Northern Spy(22)

I drop my head, pressing my eyes shut. My sister will never come home. She will be killed along with her unit or sent to prison for the rest of her life.



* * *



—

Two bouncers stand outside the Rock bar. We grew up together. Both of them are from Andersonstown, both of them are IRA sympathizers, if not members themselves. They watch me walking up to them, as singing comes from inside the bar, drunken men shouting along to “Four Green Fields.”

“Where’s my sister?”

“We’ve not seen Marian in tonight,” says Danny.

“I need to talk to her.”

Without looking at me, Danny fixes his glove, pulling it higher on his wrist. “I’m sure she’ll be giving you a shout when she wants.”





12


I OPEN A KITCHEN DRAWER the next morning and consider the objects inside, like I’ve forgotten what they’re for. Marian has used all the cooking tools in this kitchen, or I’ve used them to cook for her. On her last birthday, I made a sponge layer cake with rose frosting. I spent hours preparing the base and the filling, assembling the layers, spreading thick frosting down the sides with a cake knife. In the other room our friends turned off the lights. I remember carrying the cake into the room, with its lit candles, and setting it down in front of her. She was a terrorist then. She’d already been one for years.

There might still be an explanation. She might have joined the IRA for protection, or been forced into joining.

Finn won’t be back from Donegal until tomorrow morning, and the house feels flat without him. Being alone in it for one more minute might do my head in. I shove my feet into plimsolls and open the sliding door.

When I reach the top of the hill, six helicopters are hanging above the city in the distance. I freeze, searching for a line of smoke rising between the buildings. The helicopters are spaced apart in the powder-blue sky, which might mean that different locations have been attacked simultaneously.

I dial Tom’s number. “Where are you? Where’s Finn?”

“At the house.”

“In Ardara?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

“Do you know what’s happened? There are helicopters over the city.”

“Oh,” he says. “Nothing’s happened yet. The threat level has been raised again.”

“Did they say why?”

“No.” I can hear Finn cooing in the background, and I press the phone to my ear, wishing myself toward him.

After we hang up, I stand on the hill reading the news on my phone. An attack is believed to be imminent. Police snipers are lying with their rifles on rooftops around the city center. Barricades have been built outside Stormont, Great Victoria Station, and Belfast Castle, and every bridge over the Lagan has been closed. Hospitals have told their staff to be on call, and a blood drive at St. Anne’s has a queue of people down the road waiting to donate.

All of these preparations—the barricades, snipers, helicopters—are only the visible end of the security measures. At a certain level, they might be theater, a distraction from the real response to the threat, the snatch jobs, the enhanced interrogations, the bribes. They pay some informers. How much would they pay to stop a large-scale attack?

There’s a lot of money to be made. Some people apparently work within the IRA for years with an eye toward a trade, an exfiltration. Marian might be one of them. I try to picture her negotiating her conditions. A certain sum, a new home abroad. She might wake up tomorrow in a flat with a view of the Parthenon. I’m desperate for this to be true, for any explanation that means she’s not about to walk into a train station or market hall with an automatic rifle.



* * *



—

For the rest of the morning, I listen to interviews on the radio with government ministers. I move around the house, cleaning, cooking, folding laundry, while thinking, I need to speak with her, I need to stop her from doing something appalling. The fact that I can’t contact her is unbearable.

On the radio, one of our presenters, Orla, is interviewing the chief constable. “Do you plan to evacuate the city center?” she asks.

“No,” says the chief constable. “Not at this time.”

Orla sounds ready to erupt. “You’re telling us there’s going to be an attack, but not where.”

“We don’t know where.”

“Should we just wait and see?”

The chief constable starts to answer, but Orla cuts him off. “The IRA has announced that they intend to escalate the conflict. How will this campaign be different? Will their targets be different?”

“We’re working with the intelligence services and the army to understand the exact nature of the current threat.”

“Are they going to target a primary school?”

I stop with my hands in the sink. “We aren’t aware of threats against any specific locations,” says the chief constable. “We don’t have cause to shut schools at this time.”

Orla makes a sound of disbelief, and my mouth turns dry. She keeps questioning the chief constable about schools, asking if parents should make the decision themselves to keep their children at home this week.

“That would be up to them,” he says, implacable. Before she can ask another question, he says, “To everyone listening, we need your help. We all know that the IRA relies on its community for protection. I believe there are people listening who have seen the preparations for a large-scale attack. They still have time to stop it.”