Free The Angel Tapes by David M. Kiely

The man’s a looper; I know it. You’d have to be loopy to dream up something like this.”
    â€œSo you reckon he’ll set off the bombs anyway?”
    â€œI do. It’s the spectacle, Sweetman! Seeing your handiwork on television, having half the country talking about you in the pub. Having everyone scared out of their wits over you. He probably wanked himself silly watching the news.”
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t be so crude, sir.”
    â€œSorry. But you see my point? There’s no way we can give in to him like the Brits did in Heathrow. He’d do the job anyway. And we’d leave ourselves wide open to some other mad bastard with a bomb and a funny voice.”
    â€œYou’re right, Blade.”
    â€œI know I’m right. And I wish to Christ I wasn’t.”

Eight
    Three women had left messages on Blade’s machine. One was his mother. The message was garbled, and that didn’t surprise him in the least—he’d have been very surprised had Katharine’s words been fully coherent. He made a mental note to call her.
    The second message had been left by someone at the bank. Politely but firmly, Macken was invited to review the terms of his overdraft. He knew what that meant. He muttered a curse and decided to ignore the invitation for the time being.
    The third caller was a stranger. Yet her voice, husky as that of a Gauloise smoker, awakened memories in Blade. He remembered a club on Leeson Street. He’d visited it on Thursday night in the company of Sweetman and a half-dozen other officers, the leftovers of Paddy O’Driscoll’s farewell party. Much wine had been drunk, dances danced. There’d been a blonde woman in her late twenties who’d been dancing alone, shoeless. She’d brushed off every advance made to her—apart from Macken’s.
    Christ almighty tonight, how could he have forgotten! She’d been stunningly beautiful. The last time he’d dated a girl like that was the week a man walked for the first time on the moon. Blade had empathized with that walker. And she—Elaine, that was her name, the answering machine reminded him; Elaine de Rossa—she’d responded eagerly to his advances. Unbelievable. Now she was giving him her phone number, with a request that he call her.
    The number seemed familiar. Then Macken recollected the seven digits he’d scrubbed off his palm the previous morning. Stupid, stupid. You didn’t always get second chances with women like Elaine.
    Blade picked up the receiver. He hesitated. He didn’t have time for this. He really didn’t; not now. But more memories of Elaine de Rossa were starting to come, and Blade was a red-blooded man.
    He rang the number.
    *   *   *
    â€œI’m not here,” Ambassador Seaborg said. “I’m not in this room; I’m not hearing this conversation. Is that understood?”
    He had his back turned to them, as though to add emphasis to his words. He didn’t see the look that Lawrence Redfern tossed to the others.
    Seventeen of them were gathered in the ambassador’s office: burly men dressed eerily alike in dark, double-breasted suits. The fashion was outmoded but purposeful: The loose jackets concealed the bulges made by heavy-caliber handguns, when such weapons needed to be borne. For the moment, these and other tools of Redfern’s trade were stored in the armory in the bowels of the embassy, behind a door marked ARCHIVES . The double electronic keycard that would open that door was in the custody of Seaborg’s driver, Thomas Jones, who sat in a corner of the room, idly filing his nails. Seaborg wasn’t privy to Jones’s real name; that information was guarded by the men and women of a government facility in Langley, Virginia.
    Two others present were on the embassy payroll: one an interpreter, the other a minor office functionary. Seaborg mused that they actually performed