Cry of the Hunter - Jack Higgins [2]
There was another short, uneasy pause before O’Hara said, ‘How’s the writing going? I never seem to see anything under your name.’
Fallon nodded, ‘You never will. I write thrillers under two different names. They wouldn’t interest you. They don’t even interest me. All they do successfully is pay the bills and keep me in whisky.’
Doolan leaned forward. ‘Don’t you ever feel like doing something else, Mr. Fallon?’
Fallon looked at him for a moment and then smiled. ‘Not particularly. What would you suggest?’
Doolan fumbled for words. ‘Well, now, what you were doing before was not such a bad thing.’
‘I was in prison before,’ Fallon told him. ‘I was doing hard labour. Would you have me do that again?’ There was a short, tense silence and he stood up and said, ‘What is it, O’Hara? What do you want with me?’
O’Hara sighed heavily and poked a log that was threatening to fall into the hearth, back into place with the end of his walking stick. ‘The Organization needs you, Martin,’ he said. ‘It needs you bad.’
Fallon started so that whisky slopped over the edge of his glass. He gazed at O’Hara in astonishment and then he laughed harshly. ‘The Organization needs me?’ he said and there was incredulity in his voice. ‘After all these years it needs me?’
O’Hara nodded slowly. ‘It’s right enough. Doolan and I have been asked to come and see you.’
Fallon began to laugh uncontrollably. ‘That’s rich,’ he said. ‘That’s damned rich.’
Doolan jumped up and said angrily. ‘What’s so funny, Mr. Fallon?’
‘The fact that the Organization can bloody well do without me,’ Fallon said. ‘That’s what’s so funny.’
Doolan swore savagely and turned to O’Hara. ‘Is this the great Martin Fallon? Swilling his guts with whisky and rotting in a back-country pigsty?’
Fallon moved so quickly that Doolan didn’t stand a chance. A fist caught him high on the right cheek and he stumbled, tripped over a loose rug and fell heavily to the floor. Fallon hauled him to his feet and pushed him down into a chair. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, and his voice was ice-cold. ‘When I was a schoolboy I lived and breathed the I.R.A. I joined when I was seventeen. When I was twenty-two I was the leader of the Organization in Ulster. I was a name in the land. I’m forty years of age and I’ve spent nine of them in prison. I’ve done my share for Ireland.’
‘Now then, Martin,’ O’Hara said soothingly. ‘No one is denying what you’ve suffered but it should only strengthen your resolve to fight until the whole of Ireland is free again.’
Fallon threw back his head and laughed savagely. ‘For God’s sake, are you still handing out that kind of clap-trap? The country is as free as it wants to be. If they ever want to change things north of the border they’ll do it through the government and through law. Guns and bombs will only serve to make them realize how well off they are without us.’
Doolan groaned and shook his head several times and Fallon handed him a glass of whisky which the small man swallowed at a gulp. After a while he fingered his face gingerly and said with a wry smile. ‘That’s a hell of a wallop you’ve got, Mr. Fallon, and no mistake.’
Fallon grinned and sat down. ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper,’ he said, ‘but you touched me on a raw spot.’
‘It’s a thing I wouldn’t advise any man to do,’ Doolan said feelingly.
O’Hara coughed and spat into the fire. ‘We wouldn’t have come to you if there was anyone else, Martin. It’s desperate work and you’re the only man for it, and that’s a fact.’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Fallon told him.
Doolan moved uneasily and there was puzzlement in his voice. ‘Do you mean to tell me you won’t help us. Mr. Fallon?’
Fallon took out a cigarette and lit it. ’That’s about the size of it.’ Doolan turned helplessly to O’Hara and Fallon went on, ‘That old spider there knew damned well that I wouldn’t stir a finger. He’d no right to bring you here.’
O’Hara raised his eyes piously to the ceiling and Doolan said, ‘But why now? You were the greatest of them all. You were worshipped throughout the length and breadth of Ireland.’
Fallon nodded and