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  Tynan smiled briefly.

  “And it seems to be a very curious logic indeed that I have this piece of paper in my fist from Francis Burke. As if we were Nemesis each, one for the other. He assumed it would be a weapon in my hand. After you left he handed me this envelope, what you see here. Then I knew what I was there for, not just you alone. You-I think he just wanted to see what class of a creature you might be, so that if things were to go against him he’d know about the man that’d be doing it.”

  “Doing what?” asked Minogue. “I have no quarrel with the man. I have me own religion to be going on with, and he has his.”

  “He got the idea fairly quickly, Minogue. After you canonized Marguerite Ryan.”

  “Me? All I’m saying is that it takes just a little bit of imagination to see into how terrible her life must have been. We’re the race with the big hearts and the big imagination, are we? How is it that we’re also so good at applying rules in the abstract? I have nothing to fear from Marguerite Ryan or a hundred Marguerite Ryans, so I don’t, or even from a hundred hairy members of the Women’s Action Movement. I don’t for the life of me understand what the flap is about, unless all the men of Ireland, sitting on their bar stools, are getting premonitions about what a lot of them deserve.”

  “You should have said that to His Eminence,” said Tynan drily. “He handed me this envelope and asked me several things before I opened it. I thought it was a few names, colleagues of Brian Kelly; maybe even a good-sized list of Opus Dei members in the Army and the Gardai, something that’d save us a lot of headaches and delays with our own internal investigations. I wasn’t hoping for too much.”

  “What did he ask you? Conditions?”

  “No, they weren’t conditions. He knew, or he had decided, that there couldn’t be. Frank is by no means a confused thinker when it comes to deciding what must be done in a crisis. I think he was appealing to a man he thought he knew, a man he’d known thirty years ago: that’s why he didn’t want you there. He asked me if I could treat the information with discretion, control it in respect of the possible consequences.”

  Minogue felt the light breeze coming in the open door of the car.

  “I looked down the list and I told him I couldn’t do it. I think he knew that already,” added Tynan.

  Minogue’s scalp registered something which had yet to reach the parts of his brain that could interpret ideas to him. Tynan stopped tapping the envelope on his knee and he held it at arm’s length. The light cast shadows where the envelope had been opened by thumb and by finger. The jagged edges of the paper looked like the serrated edge of a bread knife to Minogue. Knife. List. Names.

  “He asked me to think about the repercussions, think would this be justified.”

  “What repercussions?”

  “He didn’t outline them, just left them hanging like the better threats that are issued. He didn’t need to, because it’s quite plain to see. He had led us up to that point, I see now, to load me up so that I’d think twice, considering all the undeniably good work that they do… some of them, anyway.”

  Minogue felt an artery beginning to tick under his jaw.

  “Frank thought he could hook me on a weakness. He thought, he hoped, that I could not go through with what we must go through, because it would destroy and impair the work of so many virtuous people. A small sacrifice for the greater good… I must say that I hadn’t expected that of him. I realized then how much I had fallen by the wayside over the years, so that I couldn’t imagine any institution being worth the life of one man. Of two men.”

  Minogue started in the seat. His thoughts rushed out: Brian Kelly, Paul Fine.

  “He knew that too, of course,” Tynan continued. “He didn’t ask directly. Here he was by some twist of fate handing me something which would harm him and the institutions he Represents. Me, the spoiled priest, the one who took up with a Protestant wife. Me, the one he couldn’t mould. I didn’t tell him that it was because the Fines are Jews. I didn’t need to. I’m Sure Frank’s all too well aware of the significance, and I think that the symbolic side of that actually frightened him. Here,” he thrust the envelope at Minogue. “I can’t be sitting around here talking as if I was writing a bloody diary. There’s work to be done and quick.”

  Tynan stepped out and closed the door.

  “One more thing, very important, Minogue. Listen to me, carefully. A young man who must remain nameless went to a priest whom he had known in college. This priest was home from a stay in Central America. After listening to the young man, this priest was able to persuade the man to make a confession to him. This young man is undergoing a crisis that has to do with his membership in Opus Dei. He read about the murder out in Bray, and, though he can’t finger anyone directly, he was privy to peculiar conversations in an Opus Dei house near Clonskeagh. He flew the coop. Are you following me?”

  Minogue nodded.

  “Right. This pal of his from years back nearly had a fit, I was told. Radical man, the new generation of missionary. Didn’t know what to do with what he had heard, so he wrote down the names he remembered and out he marched to the Archbishop’s house, preceded by a few phone calls. Fair play to Burke, he sized up the problem and worked his way around the confessional vow.”

  “He gave me the distinct impression that he was going to chastise anyone connected with this,” said Minogue. “Including servants of the State.”

  “He’s not wild about Opus Dei, believe it or not. But he won’t go another inch with us.”

  “Meaning we’ll not know who this rebel Opus Dei fella is? Can’t interview him?”

  “Just so. What we get from him is a list of persons who may be engaging in a political conspiracy. What we do not get is this: one iota of testimony pertinent to your murder cases,” Tynan concluded crisply.

  “Run it backwards now,” Minogue tried. “Do any of these people know they’re on a sheet of paper in our fists?”

  “I asked him what the chances were of those on the list knowing that we’re on to them. He said that the confessor told the source that it would be a grievous sin for him to alert the people on this list to the Gardai being in possession of this piece of paper. That’s as far as he can go. But the person may have told someone after the confession was made. He’s unstable, upset. It might be rough.”

  Minogue frowned at Tynan’s face framed in the side window. Someone was singing in or near the pub.

  “I’ll make my call first and get the thing going from the top. You’ll be wanting to talk to Jimmy Kilmartin then, I think.”

  “Paul Fine?” Minogue called out, alarmed.

  “You’re the one who built this house of cards, Minogue. You should know. I’d stake my pension on it.”

  Minogue switched on the interior light and looked at the folded paper he had withdrawn from the envelope. There was no letterhead on the paper and it was addressed to no one. The door of the lounge bar banged after Tynan had entered. No remarks, no signature. The car creaked on its suspension. There were only the eleven typed names. Minogue did not recognize the first three but he noted that the ranks had been entered in brackets after them. Colonel Eamonn Gibney. Captain Lawrence Cunningham. The Garda rank was a sergeant: Eoin Morrissey. Garda Sergeant Eoin Morrissey worked in the Technical Bureau and Minogue had met him several times in the company of Shea Hoey at Ryan’s pub in Parkgate Street.

  Minogue realized that he was still holding his breath. His forehead was pounding now. He looked up from the paper to the windscreen’s circus reflections of dashboard and steering wheel. He looked down at the paper again, at the last name. It was still there, still the same. Fintan Gorman.

  Minogue elbowed himself out of the car and walked hurriedly to the door of Slattery’s lounge.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  This is what we’re dealing with,” said Gallagher. He turned to the unwieldy tape-recorder on the desk.

  It was Friday evening. Kilmartin, Minogue and Hoey were seated in Chief Superintendent Far
rell’s office. Farrell, who had come from a meeting with the Garda Commissioner and Tynan, seemed impatient, even more than his usual curt and belligerent self.

  Kilmartin had said it out loud as the trio were crossing Harcourt Street to Farrell’s office. Jimmy would make a lot of his prophecy after they had finished the meeting with Farrell, Minogue knew. After all, Kilmartin had been right… again.

  “Bet you that the Commissioner told him to let us in. And that Tynan told the Commissioner too,” Kilmartin had said excitedly. “Bet you any money you like. Go a tenner, Matt? A tenner says that Tynan made him.”

  Yes, Kilmartin was probably right.

  “And you know Farrell, runs the Branch like his own private army. I’d say he’s bulling mad. He wanted to go after Heher and get the source who made the confession; squeeze the bejases out of him. What do you think?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Minogue.

  “I still say it was Drumm who made the confession, and after Heher came down offa the ceiling he knew he’d have to tell the Archbishop about it. Ah, but Farrell’d choke the Pope himself to get at the source,” said Kilmartin with relish. He licked a palm and rubbed it back along his crown to settle what was left of his hair.

  “I like the sound of that,” Minogue conceded.

  “Choking the Pope or putting your tenner on the line?”

  “The former,” said Minogue. “I’d lose my tenner, I’m sure.”

  “Well, I must say that Tynan sticking up for us is something I don’t mind at all, at all,” said Kilmartin. “There may be something to him if he stood up to Farrell. Did you hear that Farrell went to the Minister, and all? He wanted the swoop last night even; he thinks this crowd is dangerous. It was Tynan’s doing to put in the phone taps and make Farrell wait for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “Maybe Farrell didn’t believe that the confessional is secret, and thought these-what should we call them-conspirators might have been told of the leak,” said Hoey. “But the confessional is still sworn to secrecy, isn’t it? So the Branch couldn’t have gone any further than ourselves.”

  “Secrecy, is it?” said Kilmartin in his music-hall incarnation. “It had bloody well better be, for the love of Jases. I told a few whoppers in confession boxes in my time, and I don’t want them broadcast, I can tell you,” he added, stepping around the parked police cars.

  Tynan’s first call from Slattery’s pub had been to the Commissioner. A second tenpenny piece had clanged into the phone when he called Farrell at his home in Clontarf. Minogue was in the pub by then and he dearly wanted to eavesdrop on what Tynan was demanding in crisp tones, sentences without verbs, a slow insistent, serious voice, as he stared at the graffiti on the wall in front of him. Minogue had fought off that temptation by giving into another. He pushed his way to the bar and bought two Jameson’s whiskeys with ice in both of them.

  Tynan questioned neither the ice nor the whiskey. Minogue phoned Kilmartin at home after Tynan had told him what he had started. To his credit, Kilmartin had not questioned Farrell’s involvement. As part of Garda department C3, the Special Branch was expected to see to subversive groups within the State. Nor did Kilmartin pass any remark about Tynan taking the reins. Putting down the telephone, Minogue had then realized that Kilmartin’s deferring without complaint was the surest sign of what the list in the envelope could mean. Kilmartin seemed to have been glad to step aside and let the paint-and-powder brigade, as he sometimes called the Special Branch, work it out.

  It was not until this morning that Minogue had found out that Tynan had had a District Court judge roused from his telly in Fairview and brought by police car to the Four Courts. No fewer than twenty-seven phone taps had been operating within ninety minutes of the two men sipping their Jameson’s. By midday today the number had grown to over fifty. Surveillance teams had been placed on all the people on the list by midnight, and had remained in place throughout the night. They were relieved by shifts of Branch detectives. In the case of the Army ranks on the list, Army Intelligence had been alerted and was reporting to the First Secretary of the Minister for Defence.

  Gallagher had met the three detectives at the front desk and directed them to Farrell’s office.

  “Tommy,” said Kilmartin, reaching across the desk, “how’s things?”

  “Hot,” grunted Farrell, a taciturn and driven policeman with a reputation for ruthlessness, but a man believed to have no political debts to service.

  “And Matty Minogue himself,” said Farrell.

  “And Seamus Hoey,” Kilmartin added.

  There were no preliminaries. Gallagher had the tape of the telephone calls edited, rewound and poised to play. He turned the switch and nothing happened.

  “Plug?” said Minogue. Hoey checked the socket behind his chair. Farrell pursed his lips.

  “Jimmy,” said Farrell, “I told God Almighty a half-hour ago that leaving things this way was too much of a risk. We should have jumped last night and worried about hard evidence and building a case after we got in the doors.”

  “Did you play him this tape too?” asked Kilmartin.

  “Damn right I did. That’s why we’re moving tonight. Yous may have a murder to worry about: we have several to prevent. As well as lunatics flinging petrol bombs at Jewish churches.”

  “Two murders,” said Minogue. Farrell glared at him.

  “It’s nothing to what could happen unless we lift this lot tonight,” said Farrell gruffly.

  “Well we-that is to say Tynan-had hardly got a start on going through the files for possible associates not mentioned on the list, Tommy,” Kilmartin said. “There has to be a lot more than two Army officers and one Garda sergeant.”

  “And didn’t Johnny Tynan tell me the selfsame thing not an hour ago? ‘A lot might slip the net if we move too soon,’ says he. ‘If we don’t get the ones on the list to talk, we’ll fall short of getting all of them,’ says he. Oh they’ll talk all right, I says to myself, but I couldn’t say that to them, now, could I?”

  Indeed, Minogue reflected. It was known that Farrell had had a hand in the selection and training of a squad of Special Branch officers whose sole job was to interrogate suspects.

  “Well, they’ve been trying,” said Kilmartin. “They’ve been up all night with the files and they’ve added possibles to the list.”

  Gallagher got up off his knees red-faced and turned the switch again. This time it worked. After the hiss of the leader portion, a broad Kerry accent announced the time and the names of the persons speaking on the tape.

  Gibney’s voice was a measured and polite Dublin accent. There were no pauses when he talked. He seemed to have prepared everything he wanted to say to Gorman on the phone. The tone was reasonable, gently persuasive. Minogue watched Kilmartin’s face go blank when Gibney mentioned the Ard Fheis.

  “… We’ve drawn up a list of proposals for when the Dail gets back in session. Wait a minute, I dropped something… OK. Now you’ll have just the one day because the Opposition will go right to work and table the no-confidence. Now there’s no way around the business we discussed, you know? You know? We just have to have them so as we can accelerate the thing and- ”

  “ I still say the momentum will carry us through.” Gorman’s tone was almost urgent, a palpable effort to stay calm.

  Minogue felt a non-existent draught on the back of his neck.

  “But we’ve talked about this ad nauseam, Fintan. Even your own estimates are for four to break ranks and then you-”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. That’s more than enough to carry the vote when the Dail sits. Don’t you see what I mean? There’s no need for anything more.”

  Farrell held his hand up. Gallagher stopped the tape.

  “This is toward the end of the call,” said Farrell. “The call went through to Gorman’s home phone at eight o’clock this morning, just before Gorman was heading off to work. Do you know what these two men are talking about?”

  “Gorman’s
going to jump ship on the Chief,” said Kilmartin slowly. “He’s going to lead away his supporters at the Ard Fheis next week…”

  “… and he’s going to bring down the fucking government,” said Farrell calmly.

  “Four sitting members of the party?” said Hoey. “Who are they?”

  “Wouldn’t we all like to know that,” said Gallagher in his sibilant Donegal tones.

  “But Gorman,” said Kilmartin. “What’s he going to get out of this? He’s not going to be the next Taoiseach, that’s for certain.”

  “Will we take bets on that?” said Farrell.

  “He doesn’t need to be,” murmured Minogue.

  “Smart lad, Matty,” said Farrell savagely. “Give the man the rabbit. Gorman needs only four government members to walk out of the party for the government to fall. The next government’ll have to be a coalition, and they’ll need Gorman. He’ll be sitting pretty when they offer him a plum Ministry. Guess which one he’ll pick?”

  “Defence again,” said Kilmartin.

  “Top of the class, Jimmy. Gibney and the others will have Gorman in their pockets, then. If they don’t have him in their pockets already, they will after they do their bit of ‘business’ that Gibney’s hinting about. Any guesses on what Gibney means there?”

  “I don’t know why I’m thinking this exactly,” Hoey began. “Wouldn’t it be to Gibney’s advantage to have a bit of disorder in the streets? A general strike, say?”

  “How about a bomb in Dublin to get the Army out on to the streets?” said Farrell, “How about shooting someone?”

  Farrell looked from face to face in the room. Gallagher rubbed his nose with the side of his hand.

  “Name of Jases,” said Kilmartin finally.

  Farrell leaned lower on his elbows. “What’s on here, as I told the Commissioner, is that we have several citizens plotting to destabilize the government of the Irish Republic, and they’re willing to use violence to that end.”