Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Kilmara raised
his eyebrows and then shook his head ruefully.
He looked at his friend in silence for a short while before
speaking.
"So what's troubling you?
The Hangman's dead.
Isn't it over?"
Fitzduane
looked at Kilmara suspiciously.
"Why shouldn't it be over?
The Chief Kripo says it's over.
He even paid for my going-away party — and drove me to the airport.
He thinks
He'll have a seizure if I go back."
Kilmara
laughed,
then
he turned serious again.
"Hugo, I've known you for twenty
years.
You've got instincts I have
learned to listen to — and good judgment.
So what's bugging you?"
Fitzduane
sighed.
"I'm not sure it's over,
but I really can't tell you why, and I'm not sure I want to know.
I'm so bloody tired.
I had a bellyful of trouble in
I just want to go home now, put my feet up,
twiddle my thumbs, and figure out what to do with the rest of my life.
I'm not going to photograph any more wars.
I'm too old to get shot at and too young to
die — and I don't need the money."
"What
about Etan?" said
Kilmara.
"Does she come into the equation?
You know she hauled me out to lunch a couple
of times when you were away.
I have the
feeling I'm supposed to act as some sort of middleman.
I wish you two would talk to each other
directly.
This habit of not
communicating when you're away on an assignment is cuckoo."
"There
was a reason for it," said Fitzduane.
"The idea was for both of us to keep a sense of perspective, not to
let things get out of hand."
"As I
said," said Kilmara, "cuckoo.
Here you are, crazy about each
other,
and you
don't communicate for months.
Even the
Romans used to send stone tablets to each other, and now we have something
called a telephone."
He shook his
head and relit his pipe.
"But why
do you think it may not be over?" he said.
"Are you suggesting the Hangman didn't die in that fire?"
Fitzduane took
his time answering.
"The Hangman's
whole pattern is one of deception," he said eventually.
"And I would feel a whole lot happier if
we had had a body to identify.
Dental
records can be switched.
On the other
hand I was there, and I don't see how he could have escaped.
He certainly couldn't have lived through a
fire of that intensity.
So the guy must
be dead, and I'm not going to spend my hard-earned rest in
Almost anything
might
happen.
My concern is with what probably
will
happen."
"The
evidence suggests that the Hangman is dead," said Kilmara, "but that is
no guarantee his various little units will vanish or take up knitting.
Remember, he operated through a series of
virtually autonomous groups, and it's likely that new leaders were waiting in
the wings.
Another thought that nags
away concerns Rudi von Graffenlaub's hanging and the other peculiar happenings
on your island.
There are a lot of rich
kids there, and the Hangman never seems to do anything without a reason.
He has a track record of kidnapping.
Were Rudi and his oddly dressed friends being
psyched up to provide some inside support for a kidnapping, maybe of the whole
school?
The place is isolated, and the
parents are richer than you and I can imagine."
"Geraniums,"
said Fitzduane sleepily.
"What?"
said
Kilmara.
"Geraniums
keep popping up," said Fitzduane, "on the tattoos and in Ivo's notes,
and the word was actually written down in Erika's apartment —but I'm fucked if
I know what it means."
Kilmara
drained his brandy and wondered if there was any point in talking to Fitzduane
when he was this tired.
He decided he'd
better make the effort since time seemed to be a commodity in distinctly short
supply.
"Leaving
flowers out of the equation," he said dryly, "I've got some other
problems worth mentioning."
He
refilled Fitzduane's glass.
The effort of
holding his glass steady forced Fitzduane to pay reasonable attention.
He was almost awake.
"And you're going to tell me about
them," he said helpfully.
"My
friend the prime minister," said
Kilmara,
"is fucking us around."
"Have you
ever considered another line of work?
I
fail to see the attraction in working for a bent machine politician like our
Taoiseach.
Delaney is a prick — a bent
prick — and he isn't going to get any better."
"Kilmara
privately agreed with Fitzduane's comment but ignored the interruption.
"A good friend of ours in the Mossad —
and they're not all such good friends — has told me of a Libya-based hit team,
some seventy plus strong, that has unfriendly intentions toward an objective in
this country."
"The PLO
coming here?" said Fitzduane.
"Why?
Unless they've been
out in the sun too long and want a real rain-drenched holiday to relax in.
What has the PLO to do with
"I didn't
say PLO," said Kilmara.
"There
are
PLO in the group but as mercenaries, and the
objective, if you can believe what the Israelis found on a rather abortive
preventive raid, is the U.S. Embassy in
The timing is put at some time in May."
"How
would seventy armed terrorists get into the country," said Fitzduane,
"and what has an attack on the U.S. Embassy got to do with me?
The embassy is in
I'm going to be as far away as one could possibly be without falling
into the
I'm going to be sleeping twelve hours a day
and talking to the sea gulls and meditating on higher things and drinking
poteen and generally staying as much out of trouble as a human being possibly
can."
"Stay
with me," said Kilmara, "and I guarantee to get your full
attention.
We've kicked this thing
around since our Mossad friend visited and we hear the news about the Hangman's
death — and our conclusions will not make your day.
We think
this U.S. Embassy
thing smacks
of the Hangman's game playing, or that of his heirs and
successors.
It's probably a diversion,
and heaven only knows where the real target is.
Possibly it won't be in
It could be anywhere, including
back in the
Unfortunately, suspecting it's a diversion
doesn't help.
The Rangers have been
ordered to keep the place secure until the flap is over.
That means my ability to deal with any other
threat is drastically curtailed.
I don't
have the manpower to mount a static defense and also maintain strength for
other operations."
"I
thought the idea was that the Rangers were only to be used as a reaction force,
along with certain limited security duties."
"It was
and it is — normally," said Kilmara, his voice expressing his frustration,
"but I was outvoted on this one.
special relationship with Uncle Sam, and my friend the Taoiseach played it
perfectly and boxed us in.
The Rangers
are a disciplined force, and there are times you just can't buck the
system."
"So where
is all this getting us?"
Kilmara
shrugged.
"You've got good
instincts.
If you think the Hangman is
out of the picture, I'm tempted to go along with you, but when you're this
tired — who the fuck knows?
Anyway, it's
my business to cover the down side."
Fitzduane
yawned.
The clock struck two in the
morning.
He was so spaced he was
floating.
It was not time to argue.
"What do you want me to do?"
"I've got
a radio and other equipment here for you," said Kilmara.
"All I want you to do is
proceed
as normal but with your eyes and ears open.
If you detect anything untoward, give me a
call — and we'll come running."
"If you're so committed elsewhere, how and with what?"
"I'll
think of something," said Kilmara.
"It'll probably never happen, but if it does, red tape isn't going
to stop me."
But Fitzduane
was asleep again.
Outside, the storm was
abating.
*
*
*
*
*
Ambassador
Noble felt like a child playing truant as he idled around the hills and lakes
of
It was the first vacation in years in which
his pleasure hadn't been diluted with some element of State Department
business, and he positively luxuriated in the freedom of traveling without
bodyguards.
the North — and even they were exaggerated and rarely involved foreigners — but
the bulk of the island was about as peaceful as could be, he had been assured.
The greatest
potential threats to his life were more likely to result form Irish driving
habits, an excess of Irish hospitality, and the weather.
He would be well advised, he was told, to
dress warmly and bring an umbrella.
If
he planned to fish, he should hire a gillie.
He calculated
afterward that his briefing had enhanced the federal deficit by a couple of
thousand dollars.
He did remember to
bring an umbrella.
He was managing fine
without thermal underwear.
He decided
the gillie could wait until he arrived at Fitzduane's
He was looking forward to
seeing his son and hearing how he was getting on at Draker.
Meanwhile, he
was having a ball doing almost nothing at all.
No diplomats, no crisis meetings, no telexes, no press.
No official dinners or receptions either, he
thought as he ate his baked beans out of the can with a spoon and waited for
the kettle to boil.
And
positively no worries about terrorism.
He had left them at the office the way all those books on how to succeed
said you should.
He looked up
at the leaden sky and listened to the rain bounce off his fishing umbrella and
thought:
Life is bliss.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane
slept in and enjoyed a leisurely midafternoon breakfast.
The storm had done its worst, but the rain
continued as if determined to leave him in no doubt whatsoever that he was back
in
Kilmara had
gone hours before but had left behind a note detailing that day's security
procedure.
Getting in and out of
Kilmara's home without setting off some part of the labyrinth of alarm systems
was no easy task, and codes were changed at least daily at irregular
times.
Fitzduane wondered how Adeline
put up with being married to a target.
That made her, he supposed, a target herself — and then there were the
children.
What a life.
Was he, Fitzduane, since his encounter with
the Hangman, now a target, too?
And
would he stay at risk?
What would that
mean for his wife and his children?
For
the first time it came to Fitzduane that once you were involved with terrorism
— on either side — there was really no end to it.
It was a permanent state of war.
He was
digesting this unpleasant thought when he heard a faint noise coming from the
front of the house — a house that was supposed to be empty.
It sounded like a door opening and
closing.
The sound was not repeated.
He was tempted
to stay where he was, to ignore what he almost doubted he had heard.
He checked the perimeter alarm board — there
were monitors in every room — but all seemed secure.