Sons of Macha. John Lenahan

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СКАЧАТЬ not dead. That he was alive and well in Tir na Nog, the mythical Irish Land of Eternal Youth, where I assisted him regaining the throne by helping him attach his missing hand and then chopping off my uncle’s hand.

      Then I narrated the story of how, when I got back home, Detective Fallon arrested me for my father’s murder and how my mother and aunt busted me out of jail and how they took me back to The Land and how Detective Fallon got transported with us by accident and then we had to search all over The Land and had to fight a battle and ride a dragon so I could use its blood to save my father’s life. And now we are back again so Brendan can see his daughter and tell his mother that he is a Druid. I left out the mermaid stuff ’cause that just sounded kooky.

      When I finished I had a long hard look at Special Agent Murano to see if I could figure out which group he was going to join. The group that thought I was crazy or the group that thought I was pretending to be crazy. Agent Andy was difficult to read. He clicked off his tape recorder and tilted his head towards the armed guard that was standing by the door.

      ‘Would you object, Conor, if we had a little conversation in private?’

      ‘Why?’

      Agent Murano leaned in so close I could smell his heavy cologne. ‘I have a lot of experience with unusual events,’ he said in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Let’s just say I would prefer to talk about your situation without prying eyes.’ Then he winked at me.

      ‘What, are you like an X-File guy?’

      He smiled. ‘When we are alone.’

      ‘OK,’ I said.

      The FBI man dismissed the guard and then lowered the Venetian blinds that were in front of what I assumed was a two-way mirror.

      I started to get excited. When you tell a story as crazy as mine, to as many people as I had and none of them believe you – you start to doubt your sanity. Could it be that I had finally met someone who truly believed me?

      ‘Have you met people from The Land before?’

      The agent shushed me, took off his jacket and covered the security camera that was mounted on the corner of the wall.

      ‘So you have a file on Tir na Nog, right?’

      Once again he raised his finger in front of his lips, picked the intercom off the table and unplugged it. Then after looking around to see that no one or nothing could overhear us, he covertly gestured for me to come close. I stood and looked around myself. It was very cloak and dagger. I just got within striking distance of him when – that is exactly what he did – he struck. He slammed the intercom into my stomach just below my ribs. Whether he had been trained or had lots of practice in using office equipment to cause pain, I don’t know, but he was certainly good at it. Every molecule of air flew out of my body and the agonising spasms in my solar plexus made it so I was having a hard time replacing any of them. I was on the ground, doing a convincing impression of a fish out of water, when he bent down and slammed the intercom into my right shin.

      I once heard that the only good thing about pain is that you can only experience it in one place – let me tell you now: that’s not true. Getting slammed in the shin just meant that I hurt from my chest to my toes. Then he slammed the damn thing into my head and I hurt all over. I tried to ask why but my breathing still wasn’t working and then I had a thought that terrified me so much I didn’t even care about the pain.

      ‘Did Cialtie send you?’ I said as loud as I could.

      Apparently it wasn’t very loud at all because Agent Murano leaned over and said: ‘What did you say?’

      ‘Were you sent by my Uncle Cialtie to kill me?’

      He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me back into a chair where he handcuffed my hands behind my back.

      ‘Still with the Faerieland stories. Do you want me to kick the crap out of you again?’

      ‘No,’ I answered honestly.

      ‘Then enough with the dragons and the Pixies.’

      ‘There are no Pixies in Tir na Nog.’

      That line earned me a backhand across the face that made my vision swim for a second. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘I want you to knock it off with the insanity talk. The last four federal crimes I have investigated in this state have all gotten off with insanity pleas. My nickname in the office is The Shrink. I refuse to lose another case to the nuthouse.’

      Relief washed over me; he was not an assassin hired by my uncle, he was a plain old ordinary Real World jerk. I smiled.

      ‘What, O’Neil, is so funny?’

      ‘The Shrink,’ I said laughing.

      Murano flew into a rage, he re-hit me in the stomach and overturned the chair I was cuffed to, my head bounced off the floor and I thought I was going to throw up. I really didn’t want to get hit again but I couldn’t help it, I was still laughing.

      ‘OK, OK,’ I said, my face pressed against the linoleum. ‘What do you want me to do?’

      The agent picked me off the floor – the cuffs cut in to my wrists. He put his face inches from mine. For a horrible second I thought he was going to kiss me. ‘You are going to confess to being a terrorist.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You’re going to admit that you are a terrorist. You don’t have to name names. You can claim that you never met your masters but you kidnapped Detective Fallon because you hate your country.’

      ‘You’re crazy.’

      ‘Maybe I am,’ Murano said, ‘but I’m going to make sure you are not crazy.’

      ‘So let me get this straight – you are punching a man who is tied to a chair and I’m the terrorist?’

      The crazy G-man tipped my chair over once again. This time I think I did black out for a short time. The next thing I remember there was drool on the floor and I finally had a pain in my head that hurt enough to block out all of the other pains in my body.

      ‘OK, OK, I said, ‘I’ll say anything you want. Let’s just try and keep my grey matter inside my skull.’

      You know all that talk about how advanced interrogation techniques are no good because a tortured prisoner will tell you anything? Well, it’s all true. I talked about how Tir na Nog was really a code word for a bunch of anarchists that wanted to overthrow the United States of America and then the world. When I started to get too outlandish, Agent Murano shook his head until eventually I just let him write my confession. We started getting along so well I even persuaded him to get me a burger and a shake. Don’t get me wrong, I still loathed the man. Anyone who would use their power to beat a shackled insane person (I know I’m not really insane but he didn’t know that) is just below snakes – and that’s giving snakes a bad name. I was slurping at the last of my shake when Murano came in holding my ‘confession’.

      I hesitated before signing. I had been called a lot of nasty things in my day. Once I had even been called ‘unfunny’ (can you believe that?). But ‘terrorist’ was not something I wanted people saying about me. I imagined that in prison СКАЧАТЬ