Cathedral Read online

  “We would be delighted.”

  “Thank you.” He continued to look at the Cardinal, who had now turned away. The man was old, but his eyes were bright. Baxter cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Your Eminence, but I was thinking that perhaps I should stand away from the center of things a bit.”

  The Cardinal waved to well-wishers in the crowd as he spoke. “Mr. Baxter, you are the center of things today. You and Miss Malone. This little display of ours has captured the imagination of political commentators. It is, as they say, newsworthy. Everyone loves these precedents, this breaking with the past.” He turned and smiled at Baxter, a wide Irish smile. “If you move an inch, they will be pulling their hair in Belfast, Dublin, London, and Washington.” He turned back to the crowds and continued moving his arm in a blending of cheery waving and holy blessing.

  “Yes, of course. I wasn’t taking into account the political aspect—only the security aspect. I wouldn’t want to be the cause of anyone being injured or—”

  “God is watching over us, Mr. Baxter, and Commissioner Dwyer assures me that the Police Department is doing the same.”

  “That’s reassuring on both counts. You’ve spoken to him recently? The Police Commissioner, I mean.”

  The Cardinal turned and fixed Baxter with a smile that showed he understood the little joke but did not find it amusing.

  Baxter stared back for a moment, then turned away. It was going to be a long day.

  Patrick Burke regarded the steps. He noticed his friend Father Murphy near the Cardinal. It must be a strange life for a man, he reflected. The celibacy. The paternal and maternal concern of monsignors and mother superiors. Like being an eternal boy. His mother had wanted that for him. A priest in the family was the ultimate status for those old Irish, but he had become a cop instead, which was almost as good in the old neighborhoods, and no one was disappointed, least of all himself.

  He saw that the Monsignor was smiling and talking with the ex-IRA woman. Burke focused on her. She looked pretty, even from this distance. Angelic, almost. Her blond hair moved nicely in the breeze, and she kept brushing wisps of hair from her face.

  Burke thought that if he were Harold Baxter or Maureen Malone he would not be on those steps at all, and certainly not together. And if he were the Cardinal, he would have invited them for yesterday, when they could have shared the steps with indifferent pigeons, bag ladies, and winos. He didn’t know whose idea it had been to wave this red flag in the face of the Irish rebels, but if it was supposed to bring peace, someone had badly miscalculated.

  He looked up and down the Avenue. Workers and high school kids, all playing hooky to get in on the big bash, mingled with street vendors, who were making out very well. Some young girls had painted green shamrocks and harps on their faces and wore Kiss Me, I’m Irish buttons, and they were being taken up on it by young men, most of whom wore plastic leprechaun bowlers. The older crowd settled for green carnations and Erin Go Bragh buttons.

  Maureen Malone had never seen so many people. All along the Avenue, American and Irish flags hung from staffs jutting out of the gray masonry buildings. A group in front of the British Empire Building was hoisting a huge green banner, and Maureen read the familiar words: ENGLAND GET OUT OF IRELAND. Margaret Singer had told her that this was the only political slogan she would see, the only one sanctioned by the Grand Marshal, who had also specified that the banners be nearly made with white lettering on green background. The police had permission to seize any other banner. She hoped Baxter saw it; she didn’t see how he could miss it. She turned to Monsignor Downes. “All these people are certainly not Irish.”

  Monsignor Downes smiled. “We have a saying in New York. ‘On Saint Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish!’ ”

  She looked around again, as though she still didn’t believe what she was seeing. Little Ireland, poor and underpopulated, with its humble patron saint, almost unknown in the rest of the Christian world, causing all this fuss. It gave her goose bumps, and she felt a choking in her throat. Ireland’s best exports, it was said bitterly, were her sons and daughters. But there was nothing to be bitter about, she realized. They had kept the faith, although in an Americanized version.

  Suddenly she heard a great noise coming from the crowd and turned her head toward the commotion. A group of men and women, about fifteen of them, had unfurled a green banner reading: VICTIMS OF BRITISH INTERNMENT AND TORTURE. She recognized a friend of her sister’s.

  A police mounted unit galloped south down the Avenue, Plexiglas helmet-visors down, long batons raised above their heads. From the north side of the Cathedral on Fifty-first Street, scooter police roared past the mobile headquarters truck and onto Fifth Avenue.

  A man with a bullhorn shouted, “LONG KESH! ARMAGH PRISON! CRUMLIN ROAD JAIL! CONCENTRATION CAMPS, BAXTER, YOU BASTARD! MAUREEN MALONE—TRAITOR!”

  She turned and looked at Harold Baxter across the empty space left by the Cardinal and Monsignor who had been moved up the steps by the security police. He remained in a rigid position of attention, staring straight ahead. She knew there were news cameras trained on him to record his every movement, every betrayal of emotion, whether anger or fear. But they were wasting their time. The man was British.

  She realized that cameras were on her as well, and she turned away from him and looked down into the street. The banner was down now, and half the demonstrators were in the hands of the police, but the other half had broken through the police barricades and were coming toward the steps, where a line of mounted police waited almost nonchalantly.

  Maureen shook her head. The history of her people: forever attempting the insurmountable and, in the end, finding it indeed insurmountable.

  Maureen watched, transfixed, as one of the last standing men cocked his arm and threw something toward the steps. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw it sailing through the air. It seemed to hang for a second before drifting downward slowly; the sunlight sparkled from it, making it difficult to identify. “Oh God.” She began to drop to the ground but caught a glimpse of Baxter out of the corner of her eye. He hadn’t moved a muscle and, whether it was a bomb or a carnation heading his way, he acted as if he could not care less. Reluctantly she straightened up. She heard a bottle crash on the granite steps directly behind her and waited for the sound of exploding petrol or nitro, but there was only a choked-off exclamation from the crowd, then a stillness around her. Green paint from the shattered bottle flecked the clothing of the people standing closest to where it hit. Her legs began to shake in relief, and her mouth became dry.

  Sir Harold Baxter turned his head and looked at her. “Is this traditional?”

  She could not control her voice sufficiently to speak, and she stared at him.

  Baxter moved beside her. Their shoulders touched. Her reaction was to move away, but she didn’t. He turned his head slightly. “Will you stand next to me for the rest of this thing?”

  She moved her eyes toward him. Camera shutters clicked around them. She spoke softly. “I believe there’s an assassin out there who intends to kill me today.”

  He didn’t appear to react to this information. “Well, there are probably several out there who intend to kill me…. I promise I won’t throw myself in front of you if you promise the same.”

  She let herself smile. “I think we can agree on that.”

  Burke stood firm as the crowd pushed and shoved around him. He looked at his watch. The episode had taken just two minutes. For a moment he had thought this was it, but within fifteen seconds he knew these were not the Fenians.

  The security police on the steps had acted quickly but not really decisively in front of the partisan crowd. If that bottle had been a bomb, there would have been more than green paint to mop up. Burke took a long drink from his flask. He knew the whole day was a security problem of such magnitude that it had ceased to be a problem.

  Burke considered the little he knew of the Fenians. They were veterans, said Ferguson, survivors, not suicidal fanatics. W
hatever their mission they most probably intended to get away afterward, and that, thought Burke, would make their mission more difficult and make his job just a little easier. He hoped.

  Colonel Dennis Logan was calming Pat and Mike, who had been aroused by shouts from the crowd.

  Logan straightened up and looked at the stanchion clock. One minute past noon. “Oh, shit!” He turned to his adjutant, Major Cole. “Start this fucking parade.”

  “Yes, sir!” The adjutant turned to Barry Dugan, the police officer who for twenty-five years had blown the green whistle to begin the parade. “Officer Dugan! Do it!”

  Dugan put the whistle to his lips, filled his lungs, and let out the longest, loudest whistle in all his quarter century of doing it.

  Colonel Logan placed himself in front of the formation and raised his arm. Logan looked up the six blocks and saw the mass of newsmen and blue uniforms milling around a paddy wagon. They’d take their time if left to their own devices. He remembered his regiment’s motto: Clear the way! He lowered his arm and turned his head over his right shoulder. “Foo-waard—MARCH!” The regiment stepped off.

  The army band struck up the “Garryowen,” and the two hundred and twenty-third St. Patrick’s Day Parade began.

  CHAPTER 11

  Patrick Burke walked across the Avenue to the curb in front of the Cathedral and stood by the barricades. The 69th Regiment came abreast of the Cathedral, and Colonel Logan called the regiment to a halt.

  The barriers behind Burke were parted where the green carpet came into the street, and a group of men in morning dress left the parade line and approached the Cathedral.

  Burke remembered that the Cardinal had mentioned, casually, to the newspapers the day before that his favorite song was “Danny Boy,” and the army bandleader apparently had taken this as a command and ordered the band to play the sweet, lilting air. Some of the people on the steps and many in the crowd around the Cathedral broke into spontaneous song. It was difficult for an Irishman, thought Burke, not to respond to that music, especially if he had had a few already.

  “O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

  From glen to glen, and down the mountain side,

  The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling,

  ’Tis you, ’tis you, must go and I must bide.”

  Burke watched the entourage of dignitaries as they mounted the steps: the marshals, Mayor Kline, Governor Doyle, senators, congressmen, all the secular power in the city and state, and many from the national level. They all passed through the space in those barriers, walked across the narrow carpet, and presented themselves to the Cardinal, then left quickly, as protocol demanded. The faithful knelt and kissed the green-jeweled ring; others bowed or shook hands.

  “But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,

  Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow,

  For I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow,

  O Danny Boy, O Danny Boy, I love you so.”

  Maureen felt the excitement, the heightening of perceptions that led to fear, to apprehension. Everyone was smiling and bowing, kissing the Cardinal’s ring, shaking her hand, the Monsignor’s hand, Baxter’s hand. Hands and wide smiles. The Americans had super teeth. Not a bad one in the lot.

  She noticed a few steely-eyed men near her who wore the same expression of suppressed anxiety that she knew was on her face. Down by the space in the barriers she recognized Lieutenant Burke from the Waldorf. He was eyeing everyone who approached, as though they were all ax murderers instead of important citizens, and she felt a little comforted.

  Around her the crowd was still singing, trying to remember the words and humming where they couldn’t, as the flutes and horns of the army band played.

  “But when ye leave, and all the flowers are dying,

  And I am dead, as dead I may well be,

  Then will ye come and find the place where I am lying,

  And kneel and say an Ave there for me?”

  Maureen shook her head. What a typically morbid Irish song. She tried to turn her thoughts to other things, but the intrusive words of the ballad reminded her of her own life—her own tragic love. Danny Boy was Brian, as Danny Boy was every Irish girl’s lover. She could not escape its message and meaning for her as an Irishwoman; she found her eyes had gone misty, and there was a lump in her throat.

  “And I shall hear tho soft ye tread above me,

  And tho my grave will warmer, sweeter be,

  And you shall bend and tell me that you love me,

  And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.”

  Burke watched the 69th move out. When the last unit was clear of the Cathedral, he breathed easier. The potential targets were no longer clustered around the Cathedral, they were scattered again—on the steps, moving around the regiment in small groups, some riding now in limousines up Park Avenue to the reviewing stands, some on their way home or to the airports.

  At the end of the 69th Regiment Burke saw the regimental veterans in civilian clothes marching in a unit. Behind them was the Police Emerald Society Pipes and Drums, kilts swirling and their bagpipes wailing as their drums beat out a warlike cadence. At the head of the unit their longtime commander, Finbar Devine, raised his huge mace and ordered the pipers to play “Danny Boy” as they passed the Cathedral. Burke smiled. One hundred and ninety-six marching bands would play “Danny Boy” for the Cardinal today, such was the combined power of the press and the Cardinal’s casual remark. Before the day was out His Eminence would wish he had never heard the song and pray to God that he would never hear it again as long as he lived.

  Burke joined the last rank of the old veterans at the end of the 69th Regiment. The next likely point of trouble was the reviewing stands at Sixty-fourth Street, where the targets would again be bunched up like irresistibly plump fruit, and on St. Patrick’s Day the fastest way to get uptown was to be in the parade.

  Central Park was covered with people on hillocks and stone outcroppings, and several people were sitting in trees.

  Colonel Logan knew that thousands of marchers had fallen in behind him now. He could feel the electricity that was passing through his regiment into the crowd around him and down the line of marchers, until the last units—the old IRA vets— had caught the tempo and the spirit. Cold and tired in the fading light, the old soldiers would hold their heads high as they passed the spectators, who by this time were jaded, weary, and drunk.

  Logan watched the politicians as they left the march and headed toward the reviewing stands to take their seats. He gave the customary order of “eyes left” as they passed the stands and saluted, breathing more easily now that his escort mission had been accomplished.

  Patrick Burke left the parade formation at Sixty-fourth Street, made his way through the crowd, and entered the rear door of the police mobile headquarters van. A television set was tuned to the WPIX news program that was covering the parade. Lights flashed on the consoles, and three radios, each tuned to a different command channel, crackled in the semidarkness. A few men occupied with paperwork or electronics sat on small stools.

  Burke recognized Sergeant George Byrd from the Bureau of Special Services. “Big Byrd.”

  Byrd looked up from a radio and smiled. “Patrick Burke, the scourge of Irish revolutionaries, defender of the faith.”

  “Eat it, George.” He lit a cigarette.

  “I read the report you filed this morning. Who are the Finnigans? What do they want?”

  Burke sat on a small jump seat. “Fenians.”

  “Fenians. Finnigans. Micks. Who are they?”

  “The Fenians were a group of Irish warriors and poets. About 200 A.D. There was also an Irish anti-British guerrilla army in the nineteenth century who called themselves Fenians—”

  Byrd laughed. “That’s kind of old intelligence, Burke. Must have been held up in Police Plaza.”

  “Filed with your promotion papers, no doubt.”

  Byrd grunted and leaned back against the
wall. “And who’s Finn Mac— something?”

  “Head of the original Fenians. Been dead seventeen hundred years now.”

  “A code name?”

  “I hope so. Wouldn’t want to meet the real one.”

  Byrd listened to the radios. The command posts up and down the Avenue were reporting: The post at the Presbyterian church at Fifty-fourth Street reported all quiet. The post on the twentieth floor of the General Motors Building reported all quiet. The mobile headquarters at the Cathedral reported all quiet. Byrd picked up the radiophone and hesitated, then spoke softly. “Mobile at Sixty-fourth. All quiet at the reviewing stands. Out.” He replaced the phone and looked at Burke. “Too quiet?”

  “Don’t start that shit.” Burke picked up a telephone and dialed. “Jack?”

  Jack Ferguson glanced at the closed bedroom door where his wife slept fitfully, then spoke in a low voice. “Patrick”—he looked at a wall clock in the kitchen—“it’s twelve-thirty. You’re supposed to call me on the hour.”

  “I was in the parade. What do you have?”

  Ferguson looked at some notes scribbled on a pad near the telephone. “It’s hard to find anyone today.”

  “I know, Jack. That’s why today is the day.”

  “Exactly. But I did learn that the man called MacCumail has recruited some of the more wild-eyed members of the Boston Provisional IRA.”

  “Interesting. Any line on weapons? Explosives?”

  “No,” answered Ferguson, “but you can buy anything you want in this country, from pistols to tanks.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A partial description of the man called MacCumail—tall, lean, dark—”

  “That could be my mother.”

  “He wears a distinctive ring. Always has it.”

  “Not very smart.”

  “No. He may believe it’s a charm of some sort. The Irish are a superstitious lot. The ring is oversized, probably an antique or a family heirloom. Also, I did find out something interesting about this MacCumail. It’s only hearsay … but apparently he was captured once and possibly compromised by British Intelligence.”