The People's Republic of America Read online

Whelan showed his guest to his room on the second floor. On the way, he said, “Judging by your accent and name, you’re a Scot, Mr. Dalrymple. Where’s home?”

  “In Ayr, it’s a town sixty-five kilometers Southwest of Glasgow.”

  “That’s Lowlands country,” Whelan said. “From your accent, I would have guessed you to be a Glaswegian.” His face was expressionless. His eyes again conveyed nothing.

  Dinwiddie appeared to be rattled. “You fancy yourself an expert on accents, Mr. Whelan?”

  “An innkeeper meets people from all over the world.” Whelan paused for a moment then said, “I’ve made fresh coffee, or we have tea if you prefer.”

  “No, I’m fine, thank you. I think I’ll just rest for a wee bit, then perhaps have a look at the town.”

  “Traveling can be tiring,” Whelan said. “But come downstairs later. We’ll be serving wine and some amazing Irish brown bread at five. It’s traditional Irish comfort food. You don’t want to miss it.”

  * * *

  When Whelan left, Dinwiddie locked his door. A rare emotion suddenly overcame him. Longing. And emptiness. And maybe a sense of dread. In all his contracts, all the places he’d traveled to fulfill them, he’d never experienced this before. He sat on the edge of the king-size bed and took a deep breath. His hand shook slightly as he reached for the pendant on a silver chain around his neck. It was a Trinity Knot, its unbroken lines symbolizing the eternal, unending circle of life and love. His lover, Lucien, had given it to him. As his hand closed tightly around it, Dinwiddie felt his heart beating more rapidly than usual. Why? Was it his feelings for Lucien and their relationship? Or was it something else, something more sinister, like apprehension about this, his final contract killing?

  He shook his head, trying to dispel the sensation. In a further effort at distraction, he stood and opened his small suitcase. He removed a grey windbreaker, denim pants, a dark blue fisherman’s sweater, and a pair of black Balenciaga Triple S sneakers. The shoes would add at least an inch to his height. He smiled at the thought of being taller than Whelan. Perhaps it would make the innkeeper’s muscularity seem less imposing. To Dinwiddie, that alone almost justified the shoes’ price of nine hundred pounds.

  After changing clothes, Dinwiddie repacked his suitcase and placed it in the closet of his spacious and well-appointed room. He slipped into the windbreaker and went downstairs. There were no other guests to be seen, but he heard someone rattling around in the kitchen. Whelan? He quietly exited through the front door.

  * * *

  Brendan Whelan was in the inn’s kitchen when he heard the front door open and close. He knew it had to be the new guest, the Scotsman, Dalrymple. Otherwise, the house was empty. It was the low point of the offseason. His wife, Caitlin, was shopping with her mother in Dublin for a few days and not due to return until tomorrow. He almost felt guilty that he was enjoying her absence. But things were strained since her act of infidelity.

  It happened because fate had forced an impossible choice on Whelan. Whelan’s long missing and presumed dead brother Maksym, a man of incarnate evil, had vowed to kill Whelan and his entire family. He’d nearly succeeded.

  Rather than hunker down in Dingle and wait for Maksym to find him, Whelan had gone after Maksym. He thought taking the fight to the enemy was the safest way to protect his family. He was wrong.

  Whelan left Caitlin and their sons, Sean and Declan, under round-the-clock protection of armed townspeople and Caitlin’s brother Padraig, who was the superintendent of the local office of the Garda Síochána, the Irish national police. The locals were no match for Maksym and his accomplice. They killed Padraig and three of the townspeople. The killers abducted Caitlin and the two sons and held them hostage in an ancient redoubt on the coast east of Dingle. Whelan and his closest friend and colleague, Sven Larsen, also known as the Man with No Neck, tried to rescue them, but Maksym captured them.

  Maksym intended to shoot the youngest son first, then the older boy, then Caitlin so Whelan could suffer the agony of watching his loved ones being murdered. It didn’t work out that way. Maksym’s accomplice, a Russian mercenary soldier named Andrei Ulyanin, had a murderous grudge of his own. He shot Maksym in the back, killing him.

  Caitlin opposed Whelan’s decision to leave her and the boys for a preemptive strike on Maksym. Afterward, she blamed her husband for losing her brother and the near loss of her sons and her own life. For a while, she hated Whelan with an intense passion and left him for another man, becoming pregnant with his child. She miscarried and, eventually, she and Whelan reconciled, but he felt things were never the same between them. In his mind, her infidelity had destroyed the bond of trust. He wasn’t confident their marriage could ever be the same again.

  A tingling sensation on his wrist interrupted his painful thoughts. The special watch he wore signaled an incoming call from Whelan’s mentor, Cliff Levell. Whelan went into the closet-sized office just off the kitchen. He pressed his thumb against a lens-like object embedded in a small wall safe. There was a soft click and the safe door swung open. He reached in and removed a satellite phone.

  The phone was a product of a special lab owned by a series of international straw corporations ultimately controlled by three billionaire brothers, Alfred, Hermann, and Tomas Mueller. The lab developed communications gear for the American government’s top security agencies. But what the government got wasn’t the latest cutting-edge encryption technology. The pre-beta stuff went to Levell, and a few carefully chosen others. One of those was Brendan Whelan.

  Levell assured Whelan that their encryption methodology was always ahead of the curve. The communications traveled via satellites that were built and operated commercially by another of the countless Mueller enterprises. But the satellites harbored highly encrypted communications equipment accessible only by persons specifically designated by the Muellers. To the rest of the world, the satellites broadcast music for commercial radio operations. But digitally encrypted into the streams of music were the messages transmitted between Levell and the chosen few. The system used a newly developed asymmetric encryption. It was a combination of three encryption methods, used together with a complex hash and a well-protected key. Current technology couldn’t crack it.

  Whelan powered up the phone and said, “Yeah, Cliff, what’s on your mind?”

  Levell, as usual, cut right to the point of his call. “What are you doing right now?” His voice, as always, was raspy and edged with anger.

  “Sitting in my office, speaking with you.” Whelan grinned. He knew the response it would generate.

  “No, wiseass,” Levell said impatiently. It seemed to Whelan that the older man was always impatient; either that or angry as hell. “I’m asking you what’s going on around you. Who’s there? Lodgers? Handymen? Strangers of one kind or another?”

  “No, things are slow right now. Caitlin and her mother are spending a few days in Dublin on a girls’ getaway. You know, melting plastic right and left.”

  “What about Sean and Declan?”

  “They’re at that pricy sports academy in Florida.”

  “They still planning to play football at the University of Miami like their old man did?”

  “I can’t seem to talk them out of it,” Whelan said, his voice rich with paternal pride.

  “Are there any other people around?”

  “It’s off-season. There’s only one guest.”

  “Who is it?” Levell demanded.

  Whelan pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment and looked at it, as if unsure of what he was hearing. He replaced it and said, “Since when have you been interested in the innkeeping business, Cliff?”

  “Since I learned that there’s a contract on your head. Eventually, there’ll be a bullseye on the other six Dogs, the Muellers, me, Maureen, Mitch Christie, and others.”

  Whelan sat bolt upright. Levell had almost no sense of humor. He was a very serious man not given to kidding. “Where did you hear that?”

  “
From people who are in a position to know. Based on decades of friendship, they felt enough guilt from selling us out to share that unpleasant news with me.”

  “Who the hell wants us dead?”

  Levell replied slowly and evenly. “The United States government.”

  * * *

  When Dinwiddie stepped outside the Fianna House, it was a typical Irish day—damp with dark rain clouds gathering to the north above the peaks of the Slieve Mish Mountains, where Conor Pass snaked across the pyramidal-shaped Croaghskearda Mountain.

  The Scottish assassin liked to study the area where he’d be operating. He’d read that humans had occupied Dingle and the surrounding area continuously for at least six thousand years. But it wasn’t until the Anglo-Norman invasion in the twelfth century that the port began trading with the European continent. Its broad, deep harbor was protected by a rocky-cliffed inlet only 200 meters wide at its narrowest point. By the sixteenth century, it became one of the largest and most important deep-water ports in Ireland. Today, it was home to commercial fishing trawlers and a fleet of private and rental craft.

  The harbor was only a few blocks from the Fianna House, but Dinwiddie could smell the aromas of salt-water and dead fish mingled with the odor of smoke from wood-burning fireplaces and gas and diesel fumes from motor vehicles. He quickened his pace, hoping to complete the business at hand before the wet weather hit. When he reached the harbor area, he quickly found the craft he was looking for, an aging 30-foot pilothouse boat, painted blue beneath the waterline and white above it. There was a smallish man onboard. He had removed the cover and appeared to be working on the engine. His thick brown hair was morphing to gray and curled from beneath a black watch cap. He wore faded denims and a heavy, long-sleeved grey t-shirt.

  Dinwiddie stepped aboard and the man stood. “Hamish,” the man said in his thick Marseillais accent and smiled warmly,

  Dinwiddie returned the smile. “Lucien.” He refrained from embracing his lover, Lucien Magaud. If someone saw them, it could stick in their memory; something Dinwiddie wanted to avoid.

  “Where is the person you hired to run the boat?” the Scotsman said.

  “He’s getting lunch at a pub and will be along shortly. It’s not important, as you won’t need him until much later tonight.”

  “This bloke does know the waters between here and Cork?”

  “Like the proverbial back of his hand. He’s smuggled along this coast for years. You’ll be in expert hands.”

  “And the driver who’ll be waiting at the boat basin at Crosshaven?”

  Magaud nodded. “When I leave here, I’m going directly to Cork to meet with him and give him half his fee. He’s trustworthy in this matter; he’ll be there.”

  Lucien motioned to Dinwiddie to step into the cramped pilothouse with him. He removed a panel from the wall lining the hull and withdrew a small bundle wrapped in what appeared to be rags. He tugged the cloth away and revealed a suppressed Ruger SR22 with a ten-round magazine in it and an additional loaded magazine. “Your old friend, just as you requested.”

  Dinwiddie took the pistol and inspected it. He ejected the magazine and the round in the chamber, checked to make certain both magazines were fully loaded, then worked the gun’s action. Satisfied, he replaced the round in the chamber, inserted the magazine, slipped the safety on, and stuck the weapon in the rear of his waistband. His windbreaker covered the exposed butt of the pistol.

  “You’ve checked in and met our target, the proprietor. Any problems?” Magaud said.

  “Maybe. I didn’t see or hear anyone else at the inn, not even his family.”

  “How is that a problem? The fewer people around, the better.”

  Dinwiddie’s face clouded with a worried expression. “I don’t like loose ends. They’re what cause things to unravel, to go south. I want to know exactly who’s around and where they are.”

  “I can’t speak for the whereabouts of the family members, but look around. All you see are locals. This isn’t tourist season, so the inn would normally be empty.”

  Dinwiddie glanced around the harbor area. There were several empty boat slips and traffic was light on the Sraid Na Trá, the street that ran along the waterfront. “I’ll find out soon enough. There’s a bit of a soirée at five.”

  Magaud smiled reassuringly. “Well, then, it seems you’ll soon have your answer.”

  “That’s not the only thing.” He scowled at Magaud. “This Whelan bloke is a dangerous-looking fellow… big, strong-looking, quite sinister. Have you told me everything you know about him, like what’s his background? Was he a copper? Ex-military?”

  Magaud briefly broke eye contact. “Well,… he is a mystery. He was born in Ireland but grew up in the States. He showed up in Dingle some years back, married the daughter of the Garda Chief Superintendent for County Kerry. The newlyweds renovated an old farmhouse into the inn, and now have the two boys.”

  “I know most of that,” Dinwiddie said impatiently. “It’s in the dossier you put together. But what about the ‘he is a mystery’ you mentioned? What mystery?”

  Again, Magaud wouldn’t meet the other man’s gaze. He fidgeted with an oiled-stained rag, wiping his hands repeatedly. “It’s probably nothing, just a meaningless anomaly.”

  “I’ll be the one to decide that. Tell me.”

  “There are parts of his life that are missing.”

  “What do you mean, missing?”

  “He was some sort of athlete, American football, I think. He received a scholarship to a university at seventeen, but dropped out after a few months. It seems he disappeared for a time.”

  “How long?”

  “He showed up in Dingle a few years later.”

  “A few years!” Dinwiddie shouted. “Every profile you’ve ever done covers every minute of a target’s life. And you couldn’t find information on where this bloke was, what he was doing for a period of years?”

  “Please, Hamish, calm yourself.” Magaud quickly glanced around the dock area. “And please keep your voice down. We don’t want to attract attention.”

  “I don’t give a bloody fig about attention. What else haven’t you told me?”

  Magaud seemed to hesitate, then said, “There have been periods of time in the recent past when he’s… disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? Jesus Christ! What have we gotten ourselves into? Who’s our client? Why do they want this innkeeper… if he is an innkeeper, killed?”

  “You know we rarely discuss a client’s identity, Hamish. It’s not good for business.”

  “Fuck business! This is our last job. Tell me who the client is.”

  “He called himself Mr. Smith. I’m sure that isn’t his real name. In this business, no one uses their true identity. He sounded Américain.”

  “You’re former DGSE. What do you know about him?” Dinwiddie’s reference was to the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, France's foreign intelligence agency, equivalent to the British MI6 and the American CIA. It was Magaud’s former employer.

  “Yes, from my days in the DGSE, I can recognize a fellow spook. I believe this Smith fellow is CIA.”

  “Why is the bloody CIA hiring out this hit? I thought they did their wetwork in-house.”

  Magaud shrugged. “The Yanks have laws that prohibit the Agency from conducting political assassinations, but they’re clever bastards. I’m certain they’ve parsed the language of the law to get around it.”

  “My point exactly. So, why are they using us?”

  “There must be something about killing this particular target they don’t want to come back at them.” Magaud grinned, then added, “Whatever the case, they are paying us handsomely to do the job for them.”

  “I don’t know, Lucien. There’s something about this job that doesn’t feel right. We’ve been very fortunate until now. If this wasn’t our last contract, one that enables us to retire to our villa, I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Indeed, mon chéri, let’s get this l
ast job behind us. Are your plans still the same?”

  Dinwiddie nodded. “Ninety minutes after Whelan goes to bed, he should be in the deepest slumber of the night. I’ll sneak into his bedroom with the suppressed Ruger and shoot him at point-blank range. If his missus is there, I’ll do her too.”

  “What about the kids?”

  “If I see them or anyone else in the house, I’ll kill them too. I’ve been doing this too long to fuck up and leave any loose ends behind.”

  * * *

  Whelan was speechless for a moment. He heard what Levell had just said, but it wasn’t registering. “Say again? The U.S. government wants to kill me? What the hell is this all about?”

  “You heard right. The lower forms of life inside the Beltway are finally making their collective move to seize permanent power.”

  “What? Why?”

  “In a word, greed. They fear us, our potential to cause problems for their efforts to solidify their control of this country.”

  “Cliff, I follow the social and political developments in America. There have been signs of this happening for a long time.”

  “Well, it has happened, and our first order of business is to avoid being assassinated. The second is to restore basic freedoms…, such as they were.”

  Whelan heard the anger mixed with resignation in Levell’s voice. Now in his mid-to-late seventies and trapped in the confines of a wheelchair, the result of an automobile crash several years earlier, Cliff Levell remained the toughest, most ornery man Whelan had ever known. And he had known several. But Levell also was a consummate strategist as well as tactician.

  “On your first point, survival, I assume you have a plan.”

  “I’m working on one. For starters, we need to get everyone back together. There’s that old adage about safety in numbers.”

  “When and where?”

  “As for timing, yesterday wouldn’t have been soon enough. Realistically, I want everyone together no later than a week from today. If you hustle, that should be enough time for you to round up the others.”