‘No.’
‘I have a nice plan.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Very nice, very special.’
Always a game. Liked his nice plans to be revealed with theatrical slowness. ‘Tell me the plan, then, before it’s autumn.’
Dawson readjusted his shirt cuffs. He liked no more than an inch of white to show where the suit sleeves ended. His eyes alighted on the grass whip stuck in the fence post. ‘A scythe,’ he said.
‘Grass whip.’
‘It’s not a very subtle sculpture.’
‘It’s stuck. Give me a hand with it.’
‘My oxters’ll get sweaty. It’s always the lefty that goes first.’ They grabbed the handle and pulled. ‘Reaper came, did he, Dan? You pulled a quick judo throw on him?’ The blade squeaked out. ‘More and more you’re my hero, Daniel. I think of you as a supernatural.’
Dan made tea. They drank it in the garden. The saucers were side by side on the step and Dawson’s biscuit remained untouched. No one ever saw Dawson eat — not ever. Dan had heard various theories. An intestinal complaint. A protein-only diet. A belief that being seen with your face in a sandwich ruined the myths a man created for himself. The other thing he never did was linger in the house. He worked on the assumption every building was bugged. He thought if a man was going to be caught he might as well be caught outdoors.
Dawson lit up a Newport. ‘Want one?’
‘Why not.’ It was useful, when talking to a guy like this, to have something in your hand.
Eventually Dawson said, in a much quieter voice than before, ‘We’ve work that needs a man of your skills, yes? You’d have seen the two house calls we made to those UVF members last week. Arosa Parade, near the Grove? Doing a job on the Loyalists in the heart of their territory, Danny. Important work, for sure, but —’
‘Small.’
A nod.
‘And?’ Dan said. Then he rephrased, careful to avoid a rising intonation: ‘And you have me in mind, I assume, for a follow-up. To which I’d remind you, I don’t do guns.’
‘Or knives. Or paper clips. I know, I know.’
‘I’d be working with Patrick.’
‘No. This one’s lonely. We’re having a try for keeping Patrick uninteresting. Mad Dog’s got a big job coming up.’
It was bait, this comment. Jobs so big that you couldn’t work in advance of them? They didn’t exist. Couldn’t work after, for a while — that made sense. ‘What’s his big job, Dawson?’
‘Curiosity’s another of the tragic flaws, Danny.’
‘Fine.’
‘Still not read your Shakespeare, have you?’
‘Enough, Dawson.’
‘Unaccommodated men,’ he said, and blew a smoke ring. Dan watched it widen and die. ‘Every society’s got them at the edges of the public space, haven’t they? But no, we need to put Patrick on the subs bench a little while. The op he’s on — it’s not for you. Though tell me, what do you think of the name Roy Walsh?’
Familiar somehow, but Dan couldn’t place it. ‘I picture a glittering jacket,’ he said. ‘Grinning game-show host.’
‘I’ve just come from a little Army Council meeting, is all. We’re toying with a couple new aliases.’
The piece fell into place. Roy Walsh was the name of another volunteer. In which case, hardly a good alias.
Dawson listened to Dan’s concerns, blowing smoke again. ‘Opposite,’ he said. ‘Confuses the old authorities, so it does. The real Walsh is a Red Light right now, see? In the Special Branchy books. Which is to say, given he can’t visit the mainland, he’s got an alibi tighter than Gerry Adams’s arsehole.’
‘Heard it was pretty loose.’
‘No,’ Dawson said thoughtfully. ‘Verbal incontinence, that’s Gerry’s main issue. My own idea of a CEO? Leave a bit more to the imagination. Be a bit more like God.’ He took his asthma inhaler from his trouser pocket and twirled it in his left hand. Then he pocketed it again and took a nimble drag on his Newport. He said, ‘Forget Patrick’s job. This other one I’m putting you on is plenty big. Large impact, high value. But simple, for a man of your skills.’
‘They’re all simple in the strategy rooms. It’s when you’re there, sweating into the Semtex, peelers approaching you east, south and west — that’s when it gets tricky.’
‘You go north, in that situation, no? Simple. Easy. I tell you, for me it’d be a fucking relief to go north. Instead I’m stuck at home, strategising, with a one-eyed woman who’s always nagging me to go south.’
Dawson waited for the laugh, accepted it with a wave of his hand, smoke creeping out of his mouth. ‘I disgust myself daily,’ he said, crouching to press his cigarette into a paving stone. ‘Also, you’re the expert, but it’s not advisable to sweat into the Semtex.’
‘You’re thinking of a car charge, I suppose.’
‘There’s been enough charges under cars,’ Dawson said. ‘There’s been enough Nissan Sunnys and Land Rovers. This one’s an arty kind of operation. Right up your street.’
‘Local.’
‘Everything’s local. The wonders of transport. This one’s across the Irish Sea. Larne — Stranraer ferry. You must be familiar? It’s being used — you’ll like this — to move fifteen Brit Army trucks a fortnight. Fifteen. Two-or three-ton trucks, it seems. Ones bringing blankets and uniforms from Scotland. Supplies for the Province troops. Comforts, so they can be well rested when they kill us.’
‘You’ll never get the kind of volume of fertiliser, or whatever you’re wanting, onto one of those.’
‘We are on there. That’s the point. Not fertiliser — a human presence. I know that’s tough to grasp for a robot like you. For a guy who fiddles with wires for a living. I’m a people person. Our army is full of them. It’s only your area that’s chilly. So I’m talking about a flesh-and-blood volunteer, Danny, a civilised human person, someone who doesn’t operate at a remove from reality. Sixteen-year-old lad, very mature, cousin of McCluskey C. He’s a ship’s hand and — screw Mick’s mother — he’s noticed a pattern. He’s noticed that the fifteen trucks get loaded at Stranraer every other Saturday morning, arriving at Larne in the afternoon. The last three of the trucks are, he says, packed with soldiers.’
‘You’re just giving me facts,’ Dan said, refusing a second cigarette.
‘You asked for facts.’
‘I asked for nothing.’
‘None of us does. Óglaigh na hÉireann. The Army of People Who Ask for Nothing.’
‘Objectives,’ Dan said, but at that moment Dawson’s eyes widened. Voices were coming through the fencing: the home of Ancient Jones.
A second, two seconds, and Dan recognised these voices as the talk of people on TV. Muffled but neat. Scripted. Ancient Jones was ninety-four and the best kind of Protestant around, but he liked to have the volume as high as his heating. Twice Dan had helped replace blasted component parts, fried audio elements. When he was hot, Jones opened his windows wide. He sat there flooding half of Belfast with sound waves from obscure wildlife programmes, repetitive weather reports, golf. An alternative to taking off one of the jumpers his bulky niece kept knitting.
‘Elderly,’ Dan explained.
Dawson frowned. ‘Objectives. The objectives will become clear when you hear the plan. The plan is to plant one of your speciality packages at the side of the road and take out the last three trucks on a Saturday afternoon in two weeks’ time. Ones that will be packed full of soldiers returning from Scotland. Sitting ducks. Quack quack quack. No need to get our gear on the actual ferry.’
‘Single-lane traffic.’
‘Yes.’