Michael Russell - The City of Strangers

John Cavendish shook his head.

Zwillman picked up the photographs.

‘I’ve got some friends who’ll want a look at these too.’

Cavendish knew enough not to ask who Zwillman’s friends were.

‘What about these women?’ said the American.

It sounded like a change of subject, but it wasn’t.

‘It’s going ahead. It’ll be the night after Patrick’s Day.’

‘And will you get the information?’

‘She says the sister’s got it. She knows the key to the ciphers. She knows how they work. If I can get both of them across to Canada –’

‘So when does she deliver?’

‘When they’re on their way.’

‘I want to know what this is about,’ said Longie Zwillman. ‘So do you. I got someone inside the Bund. A good man. They trust him. But he doesn’t know nothing about this meeting with the IRA. Nobody does. That’s not how it is. They’re smart as hell when it comes to dressing up in brown shirts and Sieg-Heiling it all over New York, but their organisation stinks. It’s like a sieve. And you don’t seem to think the IRA’s far behind them –’

‘Some of the time,’ replied Captain Cavendish. ‘It depends –’

‘This has got a smell. That’s where it started. You smelt it and I smelt it. But that’s all we have, a shitty smell. They got it well hid. That means it’s got to be worth hiding. You need to open up those ciphers, Captain. This woman has to deliver the goods. If you can’t get it out of her somebody else is going to have to. No maybe. So how about you keep me posted, John?’

The half smile that was always on Zwillman’s lips was still there. His expression hadn’t changed at all. But John Cavendish was conscious that he was dealing with a man who was used to getting what he wanted and didn’t care what happened along the way. The American wasn’t a man to play games with. He had made a mistake telling him about Kate and Niamh at all. It had been necessary to give information to get information back.

It had never crossed his mind that he risked losing control. But the waters were getting deeper. Now he heard the quiet threat in Longie Zwillman’s voice.

It’s the sheer size of it I couldn’t believe. It’s higher than a house. It’s like a liner, sitting in the water, but it’s the wings and the engines that are so big when you climb up under them to get in. One minute you’re on the water, bumping a bit – bumping quite a lot in fact, and then you’re in the air. We were only over Ireland a few minutes, hardly at all, and then we were over the Atlantic. You look down and the sea just goes on and on forever.

The postcard Stefan Gillespie was writing to Tom was growing in length, and his writing was getting smaller and smaller to fit. He had bought the picture of the Boeing 314 Yankee Clipper at the terminal, but Tom wanted it to be written on the plane and sent from America with an American stamp. The card wouldn’t reach Baltinglass till he was back there himself, but it was crucial that it came in the post as far as his son was concerned; that had an authenticity that the picture alone couldn’t have.

Finishing the card Stefan gazed down at the Atlantic again, as he had been gazing on and off for an hour. At 20,000 feet the sky was clear; there was nothing below except the sea, grey and choppy and unchanging, mile after mile after mile, and the long journey was only beginning. But as Stefan gazed down, that unchanging swell had its own fascination. The flying boat felt smaller now, far smaller than it had tied up beside the pontoon on the Shannon.

The cabin of the Yankee Clipper was divided up into small seating areas, with bulkheads closing them off from one another. The seats were leather, still with the smell of newness about them. The floors were thickly carpeted. Halfway along the length of the main cabin there was a small dining room; two stewards, naval-officer navy now exchanged for gleaming white jackets, were setting the tables for the first sitting of dinner, with crisp linen and silverware. Another steward, passing Stefan’s seat with a bottle of champagne, stopped and topped up the glass at his elbow.

The journey that was all about bringing a man home to hang perhaps had become no less strange in all the self-conscious elegance of the Yankee Clipper. But it was still hard not to smile grimly at the prospect of the return, a pair of handcuffs linking him and his prisoner across the plush leather, and both of them with a glass of champagne in each free hand. Whatever crap Superintendent Gregory had given him the night before at the Four Courts Hotel, he had taken one piece of advice; on the way to Kingsbridge Station he had walked round to the Bridewell Garda station, behind the Four Courts, to get a pair of handcuffs.

The flying boat was by no means full. Most of the passengers were already on the plane when it touched down from Southampton, English and American; only three others had got on with him at Foynes. The service had been in operation for barely a month and many of the passengers were wealthy people flying for the experience rather than because they needed to get to America fast.

The smell of money filled the cabin of the flying boat as distinctively as the smell of new leather and the steaks sizzling in the galley at the back of the fuselage. Several passengers had eyed him curiously as they smiled and said hello, not because they knew who he was, but because they didn’t. There was an atmosphere on board the plane, amidst all the tasteful elegance; if you were on the flight you ought to be important enough to be recognisable; you did have some obligation to be somebody.

Across the aisle from Stefan, in the compartment just in front of the galley, a man in his late fifties or early sixties had been immersed in a pile of newspapers, English and Irish, between scribbling notes in a notebook. He had said hello to Stefan, and remarked on the weather, which was pretty good for the crossing to Newfoundland it seemed, and then he’d got on with what he was doing.

He was a thin man, with a thick sweep of grey, almost silver hair; he had the kind of intense, thoughtful face that always has a frown between the eyebrows, even when it’s smiling. From time to time he whistled tunelessly to himself, not loudly, but loudly enough for it to slightly grate on Stefan. The Yankee Clipper was surprisingly quiet, despite the insistent buzz of the four great engines hanging from the wings above them, endlessly turning the propellers. Then all of a sudden the man folded his pile of newspapers together and reached over to put them on the empty seat opposite him. He closed his notebook, put away his pen, and picked up his champagne. He turned towards Stefan Gillespie with a smile.

‘Sláinte!’

‘Sláinte mhaith,’ replied Stefan.

‘First time?’ asked the man.

‘The very first.’

‘Quite something,’ the man continued, glancing out at the sky.

Stefan nodded.

The man got up and walked across the aisle, stretching out his hand.

‘Dominic Carroll.’

They shook hands.

‘Stefan Gillespie.’

The stranger sat down in the seat opposite him. There was nothing particularly unusual about the way he delivered his name, but Stefan got the impression that he expected it to mean something. As he continued to smile at Stefan it was as if he was waiting for recognition of some kind to dawn. It didn’t, and Dominic Carroll’s smile became a grin for a moment, as if he was aware of his own ego, and could find the room to laugh at it sometimes.

‘Where are you from, Mr Gillespie?’

‘West Wicklow, Baltinglass.’

‘I don’t know it. I could place it probably. I’m just about from County Tyrone, Carrickfergus. We emigrated when I was four, so you see it is just about. I’m a New Yorker, heading home. And where you headed yourself?’