James Benn - Evil for evil

"They left it empty outside of Omeath, so it probably came through here."

"Why do you say that?" asked Kieran.

"Aye, why wouldn't they take the ferry, coming from Newcastle direction?" John added. They both looked at me as if I were daft.

"The ferry?"

"Aye," said John. "Look here, on your map. There's a ferry that runs from Warrenpoint to Omeath, direct across the lough. There'd be no need to make a big loop all around Newry."

He was right. It would shorten the trip and keep them out of a big city, where the RUC was more likely to have heard about the theft.

"The ferry has to be guarded as well, right?"

"Aye, same as here. Customs on our side, Garda on theirs. What was in the truck anyway?"

"Fifty automatic weapons."

Kieran whistled.

"I don't think our customs lads would miss that. Or the Garda. If that truck went over on the ferry or down our road, it was empty," John said with certainty.

"Then where are the guns?" I asked, not expecting an answer.

"Well, I'd say somewhere between where they were taken and the ferry," Kieran said, rubbing his chin for all he was worth. "Wouldn't you, John?"

"Unless the driver knew of an unguarded crossing to our west, down Crossmaglen way. Or the weapons might have been transferred to pack animals and brought over."

"Fifty Browning Automatic Rifles and over two hundred thousand rounds of ammunition," I said. "That would require a sizable herd."

"Aye, I'm not saying it's likely now. Odd though," John said. "Why would they send an empty stolen truck across the border?"

"Not on a whim," I said. "For a purpose."

"Still," Kieran said, "it could be done. Drive the truck to a farm, transfer the guns and all to a tractor maybe. Then across the fields to another farm in the Republic and onto another truck. Or else buried all nice and tidy."

"Not that you would know of such things," John said.

"There was a time I did," Kieran said. "But I'll speak no more of those days. All the best, Yank." With a wave of the hand, he left us.

"Sounds like he knows a few secrets," I said.

"My father-he was in the RUC too-says Kieran was one of the local IRA boys, and that he was sure they traded shots during the war. A decent man, though, law-abiding once the fight was over."

"Except for the butter."

"Well, there's laws and then there's plain common sense, now isn't there?"

"You'd get no argument from me or my father either."

"Are you a policeman in America?"

"Yes. Family business for me, too."

"So you know how it is then. Sometimes you save a lot of trouble by looking the other way, when the only law that's broken is one preventing a man from putting food on his family's table."

"Must help keep the peace to think that."

"It's like letting pressure off a steam valve," John said. "Keep things all bottled up and sooner or later it will blow up in your face. If I let the boys run around the hills and get themselves all tuckered out bringing butter and sugar home to the missus, then they don't have time for other mischief."

"Too bad you don't work up near Ballykinler. Too damn much mischief up there."

He gave me directions to Newry, told me to follow the Newry Canal south, and keep on the road to Warrenpoint, where the ferry docked along Carlingford Lough. As I drove out of town on a narrow country road I thought about John's theory of law enforcement. It sounded smart, especially along the border where the population was more heavily Catholic, and the IRA could slip across and back with ease. How many men would it take to haul all those arms and all that ammo on their backs or slung over ponies? A lot, especially since there had been no trace of the crates found. Boxes of ammunition and crates of BARs were heavy, and a big group of men and animals were bound to attract attention. Maybe at the ferry, someone would remember something. Maybe.

I FOLLOWED THE canal, and as it widened into Carlingford Lough, I was looking a few hundred yards into the Republic of Ireland. Free of the British, land of my ancestors, brought forth in blood. I felt my heart should stir, that I might see ghosts of the martyrs floating above the sacred ground of free Eire. But I didn't. Instead, I felt cold and tired, the fairy tales of my youth dispelled forever. I remembered the day I'd decided there were no leprechauns. I'd long before figured out Santa Claus but made believe I hadn't so I wouldn't tip off my kid brother. But leprechauns had remained real and vivid in my imagination, the distance only increasing the mystery of their hidden world, until that day when my childish imagination gave way to hard logic. The same thing was happening now with those other fairy tales, the Robin Hood stories of dashing IRA boys outwitting the clumsy and heavy-handed Brits by night. I'd discovered that they didn't always fool the English, and if they were caught, the consequences were terrible. And when they did elude the enemy, their antagonisms festered, and one day a little girl would see her father gunned down, or a bomb would explode in a movie house, killing and maiming happy couples. Because a man turned in on himself, nursing secret hates on the mother's milk of religion and revenge. Maybe women too. Slaine O'Brien had to have her reasons for wearing the uniform of the British Empire at the Irish Desk of MI-5.

I felt guilty, wishing God hadn't given me the sense to see two sides of a thing. It had been so easy before, daydreaming of my return to Ireland, to wreak the vengeance Granddad Liam had ordained. I was certain he had every right to do so. But did he have the right to hand it down? Would I?

I shook off those thoughts, as certain of damnation for thinking them as I was for having impure notions in church. Which, now that I thought about it, I'd often been unable to stop for a minute when I was younger, no matter how hard I had tried to conjure up visions of red pitchforks and rivers of molten lava. Maybe merely thinking wasn't really a sin. If it was, it pretty much didn't matter by this point.

The road along the river curved to reveal Warrenpoint, a cluster of buildings around a single church steeple huddled along the waterfront. The setting sun lit the gray, heavy clouds drifting across the darkening blue sky, the last, sideways light of the day reflecting off the white buildings' gables and turrets. Fields and hills rose emerald green beyond, ascending slowly up the distant Mountains of Mourne. It took away my breath-the beauty of the land, the sun-washed cluster of homes and shops, the ebbing tide- like something I'd known all my life but never opened my eyes to. Brits and borders be damned. I had come home, home to Ireland.

I drove slowly, not wanting to miss a thing. A few pedestrians walked along a promenade, and the occasional automobile drove by in the other lane. It was quiet, the lazy kind of quiet that comes at low tide when the day's work is done and the boats are all tied up, waiting for the next tide to lift them. Small sailboats and fishing boats were moored along the quay, and ahead I saw a boat launch, a concrete roadway leading into the muck and rocks where the water had receded. A flat-bottomed boat, big enough for a large truck, sat at the end, tied to a mooring and canted at an odd angle, waiting for the tide to set her straight.

I parked the jeep next to McCabe's Market, where two Union Jacks fluttered defiantly in the quickening breeze. Mr. McCabe was evidently a proud Unionist, defining his territory at this outpost of the Ulster border. I walked across the street to the broad sidewalk that paralleled the quay. A couple of kids played along the water's edge, squawking each time their feet slid on a slippery stone and dipped into the cold water. A few people strolled by, in no great hurry. The view across the lough to Omeath was stunning, and even at low tide the water glistened with colors, greens from the fields and blue from the sky rippling across waves and currents. It was beautiful all right but I wasn't here for the view. I watched the ferry for a minute, saw no movement, and headed back to the jeep, thinking I should look for the local RUC station.