Sons of Macha. John Lenahan

as crazy as mine, to as many people as I had and none of them believe you – you start to doubt your sanity. Could it be that I had finally met someone who truly believed me?

      ‘Have you met people from The Land before?’

      The agent shushed me, took off his jacket and covered the security camera that was mounted on the corner of the wall.

      ‘So you have a file on Tir na Nog, right?’

      Once again he raised his finger in front of his lips, picked the intercom off the table and unplugged it. Then after looking around to see that no one or nothing could overhear us, he covertly gestured for me to come close. I stood and looked around myself. It was very cloak and dagger. I just got within striking distance of him when – that is exactly what he did – he struck. He slammed the intercom into my stomach just below my ribs. Whether he had been trained or had lots of practice in using office equipment to cause pain, I don’t know, but he was certainly good at it. Every molecule of air flew out of my body and the agonising spasms in my solar plexus made it so I was having a hard time replacing any of them. I was on the ground, doing a convincing impression of a fish out of water, when he bent down and slammed the intercom into my right shin.

      I once heard that the only good thing about pain is that you can only experience it in one place – let me tell you now: that’s not true. Getting slammed in the shin just meant that I hurt from my chest to my toes. Then he slammed the damn thing into my head and I hurt all over. I tried to ask why but my breathing still wasn’t working and then I had a thought that terrified me so much I didn’t even care about the pain.

      ‘Did Cialtie send you?’ I said as loud as I could.

      Apparently it wasn’t very loud at all because Agent Murano leaned over and said: ‘What did you say?’

      ‘Were you sent by my Uncle Cialtie to kill me?’

      He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me back into a chair where he handcuffed my hands behind my back.

      ‘Still with the Faerieland stories. Do you want me to kick the crap out of you again?’

      ‘No,’ I answered honestly.

      ‘Then enough with the dragons and the Pixies.’

      ‘There are no Pixies in Tir na Nog.’

      That line earned me a backhand across the face that made my vision swim for a second. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘I want you to knock it off with the insanity talk. The last four federal crimes I have investigated in this state have all gotten off with insanity pleas. My nickname in the office is The Shrink. I refuse to lose another case to the nuthouse.’

      Relief washed over me; he was not an assassin hired by my uncle, he was a plain old ordinary Real World jerk. I smiled.

      ‘What, O’Neil, is so funny?’

      ‘The Shrink,’ I said laughing.

      Murano flew into a rage, he re-hit me in the stomach and overturned the chair I was cuffed to, my head bounced off the floor and I thought I was going to throw up. I really didn’t want to get hit again but I couldn’t help it, I was still laughing.

      ‘OK, OK,’ I said, my face pressed against the linoleum. ‘What do you want me to do?’

      The agent picked me off the floor – the cuffs cut in to my wrists. He put his face inches from mine. For a horrible second I thought he was going to kiss me. ‘You are going to confess to being a terrorist.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You’re going to admit that you are a terrorist. You don’t have to name names. You can claim that you never met your masters but you kidnapped Detective Fallon because you hate your country.’

      ‘You’re crazy.’

      ‘Maybe I am,’ Murano said, ‘but I’m going to make sure you are not crazy.’

      ‘So let me get this straight – you are punching a man who is tied to a chair and I’m the terrorist?’

      The crazy G-man tipped my chair over once again. This time I think I did black out for a short time. The next thing I remember there was drool on the floor and I finally had a pain in my head that hurt enough to block out all of the other pains in my body.

      ‘OK, OK, I said, ‘I’ll say anything you want. Let’s just try and keep my grey matter inside my skull.’

      You know all that talk about how advanced interrogation techniques are no good because a tortured prisoner will tell you anything? Well, it’s all true. I talked about how Tir na Nog was really a code word for a bunch of anarchists that wanted to overthrow the United States of America and then the world. When I started to get too outlandish, Agent Murano shook his head until eventually I just let him write my confession. We started getting along so well I even persuaded him to get me a burger and a shake. Don’t get me wrong, I still loathed the man. Anyone who would use their power to beat a shackled insane person (I know I’m not really insane but he didn’t know that) is just below snakes – and that’s giving snakes a bad name. I was slurping at the last of my shake when Murano came in holding my ‘confession’.

      I hesitated before signing. I had been called a lot of nasty things in my day. Once I had even been called ‘unfunny’ (can you believe that?). But ‘terrorist’ was not something I wanted people saying about me. I imagined that in prison hierarchy, a terrorist would be just a tiny step above a guy who cooks puppies for supper.

      ‘I don’t think I can sign this,’ I said.

      ‘You want we go through all this again, O’Neil?’ Agent Murano said, rubbing his knuckles.

      ‘Well the way I figure it, either I get a beating from you today or I get one every day from my white supremacist flag-loving cell-mate. Sorry, Andy, but I’m sticking with the fire-breathing dragon story.’

      ‘Sign it,’ the FBI man said as he stepped menacingly towards me.

      ‘No.’

      ‘SIGN IT!’

      ‘Sign what?’ Brendan said as he entered the room. The so-called kidnap victim was flanked by a local cop in uniform and an old, grey-haired lady that I at first thought was his mother. Brendan picked up my confession and scanned it. I kept staring at the wrinkled face of the old lady – something about her intrigued me.

      ‘So you’re a terrorist now?’ Brendan said to me.

      ‘Special Agent Murano thinks so.’

      ‘Did he coerce you?’

      ‘I’d say he counselled me,’ I replied. ‘Agent Andy is like a shrink.’

      Murano bristled and pulled Fallon into the corner. I’m sure the special agent meant to whisper but he was worked up and not doing it very well. I could hear every word.

      ‘What do you care if I rough him up a bit? According to the report he had you locked up in a closet for a couple of months.’

      ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

      ‘Come on,’ Murano said, ‘you probably want to take a few pops yourself.’

      ‘I’m not sure his attorney would approve,’ Fallon said, pointing to the old woman.

      ‘No,’ the grey-haired woman said, ‘I’d be fine with that.’

      At the sound of her voice all the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight out.

      ‘No you are not,’ Fallon said to her. ‘You were about to tell your client not to sign anything.’

      ‘My what?’

      ‘Your client, Mr O’Neil?’ Brendan said pointing to me. ‘You were about to tell him not to say or sign anything.’

      ‘Oh yes, I was.’ A look of confusion crossed her face – it was maddeningly familiar. ‘Yes,