The White Plague Read online

  Later, John would look back on that moment as the beginning of the rage that took over his entire life. That was the moment when he promised:

  You will pay. Oh, how you will pay!

  And there was no doubt in his mind at all how he would set about making them pay.

  Do you realize that this one man is changing the political map of the world?

  – General Lucius Gorham,

  U.S. presidential foreign affairs advisor,

  speaking to the secretary of defense

  THE WARNING letters began arriving during the week before the first anniversary of the Grafton Street bombing. The first one was timed to reach Ireland too late for counteraction. Others went to world leaders, where they were treated as crank letters or were bucked along to specialists. The letters were numerous at first – to radio and television news departments, to newspapers, to prime ministers and presidents and church leaders. It was determined later that one of the first letters was delivered to a newspaper editor on Dublin’s O’Connell Street.

  The editor, Alex Coleman, was a dark and vital man who covered his drive with a generally mild manner even when he was being most forceful. He was considered an oddity among his peers because of his strong temperance beliefs, but none doubted his penetrating alertness to a good story.

  Coleman read the letter several times, glancing up occasionally to look out his third-floor window onto the street, where Dublin’s morning traffic already had begun to congeal into its usual frustrating crawl.

  Crank letter?

  The thing didn’t have that feeling about it. The warnings and threats made his skin crawl. Was this possible? The words had an educated air about them, sophisticated. The thing was typed on bond paper. He rubbed the paper between his fingers. Expensive stuff.

  Owney O’More, Coleman’s personal secretary, had clipped a note to the letter: “I hope this is a crank. Should we call the Garda?”

  So it had worked its disturbance on Owney.

  Once more, Coleman read through the letter, seeking some reason to disregard it. Presently, he put the letter flat in front of him and keyed the intercom to Owney.

  “Sir?” Owney’s voice always had a military abruptness.

  “Check out the Achill Island angle, will you, Owney? Don’t stir up any hornets. Just find out if there’s anything unusual afoot.”

  “Right away.”

  Coleman returned his attention to the letter. It was so damned direct, so clear and straightforward. A mind of power and… yes, terrifying purpose, lay behind it. There was the usual warning to publish “or else” but then…

  “I am going to wreak an appropriate revenge upon all of Ireland, Great Britain and Libya.”

  The expressed justification rang a bell in Coleman’s memory.

  “You have wronged me by killing my loved ones. By my hand alone you are being called to account. You murdered my Mary and our children, Kevin and Mairead. I have sworn a treble vow on their memories. I will be avenged in kind.”

  Coleman again keyed the intercom and asked Owney to check on those names. “And while you’re at it, call the College Hospital and see if you can get me through to Fin Doheny.”

  “That would be Fintan Craig Doheny, sir?”

  “Right.”

  Once more, Coleman read the letter. He was interrupted by the telephone and intercom simultaneously. Owney’s voice said: “Doctor Doheny on the line, sir.”

  Coleman picked up the phone. “Fin?”

  “What’s so all-fired important, Alex? Owney O’More sounds like he’s been scalded.”

  “I’ve a threatening letter, Fin. And there’s some technical stuff in it. Mind listening a minute?”

  “Get on with it.” Doheny’s voice had an echo quality, suggesting a speaker phone.

  “Is someone else with you?” Coleman asked.

  “No. What’s got the wind up?”

  Coleman sighed and returned his attention to the letter, extracting the technical references for Doheny.

  “It’s hard to say from just a letter,” Doheny said. “But I find no fault with his references to the recombinant DNA process. You know, Alex, it is possible that way to make new diseases… but this…”

  “The threat could be real?”

  “I’d give that a qualified yes.”

  “Then I shouldn’t disregard this thing?”

  “I’d be calling the Garda.”

  “Is there anything else I should be doing?”

  “Well, I’ll give that a think and be back to you.”

  “One thing, Fin! Not a word on this until I’ve had a go at it.”

  “Aw, you scramblin’ newspapermen!” But there was a hint of laughter in Doheny’s voice that Coleman found reassuring. A qualified yes. Doheny wasn’t too worried then. It was still a good story, though, Coleman thought as he replaced the telephone in its cradle. A bomb victim’s vengeance. Medical expert says the thing’s possible.

  Owney’s voice came over the intercom: “Sir, that bomb at Grafton and St. Stephen’s Green. You remember that?”

  “That bloody thing!”

  “Sir, three of the victims had the names in this letter. There was a Mary O’Neill killed with her twin children, Kevin and Mairead.”

  “From America, yes, I remember.”

  “The husband was at the window of a bank down the street and saw it all happen. Name of…” Owney paused, then: “Doctor John Roe O’Neill.”

  “Medical?”

  “No, a professor of some sort. He was here on one of those foundation grant things they’re so fond of – studying the state of genetics or some… yes, that’s what our story says. Genetics research.”

  “Genetics,” Coleman mused.

  “According to our story at the time, sir. This O’Neill had something to do with physical chemistry – a biophysicist – and he taught at some school of pharmacy in the States. Says here he also owned a pharmacy there.”

  Coleman suddenly shuddered. He felt that something evil had crawled beneath the surface of his land, a thing more venomous than any snake the Sainted Patrick had banned. That IRA bomb could come to be known as the most awful mistake in human history.

  “Any luck getting through to Achill?” Coleman asked.

  “The lines are jammed, sir. Should we dispatch an aircraft?”

  “Not yet. Get on to the Garda. If the Achill phones are jammed, they may know something. Did you copy this letter?”

  “Two copies, sir.”

  “They’ll want the original…”

  “If they don’t have one of their own already.”

  “I thought of that. I just don’t like tipping our hand. We may have a head start on this. Well, we’ll just have to chance it.” He glanced down at the letter on his desk. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting fingerprints off this, anyway.”

  “Are we going ahead with the story, sir?”

  “Owney, I’m almost afraid not to publish it. There’s something about it. And singling out Achill this way… ‘a demonstration,’ he says.”

  “Sir, you’ve thought of the panic we might…”

  “Just get me the Garda, Owney.”

  “Right away, sir!”

  Coleman picked up his phone and called his wife at home, making it brief and imperative.

  “There’s going to be trouble over a story we’re about to publish,” he explained. “I want you to take the boys and go to your brother’s in Madrid.”

  When she started to protest, he cut her off: “This is going to be bad… I think. If you’re here, I’m vulnerable. Don’t waste any time; just leave. Call me from Madrid and I’ll explain.”

  He replaced the phone in its cradle, feeling somewhat foolish but relieved. Panic? If this thing proved to be true, there would be worse than panic. He stared at the letter, focusing on the signature.

  “The Madman.”

  Coleman shook his head slowly, recalling the tale of the Irish coffin-ship survivor who, making a cross of shov
els over his wife’s grave at Grosse Isle, Quebec, had vowed: “By the cross, Mary, I swear to avenge your death.”

  O’Neil’s wife had been named Mary. And now, if this was O’Neill, he called himself simply “The Madman.”

  They are a torture, my memories – a lovely torture.

  – Joseph Herity

  THE PATTERN of change built itself slowly in John Roe O’Neill. It set him trembling unexpectedly at odd moments, his heart pounding, sweat breaking out all over his body. At such times, he thought of the old beliefs in possession. It was like that – another personality taking over his flesh and nerves.

  Much later, he came to a personal accommodation with this Other, even a sense of familiarity and identity. He thought of it then as partly his own making, partly a thing rising out of primal darkness, a deliberate creation for the task of revenge. Certainly, his Old Self had not been up to such a deed. The kindly teacher-of-the-young could not have contemplated such a plan for an instant. The Other had to come into being first.

  As the change progressed, he came to think of himself as Nemesis revived. This Nemesis came out of Ireland’s bloody past, out of the betrayals and murders, and even carried with it a retaliation against the Celtic extermination of the First People, the Danaans, who had been in Ireland before the waves of invaders from Britain and the Continent. He saw himself then as a spokesman for all of the accumulated wrongs suffered in Ireland. It was Nemesis blaring:

  “Enough! Let it end!”

  But the Other asked: “Why should Ireland shoulder it all alone?”

  The terrorists who had killed Mary and the twins had been trained and armed in Libya. And there was England’s filthy hand in the whole mess – eight hundred years of cynical oppression – “Ireland, the guilty conscience of the English ruling class.”

  As this change became fixed in its purpose, John saw an astonishing alteration of his appearance. The old almost plump self went stringing down to a slender, nervous man, who avoided old friends, refused to answer the telephone and ignored appointments. People made allowances at first – “The awful shock of such a tragedy…” The foundation that had sent him to Ireland gave him an unrequested extension on the project with a polite letter asking if he wanted to turn it over to another researcher. The school extended his leave of absence. Max Dunn, who managed the family pharmacy, took over more of the business decisions and told John not to concern himself with anything except getting his life back in order.

  John merely noted these things in passing. The change within him had become an obsession. Then he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror one Saturday morning and knew he would have to take action. Mary and the twins had been dead and buried four months. The Other was strong in him now; a new face, a new personality. He stood in the upstairs bathroom of the home he and Mary had bought when they had first learned of her pregnancy. The sounds of the old college town drifted up to him through the open window. There was a feeling of fall in the air but the forecast was for another two weeks of “warmer than normal” weather. John could hear Mister Neri down the street running his power mower. A bicycle bell went jingling past. Children shouted on their way to the park. It was September already; he knew that. And he remembered how Kevin and Mairead had shouted at play in the yard.

  Neri shut down his mower. Mrs. Neri had been one of the most persistent callers. “You’re wasting away to skin and bones, you poor man!” But Mrs. Neri had a younger sister, unmarried and getting anxious. There had been a matchmaker’s look in Mrs. Neri’s plump face.

  John leaned close to the mirror and looked at himself carefully. The changes… not quite a stranger, but strange. They won’t have any photographs of this face, he thought. But they would make drawings and spread them far and wide. At that moment, the thought still in his mind, he knew he was going to do this thing, knew he was capable of it and would certainly do it. That scream at St. Stephen’s Green had set something in motion, like the slow beginning of an avalanche. Let it come then, he thought.

  That morning, he put his house on the market and, because properties near the college were much in demand, he had it sold two weeks later to a “nice young assistant professor,” as the Real Estate Woman called him. All of these people were like dream faces to John. His thoughts had gone questing ahead to the thing that needed doing. The Nice Young Assistant Professor had wanted to know when Doctor O’Neill would be returning to his post at the school.

  “We heard about your tragedy of course, and we understand why you’re selling – all of the memories.”

  He doesn’t understand at all, John thought.

  But the transaction put a clear $188,000 in John’s pocket. The Real Estate Woman had tried to talk to John about his “tax obligations” and had worked to sell him “a much better investment a bit farther out but on land sure to increase in value dramatically over the next ten years.”

  He had lied to her, saying his accountants already had the problem in hand.

  The contents of the house had brought an astonishing $62,000, but then Mary’s father had left her some valuable old books and two fine paintings. Her family’s furniture had included several antiques, a thing John had never even thought about before. Furniture had always been only something to fill the spaces in a house.

  The college fund they had set aside for the twins yielded another $33,000. There was the McCarthy annuity from John’s mother, against which the bank loaned him $56,000. Their small portfolio of stocks brought $28,900. The bank accounts over which Mary had worked so hard brought $31,452. Almost $30,000 remained in the grant for the Ireland project, money he had not transferred to the Allied Irish Bank, keeping it in a high-interest brokerage fund that the foundation had approved. His salary, reduced by the sabbatical’s requirements, produced close to $16,000 more.

  Friends and associates had seen only the surface of this activity, taking it as “a good sign John’s finally getting back to normal.”

  The most delicate parts of the transition involved dealing with the Internal Revenue Service and the sale of the pharmacy that had been in his mother’s family now for two generations. Max Dunn said he understood that John might not want to publicize the sale, “and besides I’d want to keep the McCarthy name over the door.” From family sources, Dunn produced a $78,000 down payment and agreed to a one-year deferral on starting payments on the balance – none of which John ever intended to collect. The $78,000 was what he wanted. Cash!

  The IRS he put off with a token payment of $5,000 and a letter from his accountants explaining that due to the tragedy and attendant problems, time was required to settle the taxpayer’s affairs. The IRS, mindful of the sympathy for John and wary of adverse publicity, granted a six-month deferral.

  On the day he left Highland Park in his station wagon, John had almost $500,000 tucked away in the back in the fireproof box that once had held his will and property deeds. The rest of the wagon was crammed full of the carefully packed elements of his personal laboratory, including his computer. Two suitcases of clothing had to be secured under the safety belt beside him on the front seat.

  Friends accepted the story that he was going to look for “someplace farther out, a place without these memories.”

  Late that evening, he ate supper almost four hundred miles away from the place he no longer called home, sitting in a roadside cafe that smelled of rancid grease. He chose a booth that gave him a view of the car parked outside, noting the gray film of dust that gave it a rundown look. That was good. The grille still showed a shallow dent Mary had put there while trying to maneuver out of a supermarket parking lot. John left without finishing the meal and could not even remember what he had ordered.

  Later, he found a motel with an alcove parking place beside his room. He transferred the fireproof box to a place under the bed, put his father’s old .38 Colt under the pillow and lay down fully clothed, not expecting to sleep. He could feel the presence of that box under the bed. The money represented energy for the thing he knew he had
to do. Every sound outside brought him to alertness. Headlights sweeping across the window draperies set his heart pounding. Activity outside subsided as the night wore on and he told himself he would nap a bit. Someone starting a car awakened him and he opened his eyes to gray morning light around the edges of the draperies.

  And he was hungry.

  “Those two wains dead will not win us friends. Could you not have waited just a bit?”

  – Kevin O’Donnell

  “Me standing back out of the window I could not see them down there.”

  – Joseph Herity

  IN THE months after their first meeting in the quad, Stephen Browder and Kate O’Gara moved slowly from tentative acquaintance to what her mother called “an understanding.”

  “She’s walking out with this young man who’ll be a doctor,” Kate’s mother told her next-door neighbor.

  “Ahhh, that’s a fine catch,” the neighbor said.

  “Well, my Katie’s no slouch around, and her almost a nurse.”

  “It’ll be a fine thing, two medical people in the family,” the neighbor agreed.

  On a Friday, late in October, Stephen borrowed a fellow student’s car, having arranged to take Kate to the Blackwater Hilltop south of Cork for supper and the dancing afterward. He had been saving for a month to afford this outing and it was a daring thing to do. The B-H, as it was known in Cork, had the reputation of a “fast roadhouse,” but their Guinness was the best and their chef brought regular customers from as far away as Dublin.

  The car was a six-year-old Citroën whose offside showed a long series of scratches from scraping a bridge abutment. It had once been silver-gray, but the student owner had repainted it a garish fluorescent green.

  Kate, suppressing serious guilt feelings, told her mother they were going with other students to the harvest fair at Mallow, and that they planned to stay for the fireworks, the late supper and the music.

  Her mother, remembering similar outings in her own youth, admonished: “Now, Katie! Don’t let your young man make any advances.”