Cathedral (12 page)

Dan Morgan looked at her. "Even if he could hear you, there's not a thing he ran do now."

The telephone rang, and Morgan answered it. He listened. "Yes, as ready as I'll ever be." He hung up, then

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looked at his watch and began counting off sixty seconds as he walked into the bedroom.

Terri O'Neal looked up from the television and watched him. "Is this it?"

He glanced at the parade passing by on the screen, then at her. "Yes. And God help us if we've misjudged.

"God help you, anyway."

Morgan went into the bedroom, opened the side panel of the bay window, and waved a green shamrock flag.

105

Brendan O'Connor stood with the crowd on Fifth Avenue. He looked up and saw the shamrock flag waving from the window on Sixty-fourth Street. He took a deep breath and moved behind the reviewing stands where pedestrian traffic was allowed to pass under the scrutiny of patrolmen. He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke blow southward, over his shoulder.

O'Connor reached his right hand into the pocket of his overcoat, slid the elastic off the handle of a grenade that had the pin removed, and held the handle down with his thumb. As he moved through the closely pressed crowd he pushed the grenade through a slit in his pocket and let it fall to the sidewalk. He felt the detonator handle hit his ankle as it flew off. He repeated the procedure with a grenade in his left pocket, pushing quickly through the tight crowd as it fell.

Both seven-second fuses popped in sequence. The first grenade, a CS gas canister, hissed quietly. The second grenade, a smoke signaling device, billowed huge green clouds that floated south into the stands. Brendan O'Connor kept walking. Behind him he could hear the sounds of surprise as the CS gas rose to face level, followed by the sounds of fear and panic as the smoke and choking gas swept over the crowd on the sidewalk and up to the reviewing stands. O'Connor released four more canisters through his pockets, then walked through an opening in the stone wall and disappeared into the park.

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Patrick Burke vaulted the low stone wall of Central Park and barreled into the crowd on the sidewalk near the reviewing stands. Billowing green smoke rolled over the stands toward him, and even before it reached him his eyes began to tear. "Shit." He put a handkerchief to his face and ran into the Avenue, but panic had seized the marchers, and Burke was caught in the middle of the confusion. The banner of the unit had fallen to the pavement, and Burke glimpsed it under the feet of the running menBELFAST

IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY VETERANS. As he fought his way across the Avenue, Burke could see that their ranks were laced with agitators and professional shriekers, as he called them. Well planned, he thought. Well executed.

James Sweeney put his back to the streetlight pole at Sixty-fourth Street and held his ground against the press of people around him. His hand.s reached through the pockets of his long trench coat and grabbed a long-handled bolt cutter hanging from his belt. He let the skirts of his coat fall over the cable connections from the mobile headquarters van as he clipped the telephone lines and then the electric power lines at the base of the pole.

Sweeney took three steps into the shoving crowd and let the bolt cutter slide into the storm drain at the curb. He allowed himself to be carried along with the flow of the moving mass of marchers and spectators up Sixty-fourth Street, away from the Avenue and the choking gas.

Inside the mobile headquarters van the telephone operators heard an odd noise, and the four telephones went dead. All the lights in the van went out a second later. One of the operators looked up at George Byrd silhouetted against a small side window. "Phones out!"

Byrd pressed his face to the small window and looked down at the base of the streetlight. "Oh Christ! Sons of bitches." He turned back and grabbed at a radio as the van driver started the engine and switched to internal power. Byrd transmitted: "All stations! Mobile at Sixty-fourth.

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Power line cut. We're operating radios on generator. Telephone lines cut.

Situation unclear-"

Burke burst through the door and grabbed the radiophone from Byrd's hand.

"Mobile at Fifty-first-do you read?"

The second mobile van beside the Cathedral answered. "Roger. All quiet here. Mounted and scooter units headed your way-"

"No! Listen---"

As the nineteen bronze bells in the north spire of St. Patrick's Cathedral chimed five o'clock, the timer on the box resting on the crossbeam above the bells completed the electrical circuit. The box, a broad-band transmitter, began sending out static over the entire spectrum of the radio band. From its transmitting point, high above the street, the transmitter jammed all two-way radios in the midtown area.

A high, piercing sound filled Burke's earphone. "Mobile at Fifty-first-do you read? Action will take place at Cathedral. . . ." The sound grew louder and settled into a pattern of continuous high-pitched static.

"Mobile at Fiftyfirst . . ." He let the radiophone fall from his hand and turned to Byrd. "Jammed."

"I hear it-shitl" Byrd grabbed at the radio and switched to alternate command channels, but they were all filled with static. "Bastardsl"

Burke grabbed his arm. 'Usten, get some men to the public telephones.

Call Police Plaza and the rectory. Have them try to get a message to the police around the Cathedral. The mobile van there may still have telephone communication."

"I doubt it."

"Tell them-"

"I know, I know. I heard you." Byrd sent four men out of the van. He looked out the side window at the crowd streaming by and watched his men pushing through it. He turned around to speak to Burke, but he was gone.

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On the steps of the Cathedral, Maureen watched the plainclothesman standing in front of her trying to get his hand radio to work. Several policemen were running around, passing on messages and receiving orders, and she could tell by their manner that there was some confusion among them. Police were moving in and out of the van on the corner to her right. She noticed the spectators on the sidewalks; they seemed to have received some message that those on the steps had not. There was a murmur running through the crowd, and heads craned north, up the Avenue, as though the message had come from that direction as in a child's game of Pass-It-On. She looked north but could see nothing unusual except the unsettled crowd. Then she noticed that the pace of the marchers had slowed. She turned to Harold Baxter and said quietly, "Something is wrong."

The bells struck the last of the five chimes, then began their traditional five o'clock hymns with "Autumn."

Baxter nodded. "Keep alert."

The County Cork unit passed slowly in front of the Cathedral, and behind them the County Mayo unit marked time as the parade became inexplicably stalled. Parade marshals and formation marshals spoke to policemen.

Maureen noticed that the Cardinal looked annoyed but not visibly concerned about the rising swell of commotion around him.

Office workers and store clerks began streaming out of the lobbies of Rockefeller Center, the Olympic Tower, and the surrounding skyscrapers onto the already crowded sidewalks. They jostled to get away from the area, or to get a better view of the parade.

Suddenly there was a loud cry from the crowd. Maureen turned to her left.

From the front doors of Saks Fifth Avenue burst a dozen men dressed in black suits and derbies. They wore white gloves and bright orange sashes across their chests, and most of them carried walking sticks. They pushed aside a police barricade and unfurled a long banner 109

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that read: GOD SAVE THE QUEEN. ULSTER WILL BE BRITISH FOREVER.

Maureen's pulse quickened, and her mind flashed back to Ulster, to the long summer marching season when the Orangemen paraded through the cities and villages, proclaiming their loyalty to God and Queen and their hate of their Catholic neighbors.

The crowd began to howl and hiss. An old IRA veteran fortified with spirits crashed through the police barrier and ran into the street, racing at the Orangernen, screaming as he ran, "Fucking bloody murdering bastardsl I'll kill you!"

A half dozen of the Orangemen hoisted bullhorns; and broke into song:

"A rope, a rope, to hang the Popel

A pennyworth o' cheese to choke himl

A pint o' lamp oil to wrench it down,

And a big hot fire to roast himl"

Several of the enraged crowd broke from the sidewalks and ran into the street, spurred on by a few men who seemed to have materialized suddenly as their leaders. This vanguard was soon joined by streams of men, women, and teen-agers as the barriers began falling up and down the Avenue.

The few mounted police who had not headed to the reviewing stands formed a protective phalanx around the Oraniemen, and a paddy wagon escorted by patrol cars began moving up Fiftieth Street to rescue the Orangemen from the crowd that had suddenly turned into a mob. 'Me police swung clubs to keep the surging mob away from the still singing Orangemen. All the techniques of crowd control, learned in the Police Academy and learned on the streets, were employed in an effort to save the dozen Orangemen from being lynched, and the Orangemen themselves seemed finally to recognize their perilous position as hundreds of people ran out of control. They laid down their bullhorns and banner and joined the police in fighting their way to the safety of the approaching paddy wagon.

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Patrick Burke ran south on Fifth Avenue, weaving in and out of the spectators and marchers who filled the street. He drew up in front of a parked patrol car, out of breath, and held up his badge. "Can you call mobile at the Cathedral?"

The patrolman shook his head and pointed to the staticfilled radio.

"Take me to the Cathedral. Quick!" He grabbed the rear-door handle.

The uniformed sergeant sitting beside the driver called out. "No way! We can't move through this mob. If we hit someone, they'll tear us apart."

"Shit." Burke slammed the door and recrossed the Avenue. He vaulted the wall into Central Park and ran south along a path paralleling the Avenue.

He came out of the park at Grand Army Plaza and began moving south through the increasingly disorderly mob. He knew it could take him half an hour to move the remaining nine blocks to the Cathedral, and he knew that the parallel avenues were probably not much better, even if he could get to them through a side street. He was not going to make it.

Suddenly a black horse appeared in front of him. A young policewoman, with blond hair tucked under her helmet, was sitting impassively atop the horse. He pushed alongside the woman and showed his badge. "Burke, Intelligence Division. I have to get to the Cathedral. Can you push this nag through this mob with me on the back?"

She regarded Burke, taking in his disheveled appearance. "This is not a nag, Lieutenant, but if you're in so much of a hurry, jump on." She reached down. Burke took her hand, put his foot in the stirrup, and swung heavily onto the rear of the horse.

The policewoman spurred the horse forward. "Giddyapl Come on, Commissionerl"

"I'm only a lieutenant."

The policewoman glanced over her shoulder as the horse began to move forward. "That's the horse's name,Commissioner."

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"Oh. What's your ... T'

"Police Officer Foster ... Betty."

"Nice. Good names. Let's move it."

The trained police horse and the rider were in their element, darting, weaving, cutting into every brief opening, and scattering knots of people in their path without seriously injuring anyone.

Burke held tightly to the woman's waist. He looked up and saw that they were approaching the intersection at Fifty-seventh Street. He shouted into her ear, "You -dance good, Betty. Come here often?"

The policewoman turned her head and looked at him. "This run had damned well better be important, Lieutenant."

"It's the most important horse ride since Paul Revere's."

Major Bartholomew Martin stood at the window of a small room on the tenth floor of the British Empire Building in Rockefeller Center. He watched the riot that swirled around the Cathedral, then turned to the man standing beside him. "Well, Kruger, it appears that the Fenians have arrived."

The other man, an American, said, "Yes, for better or for worse." He paused, then asked, "Did you know this was going to happen?"

"Not exactly. Brian Flynn does not confide in me. I gave him some ideas, some options. His only prohibition was not to attack British property or personnel-like blowing up this building, for instance. But you never quite know with these people." Major Martin stared off into space for a few seconds, then spoke in a faraway voice. "You know, Kruger, when I finally caught up with the bastard in Belfast last winter, he was a beaten manphysically as well as mentally. All he wanted was for me to kill him quickly. And I wanted very much to accommodate him, I assure you, but then I thought better of it. I turned him around, as we say, then pointed him at America and set him loose. A dangerous business, I know, like grabbing that tiger by the tail. But it's paid off, I think."

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Kruger stared at him for a long time, then said, "I hope we've calculated American public reaction correctly."

Martin smiled as he took some brandy from a flask. "If the American public was ambivalent about the Irish problem yesterday, they are not so ambivalent today." He looked at Kruger. "I'm sure this will help your service a bit."

Kruger replied, "And if itdoesn't help, then you owe us a favor. In fact, I wanted to speak to you about something we have planned in Hong Kong."

"Ah, intrigue. Yes, yes, I want to hear all about it. But later. Enjoy the parade." He opened the window, and the sound of crashing windows, police sirens, and thousands of people filled the small room. "Erin go bragh, as they say."