Evil for Evil by James R. Benn Read Free Book Online

not have to suffer the sight of his three boys going off to fight for the English, and only two of them returning, with poor Frank, the oldest, left in a grave on the outskirts of a village called Chateau-Thierry.
    Dad and Uncle Dan came home to a hero’s welcome, but they never thought it fitting. While they were mustered out, the IRA was fighting the English for a free Ireland, and they felt no elation in having helped England keep its empire. They joined Clan na Gael, raising money for the cause, and taking in IRA men on the run. Some of them, according to the stories, were from the Squad, Michael Collins’s assassins who targeted British intelligence officers throughout Ireland.
    Uncle Dan’s involvement went deeper. When raising money through Clan na Gael wasn’t enough for him, he secretly became an IRA man. But it seemed to me that with the IRA, secrets were meant to be bragged about to those you trusted. Uncle Dan came to the house after he’d been sworn in as a member of the North American IRA, and told us all about it. Mom was worried, and said maybe he joined because he didn’t have a wife and kids to keep him from storing guns in the cellar and inviting hard men with cloth caps pulled down over their faces to sleep on his couch whenever they pleased. Dad listened, and stayed with Clan na Gael. They both rose in the ranks of the Boston PD, they and their buddies doing what they could for the Cause, turning a blind eye when they needed to. Sláine O’Brien thought this was keeping a wound from healing but in my family, a wrong still demanded righting, a silent hand from the past reminding us of it every year.
    For the first time since Granddad’s uncle had charged him and his descendants with the duty of smiting the English for their crimes, a Boyle was returning to Ireland. On a British aircraft, working for the British, against the IRA. I hoped Granddad Liam wasn’t watching and weeping for what had become of his clan. What would he make of Sláine O’Brien, working for British counterintelligence? What did I make of her? What secrets, if any, drove her to wear the British uniform?
    I felt the Sunderland descend and saw the tall, sharp cliffs of Donegal, the sea raging against them. We went lower, and the green fields of Ireland appeared, distant patchworks of foggy emerald that gave me no joy at all. Sunlight danced on lakes, and as we flew over the largest, Lough Neagh, I saw Belfast to the north, a sprawl of smokestacks and industry fronting the Irish Sea. The plane banked south, headed for a landing in Dundrum Bay, an inlet close to Newcastle, where I was to report to 5th Division headquarters. I shivered as the damp chill seemed to rise from the ground and penetrate the metal skin of the flying boat, and I made a mental note to ditch my tropical khakis for a good thick woolen uniform.
    The Sunderland slowed as Dundrum Bay came closer, rushing up at the last second, and finally it thumped once, then twice, before settling into the water and easing up on the props until it chugged along, almost quietly, to a long dock built out into the bay. As soon as the engines shut down, a small boat motored out and pulled up to the main hatchway up front. As I got in, an old gray-bearded fellow revved the small engine and headed for the dock.
    “Welcome to Ireland,” he said. “There’s some who are in a hurry for your company.”
    “I’m a popular guy,” I said as I extended my hand. “Billy Boyle.”
    “Grady O’Brick I am,” he said. We shook, and I couldn’t help but notice the old man had no fingernails to speak of. The tips of his fingers were thin, with rutted scar tissue where the nails had once been.
    “You’re Catholic then, by the sound of your name.”
    “Aye, as are you. You have the look of the altar boy about you. Mind how you go here, lad.”
    “Where?”
    He only nodded toward the dock as he eased up on the motor and gently brought the boat alongside as he leaned close and spoke