The Orion Assignment (10 page)

He sat at a small, two-person table trying to relax, just listening to the mix of accents and occasional alternate language. Dublin was a fairly busy crossroads and its three runways handled just about every airline on earth, except British Airways of course. But a certain amount of tension would remain, despite the effects of the dark, rich stout. He judged airport security as excellent, but there were an awful lot of people crammed into a confined space and they came from everywhere. This made it a target rich environment for terrorists and it was just good sense to maintain your awareness in such circumstances.

So when Morgan's senses alerted him to a possible threat from behind he did not react, at least not in any way an observer would notice. But his feet slid under his chair so that he was on the balls of his feet, and he leaned toward his mug raising part of his weight from his seat.

Through hearing and instinct Morgan tracked the figure walking up behind him. The stranger stepped around to his side, eyed him with raw hostility, and lowered himself into the other seat. Morgan had kept his eyes low, staring into his dark brew, but how he raised them to the face of his new seatmate.

“Do I know you?”

“I don't think so,” the stranger said. “But I know who you are. You're the boy what's been following around after Father Sullivan these past few days.”

The stranger bore the ruddy, freckled face of a native. His hair was home cut and unruly. His crooked teeth, flannel shirt and Brogan shoes spoke of a man bred in
the countryside who only entered the city when he had to. This was no chance meeting of travelers.

“Yeah, I been following Sean,” Morgan said. “To keep him safe. Got a feeling you been following around too, but maybe with a different objective.”

The stranger rested a fist on the table and raised an eyebrow. “You don't understand our struggle, boy. The priest keeps a lot of people from seeing the truth. He keeps people from assisting their brothers in the struggle against the murdering Anglicans.”

“Your struggle?” Morgan snorted and emptied his mug before continuing. “First of all, as a merc I seen the same tribal bullshit all over Africa, then in Eastern Europe and it's been going on for centuries in the Middle East. All the hate don't solve nothing, it's just there, part of the environment. So you can talk all the shit you want to about your idiotic struggle. But if you call me boy one more time, I'm gonna have to kick your big Irish ass.”

The crowd around him seemed awfully quiet and Morgan realized that he had gotten a lot louder than he intended. Passersby had stopped to stare at him. Their faces were not kind. They may not mean him harm, but they certainly wouldn't help him if trouble started. After a deep breath, he got to his feet.

“Nice talking to you, buddy, but I got a plane to catch.”

Morgan strode away from the bar hoping to disappear into the crowded concourse. He walked the airport at random, but the feeling of danger followed him. As he strolled past the duty free shops that feeling spread. He stopped at a newsstand and picked up a copy of the Irish Times. The stranger walked past him just as Morgan was leaving the newsstand. Morgan moved down two doors and stopped. Staring into the broad shop windows he was able to scan the crowd flowing past. One fellow to his right was paying too much attention to Morgan. Another watcher, pretending to
consider a liquor purchase, was a bit more subtle. A fourth man entered the shop and turned to stare openly at Morgan through the plate glass. He was a broad, tall bruiser of a farm boy. But then, they all were.

Morgan considered his options to be limited. He had no weapons with which to threaten his followers, but he doubted they would allow him to board his flight. A brawl in the airport would probably result in his being held for questioning at the very least, which would keep him from taking off on time. He might be able to avoid the troublemakers altogether if he moved straight for the boarding area, but their frustration could send them straight to Sean Sullivan while Morgan was away. He needed to engage them, but without drawing public attention.

The men's room was not quite as busy as the concourse, but Morgan knew this was a temporary situation that would change when the next wave of planes landed. There was no door to insure privacy, just a passage that wound left, then hard right to the long column of stalls. Beyond that was a separate long tiled space holding urinals on one side and a row of sinks on the other.

Morgan knew he would have a moment inside. They would want to be sure he wasn't laying a trap, and they'd post a man at the entrance to turn other men away. That was okay. He took the opportunity to make use of the facilities.

By the time the stranger entered the men's room Morgan was drying his hands under the hot air machine. All the other patrons had left, leaving him alone with the humidity and the smell of urine.

“About time you showed up,” Morgan said. “And you brought two of your friends I see.”

“You didn't think I'd come alone, did you?” the stranger asked, smirking as he sauntered forward. His two friends entered behind him, fists already curled.

“Of course not,” Morgan said while rolling his
newspaper up. “I'm kind of glad, because I need to send a message to all your happy little terrorist pals, and I want you in one piece to deliver it. So. Who's first?”

The tallest of the three men stepped forward, his fists raised, his steps echoing in the tile hall.

“You are a big one,” Morgan said, moving his feet a bit apart but not advancing. “You're taller than me, and you got a longer reach. How could I ever…”

Morgan stopped talking when he sensed that his opponent was about to swing. Less than a second before the big fist moved toward him, Morgan leaned forward, snapping his right arm forward, holding the newspaper like a spear. Its edge struck the big man's face and Morgan gave it a slight twist before his arm snapped back. The big man's hands flew to his face. Morgan stabbed again, this time into the man's solar plexus. The stunned fighter staggered back, his body sagging as he dropped to his knees. As his hands dropped to his stomach he revealed a neat circle of blood inscribed around his left eye. Morgan tossed the newspaper aside and focused his attention on the second fighter.

“Those paper cuts are the worst, ain't they? Okay, now you.”

After only a moment's hesitation, the second man lunged forward, arms spread as if he would wrestle Morgan to the ground. Morgan maintained a bored expression as he sidestepped the clumsy lunge. One foot stayed out to trip his attacker and he grabbed the front of the man's shirt. A sharp yank down smacked the man's forehead into the edge of the sink. The sound of the impact bounced around the room, followed by the slap of his body hitting the floor. Morgan stepped over him toward the stranger who had first sat with him, who was backing away.

“Now you're ready to understand the message I want to send back with you,” Morgan said. The stranger started to turn but Morgan quickly captured his right arm
and twisted it up behind his back. Ignoring the howl of pain, Morgan steered the man back into the room and slammed his face into the wall between two urinals.

“Now you can lose the arm, or you can hold still and promise to do as I say.”

Through gasps of pain the stranger managed to say, “Whatever you want.”

“Good,” Morgan said, pressing the man hard into the tile wall. “Now you don't need to report any of this to your boss. I imagine that would be pretty embarrassing. But you
do
need to tell all your friends and neighbors who might have liked the bombing of the church or who might have been involved with the grenade tossed into a certain public house not long ago. You need to tell them everything that happened here today. Right?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell them.”

Morgan twisted the arm up another inch. “Good. And you make sure they all understand that I don't need a gun or a knife to kill any of you bastards. They need to know that if anything bad happens to Sean Sullivan while I'm gone the police won't mean shit to me, the IRA won't me shit to me. I'll just find the son of a bitch who did it and destroy him in place. No discussion. No mercy. Just an ugly death. Are we clear?”

The stranger nodded his head with such vigor that Morgan had to let him go and watch him sink to the floor, clutching his arm. Nodding, he stepped toward the hall. He wasn't even breathing hard as he walked up behind the muscular man standing at the entrance with his arms folded. An older man was approaching the men's room but the guardian shook his head. Morgan slapped the man lightly on the shoulder and jerked a thumb toward the inside.

“Hey, we're done inside. You can let people in now. And your friends in there could use some help. They don't look so good.”

Morgan smiled as he headed toward his gate. He was more confident that Sean would not be bothered in his
absence, he had not worked up a sweat, and most importantly, he would board his plane on time.

“Wait till you see this place,” Max said as he drove his aging Citroen down the long gravel driveway. They had indeed taken a long lakeside drive, with Felicity cuddled into Grogan's massive side all the way. They found a remote place to park, high school style, facing the sunset.

She found herself enjoying the part she was playing. She was coming to like this big, simple country boy quite a bit. In his innocence she found a sincerity that seemed to be missing in the cosmopolitan circles in which she usually traveled. She felt a little guilty about using him, which she would nonetheless do without hesitation. She was glad she would at least be able to give him something in return that night.

As the car turned the final curve on the drive, the mansion took Felicity's attention. It was an authentic reproduction of an old style Georgian mansion. In front of the house, the driveway split to circle a flagstone-edged pond and came together to flow on through the ten-foot wide gap in the hedge wall. A life size female nude statue stood atop a marble column rising out of the pond. The hedge she figured for a good six feet in height.

She got out of the car next to a large swinging sign while Grogan went off to park. The sign read “ORION HOUSE” in large Gothic letters. Between the two words was a painting of a Herculean figure in ancient Greek attire, holding a huge club over his head. His left hand held a short sword. The mythological hunter had red curly hair. She figured she was looking at the owner's self image.

The house itself was breathtaking. She tried to take the entire rambling structure in by mentally cataloging it.
It was all brick and three stories tall, at least the central portion. There were nine windows across the top two levels. On the ground floor, the center was dominated by a semicircular landing, which surrounded the door and one window on each side of it. The landing had its own semicircular roof supported by a half dozen Doric columns.

The windows on the first two floors were easily six feet tall. The third floor windows were about half that size. A stone fence ran along the edge of the flat roof. Four large chimneys sprang from the roof at even intervals.

She took two steps back to take in more. A square tower projected forward at each end of the main house. Beyond these, level with the main portion of the building, a wing projected out to each side. These had their own porches, running their full length, terminating in another semicircular landing. The porches were each supported by three pairs of columns about five feet apart. With the terminal landing, the wings were about thirty feet or so long. That would make the house a hundred and twenty feet across.

For the first time, she realized how conceited her enemy must be. How many hundreds of thousands of pounds must have gone into this gargantuan edifice in tribute to his enormous ego? Perhaps it wasn't just for his public image. Maybe he believed he was Orion, the mythical hunter.

“Isn't it the most amazing thing you've ever seen?” Grogan asked from behind her. “I feel like the luckiest man alive to live and work here.”

Despite the apparent traditional design of the house, a keypad hung above the bright bronze doorknob. Grogan stood close to it and punched five buttons in order. The huge oak door swung open without a sound. Reaching back, he took Felicity's hand and guided her into the house. Victorian furniture decorated the large reception area. Max steered left and they started down
the long hallway. They walked on parquet floors, between walls paneled with cedar.

“Know how I got this job?” Grogan asked when they stopped at the last door on the right.

“Do tell me.” She hung on his arm, beaming up at him.

“Well, I was coming in from plowing the fields on me pa's farm,” Max said, unlocking the door. “There stands this redheaded bloke in fox hunting clothes. He says to me `you Max Grogan' and I says `yessir'. He says `I hear tell how you're the biggest man in the county' and I says `'strewth, I'm the biggest I know of.” Max stepped into his room and hung his jacket and cap on a coat rack in the corner. “He says to me `my name's Ian O'Ryan and now I'm the biggest man in the county. But as you're the tallest and widest, I want you as me gamekeeper.' How's that for a wild piece of luck, eh?”