Michael Herlihy sidled alongside me. “Paul?” That was his idea of a greeting. We had known each other since second grade, yet he could not bring himself to say hello.
“How are you, Michael?” I asked him. No one ever called him Mick, Micky or Mike. He was Michael, nothing else. When we had been kids all the local boys had nicknames: Ox, King, Beef, Four-Eyes, Dink, Twister; all of us except for Michael X. Herlihy, who had never been anything except Michael. The X stood for his baptismal name, Xavier.
“I’m good, Paul, thank you.” He spoke seriously, as if my question had been earnestly meant. “You had no problems in reaching us?”
“Why should I have problems? No police force is watching me.” I had aimed the remark at Brendan who was a noisy and notorious beast, not given to reticence, and if he had travelled here with his usual flamboyance then it would be a miracle if the FBI and the Miami police were not inspecting us at this very moment.
“Stop your fretting, Paulie.” Brendan dismissed my criticism. “You sound like an old woman, so you do. The Garda think I’m at another of those Dutch conferences where we discuss the future of Ireland.” He mocked the last three words with a portentous irony, then began excavating mounds of corrugated cardboard and foam packing from inside an opened crate. “I took a flight to Holland, a train to Switzerland, a flight to Rio, and then another plane up here. The bastards will have lost my footprints days ago.” His echoing voice filled the warehouse’s huge dusty space, which was lit only by what small daylight filtered past the roof’s ventilator fans. “Besides, it’s worth the risk for this, eh?” He turned, lifting from the opened crate a plastic-wrapped bundle which he handled with the piety of a priest elevating the Host. Even Michael Herlihy, who was not given to expressing enthusiasm, looked excited.
“There!” Brendan laid the bundle on a crate and pulled back its wrapping. “For the love of a merciful God, Paulie, but would you just look at that wee darling?”
“A Stinger,” I said, and could not keep the reverence from my own voice.
“A Stinger,” Michael Herlihy confirmed softly.
“One of fifty-three Stingers,” Brendan amended, “all of them in prime working order, still in their factory packing, and all with carrying slings and full instructions. Not bad, eh? You see now why I took the risk of coming here?”
I saw exactly why he had risked coming here, because I knew just how highly the IRA valued these weapons, and just what risks the movement would take to acquire a good supply. The Stinger is an American-made, shoulder-fired, ground-to-air missile armed with a heat-seeking high-explosive warhead. The missile and its launcher weigh a mere thirty pounds, and the missile itself is quick, accurate and deadly to any aircraft within four miles of its launch point. Brendan was gazing at the unwrapped weapon with a dreamy expression and I knew that in his mind’s eye he was already seeing the British helicopters tumbling in flames from the skies above occupied Ireland. “Oh, sweet darling God,” he said softly as the beauty of the vision overwhelmed him.
The Provos had tried other shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. They had used Blowpipes stolen from the Short Brothers factory in Belfast, and Russian-made Red Stars donated by Libya, but neither the Blowpipe nor the Red Star was a patch on the Stinger. The big difference, as Brendan had once told me, was that the Stinger worked. It worked just about every time. Fire a Stinger and there is a multimillion-pound British helicopter turned into instant scrap metal. Fire a Stinger and the Brits cannot supply their outlaying garrisons in South Armagh. Fire a Stinger and the Brits have to take away their surveillance helicopters from above the Creggan or over Ballymurphy. Fire a Stinger and every newspaper in Britain, Ireland and America sits up and takes notice of the IRA. Fire enough Stingers, Michael Herlihy believed, and there would be a bronze statue of a scrawny Boston garbage lawyer strutting his way across St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin.
“It will be the most significant arms shipment in the history of the Irish struggle,” Michael Herlihy said softly as he gazed at the unwrapped weapon, and if his words were something of an exaggeration, it was forgivable. The Libyans had sent the IRA tons of explosives and crates of rifles, but neither bombs nor bullets, nor even the green graveyards full of the innocent dead, had yet budged the Brits one inch from Ulster’s soil. Yet Stingers, Herlihy and Brendan fervently believed, would scour the skies of their enemies and so shock the forces of occupation that, just as glorious day follows darkest night, Ireland would be freed.
There seemed just one snag. Or rather two: both of them thin, both tall, both dressed in pale linen suits and both with dark smooth faces. Michael Herlihy made the introductions. “Juan Alvarez and Miguel Carlos.” They were not names to be taken seriously, merely convenient labels for this meeting in an anonymous Hialeah warehouse under the clattering exhaust fans that flickered the dusty sunlight. “Mr. Alvarez and Mr. Carlos represent the consortium that acquired the missiles,” Michael said unhappily.
“Consortium?” I asked.
The one who called himself Alvarez answered. “The fifty-three missiles are currently listed as US Government property.” He spoke without irony, as though I would be grateful for the information.
“God, but it’s beautiful,” Brendan muttered. He stroked the Stinger; caressing its olive-green firing tube and folded acquisition array. The missile itself was invisible behind the membrane that sealed the firing tube.
“And the consortium’s price?” I asked Alvarez.
“For fifty-three weapons, señor, five million dollars.”
“Jesus Christ!” I could not resist the blasphemy for the price had to be extortionate. I had been away from the illegal arms business for four years, but I could not believe the cost of a Stinger had escalated so high, not since the United States had been giving Stinger missiles to the Afghan mujaheddin, which surely meant there had to be other Stingers available on the black market. Yet these men expected five million bucks for fifty-three missiles?
Alvarez shrugged. “Of course, señor, if you are able to buy the same quality for less elsewhere, then we shall understand. But our price remains five million dollars.” He paused, knowing just how deeply the Provisional IRA lusted after these weapons. “The five million dollars must be paid in gold coins, here, in Miami.”
“Oh, naturally,” I scoffed.
“And naturally, señor,” Alvarez went smoothly on, “a small deposit will be required.”
“Oh! A small deposit now?” I sneered.
“The cost isn’t your business, Paul, so shut up,” Brendan snarled. He was in love with the missiles and thought them worth any price. He took me by the arm and steered me out of the Cubans’ earshot. “The point of this, Paul, is that we already have the gold. It’s all agreed. All we need do is bring the gold here.”
I understood at last. “In a boat? From the Mediterranean?”
“That’s right.”
“The Arabs are giving you the gold?”
“And why not? Considering how rich the buggers are? They’ve got all that oil and all poor Ireland has is a bogful of wet peat. What’s gold to them, Paulie?” Brendan’s grip on my arm was hurting. “But the point of bringing you here was so you could see the Stingers for yourself. Shafiq said you’d not help us unless you knew just what it was all about, so now we’re showing you. You always were a careful man, Paulie, were you not?”
“Except in women, Brendan?” I asked the question sarcastically, probing a four-year-old wound.