Nor did I intend to trust them. I had my secrets, chief of which was the existence of five million dollars in a renamed yacht. The five million dollars were my pension, my security, and I had no intention of ever letting the government know that such a sum had even been discussed. The money was not important. What was important were the Stingers, and il Hayaween, and Saddam Hussein’s plans to spread terror world-wide.
“You say il Hayaween talked about bringing down an airliner at Heathrow with a Red Star?” Gillespie asked.
I nodded. “It’s much easier than trying to smuggle a bomb aboard.”
“But why a Russian missile? Why not the Stingers?”
“Because the Stingers are in America. I’m guessing that they never did mean to send all the Stingers to Ireland, but to deploy them in the States.”
“You mean…” Gillespie stared at me.
“I mean that if we attack Saddam Hussein’s forces in Kuwait then he’ll bring down planes in Washington and Miami and New York and anywhere else he can.”
Gillespie blanched at the thought of guarding the vicinity of every major civilian airport in North America. “And do you believe the Provisional IRA would cooperate with such an action?”
“No,” I said firmly, “because the IRA wants American support. Part of their income and a lot of their respectability depends on Americans thinking of the Irish as harmless little leprechauns inhabiting an idyllic little island which is being unjustly treated by the nasty English, and blowing up American civilians with IRA weapons tends to sour that fairy-tale image. So I suspect the IRA are being used by il Hayaween. The Palestinians aren’t in a position to travel to Miami to buy the missiles, but the Irish are. However, once the missiles are paid for, then God knows what il Hayaween has in mind.”
“How were the Stingers paid for?”
“The usual method,” I said, “is electronic transfer. I never handled the money itself, just the request, but I know the Libyans liked to use a bank called BCCI…”
“We know about those bastards,” Gillespie said meaningfully, then shrugged an apology for interrupting me. “Go on, please.”
“There isn’t much more to tell. I requested the payment from Shafiq, he told me it was all OKed, and then I telephoned a number in Ireland to say that everything was on line and their money would be coming. They’d already paid a half-million deposit, so I only asked Shafiq for the one million.”
“You have the telephone number in Ireland?”
I gave him the number that had been in Gerry’s suit pocket, but warned him that it would almost certainly belong to a message-taker who would have no inkling of what the messages were about.
Stuart Callaghan, whose bodyguard duties seemed exhausted now that we had arrived at the safe mansion, had lit a fire in the library’s big hearth. Now, at Gillespie’s bidding, he took away the new details of the Stinger trade, doubtless to telephone them through to Langley so that the search for the missiles could be intensified. Gillespie still worried at my story. “What about the two Cubans. Were they Cuban-Americans? Or Cuban-Cubans?”
“I’ve no idea.”
Gillespie tapped the pencil softly on the table. “Comrade Fidel must be itching to do his bit for Brother Saddam, mustn’t he?”
“I guess so. I don’t know.”
“BCCI.” He drew a pencil round the bank’s initials. “You say the Libyans usually transferred money by wire?”
“Almost always. It’s heavy stuff to carry around in a suitcase.”
He half smiled at my half-jest. “So there should be a record of the transaction?”
“Bound to be.”
“And of the half-million dollar deposit. Where would that have come from?”
“Boston, I guess, but I don’t know. Herlihy must use a dozen banks.”
“Look for the money,” Gillespie said softly, “it’s always the same. Look for the money.” He looked up at me. “One last question before we break. Why did you use a false passport to enter the country?”
“How do you know I did?”
“Because we had an all-ports watch alerted for you.”
“Maybe I walked across the Canadian border?”
“The Canadians cooperate with our all-ports watch alerts,” Gillespie said softly. “And what about your hire-car? You used a French name and credit card? But it seems the card really belongs to a prisoner?”
“Habit,” I said, “just old habit. I guess I wanted to use false papers one last time. A whim.”
“You still have the passport and credit card?”
“I tossed them. I told you, it was my last time. I won’t need false papers again, will I?”
“No, you won’t.” Gillespie pretended to believe me. He closed his notebook and carefully snapped a rubber band around its leather covers. “I guess that’s the immediate business taken care of. What I’d like you to do now, Paul, is take a rest. You look bushed. Maybe we’ll pick up this afternoon? There’ll be someone with me by then.”
“Van Stryker?” Simon van Stryker had recruited me into the Stringless Program and I had liked him. I had spent years looking forward to meeting him again, hearing his congratulations.
“Van Stryker’s rather exalted these days. But you will meet him in due course. He takes an interest in you.” Gillespie paused and had the grace to look somewhat embarrassed. “We’ve asked one of the Agency’s psychiatrists to sit in on future sessions. It’s normal practice.”
“To find out if I’ve gone mad?” I asked lightly.
“Something like that, yes,” he replied just as lightly. In fact the shrink would be there to detect my lies.
“Fine by me!” I said.
“Great.” Gillespie smiled. I smiled. Just great.
The psychiatrist surprised me because her appearance suggested someone who ought to have been knitting baby socks for a grandchild rather than monitoring a debriefing about terrorism, but doubtless she was a lot shrewder than her motherly, plump exterior suggested. She was a middle-aged black woman who smiled pleasantly at me, then shook the snow off her overshoes and settled in the bay window at the far end of the long library table. “Terrible weather,” she said cozily, “just terrible. Do you mind if I call you Paul? I’m Carole, Carole Adamson.”
“Paul’s fine.”
“Don’t you mind me, Paul. I’m just here to listen.” She was wearing a thick wool cardigan, wooden beads, and had a comfortable smile. She also frightened me for I was only too ready to believe that psychiatrists possessed arcane powers, and that my every little lie and evasion would telegraph themselves to Carole Adamson’s shrewd and watchful eyes. I could not see her without turning in my chair, but I was very aware of her scrutiny.
Gillespie began the afternoon session by saying FBI agents had begun their search for the Stinger missiles and for their Cuban vendors. In the meantime, he said, he wanted to explore my history of terrorist connections. “I want to go back to the very beginning,” he said. “Who introduced you to the IRA?”
“A guy called Joey Grogan.”
“Was that in America?” Gillespie asked. “Or in Ireland?”
“In Boston,” I said, and felt a flicker of annoyance. I had come here to talk of il Hayaween and Stingers and the Palestinian training camps, and instead Gillespie wanted to plow this old field. “Why don’t you just look up the file?” I asked.