TRIAL OF SILENCE

PROLOGUE

Sean Speaks:

If this were an Ice Age Chronicle the combat would be with clubs on the edge of flaky cliffs a swift moving river below to carry the battered body—bodies if combatants were evenly matched—to the sea. A thousand years ago if we were Nobles, or thereabouts, it would be with armour on a caparisoned mount with lance and backup broadsword, a lady’s scarf tied on somewhere floating around and if the knight had good fortune it would not blow across his eyes at the moment of fixing aim. An 18th Century Gentlemen’s heirs would retain a sharp cutting edge on rapiers and keep pistols clean and at hand. Lowborn desert terrorists at the end of the 20th Century settled individual differences with knives in the sand rather than waste bullets that were not always readily available. All of the above in the presence of a vociferous bloodthirsty cheering section. Now, in a civilized part of the world—New York City, for example—it will be in front of no one, something silent, subtle, no clubs, knives, swords, lances or pistols … something more painful.

There are moments I’m sure I am wrong. An impartial observer would say as much. The thought has crossed my mind to alert Iris, seriously. She would probably not believe me and I’m reasonably sure I would not be able to convince her otherwise. The occasions I’ve warned that he is dangerous were tepid self-reminders of what I had set in motion. Down to the wire the expectation is that friendship will invalidate what I did.

I know better … if it gets to the wire.

He was unmistakably in earnest when he shaved off an effective cover. Zach with a beard evokes images of a rather alarming woolly mammoth. It’s impossible to guess at the angles of his face. Shaved, people stare and try to memorize, few women can say no to that face. He used to complain through his beard that it was easier for me to get someone to bed, and it was where we were. I was the exotic fair novelty in a land of primarily dark people. I told him we could go to Scandinavia where it would be easier for him. I couldn’t have cared less, which was when he began calling me a cold bastard. Frequently, when he came up with a couple of possibilities I left him with both and went to the cinema. Not because the women were unappealing, on the contrary, Zachariah had talent when it came to finding attractive women. The following day he’d thank me for leaving then tell me I was insane. I’d give him my stock, “Yes, well, the film wasn’t much, should have stayed to help out.”

He didn’t understand, nor did he try.

I disliked female diversion when planning raids. We were always into something and I had priorities. I sat through films to get lost in my head and always walked out with a plan. (Had to be a walk-in cinema with buttered popcorn, a Hershey bar with almonds and a medium coke: shades of teen years plotting against parents and Brits.) When making love I had to pay attention to what I was doing, more particularly to what I was saying. Female terrorists and undercover policewomen were assigned to pump me for information while I returned the favor for carnal pleasure. Consequently, the role I played was just passing through with a secretary, waitress, bank employee, shop attendant, student, whatever was uncomplicated … complicated if I wanted info on a target. I might have been less indifferent if sex had not been so readily available. I have wondered about those women that asked little while speaking in a future tense. I hope they found what they deserved, not what they wanted. It was apparent to me fairly young that it was usually women who fancied marriage but the institution more often than not was a man’s feather bed and, in spite of headway with social equality and the rest, it was still frequently a woman’s iron maiden.

Then one rather annoying day Stone Face Stuart stepped into an elevator smelling like a West Coast Irish breeze. Christ, she had a body a man thinks about in idle moments and she made me laugh for the first time in a year.

Zachariah thought she was merely the next one. I should have told him hands off. According to the rules she was mine—I met her first. I do have a rather bad habit of testing people, especially those close to me.

I made sure he found me the way he had left me when he went down to her apartment: sitting in the reading chair reading, the telephone—everything turned off but the flashing red light announcing a call—was on the floor just out of sitting-down reach. I did that so I didn’t automatically answer the bloody thing, had to decide each time it rang if I felt like getting up. Calling was not casual either. Zachariah knew the routine. Cardhu was on the table beside the chair. While he was shaving I settled on calling her. I could well enough imagine her waking up, seeing his handsome face and reaching for him. When he returned too soon, I gave him the ready quip: “Ms. Stuart likes quickies?” I managed the casual voice but I sure as hell shot myself in the foot, metaphorically speaking. We never discussed women! Never. It had always been, “Who is she? How do you know her?” Prudent paranoia of hunted men.

He poured a drink, refreshed mine, and sat on the nearest bar stool. “Ask her if you really want to know.”

His eyes flicked to the phone then to my face. He started talking about the Junta meeting we had attended earlier cutting off any follow-up on Iris. When he stood to go to bed he pulled the two pieces of straw papers from his shirt pocket and set them on the bar. I looked at them on the way to bed. One said Zach, the other Fitz. He wanted me to know the draw had been authentic.

It was also a warning.

We drew his fair straws and he won. Since I had not previously claimed possession that straw should have been the end of it and would have been except for several loose ends: there was the possibility she would not forgive him for hurting her in spite of his handsome clean-shaven face and if I disappeared she would have been lost to both. What a cock wants is not always what’s good for it, or what it gets, so I theorized that if things didn’t work out with me then perhaps Zachariah could step in.

I tried evasion after Algeria. An interesting self-deception I took myself through because the tiny—I mean tiny—soft, protected, fragment of my Irish heart, the piece that ached to love, palpitated quietly, steadily on the walls. Too late. Too late. Too late. What happened on that desert mesa was heart-wrenching. I had taken stainless Iris there to punish what had seemed like arrogance. I wanted it dirty and she bloody well knew. She turned it into … something else. Lila’s blood-rite ceremony was plethoric. The wedding had been celebrated

on that mesa.

...

There are moments in the silent hours—satiated for the moment, her forehead touching my shoulder, a leg against mine, listening to her sleeping breath—that I wonder if she would have been better off with him. Zach married is a woman’s dream of fidelity. After Algeria, I could have happily been committed … except I was afraid of becoming an unreasonable … possessive … smothering … jailer … of losing control, of losing myself somewhere in the morass of an untested relationship with a woman I didn’t know well but couldn’t get out of my head.

The others kept the cock crowing and my head self-possessed.