Patriot games - Tom Clancy [36]
He turned away from the Sony television and gazed out the leaded- glass windows to the darkness of the sea. He saw the running lights of a car ferry inbound from Le Havre. The view was always a fine one. Even in the limited visibility of an ocean storm, one could savor the fundamental force of nature as the gray waves battered the rocky cliff. Now, the clear, cold air gave him a view to the star-defined horizon, and he spied another merchant ship heading eastward for an unknown port. It pleased O'Donnell that this stately house on the headlands had once belonged to a British lord. It pleased him more that he'd been able to purchase it through a dummy corporation; that there were few questions when cash and a reputable solicitor were involved. So vulnerable this society-all societies were when you had the proper resources and a competent tailor. So shallow they were. So lacking in political awareness. One must know who one's enemies are, O'Donnell told himself at least ten times every day. Not a liberal "democratic" society, though. Enemies were people to be dealt with, compromised with, to be civilized, brought into the fold, co-opted.
Fools, self-destructive, ignorant fools who earned their own destruction.
Someday they would all disappear, just as one of those ships slid beneath the horizon. History was a science, an inevitable process. O'Donnell was sure of that.
He turned again to stare into the fire burning under the wide, stone mantel. There had once been stag heads hanging over it, perhaps the lord's favorite fowling piece-from Purdey's, to be sure. And a painting or two. Of horses, O'Donnell was sure-they had to be paintings of horses. The country gentleman who had built this house, he mused, would have been someone who'd been given everything he had. No ideology would have intruded in his empty, useless head. He would have sat in a chair very like this one and sipped his malt whiskey and stared into the fire-his favorite dog at this feet-while he chatted about the day's hunting with a neighbor and planned the hunting for the morrow. Will it be birds again, or fox, Bertie? Haven't had a good fox hunt in weeks, time we did it again, don't you think? Or something like that, he was sure. O'Donnell wondered if there was a seasonal aspect to it, or had the lord just done whatever suited his mood. The current owner of the country house never hunted animals. What was the point of killing something that could not harm you or your cause, something that had no ideology? Besides, that was something the Brits did, something the local gentry still did. He didn't hunt the local Irish gentry, they weren't worth his contempt, much less his action. At least, not yet. You don't hate trees, he told himself. You ignore the things until you have to cut them down. He turned back to the television.
That Ryan fellow was still there, he saw, talking amiably with the press idiots. Bloody hero. Why did you slick your nose in where it doesn't belong? Reflex, sounds like, O'Donnell judged. Bloody meddling fool. Don't even know what's going on, do you? None of you do.
Americans. The Provo fools still like to talk it up with your kind, telling their lies and pretending that they represent Ireland. What do you Yanks know about anything? Oh, but we can't afford to offend the Americans, the Provos still said. Bloody Americans, with all their money and all their arrogance, all their ideas on right and wrong, their childish vision of Irish destiny. Like children dressed up for First Communion. So pure. So naive. So useless with their trickle of money-for all that the Brits complained about NORAID, O'Donnell knew that the PIRA had not netted a million dollars from America in the past three years. All the Americans knew of Ireland came from a few movies, some half-remembered songs for St. Paddy's Day, and the occasional bottle of whiskey. What did they know