gravel. The two Irish wolfhounds came bounding around the corner of the big Georgian house.
"One would wonder if they were dogs or elephants with hair," said Fitzduane. "They're enormous bloody brutes."
"You'd know if you visited more often," said Kilmara. "Now stay quiet until I identify you."
Fitzduane did not need to be told twice. He watched while Kilmara called the two hounds to heel. Each dog was well over a meter and a quarter high and, he guessed, weighed at least as much as a fully grown man. Long pink tongues lolled over sharp rows of teeth.
"Ailbe and Kilfane," said Kilmara. "Fairly recent acquisitions."
The two men entered the house through the courtyard door and made their way to the large country-house kitchen.
"Do you know the story of the original Ailbe?"
"Remind me," said Fitzduane.
"There was a renowned Irish wolfhound called Ailbe in the first century," said Kilmara, "owned by MacDatho, King of Leinster. Now Ailbe was such a remarkable dog that he could travel from one side of the kingdom to the other in a single day, and of course he was unsurpassed in hunting and war. Ailbe became so famous that both the King of Ulster and the King of Connaught coveted him, and an offer of no less than six thousand milch cows, a chariot with two fine horses, and the same again after a year was made. This was an offer MacDatho could hardly refuse. At the same time he knew he still had a problem because the king who did not get the hound would give MacDatho a most difficult time. It was a real dilemma.
"So what did MacDatho do?"
"MacDatho promised the hound to both kings," said Kilmara. "When they arrived to conclude the deal, no sooner did they see one another than they forgot all about the hound and fell to fighting. MacDatho, in the manner of a politician, watched the battle from a nearby hill, and an excellent battle it was, with heroics and bravery all over the place and regular pauses for light refreshment and harp playing. However, Ailbe, the bionic wolfhound, was no voyeur. He tossed a coin and entered the fray on the side of the King of Ulster — and had his head chopped off."
"Is there a moral to this story?"
"Pick your battles."
Kilmara gestured Fitzduane to a seat at the big kitchen table and then strode across to the cast-iron range. He poked the cooker into life and stood for a moment enjoying the waves of heat coming from the stove. He donned an apron over his combat fatigues and hummed as he cooked.
Fitzduane dozed a little. It was nearly dawn. Images flickered through his mind. He awoke with a start when Kilmara put a plate of food in front of him.
"Bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding, white pudding, and fried bread," he said. "You won't see the likes of this in Switzerland." He poured them both coffee from an enamel pot that looked as if it had been around since MacDatho's time.
Fitzduane picked up his mug of coffee. "That book of mine you found in the terrorists' car—"
"Uh-huh," said Kilmara.
"You thought it had to do with me?"
"It's a possibility," said Kilmara. "Maybe on one of your foreign forays you photographed some local supremo from his bad side or something, and our friends were sent to teach you a permanent lesson. They didn't seem to be slap-on-the-wrist types. Well, who knows? I'll worry about the reasons after I've had some sleep."