8. Abel #2
“What about Shane?”
“What… you mean Shane Horsell? The accountant?” Grant looks at me quizzically, his eyebrows lifted as if asking why I was thinking of Shane specifically.
“Yeah, him. Didn’t he say his daughter’s left him? Gotten married and gone to live with her husband in Charleston.”
“Yes, that’s right, I remember now. Started studying for her own accountancy degree too, I think he said.”
“Reckon he’ll be shorthanded, because she did quite a bit of the basic bookkeeping, I think.”
“You’re brilliant, Abe! I’ll give him a call.”
Ten minutes later, Maria is fixed up with an interview for two-thirty this afternoon.
“Shane’s a good guy,” Regan reassures her.
Very relaxed. Plays tennis at the local club, and apparently, he’s not bad, though I’ve never tried the game myself.
Good accountant too, mind you. He does our accounts for us—that’s how we know him.
Knows his cars as well. Drives an old British Aston Martin, would you believe?
That’s a V8 too, come to think of it. Of course, he only takes it out for weekend drives in the summer months. It’s far too good for normal use.”
I grunt my general agreement at all this detail.
To my mind it’s not really necessary, but yes, Shane’s a good guy, and I’d thought of him because, although he’s an accountant—or maybe because he’s an accountant—I didn’t think Shane would mind keeping his daughter’s name on the payroll whilst paying Maria, so there’d be no tax or employment records for this Tony character to come across.
I make a mental note to give Shane a second call, later on this morning, when everyone’s busy doing stuff.
Fill him in quietly on the situation. He and I have had some longer chats before now, down at Theo’s Sports Bar.
Swapped stories—turns out he’d had a military career and seen some action himself, though decades ago now.
Afghanistan was for him what Iraq had been to the three of us.
In short, I trust him to keep a confidence, and it seems to me that the less people know about Maria and Sandro, the better all round.
Because, despite Regan’s eternal sunny optimism, and even allowing for Grant’s methodical strategizing… deep down, I have a bad feeling. Call it gut instinct, but my feeling is that there’s a dark cloud on the horizon—and it’s coming our way.
Perhaps it’s because of that feeling that I decide to check over my stock of weapons, give them a clean.
Weapons need to be regularly maintained, even if you’re not using them.
There’s no point in owning even the best of side arms if it jams on you just when you need it.
The enemy ain’t gonna wait until you clear the breech. Bang, your dead.
I unlock the gun cabinet in the workshop and pull out my crown jewel—an SR-25 semi-automatic sniper rifle, with riflescope, bipod and detachable suppressor, and referred to in the Special Forces as the Mk 11 MOD 0 semi-automatic delivery platform.
Accurate to under a minute of angle, this rifle had saved my life more than once in Iraq.
“Wow, that’s quite a weapon.” Surprised, I turn to see Sandro, watching me from the doorway, a mug of coffee in his hand. “Can I take a look?”
“Sure.” He ambles over and I hold the gun out to him.
“Very nice,” he says. “Lovely balance.”
“Yeah,” I say, taken slightly aback. “Know much about guns?”
“Not really. But I appreciate good workmanship when I see it. And this thing’s a beauty. May I?”
Not sure exactly what he’s asking, I nod.
And then, before I know it, he’s checked the chamber, dropped the magazine free into one hand, and field-stripped the rifle across the workbench with the sort of smooth, economical movements that only come from repetition.
Not fumbling. Not figuring it out as he goes. Muscle memory. Pure and simple.
I just stand there watching him.
The upper receiver pivots open. Bolt carrier group out.
Buffer and spring checked with a thumb. His fingers move lightly, confidently, over the internals, inspecting them with quick little glances that somehow miss nothing.
Then he reassembles the whole thing in what seems like seconds, snapping it back together with a solid metallic clack before smoothly working the charging handle and dry-checking the trigger.
Perfect.
He holds the rifle lightly, almost affectionately, sighting briefly down the workshop through the optic.
“Very nice,” he murmurs again. “Accurate too, I would imagine.”
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “Very.”
He nods approvingly and hands it back to me.
“Nice rifle, son. Wish we’d had these back in the day.”
I stare at him. “How the hell do you know your way around an SR-25?”
“Oh…” He smiles vaguely, taking a sip of coffee.
“There’s a lot of wild boar in Italy. And the truffles…
mmmm! Have you tried truffle oil? Well, you see, my Papa, he used to take me out hunting wild boar when I was young.
At night. Best time for hunting boar. And where there’s boar there’s truffles, and where there’s truffles there’s boar.
Not to mention poachers, of course. Either way, it’s reassuring to have a good quality rifle at your side.
Of course this was years ago. Decades. Well before I came to America. ”
I keep staring at him.
Bullshit.
Not the truffles part. I’m sure there probably are truffles. But nobody learns to handle a rifle like that chasing pigs around the woods. There must be more to it. But what?
He just smiles at me over the rim of his mug, completely unbothered, as if we’ve been discussing gardening tools instead of precision military hardware.
Then he nods once towards the rifle.
“Keep her clean,” he says. “A weapon should respect the man carrying it.”
And with that, he ambles back out of the workshop, coffee in hand, leaving me standing there with the rifle across my palms, watching the doorway long after he’s gone.