The Savage Day - Jack Higgins [61]
Which was interesting, and for a second I got a flash of the place again in my mind's eye as I had last seen it, grey, windswept and lonely beneath the barren rocks of the island in the morning rain.
He stared up at me in mute appeal. 'I'll see to it,' I said and something made me add in Irish, 'I'll settle Barry for you, Small Man.'
His eyes opened again. 'Who are you, boy? What are you?'
I said nothing and he continued to stare up at me, a slight frown on his face and then his eyes widened and I think a kind of understanding dawned.
'Holy Saints,' he said. 'There's irony for you. My God, but I call that rich.'
He started to laugh weakly and Sister Teresa pulled me gently away. 'Please leave now,' she said. 'As you promised.'
'Of course, Sister.'
She turned back to the bed as the priest was ushered in and I went into the ante-room and took Binnie by the arm. 'Let's get out of here. No sense in prolonging the agony.'
He looked once towards the bed where the priest leaned over Cork, turned and walked out. I followed him along the corridor and out of the front door to the courtyard, where the Land-Rover still waited at the bottom of the steps.
Binnie said, 'What now?'
'Stramore,' I said. 'Where else?'
His eyes widened. 'He told you, then, where the stuff is?'
'Not ten miles from Spanish Head. Remember that island we stopped at yesterday morning - Magil? He sank the launch in the bay there.'
Binnie glanced at his watch, then slammed a fist against his thigh in a kind of impotent fury. 'Much good will it do us.'
His despair was absolute, which was understandable enough. He had just lost the one man he respected above all others, was now faced with the knowledge that Norah Murphy would almost certainly end the same way, and there was nothing he could do about it.
'No chance of reaching Stramore by six o'clock now, Major. No chance at all.'
'Oh yes, there is,' I said. 'If we don't waste time dodging round the back country, stay on main roads all the way.'
'But how?' he demanded. 'It's asking to be lifted.'
'Bluff, Binnie,' I said. 'Two paratroopers in an army Land-Rover taking a chance on the Queen's Highway. Does the prospect please you?'
He laughed suddenly, much more his old self again. 'By God, Major, but there are times when I think you're very probably the Devil himself.'
I opened the rear door and pulled the young corporal up and out into the open. He seemed unsteady on his feet, the skin around the swollen nose and eyes blackening into bruises. I sat him down carefully on the convent steps.
Binnie said, 'What are we going to do with him?'
'Leave him here. By the time the nuns have patched him up and fed him and reported his presence to the Garda, it'll be evening. He can't do us any harm, but if we're going, we've got to go now.'
The nun on the gates had got them open. As we drove through I called, 'We've left you another patient back there on the steps, Sister. Tell Sister Teresa I'm sorry.'
Her mouth opened as if she was trying to say something, but by then it was too late and we were out into the road and away. Five minutes later we bumped over the farm track that took us into Ulster and turned along the road to Strabane.
The streets of Strabane were jammed with traffic and there seemed to be road blocks everywhere, which was pretty much what I had expected. The authorities must have known for some considerable time that we were not in the wreckage of that burned-out Cortina at the bottom of the ravine.
Getting through proved unbelievably easy for the obvious reason that there were soldiers everywhere and we were just two more. I told Binnie to simply blast his way through, which he did, on several occasions taking to the pavement to get past lines of cars and trucks waiting their turn.
At every check point we came to we were waved on without the slightest hesitation, and within ten minutes of entering the town we were clear again and moving along the main road to Londonderry.
Binnie was like some kid out for the day, excitement