Mullins looked around his solitary observation post, then peered back into Fifth Avenue. He unfastened a rolled flag around his waist and tied the corners to the louvers, then let it unfurl over the side of the tower. A wind made it snap against the gray marble, and the Cathedral’s floodlights illuminated it nicely.
From the street and the rooftops an exclamation rose from the reporters and civilians still in the area. A few people cheered, and a few applauded. There were a few jeers as well.
Mullins listened to the mixed reaction, then pulled his head back into the tower and wiped the cold sleet from his face. He wondered with a sense of awe how he came to be standing in the bell tower of St. Patrick’s Cathedral with a rifle. Then he remembered his older sister, Peg, widowed with three children, pacing the prison yard of Armagh. He remembered the night her husband, Barry Collins, was killed trying to take a prison van that was supposed to contain Maureen Malone’s sister, Sheila. He remembered his mother looking after Peg’s three children for days at a time while Peg went off with hard-looking men in dark coats. Mullins remembered the night he went into the streets of Belfast to find Brian Flynn and his Fenians, and how his mother wept and cursed after him. But most of all he remembered the bombs and gunfire that had rocked and split the Belfast nights ever since he was a child. Thinking back, he didn’t see how he could have traveled any road that didn’t lead here, or someplace like it.
Patrick Burke looked up. A green flag, emblazoned with the gold Irish harp, hung from the ripped louvers, and Burke could make out a man with a rifle standing in the opening. Burke turned and watched the police in the intersection wheeling away the smashed spotlight. The crowd was becoming more cooperative, concluding that anyone who could put out a spotlight at two hundred yards could put them out just as easily. Burke moved into the alcove of the tower door and spoke to the policeman he had posted there. “We’ll just stand here awhile. That guy up there is still manufacturing adrenaline.”
“I know the feeling.”
Burke looked out over the steps. The green carpet was white with sleet now, and green carnations, plastic leprechaun hats, and paper pompoms littered the steps, sidewalks, and street. In the intersection of Fiftieth Street a huge Lambeg drum left by the Orangemen lay on its side. Black bowlers and bright orange sashes moved slowly southward in the wind. From the buildings of Rockefeller Center news cameramen were cautiously getting it all on film. Burke pictured it as it would appear on television. Zoom-in shots of the debris, a bowler tumbling end over end across the icy street. The voice-over, deep, resonant—“Today the ancient war between the English and the Irish came to Fifth Avenue….” The Irish always gave you good theater.
Brian Flynn leaned out over the parapet rail of the choir loft and pointed to a small sacristy off the ambulatory as he said to Hickey, “Since we can’t see the outside door of the bishop’s sacristy or the elevator door, the police could theoretically beat the alarms and mines. Then we’d have policemen massed in that small sacristy.”
Leary, who seemed to be able to hear things at great distances, called out from the far end of the choir loft. “And if they stick their heads into the ambulatory, I’ll blow—”
Hickey shouted back, “Thank you, Mr. Leary. We know you will.” He said softly to Flynn, “God Almighty, where’d you get that monster? I’ll be afraid to scratch my ass down there.”
Flynn answered quietly, “Yes, he has good eyes and ears.”
“An American, isn’t he?”
“Irish-American. Marine sniper in Vietnam.”
“Does he know why he’s here? Does he even know where the hell he is?”
“He’s in a perch overlooking a free-fire zone. That’s all he knows and all he cares about. He’s being paid handsomely for his services. He’s the only one of us besides you and me who has no relatives in British jails. I don’t want a man up here with emotional ties to us. He’ll kill according to standing orders, he’ll kill any one of us I tell him to kill, and if we’re attacked and overcome, he’ll kill any of us who survives, if he’s still able. He’s the Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper, and the court of last resort.” “Does everyone know all of this?”
“No.”
Hickey smiled, a half-toothless grin. “I underestimated you, Brian.”
“Yes. You’ve been doing that. Let’s go on with this. The Archbishop’s sacristy— a problem, but only one of many—”
“I wish you’d brought more people.”
Flynn spoke impatiently. “I have a great deal of help on the outside, but how many people do you think I could find to come in here to die?”
A distant look came over the old man’s face. “There were plenty of good men and women in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916. More than the besieged buildings could hold.” Hickey’s eyes took in the quiet Cathedral below. “No lack of volunteers then. And faith! What faith we all had. In the early days of the First War, sometime before the Easter Rising, my brother was in the British Army. Lot of Irish lads were then. Still are. You’ve heard of the Angels of Mons? No? Well, my brother Bob was with the British Expeditionary Force in France, and they were about to be annihilated by an overwhelming German force. Then, at a place called Mons, a host of heavenly angels appeared and stood between them and the Germans. Understandably the Germans fell back in confusion. It was in all the papers at the time. And people believed it, Brian. They believed the British Army was so blessed by God that He sent His angels to intervene on their behalf against their enemy.”
Flynn looked at him. “Sounds like a mass hallucination of desperate men. When we start seeing angels here, we’ll know we’ve had it, and—” He broke off abruptly and looked at Hickey closely in the dim light. For a brief second he imagined he was back in Whitehorn Abbey, listening to the stories of the old priest.
“What is it, lad?”
“Nothing. I suppose one shouldn’t doubt the intervention of the supernatural. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”
Hickey laughed. “If you can tell it tomorrow, I’ll believe it.”
Flynn forced a smile in return. “I may be telling it to you in another place.”
“Then I’ll surely believe it.”
Megan Fitzgerald came up behind George Sullivan setting the last of the mines on the south transept door. “Finished?”
Sullivan turned abruptly. “Jesus, don’t do that, Megan, when I’m working with explosives.”
She looked at Sullivan, dressed splendidly in the kilts of a bagpiper of the New York Police Emerald Society. “Grab your gear and follow me. Bring your bagpipes.” She led him to a small door at the corner of the transept, and they walked up a spiral stone staircase, coming out onto the long south triforium. A flagpole with a huge American flag hanging from it pointed across the nave toward the Papal flag on the opposite triforium. Megan looked to the left, at the choir loft below, and watched Flynn and Hickey poring over their blueprints like two generals on the eve of battle. She found it odd that such different men seemed to be getting on well. She hadn’t liked the idea of bringing John Hickey in at the last moment. But the others felt they needed the old hero to legitimize themselves, a bona fide link with 1916, as though Hickey’s presence could make them something other than the outcasts they all were.
She saw no need to draw on the past. The world had taken form for her in 1973 when she had seen her first bomb casualties in downtown Belfast on the way home from school, and had taken meaning and purpose when her older brother Tommy had been wounded and captured trying to free Sheila Malone. The distant past didn’t exist, any more than the near future did. Her own personal memories were all the history she was concerned with.
She watched Flynn pointing and gesturing. He seemed not much different from the old man beside him. Yet he had been different once. To Tommy Fitzgerald, Brian Flynn was everything a man should be, and she had grown up seeing Brian Flynn, the legend in the making, through her older brother’s eyes. Then came Brian’s arrest and his release, suspicious at best. Then the br
eak with the IRA, the forming of the new Fenian Army, his recruiting of her and her younger brother Pedar, and, finally, her inevitable involvement with him. She had not been disappointed in him as a lover, but as a revolutionary he had flaws. He would hesitate before destroying the Cathedral, but she would see to it that this decision was out of his hands.
Sullivan called out from the far end of the triforium, “The view is marvelous. How’s the food?”
Megan turned to him. “If you’ve no qualms about feasting on blood, it’s good and ample.”
Sullivan sighted through his rifle. “Don’t be a beast, Megan.” He raised the rifle and focused the scope on Abby Boland, noticing her open blouse. She saw him and waved. He waved back. “So near, yet so far.”
“Give it a rest, George,” said Megan impatiently. “You’ll not be using it for much but peeing for yet a while.” She looked at him closely. George Sullivan was not easily intimidated by her. He had that combination of smugness and devil-may-care personality that came with handling high explosives, a special gift of the gods, he had called it. Maybe. “Are you certain Hickey knows how to rig the bombs?”
Sullivan picked up his bagpipe and began blowing into it. He looked up. “Oh, yes. He’s very good. World War Two techniques, but that’s all right, and he’s got the nerve for it.”
“I’m interested in his skill, not his nerve. I’m to be his assistant.”
“Good for you. Best to be close by if it goes wrong. Never feel a thing. It’ll be us poor bastards up here who’ll be slowly crushed by falling stone. Picture it, Megan. Like Samson and Delilah, the temple falling about our heads, tons of stone quivering, falling…. Someone should have brought a movie camera.”
“Next time. All right, George, the north transept is your sector of fire if they break in. But if they use armor through that door, Boland will lean over the north triforium and launch a rocket directly down at it. Your responsibility for armor is the south transept door below you. She’ll cover you and you’ll cover her with rifle fire.”
“What if one of us is dead?”
“Then the other two, Gallagher and Farrell, will divide up the sector of the dead party.”
“What if we’re all dead?”
“Then it doesn’t matter, does it, George? Besides, there’s always Leary. Leary is immortal, you know.”
“I’ve heard.” He put the blowpipe to his mouth.
“Can you play ‘Come Back to Erin’?”
He nodded as he puffed.
“Then play it for us, George.”
He took a long breath and said, “To use an expression, Megan, you’ve not paid the piper, and you’ll not call the tune. I’ll play ‘The Minstrel Boy’ and you’ll damn well like it. Go on, now, and leave me alone.”
Megan looked at him, turned abruptly, and entered the small door that led down to the spiral stairs.
Sullivan finished inflating the bagpipe, bounced a few notes off the wall behind him, made the necessary tuning, then turned, bellied up to the stone parapet, and began to play. The haunting melody carried into every corner of the Cathedral and echoed off the stone. Acoustically bad for an organ or choir, Sullivan thought, but for a bagpipe it was lovely, sounding like the old Celtic warpipes echoing through the rocky glens of Antrim. The pipes were designed to echo from stone, he thought, and now that he heard his pipes in here, he would recommend their use in place of organs in Ireland. He had never sounded better.
He saw Abby Boland leaning across the parapet, looking at him, and he played to her, then turned east and played to his wife in Armagh prison, then turned to the wall behind him and played softly for himself.
CHAPTER 18
Brian Flynn listened to Sullivan for a few seconds. “The lad’s not bad.”
Hickey found his briar pipe and began filling it. “Reminds me of those Scottish and Irish regiments in the First War. Used to go into battle with pipes skirling. Jerry’s machine guns ripped them up. Never missed a note, though—good morale-builder.” He looked down at the blueprints. “I’m beginning to think whoever designed this place designed Tut’s tomb.”
“Same mentality. Tricks with stone. Fellow named Renwick in this case. There’s a likeness of him on one of those stained-glass windows. Over there. Looks shifty.”
“Even God looks shifty in stained glass, Brian.”
Flynn consulted the blueprints. “Look, there are six large supporting piers— they’re towers, actually. They all have doors either on the inside or outside of the Cathedral, and they all have spiral staircases that go into the triforia…. All except this one, which passes through Farrell’s triforium. It has no doors, either on the blueprints or in actuality.”
“How did he get up there?”
“From the next tower which has an outside door.” Flynn looked up at Eamon Farrell. “I told him to look for the way into this tower, but he hasn’t found it.”
“Aye, and probably never will. Maybe that’s where they burn heretics. Or hide the gold.”
“Well, you may joke about it, but it bothers me. Not even a church architect wastes time and money building a tower from basement to roof without putting it to some use. I’m certain there’s a staircase in there, and entrances as well. We’ll have to find out where.”
“We may find out quite unexpectedly,” said Hickey.
“That we may.”
“Later,” said Hickey, “perhaps I’ll call on Renwick’s ghost for help.”
“I’d settle for the present architect. Stillway.” Flynn tapped his finger on the blueprints. “I think there are more hollow spaces here than even Renwick knew. Passages made by masons and workmen—not unusual in a cathedral of this size and style.”
“Anyway, you’ve done a superb job, Brian. It will take the police some time to formulate an attack.”
“Unless they get hold of Stillway and his set of blueprints before our people on the outside find him.” He turned and looked at the telephone mounted on the organ. “What’s taking the police so long to call?”
Hickey picked up the telephone. “It’s working.” He came back to the rail. “They’re still confused. You’ve disrupted their chain of command. They’ll be more angry with you for that than for this.”
“Aye. It’s like a huge machine that has malfunctioned. But when they get it going again, they’ll start to grind away at us. And there’s no way to shut it down again once it starts.”
Eamon Farrell, a middle-aged man and the oldest of the Fenians, except for Hickey, looked down from the six-story-high northeast triforium, watching Flynn and Hickey as they came out of the bell-tower lobby. Flynn wore the black suit of a priest, Hickey an old tweed jacket. They looked for all the world like a priest and an architect talking over renovations. Farrell shifted his gaze to the four hostages sitting in the sanctuary, waiting for some indication as to their fate. He felt sorry for them. But he also felt sorry for his only son, Eamon, Jr., in Long Kesh. The boy was in the second week of a hunger strike and wouldn’t last much longer.
Farrell slipped his police tunic off and hung it over the parapet, then turned and walked back to the wooden kneewall behind him. In the wall was a small door, and he opened it, knelt, and shone his flashlight at the plaster lathing of the ceiling of the bride’s room below him. He walked carefully in a crouch onto a rafter, and played the light around the dark recess, moving farther out onto the wooden beam. There was a fairly large space around him, a sort of lower attic below the main attic, formed by the downward pitch of the triforium roof before it met the outside wall of stone buttresses.
He stepped to the beam on his right and raised his light to the corner where the two walls came together. In the corner was part of a rounded tower made of brick and mortar. He made his way toward it and knelt precariously on a beam over the plaster. He reached out and ran his hand over a very small black iron door, almost the color of the dusty brick.
Eamon Farrell unhooked the rusty latch and pulled the door open. A familiar smell came out of the d
ark opening, and he reached his hand in and touched the inside of the brick, then brought his hand away and looked at it. Soot.
Farrell directed the light through the door and saw that the round hollow space was at least six feet across. He angled the light down but could see nothing. Carefully he eased his head and shoulders through the door and looked up. He sensed rather than saw the lights of the towering city above him. A cold downdraft confirmed that the hollow tower was a chimney.
Something caught his eye, and he pointed the light at it. A rung set into the brick. He played the light up and down the chimney and saw a series of iron rungs that ran up the chimney to the top. He withdrew from the opening and closed the thick steel door, then latched it firmly shut. He remained crouched on the beam for a long time, then came out of the small attic and moved to the parapet, calling down to Flynn.
Flynn quickly moved under the triforium. “Did you find something, Eamon?”
Farrell hesitated, then made a decision. “I see the tower as it comes through behind the triforium. There’s no doorway.”
Flynn looked impatient. “Throw me the rope ladder, and I’ll have a look.”
“No. No, don’t bother. I’ll keep looking.”
Flynn considered, then said, “That tower has a function—find out what it is.”
Farrell nodded. “I will.” But he had already found it, and found an escape route for himself, a way to get out of this mess alive if the coming negotiations failed.
Frank Gallagher looked out from the southeast triforium. Everyone seemed to be in place. Directly across from him was Farrell. Sullivan, he noticed, was making eyes at Boland across the nave. Jean Kearney and Arthur Nulty were in the attic building bonfires and discussing, no doubt, the possibility of getting in a quick one before they died. Megan’s brother, Pedar, was on the crypt landing watching the sacristy gates. He was young, not eighteen, but steady as a rock. For thou art Peter, and upon this Rock, thought Gallagher, who was devoutly Catholic, upon this Rock,I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The Thompson submachine gun helped, too.