Redemption. - Redemption. Part 79
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Redemption. Part 79

"You're going to find the reasons that will make the rest of your way worth the while."

Sir Frederick Weed was wheeled out to the veranda a short distance away. His chair was set so he could look down the slope of the hills and see the stacks of Weed Ship & Iron. His nurse took up a magazine beside him.

"My father is nearly totally paralyzed. He cannot speak, but he hears and comprehends everything. His mind is as keen as it ever was. We've worked out a language by blinking his eyes and some small movement of a couple of fingers. Come, let's meet him. He'll enjoy your rowdy stories, if you have any."

"I'm afraid I do."

They made to the veranda, where she greeted her father with a kiss and set his lap robe straight, then took a chair in front of him.

"Freddie, this is Rory Landers. You know him from Chris and Jeremy's letters."

Rory could detect a smile through Weed's watery eyes.

"I've heard a lot about you, sir," Rory said.

"Rory is going to visit for a while. He's going to tell us all about his year with the boys."

Weed blinked.

"He said that you're most welcome."

When Caroline and Rory had retired from the veranda, she turned and watched her father for ever so long. "He just sits there, day after day, looking down at the empire he created. He is trying to will his grandsons back to life and himself to the man he once was. He refuses to accept that those things are gone. He fights to no avail, wondering why his willpower can't remake the past."

"Is there anything I can do or say to help him?"

"Yes."

"What is that?"

"It will have to wait, but there is something we both need to know. Now, how about letting you have a stretch and a cleanup before dinner."

She took him up the great winding stairs in the foyer and down a hall with walls filled with paintings and indentations holding statuary. She opened the door to Jeremy's apartment.

"Are you sure you want me to stay in there?"

"Jeremy would be livid if I put you up anywhere else. And Rory, this is not going to end up a sad experience."

"I know that."

As he entered the room, Caroline took his arm and turned him around to her. "Are we going to be able to get their bodies back?"

Rory shook his head.

"Why?"

"Please don't."

"I must know. I have to put it to rest."

"There are...thousands of unidentifiable skeletons...thousands and thousands, ours and the Turks. They're all bleached white and lie in piles...everywhere.... Is that what you wanted to know earlier, for your father and yourself?"

"No," she said. "It is something quite different."

There was joy in Rathweed Hall in the next days as Rory recounted the boisterous scene in Cairo. It was right to tell these two. They could now have Chris and Jeremy's happy days to be part of the memory. You could fair feel the old man laughing inside him.

But what was it they really wanted to know? It seemed that would have to come later, when fuller trust had been built.

Rory was sketchy about his own past. He did speak of Georgia and his hope he would find her, but nothing was said of Calvin Norman. For the most part he stuck to his Landers story, that he was a lad at odds with his father.

Caroline was much taken by Rory, but she was nobody's fool. Running the vast operations as she did, and being raised and living in an atmosphere of constant conspiracy, she got the scent of Rory's hiding something. What it probably was, in her mind, was a childhood pain of some sort he didn't care to be open about. It was something, though. Whatever it was, Caroline decided to let the days pile up without probing.

On the other hand, Caroline had intimated from the beginning that there was something about Gallipoli she and her father needed to know.

At the end of a week, Rory told Caroline he was going to make his little round of the country. He promised to return to Rathweed Hall, of a certainty.

She gave him a set of keys to her townhouse on Merrion Square in Dublin. "Bachelor officers' quarters can be a bit stuffy and confining. Now, I want you to take these keys and feel it is your home, like you and my lads were cousins. Come and go as you want, Rory. And have yourself a party or two, girls welcome."

Rory blushed. Imagine his mom ever saying anything like that to him. "You're like my Georgia," he said. He went up to pack after promising to phone her regularly, and to return.

As he threw the last of his gear in his bag, Caroline came to his parlor. "Can we have an up-front talk before you leave?"

"Of course."

"I mean, up-front."

Oh hell. What did she already know? What did she suspect?

"I'll tell you what's on my mind," she said before he could chart a course. "You have alluded to the fact that you may be here in Ireland for some time. I know, firsthand, how General Brodhead feels about you. We went through the same experience with Chris. Are you going on his staff?"

"Jesus Christ, Caroline. I didn't want to bring the General into too much of the conversation this week because I didn't know if it was the right or wrong thing to do. Yes, he's asked me to join his staff and part of my wandering about now is to think it over. You'd certainly be the first to know if I did."

Caroline stared at him without comment.

"All right," he said, "he and your late husband were cronies, I gather?"

"Yes, very much so, identical twins-one in a factory owner's cutaway and the other in military uniform."

"Knowing from Jeremy of your unhappy marriage, I didn't feel right in bringing up anything of that nature."

"That's very good of you, Rory. But what has Llewelyn Brodhead to do with Roger Hubble?"

"He's got the hots for you."

Rory was fairly shocked that Caroline didn't so much as blink an eye.

"I was once very beautiful..."

"You still are."

"Cut it out. Anyhow, I've had lads in heat sniffing around me all my life, Rory. Even though Llewelyn was close to my husband and always proper, I have long ago picked up on his ardor. He has a shipwreck of a wife and, beyond Ireland, a penchant for whores."

"Brodhead? Whores? Do you know that or are you just saying it?"

"Weed Ship & Iron is into so goddamned many bedrooms, I've lost count. Espionage, industrial and otherwise, was a way of life. We once had a retired Brigadier running our intelligence service-fortunately he is deceased-who had the goods on everyone in the British Isles, and particularly Ulster."

Rory held up his hands. "I'll never try to lie to you again, Caroline. I should have told you I may be going to work for him. I'm sorry about that. It was just a bad call on my part. The rest of it. He's hot for you. He told me to slip in the good word for him. I figured you already had that all figured out. The rest of it is your business."

"Thank you, Rory," she said, then dropped the other shoe: "We're almost finished. My father and I want you to tell us about Brodhead at Gallipoli."

"What about him?"

"We analyzed his testimony and reports to the commission. He lied to cover his ass, and don't tell me you were only a lieutenant."

"No, I won't tell you that. He's my general."

"Good old boys club?"

"Whatever I say, good, bad or otherwise isn't going to bring Jeremy and Major Chris back to life."

"You don't know us, Rory. We are ancient Gaels, ourselves. We are as we are, and we must know. You don't have to tell us much. Just confirm what we already believe."

"Why?"

"Don't let my surroundings here fool you. I know what's going on in this country and I believe Jeremy was intending to make a declaration to become a republican. He always had the soul of a republican, and he had a mentor who opened his eyes to terrible realities. As far as I'm concerned, Llewelyn Brodhead is harmless. He may not be so harmless as far as Ireland is concerned. As for what happened at Gallipoli...my father and I are haunted...I told you-we are ancient Gaels."

Rory felt a rage from her he'd never seen in a woman before. There was no use trying to quarrel with her, with the strange look in her eyes. Lord, what to do? The open wounds of these two people might only be closed by vengeance. And what of himself? Rory thought. Would not his own vengeance be the end of his search in Ireland?

"Will it matter between you and me if I join his staff?"

Caroline's face flushed. He was a tough lad, all right. No wonder Jeremy adored him. "I want you to go back to Brodhead's command, Rory. If it means we take him off our slate, so be it."

"I'm not a very sophisticated lad, Caroline. It would be better if we leave the General out of it. I just don't understand all the in-fighting."

"Like hell you don't," she said. "For the sake of appearances," she continued, totally switching tones, "if you go on Llewelyn's staff and if he should ask, tell him you relayed his interest to me, and let him know I was quite flattered by his attention. No harm in that, is there, Rory, making the old boy feel good?"

"I'll tell him I caught a light in your eye at the mention of his name."

"Welcome to our dirty little games, Lieutenant."

He put his arms about her and gave her a tight squeeze. Jaysus, what a woman, he thought. Everything was falling into place so damned well he could fairly believe it.

Although they still held their secrets, they felt a bonding, like mother and son.

It had been a restless night until it suddenly struck her! Caroline bolted upright in bed, flung her covers off and paced, then howled with discovery!

It was nothing that Rory Landers had said that gave him away, so much as the manner he said it. He claimed no Irish ancestry, but certainly one of his parents was Irish. There was too much of a Donegal lilt unconsciously weaving in and out of his conversation.

Good Lord, she had spotted the Larkin face the moment he entered Rathweed Hall and even a similarity of voice. At first she wondered if she hadn't unconsciously expected Conor to come through that door for the last ten years.

Landers had many of Conor's moves: his knowing stare, his startling candor, the laugh, the mystery of his travels in Ireland. Of course Rory was aware of Jeremy's republican leanings. Jeremy knew who Rory really was and never gave him away but left little hints throughout his correspondence to her.

Caroline's personal assistant, Tony Pimm, was at Rathweed Hall within the hour.

"We need to lift some Army records of a colonial, a New Zealander. I want them duplicated. Lieutenant Rory Landers. Canterbury district or county, Christchurch area, the South Island."

"Landers? I thought you and Freddie were very taken by him. What's our man up to?"

"I don't think he's Landers. He's somebody else."

"I see. Some soldier who knew Jeremy and Chris enough to get into Rathweed Hall and work a swindle on you."

"No, that's not his game. The relationship with my sons is genuine and I adore him. I need information out of New Zealand. Is our office in Wellington properly connected?"

Tony Pimm nodded that it was.

"I think he enlisted under the name of Landers because he didn't want to carry his real identity into Ireland. Have Overcash in Wellington round up the names of all the stations, owners, and transfers, and the like, and see if anything Irish pops up."

"Like what?"

"Larkin."

"Holy Christ."

"I'd wager he's Conor Larkin's nephew and, hang on, Tony, he's been offered a post inside Dublin Castle by Sir Llewelyn himself."

77.

"Sixmilecross! Sixmilecross!"

Rory's heart leapt as the train slowed. He pressed his head against the window of his compartment trying to focus his eyes. The train eased into the lay-by to take on water at the tower. Down the line a conductor helped a woman and little girl off the train to a waiting buckboard and husband.

Rory knew from Jeremy's description that he was on the exact site of the ambush. British troops had been riding the train, Conor and his party were strung out along the rail and at the crossroads, horses and wagons tied just beyond the bridge in the trees.

His compartment door opened. It was a different conductor. He leaned over Rory, reading the patch on his shoulder.

"New Zealand, is it?"

Rory nodded.

"Me partner sez to me there is a Victoria Cross lad in the military car. And where might you have been to exact this distinction?"

"Gallipoli."