The Marching Season

sodium light burned in the city center, but in the west, in the Falls, the Shankill, and the Ardoyne, it looked like a blackout. Maguire usually felt peace in this place—he had lost his virginity here, as had half the boys of the Ballymurphy—but tonight he was on edge. He was smoking too much, gulping his lager, sweating in spite of the cold.
    He talked. He told Michael old stories. He talked about growing up in the Ballymurphy, about fighting the Brits and torching their "pigs." He told Michael about making love on Black Mountain for the first time. "Her name was Catherine, a Catholic girl. I was so guilty I went to confession the next day and spilled my guts to Father Seamus," he said. "I spilled my guts to Father Sea-mus quite a few other times over the years, every time I popped a British soldier or an RUC man, every time I planted a bomb in city center or London."
    He told Michael about an affair that he had had with a Protestant girl from the Shankill just before he joined the IRA. She became pregnant, and both sets of parents forbade them to ever see each other again.
    158 Daniel Silva
    "We knew it was for the best," he said. "We would have been outcasts in both communities. We would have had to leave Northern Ireland, live in fucking England or emigrate to America. She had the baby, a boy. I've never seen him." He paused. "You know, Michael, I never planted a bomb in the Shankill."
    "Because you were afraid you might kill your own son."
    "Yeah, because I was afraid I might kill my son, a son I've never seen." He pulled the top off another beer. "I don't know what the fuck we've been doing here for the last thirty years. I don't know what it was for. I've given twenty years of my life to the IRA, twenty years to the fucking cause. I'm forty-five years old. I've no wife. I've no real family. And for what? A deal that could have been reached a dozen times since 'sixty-nine?"
    "It was the best the IRA could hope for," Michael said. "There's nothing wrong with compromise."
    "And now Gerry Adams has a wonderful idea," Maguire said, ignoring Michael. "He wants to turn the Falls into a tourist area. Start up a bed-and-breakfast or two. Can you imagine it? Come see the streets where the Prods and the Micks fought an ugly little war for three decades. Jesus fucking Christ, but I never thought I'd live to see the day] Three thousand dead so we can make the travel section of The New York Times."
    He finished his beer and threw the empty can down the side of the mountain.
    "The thing you Americans don't understand is that there'll never be peace here. We may stop slaughtering each other for a while, but nothing's ever going to change in this place. Nothing's going to change." He tossed his cigarette over the edge of the hillside and watched the ember disappear into the darkness. "Anyway, you didn't come all the way here to listen to me babble about politics and the failures of the Irish Republican Army."
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    "No, I didn't. I want to know who killed Eamonn Dillon."
    "So does the fucking IRA."
    "What do you know?"
    "We suspect Dillon had been targeted for assassination for a very long time."
    "Why?"
    "As soon as Dillon was killed, the boys from the Intelligence Unit went to work. They suspected someone inside Sinn Fein had betrayed him because the killer appeared at precisely the right spot at precisely the right time. It was possible the Loyalists followed him around the Falls, watched him, but not very likely. It's difficult for them to operate in a place like the Falls without being identified, and Dillon was careful about his routine."
    "So what happened?"
    "IRA Intelligence turned Sinn Fein headquarters upside down. They searched every square inch of the place for transmitters and miniature video cameras. They scared the shit out of the staff and the volunteers, and it paid off."
    "What did they find?"
    "One of the volunteers, a girl named Kathleen who answered the phones, had been carrying on a friendship with a Protestant girl."
    "Did the girl have a name?"
    "Called herself Stella. Kathleen thought there was nothing wrong with her friendship with Stella because of the peace agreement. The IRA leaned on her in a very big way. She acknowledged that she had told Stella things about the Sinn Fein leadership, including Eamonn Dillon."
    "Is Kathleen still with us?"
    "Barely," Maguire said. "Dillon was beloved inside the IRA. He was a member of the Belfast Brigade in the seventies. He served under