Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

“Kathleen O’Connor is your lost jewel, yes?”

“If you speak in terms of long-delayed vengeance,” Max said.

“Hard to get over kin betrayed and slain, is it? And ye’ve only had twenty years of it, lad.”

Max nodded, soberly. These men had truly had cause. Centuries of it, enough to no longer feel like men, but trapped, snarling animals. If he and Gandolph indeed found Kitty the Cutter’s last savagely patriotic stash, they’d send it to the widows and orphans of Ulster, both sides.

He glanced at Gandolph, knowing his unilateral resolve would be honored there.

“All right, then,” Liam said, hunkering down over his pint and lowering his voice. “You’ve proven your mettle to me. We asked around, as you wanted. We asked about Kathleen O’Connor. No man who saw her forgot her. Some didn’t wish to speak of her, defending her to this very day. Some spat at the mention of her name. One, only one woman who is our liaison to the charities knew of her.”

Max and Garry leaned in and strained their ears to hear Liam’s soft conspiratorial tone.

“She’s contributed to the charities within the past year.”

Max reared away, almost physically seared by the implications. “No. I saw her dead.”

“I don’t know what you saw, man, but she put forty thousand American dollars of bearer bonds into the widows’ and orphans’ coffers within the past three months.”

“How do you know it was she?” Gandolph asked, his grammar precise even during the stress of hard bargaining.

“Because Rose Murphy, one of our longest, loyalest supporters, said it came in from a name Kathleen used to use. From the U.S.”

“And what name was that?” Max asked.

“Rebecca.”

Max tensed again. He and Garry and Liam knew from the documents that was Kathleen O’Connor’s name in the Magdalen asylum.

“Just Rebecca?” Gandolph asked. “A lot of women bear that name. How can you be sure it was Kathleen, then?”

“Not just Rebecca. Rebecca Deever. That was the code name she used for all her U.S. activities after she left the homeland. Even I recognize it from ‘donations’ and weapons shipments before the bloody ‘peace accord.’ ’Twas from her, no doubt. Even I didn’t know about these last decade’s sendings. She went around me and my associates. Directly to the women. You see, it worked both ways, Max, you and Kathleen. We IRA men blamed her for inflaming you so much our bombers were tracked down by your vengeance.”

“Then she did know O’Toole’s was scheduled to be hit while Sean was there?”

Liam shrugged. “Should have. You understand, man, we were as mad at you for bein’ with her at the time as you became angry with yourself. We never understood why she spent her time and self with you.”

“Causing heartache and guilt and murderous jealousy,” Max said. “That was the only real ‘cause’ that drove her, setting men against one another over her and enjoying the mayhem. She was avenging herself on the entire male sex, and Irishmen particularly.”

“For the years at the Magdalen asylum,” Finn suggested.

“And,” Max reminded them, “for that recorded teenage pregnancy and the baby taken away, never to be found.”

Liam nodded, eyeing his fellows. “We played into her hands as well, then.”

“So does it matter, then, whether the money is from her or her ghost?” Max asked. “Isn’t that where you intend any money Kathleen raised in the States to go? To your widows and orphans?” He kept his voice disingenuous yet silken.

“Mostly,” Liam whispered back, “but we do have our own priorities, even now. Remember. You’ve promised to help find her stash of cash. Even if she’s not still alive, there’s a backup pile of it, and we deserve every bit of it.”

“You certainly do,” Gandolph said abruptly, with Oliver Hardy emphasis. Max marveled that his own mind could remember eighty-year-old Laurel and Hardy comedy routines, but not the tragedies of his recent life.

Gandolph put down his pint glass and sat back. “A fair bargain. We want her; you want her amassed foreign treasure. We still both need each other, but mostly we—Michael and I—need to get back to the States to hunt her and the guns and roses and money she promised you.”

At Gandolph’s prodding, Max rose.

He felt like a walking zombie. Nothing settled. He’d been prepared to bury Kathleen O’Connor as an old enemy dead and gone for both their benefits. Now he had to deal with her resurrected and still poisonous? Did forgiveness go that far? Recovering terrorism money for shaky, defanged terrorists? What was Gandolph thinking?

Probably way ahead of him and his on-off memory.

Max swaggered to the pub door, because it was either that or limp. Gandolph was right behind him.

Then the door crashed inward with a crowd of dark-coated men behind it … five, by an instant count: the two ex-IRA men they’d met with and three more of that ilk.

He and Gandolph had led them here, for sure.

“Out of the way,” Gandolph shouted, pushing Max into the wall and then through the open door behind the incoming newcomers. The room behind them exploded with Irish curses and splintering wood and glass as the two gangs met full force.

Max was out in the misty night, scrambling over the slippery-damp cobblestones, his hand rushing Gandolph along with him to the sanctuary of their car.

He grappled the keys from his pants pocket as he ran and used the unlocking device to open the doors from twenty feet away. The customary beep sounded like a siren in the echoing, hard empty streets of Belfast.

He shoved Gandolph around the Mondeo’s rear and into the passenger side. The older man clutched his computer and briefcase to his chest as Max leaped around the car’s front, then slammed himself into the driver’s seat, gunning the engine and careening down the left side of the narrow way. No headlights, no seat belts, no time.

The wheels screamed around a corner, into the so-far-deserted dark.

They heard muffled voices bursting out into the night and the choked sound of at least two cars or vans hastily starting behind them.

“Damn!” Max’s fist pounded the steering wheel.

“Damn for the interruption or because Kathleen may still be alive?” Gandolph grunted, with frequent interruptions, wrestling to buckle his seat belt while keeping hold of his precious computer and briefcase.

“Damn everything,” Max muttered, watching his side and rearview mirrors. “There they are,” he exclaimed, as the inside of the car was washed with a streak of headlights from the rear.

“I can get up a street map of this section,” Garry huffed, opening the laptop and making keys cluck like chickens.

“I haven’t time to crane my neck and eyes at small-screen maps,” Max said in frustration.

A screech of corner-turning wheels at an upcoming deserted cross street made him suddenly veer into the right lane … the wrong lane for this city.

Behind the Mondeo, a black Morris Mini crammed with men streaked forward fast … and toward the front fender of a crossing Ford Focus. Max squinted into the rearview mirror, watching both cars swerve away from a collision. He lurched the Mondeo into the proper left lane as a pair of high, bright headlights riding behind a sustained horn was about to smash into them head-on.

“Oh, my God, Max!” Garry averted his face. “I’ll expire from cardiac arrest.”

“They had the near miss, not us,” was Max’s reply. “Why did the ex-IRA raid the alternate IRA, and why they are now both after us?”

“Money. Kathleen was a master moneymaker, and both sides see no reason to let any hidden funds go to the other, or to foreign pilgrims like us seeking something as intangible as closure.”