I said, “The Edmund Wall Appreciation Society wants to buy your house.”

  “Buy it?”

  “For a museum. Well, like a living museum, really. Certainly people could visit, to see the birthplace, but we could keep his papers here too. It could be a research center.”

  “Do people do that?”

  “Do what? Research?”

  “No, visit houses where writers were born.”

  “All the time. Lots of writers’ houses are museums. Or tourist attractions. We could make a very generous offer. Edmund Wall has many passionate supporters in America.”

  “How generous?”

  “Best plan would be to pick out where you’d like to live next, and we’ll make sure you can. Within reason, of course. Maybe a new house. They’re building them all over.” Then I shut up, and let temptation work its magic. Mrs. Healy went quiet. Then she started to look around her kitchen. Chipped cabinets, sagging hinges, damp air.

  The kettle started to whistle.

  She said, “I’ll have to talk to my husband.”

  Which felt like the runner sliding into third ahead of the throw. Safe. Ninety feet away. Nothing guaranteed, but so far so good. In fact bloody good, as they say on those damp little islands. We were in high spirits on the way back in the Mercedes.

  * * *

  The problem was waiting for us in the Europa’s lobby. An Ulsterman, maybe fifty years old, in a cheap suit, with old nicks and scars on his hands and thickening around his eyes. A former field operative, no doubt, many years in the saddle, now moved to a desk because of his age. I was familiar with the type. It was like looking in a mirror.

  He said, “Can I have a word?”

  We went to the bar, which was dismal and empty ahead of the lunchtime rush. The guy introduced himself as a copper, from right there in Belfast, from a unit he didn’t specify, but which I guessed was Special Branch, which was the brass-knuckle wing of the old Royal Ulster Constabulary, now the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Like the FBI, with the gloves off. He said, “Would you mind telling me who you are and why you’re here?”

  So Carter gave him the guff about Edmund Wall, and the appreciation society, and the birthplace, but what was good enough earlier in the morning didn’t sound so great in the cold light of midday. The guy checked things on his phone in real time as Carter talked, and then he said, “There are four things wrong with that story. There is no Edmund Wall, there is no appreciation society, the bank account you opened is at the branch nearest to Langley, which is CIA headquarters, and most of all, that house you’re talking about was once home to Gerald McCann, who was a notorious paramilitary in his day.”

  Carter said nothing, and neither did I.

  The guy continued, “Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, you know. They won’t allow unannounced activities on their own turf. So again, would you mind telling me who you are and why you’re here?”

  I said, “You interested in a deal?”

  “What kind?”

  “You want to buy a friend in a high place?”

  “How high?”

  “Very high.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere useful to your government.”

  “Terms?”

  “You let us get the job done first.”

  “Who gets killed?”

  “Nobody. The Healys get a new house. That’s all.”

  “What do you get?”

  “Paid. But your new friend in the very high place gets peace of mind. For which he’ll be suitably grateful, I’m sure.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “First I need to check you have your head on straight. This is not the kind of thing where you make a bunch of calls and get other people involved. This is the kind of thing where you let us do our work, and then when we’re gone, you announce your new relationship as a personal coup. Or not. Maybe you’ll want to keep the guy in your vest pocket.”

  “How many laws are you going to break?”

  “None at all. We’re going to buy a house. Happens every day.”

  “Because there’s something in it, right? What did Gerald McCann leave behind?”

  “You got to agree to what I said before. You got to at least nod your head. I have to be able to trust you.”

  “Okay, I agree,” the guy said. “But I’m sticking with you all the way. We’re a threesome now. Until you’re done. Every minute. Until I wave you off at the airport.”

  “No, come with us,” I said. “You can meet your new friend. At least shake hands with him. Then come back. Vest pocket or not, you’ll feel better that way.”

  He fell for it, like I knew he would. I mean, why not? Security services love a personal coup. They love their vest pockets. They love to run people. They love to be the guy. He said, “Deal. So what’s the story?”

  “Once upon a time there was a young officer in the US Army. A bit of a hothead, with certain sympathies. With a certain job, at a certain time. He sold some obsolete weapons.”

  “To Gerald McCann?”

  I nodded. “Who as far as we know never used them. Who we believe buried them under his living room floor. Meanwhile, our young officer grew up and got promoted and went into a whole different line of work. Now he wants the trail cleaned up.”

  “You want to buy the house so you can dig up the floor?”

  I nodded again. “Can’t break in and do it. Too noisy. The floors are concrete. We’re going to need jackhammers. Neighbors need to think we’re repairing the drains or something.”

  “These weapons are still traceable?”

  “Weapon, singular, to be honest with you. Which I’m prepared to be, in a spot like this. Still traceable, yes. And extremely embarrassing, if it comes to light.”

  “Did Mrs. Healy believe you about Edmund Wall?”

  “She believed us about the money. We’re from America.”

  The guy from Special Branch said, “It takes a long time to buy a house.”

  It took three weeks, with all kinds of lawyer stuff, and an inspection, which was a pantomime and a farce, because what did we care? But it would have looked suspicious if we had waived it. We were supposed to be diligent stewards of the appreciation society’s assets. So we commissioned it, and pretended to read it afterward. It was pretty bad, actually. For a spell I was worried the jackhammer would bring the whole place down.

  We stayed in Belfast the whole three weeks. Normally we might have gone home and come back again, but not with the Special Branch copper on the scene, obviously. We had to watch him every minute. Which was easy enough, because he had to watch us every minute. We all spent three whole weeks gazing at each other and reading crap about dry rot and rising damp. Whatever that was. It rained every day.

  But in the end the lawyers got it done, and I received an undramatic phone call saying the house was ours. So we picked up the key and drove over and walked around with pages from the inspection report in our hands and worried expressions on our faces—which I thought of as setting the stage. The jackhammer had to be explicable. And the neighbors were nosy as hell. They were peering out and coming over and introducing themselves in droves. They brought old Mrs. McKenna’s sister, who claimed to remember the baby being born, which set off a whole lot of tutting and clucking among her audience. More people came. As a result we waited two days before we rented the jackhammer. Easier than right away, we thought. I knew how to operate it. I had taken lessons from a crew repairing Langley’s secure staff lot.

  The living room floor was indeed concrete, under some kind of asphalt screed, which was under a foam-backed carpet so old it had gone flat and crusty. We tore it up and saw a patch of screed that was different than the rest. It was the right size too. I smiled. Gerald McCann, taking care of business.

  I asked, “What actually happened to McCann?”

  The Special Branch guy said, “Murdered.”

  “Who by?”

  “Us.”

  “When?”

  “Before he could use this, obviously, whatever it is.”

  And after that, conversation was impossible, because I got the hammer started. After which the job went fast. The concrete was long on sand and short on cement. Same the world over. Concrete is a dirty business. But even so, the pit was pretty deep. More than just secure temporary storage. It felt kind of permanent. But we got to the bottom eventually, and we pulled the thing out.

  It was wrapped in heavy plastic, but it was immediately recognizable. A reinforced canvas cylinder, olive green, like a half-size oil drum, with straps and buckles all over it, to keep it closed up tight, and to make it man-portable, like a backpack. A big backpack. A big, heavy backpack.

  The guy from Special Branch went very quiet, and then he said, “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yes, it’s what you think it is.”

  “Jesus Christ on a bike.”

  “Don’t worry. The warhead is a dummy. Because our boy in uniform wasn’t.”

  Carter said, “Warhead? What is it?”

  I said nothing.

  The guy from Special Branch explained, “It’s an SADM. A W54 in an H-912 transport container.”

  “Which is what?”

  “A Strategic Atomic Demolition Munition. A W54 missile warhead, which was the baby of the family, adapted to use as an explosive charge. Strap that thing to a bridge pier, and it’s like dropping a thousand tons of TNT on it.”

  “It’s nuclear?”

  I said, “It weighs just over fifty pounds. Less than the bag you take on vacation. It’s the nearest thing to a suitcase nuke ever built.”

  The guy from Special Branch said, “It is a suitcase nuke, never mind the nearest thing.”

  Carter said, “I never heard about them.”

  I said, “Developed in the 1950s. Obsolete by 1970. Paratroops were trained to jump with them, behind the lines, to blow up power stations and dams.”

  “With nuclear bombs?”

  “They had mechanical timers. The paratroops might have gotten away.”

  “Might have?”

  “It was a tough world back then.”

  “But this warhead is fake?”

  “Open it up and take a look.”

  “I wouldn’t know the difference.”

  “Good point,” I said. “Gerald McCann obviously didn’t.”

  The guy from Special Branch said, “I can see why my new friend wants the trail cleaned up. Selling nuclear weapons to foreign paramilitary groups? He couldn’t survive that, whoever he is.”

  * * *

  We put the thing in the trunk of a rented car, and drove to a quiet corner of Belfast International Airport, to a gate marked General Aviation, which meant private jets, and we found ours, which was a Gulfstream IV, painted gray and unmarked except for a tail number. The guy from Special Branch looked a little jealous.

  “Borrowed,” I said. “Mostly it’s used for renditions.”

  Now he looked a little worried.

  I said, “I’m sure they hosed the blood out.”

  We loaded the munition on board ourselves, because there was no spare crew to help us. There was one pilot and no steward. Standard practice, in the rendition business. Better deniability. We figured the munition was about the size of a fat guy, so we strapped it upright in a seat of its own. Then we all three sat down, as far from it as we could get.

  * * *

  Ninety minutes out I went to the bathroom, and after that I steered the conversation back to rendition. I said, “These planes are modified, you know. They have some of the electronic interlocks taken out. You can open the door while you’re flying, for instance. Low and slow, over the water. They threaten to throw the prisoner out. All part of softening him up ahead of time.”

  Then I said, “Actually, sometimes they do throw the prisoner out. On the way home, usually, after he’s spilled the beans. Too much trouble to do anything else, really.”

  Then I said, “Which is what we’re going to do with the munition. We have to. We have no way of destroying it before we land, and we can’t let it suddenly reappear in the US, like it just escaped from the museum. And this is the perfect setup for corroboration. Because there’s three of us. Because we’re going to get questions. He needs to know for sure. So this way I can swear I saw you two drop it out the door, and you two can swear you saw it hit the water, and you can swear I was watching you do it. We can back each other up three ways.”

  Which all made sense, so we went low and slow and I opened the door. Salt air howled in, freezing cold, and the plane rocked and juddered. I stepped back, and the guy from Special Branch came first, sidewinding down the aisle, with one of the transport container’s straps hefted in his nicked and scarred left hand, and then came the munition itself, heavy, bobbing like a fat man in a hammock, and then came Carter, a strap in his right hand, shuffling sideways.

  They got lined up, side by side at the open door, their backs to me, each with a forearm up on the bulkhead to steady himself, the munition swinging slackly and bumping the floor between them. I said, “On three,” and I started counting the numbers out, and they hoisted the cylinder and began swinging it, and on three they opened their hands and the canvas straps jerked free and the cylinder sailed out in the air and was instantly whipped away by the slipstream. They kept their forearms on the bulkhead, looking out, craning, staring down, waiting for the splash, and I took out the gun I had collected from the bathroom and shot the guy from Special Branch in the lower back, not because of any sadistic tendency, but because of simple ballistics. If the slug went through and through, I wanted it to carry on into thin air, not hit the airframe.

  I don’t think the bullet killed the guy. But the shock changed his day. He went all weak, and his forearm gave way, and he half fell and half got sucked out into the void. No sound. Just a blurred pinwheel as the currents caught him, and then a dot that got smaller, and then a tiny splash in the blue below, indistinguishable from a million white-crested waves.

  I stepped up and helped Carter wrestle the door shut. He said, “I guess he knew too much.”

  I said, “Way too much.”

  We sat down, knee to knee.

  * * *

  Carter figured it out less than an hour later. He was not a dumb guy. He said, “If the warhead was a dummy, he could spin it like entrapment, like taking a major opponent out of the game. Or like economic warfare. Like a Robin Hood thing. He took a lot of bad money out of circulation, in exchange for a useless piece of junk. He could be the secret hero. The super-modest man.”

  “But?” I said.

  “He’s not spinning it that way. And all those people died of cancer. The Robinsons, and the Donnellys, and the McLaughlins.”

  “So?” I said.

  “The warhead was real. That was an atom bomb. He sold nuclear weapons.”

  “Small ones,” I said. “And obsolete.”

  Carter didn’t reply. But that wasn’t the important part. The important part came five minutes later. I saw it arrive in his eyes. I said, “Ask the question.”

  He said, “I’d rather not.”

  I said, “Ask the question.”

  “Why was there a gun in the bathroom? The Special Branch guy was with us the whole time. You didn’t call ahead for it. You had no opportunity. But it was there for you anyway. Why?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He said, “It was there for me. The Special Branch guy was happenstance. Me, you were planning to shoot all along.”

  I said, “Kid, our boss sold live nuclear weapons. I’m cleaning up for him. What else do you expect?”

  Carter said, “He trusts me.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “I would never rat him out. He’s my hero.”

  “Gerald McCann should be your hero. He had the sense not to use the damn thing. I’m sure he was sorely tempted.”

  Carter didn’t answer that. Getting rid of him was difficult, all on my own, but the next hours were peaceful, just me and the pilot, flying high and fast toward a spectacular sunset. I dropped my seat way back, and I stretched out. Relaxation is important. Life is short and uncertain, and it pays to make the best of whatever comes your way.

  THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED

  I came out of my deposition feeling pretty good about it. My answers were brief and concise. My control was good. I said nothing I shouldn’t have said. I used an old trick someone taught me long ago, which was to count to three in my head before replying to a question. Name? One, two, three, Albert Anthony Jackson. The trick mitigates against hasty and unwise responses. Because it gives you time to think. It drives them crazy, but there’s nothing they can do about it. The oath doesn’t say “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all within three seconds of opposing counsel shutting his yap.” Try it. One day it will save your ass. Because unwise responses are tempting at times. As in my case that morning. The committee chairman had a clear agenda. The very first substantive question out of his mouth was, “Why aren’t you in the armed services?” As if I was a coward, or a moral degenerate of some kind. To take my credibility away, I supposed, if necessary, if the deposition ever came to light.

  “I have a wooden leg,” I said.

  Which was true. Not from Pearl Harbor or anything. Not that I discourage the assumption. Truthfully I was run over by a Model T Ford in the state of Mississippi. A narrow wooden wheel, a hard tire, a splintered shin, a rural doctor miles from anywhere. He took the easy way out by taking the leg off below the knee. No big deal. Except the army didn’t want me. Or the navy. But they wanted everyone else. Which meant by the summer of 1942 the FBI was hurting for recruits. The leg didn’t worry them. Maple, like a baseball bat. Not that they asked. They gave me training and then a badge and a gun, and then they sent me out in the world.

  So a year later I was armed, at least, if not in the service. But even then the guy gave no ground. He said, “I’m sorry to hear about your misfortune,” disapprovingly, accusingly, as if I had been careless, or long premeditated a plan to avoid the draft. But after that we got along fine. He stuck mainly to procedural questions about the investigation, and one, two, three. I answered them all, and I was out of the room by a quarter to twelve. Feeling pretty good, as I said, until Vanderbilt grabbed me in the corridor and told me I had to go do another one.