Jake looked over at the stranger again and then turned to Beth. “Maybe he’s one of your relatives.”
He laughed and winked at McGill, then turned back toward the bar. The man was gone. He looked around the room. The stranger was nowhere to be seen.
“Hey, Beth, does that Whataburger syndrome also let you vanish into thin air?”
“Waardenburg — smart ass.”
McGill laughed at Jake. “Yeah, smart ass. He’s gone now anyway.”
The conversation at the table turned to the crash scene and some of the details that were observed during the initial stakedown. Beth and Carol objected a couple of times at the more graphic details. The conversation was interrupted periodically by the waitress as she delivered more rounds of Black and Tans. Carol raised her hand in protest and stopped drinking after the second round.
The group got louder with each drink. Ben asked, “Who was this guy O’Rourke anyway?”
McGill quickly spoke up. “Laurence O’Rourke is a bastard, I tell ya. When I was but a wee tyke, he started his killing for the IRA. The Irish Republican Army, for those of you who don’t know.”
His Irish brogue now thickened by the alcohol, he said, “Mr. O’Rourke worked his way up the ranks in the IRA very fast. Innocent people died because of him. His plans backfired about as often as they succeeded. IRA men died. The Constabulary men died. He was promoted to the IRA’s internal security unit called the Nutting Squad.”
“What’s a Nutting Squad?” Dave asked.
“It’s like … maybe like internal affairs with the police but with much graver consequences. They police their own. Anyway, as a member of the Nutting Squad, O’Rourke killed many IRA members for squealing when the Constabulary arrested them.”
Jake interrupted, “Sounds like you knew him personally, Pat?”
McGill picked up his glass and looked around the table, his eyes hard. “The bastard was a ruthless murderer. He was arrested in 1978, and thrown in prison where he participated in the ‘Dirty Protest’ at the H-Block. He was released, then arrested again in 1982. And once again he was thrown in the Maze. Then in September of 1983, I did meet Mr. Laurence O’Rourke. ”
There was a long silence as he stopped talking. McGill took several hard swallows from his fifth Black and Tan of the night. Still gazing at the ceiling, his eyes glassed over, McGill finished his story.
“My family, my cousins’ family — we were always IRA sympathetic. Even though my uncle never participated, we supported the IRA’s efforts in many ways. In 1983, there was a prison break from the Maze and Laurence O’Rourke hid in our basement for three days while authorities combed the countryside. I was sixteen at the time. Three months later, my aunt, my cousin and I moved to the States to get away from the Troubles. We moved here, to Savannah.”
Jake studied McGill’s face, now as grim as it had been jovial earlier in the evening, deep furrows in his brow and hatred in his eyes. “I don’t get it, what makes him so special?”
“That’s what I’m getting to. Mind your horses…Jake.”
Jake threw up his hands. “Sorry.”
“O’Rourke left the internal security unit when he was appointed IRA Quartermaster General,” McGill said. “His job was to obtain, conceal and maintain the stores of weapons and arms of the IRA. Then, around 1995, he left the IRA and joined Sinn Fein where he spent several years working toward unifying Ireland. The 1998 Good Friday Peace Accord was the first real step toward peace. But even it had problems.
“Now the IRA has disarmed. The only way there will ever be peace is through mutual giving. The unilateral disarming of the IRA …”
McGill dropped his head and stared into his beer mug.
Beth elbowed Jake in the ribs and taking the hint, Jake said, “Come on, folks, it’s getting late, we have a busy day tomorrow, and we should head back to the ho—”
McGill interrupted, “A spy! Now he’s a spy. You see, it all makes sense now. All those loyal IRA men he killed or that were killed when one of his plans backfired. He was a British spy.”
“That was this guy, the guy on our plane? I remember reading about him in the paper a few weeks ago but I couldn’t remember his name. I didn’t realize that was this guy,” Dave said.
McGill mumbled, “The bastard, the bastard.”
The ferry ride back to the Westin was relatively quiet. McGill muttered about Laurence O’Rourke while Carol urged him to drink the coffee she had talked the bartender out of prior to their departure from Barry’s.
Ben and Dave were talking about the accident, both making “educated guesses” about the angle of impact and speed at impact— using their hands to simulate airplanes angling downward. They discussed what time the flatbeds should show up to start removing the wreckage and relocating it to the Gulfstream hangar.
Beth snuggled close to Jake in the chill of the damp night air.
He put his arm around her. “I’ve never seen Pat like this before. He’s mentioned a couple of things about his past before, but usually he’s very private.”
“He’s just had too much to drink,” she said. “He’ll feel it tomorrow.”
The ferry pulled into the dock next to the Westin.
“I’ll make sure he gets to his room okay.”
The elevator took them to the sixteenth floor, the top floor of the hotel. Dropping Beth off at their room, he walked McGill down the hall to his room. McGill fumbled with his keycard, finally making a clean swipe and unlocking the door. Jake stayed long enough to make sure McGill was coherent enough to get ready for the day tomorrow.
“Pat, are you going to be alright? Can I get anything for you before I go?”
Jake had known his boss had a past he didn’t like to talk about. Now he was starting to understand that part of McGill, although he really wasn’t sure what to say to him.
McGill looked at him. “Thanks for being a good friend. I’m fine — just too much to drink is all.”
“Pat, since you knew O’Rourke and all, do you think you should recuse yourself as investigator-in-charge?”
“Nonsense, Jake. How was I to know that someone I met nearly thirty years ago would be on that airplane? Besides the investigative procedure is the same regardless of who’s on board.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. It really shouldn’t matter one way or the other.”
McGill smiled. “You better get back to Beth before she gets jealous. I think she’s on to us.”
They laughed and Jake walked out.
He stood outside the door until he heard McGill lock the deadbolt. As he walked down the hallway toward his room his mind had questions. Why was McGill so upset about someone he knew such a long time ago? This O’Rourke sounded like a pretty bad guy, but why did McGill hate him so much?
At his door, he slid his keycard into the lock, saw the expected green light and heard the click of the release of the door lock. He opened the door — the room was dark except for the light coming in through the sliding glass door. In the darkness he could see the shadowy silhouette of Beth sitting on the bed.
He closed the door behind him — locking the deadbolt.
“Alright, Are you naked?”
A man swiftly moved from the bathroom and placed the barrel of a silenced pistol next to Jake’s right temple.
With a heavy Irish accent he said, “Not a sound. I want you to know something about a man named Laurence O’Rourke.”
CHAPTER 18
The next morning, the Go Team assembled in the conference room shortly before seven a.m. Carol had prearranged breakfast for them. Six silver platters were brought in by the hotel servers.