Redemption - Leon Uris [137]
“Bullshit. The greatest raid in Irish history and you are going to close me out after all the miles of muddy road we’ve walked together?”
“I’m thinking we’ll need a highly placed writer of your caliber to immortalize things.”
“Bullshit, Ireland has too many bad writers and twice as many orators to fail to immortalize you. You think it’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t know how dangerous it is, see,” Conor lied. I always knew when he was lying to me. If he was sitting, he always scratched his knee, three times, quickly. If he was up and walking he’d quicklike bite his lower lip. He scratched his knee, stood, and bit his lip. “There are more than a dozen targets under consideration,” he continued.
“Bullshit,” I explained.
“Don’t even think about the half of it, Seamus. The target is only going to be known by myself and Dan, so dismiss any wild guesses.”
“I’ll not make a wild guess. I’ll tell you the target, directly and precisely.”
Conor narrowed his eyes and glared at me.
“Now then,” I began, “It’s going to be a target in Ulster. So, we’re talking about the naval base in Belfast or the British Army Command at Castle MacStewart or cut the cable to England and so forth and so forth. However, if I were a lad who grew up in Ballyutogue and summered the flock for two years at the derelict castle grounds of Lettershambo, and as kids me and my best pal had found a cave at low tide on the lough leading to a tunnel into the castle…”
Conor’s eyes breathed lightning.
“And later I worked on the restoration of Lettershambo, and the Ulster Militia stored maybe a hundred thousand guns in it along with a million rounds of ammunition, then I might be considering such a target…if the tunnel is still intact.”
“It’s still intact,” Conor whispered.
“Myles McCracken’s brother Boyd is the best poacher on Lough Foyle. He stole enough fish from his lordship to feed the entire village when the crops went sour. And Boyd is a Brotherhood man who can get us over Lough Foyle.”
“We carry a few hundred pounds of dynamite into the castle.”
“Charlie Hackett,” I said, naming the best dynamite man in Ireland.
“Charlie Hackett,” Conor repeated.
“Well, what the hell are we going to do with a few hundred pounds of dynamite?” I asked. “Put our initials in the castle wall?”
“During the restoration, I helped install the central heating boiler. It is only twenty or thirty feet from where the tunnel enters the castle.”
“I know…”
“From the boiler there are large pipes, a foot in diameter, going to every room and hall in the castle. Hot-air ducts, they’re called. One of the rooms holds their dynamite stash, probably several hundred tons of it. If we can blow up the boiler it will shoot a fierce concussion through the ducts.”
“And blow their dynamite stash,” I whispered.
“Aye, take down Lettershambo with their own dynamite.”
“W-w-will it work?”
“We’ll know for sure when we push in the plunger.”
For a moment I swooned, then looked at him, crazy-like. Why, that would be like blowing up Gibraltar! I looked at him again. He was dead serious. Obviously, he had worked it out in his mind down to the most finite detail. I just must have fallen into a chair and mumbled.
In time, night took over Cork. After the magnitude of what was contemplated sunk in, we both thought of what Ireland would be like the day after Lettershambo was blown up. Suddenly the worth of my entire life was clear. Conor and I, two bumpkins out of Ballyutogue, had reached a moment of euphoria together, in fulfillment over what we had lived to try to accomplish.
Conor Larkin’s face showed the wearies. What a fitting way to bow out, I thought. Bow out? Bow out! Of course. As I rethought it, I sensed his awesome journey of a great deal of joy, of tragedy, and of melancholy reaching a climax in a burst that would shake the British Isles. Larkin intended to put every drop of his energy and wisdom into the raid and then depart the scene.
This realization was not that difficult to come by. In a sense he was going to be the first casualty of his own convictions that north and south