“I believe we’re both outlaws now,” Michael said.
On the run in the Vauxhall, they were no longer Francis and Michael Dempsey, they were Frank and Jesse James. And they weren’t bumping over a rutted backcountry road in the middle of Ireland, they were racing across the high plains outside of Carson City or Dodge or Tombstone—some frontier town whose name Francis had dredged up from the cowboy novels that formed the bulk of the prison library.
“Da’d murder you for reading that tripe,” Michael said.
“I heard Yeats himself loved cowboy stories, so what’s the harm?”
“Yeats is dead.”
“Well,” Francis said, “so is Da.”
Though they wanted to imagine that some lean-boned sheriff with a drooping mustache was gathering a posse to hunt them, they knew that they had only the massed forces of the Roman Catholic Church and the newly christened Republic of Ireland at their backs. For the first time in their lives, the brothers gave thanks that Ballyrath was so far off the map of twentieth-century progress that there wasn’t a telephone within miles, but they knew that eventually word would reach the outside world that an escaped convict and a seminarian–cum–car thief were on the loose. Until then, they had to achieve some distance from the scene of their escape—a difficult proposition on roads unbroken by alternate routes and hemmed in by bristling hedges, where they could be stopped cold by a single donkey cart turned sideways in their path.
Once the flush of excitement started to wane, they were confronted with the reality of being on the run and mostly penniless on an island that required money and legal papers to depart. In search of a less conspicuous mode of transport, they stopped east of Athenry to trade the Vauxhall to a pair of traveler folk for a dilapidated Morris Minor. “Smells like priests,” one of the men said, and Francis had to agree with him. The Vauxhall had the stink of hair tonic and candlewax on it. Though they were fleeced in the deal, the brothers fired up the engine and, lured by the comforts of the words safe house, followed the map south.
IT DIDN’T LOOK like much upon their arrival, but maybe that was the point. It was an out-of-the-way house down a long lane off a back road—the kind of place that no one would simply stumble across. Had they known where they were going, or had their map been more than an old man’s half-remembered cartography rendered with a nubby pencil on a pension-check envelope, they could have made the drive from Ballyrath to the house in six hours. But the map, the swap with the travelers, the detours when they feared driving too close to towns or police barracks—all of it added up, and by the time they steered the Morris Minor, a desperate machine with a fly-pocked windscreen, up the dirt track that led to the house, it was long past midnight. The only light came from the half-moon and the car’s headlamps, which Francis aimed at the front door and left on as they exited the car.
Sure enough, this was it, red door and all. A long stone cottage topped by a mangy thatched roof. The door itself was stout, ribbed with iron bands, and absolutely immovable.
“Would’ve been nice of him to mention that,” Francis said. “Maybe take a moment from his lousy mapmaking to jot down a note about where to find the key?”
The windows seemed equally impregnable. Thick shutters latched from the inside betrayed no hint of light in the cottage. All of this contributed to the sense of this safe house being extremely safe, snug, and secure—provided you could ever get in. Michael suggested a search of the Morris Minor for a jack or a pry bar, anything they could use to jimmy one of the shutters or, if necessary, smash a window. Francis had to admit that his lock-picking abilities weren’t up to this door. It was a skill he had tried to acquire at Mountjoy, but given that anyone caught practicing on the cell doors faced a week in solitary confinement, his education had been more theoretical than applied.
Taken together, the Dempsey brothers were an unlikely pair of housebreakers. Francis wore the suit he had been sentenced in—a suit that had sat, poorly folded, in the jail’s storehouse since the first day of his incarceration. Gangster-inspired, with broad lapels, chalk stripes, and a double breast, it was not a suit made to convey the innocence of its wearer. Francis thought the outfit made him look dashing; the judge thought it made him look guilty. Francis’s companion in this halfhearted assault on the locked door, meanwhile, was dressed in a narrow, inky-black cassock studded with buttons from toe to notched collar.
Francis’s clumsy efforts with the door were interrupted by a voice from the darkness: “What do you want here?”
Both brothers’ shadows, outlined by the car’s headlamps, jumped like puppets in a children’s theater. “Who’s there?” Francis said. “Show yourself.”
“Move on,” the man’s voice said. “You’ve no business here.”
“We were sent,” Michael said. “Broken arch, red door. We have a map.”
“Don’t show him that,” Francis said. “He’s not supposed to be here, either.”
“Give the map to me.” The man emerged from the darkness behind the house, his hand extended.
“We’re to stay,” Michael said. “Collect our bearings.”
“No one’s staying here.”
“But you are.”
“Well, I’m the only one.”
With a scrape of wood against the stone threshold, the massive front door opened wide enough for a man’s head to poke through the gap. “Who’s out there?” he said, squinting into the headlamps.
“And that one,” Michael said. “That’s two of you.”
“It’s my place,” the first man said.
“Why should we believe you?” Michael said. “You lied about being alone.”
There were in fact four men at the house, each thrown into a state of great agitation by the arrival of strangers. Three of the men had spent a month ensconced at the Factory, as the IRA called its clandestine bomb-making facility, developing munitions for the Sabotage Campaign, the IRA’s latest plan to bring Britain to its knees. Until today, they had received only a single visitor, a quartermaster from the Army Council who had relayed instructions to guide their work and a timetable for completing their assignment. Although he would not admit it, the quartermaster had also come to see whether or not the three had blown themselves to bits. But now, in the past twenty-four hours, the Factory had become a hive of activity. Early in the morning a car had arrived, disgorging two rough-looking fellows and a man called Finnegan who ran this entire section of the country for the IRA. One of the bruisers stayed behind, keeping close watch on a stoutly made strongbox, while Finnegan and the other drove to Cork for meetings with other higher-ups.
Francis and Michael knew none of this. As they stood outside in the spring night, chilled and tired, they knew only that their safe house—this hastily packaged gift from the men at their father’s funeral—would not be a place where they could quietly sort out their next move.