Diamond Rain: Adventure Science Fiction Mossad Thriller (The Spy Stories and Tales of Intrigue Series Book 2) (5 page)

“That’s serious shit. 
Really Marxists?”

“Ya, I’m serious.  But,
hey, it was closer than I usually get.  I never get lucky like that.  Did that
guy Billy teach you that too?”

“Was my first time,
Lanky.”

“D’jew go all the way?”

“Close, man.  I can
still feel her crotch rubbing there.”

“Gimme your hands,”
said Jean Pierre as he took Thomas’ hands and sniffed them.  “You really did
get lucky, man. I can’t believe it.”

“What the fuck, Jean
Pierre?  Let go of my hands.  You?”

“At first, all she
wanted to do was talk about politics. 
Independence.  Québec Libre.
”

“And-”

“In the taxi, I thought
she was gonna eat me alive, but nothing really came of it.  I got her number
though.  Maybe, eh?”

“Too bad I have to
leave tomorrow and go back to Boston.”

“I’ll try to get the
other one’s address if you want.  You’re good at writing letters.  Who knows?”

“Nah, she didn’t even
want to give me her number.  I ran after the bus but she just shrugged and blew
me a kiss.”

The two young men got
up from the stairs and Jean Pierre unlocked the front door.  They made their
way into the kitchen where Jean Pierre’s mother had left cold roast beef
sandwiches packed in stretch wrap out for them with a note saying not to make
too much noise when they came in.  They ate and cleaned up before going quietly
upstairs.

Thomas never did get in
touch with his first love, but Jean Pierre remained a close friend.  So close
that years later, when Lanky got into MIT in a high technology program, and
Thomas was jaunting around the globe taking pictures, Jean Pierre went to
dinner at friends of Thomas’ family in Boston every few weeks and kept close
tabs on his friend’s successes.  Little did he know, their paths would cross
often in the future.

****

After graduating from high school, the next
few years flashed by Thomas in a whirl of activity.  His photographic work was
getting him quite a following and the contracts kept coming in.  He got on
well, in his loner’s way, with everyone in his town.  But it wasn’t enough. 
The world beckoned.  His mother was clear about her wishes for him.

“A woman my age wants
grandchildren some day, Thomas.  And you’re never going to give me any when you
only look at people through that lens,” said Thomas’ ma.

“Once I make my way in
the world, we can talk about grandchildren, Ma, not now,” replied Thomas.

Thomas spoke these
words again to his mother just before he took off for Bosnia in 1995, his first
syndicated assignment as a war photographer.  Billy’s influence remained
strong.  On the plane to his first war zone, Thomas sat silently, meditating
the way Billy had taught him.  He could pick up and slow down his heart rate
better than most Buddhist monks his age.  Billy had told him that controlling
the heart rate often meant the difference between life and death in a
firefight.  Something that could give you an edge. 
I’m heading into the eye
of a hurricane. I’m gonna need Billy’s skills to survive,
thought Thomas as
the pilot announced their descent into Sarajevo.

Nine months later, Thomas was recalled by his
editor while on a story with a group of Canadian peacekeepers.  One of their
officers had been kidnapped and a militia chained him to a post to stop the
shelling of the area.  Thomas had made a name for himself, risking his life to
get close-ups of the young soldier in the rain.  Riding on that success Thomas
felt sure the message from his editor would be congratulations. 
Damn,
cursed
Thomas in his mind,
just when I was getting somewhere here and I have to go
home, but why?

The ugliness of the
Bosnian conflict did not prepare Thomas for the shock of identifying his ma and
sister in a morgue in Boston.  An old emptiness returned to the young man.  He
stopped venturing out and slept for weeks on end in the Four-Leaf Clover in an
isolated inlet near Deer Island.  Emotional paralysis ruined his ability to
take any initiative.  He couldn’t face his grandpa in jail.  The DEA had caught
him just days before the cartel found his ma and sister.  Thomas found the
letter Dan had left in a hiding place they’d arranged in case there was any
trouble.  It had been a joke at the time but now he was glad they’d done it.  
When he read the letter he knew instantly he was going to cut the connection
between them.  In it, Dan explained his complicated and harebrained scheme to
Thomas and begged for his forgiveness.  Thomas refused to visit him in prison.

For a short time, drink
clouded Thomas’ pain, but he’d seen that vice close up in Ireland as a young
lad.  He overcame the pull of alcohol after only seven days drunk thanks to a
slip on the deck of the Four-Leaf Clover and a plunge into the icy Atlantic. 
The water sobered him up for good, but even so, his heart still ached and his
mind flashed with pictures of his family on slabs in the morgue.  Even the idea
of sleep defeated him.

One morning, as Thomas dozed in a cocoon bag
on a spot between the wheelhouse and the bow of his grandpa’s lobster boat, an
odd splash near the stern woke him. 
That’s no fish,
thought Thomas.  He
popped out of his sleeping bag, grabbed an ice axe and made his way aft, to the
back of the small boat.  The splash repeated itself.  Thomas poked his head
over the edge of the gunwale and something that was no more than a flash
grabbed his neck and pulled him into the icy water.  When Thomas surfaced,
Billy stood laughing on the deck.

“Looks like I didn’t
train you so well, Tommie-boy,” said Billy as he pointed the blunt end of a
long hook at Thomas.   It was the sort used to stab large fish caught by
accident in the lobster trap lines, and Thomas grabbed it to haul himself back
out of the water.

Despite himself, Thomas
laughed for the first time in weeks. Billy went into a training stance that
they had practiced together for years in Thomas’ youth and being exposed to
Billy’s concentration snapped Thomas out of his grief.  He could see light at
the end of the tunnel for the first time in weeks.

After an hour of
strenuous training, Billy turned to Thomas.

 “I did some sniffing
around.  Your grandpa got in with the wrong people.  Someone tempted him with
the promise of riches for carrying coke in his lobster boat.  He might have
been fine but then he tried to use his old IRA connections as protection
against those cartel guys.  His friends were no match for today’s gangsters. 
They murdered your family in retaliation for your grandpa’s stupidity in trying
to skim some profits off the Columbians.”

“I knew as much, but
not all the detail.  There was a letter.  It’s left me pretty fucked up.  I
wanna do something.”

“You have to move on
from this Thomas.  Dig two graves if you seek revenge,” said Billy, sensing
Thomas’ frame of mind.

“I heard that before
but I never got it,” replied Thomas.

“Dig a grave for your
enemy and one for yourself too,” said Billy who added: “Pay back by doing some
good with your skills instead.  One more thing, get in touch with Jean Pierre. 
He always gets your spirits up.”

“I dunno.  Just haven’t
been up to it recently-”

“Gotta break the cycle
here, buddy,” said Billy.  He suddenly produced a cell phone and waved it
around.

“Don’t those things
cost a fortune?”

“The prices’re coming
down quite a bit.  Besides, I need it for work.”

Billy pressed a few
buttons.  The phone connected to someone and he spoke briefly.  He smiled.

“Here he is,” he said,
handing the phone to Thomas.

“What’re you up to,
Billy?”

“Just take it.”

Thomas took the phone
from Billy.

“Who is this?”

“You dirt ball.  Who’d
you expect?  Suzelle?”

“Lanky?”

“None other.  What’s
this ’bout you moping around on that boat when I’m sitting in my apartment all
by myself in Boston.  When ’m I gonna see ya here, buddy?”

“I didn’t wanna bug ya,
Lanky.”

“What the fuck are you
talking about, man?”

“Just hit a rough
patch, that’s all.”

“Sounds like you need
to get laid, as usual.  Get your ass down here.  Get out of the boonies and we’ll
see what we can do about that.”

“I dunno, Lanky.”

“I won’t take ‘no’ for
an answer.”  He laughed.  “Besides I gotta show you my new lab.  You know they
named a lab after me.  Come and watch me in action, man.”

“I’ll think about it,
Lanky.” Thomas didn’t sound too enthusiastic.

“You’ll do more than
fucking think about it Thomas.  You’ll get your ass down here this weekend and that’s
final.”

Billy was nodding his
agreement when Thomas gave him back the phone. “Thanks Billy.  Dug myself a
deep hole here.  Didn’t know how to get out of it, I guess.”

“That’s what friends
are for.  Pack your shit.  We’re heading down to Boston. Let’s go.”

Billy didn’t give
Thomas a chance to refuse.  He stood up and started throwing Thomas’ dirty
cloths into a duffle bag.  Thomas still didn’t move. “They’re gone, Billy.”

“I know, buddy.”  His
tone was more gentle than usual.  “Think about it this way.  Your ma, well, she
took action when things got tough.  She never stewed in it.  That’s what got
you here.  She had balls, man and she’d want you to have balls too.  You won’t
bring ’em back looking down a bottle.  Whoa.  These are pretty rank.  I think we'll
leave ’em behind.”  Billy grimaced as he picked up a pair of jeans covered with
puke.

“Let's get out of here,
Billy.  I’ll tie her up on Willard’s dock and leave the key in the usual
place.  Willard’ll figure it out and put her back here on anchor.  I can pick
up some clothes in Boston.”

“I’d say Willard’s good
for that, but leave him a note just in case,” said Billy as he pushed the
starter button while adjusting the choke.

The old lobster boat’s
motor chugged to life with a long puff of black smoke and Thomas came up beside
his friend to look out on the harbor as they moved the boat into the dock at an
old friend’s bait and tackle shop.

“Look at that.  It’s
one of those Maine Osprey you wrote about,” said Thomas.

“Thanks to you, I wrote
about those birds and got on my feet again after ‘Nam’.  You showed me how to
use that camera to get real clean shots.”

“Thanks Billy.  I was
digging a hole I couldn’t dig myself outta.”

“That’s what you said. 
But it’s nothing you wouldn’t do for me.”

They left the lobster
boat tied up at Willard’s dock and Thomas left a note giving the boat to the
old man who owned the bait shop.

“That’s more like the
Thomas I know.”

“He always talked about
wanting a lobster boat and I’m never going to be here to take care of it anyway.”

Billy’s pickup was
parked in the harbor loading area.  They walked over to it and Thomas threw his
duffel bag into the back.  Billy understood when Thomas didn’t say much on the
first part of the drive into Boston.  He remembered his own time after getting
out of the army.  Sometimes he’d needed space too.  A little while later,
Thomas turned around when they passed a highway sign pointing out Belfast,
Maine.

“Jesus Billy, that
takes me back some.”

“What’s that?”

“When we came here from
the old country, I was just a kid.  I remember seeing the signs for Belfast
when we drove up here from Boston.  It made me feel welcome here.  You know I
loved it here right from the first day.  So much space.  I remember looking out
the back of my grandpa’s friend’s station wagon, you know, one of those ones
with the fake wood panels on the side.  Anyway, I loved the big cars almost as
much as I loved the open spaces on the Atlantic.  We left the ‘
troubles’
behind that day.  I even forgot some of the pain about my da’s death that day
on the drive.”

“You sure had your
share of the bad luck lottery, Thomas.  But you always bounced back.  Just like
you’re going to this time.”

“Ya, maybe.”

“That’s the whiskey
talking, boy, not you.  Let’s get some food in your gut.  How long since you
had anything solid to eat?”

“It’s been nothing but
liquid lunch for a while now, Billy.”

They pulled off the
Maine Turnpike just after crossing over York River and headed for Route One.

“I’m sure I remember a
diner along this truck route somewhere near here,” Billy said.  Sure enough,
just outside Kittery they came up to a diner in an old silver Airstream that’d
been enlarged to include a porch with six tables.  The kitchen took over the
whole of the trailer part.  Inside the smell of bacon crisping and fresh coffee
assaulted Thomas’ senses and brought back memories of his first year in
America. 
I always loved bacon and eggs.  We never had that bacon without
rind on it in Ireland.  Funny how everything from that first year is rushing
back today.  Must be ’cause I’m starting fresh.  Jesus.  I don’t know what I’d’ve
done without Billy.