Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

“And,” Max reminded them, “for that recorded teenage pregnancy and the baby taken away, never to be found.”

Liam nodded, eyeing his fellows. “We played into her hands as well, then.”

“So does it matter, then, whether the money is from her or her ghost?” Max asked. “Isn’t that where you intend any money Kathleen raised in the States to go? To your widows and orphans?” He kept his voice disingenuous yet silken.

“Mostly,” Liam whispered back, “but we do have our own priorities, even now. Remember. You’ve promised to help find her stash of cash. Even if she’s not still alive, there’s a backup pile of it, and we deserve every bit of it.”

“You certainly do,” Gandolph said abruptly, with Oliver Hardy emphasis. Max marveled that his own mind could remember eighty-year-old Laurel and Hardy comedy routines, but not the tragedies of his recent life.

Gandolph put down his pint glass and sat back. “A fair bargain. We want her; you want her amassed foreign treasure. We still both need each other, but mostly we—Michael and I—need to get back to the States to hunt her and the guns and roses and money she promised you.”

At Gandolph’s prodding, Max rose.

He felt like a walking zombie. Nothing settled. He’d been prepared to bury Kathleen O’Connor as an old enemy dead and gone for both their benefits. Now he had to deal with her resurrected and still poisonous? Did forgiveness go that far? Recovering terrorism money for shaky, defanged terrorists? What was Gandolph thinking?

Probably way ahead of him and his on-off memory.

Max swaggered to the pub door, because it was either that or limp. Gandolph was right behind him.

Then the door crashed inward with a crowd of dark-coated men behind it … five, by an instant count: the two ex-IRA men they’d met with and three more of that ilk.

He and Gandolph had led them here, for sure.

“Out of the way,” Gandolph shouted, pushing Max into the wall and then through the open door behind the incoming newcomers. The room behind them exploded with Irish curses and splintering wood and glass as the two gangs met full force.

Max was out in the misty night, scrambling over the slippery-damp cobblestones, his hand rushing Gandolph along with him to the sanctuary of their car.

He grappled the keys from his pants pocket as he ran and used the unlocking device to open the doors from twenty feet away. The customary beep sounded like a siren in the echoing, hard empty streets of Belfast.

He shoved Gandolph around the Mondeo’s rear and into the passenger side. The older man clutched his computer and briefcase to his chest as Max leaped around the car’s front, then slammed himself into the driver’s seat, gunning the engine and careening down the left side of the narrow way. No headlights, no seat belts, no time.

The wheels screamed around a corner, into the so-far-deserted dark.

They heard muffled voices bursting out into the night and the choked sound of at least two cars or vans hastily starting behind them.

“Damn!” Max’s fist pounded the steering wheel.

“Damn for the interruption or because Kathleen may still be alive?” Gandolph grunted, with frequent interruptions, wrestling to buckle his seat belt while keeping hold of his precious computer and briefcase.

“Damn everything,” Max muttered, watching his side and rearview mirrors. “There they are,” he exclaimed, as the inside of the car was washed with a streak of headlights from the rear.

“I can get up a street map of this section,” Garry huffed, opening the laptop and making keys cluck like chickens.

“I haven’t time to crane my neck and eyes at small-screen maps,” Max said in frustration.

A screech of corner-turning wheels at an upcoming deserted cross street made him suddenly veer into the right lane … the wrong lane for this city.

Behind the Mondeo, a black Morris Mini crammed with men streaked forward fast … and toward the front fender of a crossing Ford Focus. Max squinted into the rearview mirror, watching both cars swerve away from a collision. He lurched the Mondeo into the proper left lane as a pair of high, bright headlights riding behind a sustained horn was about to smash into them head-on.

“Oh, my God, Max!” Garry averted his face. “I’ll expire from cardiac arrest.”

“They had the near miss, not us,” was Max’s reply. “Why did the ex-IRA raid the alternate IRA, and why they are now both after us?”

“Money. Kathleen was a master moneymaker, and both sides see no reason to let any hidden funds go to the other, or to foreign pilgrims like us seeking something as intangible as closure.”

“We wouldn’t keep any of that money, but give it to a common cause,” Max said.

He jerked the steering wheel and car down another side street, which turned out to be one-way the wrong way. He gunned the motor to shorten the time exposed to a head-on collision. Another cross street flashed by, with oncoming cars from both ways. Both drivers hit their brakes, and both cars spun sideways.