The City of Strangers. Michael Russell

go out and beat some Jews up, or just some people they don’t like, who mainly happen to be Jews. But that’s not compulsory, Jewish I mean. There’s a lot of people they don’t like. As an American I don’t regard that as entirely reasonable behaviour.’

      Longie Zwillman shrugged. Captain Cavendish looked at the photos.

      ‘Anyone you know?’

      The intelligence officer picked up four of the photographs.

      ‘James Stewart,’ he said, laying one of them down again. ‘I know him. He’s a Clan na Gael man in the Bronx. I wouldn’t have said he was that important, but he is close to Dominic Carroll. He raises a lot of money that goes to the IRA. He has a cousin who’s an anti-Roosevelt congressman –’

      ‘He’s a Christian Front man now as well,’ said Zwillman. ‘He’s not out in the street, but he’s been at some meetings where they put together a bunch of street fighters, mostly German and Irish. He says a lot of them are ex-IRA.’

      ‘I wouldn’t take too much notice of that. Give me a dollar for every Irishman in New York who was in the IRA and I could buy up Manhattan.’

      John Cavendish put down another card.

      ‘Joseph McWilliams. I’ve seen him at a few Irish-American bashes. He’s big on anti-British campaigns of one sort or another, that’s all I know. But I wouldn’t have said he’s anybody big in Irish-American politics now.’

      ‘He’s big on the German side.’ Zwillman spoke again. ‘He speaks at a lot of Bund meetings, about Germany and Ireland – together against the British and the Jews. I guess you know how that goes. Maybe he’s a useful go-between. He speaks good German too. This meeting was no rally for the masses, though. This was small; a dozen people, Irish and German. He’s a somebody somewhere.’

      Cavendish nodded; it was good information. He put down the next photo.

      ‘This one’s a man called Aaron Phelan. Clan na Gael organiser from Queens, and an NYPD captain. He’s also as pally as you can get with Dominic Carroll. And you know who he is now – Clan na Gael president.’

      ‘And the IRA’s man in New York.’

      ‘That’s him. If Phelan’s there, Carroll is involved in it too.’

      ‘So who’s left?’

      The G2 man put down the last of the four photographs.

      ‘An old friend,’ he smiled. ‘I knew he was in New York. It’s interesting to see he’s not just giving speeches at Hibernian Club dinners.’

      ‘Who is he?’

      ‘He’s the IRA chief of staff, Seán Russell.’

      ‘So what are they all talking about, the German Bund and the IRA?’

      John Cavendish shook his head.

      Zwillman picked up the photographs.

      ‘I’ve got some friends who’ll want a look at these too.’

      Cavendish knew enough not to ask who Zwillman’s friends were.

      ‘What about these women?’ said the American.

      It sounded like a change of subject, but it wasn’t.

      ‘It’s going ahead. It’ll be the night after Patrick’s Day.’

      ‘And will you get the information?’

      ‘She says the sister’s got it. She knows the key to the ciphers. She knows how they work. If I can get both of them across to Canada –’

      ‘So when does she deliver?’

      ‘When they’re on their way.’

      ‘I want to know what this is about,’ said Longie Zwillman. ‘So do you. I got someone inside the Bund. A good man. They trust him. But he doesn’t know nothing about this meeting with the IRA. Nobody does. That’s not how it is. They’re smart as hell when it comes to dressing up in brown shirts and Sieg-Heiling it all over New York, but their organisation stinks. It’s like a sieve. And you don’t seem to think the IRA’s far behind them –’

      ‘Some of the time,’ replied Captain Cavendish. ‘It depends –’

      ‘This has got a smell. That’s where it started. You smelt it and I smelt it. But that’s all we have, a shitty smell. They got it well hid. That means it’s got to be worth hiding. You need to open up those ciphers, Captain. This woman has to deliver the goods. If you can’t get it out of her somebody else is going to have to. No maybe. So how about you keep me posted, John?’

      The half smile that was always on Zwillman’s lips was still there. His expression hadn’t changed at all. But John Cavendish was conscious that he was dealing with a man who was used to getting what he wanted and didn’t care what happened along the way. The American wasn’t a man to play games with. He had made a mistake telling him about Kate and Niamh at all. It had been necessary to give information to get information back.

      It had never crossed his mind that he risked losing control. But the waters were getting deeper. Now he heard the quiet threat in Longie Zwillman’s voice.

       7. The Yankee Clipper

       Foynes, Co Limerick

       It’s the sheer size of it I couldn’t believe. It’s higher than a house. It’s like a liner, sitting in the water, but it’s the wings and the engines that are so big when you climb up under them to get in. One minute you’re on the water, bumping a bit – bumping quite a lot in fact, and then you’re in the air. We were only over Ireland a few minutes, hardly at all, and then we were over the Atlantic. You look down and the sea just goes on and on forever.

      The postcard Stefan Gillespie was writing to Tom was growing in length, and his writing was getting smaller and smaller to fit. He had bought the picture of the Boeing 314 Yankee Clipper at the terminal, but Tom wanted it to be written on the plane and sent from America with an American stamp. The card wouldn’t reach Baltinglass till he was back there himself, but it was crucial that it came in the post as far as his son was concerned; that had an authenticity that the picture alone couldn’t have.

      Finishing the card Stefan gazed down at the Atlantic again, as he had been gazing on and off for an hour. At 20,000 feet the sky was clear; there was nothing below except the sea, grey and choppy and unchanging, mile after mile after mile, and the long journey was only beginning. But as Stefan gazed down, that unchanging swell had its own fascination. The flying boat felt smaller now, far smaller than it had tied up beside the pontoon on the Shannon.

      The cabin of the Yankee Clipper was divided up into small seating areas, with bulkheads closing them off from one another. The seats were leather, still with the smell of newness about them. The floors were thickly carpeted. Halfway along the length of the main cabin there was a small dining room; two stewards, naval-officer navy now exchanged for gleaming white jackets, were setting the tables for the first sitting of dinner, with crisp linen and silverware. Another steward, passing Stefan’s seat with a bottle of champagne, stopped and topped up the glass at his elbow.

      The journey that was all about bringing a man home to hang perhaps had become no less strange in all the self-conscious elegance of the Yankee Clipper. But it was still hard not to smile grimly at the prospect of the return, a pair of handcuffs linking him and his prisoner across the plush leather, and both of them with a glass of champagne in each free hand. Whatever crap Superintendent Gregory had given him the night before at the Four Courts Hotel, he had taken one piece of advice; on the way to Kingsbridge Station he had walked round to the Bridewell Garda station, behind the Four Courts, to get a pair of handcuffs.

      The flying boat was by no means full. Most of the passengers were already on the plane when it touched down