Chapter 26

(BELFAST 2020)

The tired looking older man with the shaggy eyebrows sat on the park bench watching the young lads playing football on the open field. It was one of those lazy summer days when the weather was perfect and everything was nice and shiny-clean because of the quick afternoon shower that pounded the sidewalks and the streets and left tell-tale moisture on the grass to remind people that growing things needed the damp to make them grow.

Danny was interested in the pace of the play and he noted that even the slowest of the young men was infinitely faster than he on his best day. There was even one female goaltender that he had to concede was quicker on her feet than his own slightly erratic gait.

It was hard for him to admit that he was feeling his true age at seventy winters and had slowed down both physically and mentally to a state of passive existence seldom putting his muscles or his brain cells into any stressful situation simply as a matter of survival. The doctors had told him almost five years ago that he would probably die of a heart attack before he succumbed to the cancer that had broken out in odd places on his shrinking frame. He thought of his beloved grandfather that had lived to the ripe old age of eighty-nine and wondered at his secrets of success. He remembered the dapper old man would shave with a straight razor every morning and take a shot of whiskey every four hours like it was some elixir of life that sustained him better than fruit or vegetables.

He didn't expect to reach that goalpost of life expectancy but it didn't bother him very much. His soul-mate Molly had passed the previous winter from some unexplained virus that no doctor was able to pin down with a nice-sounding title.

His body was ample evidence of the numerous close shaves he had gotten into with the knife scars and the bullet holes and even the flattened part of his skull where he was crowned with a hundred year old brick launched by a defective blasting cap purchased from an unreliable source.

The limp was not the result of a revenge inspired "capping" exploit that shattered one of his knees but from the stepping on a rusty nail in a railroad yard when he was running in wild retreat from the SAS boys looking for blood.

They didn't get him that day and he was more lucky than expert in avoiding capture.

The past year had been more of a nightmare than any year of his life and he attributed that to the absence of his Molly who was the light of his life and the muse of his covert operations. He was happy that she had gone quietly in bed because her own responsibilities in Whitehall were enough to make her a prime target for several different mean-spirited organizations. His own mentors were of a mind to eliminate her on more than one occasion but he had dissuaded them and now they were just another memory from the past.

Some young girls with foul mouths sat on the bench next to him forcing him to retreat to the very end. There were three of them and they all had that look of wild and careless abandon that the young people seemed to find so fulfilling these days. He had no objection to their rough language or the fact they were all drinking the hard stuff from bottles hidden under their vests. It was the sort of behavior that irritated most of the older generation but he didn't find fault in it because it reminded him of his own actions more than a half century ago.

He listened to their conversation with no sign on his weathered face that it made any impression on him. It was easy to ignore the pointed references to his useless value to society because he "beyond his expiration date". They all seemed to derive some measure of glee in guessing at his age and manner of death. Danny was convinced they were certain he could not hear their words or if he was able to hear them, he didn't understand their meaning because he was either a foreigner or a senior citizen unable to remember his daughter's name. It actually was a bit amusing to him because they were compensating for their lack of attention in a world that not quite adjusted to punk rocker females with attitudes.

Obviously, their boyfriends were in the game on the open field and they shouted filthy words of encouragement to them promising them favors of the kinky sort if they scored a goal. He remembered playing so many years ago and desperately hoping some young girl would take an interest in him because of his playing skills but it was something that never happened.

He had started early on the gunman stage of his life and his first adventures were heavy on violence and extremely short on female companionship. Looking back on it in retrospect, he could understand that the violence was his short-cut to erotic satisfaction and it was a cycle he was never really able to break until he met his Molly in front of the courthouse building.

Danny looked tired and defenseless sitting on the bench and in a sense he deserved to be pitied but it wasn't for the fact he was tired or was perceived as a loser. He was to be pitied because even at this late stage of his life, he was constantly sweeping the foreground and the background for possible threats and he was nicely armed with not just one weapon but two firearms well- hidden on his person. He also had the long sharp "sticker" that he continued to keep in his pocket to use as a last line of defense in hand to hand combat. Danny was no fan of the things because he had seen how easily strong men were taken out by a stab in the back when they least expected it from people they trusted or felt were no threat because they were devious in their role-play.