The City of Strangers. Michael Russell

both. Whatever they were talking about didn’t include him.

      ‘Does know what?’ he said, his eyes on Kate. ‘What’s this about?’

      ‘It doesn’t matter, Jimmy.’

      She was awkward rather than dismissive, but it came across as dismissive anyway. Cavendish wouldn’t want her to talk about any of that.

      ‘It matters to me. And it sounds like it’s going to matter to Niamh.’

      The trumpeter turned to Captain Cavendish again. He didn’t know him. He didn’t know why he was involved, why he was giving out passports and booking liner tickets. He didn’t like the fact that he was taking things over, in ways that weren’t explained, ways that seemed to be about something a lot more than helping Kate O’Donnell and her sister because he was a nice guy. He had only met the captain three times; he didn’t always feel like a nice guy. He watched people too much. ‘So this’ll be some li’l thing the nigger don’t need concern hisself with, that right Massa John?’

      ‘Come on, Jimmy. It’s nothing of the kind,’ said Cavendish.

      ‘Maybe this nigger should know about it, Kate,’ snapped Jimmy.

      ‘He’s not helping us for love,’ said Kate, shaking her head. ‘You must have worked that out. He wants something out of it. You know what Niamh was doing on the boats. You know she wasn’t just any old courier either. Why should the captain do anything for nothing? Why should anybody? He’s a soldier, an Irish soldier. You know what I’m talking about too.’

      John Cavendish wasn’t comfortable with what Kate was saying, but he didn’t stop her saying it. He looked across at Jimmy Palmer and nodded.

      Jimmy didn’t like it but he could work it out, enough anyway.

      ‘We can’t do this on our own,’ said Kate. It was all she could offer.

      The trumpeter stubbed out his cigarette. The waiter arrived with the fresh drinks and passed them round. Palmer downed his bourbon in one.

      ‘If there’s a deal, then you do your part, Mr Cavendish. She can’t stay there. And days, not weeks. Kate’s seen her. She can’t take much more.’

      ‘I’m ready to go.’ John Cavendish looked from Jimmy to Kate.

      Jimmy was looking at Kate now too.

      She nodded.

      Ellington’s band was straggling back on stage.

      ‘I got the taxi,’ said the horn player, getting up. ‘Just give me the day.’

      Kate nodded again. She picked up her drink.

      Cavendish raised his and smiled.

      Jimmy reached out his hand. John Cavendish shook it.

      Kate smiled at them both. It wasn’t much of a smile. She looked tired.

      The trumpeter walked back to the stage.

      ‘Do you want a lift, Kate?’ She shook her head.

      ‘No, I’ll get a cab.’

      ‘Sure?’

      ‘It’s better we’re not seen together outside work.’

      She was right.

      Suddenly Duke Ellington’s hands hit the piano hard. The drummer crashed the cymbal and top hat. Jimmy Palmer’s horn was loud and liquid.

      Outside it was cold. Kate O’Donnell slipped away, with no more than a last smile, a stronger smile now, and hailed a cab. John Cavendish watched her go for a moment, conscious that he had been delaying things. He didn’t know what the consequences would be, that was all. There was no obvious connection to make between a woman escaping from a sanatorium on Long Island, where she was virtually a prisoner, and the IRA’s courier system and its ciphered messages to and from America. But if the IRA was as careful as it ought to be, someone could decide changes were in order anyway, and that might mean his interceptions drying up. He pushed away all that and walked towards 7^th Avenue to get his car. It was time to act; a file full of ciphers nobody could read was no use to anybody. He needed Niamh Carroll now.

      The night was bright and noisy all around him; car horns, laughter, singing, angry voices, somewhere a saxophone, the rattle of the trains from the el. It was still Ellington’s music, all of it.

      At the corner with 7^th Avenue there were a few people standing in front of a small black man, not old but with strikingly white hair, who stood on a box speaking. In front of him there was a placard: The Ethiopian Pacific Movement – the Struggle between the New Order and the Old. People drifted by. Some paused, then walked on quickly. The night swept round the white-haired man. John Cavendish did stop, listening to his words. He had seen the man before.

      ‘You think there’s going to be change while those sonovabitch Jews run things? Even the white man’s starting to listen now. Even the white man’s got someone telling him what’s righteous. You heard of Adolf Hitler? Now, he’s a man got those sonovabitch Jews on the run. When he’s kicked their butts, well, the white man can have Europe, that’s all Hitler wants. He wants us to have our place and whitey to have his. Black place, white place. That’s the world we want. So Herr Hitler is fighting our battle for us. He’s fighting against white democracy, because white democracy is the biggest shit lie the Devil ever put on the earth. And you know what Herr Hitler’s going to do? He’s going to take Africa from the British and give it to the black man. That’s coming brothers, believe me! And we got other friends too, not just Mr Hitler. We got the Japanese now. They want to kick the white man’s ass out of the Pacific, like Hitler will in Africa. They’ll kick it so hard you won’t see a white man or a fucking sonovabitch Jew for dust!’

      The words puzzled Cavendish now as they had puzzled him before, but the light of truth shone in the black man’s eyes. He was looking at Cavendish, with a slight smile, only now registering his only listener. The captain smiled back amiably, pulled his hat on tighter, and walked off.

      *

      When Donal Redmond left John Cavendish’s car in Queens he had walked two blocks to Lennon’s Bar, the call house where the messages he brought from Ireland were dropped. He walked in through the bar, nodding to the barman and the two or three customers who were there, and headed straight for the back room. He knew the place; he knew the routine. And there’d be a couple of drinks afterwards. He opened the door into Paddy Lennon’s office.

      The old man was sitting at his desk, a green shade over his eyes, totting up figures. The room was tiny, lined with ledgers and files, the desk piled with skewered bills and receipts. Paddy raised his eyes and pushed up the shade.

      ‘You’re late.’

      ‘Why the fuck’s everyone always telling me I’m late?’

      ‘Maybe it’s got something to do with the time.’

      ‘Is there a clock on this?’

      Paddy Lennon simply smiled, but it was an odd sort of smile.

      The steward put down his duffel bag and got out the Jacob’s tin.

      The bar owner took it and put it in a drawer in the desk.

      ‘You should stay off the booze till a job’s done, Donal.’

      ‘I don’t take orders from you. I deliver and you collect. That’s it. I get my orders in Dublin. The job is done and that’s that. The way it always is.’

      ‘The way it always is,’ said Paddy, pulling down his eye shade.

      As Donal Redmond walked back to the bar there were two men standing in his way. One of them was a uniformed NYPD officer. The other man wore a grey raincoat and still had his hat on. He was a policeman too, a detective. He didn’t need a uniform for the ship’s steward to know it.

      ‘Mr Redmond?’ It was the detective who spoke.

      ‘That’s