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the gold.”
    “Is that a fact? Tell me.”
    “It’s complicated, but here goes,” and Keogh went through the whole business step-by-step.
     
     
    W HEN HE WAS finished, Barry said, “Christ, but it’s the ruthless bastard you are. Will Tully play?”
    “He will. A hundred-thousand-pound payday. He isn’t going to turn that down.”
    “Right. Let’s say everything works. What happens on board the
Irish Rose
once you put to sea? They’ll try to take you.”
    “Of course, but we’ll be prepared.”
    “You, Ryan, and his niece? God save us all.”
    “Oh, He will, He will. What about the Kilalla end?”
    “Oh, I think I can promise you an interesting reception. A considerable contribution to IRA funds. It could win us the war.”
    “Just think of that,” Keogh told him. “And it’s only taken seven hundred years.”
    Barry laughed. “Go on, dark hero, get on with it and keep in touch,” and he switched off his phone.
     
     
    I N THE PARLOUR at the William & Mary, Ryan and Kathleen sat at the table and listened to what Keogh had to say. Keogh helped himself to a Bushmills on the side.
    Bell said, “You shot him?”
    “Only a little.” Keogh sipped his Bushmills. “The lobe of his right ear.”
    Kathleen’s face was infused with excitement. “That taught the bastard a lesson.”
    Ryan said, “You think he’ll still come?”
    “Of course he will. He wants his hundred thousand pounds.”
    “But he’ll try for more on the run to Ulster?”
    “Yes, well, we know that, so we’ll just have to be prepared.”
    “I suppose so.” Ryan took a deep breath. “We’ll catch the Glasgow Express in the morning. We’ll leave at Carnforth and take the local train to Barrow.”
    “Then what?”
    “We’ll be met,” Ryan told him. “Something else I didn’t tell you. I have a cousin who runs a sheep farm in the Lake District not far from Ravenglass. But enough of that now. I’m for bed. We’ll need an early start.”
     
     
    A S THE
I RISH R OSE
moved down the Thames, Tully stood at the wheel, his head disembodied in the light of the binnacle. His right ear was covered by a taped bandage. The door of the wheelhouse opened and Dolan entered with a mug in one hand. He put it down by the wheel.
    “Tea,” he said. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine,” Tully told him.
    “So what about that little bastard?”
    “Oh, when the right time comes I’m going to cut his balls off.” Tully reached for the mug and drank some tea. “There’s an old Sinn Fein saying, ‘Our day will come.’ Well, mine certainly will where Keogh’s concerned.”
    He swung the wheel and increased power.
     
T HREE
     
    T HE G LASGOW E XPRESS wasn’t particularly busy. Keogh sat opposite Kathleen at a corner table. Ryan took the one opposite. Almost immediately he opened his briefcase and took out a file. He started to work his way through it, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.
    The girl took the copy of
The Midnight Court
from her carrying bag and an Irish dictionary, which she put on one side. A strange one, Keogh thought, a strange one, indeed. He sat there gazing out of the window, wondering what she would say, what her reaction would be if she knew he was everything she hated — a Roman Catholic and an IRA enforcer. God, but the fat would be in the fire the day that got out.
    About an hour out of London an attendant appeared pushing a trolley with tea, coffee, sandwiches, and newspapers. Ryan stopped working and took a coffee. The girl asked for tea and so did Keogh. He also bought the
Times
and the
Daily Mail
and spent the next hour catching up on the news.
    There wasn’t much on the Irish situation. A bomb in Derry had taken out six shops in one street — a tit-for-tat killing of two Catholics on the Falls Road in retaliation for the shooting of a Protestant in the Shankill. An Army Air Corps helicopter flying in to the command post at Crossmaglen had come under machine gun fire as well. Just another