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(DUBLIN—JUNE 16, 4:15 A.M.)

The fucking coca leaves. Perfectly legal in Peru, useful for calming nausea and helping you get through the night shift. Really quite benign. You stick a couple in your cheek, they slowly dissolve, and you’re set. Almost impossible to refine cocaine from the leaves in their dried form and completely impossible with the tiny amount I had left in my backpack. But even so, most western governments had declared them illegal controlled substances.

The dog stopped barking.

“I’d loike ye ta come wit me, sur,” the customs agent said. I hadn’t heard that hardcore North Dublin accent in a long time and I could barely understand the man. The words were there but it was like hearing Anglo-Saxon or being aurally dyslexic. It took me a while to process what he’d said.

“Of course,” I said after a long pause.

I accompanied him into an antechamber.

“Look, I know why the dog is going crazy, I’ve got these coca leaves in my pack, the dog probably thinks they’re cocaine.”

“Iz zat so, sur?” “Aye it is.”

“Yaar fra America?”

“No, originally I’m from Belfast. I work in America now. Well, Peru. It’s complicated…. Until yesterday I was the head of security at the Miraflores Hilton in Lima. We used to take the leaves for the night shift.”

The customs agent found the bag of coca leaves and sniffed them. He was an older gentleman, fifties or sixties, a shock of white hair, dead capillary nose, ruddy cheeks, chubby body squeezed into a faded white shirt. The sort of desperate character who would like nothing more than to fuck someone over at four in the morning. It looked bad. If the authorities were feeling ungenerous I knew that this could be seen as an attempt to smuggle coke into Ireland. I could be looking at jail time.

“What ya doin in Oirland?”

“I’ve come to help an old girlfriend of mine. Her daughter has gone missing and she’s really cracking up and I’ve come to support her and maybe help find the girl.”

“What’s hur neem?” “Bridget Callaghan.”

He didn’t mean to show a reaction but he did. His eyes widened slightly. He knew who she was.

“What’s yur neem?” “Michael Forsythe.”

“Ok. Did ye breeng anyting else illegal?”

“No,” I said and turned out my pockets. The customs agent went through my stuff anyway. He noted the fifteen thousand dollars of Bridget’s money and a couple of grand of my own there too. He stared at me for a moment and his eyes drifted back to the cash.

It gave me an idea. I toyed with it, dismissed it, floated it again.

But this was the situation. If they arrested me, it would take me a couple of days to hit bail, and the wee lassie could be dead, or in the Hare Krishnas, or a member of a biker gang, or taking drugs in some dingy flat, long before I could be of any assistance. Once again I’d be bloody straight into Bridget’s bad books. Michael the traitor, Michael the fuckup. And to overegg that custard Bridget or anyone else then would have an excellent opportunity of killing me while I waited on remand in an Irish jail.

That was option 1.

But there was always option 2.

What about it then? Just looking at him, I knew he wasn’t going to let me go with a stiff talking to. I was too old and he was too old for that. Aye, it would have to be the other way.

His greedy eyes on the money.

Bringing in a few harmless leaves was no big deal but attempting to bribe a government official could get me seriously fucked. If he took it badly, he’d report me and they’d throw the book at me. I could be facing years, not months; also, there was no way he could ignore it. He might be irked. Beyond irked. Seriously pissed off. “Some Yank scumbag comes in here attempting to bribe me with his wad of cash. I’ll bloody do you, mate.”

Yeah, but…

I was a friend of Bridget Callaghan and he’d heard of her. Maybe even was a little afraid of her. Jesus, it was a lot to weigh in my mind.

“Why don’t ya teek a seat and I’ll inform ye of yer rights,” the man said and I could more or less follow him completely now.

I sat down. Now or never.

Every year The Economist publishes a table of the countries whose public officials are amenable to bribery. Denmark is always near the bottom of the table, the very least subornable in the world. Try to talk your way out of a traffic ticket in

Copenhagen and they’ll bung you in the slammer. India is at the top with the most corrupt officials. It’s not even really seen as corruption out there, it’s just the way business gets done. Now where did Ireland fit in on the scale? I tried to remember. Somewhere between Britain and America on the lower part of the page.

I gave the agent the final once-over. An old whiskey-breathed sad sack, who clearly hated work, me, himself. He might just respond to the right level of incentive program.

“I’m really sorry this had to happen; I use the coca leaves for purely medicinal purposes, they’re not illegal in Peru, I forgot they were in my bag. Of course, it’s no excuse. Is there any way I can pay an on-the-spot fine and get out of here? Bridget Callaghan is expecting me.”

The man regarded me closely. He looked at the fifteen thousand dollars in bills sitting on the table. He closed his eyes.

He was thinking about it. Good.

“De ye have a contact for Miss Callaghan?” he asked.

“I do,” I said and gave him Bridget’s phone number in the Belfast Europa.

“Jus a moment,” he said, took away my passport, and left the room.

He hadn’t given me his name. He hadn’t told me where he was going. I sat down on the chair. Waited.

Twenty minutes later he came back.

“You’re who ye say ye are. I have a great deal of respect for Miss Callaghan. The fine’ll be about two thousand dollars, that’s the equivalent to the euros,” he said, and involuntarily licked his lips in anticipation.

“I’d like my passport back,” I said.

He gave me the passport and took the coca leaves and threw them in a garbage can behind him. I counted out two thousand dollars, gave them to him.

I wondered if he had indeed called Bridget at the Europa. It would have woken her up, but more than that, it would have alerted her that I was back in the country. I’d have to be on my toes.

Then again, he didn’t seem the type to call. He was just killing twenty minutes out there, making me sweat while he thought it over. He could really do what he liked. It was four in the bloody morning. There were no other customs inspectors on.

I was pleased with myself. A good guess on my part. Two thousand was about the right price for this unimaginative, pathetic, small-time shitehawke.

“Thanks very much,” I said. “I won’t let it happen again.”

I repacked my bag, patted the dog, left the customs office, and walked through the Green Channel.

My trials, however, weren’t over just yet. A man from the department of agriculture. “Did you visit any zoos in America?”

“No.”

“Farms?”

“No.”

“Agricultural research stations?” “No.”

An assassin entering the country was one thing, but the prospect of diseased feed or potato blight or another mad cow epidemic sent the Irish around the bend.

“Have you ever had occasion to eat squirrel, flying squirrel, capybara, or other rodents?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes and answered all the stupid questions.

Another half hour of officialdom and when I was done finally I went to the bathroom, washed my face, walked out of the airport and into my first Irish day in a very long time.

Buses had taken away most of the passengers from my plane and the rest had gotten the few remaining taxis. A typical charming summer’s morning in Ireland. A cold, gray sky and a freezing wind skewering in from the Irish Sea. I shivered in my thin leather jacket, Stanley work boots, and jeans. I didn’t even have a hat. At least the sun was already coming up. June 16 marks the earliest sunrise in the northern hemisphere and there would be light now until close to midnight since it was the week of the summer solstice. I went to the taxi rank. Only one car lurking over there. A black, slightly beat-up, Mercedes. The cabbie drove over and stopped the car beside me. I hopped in the back.

“Connolly Station,” I said.

“The station it is,” the driver said, and after that encounter with the customs agent I could understand the accent completely now. It just took you a minute or two to get back in the game. Ireland has about three or four major regional accents. Some of them very hard to follow. In Northern Ireland I can put a man within twenty miles of his hometown and in the south fifty. Or at least I could before my long years of exile.

The driver looked at me in the mirror, switched off the engine, turned around.

“That’ll be twenty euros, is that all right?” he said. “Sure…but I’ve only got dollars, ok?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t take dollars.”

I swore inwardly. Another Irish subtlety I’d forgotten. Don’t give details when you don’t have to.

“Come on, mate, just get going,” I said.

“I don’t take dollars, you’ll have to get change,” the taxi man insisted.

“You don’t take dollars at all, never?” “No, I could lose me license.”

“Come on, do me a favor. I’ll give you fifty bucks if you just get cracking,” I said.

“You’re going to have to get change, pal, euros, or else you’ll be walking where ya want to go,” the driver said, getting somewhat hot under the collar. I looked at him in the mirror. He was about my age, wearing a Manchester United beanie hat and a thick sweater with reindeer on it. Big build, fat, frothy lips, the skin tone of a granite statue. A Dublin accent, but a hint of the north in it too.

I was about to give the bastard a piece of my mind but then stopped, unclenched my fists, and found a place of inner tranquility.

“Ok, mate, I’ll get the bloody euros,” I said through the window and smiled reassuringly at him. He didn’t smile back. He seemed nervous. He wiped tiny beads of sweat off his forehead. Interesting, but I didn’t have the time to probe the inner psychology of a cabbie, I was freezing out here. I sprinted back to the overhang outside the terminal. I asked a pair of cops where I could change money.

“Inside couple of bureaus de change, Eire Bank’s got a better rate than National,” one said.

“And a prettier girl,” his partner added.

I found the two bureaus de change and headed for the National Bank. Old habit: whatever a peeler says, play safe and do the opposite.

I gave the girl three thousand dollars. She gave me back two thousand four hundred and ninety euros.

“Happy Bloomsday,” she said.

“Thanks, happy Bloom to you, too, love.”

I walked back out to the taxis. The driver was on his cell phone. He hung up hurriedly when he saw me, gave me a big fake smile.

“Ok, mate, where to? Connolly?” the driver asked.

“I haven’t been here in a while, is it Connolly Station where you get the trains to Belfast?”

“It is too now, and is that where you want to go?”

“No, I was just asking that to make small talk. Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said, once again betraying my irritation.

“Connolly Station it is,” the driver said, and I knew he was going to take the most expensive route that he bloody could.

Streets.

Trees.

Cars.

Dublin is a city I don’t know well. Drop me a few blocks from O’Connell Street and I’m banjaxed. I can get you to Trinity and St. Pat’s and a brothel opposite the Four Courts but that’s about it. It’s not my town at all. When I lived in Belfast I’d be down about twice a year for a rugby match. Don’t think I’ve ever stayed overnight. Lot of beggars about back then, now it’s yuppies with cell phones and PDAs.

Dubliners have changed quite a bit. Nowadays they’re increasingly like Londoners. Cosmopolitan, busy, cheeky. They think just because they know where to get a decent pint of Guinness or a half-decent cup of coffee that this gives them the right to put on airs. I suppose they’re arrogant because they live in a nice town. Good new statues, new architecture, and a really lovely Georgian zone near Trinity. Belfast, by contrast, is a bloody disaster area. The old ugliness from before the war, the 1970s bomb-damage ugliness, the 1990s rebuilding ugliness. Belfast never makes Lonely Planet’s list of most beautiful cities. Still, salt of the earth. Scotchy used to say, “Scratch a Dubliner and underneath you’ll find a snob; scratch

a man from Belfast and he’ll punch you in the face for taking liberties.”

Anyway, I don’t know Dublin, so it wasn’t until I saw that the cabbie was driving over a Liffey River bridge that I began to get suspicious.

Dublin Airport is in the north of the city.

Connolly Station, as far as I remembered, is also in the north of the city. Certainly north of the Liffey. Driving from the airport to Connolly should not for any reason involve crossing the river.

I reexamined the driver. Scars on his hands. Big guy, bruiser, you would have thought. Slow, but you wouldn’t want to mess with him. Knock your block off, he would.

No, I didn’t like him at all.

And now that I checked out the cab, I began to notice a few odd things as well.