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Two headlights appeared on the horizon, heading south toward the camp. O'Do
The vehicle was a Toyota Land Cruiser, the four-wheel-drive that had replaced the Land-Rover in most places. The driver took it right into the garage before getting out. O'Do
"Glad to see you got out, Sean," the visitor said. He carried a small satchel.
"Thank you, Shamus."
O'Do
"Thank you, Kevin."
"You're just in time for di
"Well, one can't always be lucky," Shamus Padraig Co
"Not in here." O'Do
"Good." Co
"How did you get it past the bastards?" Miller asked.
"I heard about the new rule. I told them I was bringing in a gun, of course." Everyone laughed as Miller fetched three glasses and ice. You always used ice in this place.
"When are you supposed to arrive at the camp?" O'Do
"I'm having some car trouble, and staying the night with our uniformed friends. The bad news is that they've confiscated my whiskey."
"Bloody heathens!" Miller laughed. The three men toasted one another.
"How was it inside, Sean?" Co
"Could have been worse. A week before Kevin came for me, I had a bad time with some thugs—the peelers put them up to it, of course, and they had a merry time. Bloody faggots. Aside from that, ah, it is so entertaining to sit there and watch them talk and talk and talk like a bunch of old women."
"You didn't think that Sean would talk, did you?" O'Do
"Good lad!" Co
"So, what's the news from Belfast?" the chief asked.
"Joh
"One does not get drunk for a failure," Miller observed sourly. That bastard Ryan!
"But it was a splendid attempt. It is clear enough that you were unlucky, no more than that, and we are all slaves to fortune."
O'Do
"Will they try to spring Maureen?"
Co
"There are ways." O'Do
"Well, you've gotten everyone's attention. The reason I'm here is to brief our lads on your operation."
"Really!" Kevin laughed. "And what does Mr. Doyle think of us?"
The visitor crooked a comically accusing finger. "You are a counterrevolutionary influence whose objective is to wreck the movement. The op on The Mall has had serious repercussions on the other side of the Atlantic. We'll—excuse me, they'll be sending some of their chaps to Boston in another month or so to set things right, to tell the Yanks that they had nothing to do with it," Co
"Money—we don't need their bloody money!" Miller objected. "And they can put their 'moral support' up—"
"Mustn't offend the Americans," Co
O'Do
As he drank off the last of his second whiskey. Miller's eyes snapped open sharply enough to make a click.
"Kevin, we won't be doing much in the U.K. for a while…"
"Nor in the Six Counties," O'Do
"Shamus, how effective might Doyle's men be in Boston?"
Co
Miller smiled for a moment. He refilled his own glass this time as the other two talked on. His own mind began assembling a plan.
Murray had had a number of assignments in the Bureau over his many years of service, ranging from junior agent involved in chasing down bank robbers to instructor in investigation procedures at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. One thing he'd always told the youngsters in the classroom was the importance of intuition. Law enforcement was still as much art as science. The Bureau had immense scientific resources to process evidence, had written procedures for everything, but when you got down to it, there was never a substitute for the mind of an experienced agent. It was mostly experience, Murray knew, the way you fitted evidence together, the way you got a feel for the mind of your target and tried to predict his next move. But more than experience, there was intuition. The two qualities worked together until you couldn't separate them in your own mind.
That's the hard part, Murray told himself on the drive home from the embassy. Because intuition can run a little wild if there's not enough evidence to hold on to.
"You will learn to trust your instincts," Murray told the traffic, quoting from his memorized class notes. "Instinct is never a substitute for evidence and procedure, but it can be a very useful tool in adapting one to another—oh, Dan, you would have made a hell of a Jesuit." He chuckled to himself, oblivious of the stare he was getting from the car on his right.
If it's so damned fu
Murray's instinct was ringing a quiet but persistent bell. Why had Jimmy said that? Obviously it was bothering him, too—but what the hell was it?
The problem was, it wasn't just one thing. He saw that now. It was several things, and they were interrelated like some kind of three-dimensional crossword puzzle. He didn't know the number of blanks, and he didn't have any of the clues to the words, but he did know roughly the way they fitted together. That was something. Given time, it might even be enough, but—