for some food. Don’t say a fucking thing about what we’ve been talking about. That’s important. You hear me.’
I was wondering how Ballinskelligs 1 could dial Ballinskelligs 1. Jim ordered four large breakfasts and four pints of Guinness. They were ready when Graham and Alan arrived. They said it was too early for them to drink, so Jim and I drank their Guinness.
‘Jim, we have to fly back to London today. Is there anything further to discuss?’ asked Graham.
‘No. I’ll see you in seven to ten days. I’m away.’
With that, Jim got up, shook our hands, and walked out of the shop.
‘So, what do you think?’ I asked Graham and Alan.
‘You’ve got to forget it,’ said Alan. ‘The man’s nuts. All this John Lennon nonsense. And he’s got no idea where Kabul is.’
‘I think he can do it,’ said Graham. ‘He’s the kind of person who can get away with things. Look, we should leave now and get on the road. I have to get to London.’
On the way back to Cork airport, we passed near Blarney. I wanted to stop and kiss the stone to get some luck. Graham said there was no time. This was the area where my great-great-grandfather, Patrick Marks, then McCarthy, spent his young life. How Irish did this make me?
At Cork airport, I picked up a payphone and asked the operator for Ballinskelligs 1. A beautiful Irish voice said, ‘Now, who would you be wanting: Michael Murphy’s, the shop, the farm, or the strangers? Two arrived last night, but they’ve gone early this morning.’
‘To whom am I speaking?’ I asked.
‘Why now, I’m the Ballinskelligs operator.’
It all made a bit more sense now, but it was still weird.
There were things to do back home. The new AnnaBelinda premises included a self-contained flat. Rosie, Emily, and I were leaving both our Brighton and our London flats to go and live there and open the planned-for up-market boutique. I supervised, or rather smoked joints and watched, the extensive refurbishing of the one-time transport café. The dress-shop front was beginning to look good and was already attracting a great deal of the city and university’s interest. Pattern-cutting and other workshop rooms sprouted out of the timber and sawdust. The flat was comfortable, and there were separate offices. In one of these I had an interior decorating company which, with an accommodating local builder, Robin Murray, I’d formed primarily for the purpose of being able to fiddle the accounts when refurbishing the premises. Although money-laundering then was nothing approaching the problem it is these days, one still had to be a little devious if one ventured from underground. I definitely didn’t want the authorities to know how much money I had. Accordingly, I paid a lot of money in cash for the refurbishing, but the accounts showed an expenditure of considerably less. Another office was set aside to convert my hobby of collecting stamps into a philatelic business. My plan was to buy in my own name massive quantities of unsorted stamps, known in the trade as kiloware, at cheap prices. At the same time, expensive rare stamps would be bought anonymously by me for cash from reputable dealers in the Strand. My business records would state that these valuable stamps had been recovered from the kiloware after a painstaking, time-consuming search. I would then sell the valuable stamps to stamp dealers in the provinces and appear to be shrewdly making legitimate money. There would be some financial loss, but who cared? 6, Gloucester Street, Oxford, was shaping up to be a great headquarters. Only the large, empty cellar remained without a function.
A week after my return from Ireland, Alan Marcuson rang saying that McCann had set everything up. He said he had totally underestimated McCann’s abilities. He really had got it together. Graham and I should come over to Dublin right away. I pictured McCann standing behind Alan at some Ballinskelligs 1 location, threateningly prompting Alan’s every word.
Graham couldn’t make it; he was too tied up with his property and carpet businesses. I flew alone to Dublin and checked in at the Intercontinental Hotel. It overlooked the Lansdowne Road rugby ground, where just the year before the Irish had cruelly robbed the Welsh of the Triple Crown. There was a package waiting for me at the reception desk. An attached note said: ‘Read this. Seamus.’
I opened the package. Inside was a mass of detail about an airport I had never heard of. It was called Shannon and was situated on the Atlantic coast just outside Limerick.
The airport boasted a number of unique characteristics. It was the closest European airport to North America, and, as such, was a connection and refuelling point for European and Asian airlines on long hauls across the Atlantic. In 1952, Irish government and individual entrepreneurs, doing their utmost to exploit Shannon’s position as an airways cross-roads, invented the first ever duty-free shop where transit passengers could purchase alcohol, cigarettes, perfumes, and watches at bargain prices. The area surrounding Shannon airport had been declared a freeport, to which raw materials and other bonded goods could be shipped for use for manufacturing purposes provided the finished products were exported from Ireland and not offered for sale within the country. A massive trading estate housing numerous businesses anxious to take advantage of this incentive spread around the airport. Every day, several hundred cars and trucks drove in conveying factory employees and locally built machinery. I began to see the point. Gear could be sent into Shannon Trading Estate from abroad without going through customs checks and would, somehow or other, be taken out of the trading estate camouflaged by the exodus of factory workers leaving at the end of their shift. There were maps of every inch of the estate and airport and a variety of air-freighting/importation forms. I was very, very impressed.
The hotel room door opened, and Jim walked in accompanied by a hotel employee carrying a bottle of Paddy Irish whiskey and a bucket of melted ice.
‘You’re a good man, Damien,’ said Jim. ‘Sign the bill, H’ard, and give your man here a twenty-pound tip. He deserves it.’
I gave the whiskey-bearer his money.
Jim put his arms around me and squeezed tightly. I was very startled.
‘What do you think of the Kid, then? I’ve done it. I’ve cracked it. Send all the fucking dope you want.’
‘How did you do it, Jim?’
‘I pretended I worked for Fortune magazine and rang up the airport manager to ask for an interview. I went from him down, you understand me, till I got the man I wanted. Anything can be taken out of that trading estate there. Any fucking thing. As long as you got one of these.’
Jim grabbed hold of the pile of papers I’d been reading and displayed one entitled ‘Out of Charge Note’.
‘You can get these copied, can’t you?’
‘I should think so, Jim. Charlie Radcliffe worked in the printing and publishing business for years. He’ll know how to get it done.’
‘Don’t you tell Charlie Radcliffe what they’re for. You hear me.’
‘Well … Okay. Maybe I’ll use someone else. Who examines them?’
‘You wired up, H’ard? I just fucking told you I got the man I wanted. He fucking examines them. And, if he values his fucking Guinness, he’ll pass them. His name’s Eamonn. He’s a true Republican.’
‘Does he know we’re going to bring in dope?’
‘Of
