Scanlon sat in his cell.
He knew he was meat.
Pound his head against bars? Beat himself bloody on the back brick wall, trying to take the coward's way out? Didn't matter now.
He knew well as knowing you needed to piss: he'd fallen. He was just bad meat. Unsanctified meat. Soul chased out. Low meat. Gone meat. Done meat. The thing Father Mike had warned against: "Never be just meat, Jimmy." Scanlon could only see himself that way now. Might as well have arrived sealed in a can. He had no control. He had no more will. He had nothing except a beating heart keeping the whole worthless apparatus alive. His brain counted for nothing he could see.
He needed his soul back.
Even a small replica of same.
So Scanlon sat in his cell, sticking to his tune: "the legendary Explosive 808, the green stuff that smelled of almonds," he whispered to himself. "Got me a trunkful. Being shipped to another base on a certain day, at a certain time."
That was his story. His tune. His tune was all he had left. If he ever saw those IRA pricks again.
That was the best he could do.
Traitor and murderer Jimmy Scanlon could try to sell one more easy hijacking. One more, seemingly from a lingering last-gasp loyalty to Father Mike, who thinks you IRA people walk on water. 'Course he's never seen your real work like I have. After that, fuck-ups? Then I head off to fight the Huns. Do something worth doing. Good riddance to you all: your little island and your little fights.
What he'd say to the IRA was just enough, Jimmy planned:
This explosive material was far, far more powerful.
Like you were gods. (Small problem: Scanlon kept seeing leprechauns, not real gods. Move on please, Jimmy. Move on NOW.)
Stable explosive, too. Pliable, like child's modeling clay.
Safe enough for tiny fingers. Idiots could mold it easily to anything their minds could imagine.
And I know you IRA fellas have good imaginations.
They did.
They held up their end of the Irish penchant for spinning wild and tall tales: by robbing banks, trading arms, agitating North and South, digging in. Ireland had revolted more than once. And every dismal, cruelly-dealt-with failure had hardened the next bunch to come along.
Due credit to the lot of them, Jimmy supposed. Burke, too.
Now they're finally hard enough to add a permanent lick of poison, don't-touch-me stone to this sea-girt soil, hen-scratched backyard of every English monarch since 1171. A slave yard, too, for almost 800 years. Just farmland to be owned and markets to exploit. The people really didn't matter, poor souls.
No wonder, Burke admitted: the IRA.
He understood the matter: mind, heart, and map. Until.
Until you crossed a boundary.
Until you killed my G.I.s, the ones under my personal protection so far from their families and loved ones. Burke took that personally. Yes, he would.
He would slide on Canada and the Brits. He liked those troops for enough good reason. But they were not his business here.
Killing G.I.s? Beyond, as he'd said, the pale.
And that, my IRA friends, was completely his business. full time.
Nothing then? (Jimmy couldn't help himself. Jimmy was dead. Nothing else.)