Northern Spy(57)

Anyway, I’ve grown used to the pace of eating with Finn, the constant catching and righting, offering, chatting, and anything else can feel flat, lifeless. This sort of meal is nice, but so is having my son lower his fist and blink at me through lashes sticky with yogurt, trusting me to fix it.

Damian appears in the doorway and pours himself a coffee. “Are you having any?” I ask, nodding at the banquet.

“No, I’m not eating,” he says firmly, like he’s fasting. I wonder if it’s a mark of respect for his victim, or if his nerves are sharper on an empty stomach.

He carries his coffee out of the room. I move away from the table, too, like it’s the scene of a failure, though I’m not sure whether the failure was in not abstaining from the food or not enjoying it.



* * *



—

At eleven, Damian will switch on the radio in our room, so anyone passing might believe him to be inside, on the phone. I will arrange my book and scarf on a chair in the walled garden, like I’ve just wandered off for a moment. Enough of the other guests and staff will have seen us over the course of the morning that their accounts will overlap. If they are questioned, it will seem like we never left the property. Which is only contingency anyway, said Damian, since the police will assume the sniper fled the area, and that anyone staying at Ballyrane is harmless.

“People make assumptions,” Damian said last night. He told me about a magician who made his audience believe he’d teleported. The theater went dark, and the magician appeared in a spotlight at the back of the theater, and then instantly in a spotlight on stage.

“How?” I asked.

“He just ran really fast.”

In the walled garden, I settle in a chair with my book. Wind stirs the fruit trees. After a few minutes, I slip out through the bottom of the garden to meet Damian. At the edge of the property, he retrieves the rucksack he’d hidden late last night. He tightens the straps over his shoulders, and we start to run through the woods. Damian runs like a soldier, with his arms low. At first I struggle to keep up with him, and then a tension snaps, and I’m at his heels.

We cross a stone bridge over the Blackwater. This is the nearest road to the scene, and I’m to wait here as a lookout. Damian pulls camouflage fatigues on over his clothes. He changes into army boots, then removes the rifle from his bag and chambers it.

I watch him disappear through the trees. Soon I can’t hear any sounds except the river, and the leaves tossing. A cold film of sweat forms on my face. Lord Maitland’s group is only a short distance upstream. He is standing in the water, around the next curve in the river.

MI5 might have decided to let the assassination proceed after all, for some reason, some political purpose. That might be why no one has given me any instructions. I think of Maitland’s aged, reddened face, of his round voice. He has no idea how scared he should be. These might be his last seconds on earth.

Or Damian’s. Special Forces officers might be surrounding him, their rifles drawn. They might be about to shoot him. Marian might ask me if I tried to stop them, to save him.

I want to drop to my knees. Wind pulls at my clothes, and I try to decide whether to scream, to warn Maitland, or Damian. I’m gasping air into my lungs when Damian appears through the trees, running toward me. I’m too late. I scramble to hold out his shoes, and open the rucksack for his fatigues and boots. He fieldstrips the rifle and stuffs it into the bag. Our movements seem clumsy and slow, even though in seconds we’ve dropped the rucksack into the river from the bridge and taken off at a sprint.

Back in the garden, his face is white, and his hands shake.

“What happened?” I ask.

He says, “I missed.”





35


ICARRY FINN INTO HIS day care and kneel to unbutton his coat. “How was your weekend?” asks Gemma, one of the other parents.

“Oh, fine.”

“Do anything fun?”

“Not really. I had a work trip.”

We drove back from Mallow on Saturday morning, after an interminable afternoon and evening at Ballyrane. News of the assassination attempt had broken, and the guests discussed it all through dinner. I kept waiting for one of them to look at Damian or me and say, “It was you, wasn’t it?”

When we reached Belfast, we drove straight to a safe house in the New Lodge to be debriefed. Seamus asked me about our stay, about the length of the bridge and the width of the river, about Damian’s mood before and after the shooting.

“Is he under suspicion?” I asked Marian, once we were alone.

“No,” she said. “Damian’s whole family is IRA. Both of his parents were in prison during the Troubles.”

“He’s in love with you,” I said.

“I know.”

“Are you with him?”

“No, not that way.”

Maitland had shifted his weight, and the bullet went past him into the gorse. Then, in the chaos, Damian couldn’t get a clear shot at him without possibly hitting the ghillie or one of the women. Seamus is furious with him, but not worried about his loyalty.

“How was your weekend?” I ask Gemma.

“Terrible,” she says cheerfully. “Both boys had colds.”

We talk for a while about infant Calpol, hot broth, menthol compresses, and I become aware of a sort of prickling, all over my body, a delight in being here, in this room, with my son holding on to my knees.