The Angel Tapes (5 page)

Sweetman and he arrived some minutes after four. There was a man—Blade guessed by his accent and bearing that he was a U.S. Marine—and a woman on duty in the lobby. Macken was given a brief but thorough frisking and Sweetman's purse was scanned for weaponry. Then a junior aide escorted them to the ambassador's office. He tapped lightly on the door, opened it a fraction and looked in.

“Umm, his Excellency is on a call right now.”

“Sure we'll be like mice, so we will,” Blade said, and pushed the door open, to allow Sweetman in ahead of him. The aide looked startled, then shook his head slowly and left.

The office was almost exactly as Macken had pictured it. Its walls were half-paneled with the greenish brown wood that he always associated with American offices. But the big desk was mahogany; likewise the chair behind it. Two flags hung limply at the rear of the desk: the Stars and Stripes and the Irish Tricolor. Immediately behind and above the ambassador's head was the obligatory photograph of the current president.

The ambassador was dressed in a beautifully tailored dark-blue suit. His hair looked dark blue, too, Blade decided, and incongruously youthful and full, in contrast to his deeply lined face. A white scar ran along one tanned cheek. Blade wondered about that. Then he noticed the other photographs in the room—scenes from combat zones, uniforms, and war vehicles that spoke of service in Vietnam. There were military souvenirs, too, placed at random among the books on the shelves.

Blade approved. He liked dealing with men with military backgrounds—partly because he'd one himself, but mainly because such men, in his experience, were usually more forthright than others. He asked himself, though, how a former soldier could adjust to diplomatic life, where an unwise word or too limp a handshake could have dire consequences.

Yet this old soldier had made the transition well, Blade saw; whoever he was talking with on the phone could not fail to be reassured by the ambassador's gentle and persuasive manner. Death threats? Not here, not here, he heard him say. No, the whole thing had been blown out of all proportion.

Ambassador Seaborg gestured toward the three chairs in front of his desk and Macken and Sweetman sat down. There was a paperweight in the shape of an army jeep on the desk—a parting gift to one “Col. E. William Seaborg”; a sawed-off and highly polished 30-mm shell casing held a dozen unused and meticulously sharpened pencils.

The ambassador smiled warmly in their direction as he finished the conversation and hung up. Then he came from behind the desk and shook hands.

“Thank you both for coming. Mr. Redfern will be joining us shortly. Coffee? Tea?”

They declined. Then the ambassador surprised them both: he became another person. Gone was the suaveness of Seaborg's telephone manner; it was as though a weight had fallen abruptly from his shoulders; he seemed to pull himself up to his full height—and that height was considerable.

“I won't bullshit either of you,” he said. “I prefer to leave that to the politicians. We've made inquiries about you, Detective Superintendent, and it gives me confidence to know that a man of your background is handling the investigation.”

Macken raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Our Mr. Redfern's work. It's his job to find out these things. You know he's with the agency, don't you?”

“I guessed as much.”

“Ever been involved with terrorists, Blade?… I may call you Blade?”

“You may indeed. And yes and no.”

Seaborg laughed loudly; it took Macken and Sweetman aback.

“You know, I've served in this country for close to five years and I still don't speak the goddamn language. What does ‘yes and no' mean?”

“Well, sir,” Blade said, “I need hardly tell
you
”—he nodded in the direction of Seaborg's combat photographs—“that terrorism is a relative term; one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.”

“True.”

“So, to answer your question: yes, I've come into contact with terrorists: mainly the Hizbollah, Hamas, and the PLO in Lebanon. And no, as far as they themselves were concerned, they weren't terrorists; to them, the Israelis were the terrorists. But we were the UN, so we didn't take sides.”

Seaborg seemed satisfied with this reply. He sat down at his desk and opened a manila folder. Blade saw that it contained sheets of computer printout.

“‘Sandhurst Royal Military Academy,'” the ambassador read out loud. “‘Third battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment.' Forgive me for asking, but isn't that a tad unusual for an Irishman?”

“The pay was better in the British Army.”

Seaborg didn't know if Macken was serious.

“Well, you certainly had a distinguished career,” he said, flipping through the dossier. “Germany, southern Lebanon, Cyprus. Decorated six times. Then in, let's see … 1981, it's all over. You resigned your commission. Why in hell did you do that?”

“Mind if I smoke?” Blade asked. He didn't wait for a reply but took a pack of Hamlets from his breast pocket, stripped one of its clear foil wrapping, and lit it.

Seaborg frowned. He stood up, went to a cabinet and returned with a cut-glass ashtray. It looked as though it had never before seen real service.

“I put somebody into hospital,” Blade said. “He raped a woman—a girl, a tourist. I thought he deserved what I gave him. The army disagreed.”

“Could be because the man you hospitalized was your commanding officer,” the ambassador said. He grinned wryly. “I can understand them being a bit pissed about a thing like that. You were damn lucky they didn't press charges.”

He went pointedly to the air-conditioning, turned it up a notch, and sat down again.

“Anyway, Blade,” he continued, shutting the folder, “I don't give a damn, either way. I've just been talking with the White House—tenth time today, incidentally, and it's still only eleven in the morning over there. They want a full-scale operation. Army, police, every available man. They figure that the more manpower we throw at this, the sooner we get our bomber.”

Macken glanced at Sweetman; her expression told him that she'd read this the same way. Without having heard the tape recording of Angel's demands, Seaborg had dropped the plural and was referring to the bomber as a single entity.

“But that,” Seaborg continued, “is not the way
I'd
go about it, if I were running things.”

The door opened and a fair-haired man in his late thirties entered. There'd been no knock. His appearance fitted uncannily well with the voice Blade had heard that morning in Duffy's office; he knew before introductions were made that the newcomer was Lawrence Redfern.

Like stags in the rutting season, Macken and he embarked on the ritual of sizing each other up. This, Blade thought, is a man you would not want as an enemy. Redfern looked with disgust at the cigar, then eased himself into the vacant chair with the fluidity of movement of a beast of prey.

At that moment Blade's mind played back an image he'd seen earlier, an image he'd not consciously registered: a picture on the wall. It showed a somewhat younger Seaborg standing, against a backdrop of desert, in the company of an army officer wearing the bars of a major. That officer was Lawrence Redfern.

Redfern placed a boxed audiocassette on the desk.

“You might as well know,” he told Macken and Sweetman, “that we're abreast of developments in this affair. We know about this guy Angel; we know what he wants, and”—he paused—“we're damned if he's going to get it.”

“May I ask where you got that tape?” Blade said.

“You may. Commissioner Duffy had it sent over by courier. I assumed you knew that.”

Redfern's tone suggested that Macken was very much a fool if he'd
not
known.

“Well, I didn't.” Blade was irritated. “He didn't say anything about it to
me.
”

“Gentlemen!” Seaborg raised a hand. “Let's not get off on the wrong foot here. I apologize, Blade; I thought you knew. Mr. Duffy promised us full cooperation, and that included letting us have the same information you're working on. He ought to have told you, I agree, but it's not my place to criticize. Now, can we press on?”

Blade shrugged.

“As I was about to say before Mr. Redfern joined us,” the ambassador continued, “I believe that the best way of handling this is to maintain as low a profile as possible.” He stood up. “Do nothing—or at least behave as though you're doing nothing. Lull the enemy into a false sense of security. That's how battles are won. Make him think you're powerless. Then
he
has to bring the fight to
you.
If he sees that you're making no move toward him, then he'll feel obliged to make one toward you.”

“And he'll make the wrong move,” Redfern said.

“Exactly. Blade?”

Macken leaned across the desk and squashed his cigar out in the ashtray. It continued to smolder slightly and Redfern waved a hand under his nose. Blade smiled to himself, then sat back in his chair. He linked his fingers, started to stroke his chin with both thumbs. He half closed his eyes and began speaking in a soft voice.

“I was in command of a Saracen unit in Cyprus, patrolling the Green Line, as they call it, between north and south. The animosity between those two peoples—the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots—had to be seen to be believed. You saw the North and South Vietnamese in action, Colonel, so you'll understand.”

Seaborg nodded. If he thought it unusual to be addressed by his military rank then he gave no sign.

“One night,” Blade went on, “a group of Turks raided a village in my sector, killed two men, broke into the church, and made off with a number of icons and gold objects—worth a lot of money, but the desecration was worse. So the headman called a meeting and the men discussed what to do about it. Most of the younger ones wanted to cross over to the north and raid the first Turkish village they came to. Maybe plunder the mosque, too, if they could. An eye for an eye.”

He paused, then said: “But the headman disagreed; he'd a better idea. ‘Let's pretend,' says he, ‘that nothing has happened. Let's make these jackals believe that they can have their way with our village unchallenged.'

“But every night he posted armed men in concealed positions at the approaches to the village; they were well hidden. Sure enough, ten days later the same band of Turks returned, suspecting nothing. They were massacred—all of them. We found the corpses the next morning on the road. They were riddled with bullets and so mutilated with knives and machetes that their own mothers wouldn't have recognized them.”

Blade stopped and nodded slowly. Plainly, the tale was finished.

“So what's the point you're making, Macken?” Redfern asked.

“The point is: I agree with the colonel. We keep a low profile. We call off the hounds. We tell this Angel character that we're having a whip-round for the money.”

“But in the meantime,” Seaborg said, “we're laying in wait for him.”

Blade nodded. “Our police psychologist, Dr. Earley, is putting together a picture of this man. I trust her judgment when she says we're dealing with a huge ego. The swine wants to see us running around like blue-arsed flies. He'd like nothing better than seeing half the Guards in the country searching high and low for him. But if he thinks we're doing nothing, he'll be frustrated. We won't be playing the game.”

“I'm with you,” Seaborg said.

Redfern grunted.

“Think of him,” Blade said, “as a hermit crab. He's in there, in his shell, and it's like a fortress; he's thoroughly protected. He wants to see the little blue fishes swimming past him, and he can stretch out his pincers and grab one of them every now and then and give it a good shake, just for the sheer divilment of it. But if the fish refuse to play and don't come looking for him, then he'll be forced to show more and more of himself. Until he's out so far that there's no going back. And then we
have
the bastard.”

Five

“I thought,” Sweetman said, “it went grand, considering. What did you make of Redfern?”

“Oh, he's not the worst. A bit tight-arsed, but what did you expect? They probably issue their people with special underpants. Did you notice something funny though? There wasn't a mention of the CIA. I think Seaborg referred to ‘the agency' at one stage, but that was the extent of it. Like he was talking about an
estate
agency. God, they're secretive so-and-sos.”

“
I
thought Seaborg was very up-front.”

“No, I mean Redfern's mob. Seaborg's a good man. The Yanks are lucky to have him here.”

It was approaching six o'clock. The air was cooler now in the shade of the limes that line the avenue outside the embassy. On the other side of the intersection, commuting Dublin was making its tortuous way back to the southern suburbs. Starlings chattered in the trees.

Sweetman removed the parking ticket from her windshield and tossed it in among the others in the glove compartment. She opened the door on Blade's side. Then she saw he had his cellular phone in his hand and was extending the antenna.

“I want to have a word with Duffy before he leaves,” he told her. “I didn't like the way he handled that tape business. Fuck him; he might have told me first and not have me making an eejit of myself in front of Redfern.”

But Duffy was in a meeting and couldn't be disturbed. Blade harangued the operator at Garda Command and Control, to no avail. Fuming, he broke the connection.

No sooner had he done so than the phone rang.

“Yes?” he said gruffly.

“
HELLO, BLADE! TELL ME, DID IT GO ALL RIGHT WITH THE AMERICANS
?”

Macken blanched. Sweetman must have guessed the identity of the caller because her silent lips framed the single word: “Angel?” He nodded.