To the Death

And all the bloody documents are forged, for Christ’s sake. Something’s going on, and I can’t understand for the life of me why nobody can see it except for me. And what in the name of Christ are the fucking Iranians doing frigging around in a submarine, a drive and a nine iron from Kinsale Golf Club? Tell me that. Jimmy, all alone in his office, was working himself into a lather about Ireland.

So much so that he opened his computer and Googled the Irish Times just to see what the hell was going on over there. And what greeted him was that whacking great front-page headline announcing the brutal murder of the Irish dairy farmer Jerry O’Connell.

Jimmy wrote down Crookhaven and checked the distance along the coast to Kinsale Old Head — forty-two miles along the shore. He then compared the GPS numbers; not the numbers that separated Kinsale from Crookhaven, but the ones that separated Crookhaven from the submarine when the Brits detected her. The latitudes were submarine 51.15, Crookhaven 51.32, about seventeen miles different. Longitude, submarine 08.29, Crookhaven 09.34. About the same forty-odd miles, with the submarine running predictably south.

She’d been running all day. It was 4 o’clock in the bloody afternoon. I don’t know what happened to the Irish farmer. But something’s really weird here. Bloody great headlines, murder, Maureen Carson, towelhead submarines. All concerning Ireland. Give me a break. They’ve got to be connected.

And this is where Jimmy Ramshawe parted company, mentally, with Admiral Morgan, who told him bluntly, “Kid, you still lack the one truth that might bind all this together. Right now they’re all floating coincidences.

“Nothing’s connected to anything else. Nothing puts Carla or Maureen on the submarine. Nothing connects either woman with the other. Nothing suggests the submarine was doing anything except a training exercise. As for this murder, no one knows who committed it, and there is not one shred of evidence to indicate that one of the Iranians got off and then kicked an Irish pig farmer to death.”

“Dairy.”

“What?”

“Dairy farmer, not pig.”

“Oh, thank God. That makes all the difference.”

“Arnie, I agree nothing quite adds up. But something’s going on, and I don’t think you should go to England. ”

“Bullshit.”

1400 Tuesday 17 July Dun Laoghaire, Dublin

General Rashood bought two first-class passenger tickets for the two o’clock ferry to Holyhead in North Wales, a journey of sixty-five miles across the Irish Sea. This was unusual, because the Stena Line fast ferry is essentially for cars and trucks, roll on, roll off. The vast majority of passengers were planning to drive through Wales, England, or Scotland, either vacationing or going home. There were some passengers without cars, but mostly students, backpackers, and hitchhikers. Ravi and Shakira did not fit the pattern.

Nonetheless, they found their way up to the first-class lounge, and ordered hot sandwiches for lunch. The stewardess would bring them complimentary coffee throughout the journey.

The summer sea was calm, and the ferry, a giant hovercraft, charged toward the United Kingdom in a blizzard of howling spray, ripping past a regular shaft-driven ferryboat as if it had stopped.

Holyhead, their destination, sits on Holy Isle, the northwest point of Wales, jutting out into the Irish Sea. This in turn is joined to the ancient twenty-mile-long Isle of Anglesey where the A-5, the main road into England, begins. Or ends, depending on your direction.

Ravi and Shakira had to wait for the cars and trucks to leave the ship before foot passengers were permitted to walk off. They joined a busy line of mostly young people going through the passport control area, and twenty minutes later, with only the most cursory glance at one of Shakira’s four passports, the British one for Margaret Adams, they waved her through.

Ravi, the former British Army officer, said “good afternoon” crisply in that unmistakable tone the British use to intimidate the lower orders, and was waved through immediately. The official paid hardly any attention to this well-dressed Charles Larkman, in his expensive brown suede jacket and white T-shirt.