The Trojan Boy Read Online Free PDF

inside O'Neill's head. Outwardly he was calm but he saw that McShane was construing this as bravery. The man's face was bursting with emotion as he turned to his brother and said, 'See! What did I tell you? With one arm they are still more than a match for these Brit bastards.'
    McShane came over to O'Neill's bedside and knelt like an adoring shepherd. 'I tell you, mister,’ he said to O'Neill. 'When I saw you in that doorway preparing to take on the Brits single-handed, I've never felt so proud in my life.'
    O'Neill looked at the man. Should he tell him the truth? Tell him that he had never had any intention of taking anyone on single-handed? Tell him that he had, in fact, been preparing to blow his own brains out because this was the real world and the real world was a long way from a John Wayne film? Tell him that the real struggle was for professionals not romantics, it was for men who calculated the odds with their brains not their hearts, men who figured out risk against return? O'Neill decided that there was no point in telling him anything. Let the myths flourish with the folk songs. After all, the British had television.
    'Can you fix me up so I can move out of here?' O'Neill asked the nurse.
    I’ll do what I can but it will just be a case of covering the whole mess up and strapping your arm to your body. We'll keep the tourniquet on but you'll have to remember to release it at intervals or gangrene will set in.’
    The nurse cleaned up the wound before smothering it in white dressing. O'Neill was exhausted for it had been an agonising fifteen minutes, during which the woman seemed to have consistently sought out the most sensitive areas to linger over and probe and prod for bone fragments. Suppressed anger and frustration had welled up inside him like the rolling waves of a rising tide, till now he felt too weak to move.
    'He will have to rest for a bit,’ said the nurse as she packed her case.
    'We can take him where he wants to go later tonight,’ said McShane.
    'No.’ said O'Neill weakly. 'You've done enough. Phone this number.' He recited a series of digits. Tell them that you have a parcel ready for collection, then tell them what they want to know.'
    'You can rely on us,’ said McShane.
    Two men came for O'Neill at nine in the evening. Any later and the risk of a spot check would have been greater, but at that time the traffic was just right. McShane and his brother stood on either side of the doorway like football fans seeing their team out of the tunnel. O'Neill stopped and thanked them both.
    'Anything for a free Ireland,’ said McShane self- consciously.
    'Don't go selling your story to a newspaper now, will you?' said one of the men who had come for O'Neill.
    McShane laughed nervously for he had seen the veiled threat. O'Neill looked at McShane's wife and saw that she had not bothered to laugh. Thank you as well, missus,' he said.
    'You're welcome,' said the woman as she turned away.
    The dark blue Bedford van took off from the kerb and the driver said to O'Neill, 'We can't take you home. The Brits know you're missing. They turned your place over last night.'
    'What about Kathleen?'
    'Your sister told them that you were away for a few days but they turned it over anyway.'
    'So where are we going?'
    The Long House. They've got a doctor for you.'
    'I want to see Kathleen.'
    'It's difficult. The Brits are watching your house all the time.'
    The army?'
    The woman at number seventeen has a new lodger, works the boats . . . you know the game.'
    'At least it's predictable,' said O'Neill.
    'We'll try to set up some kind of decoy so that your sister can slip away.'
    ‘ Thanks.'
    The Long House was a warehouse. It was owned by a wholesale newsagency that distributed stationery, magazines and periodicals throughout the north and as such, with the ephemeral nature of news, it was ideal cover for the IRA with delivery vans coming and going at all hours. They had been using the building successfully for two