Kelly placed her gun on the bedside table. “Oh I do, Mary,” she said softly. “And I want to help.” She walked over to an easy-chair and sat down, crossing her long legs like a secretary preparing to take dictation.
Mary looked at the gun on the bed, and then back at Kelly. “Who are you?” she asked.
Kelly raised an eyebrow archly. “Kelly Armstrong, special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“And?” said Mary, sensing that there was more to come.
“And Colm O’Malley was my father.”
The revelation hit Mary like a blow to the stomach. “Colm O’Malley?” she repeated.
“Didn’t they tell you? Didn’t they tell you that Fergus is my uncle?”
Mary shook her head. “No, they didn’t.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “But you’re American,” she said.
“I am now,” she said. “My parents divorced when I was a kid.” Mary looked up sharply. “I know, I know, Catholics don’t get divorced,” she said. “My mother was American, she went back to the States and divorced him there. I hardly saw him when I was growing up, but later, when I was in my teens, I used to go to stay with him. Things were never right between him and my mother, she wouldn’t even let him come to my wedding.” She grimaced as if in pain. “She couldn’t stop me going to his funeral, though.” She reached up as if to casually slip a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear but she brushed her cheek with the back of her hand and Mary could see that she was close to tears.
“My husband died, too,” said Mary quietly.
Kelly looked at her fiercely. “I know,” she said. “You think if I didn’t know I’d be sitting here talking to you like this?” Her anger subsided as quickly as it had flared. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Mary said nothing and the two women sat in silence for a while, united by unspoken memories.
“How could they do it?” Kelly asked eventually. “How could they murder them like that?”
“The SAS have a saying,” said Mary. “‘Big Boys’ Games, Big Boys’ Rules’.”
“That doesn’t excuse what they did,” said Kelly. “It doesn’t even explain it. They gunned my father down like an animal.”
“I know,” said Mary.
“Like an animal,” Kelly repeated. She looked up sharply. “I want to help, Mary.” There was a new brittle — ness in her voice, like splintered glass.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” said Mary. “You don’t know what we’re planning.”
Kelly snorted softly. “You’d be surprised,” she said. “I know you’re planning an assassination using three snipers, and that one of the snipers will be more than a mile from the target. I know that two of the snipers are former Navy SEALs, Rich Lovell and Lou Schoelen, and that you organised a full rehearsal in Arizona to calibrate your weapons. And I know that the assassination is set for sometime within the next two weeks.” Mary sat in stunned silence as Kelly ticked off the points on her fingers. Kelly smiled smugly. “The only thing I don’t know is who you’re planning to kill.”
“My God,” whispered Mary.
“So?” asked Kelly.
“My God,” repeated Mary. “Does the FBI know all this, too?”
Kelly shrugged. “Some of it. They know that Lovell and Schoelen are the snipers, but so far they’re not aware that there’s an IRA connection.”
“Do they know who else is involved?”
Kelly shook her head. “Just the SEALs.”
“How did you find out that I was part of it?” asked Mary.
“Someone with an Irish accent hired one of the cars you used in the desert. That set bells ringing in my mind and I took the photographs to my uncle. He recognised you.”
“But the FBI doesn’t know I’m involved?”
“Not yet, no. But they’re using computers to enhance the photographs so I would guess it’s only a matter of time. So who’s the target?”
Mary shook her head as if trying to clear it. “Photographs?” she said. Realisation dawned. “The plane,” she mumbled. “It must have been the plane.”
“There was a video-recorder on board,” said Kelly, “the whole thing was filmed.”
Mary looked at her watch, and then at the FBI agent. “And you want to help?” she said. “Knowing what that entails, you want to help?”
“If the target is who I think it is, yes, I’ll help. I want to hurt the British the way they hurt me.” She stared at Mary with an intensity that bordered on fanaticism.
Mary nodded slowly. “The Prime Minister,” she said.
Kelly let out a deep breath with the sound of a deflating tyre. “I knew it,” she said. She stood up and walked to stand in front of Mary. “I’m with you,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for a chance like this for a long time.”
Rich Lovell sat on the side of his bed, a sheet of polythene spread over the quilt so that it wouldn’t be stained by his disassembled Barrett rifle. The former Navy SEAL stripped, cleaned and lubricated his weapon every day, whether or not it had been fired. Slowly and methodically, he checked that the chamber was empty and broke the rifle down into its three major components: the upper receiver group, containing the barrel and telescopic sight; the bolt carrier group; and the lower carrier group, including the trigger components. He picked up the upper receiver group and checked that the barrel springs weren’t overstretched and that the impact bumper was in good condition. The muzzle brake was tight, as were the scope mountings which had been set during the Arizona rehearsal. He carefully put the upper receiver group back on the polythene and picked up the bolt carrier group. He looked to see that the ejector and extractor were under spring pressure and weren’t chipped or worn. As his hands performed the functions they’d done thousands of times before, his mind emptied. Cleaning his rifle was a form of mantra for Lovell, bringing an inner peace that he rarely felt at other times. He de-cocked the firing mechanism, then depressed the bolt latch and worked the bolt in and out, feeling for any signs of roughness. There were none. There had been none the previous day, there would be none the following day, but every day he checked. He held the bolt down and peered at the firing-pin, confirmed that it wasn’t broken or chipped, and then examined the firing-pin hole for signs of erosion. There were none.
He inspected the bolt latch and the cocking lever, then replaced the components on the polythene sheet.
The last group to be checked was the lower receiver. He pulled the bolt carrier back and checked that the mainspring moved freely and that the trigger mechanism was in good condition.
When he was satisfied that everything was as it should be, he inserted his bronze-bristle bore brush through the chamber end of the barrel and made six passes with rifle-bore cleaner. He unwrapped a pack of small cloth patches and he pushed them through the bore one at a time with the brush until they came out completely clean. The dirty ones he screwed up and threw into his wastepaper bin. He used another piece of cloth to dry off any parts of the upper receiver group which had come into contact with the cleaner. He took a small bottle of CLP — cleaner, lubricant and preservative — and soaked a square of material with it before passing it through the barrel. He held the end of the barrel to his eye and squinted down it to check that it had a thin coating of CLP. Satisfied, he poured CLP on another cloth and generously lubricated the bolt, the bolt carrier and the receiver, and then lightly rubbed it over all the metal surfaces.
When all the individual components were glistening with the CLP he assembled the rifle with crisp, economic movements. He stood up and went over to the window where he put the rifle to his right shoulder and put his eye close up to the telescopic sight. The reticle graduations came into focus, superimposed on the green lawn. He aimed the rifle at the base of a small bush and tightened his finger on the trigger. The image in the scope was rock steady despite the weight of the rifle. Lovell knew better than to pull the trigger without a bullet in the chamber: to do so could damage the firing-pin. He swung the rifle slowly across the lawn, breathing softly and slowly. Marksmanship was to a large extent a function of breathing and it was something he practised almost as much as actually firing the weapon. The road filled the scope and he followed it back towards the highway. The view turned blue and then Lovell was looking at the face of Matthew Bailey. Lovell smiled and smoothly followed Bailey with the rifle, keeping the man’s forehead dead in the centre of the scope. Instinctively his finger pressed harder on the trigger, shallow breathing to keep his chest movement to a minimum. He became totally focused on Bailey, then when he was sure he had the shot made he held his breath and mentally the trigger was pressed and the bullet leapt from the barrel at more than three thousand feet per second. “Bang,” he said, softly.