“You’re wrong. I may be an American but I do understand. I understand that you’re a traitor to your own country, to your own people.” Jake pointed to Nasiri. “And now you’re helping terrorists. You are nothing more than an assassin who would kill his own mother for money. You can’t expect to get away with this. You can’t expect that no one will come after you.”
“No one come after me, are you joking? Pay attention. Everyone is already trying to kill me because I know too much or,” O’Rourke waved his gun over the cache, “they want this. Some want to use it, others want to destroy it and pretend it never existed. Either way I can never live in peace again without always looking over my shoulder wondering is today the day somebody gets lucky? Is today the day I die?”
Farid Nasiri walked up and stood next to O’Rourke. O’Rourke waved his gun and said, “But you’re right about one thing. This is only about money now. And he has a lot of it — which is going to be mine soon.”
Jake felt the rage building inside him. “You better be looking over your shoulder. You shot Beth. I left her in Savannah, struggling for her life.”
“An unfortunate accident, I assure you.” O’Rourke alternated pointing his gun at Jake and then Kaplan. “I was aiming for your smart-ass friend here.”
“You asshole, that unfortunate accident will cost you your life—”
“Except that I’m holding the gun on you,” O’Rourke panned the gun back and forth. He looked at Kaplan. “What is your name anyway?”
“Kaplan.”
“And why are you here, Mr. Kaplan?”
“To keep Jake company. Why else? He gets lonely when he travels alone.”
“Shut up. I’m growing tired of your humor.”
“Who are these Americans?” Nasiri asked. “Kill them and let’s get on with our business.” Nasiri spat at Kaplan’s feet.
Kaplan stared at the overweight man. The Persian stepped back.
“Not yet. They’re no threat to us now. They’re not armed and we are. Mr. Pendleton doesn’t understand how brilliant I am. This has taken many years of careful planning. I’m sure you were briefed that I served as Quartermaster General for the IRA for quite a few years.”
Jake’s reply was an icy stare.
O’Rourke smiled. “I acquired weapons for the IRA all over the countryside. I even had three stockpiles in Britain. It was safer than trying to transport them. It made strikes against the British on British soil so much easier—”
Kaplan said, “Why weren’t all the weapons caches surrendered or even reported?”
“As you Americans like to put it, backup. I…we needed a backup plan in case the cease-fires and the peace agreements fell through. If the IRA surrendered all their weapons and the agreements were broken, we would be defenseless and subject to a slaughter.”
“You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth,” Jake argued. “You said the IRA needed a backup plan but you are a British spy, spying on the same people you are now talking about protecting. You truly have no allegiance, do you?”
“I never wanted to be in the IRA. In my late teens, I wanted peace. I thought the Troubles were nothing more than the senseless slaughtering of our people by our own people, a wasteful civil war, as it were. Peer pressure forced me to try to join the IRA. My first mission backfired and I was arrested.
“That’s when I was approached by an SIS handler. While I was in prison, he convinced me that the way to peace was for the IRA to be crippled internally. That the piecemeal army would fold up and just die out. So I went along and infiltrated the IRA. Later, I actually started getting sympathetic to the IRA cause and even sabotaged some of my handler’s plans.”
Kaplan was silent and his stance looked casual, but Jake could tell by his eyes he was looking for an opportunity. Jake nodded to encourage him to keep talking. Come on, come on, Isabella, his mind screamed. You show up before he blows my brains out, I’ll be your friend for life.
"Finally, my last assignment was to infiltrate Sinn Fein. The British government hates Mairéad Brady and views Sinn Fein as just a puppet of the IRA. They want her out of the picture. She is viewed as nothing more than a terrorist herself, running a terrorist organization," said O’Rourke.
“Once inside, I was supposed to leak information back to my handler that would permanently discredit Sinn Fein and remove Brady from authority or, better yet, find something that would send her to prison. But, sadly, there is nothing.”
Jake interrupted, “That’s a nice history lesson but that doesn’t explain all this. Why keep all this?”
“I already told you, you’re American, you won’t understand. I am a man with no place to go. The IRA, what’s left of them, wanted me dead because I was a spy for the British and they hold me responsible for the deaths of my fellow IRA members. Sinn Fein wants me dead for the same reason. The only difference is the IRA wants this stockpile location so they have access to arms again.”
“What do you mean, access to arms again? There are several other weapons storage facilities, your ‘unofficial’ ones.”
O’Rourke glanced at the file cabinets. The top drawer still open. “I see you’ve done some reading since you got here, so you probably also realize that the other sites are miniscule compared to this one. Sinn Fein wants this stockpile destroyed so they can disavow its existence and the IRA will have lived up to their full disarmament. And, of course, I won’t be around to say otherwise. The British government wants me dead because I can publicly implicate them in the sanctioning of the murders of several Brits.”
O’Rourke stopped, and then took a few deep breaths.
“First and foremost, Mr. Pendleton, I’m an Irish Catholic. I have arranged a deal with the Provisional IRA for protection in exchange for the evidence I have accumulated against Sinn Fein and the British government. That is to include the factual documentation, which I have in my possession, that, despite both parties’ denials, Sinn Fein and the Ulster Defense Association were negotiating behind the scenes on deals that included the deaths of certain, shall we say, notorious figures from each side of the table.
“Besides, the UDA didn’t give up any weapons, only made the false claim to disarm after the IRA disarmed. So now the IRA has disarmed but not UDA … Something doesn’t seem quite right now, does it, Mr. Pendleton?”
“And you’re just going to sell all these weapons to Al Qaeda so they can kill innocent men, women and children all over the world?”
“Quite frankly, I don’t care what Nasiri does with all this. I say good riddance. I’ll be a rich man living a life in seclusion.”
From behind O’Rourke came the sweetest words Jake had ever heard. “Not if I have anything to say about it, O’Rourke. Now, drop the gun.”
CHAPTER 72
He heard the voices in front of him but stayed concealed in the darkness of the tunnel while he assessed his next move. He watched from behind as the woman held the gun on O’Rourke. He heard the man’s voice but didn’t have a clear view of him.
Collins had followed the woman through the tunnel, crouching because of the low overhead clearance. The tunnel had continued for about a quarter of a mile before emptying into the large chamber room filled with crates. The room was very large, lit only by five or six dozen low-wattage bare bulbs hanging from the stone ceiling.
His vantage point wasn’t clear. Somewhere in the maze of crates, he knew O’Rourke stood, with the woman’s gun aimed at him. But who had O’Rourke been talking to before she arrived, and where was that person standing? Who else was in the chamber with them?