Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

“Really? Sounds more like your role in Las Vegas, if you ever revisit the place. That ‘revival’ thing is just a bizarre coincidence. I didn’t actually read the books. Do you know how long each of the three is? I plucked the Gandalf mojo out of the popular-culture air ages ago. My last name was Randolph. I needed a ‘magical’ moniker. ‘Gandolph.’” Garry chuckled and patted the hair at his temples. “Time did make me ‘Gandolph the Grey,’ though.”

Max chuckled too.

Chuckled. His mood was improving. No wonder he’d partnered with this guy.

“This route doesn’t seem familiar,” Max complained ten minutes later. “Sean and I had to have taken the M1 heading north before.”

“It shouldn’t,” Gandolph said. “Times have changed. I’m tracking our route on a Yahoo! map on my computer. The M1 wasn’t much of anything when you and your cousin made your way north. How? Hitchhiking, perhaps? Once you had ID’d and targeted the three IRA members who’d blown up O’Toole’s Pub and killed Sean, among six other victims, my job was to recruit you and get you off the island and onto the Continent for concealment and training. You were on the IRA’s most-wanted list for years.”

“When did that change?”

“Officially? Ages ago, as international grudges go. Since the Good Friday Agreement was signed by the British and Irish governments in nineteen ninety-eight, most of the politically motivated violence tapered off. International repugnance for the horror of nine/eleven finished off the ‘Troubles’ the way hundreds of years of relentless hatred and undying hope could not. The IRA has evaporated except for last-gasp ‘alternate’ groups. Recently, Belfast was named the safest city in the UK.”

Max snorted. “My memory is dysfunctional, not my nose for political hatred. The English have tried to destroy the Irish for almost five hundred years. And vice versa. Enmity is in the blood.”

“Quite true, Max, but it can’t compete with fundamental Islam’s jihad against Christian nations, for longevity. Give the Irish credit for knowing when they’re outgunned. At any rate, Belfast is the new tourist hot spot.”

“That bridge toll I paid near Drogheda?”

Gandolph nodded. “That was for crossing the Bridge of Peace. Less than two euros a car. You didn’t even notice.”

“It was a bloody highway toll. They’re as common as grass.”

“Exactly. We’ve crossed the border. You didn’t notice the changes in signage.”

Max looked around wildly. “It can’t be that simple. I may not remember much, but even my aching bones know that.”

“It won’t be simple,” Gandolph said, “but it at least will be possible now.”

Max spotted a pub sign. The place was stage-Irish rustic and called Durty Mulligan’s.

“That looks like a fine place to get stewed,” Max quipped.

Gandolph ran a vein-knotted hand through his pepper-dusted white hair. “Ah, it’s like old times again, without the imminent danger.”

“Are you sure?”

Gandolph shrugged. “No one’s had time to fix on us and figure out our mission. For now, we can eat, drink, and be merry, eh?” He eyed the attractive pub that had probably been put up five years ago.

“And you can catch me up even more on my forgotten past,” Max said.

“I said ‘be merry.’ Time enough for business when we’re back on the road.”

Once they were seated over a pint in the Belfast pub, though, Gandolph revved up his computer.

“We should have been doing this in the Temple Bar area of Dublin,” he said wryly.

“When I didn’t even know who she was and that we’d had a … serious connection? Even smacking me in the face with her name in foot-high gold letters didn’t trip my memory trigger. You’d think if our love affair was that intense, I’d remember it.

“And why do all these things come wireless nowadays?” Max asked, unable to keep an irritable edge out of his voice. He felt both antsy and reluctant. “It’s intrusive, and we could be tracked.”

Did he want to see the Web site of this “Temple Barr” in Dublin’s fair city or Belfast or anywhere on the globe? If she was his “lost love,” he had forgotten that fast enough to sleep with a sleek, mysterious blonde of the possibly traitorous sort, who could have seduced an alpine walking stick.

So all he’d get out of perusing his past now was looking at a woman betrayed, thanks to His Truly. Or Untruly, rather.

Garry … Gandolph, starting to look familiar and trustworthy, was as eager as a boy, though, bringing up the “Web page” as if unveiling a magical feat. Even Max knew the old guy was behind the times, more at sea at these tech things than how Max himself would be with an intact memory. His rush of affection made plain that he needed to keep that superior knowledge from his mentor.

Temple Barr, a memorable name for a PR woman, had chosen to use a Web site photo of herself taken against the huge stone creature statues on the floor of Vegas’s McCarran Airport. Max was shocked to instantly identify the place, but not the person. What kind of a cad was he?

“She’s … cute,” he couldn’t keep from commenting in his dazed monotone.