Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [97]
“It’s time to go, Colonel,” Stedman said.
“I’m ready,” Sara said as she put the laptop in her soft leather briefcase and picked up her room key.
“You can leave the key here,” Withers said as he opened the door. “We’ve already checked you out of the hotel.”
“How very thoughtful,” Sara said. No doubt Stedman’s cleaners would return the key to reception after removing any trace of her from the room.
As she stepped outside the hotel with Stedman in the lead and Withers following behind, Sara spotted Fitzmaurice rolling to a stop at the curb. Perhaps he hadn’t been ordered to stand down by his superiors after all. She caught his eye and nodded slightly at a black, right-hand-drive Jeep Grand Cherokee with Diplomatic Corps plates. He glanced at the vehicle and gave Sara a quick nod in return.
Stedman and Withers hustled Sara into the car and drove her away. To avoid telegraphing the tail she didn’t dare look back to see if Fitzmaurice was following. Instead she spent the time during the short drive to the airport trying to figure out a way to pass Fitzmaurice the Spalding disk without arousing attention.
At the airport Stedman parked in a restricted zone next to the terminal, and the two men walked her to a check-in area on the upper level, where Withers gave her a ticket. Their diplomatic passports allowed them to bypass security, and they entered a long, wide corridor filled with shops, eateries, and stores that led to the departure gates.
Sara stopped in her tracks and looked at the flight information on the ticket. She had an hour before boarding time. Stedman touched her elbow as she glanced around, hoping to spot Fitzmaurice.
“We’ll take you through U.S. Customs now,” he said.
“What’s the hurry, Major?” Sara replied. U.S. Customs ran a pre-clearance operation at the airport, and once she stepped across the line, she would technically be on American soil, which meant Fitzmaurice would be unable to easily follow.
“No hurry, ma’am,” Stedman replied.
“Would you mind if I bought a book to read on the flight?” Stedman glanced at Withers, who shrugged in reply. “Go right ahead, Colonel.”
In a nearby bookstore crowded with travelers buying newspapers, magazines, and paperbacks, Sara browsed while her watchers stood at the entrance and kept her in view. At the new release section she picked up a copy of Brendan Coughlan’s latest novel, The Dory Shed, which he’d read from at O’Reilly Hall, and placed the Spalding disk inside it. With the book under her arm she paged through other fiction titles, including a recently reissued edition of The Year of the French, by Thomas Flanagan, the writer Fitzmaurice’s son, Sean, had so highly praised. Mentally, she counted off the minutes, and was about to lose hope that Fitzmaurice would show, when a man jostled past her in the narrow aisle.
“Excuse me,” Fitzmaurice said, in a normal speaking voice.
“No harm done,” Sara replied with a smile, as she very deliberately put the Coughlan novel back on the shelf face out.
Fitzmaurice reached for it. “Is it not a good book then?”
“Not my cup of tea,” Sara replied. “It’s about some Irishmen living in some dreary place in Nova Scotia.”
She turned away, went to the counter, and paid for the Flanagan book. Fitzmaurice stepped up behind her with The Dory Shed in his hand.
“Have a safe flight,” he said with a smile as she was about to leave.
“Smooth sailing to you,” Sara replied.
Just west of Dublin, within the confines of an eleven-kilometer wall, is the largest enclosed city park in Europe. Fitzmaurice had played in it as a child and, as an adolescent, had courted comely lasses under its trees and on the greens.
Seven hundred hectares in size, Phoenix Park, once a hunting preserve of a duke, was a popular destination for Dubliners seeking relief from the crowded streets, the noisy traffic, and the tourists that inundated the city from May to September. Aside from a zoo and flower garden the park also contained the official residence of the