Each human heart must bear its grief

Though bitter be the ’bode

So God be with you, Ireland,

And the Old Bog Road

There are all sorts of ways to destroy the heart. When you get older you realise that. When I was young I was scared of nothing. Nothing outside of a knife or a gun or a fucking bomb blast could have put the fear in me, and even then. But as I got older it was the things you couldn’t see that began to worry me. Things that can put their hands straight through the flesh of your chest and grab hold of your heart and take it out and beat it to a pulp and put it back there without leaving so much as a scar. Women, chanters, snakes and ghosts. And not necessarily in that order.

*

Finally we get the nod from the top brass and Mack meets us in the Mickey Mouse van, somewhere outside of Belfast. The Europa gig is on and everybody’s celebrating. Mack pulls a gold packet of twenty B&H out his top bin and passes them around. What a cigarette. All the top brass smoked B&H. That was their style.

Have youse read that fucking Green Book like I told youse? Mack says to us. Fuck me, Tommy says to him, next thing you’re going to need a fucking degree to join the Ra. Specialist subject: the murder of dirty Huns, Barney says. That’s not university, mate, Mack says to him.

What are you talking about?

That’s Mastermind, Mack says to him. That’s Mastermind where you have a specialist subject. In university they call it your major. That’s America, I says to him. That’s what they call it in America. In the UK it’s different. Aye, well, we’re not in the UK, Tommy says. Maybe you haven’t read the fucking Green Book. That reminds me of my favourite joke, Barney says. Paddy from Ireland goes on Mastermind …

For fuck sake, Mack says to him, cut it out. This is supposed to be a high-level briefing about a devastating attack on the forces of oppression, not the Royal Variety Performance. I’d blow the fucking Royal Variety Performance sky-high, Barney says. Now there’s a fucking target. Stop! Mack says. Just fucking stop talking for a minute here, would youse, he says. Do we actually have a plan? I’ve got a plan, I says to him. I know the Europa like the back of my hand, I says. I don’t believe you’ve ever been in there in your fucking life, Tommy says to me, and he fixes me with a dead-cold stare. Aye, I have, I says to him. The fuck do you know? Listen, I says to Mack. I’ve been doing a little research, leaning on a few cunts, setting a few cunts up, get the gist of what I’m saying? They’re starting to get to know me in there, is what I’m saying. If they knew you, they’d ban you in two seconds, Tommy says, but his eyes have calmed a bit now. Look, I says to Mack. What I’m saying is that I’m happy to do it. I’ll need a bomb with a timer on it, mind. Something that I can trigger quick like but that isn’t going to go off in my hand. Something sturdy enough to drop down one of the ventilation shafts. They have them on every floor. All you need to do is shoogle the grille off and it’ll be like dropping a match into a drum of petrol. Just as long as I’ve got time to get back out, mind. Before the entire edifice goes ka-boom. Shouldn’t be a problem, Mack says to me. You would not believe the boffins we have behind the scenes this weather. They’ll be inventing remote-control bombs that you can fly into a ventilation shaft from a mile off before anyone knows it, he says.