Dagger Magic

This morning they had launched from Downies to check a report of illegal fixed nets in the area. Their backup boat had developed engine trouble and would try to catch up later, but their land-based backup would be shadowing them from the shore in a Land Rover, also linked by radio. Scanlan had spotted him as they passed Dunfanaghy, and expected to pick him up again after they rounded Horn Head.

The radio chatter ebbed and flowed against the background bluster of wind and waves, and Scanlan automatically scanned the shoreline as O'Haverty skipped their nimble craft past a succession of small inlets gouged out of the coastline by the action of the North Atlantic tides. But as O'Haverty brought the boat around the point of the headland, a sudden and unexpected stretch of calm water stretched before them along a narrow crescent of sandy beach adjacent to the rock cliffs. Taking closer notice now, Scanlan saw that the outbound swells were coated with the greasy rainbow film of spilled oil.

"Uh-oh," O'Haverty said, glancing back at him.

"Yeah, I see it." Scanlan swung his binoculars along the sweep of shoreline and adjusted the focus. "We'd better have a closer look."

As O'Haverty nosed the boat toward the beach, the slick became visible as a V-shaped stain fanning out across the flattened waves, apparently coming from a waterline cleft in the base of the cliffs that marked the western end of the beach.

"Looks like it's coming from those rocks up ahead," O'Haverty said.

"Yeah." Scanlan lowered his binoculars for a few seconds to peer with unassisted sight, then resumed his study. "I don't see any signs of a wreck, though. Maybe an oil barrel's gotten washed against the rocks and broke open. Let's go in, and I'll check it out."

Without comment, O'Haverty brought the boat around with a spin of the wheel and gave a brief rev to the engines to propel them in toward the shore while Scanlan shed his binoculars and helmet and moved into the bow, ruffling a hand through sandy hair. As soon as the boat's snub nose nudged sandy bottom, Scanlan threw a leg over the side and stepped onto the sand and shingle, grabbing an anchor and coil of line. Sea water washed and tugged at the legs of his survival suit until he won free of the retreating surf and bent to set the anchor behind a cluster of rocks a few yards higher on the beach. Behind him, O'Haverty pulled up the slack and snubbed it off.

"We'd better make this quick," O'Haverty called, shouting to make himself heard above the boom of the surf. "Tide'11 be turning soon."

Grinning, Scanlan gave his partner a thumbs-up sign and turned to begin trudging toward the promontory. The tide-lines to his left suggested that the strip of beach was only exposed to view at low tide - which explained why he did not remember having seen it before, even though he and O'Haverty had passed this headland many times on routine patrol. He was halfway to the base of the cliffs, heading for the area from which the oil seemed to have come, when a flicker of color and movement drew his gaze upward.

About halfway up the cliff-face, a small flurry of sea gulls exploded into flight from the mouth of a jagged fissure in the rocks. That alone was hardly surprising, but as the birds wheeled away screeching, a slight, shaven-headed figure in flowing orange robes suddenly appeared from behind them.

The sight was startling enough to bring Scanlan up short, to send him scuttling into the shadow of the cliff-face to his left - though if the man looked down, he was sure to notice the bright orange upper half of Scanlan's survival suit. Scan-Ian could not have said why it seemed important that the man not see him. Even as he craned to get a cautious better look, hardly able to believe his eyes, a second man emerged from the fissure's mouth, a slightly more wizened version of the first. Both were well past middle age, and obviously of Oriental extraction.

What the hell? Scanlan thought.

Their attire reminded him of the Hare Krishna votaries he had seen now and again in Dublin and London, handing out flowers and pamphlets on street corners or dancing and singing in the streets - except that these two were much older than the usual Hare Krishna, and far less scruffy-looking. Part of the difference lay in the high-collared black tunics they wore beneath the saffron-orange outer robes, almost like a priest's cassock - a feature that Scanlan couldn't recall ever seeing before. But that sartorial difference paled to insignificance before the incongruity of anyone so garbed being present on this bleak, windswept stretch of Donegal coast.

The two glanced back into the darkness of the cave and conferred briefly, whatever words they spoke whisked away in the wind and the boom of the surf, then moved off along a ledge that slanted away toward the landward summit of the cliff. As they disappeared behind a screen of boulders, they seemed not to have noticed that they were being observed from shore and boat.