The South Lawn Plot (24 page)

A
LL HE TOUCHED
was the space between the sheets. And it wasn't warm.

Manning sat up and covered his face with his cupped hands. He gave himself about twenty seconds before he dared look at the clock. 8.40. Not as bad as he had expected.

Rebecca had let him sleep late and had taken Jessica to school. He rubbed the palm of his hand over his chin. The stubble might have to stay.

He reached for the bedside phone and dialed the embassy. His call went through to the answering machine. “Good,” he said.

He swung his legs out of bed, grabbed his watch and gave himself two minutes for a body wash and to brush his teeth. He threw on a clean shirt, reckoned he could manage without a tie, pulled on a pair of khaki pants and matched them with a pair of his more sensible brown shoes. He grabbed a navy blazer that was draped over the back of a chair and headed downstairs.

The kitchen was illuminated by shafts of sunlight probing through trees in the back yard that were still some days away from full leaf. Ten minutes for a coffee and something to bite on and he would be in the car.

Rebecca had made a pot of coffee. She had left him a bran muffin on a plate. There was also a note: “Took Jessie to school. Call me on my cell later. Love R.” Throwing some coffee in a traveling mug, Manning grabbed the muffin and made his way through the rear kitchen door, into the fenced yard and out through the door in the wooden fence.

“The winner,” he said as he got into the car, this time without indulging himself in his old habit of checking under the vehicle first.

He smiled. He was feeling good. It was one of those spring mornings that made Washington worth the steamy summer and dreary winter.

“Good morning, D.C.” The disc jockey on the radio was suitably seasonable, too.

Yes, Manning thought, it was possible to leave a past behind, just like
the alleyway behind the Georgetown row houses that made up his adopted American neighborhood, now vanishing in the rear view mirror. Yes, he could live here, maybe for keeps.

Not too many minutes later, Manning steered the car through the wrought iron gates. The wheels screeched as they dug into the gravel of the driveway. He parked beside the black SUV already pulled up outside the door of the house. He was on time, just about, but clearly the G-Man had gotten the jump on him.

Manning turned off his engine and got out of the car. He placed the palm of his hand on the SUV's hood. It was only warm. So, he thought, the G-Man had been here for a while.

Manning stepped back and gazed up at the house. It was a fine looking building, a Georgian style mansion with, as the ambassador had told him proudly, an original floor plan that included no fewer than eight bedrooms, though some had been converted into offices by the previous owners.

Manning smiled. The ambassador would probably turn them back into bedrooms, probably name one after Lincoln, or better still, Mata Hari.

He took a few steps towards the front door, remembering as he did so that he was the sole possessor of the house key. So where was Voles?

His question was immediately answered. The front door of the house opened, and the onetime FBI agent was standing just a few feet away. He caught sight of Manning and waved with his free hand. In his other hand he was carrying a bulky case. It looked like it might be a container for a large musical instrument.

“How did you get in?” Manning said, holding his hands out and raising his shoulders into a bodily question mark.

Voles smiled and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a key and held it aloft.

“The ambassador,” he said. “I'm sorry, Mr. Manning, but I like to do this work alone. Secrets of the trade. By the way the house is clean. No bugs, flying, crawling or installed.”

Manning stared at Voles and said nothing.

“I know what you're thinking,” said Voles. “Don't take it personally. I could have insisted that nobody from your embassy showed up at all, but in fact I wanted to have a word with you.”

Manning twisted his feet in the gravel and eyed Voles carefully.

“Mind if I have a look around the house?” he said.

“Well, actually, I do,” Voles replied.

Manning frowned.

“Again, Mr. Manning, Eamonn, please don't take this personally. When I check out a place I prefer that nobody but my direct employer is the next person to set foot in the door. Not that I don't trust you entirely, almost entirely, but for me it's just policy. This way I can guarantee a clean environment at the point of payment. After that, well…” Voles let the word trail away.

Manning well understood the man's professional caution but wasn't going to let him off the hook that easily.

“Well. I have a key. What if I just walk into the place after you leave?”

“I won't leave until the ambassador arrives,” said Voles. He looked at his watch. “She should be here in about twenty minutes. Plenty of time for you and I to have a talk.”

“A talk? What have we got to discuss? No doubt you agreed a price with Evans.”

Voles ignored the note of disdain in Manning's words.

“Well, I'm a curious man,” he said. “In the course of my work I entertain many questions and rarely do I have a chance to, shall we say, tap into the answers. At least in the clear light of a fine spring morning.”

Neither man had moved since setting eyes on each other but Voles now walked towards the back of his car. He opened the rear door and heaved the case into the trunk. There were several blankets, and Voles made sure the case was well padded.

“There we go,” he said, not so much to Manning as himself. But when he closed the trunk he stared directly at the diplomat.

“Let's take a little walk.” The American's tone had changed. There was no mistaking an order, and though he was taken aback, Manning shrugged as if to say where.

“There's a rather fine yard out back, garden, you would say. Twenty minutes around the borders of the lawn will do nicely,” said Voles.

He was already walking in the direction of a gate in a stone wall that led to the rear of the building. Manning stared after him for a second before he began to follow.

“Nice yard. And big,” Voles said.

Manning's eyes scanned the space, a leafy island with plenty of privacy. It was indeed a big chunk of real estate. He would really have to find out the price of the place now.

“I think the ambassador saw this movie about Marie Antoinette and got ideas. Apart from that she wants to take on the Brits in cocktail diplomacy,” he said.

Voles looked at Manning, silently asking the question.

“It works like this,” said Manning, warming to the subject, if not his companion. “In years past anytime the shit hit the fan in the Northern Ireland peace process, Her Majesty's diplomats would turn on the gin spigot. By that I mean they would entertain important people in the administration and Congress, or at least people who felt they were important.

“And I mean really entertain. Lunch at the best places in town, receptions at the ambassador's place up on Massachusetts Avenue and, the
pièce de resistance
, garden parties. You ought to see some of the Yanks go weak at the knees at one of those things, especially if the embassy hauls in some royal to conduct a tour of the flower gardens and drop the possibility of some honor from the old dear at the palace.

“The British don't have to threaten anybody with gunboats anymore. They just have to mention an honorary knighthood and the revolution's over before the first musket ball is fired. Ever been up at the British place?” Manning nodded his head slightly to one side.

“No,” Voles responded.

“Well, it's quite a scene. The ambassador's residence was designed by the same guy who built New Delhi. Someone at the Indian embassy told me that. I can't remember his name.”

Voles smiled. “The envoy or the architect?”

“Neither.”

“Well,” said Voles, “I can't quite rattle off the entire Indian embassy staff, but Edwin Lutyens was the man behind governmental Delhi. I know because I did some work for the bureau in south Asia a few years back. The British ambassador's place must be impressive indeed.”

“Yeah, fit for an empire. And a bloody good party. Are you an expert on architecture? Oh, I forgot, you are, in a way.”

“I suppose I am. I'm also a little curious. Isn't it all peaceful now in Northern Ireland? Why the cocktail wars?”

“Old habits,” said Manning. “While there's a lot of cooperation now there's still the big question over the future of Ireland, a border or no border. In the meantime, the present heavily depends on economics. The Brits are not
going to leave Northern Ireland completely hostage to ourselves in the South. It's a delicate thing, a little war of sorts, only no bombs, bullets.”

“You remember those things, don't you?” said Voles.

Manning, startled, looked directly at his interrogator, but the American was gazing away from him, to his right.

“I should tell you,” Voles continued, now turning to face Manning, “your security and intelligence people could easily conduct a sweep for bugs and wires but that's not the entire story. Let me paint a portrait of your country as the world intelligence community might view it.”

Manning let out a sigh, feigning impatience. But he was curious.

“Briefly then, Eamonn, your intelligence community is not lacking in literal intelligence but it is yet to be clearly delineated. In the past couple of years the political department at your Department of Foreign Affairs has been given a new set of guidelines and instructions on intelligence gathering. This sort of reinvigorated intelligence gathering, we won't quite call it spying, has been happening the world over, as you know, since September 2001 and all the nasty stuff that followed.

“The political department is your polite Irish version of MI6. It's moderately effective at certain levels but is still lacking a clear definition of your nation's national interest, or a clear picture of who in the world might be either harmful, or helpful, to those interests. You are at least ten years away from having a fully functional, non-military, intelligence-gathering arm. With a little help that can be cut back to five or six. But the budget is currently too small. The entire operation is gloriously amateur. Occasionally you strike pay dirt, such as Nigeria last year.”

Manning stared at Voles. “Nigeria?”

“Oh, yes. There was coup in the works but one of your people picked up word of it from some local woman he was having an affair with. Her sister was shacked up with one of the army officers heading up this little operation. Your man in Lagos rang Dublin with the news, or at least part of it. He was deliberately vague because, well, he was married.

“Anyway, the British, aware that your guys sometimes do pick up nuggets these days, were listening in on the lines even though your people probably would have passed it on to them anyway. The British have habits they will never relinquish. No doubt you understand that. Anyway, they looked into it even as they filed away a note on your man's playing around. You never know
when a little dirt might come in handy. The end of it all came rather quickly after that. The British tipped off the Nigerians, the plotters were rounded up and the few lucky ones ended up with border postings with front door views of the Sahara.”

“And the unlucky ones?”

Voles shrugged. “But back to your intelligence people. Your police have two main units but both are confined largely to operations on your own island. Your police security and intelligence section isn't bad, and we, I mean primarily the CIA, have had some success with them in tracking down itinerant Middle Eastern terrorist types who see Ireland as a bit of a backwater where they can work undisturbed, mainly on money laundering.

“Your military intelligence is again mostly a domestic operation and is understandably reluctant to involve itself with anything civil or political. On top of that, there is the matter of jealously. Give the job to the army and the cops will be jealous and vice versa. And where there is jealously, there are wagging tongues.”

“I get the picture,” Manning said, cutting Voles short. “So this is where you come in. Small, recently wealthy country on edge of Europe, militarily neutral on paper but increasingly being drawn into NATO's orbit. Intrigued at the thought of playing with the big boys but nervous about them, too. And considerable opposition to the idea of such big boys games on the domestic political front. That means a government concerned about keeping a lid on things. We don't spy on people so they don't have to spy on us. We're nice people, the funny, quaint and quirky Irish, so just bugger off and leave us alone.”

“Precisely, Eamonn. But how do you know you're being left alone?”

Before Manning could reply their talk was cut short by a piercing scream. Both men made for the gate, and as they reached it, they spotted the source.

“Oh, Christ,” said Manning, “it's bloody Evans. What is she doing on the ground?”

The two men hurried to where Evans had fallen. She was a heap on the ground, though a heap that would not go easily unnoticed.

“These bloody heels. God, Eamonn, I think I've broken my ankle.”

Manning arrived at the scene of the disaster first. Evans, her hair tossed and falling over her eyes, stared up pitifully at her first secretary.

“Ambassador, are you okay?” Manning did his best to sound concerned. He wanted to laugh.

“I'm not sure, really. Remind me to have this place properly paved when
we move in. They can't expect me to walk around the grounds in carpet slippers or rubber wellies.”

“Of course not,” said Manning. The ambassador, who, he concluded, must have been dropped at the gate by a cab, ignored the sarcastic tone. Manning looked around for Voles. He was standing about fifteen feet away. He nodded at Manning as if to say Evans was all his.

“Well, don't just stand there gawking, Eamonn. For God's, sake help me up.”