Page 13 of Blood in the Water
Christophe nodded. “Good morning.”
Nolan was still caught off guard when Christophe spoke. He looked every bit the Frenchman he was, with dark hair and eyes and the trim figure that seemed to be inherent in European men, but his accent was almost undetectable.
Nolan lifted a hand to flag the waiter and ordered coffee, then waited while Will ordered bacon, eggs, hash browns, a short stack of pancakes, and a side of sausage, probably because he knew Marchand was paying. He was ridiculous that way, taking advantage of every opportunity to eek out a free meal or free beer or pretty much anything he could get for free, even though he had hundreds of thousands of dollars saved in his “Fuck Seamus” account, an offshore account that was his backup plan in case things got too hot in Boston.
“Thanks for coming,” Christophe said when the waiter left.
“No problem,” Nolan said. Norwood was only a half hour inland, and it was thirty minutes well spent if it minimized the chance of Seamus catching Nolan and Willmeeting with the Syndicate. Nolan had been careful anyway, watching the cars in his rearview mirror, making sure he wasn’t followed.
“How are things?” Christophe asked.
Nolan searched for the right words. “Stable, but becoming more tenuous by the day. Seamus has us tailing his own men now.”
“Since when?”
Nolan had to hand it to Marchand. Nothing ruffled the man.
“Since last night as far as we know,” Nolan said.
“Any chance he put the other men on you before that?”
“Doubtful,” Nolan said.
“Because?”
He thought of his secret meetings with Bridget, of the two occasions on which he’d met Christophe since the Harbor Trust theft.
“Because he’d be at the bottom of the bay,” Will said. “We both would.”
Christophe nodded. “Watch your back. Now you know.”
“Now we know.” Nolan waited while the waiter set two cups of coffee on the table and filled them for Nolan and Will. He topped off Christophe’s mug and turned to take the order of two women in business clothes who’d just sat down. “What about you? What do you know?”
“I’ve sent you some information to the encrypted email address,” Christophe said. “The New York cyber lab dug deep into the background of Seamus’s IRA friends. Whether or not it will help you remains to be seen, but in my experience, it’s always better to have it.”
“What’s the short version?” Nolan asked.
“The short version is that Seamus and Baren Maguire were both members of the IRA’s Army Council.”
“What the feck does that mean?” Will said.
“The Army Council was the overarching authority of all IRA operations,” Christophe said. “Nothing was done without their sanction, and the vast majority of their strategy was developed from within the Army Council ranks.”
Nolan wasn’t fooled by the military terminology. The IRA had been a vicious terrorist organization along the lines of ETA — an organization with a sympathetic goal that killed many of the people it was supposed to help. The fact that they’d used a military hierarchy to structure their leadership and men on the ground didn’t change the fact that they’d spent decades planting bombs in places where civilians were blown to bits.
“So they were leadership,” Nolan said. “Not soldiers.”
“That would be a simplistic assessment. One didn’t get to the Army Council unless one had already served — heroically from their standpoint — as a soldier or volunteer.”
“Feck,” Will said.
They paused the conversation again as the waiter set four plates down in front of Will. When the waiter was assured they didn’t need anything else he left, and Will picked up his fork and attacked his pancakes like a man who hadn’t just been told his boss was a former IRA leader.
“So they did such a good job blowing shit up and killing people that they were rewarded with roles in the Army Council,” Nolan said.
Christophe nodded. “I’d say that’s accurate.”
“Great,” Will said between bites of scrambled eggs.