Let’s say midnight. They’re four hours ahead in Are- land so you’ll be able to see Barry late morning.” “Of course, Uncle.” “And then dinner.” Don Antonio smiled. “Suddenly I flare quite an appetite.”
IN DUBLIN ON THE FOLLOWLNG MORNING IT WAS jUSt coming up to n—n when Barry answered the sound of the bell at his front door and found Marco Sollazo standing there.
“Mr. Barry?” “And you’d be Mr. Sollazo?” “That’s right.” “Come in for a moment while I get my coat.
You’ll have to excuse the mess, I’m on my own these days. My wife died last year.” Marco Sollazo waited in the small parlour. There was a sofa, two easy chairs, a fireplace, faded family photos of children at various stages of their development.
It.all fitted with the image of the pleasant-faced sixty-year-old man in the cardigan whom he
had just met and yet this man had been for several crucial years Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA.
He came in wearing a raincoat and cloth cap.
“We’ll take a walk in the park and then have a drink
and a bite to eat at Cohan’s Bar.”
“Anything you like.”
Barry took an umbrella down from a hatpeg in the hall. “Just in case,” he said. “This is Ireld, remember.”
They crossed the road to where the park waited behind green painted railings. Sollazo said, “Your home, is it unsafe to talk there? Do they have you wired for sound?”
“‘Hell no. Oh, they tried it back in the old days, the British Secret Intelligence Service, Irish Intelligence, Dublin Special Branch. I had my own experts who used to come round once a week and sweep the house. I expect y°Ur uncle had to take the same precautions.”
“And still does.”
“Well I’m not Chief of Staff for the IRA anymore.” He smiled. “A time for peace, Mr. Sollazo,
that’s what they tell me.”
“So no more IRA?”
Barry laughed out loud. “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. There’s another Chief of Staff in my place, our command structure intt throughout the country, and as your President and the British Prime Minister have found to their cost, we don’t intend to give up our arms.” · “Yes,; I understand from the newspapers that the x39
refusal of your people to comply in the matter of arms is a main talking point when the President visits London on Friday.”
“They can talk until they’re blue in the face, it won’t make any difference. We’ll hang.on to our arms come what may.”
“You don’t think this peace will last?”
“It never has before.” They turned through the park gates and it started to rain, and Barry raised the umbrella. “I told yot/ it would. Anyway, let’s get down to business.”
$ollazo took the photo his contact at Green Rapids had provided the previous night. “Do you know this “I certainly do,” Barry nodded. “His name is Michael Ryan, once a notorious gunman for the Loyalist cause, a black Orangeman from Belfast.”
“Would it surprise you to know that he’s been in prison in America of 0Ythe past ten years?”
Barry smiled. “Now there’s a wonder. He dropped out of sight in nineteen eighty-five, but totally, and I could never figure that out. What did he do?”
“He shot a policeman while robbing a bank. They gave him twenty-five years.”
“Poor sod.” Barry whistled. “He must be sixty-five now. I don’t suppose he’s got much chance of seeing the light of day.”
“Not really. He can apply for probation after fifteen years, but he’d be around seventy by then and not much chance of parole, anyway. He shot a policeman, remember.” “What name is he using?” “Liam Kelly. He has a history of heart trouble so they moved him from Ossining to Green Rapids Detention Center. The medical facilities are good and the general hospital in the town is exceptional. He’s visited regularly by his’ niece, who is a nurse at the hospital. She calls herself Jean Kelly. I’ve seen her.
Small and rather ugly in a peasant kind of way. Dark hair, around twenty-five or six.” ,That would be Kathleen Ryan–she is his niece.
Well, now, fancy that and after all these years.” The rain increased, in a sudden rush and he took Sollazo by the arm. “Let’s make for the shelter over there.