Rain on the Dead

NANTUCKET (#u716228c6-7378-52df-a43c-835920399ae5)

1 (#u716228c6-7378-52df-a43c-835920399ae5)

The island of Nantucket, Massachusetts – high summer, the western end of the harbour crowded with boats, many tied up at the jetty. Among them was a scarlet-and-white sport-fisherman named Dolphin. On the flying bridge, a grey-haired man sat at the wheel playing a clarinet, something plaintive and touching. He was around sixty, a white curling beard giving him the look of an old sailor.

The man who joined him from below, wearing swimming trunks, had dark tousled hair and the beard of some medieval bravo. He was fit and muscular, his smile pleasant enough, his only unusual feature two scars on his left chest which any doctor would have recognized as relics from old bullet wounds.

He spoke in Irish. ‘Big night, Kelly!’

The other answered in the same. ‘You could say that. It’ll be dark soon, Tod – if you’re going to grab that swim, it’d better be now.’

‘I will. Keep your eye out for that kid, Henry, from the harbourmaster’s office. He’s bringing our passports and the credit card, so don’t forget to speak like the Yank your passport says you are.’

He slid down the ladder, vaulted over the rail, and swam away. Kelly heard a call from the dock.

‘Mr Jackson, are you there?’

Kelly descended the ladder. ‘He’s having a swim. I’m his partner, Jeremy Hawkins.’

Henry handed over the two passports. ‘There you go, sir, Mr Jackson’s credit card is in the envelope and your mooring licence covers you until Friday.’

Kelly took the package. ‘Thanks, son.’

‘That’s great clarinet I just heard. Kind of sounds like Gershwin, though I don’t recognize the tune.’

‘It’s an Irish folk song called “The Lark in the Clear Air”. And you’re right, I did put a bit of Gershwin in there.’

‘I think he would have been pleased, sir. Are you and your friend professional musicians?’

‘I was for a while and he does play decent piano, but on the whole we found other things kept getting in the way.’

‘Well, that seems like a damn shame to me,’ Henry said, and walked away, calling at another boat.

Kelly turned and looked out over the harbour to see how Tod was getting on, and saw him swimming towards a round buoy floating on a chain. Many people were diving or jumping off the boats, some in wet suits, generally having a good time while the light still held.

For his part, Tod stroked the last couple of yards, then grabbed onto the chain, aware of the unmistakable sound of a helicopter descending somewhere in the distance.

He hung there, listening, and two young men erupted from the water, like black seals in their wet suits. They were like twins, darkly handsome, the same wildness apparent in their faces.

The nearest one grabbed the chain and laughed as his brother joined them. ‘Mr Jackson, I recognize you from your photo. We’re the ones you came to meet. The Master sends his regards and hopes that success in our venture will make us your favorite Chechens. I’m Yanni and this is Khalid.’

He had no accent, which his brother explained in a rather mocking tone. ‘Our parents were killed by barbaric Russian soldiers in the Chechen war. The wonderful American Red Cross saved us and our grandparents, and gave us a new life in good old New York.’

‘Where thanks to the public school system, we emerged as normal American teenagers,’ Yanni said.

‘Creating a problem for Westerners who expect Muslims to look and sound like Arabs,’ Khalid said.

‘So what can Muslims who look like Westerners do?’ Yanni added.

‘Why, serve Allah as undercover warriors in the great struggle,’ his brother said. ‘And here we are. We’ve already checked out the house of our target. It’s just off the beach, surrounded by trees – no problem. An easy one, this.’

Tod said, ‘Except that every security camera on every property you passed walking along that beach probably has your faces now.’

‘So we’ll wear ski masks for the hit,’ Khalid said. ‘Why should it matter as long as the target is dead? That’s all that counts.’

They were no longer smiling. Their faces were like death masks, their eyes pinpricks. They were obviously on drugs, which exasperated Tod, though there was no point in mentioning it now.

‘I’m going back to that boat.’ He indicated the Dolphin.‘I’ll see you there in forty-five minutes.’

They didn’t reply, simply turned and swam away, and so did he.

Hawkins was Tim Kelly, and Jackson, Tod Flynn, both of them Provisional IRA who had served sentences in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland for many killings. Released during the peace process, they had become mercenaries. The situations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and elsewhere offered highly paid security work and sometimes rather more than that, for Flynn had been a top enforcer with the IRA, and reputation was everything in the Death Trade. It brought the cautious phone calls, the offers of the big money that went with them, and the offer for this present job had been very big.

In the cabin belowdecks, he had a large whiskey, feeling strangely cold, and told Kelly about his meeting with the Chechens. Kelly said, ‘I knew it was a mistake to get involved with sodding Muslims. What are we going to do?’

‘There’s not much we can do, but I’ll tell you this. I’m putting a pistol in my pocket for when they come, just in case it gets nasty. You should, too,’ and he hurried away to his cabin.

He showered and dressed, and as he did so, remembered the first time he’d heard the Master’s voice, filled with quiet authority, and a touch of English upper class.

‘Would that be Mr Tod Flynn?’ the voice had asked.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘I’ve just credited your bank account with a hundred thousand dollars. Check for yourself, and I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.’

Tod frowned, but called his bank and received the happy news that the money had indeed been deposited from a Swiss bank in Geneva.

When the second call came, he said instantly, ‘Who is this?’

‘People know me as the Master. That will do for the moment.’

‘Al Qaeda,’ Tod said. ‘Everyone in the business knows about you guys and the way you operate. Don’t you have enough of your own people to call on? What do you want me for?’

‘Oh, I’m a great admirer. That finance man in Nigeria you took care of – five hundred yards through an open window of a car doing seventy. Splendid work. I have a list. My favourite was the Russian paratroop general who glanced out of the turret of his tank for a moment during a street battle and you took him at five hundred yards.’

‘Four hundred,’ Tod said. ‘And it was snowing. So what do you want?’

‘I have a target, living quietly in a house on the island of Nantucket with a manservant. I’m sending in a couple of Chechen boys to knock him off. All I need from you is to keep an eye on things and pick them up when they’re done. You’ll be waiting in a boat off the beach and they’ll swim out to you.’

‘So I’m the getaway driver, is that it?’ Tod laughed harshly. ‘What’s he done, this target?’

‘No need for you to know. Let’s just say he’s an old enemy.’

Tod nodded. ‘And what would be in it for me?’

‘You’ve already got one hundred thousand. That’s for you and your friend Kelly. I’ll give you another hundred afterwards and take care of your expenses.’

As usual, greed won the day. ‘Add another fifty thousand,’ Tod said. ‘Which rounds it to a quarter of a million, and I expect the full advance before we go.’