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penetrating. The streets were empty, and his footfall was loud and rhythmic as he walked. He liked the sound. The weight of his guns was comfortable under his coat. When he first began to wear them they seemed heavy, but now they were part of him, no more uncomfortable than his shirt. A steel-plated Lancia went by with a guttural purr. It slowed as it passed Conn, but it did not stop, and soon it picked up speed and drove on, ugly and implacable like an ancient nocturnal carnivore. If they stopped him he’d make a fight of it. He might be able to lose them in the back gardens of the neighborhood, and even if he couldn’t he would rather go down like a soldier of the IRA, which he was, with his guns in his hands. He smiled as he walked, liking the image of himself, two-gun Sheridan, and smiling at his own boyish heroism, though he was proud of it too, and he knew it to be real.
    At Haddington Road he stopped half a block east of Beggar’s Bush before the two-story row house with ared door. He was on his own. There had been
no
instructions. How he killed this man was up to him. He didn’t like it much, but he’d do it. He’d sworn an oath to a free Ireland, and this balding youngish man he was about to kill had chosen to be a Secret Service officer, had chosen to repress the Irish people, had chosen to run the risk that he was about to incur. Certainly this man had sent over many a good-hearted Irish lad.
    Conn took the big Webley out, and cocked it, and held it by his side. He walked briskly across the street and up the front steps and rapped loudly on the front door. After a moment he rapped again. There was movement inside the house. The front door opened a crack and a voice said, “Who is it?”
    “From the Castle.”
    The door opened wider.
    “What the hell are you doing at this hour?”
    “John Cooper?” Conn said.
    “Aye.”
    Conn raised the gun and shot him point blank in the middle of the chest, and again. Cooper’s mouth opened but he was dead before the sound got there and he fell backwards into his front hall. Conn put the gun back and turned briskly and walked back down the stairs. Behind him he heard a woman scream, “John, dear God, they’ve killed you.” And then he was around the corner and onto Shelbourne Road walking fast in the still night.
    John Cooper
.

Conn
    “T hey are going to send me to Cork,” Conn said.
    They were walking on Wilton Terrace. The sun was bright and magpies made shrill noise along the banks of the canal.
    “Must you go?” Hadley said.
    “Of course.”
    “Because they say you must?”
    “Yes.”
    “Don’t go,” Hadley said.
    “I have to. I’m a soldier. I go where I’m sent.”
    “But it’s not like a real army,” Hadley said. He was watching the glisten of her lips as she spoke.
    “Real enough,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
    He could smell the lavender scent of her cologne, close and immediate against a faint background of water scent from the canal.
    “To Cork?”
    “Yes.”
    “I can’t do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Why, I’m married. I live here. I have a house.”
    “But you love me,” Conn said.
    She was wearing a green silk dress under a light coat. Her hair gleamed in the sunshine. White ducks drifted on the surface of the canal.
    “Of course I do, but I can’t go traipsing off to Cork with you. Where will we sleep? In a hayloft?”
    “We can stay with people in their homes.”
    “And while you fight with the Black and Tans, I stay home by the peat fire and do what?”
    “Hadley, it’s a war. It’s the best we can do. I can’t leave you.”
    “I don’t want you to.”
    Conn held both her upper arms with his hands.
    “Come with me. It’s the only way.”
    She raised her hands and pushed at him.
    “Conn, you’re squeezing too hard. It hurts.”
    He dropped his hands.
    “It’ll be an adventure, girl. It’ll be us, always together, in the countryside, making love every night in a different place.”
    Hadley shook