Chapter 13    
Disclaimers in Chapter 0


THE SLAUGHTERED LAMB
OMAGH, NORTHERN IRELAND
UNITED KINGDOM
MARCH 31
9:36 P.M.


"Do you ever think about anything but drinking, Renahan?"

Skinner looked across the worn wooden table that looked older than he was at Renahan's
boozy half smile. The other man's lips wore a wet patina of saliva, the look one got when
they were six or seven beers in and about two more away from the toilet.

"Fucking hell, man," Renahan said, too loud, though none of the men in the tavern even
looked sideways at him. "You've met me -- wouldn't you if you were me? Eh? Eh?" He
broke into a fit of chuckles, each one snorty and swimming in dark beer.

Skinner scowled, stared down at the surface of his own beer, the liquid still touching the
rim. He could see a vague reflection of his face in it, like a black mirror. He wanted to
say that Renahan was right. He wanted to tell the man that if he didn't spend so much
time acting like an asshole people might not keep mistaking him for one. But he decided
to save his breath.

Breath was what you needed in the Slaughtered Lamb, a tavern so filled with pipe and
cigarette smoke it looked like the deserted roads they'd driven back in from the roadway
where they'd been forced off onto the shoulder, the entire drive robed in fog the
headlights could barely break through.

Skinner could still remember looking up at the sign over the tavern, blurred as he'd
groped on the sidewalk for his glasses after being tossed out of the moving car with
Renahan, the sign a wooden placard festooned with an old painting of a lamb with its
throat slit. Its clarity as he righted his glasses and got to his feet wasn't much comfort as
he'd listened to the Brit laughing on the ground next to him, laughing so hard he couldn't
get up without Skinner's yank on his arm.

"In we go!" Renahan had said, brushing off his clothes as though the care mattered. He
still looked like he'd just crawled out of a box underneath a highway overpass.

"Why here?" Skinner'd asked, pointing at the sign. It didn't seem a good omen.

Renahan smiled. "Because I'm thinking this being our stop-off isn't a coincidence, Mr.
Skinner, for one," he said. "And two, we don't have a place to stay yet and they've got
some roomsÉand threeÉ" He smiled the smile that seemed to challenge and apologize
at the same time. "I've got a bit of a thirst."

Skinner had no choice but to follow him in.

The night before they'd been their captor's guests in a house outside of town, both of them
locked in the back room of a house out away from town. No one had spoken to them,
though they'd been giving a wedge of cheese and a loaf of bread at one point, and access
to a toilet as needed off the back of the house.

Renahan hadn't seemed bothered by the treatment, saying only once: "I've seen worse,"
and then quieting as the unmistakable sound of a gun butt on the door silenced them both
until nightfall. Skinner's mind had turned the image of Mulder climbing into the other
car with the young man with the slit lip over in his mind, and he'd gnawed a sore spot on
his own lip at the thought.

"Fuck," he'd breathed at one point, forgetting Renahan was there, the other man dozing in
the corner. Renahan had been awake enough to chuff at the word.

Then it was out into the car wearing blindfolds, a curving drive into town, and then the
lights of the pub as they'd had their blindfolds removed, a shove and an obscenity for
good measure and they rolled to a stop on the ground.

"I think this was a mistake," Skinner said over the din in the pub, clenching and
unclenching his jaw like a fist as he spoke.

"What part of it?" Renahan replied, taking another drink. Beer clung to his beard.

"Sitting around here with our thumbs up our asses while Mulder's Christ knows where."

Renahan smiled. "He's with Eamon Neill," he said. "You know that as well as I do.
Neill's nephew, the ginger with the scar?" He made a swipe down his face. "Little Eagon
knows exactly where we are. We'll sit tight. Wait it out."

"We should be looking for both of them," Skinner spat, and now he did take a sip of his
beer, frustrated. He wished he still smoked.

"No need," Renahan said. "They just walked in the fucking door."

Skinner looked first at the other man's Guinness smile, then over his shoulder where
Renahan's eyes were focused. Sure enough, there was Mulder and another man, shorter
with reddish hair and a beard and tired, wise eyes. Mulder's hands were in his jacket
pockets, and as he approached, Skinner saw the swollen eye, the split in his lip.  He was
looking at Skinner, a small smile on his face.

The man beside him was not smiling, and his eyes were not on Skinner but on the man
across the table from him, who leaned back in the chair he was in, its back creaking like
bones. Renahan reached for his pint and nearly missed.

Skinner stood, tucking in his shirt a bit more out of habit, straightening himself up to his
full height. He felt his mouth curl into a wry half-smile as Mulder stood before him, his
hair mussed, a couple of days growth of beard on his face making him look more worn.

Mulder's mouth quirked, the slit gaping a bit, that smartass smile that made Skinner want
to belt him from across his desk. "Sorry," he quipped. "I got held up."

"We all did, as I recall," Skinner grumbled, and turned his attention to the other man, and
Mulder did, as well. "I've been eating stinking cheese and pissing outdoors for a day and
a half."

"It's good you can keep up your regular routine this far from home, sir," Mulder said
dryly, and Skinner rolled his eyes, the relief at seeing each other in one piece released
with the insults.

Mulder turned to the man beside him.

"Mr. Neill," he said, nodding toward Skinner. "This is Assistant Director Walter Skinner
with the F.B.I." Skinner and Neill shook hands, one short shake, and Neill angled his
head in Skinner's direction.

"Mr. Skinner," he said, and his voice sounded like the man should sing bonnie Christmas
carols, Skinner thought. Something warm in it, warm and quiet, almost as if the tone of
his voice was pitched on purpose to keep people at ease. "I'm Eamon Neill. Glad to meet
you," he added, and Skinner nodded, watching Neill turn his attention to Renahan.

"Mr. Renahan," Neill said softly. "Been a long time." His voice had lost some of its
warmth now, his eyes looking tired and bit dim, as though a cloud of memory had passed
before them.

Renahan chuckled. "Not fucking long enough," he said. "What was it? Eighty-four?
Eighty-five? I can't recall."

"You know exactly when it was we last met," Neill said softly, though his voice seemed
to carry. Skinner realized it was because the noise level in the room had dropped a touch.
"I'd imagine you've still got the clipping up on your wall from the day you brought me
into Derry. You still keep all those clippings, Mr. Renahan? Like you used to do?"

Renahan took a swig from the pint, the foam clinging to his moustache like a second
moustache. "It was a memorable day, that one, aye," he said, ignoring the last part of the
question.

"I know I'll never forget it," Neill said, and he reached to his right arm, pushed the sleeve
of the thick sweater he wore up. There was a sunken-in place on the side of his forearm
where muscle was missing, the area blotted with thick white scar.

Mulder and Skinner looked at Renahan, who laughed. "I didn't do that to you now,
Eamon," he said jovially. "That's not me."

Neill smiled mirthlessly. "You didn't have to do much of anything for yourself now did
you?" he said softly. "Ran your own bloody Nutting Squad right there, didn't you?" His
voice rose in volume, but not in ire. "Kept it looking clean for the Yanks on the outside,
shiny and clean, while inside those walls you were doing worse than you blamed us for.
Weren't you. Fucking Nutting Brits having their pictures taken for the papers and you in
there chatting it up and then leaving the cell with your big smile while we were in there
with those blokes and God only knows what."

The smile fell from Renahan's face, and other faces were turning all around from the
tables surrounding them. A couple of men stood, pipes in their mouths. Skinner couldn't
tell if they were rising to move forward or back, but their eyes showed they understood
everything Neill had said, their eyes darting from Neill to Renahan and back again.

"I don't think this is the place for this discussion," Skinner ventured, putting his hands
out, one toward each of the men. Renahan was still leaning back in the chair as though
someone had poured him there, his hand tight on the glass. Neill still had his arm out, his
left hand gripping his right elbow to hold up the sweater's thick sleeve.

Mulder reached out, touched Neill's arm just above the scar's ruin, gently put his arm
down as though he were lowering a hand that held a gun.

"It's the past," Mulder said. "It's over now."

Renahan's knowing smile returned, and even Neill's eyes creased with cynical
amusement.

"You're not that naive, I know, Mr. Mulder," Neill said.

"No," Mulder said. "I know there's no such thing as 'over' in the whole goddamn
country." He couldn't keep the bitter from his voice. Skinner lowered his hands as
Neill's lips curled in an almost sad smile.

Then he rolled his sleeve down, pulled out a wooden chair and sat himself. "Not naive at
all," he said, sounding tired but somehow pleased. He turned to a man at a table nearby,
a younger man who wore a stocking cap that Skinner hadn't even noticed was there.

"Kevin, how about a pint?" he said to the young man, who nodded and stood, going to the
bar. "We'll be needing two. And another for these two, as well."

Skinner looked at Mulder, and he could tell that Mulder was tamping down the urge to
gape at the whole place, at every face, every set of eyes and every curl of smoke from
every pipe.

"Have a sit, Mr. Mulder, Mr. Skinner," Renahan said, seeming pleased at the two
Americans' discomfort, which Skinner would have labeled further as fear. Renahan's
eyes didn't leave Neill's, the two of them looking like they were about to play a
particularly intricate game of cards. Poker. With real clubs and spades.

Mulder sat, Skinner following suit, both of them moving slowly, aware of all the eyes,
the subtle lowering of the din of the room.

"Welcome to my Ireland," Renahan said to them both, his teeth showing in a bemused
smile. Skinner looked at him, then at Mulder's dawning understanding as the younger
man looked at Neill and nodded with some comprehension that Skinner couldn't yet
reach himself.

"And to mine," Neill replied, his voice quiet and knowing again. He didn't even look up
as the man he'd called Kevin returned with their black, warm pints and set them down in
the center of the table for the men to take.


*****

CLONIFFE BED & BREAKFAST
DUBLIN, REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
APRIL 1
7:02 A.M.

Another bed, this one without the woman called Bridget, the woman he'd picked up and
taken into his bed with her strange, scarred body. Without her and her smoky lips and
her entreats for a couple of pounds, but also without the small amount of warmth she'd
afforded. Christie Collin was dressing in the gray light coming through the overly fluffed
curtains at the B&B and looking at the bed, thinking of the woman's red hair sprayed out
on the pillow, how he'd looked down at her face as he'd fucked her -- Bridget so drunk she
was having a hard time keeping her blue eyes focused on his face -- and how he'd tried to
turn that face into another face.

Something more like desperation than desire. Regret rather than lust.

He wondered how long he'd be trying to bring the American woman back to life in his
mind. How long it would be before he'd stop thinking of the baby inside her, both of
them wearing suits of glittering glass and flame behind his eyes.

As he dressed (simple jeans and the ubiquitous white fisherman's sweater he wore like his
civilian uniform), he thought about two things his Sergeant had told him would happen to
a soldier.

"First," Finney'd said, cooking over a silver tin of Sterno in a mountain forest so green it
had made Christie wonder if there were any other color on Earth, "you'll feel bad about
some of the people you've killed. You'll think about them, turn their faces over in your
mind like coins. Regret things. Wish you'd go back and do things different."

Christie'd younger then, probably too young to think about such things but already in
need of doing so Ð had stirred the tea in the metal teapot and nodded.

"And second," Finney'd continued, "you'll have to learn to get over the first and move
past it or you'll crack up doing this job. There's no going back. Dead is dead and there's
nothing to be done about it."

Deaths had bothered him then, but at least then, he thought grimly, they had been carried
out for reasons he could justify or even name.

As he thought this, he could almost feel his grandmother's dry hand on his arm, hear that
papery voice that sounded like how an ancient crow would talk if it could form his name.

A tap at the door, and Christie called for whoever it was to come in.

The man he'd met the night before in a steady rain, the man haloed by the gas light
outside the cottage and holding a black umbrella over Christie as he'd ushered him into
the house, stood in the doorway, his face grim, though Christie suspected his face always
looked that way. Riggs was Old Guard, the I.R.A. his life. The Troubles seemed to have
lodged themselves in the creases of the old men's faces. At least every one he'd seen, and
he'd seen quite a few.

"Mr. Collin," Riggs said, formal and steady. "Wife's got eggs on for you like you asked.
Lady Collin said to call this morning. I've got a phone downstairs where you can be a bit
private."

"Ta," Christie said, running his hand over his crewcut out of habit, as though he were
actually straightening the razored hair. He followed Riggs out, closing the door to his
simple room with his duffle on the neatly made bed behind him.

The room Riggs led him to was a comfortable office with dark wood, the desk clearly
nearly as old as the cottage itself. The phone on the corner was even corded, the old
handle feeling ridiculously large against his ear as he turned the dial to put in the number
and it rang. The signal was as clear as water.

"Christie?" That ghostly raven voice. Early for her, the voice not yet much used for the
day.

"Aye, I'm all set where you said." He knew to keep the calls short, and he liked them that
way besides.

"He's in Omagh," his grandmother continued without any nicety or prelude. "Omagh.
With Eamon Neill and Ed Renahan and that man he works with."

A good distance away. He was safe where he was. Then why...?

"You sound worried about that," he ventured.

"Neill knows too much to be involved," she said, which he could have guessed.

"He doesn't know me." It was why he'd been chosen for this. Few knew him at all, and
his life had frankly felt just like that.

"No, but he does know me. Or...people...who know me. People not far from where he
is."

He thought of Omagh, drew a line to the coast on the map in his mind, settling on the dot
of a town whose name he knew all too well, that everyone with anything to do with the
Cause knew and had managed to keep secret.

Not far at all.

"We need to find out what Mr. Mulder knows," she continued. "I've got someone whose
going to go through his things and see what they can find. But in any case -- I think it's
time for Mr. Mulder to join his wife."

Christie felt heat come up in his face. "You said it would only be the two. The ones
responsible. You said there'd be no more to be done to pay for this."

"It's not about John in this case." Her voice was a faint wheeze now. He could hear the
whine of her chair and knew the call would end. "It's about protecting us. What's left of
us."

(You, he thought. It's about protecting you.)

"Mr. Mulder's curiosity has been unexpected. There's too much too lose. When I have
something for you, I'll call. But I want you moving. Cross the border. Go to St.
Sebastian's. Wait for me there."

And the line went dead.

He walked past the smell of butter and eggs and bread, past the sound of Riggs and his
wife and someone speaking French, a foreigner rattling a newspaper at the B&B's kitchen
table and speaking to his child. Up the stairs and back onto the corner of the bed.

The sun was coming through the drapes, flowers on their fabric staining the ivory
blankets faintly red.  He touched a spot of it, calloused fingers, hard on soft.

Bridget sleeping there. He held onto the name, held her face in his hands in his mind and
she roused and looked at him.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice tinged as if she knew him or cared.

He hesitated, looking into her invisible eyes, worrying the cotton beneath his fingers as
though it were her hair.

"She says..." he began, swallowed. "She says she doesn't understand this Mulder and
what he's doing."

"But it's what she's doing, isn't it then?" she said softly.

Christie nodded to nothing. "Don't know how she can't say she doesn't understandÉa
man with a dead wife. Dead baby..." He looked into the mirage of her eyes. "She has to
understand that sort of revenge, you know? She must."

Bridget looked at him gravely, her face seeming to vanish into white. "She understands
the Cause, Christie," she said, her voice lost on a gust of wind pressing against the
window.

He spoke to her as she faded from view, her eyes showing she heard the final thing he
said:

"Then she understands revenge."


********


CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 14.