This Other Eden (23 page)

‘How
come you got a hard-on then?’ Rosalie asked Max finally, fixing him with her
steady, unblinking, green eyes. Eyes that Max usually found drop-dead gorgeous,
but at the present time found intrusive and frankly intimidating.

‘Uhm,
well… I just couldn’t help it,’ he replied.

‘I
presumed you couldn’t help it,’ Rosalie snapped. ‘I didn’t think you’d sat
there and induced the damn thing. Why couldn’t you help it?’

Somebody
had once told Max that honesty was the best policy.

‘Look,
Rosalie … It was amazing, you know? My performance. To pull it off like
that, to trick all those cops. It was like a career triumph, like winning an
Oscar or something.

Rosalie’s
eyes said it all. Whoever had told Max that honesty was the best policy was
wrong.

Parting
of the ways.

By the time the police
convoy arrived back in Dublin, Max was almost tired of those gorgeous green
eyes that he had found so fascinating since the first day he had seen them.
They had glared at him in silent fury for the entire journey. They were so
fierce and strong that Max was actually beginning to fear that their impact
might by now have left permanent marks on his face.

The
reason for Rosalie’s fury was not just that Max’s vanity had been the cause of
her being about to spend the rest of her life in a cell. She was a reasonable
woman and aware that the Garda were clearly on to her, and that she would have
got nicked whether Max was there or not. No, her fury went much deeper than
that, for it was fuelled by a wounded heart.

She
liked Max. He had already saved her life once, in Plastic Tolstoy’s
Claustrosphere, and she had liked him then. Even tough, no-nonsense terrorist
fighters have a romantic side, and Rosalie’s was very well developed indeed.
She was a wild country girl raised on fairy tales and ancient myths. If
gorgeous handsome men wanted to risk their lives on her behalf, then she didn’t
mind a bit. Rosalie had wondered from the start whether Max might not be a
little sweet on her, from the way she had caught him looking at her. However,
she was not a vain woman, and thought it unlikely that such a colossal and rich
star could be showing anything other than a passing interest.

Therefore,
when for a second time he had offered to save her bacon, she had been deeply
moved. Rosalie had been brought up to believe that when you love someone you’ll
do anything to look after them and protect them. That certainly seemed to be
what Max was doing. After all, aiding the escape of serious criminals was a
pretty big crime in itself and Max had walked into it without a murmur. Now it
turned out the whole episode had just been about an actor’s vanity, a vanity so
great that it had eventually ended in Rosalie getting arrested anyway. He
didn’t like her at all, he had just used her as an opportunity to show off. She
hated him. She hated him because she had started to fall in love with him, and
now she would never see him again.

The
little Garda convoy eventually pulled up in the courtyard of Dublin’s Central
Police Station. Max was removed first.

‘Rosalie,
I’ll
—‘
he started to say.

‘I wish
I’d never met you at all,’ she said, her eyes no longer fierce and strong, but
liquid with sadness. ‘And I never want to see you again.’

‘You
won’t, love,’ the Inspector assured her. ‘They don’t put men in women’s
prisons, not even transvestites.’

Chapter
Fifteen

Unlikely saviour

Exit
pursued by love.

Max was deported the next
day. Nathan met him at the airport and was with him when the Garda escorted him
to the plane. Except, of course, they did not get as far as the plane, not for
quite a while anyway. Dublin Airport Authority, like all airport authorities,
seemed to see it as their principal duty to herd passengers as far down the
departure process as possible, before informing them that there will be a
two-hour delay. They do not inform you that you are passing the last lavatory
or the last bar or the last newspaper shop. That is something you discover for
yourself once ensconced in a place called a departure ‘lounge’, which is
defined as a room in which the sole facility is an inadequate number of plastic
seats.

They
stood, leaning against the wall. Nathan, Max and the two cops. For once it was
Max’s mind that was utterly preoccupied with affairs of the heart. All Max
could think about was those green eyes staring at him and then filling with
tears. Astonishingly, Nathan was not, for the moment, thinking of his beloved
and unattainable Flossie. When you are talking about a movie, even love
sometimes has to take a back seat.

‘I have
this great idea for the plot of our film,’ he had said to Max when they met.

‘If
it’s anything to do with cross-dressing, forget it. I’ll kill you if you ever
breathe a word of what happened,’ Max snapped, ‘and believe me, I know how to
kill.’

‘No,
no, it’s a bigger thing, a thematic curve.’ Nathan was very,
very
excited.
‘I am very,
very
excited,’ he said.

‘I
don’t care, I’m not interested. The world is a hollow and empty place and I am the
hollowest and emptiest thing in it.’ Max turned to the officers who were
escorting him. ‘Listen, guys. I have let down a woman I think I am in love
with. I have to make it up to her, please unlock the cuffs.’

The
officers did not move. Max pressed on.

‘Please,
guys. Try to forget for a minute that you’re tough, hard, ball-breaking peace
officers and get in touch with the child inside you. Ask that child what he
would do.’

‘We’re
doing you a favour putting you on a plane, son,’ the first officer replied. ‘If
you start a relationship by apologising to a bird, you’ll be under the thumb
all your life. Jesus, you’ll be after asking permission to go and get pissed in
the pub.’

‘That’s
right, pal. You have to be tough, forceful,’ the second officer added. ‘If you
love this little lady, then ring her from the States and say, “All right, so I
fucked up. So what? Do you have a problem with that, darling?” Tell her that
and if she does have a problem with it, then tell her that she can fuck right
off. There’s plenty of birds in the world that aren’t so fucking choosy.’

‘That’s
right,’ said the first officer. ‘Besides which, you’re better off sat in the
pub anyway. At least your money’s your own.’

‘Thanks,
guys. You’ve been real,’ Max said, and the group lapsed into silence. The Irish
cops’ attitude reminded Nathan of the cops he had met at the Beverly Hills
Fortified Village. He wondered whether this relaxed attitude to romance was
common to all policemen. Maybe if he joined the police he would get over
Flossie. Damn! He had let his mind wander on to Flossie again. Now he was as
sad as Max.

Protective
custody.

After Max had parted from
Rosalie she had been taken to an interrogation room and asked a lot of
questions about Mother

Earth.
She, of course, had told the police nothing. Partly because she would rather
have died than sing, and partly because, like all members of even vaguely
efficient secret organisations, she actually knew very little.

She did
not, for instance, know where Mother Earth’s detailed knowledge of the next
environmental hot-spots came from. And she could not have told the police, even
had she wanted to, how her unit and others like it were always able to be at
the heart of the action so quickly.

‘The
intelligence people look after that stuff,’ she told her interrogators. ‘We
just go where we’re told.’

‘So who
pays?’ they had asked, as they always did in such circumstances, Mother Earth
finances being so notoriously shadowy.

‘Rich
green fellas, I guess,’ Rosalie replied, and she knew no more than that. She
had, of course, heard the rumours, as everyone had, that some megabillionaires
were finally beginning to see sense. That they were turning the funds they had
acquired destroying the Earth to the job of saving it. Rosalie did not,
however, have any better idea than the police as to whom these dubious
philanthropists might be.

‘Oh,
come on!’ barked the policeman. ‘The kind of equipment you people carry doesn’t
materialise out of thin air! That automatic rifle you were caught with is a
state-of-the-art weapon. Our men don’t have anything as good as that. Who the
hell is supplying all that stuff?’

‘I
don’t know, gentlemen, and if I did 1 certainly would not be after telling you
now, would I? Now if you’re going to torture me, will you please do me the
courtesy of getting it over with?’

The
chief officer adopted a slightly offended but still censorial tone.

‘Sorry
to disappoint you, Miss, but contrary to hysterical rumour we do not torture
people. Not unless you count the food. Take her down, Constable.’

‘When
do I get to see a lawyer?’ Rosalie asked as she was hauled to her feet by a
tough WPC.

‘You
can see a lawyer in America. Good day, Miss.’

And to
Rosalie’s surprise, she discovered that she was not to be tried in Ireland at
all, but handed over to the FBI for extradition to America. There she would
face trial for the DigiMac Studio raid. Her departure was set for the following
day. A magistrate had already issued the appropriate authorisation and there
were no avenues of appeal. In vain did Rosalie protest that this was completely
illegal, that they could not just hand over a European citizen to the American
authorities. The truth was, of course, that they could do what they liked and
were going to. The European Federation was so utterly plagued with terrorists
(terrorism having taken over from car theft as the number one crime) that they
were absolutely delighted when another country offered to take one off their
hands. The head of the Irish Special Branch of EuroPol had actually phoned the
US ambassador to tell him that they had hundreds more suspected terrorists
awaiting trial, and the FBI were welcome to as many of them as they wanted. On
behalf of the Bureau, the ambassador had politely declined the offer.

What
kind of G-man are you?

The following evening, the
Garda handed Rosalie over to the custody of the American authorities, embodied
in this case by Special Agent Judy Schwartz.

‘Hi,
I’m Special Agent Judy Schwartz,’ said Judy, offering Rosalie his hand. She
kept hers, which were handcuffed together, firmly in her lap.

‘You’re
a G-man?’ she said. ‘You don’t look like one.’

‘Oh,
well, I can explain that. What happens is, when there’s any rough stuff, what I
do is I rush into a telephone box and put on fifteen stone of pure muscle and I
get so handsome and cool it’s terrifying.’

Judy
didn’t know why he bothered really, it never changed. No matter how many times
he tackled nerdism head on, it never got any better. Ever since he had arrived
in Dublin and met his opposite numbers in the Garda Special Branch he had been
aware of the sniggering that followed him about. Judy sort of understood. The
media had decreed many decades before what a secret agent should look like and
it just wasn’t like Judy. Judy realised that it was not really the fault of the
people who laughed at him. It was society in general. After all, if you’re a
policeman and you’re told that the FBI are sending an agent to pick up a
terrorist, you do not expect somebody with one leg shorter than the other,
thick glasses and crooked teeth. Judy
sort
of understood, but it still
hurt, even after all these years.

Judy
would have been pleased to know that on this occasion his little anti-nerdism
joke did at least hit home. Rosalie nearly apologised, but then stopped
herself. This man was, after all, going to haul her off for trial in the
States. On reflection, she didn’t care if she had offended him or not.

‘I’ll
take charge of the prisoner now,’ Judy said to the officers who were flanking
Rosalie, but they did not move away. Instead, one of them snapped open one of
the cuffs on Rosalie’s wrist and locked it on his own.

‘You’re
still on European soil, Agent Schwartz. We have to escort you and the prisoner
to the airport and put you both on the plane.’

‘Yes,
of course,’ Judy said. ‘Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that, in
the interests of security, the suspect is handcuffed to me.’

Judy
met the surprised look of the big policeman steadily.

‘This
case is extremely important to the Bureau,’ he explained. ‘Ms Connolly is an
experienced criminal, known to be shrewd, resourceful and tough. I cannot take
any chances on us losing her.’