Herbert, Frank - The White Plague

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PRECEDE

There's a lust for power in the Irish as there is in every people, a

lusting after the Ascendancy where you can tell others how to behave.

It has a peculiar shape with the Irish, though. It comes of having

lost our ancient ways -- the simpler laws, the rath and the family at

the core of society. Romanized governments dismay us. They always

resolve themselves into widely separated Ascendants and Subjects, the

latter being more numerous than the former, of course. Sometimes

it's done with great subtlety as it was in America, the slow

accumulations of power, law upon law and all of it manipulated by an

elite whose monopoly it is to understand the private language of

injustice. Do not blame the Ascendants. Such separation requires

docile Subjects as well. This may be the lot of any government,

Marxist Russians included. There's a peculiar human susceptibility

you see when you look at the Soviets, them building an almost exact

copy of the czarist regimes: the same paranoia, the same secret

police, the same untouchable military, and the murder squads, the

Siberian death camps, the lid of terror on creative imagination,

deportation for the ones who cannot be killed off or bought off.

It's like some terrible plastic memory sitting there in the dark of

our minds, ready on the instant to reshape itself into primitive

patterns the moment the heat touches it. I fear for the shape of

things which may come from the heat of O'Neill's plague. Truly, I

fear, for the heat is great.

-- Fintan Craig Doheny

right hand drive customary in Ireland. John Roe O Neill would

remember the driver's brown-sweatered right arm resting on the car's

windowsill in the cloud-filtered light of that Dublin afternoon. A

nightmare capsule of memory, it excluded everything else in the

scene; just the car and that arm.

Several other surviving witnesses commented on a crumpled break in

the Ford's left front wing. The break had begun to rust.

Speaking from her hospital bed, one witness said: "The break was a

jagged thing and I was afraid someone would be cut if they brushed

against it."

Two of those who recalled seeing the car come out of Lower Leeson

Street knew the driver casually, but only from his days in postal

uniform. He was Francis Bley, a retired postman working part-time as

a watchman at a building site in Dun Laoghaire. Bley left for work

early every Wednesday, giving himself time to run a few errands and

then pick up his wife, Tessie. On that one day each week, Tessie

spent the morning doing "light secretarial" for a betting shop in

King Street. It was Tessie's habit to spend the rest of the day with

her widowed sister who lived in a remodeled gatehouse off the Dun

Laoghaire bypass "just a few minutes out of his way."

This was a Wednesday. May 20. Bley was on his way to pick up

Tessie.

The Ford's left front door, although appearing undamaged by the

accident that had crumpled the wing, still required a twist of wire

around the doorpost to keep it closed. The door rattled every time

the car hit a bump.

people.

Bley, slight and wrinkled, had that skin-stretched cadaverous look

that is common among certain aged Celts from the south of Ireland.

He wore a soiled brown hat almost the exact shade of his patched

sweater, and he drove with the patient detachment of someone who came

this way often. And if the truth were known, he rather liked being

slowed by the heavy traffic.

It had been cold and wet through most of spring and, while it was

still cloudy, the cloud cover had thinned and there was a feeling

that there might be a break in the weather. Only a few of the

pedestrians carried umbrellas. The trees of St. Stephen's Green on

Bley's right were in full leaf.

As the Ford inched along in the congested traffic, the man watching

for it from a fourth-floor window of the Irish Film Society Building

nodded once in satisfaction.

Right on time.

Bley's Ford had been selected because of this Wednesday punctuality.

There was also the fact that Bley did not garage his car where he and

Tessie lived in Davitt Road. The Ford was parked outside beside a

thick yew hedge, which could be approached from the street along a

path shielded by a parked van. There had been a van parked in this

covering position the previous night. Neighbors had seen it but no

one had thought to comment at the time.

"There were often vehicles parked in that place," one said. "How

were we to know?"

The watcher at the Film Society Building had many names but he had

been born Joseph Leo Herity. He was a small, solidly fleshy man with

traffic just to the left of Herity s window. A white tour bus with

blue-and-red stripes down its side loomed over the small Ford.

Traffic fumes were thick even at the fourth-floor level.

Herity checked Bley's license number to be certain. Yes -- JIA-5028.

Then there was the crumpled left front wing.

The traffic began to inch forward, then stopped once more.

Herity glanced left at the Grafton Street corner. He could see the

signs of the Toy World shop and the Irish Permanent Society on the

ground floor of the red brick building soon to be taken over by the

Ulster Bank. There had been some protest about that, one ragged

march with a few signs, but it had died out quickly. The Ulster Bank

had powerful friends in the government.

Barney and his lot, Herity thought. They think we're ignorant of

their scheme to make a peace with the Ulster boys!

Again, Bley's Ford inched toward the corner, but once more was

stopped. There was heavy foot traffic where Grafton took off from

St. Stephen's Green.

A bald-headed man in a dark blue suit had stopped almost directly

beneath Herity's window and was examining the cinema marquee. Two

young men pushing bicycles threaded their way past the bald-headed

man.

The traffic remained stopped.

Herity looked down at the top of Bley's car. So innocent-looking,

that car. Herity had been one of the two-man team to emerge from the

yew-shrouded van near Bley's parking spot the previous night. In

Herity's hands had been a molded plastic package, which they had

selection team had said. The old bastard should be running a tram.

"What're his politics?" Greaves had asked.

"Who cares about his politics?" Herity had countered. "He's perfect

and he'll be dying for a grand cause."

"The street'll be full of people," Greaves had said. "And there'll

be tourists sure as hell is full of Brits."

"We warned 'em to stop the Ulster boys," Herity had said. Greaves

could be an old woman sometimes! "They know what to expect when they

don't listen to us."

It was settled then. And now Bley's car was inching once more toward

the Grafton Street corner, toward the mass of pedestrians, including

the possible tourists.

John Roe O'Neill, his wife, Mary, and their five-year-old twins,

Kevin and Mairead, could have been classified as tourists, although

John expected to be six months in Ireland while completing the

research called for under his grant from the Pastermorn Foundation of

New Haven, Conn.

"An Overview of Irish Genetic Research."

He thought the title pompous, but it was only a cover. The real

research was into the acceptance of the new genetics by a Roman

Catholic society, whether such a society had taken a position to cope

with the explosive potentials in molecular biology.

The project was much on his mind that Wednesday morning but necessary

preparations required his attention. High on his list was the need

to transfer funds from America to the Allied Irish Bank. Mary wanted

Mary, anxious to be off shopping.

Ireland suited Mary, John thought. She had pale clear skin and dark

blue eyes. Jet-black hair -- "Spanish Hair," her family called it --

framed her rather round face. A sweet face. Irish skin and Irish

features. He bent and kissed her before leaving. It brought a blush

to her face but she was pleased at his show of affection and she gave

him a warm smile as they parted.

John walked away briskly, humming to himself, amused when he

recognized the tune: "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'."

John's Wednesday appointment for "transfer of foreign funds" was at

two P.M. at the Allied Irish Bank, Grafton and Chatham streets.

There was a sign just inside the bank's entrance, white letters on

black: "Non Branch Customers Upstairs." A uniformed guard led him

up the stairs to the office of the bank manager, Charles Mulrain, a

small, nervous man with tow-colored hair and pale blue eyes behind

gold-framed glasses. Mulrain had a habit of touching the corners of

his mouth with a forefinger, first left side then right, followed by

a quick downward brush of his dark tie. He made a joke about having

his office on the first floor, "what you Americans call the second

floor."

"It is confusing until you catch on," John agreed.

"Well!" A quick touching of lips and tie. "You understand that we'd

normally do this at our main office, but . . ."

"When I called, they assured me it was . . ."

"As a convenience to the customer," Mulrain said. He lifted a folder

from his desk, glanced inside it, nodded. "Yes, this amount . . . if

street a white coated figure with a long handled brush. He stood

outlined against a row of five chimney pots.

Glancing at the closed door of the manager's office, John wondered

how long Mulrain would be. Everything was so damned formal here.

John looked at his watch. Mary would arrive with the children in a

few minutes. They planned to have tea, then John would walk down

Grafton to Trinity College and begin work at the college library --

the real start of his research project.

Much later, John would look back on those few minutes at the bank

manager's "first-floor" window and think how another sequence of

events had been set in motion without his knowledge, an inescapable

thing like a movie film where one frame followed another without ever

the chance to deviate. It all centered around Francis Bley's old car

and a small VHF transmitter in the hands of a determined man watching

from an open window that looked down on that corner where Grafton met

St. Stephen's Green.

Bley, patient as always, eased along at the traffic's pace. Herity,

in his window vantage point, toggled the arming switch of his

transmitter, making sure the antenna wire dangled out over the sill.

As he neared the Grafton corner, the crush of pedestrians forced Bley

to stop and he missed the turn of the traffic light. He heard the

tour bus gain clear of traffic off to his right, trundling off in a

rumble of its heavy diesel. Barricades were being erected on the

building to his left and a big white-on-red sign had been raised over

the rough construction: "This Building to be Remodeled by G.

Tottenham Sons, Ltd." Bley looked to his right and noted the tall

blue-and-white Prestige Cafeteria sign, feeling a small pang of

hunger. The pedestrian isthmus beside him was jammed with people

waiting to cross over to St. Stephen's Green and others struggling to

make a way through the cars stopped on Grafton and blocking Bley's

from Mary s stance that she held the children s hands. A brief break

in the throng allowed John a glimpse of the top of Kevin's head and

the old Ford with the driver's brown-sweatered elbow protruding.

Where is that damned bank manager? John wondered. She'll be here any

minute.

He dropped the heavy lace curtain and looked once more at his wrist-

watch.

Herity, at the open window above and behind Bley, nodded once more to

himself. He stepped back away from the window and toggled the second

switch on his transmitter.

Bley's car exploded, ripped apart from the bottom. The bomb,

exploding almost under Bley's feet, drove him upward with a large

piece of the car's roof, his body crushed, dismembered and scattered.

The large section of roof sailed upward in a slow arc to come

crashing onto the Irish Permanent Society Building, demolishing

chimney pots and slates.

It was not a large bomb as such things went, but it had been expertly

placed. The old car was transformed into jagged bits of metal and

glass -- an orange ball of fire peppered with deadly shrapnel. A

section of the car's bonnet decapitated Mary O'Neill. The twins

became part of a bloody puddle blown against the iron fencing across

the street at St. Stephen's Green. Their bodies were more easily

identified later because they were the only children of that age in

the throng.

Herity did not pause to glance out at his work; the sound told it

all. He tucked the transmitter into a small and worn military green

pack, stuffed an old yellow sweater onto it, strapped the cover and

slung the pack over his shoulder. He left the building by the back

Good God! What was that?

John stumbled to his feet, rejecting the question and the answer that

rumbled through his head like an aftershock of the blast. He brushed

past the bank manager and out the door. His mind remained in shock

but his body found its way down the stairs. He shouldered a woman

aside at the foot of the stairs and lurched out onto the street where

he allowed himself to be carried along by the crowd rushing toward

the area of the blast. There was a smell of burnt iron in the air

and the sound of cries and screams.

Within only a few seconds John was part of a crush being held back by

police and uninjured civilians pressed into service to keep the area

around the explosion clear. John elbowed and clawed his way forward.

"My wife!" he shouted. "I saw her. She was there. My wife and our

children!"

A policeman pinned his arms and swung him around, blocking John's

view of the tangled fabric and bloody flesh strewn across the street.

The groans of the injured, the cries for help and the shouts of

horror drove John into insensate rage. Mary needs me! He struggled

against the policeman.

"Mary! She was right in front of . . ."

"The ambulances are coming, sir! There's help at hand. You must be

still. You cannot go through now."

A woman off to John's left said: "Let me through. I'm a nurse."

This, more than anything else, stopped John's struggles against the

policeman.

were glimpses past the policeman who helped him to a cleared place

against a building across from the green.

"There now, sir," the policeman said. "You'll be taken care of

here." Then to someone else: "I think he was hit by a flying bit;

the bleeding seems to've stopped."

John stood with his back against a scarred brick wall from which the

dust of the explosion still sifted. There was broken glass

underfoot. Through an opening in the crowd to his right he could see

part of the bloody mess at the corner, the people moving and bending

over broken flesh. He thought he recognized Mary's coat behind a

kneeling priest. Somewhere within him there existed an understanding

of that scene. His mind remained frozen, though, frigidly locked

into limited thought. If he allowed himself to think freely, then

events would flow -- time would continue . . . a time without Mary

and the children. It was as though a tiny jewel of awareness held

itself intact within him, understanding, knowing . . . but nothing

else could be allowed to move.

A hand touched his arm.

It was electric. A scream erupted from him -- agonized, echoing down

the street, bringing people whirling around to stare at him. A

photographer's flash temporarily blinded him, shutting off the

scream, but he could still hear it within his head. It was more than

a primal scream. This came from deeper, from some place he had not

suspected and against which he had no protection. Two white-coated

ambulance attendants grabbed him. He felt his coat pulled down,

shirt ripped. There came the prick of a needle in his arm. They

hustled him into an ambulance as an enveloping drowsiness overwhelmed

his mind, sweeping away his memory.

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摘要：

PRECEDEThere'salustforpowerintheIrishasthereisineverypeople,alustingaftertheAscendancywhereyoucantellothershowtobehave.IthasapeculiarshapewiththeIrish,though.Itcomesofhavinglostourancientways--thesimplerlaws,therathandthefamilyatthecoreofsociety.Romanizedgovernmentsdismayus.Theyalwaysresolvethemselv...

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Herbert, Frank - The White Plague

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