Read The Bombmaker for Free Online

table and dirty plates left over from the previous night's meal, a cardboard box on the floor, and a video camera and a stack of videotapes on the sofa. Egan picked up the camera and checked it. He was wearing black leather gloves.
    McEvoy nodded. 'Should be back in an hour or so.'
    'How are you getting on with him?'
    McEvoy shrugged indifferently. 'He'll do.'
    'And the girl?'
    'No problems.' He jerked a thumb at the basement door.
    'Quiet as a lamb.'
    Egan put the camera down. 'Good job, George. Couldn't have done it better myself' He reached into the inside pocket of his bomber jacket and took out an envelope. He handed it to McEvoy. 'Bonus for you.'
    McEvoy took the envelope and slid it unopened into his back pocket. 'Cheers.'
    'Split it with Canning if you want, but I'll leave it up to you.'
    He nodded at the video camera and the cassettes. 'Get them done as soon as you can, yeah? Then get Canning to take them over to McCracken.'
    They walked outside together. 'Make sure you torch the cottage afterwards,' said Egan. 'Burn it to the ground. Forensic scientists these days, all they need is one hair. The car, too.'
    'And the rest of the money?' McEvoy had been paid twenty thousand pounds in advance and had been promised a further eighty thousand pounds, not counting the bonus in his pocket.
    Egan patted him on the back. 'It'll be in the account within ten days,' he said. He climbed into the Scorpio and McEvoy watched him drive away.
    McEvoy went back into the cottage and locked the kitchen door. He took out the envelope and riffled through the notes.
    Five thousand pounds. New notes. McEvoy stuffed the envelope back into his pocket. Egan was a true professional. When he had first approached him, McEvoy had been suspicious.
    Kidnapping, especially kidnapping a child, wasn't something that could be done lightly. Egan seemed to know everything about McEvoy, from the state of his bank account to his record with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He seemed to know where all McEvoy's bodies were buried, figuratively and literally. Some of the information Egan had could only have come from the IRA's Army Council. Other details had obviously been obtained from government computers. McEvoy,
    however, knew next to nothing about Egan. He was an American, that was clear from his accent, and he had a military bearing that suggested he'd been in the armed forces, but he remained tight-lipped about his background. He was equally reticent about what he was up to, and would only give McEvoy and Canning the information they needed to carry out the kidnapping. It was for their own protection, he insisted. The less they knew, the less they could tell the authorities in the event of them being captured. Egan had assured MeEvoy and Canning that the same level of secrecy applied over in England.
    If anything went wrong there, the two men wouldn't be implicated.
    McEvoy went through to the sitting room and poured himself a measure of Bushmills. He sat down and put his feet up on the coffee table. It wasn't the first kidnapping that McEvoy had been involved in, but this was the first time he was doing it purely for financial reasons. It was the first time he'd been involved with the kidnapping of a child, too. Not that the fact that the victim was a seven-year-old girl worried McEvoy.
    The victim was meat, nothing more. A means to an end. He sipped his whiskey and brooded.
    Martin's company was based on an industrial estate twenty miles north of Dublin. The offices were in an H-shaped brick building with a flat roof, with a storage yard for heavy equipment behind and car parking spaces in front. When business was slow the yard would be full of earth movers, trucks and cement mixers, but for the past two years the company had been busier than ever and the yard was virtually empty. He parked and walked through reception to the management offices. His secretary looked up from her word-processor. 'Coffee?' Jill Gannon had been with the company for