Evil for Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

pack. He opened the door of the staff car and I got in back, next to Subaltern O’Brien. She was fanning herself with a file folder marked SECRET in bold red letters.
    “Am I in that file?” I asked.
    “Not this one, Lieutenant Boyle,” she said as the driver sped off, scattering pedestrians and the odd donkey with an utter disregard for civilians. As we turned onto the main road, I caught a last glimpse of the old walled city, the New Gate with its narrow archway into the Christian Quarter fading from view as we picked up speed.
    “What are you doing here anyway?” I asked her.
    “Finishing your briefing,” she said as she thumbed through the papers in the file.
    “No, I mean serving with the British. You’re Irish.”
    “So are you,” she said.
    “It’s not the same. My country is at war, yours isn’t. And you’re part of MI-5, the same people who go after the IRA in Northern Ireland.”
    “Which is exactly what you have been assigned to do, courtesy of General Eisenhower.”
    “You know what I mean,” I said. “I don’t think anyone ordered you to join the ATS, much less become part of MI-5.” At that, she shrugged, silently granting the point, as she finally looked up from her file.
    “Are you one of those Irish-Americans who romanticize the brave lads of the IRA, raising pints to them in your Boston bars and crying great rivers of tears when ‘Danny Boy’ plays? Do the pipes call to you, Billy Boyle, from glen to glen and down the mountainside? I think they must, even in Boston. But you never answer them, do you? You send your money and your guns, you sons of Eire, but not yourselves, so you never see the agony you cause as you keep open the great wounds of our nation. Well, now the pipes have called and you must answer. You must.”
    “It’s not like that,” I said, after I had recovered from the quiet force of her words. “It sounds like you don’t like Irish-Americans very much.”
    “I’m sure there are some fine ones. One, I even admire very much. Now here’s what we know about the theft—”
    “Wait, who is it you admire?”
    “Never mind, it’s nothing to do with this. Now listen.”
    She went through the file, reviewing the details. The U.S. Army base at Ballykinler regularly received supplies from local farmers and shops. On the night of the raid, a truck loaded with cabbages and rutabagas had been admitted at the gate. Two men, the driver and a helper, had carried the food to the kitchen and then made an unscheduled stop at the arms depot. Fifty Browning Automatic Rifles, newly delivered, and more than two hundred thousand rounds were loaded onto the truck and driven out the main gate. The two men had not been escorted, and there was no search of the truck. Based on the time the truck was signed in and out and the estimated time it took for the food delivery, they broke into the arms depot and loaded up in under ten minutes. Eddie Mahoney’s body was found at the side of the road less than half a mile from the base, hands bound behind his back.
    “It must have been an inside job,” she concluded. “Except for Mahoney.”
    “Was he an informer?” I asked when she closed the file.
    “No. Our information tells us he was trusted by the IRA General Staff in Dublin.”
    “Would you tell me if he was an informer?”
    “Yes,” she said. “If it would help you, I would. There is one other IRA operative from Dublin you may run across. A man named Jack Taggart. He’s called Red Jack because of his leftist political leanings. We know he lived in Dublin and that the IRA General Staff sent him north two years ago to help build up the IRA Northern Command. He fought in Spain against Franco with the Irish Brigade. He’s experienced and very secretive. We lost track of him when he crossed the border. It’s likely he moved his wife and children north also, since they’re nowhere to be found in the Republic. They’re probably living under assumed identities.”
    “Do you have