Page 21 of Irish Vice

“Twenty billion a year, for the oil. No one knows how much for butter. Yet.”

She nods like an accountant flashing fingers over an adding machine. She’s taking me seriously. “You’ll need a strong supply chain. And dedicated distribution.”

“Working on it,” I say. She isn’t telling me anything I don’t know. I’d have the system in place already if I wasn’t so busy recovering from the blow she dealt me at the Rittenhouse.

“What else’ve you got?” she asks.

I’ve been saving this one. Even Madden doesn’t know. And it’s safe to share in front of Fiona, because no one else in the Union can ever make a similar deal.

“Imports,” I say.

My brother’s still out of sorts, so it’s Fiona who feeds me a skeptical opening. “Imports?”

“I’ve got a contact back home.” Eighteen years I’ve lived in Philadelphia, andhomeis still an ocean away. “In County Sligo. Near Skreen.”

Madden starts hummingDanny Boy. I ignore him.

Fiona continues with the heavy lifting. “What sort of contact?”

“The sort that sweeps floors in a cold country church. The sort that opened a storage closet a few weeks back, when ancient Father Donall died, may he rest in peace.” I cross myself, just so I can see them ape me. Fiona complies, annoyance plain on her face. Madden doesn’t bother.

“The good father was holding out on his parishioners,” I say. “Never gave a hint about what he was hiding.”

Fiona’s tired of playing my game. “Enough,” she says. “What are you bringing in?”

I turn around my monitor, so both of them can see. The pictures are poor quality. My man on the inside has a phone that’s ten years old.

It’s a book. Judging by the five-pound note in the frame, it’s as long as my forearm and two hands wide. The cover looks like wood, embossed with tarnished silver and latched with gold. It has iron hinges, two of them, and the pages lie almost flat when it’s open.

I’m no expert on bibles, and I can’t read Latin with a gun to my head. But every good Irishman has heard of the Book of Kells, and a little Internet research pointed me toward the Lindisfarne Gospels too.

The Book of Skreen was made thirteen hundred years ago. The colors look as fresh as yesterday’s paint. The designs are so complex my eyes cross tracing them.

“It must be fake,” Fiona says.

I shrug. “Father Donall didn’t think so. He kept it hidden away. There was a curse on the book, one that said the man who opens it will burn in Hell forever.”

“Please,” Fiona says, pursing her very modern, very cosmopolitan lips.

“We’ll see what it’s worth when it gets here.”

“Which will be?” She’s all business now. As if she has a better meeting to get to.

“I’ve sent Patrick Moran to fetch it.”

That gets Madden’s attention. I wouldn’t send my Warlord, my chief enforcer, if I didn’t think the book was real.

“He’s bringing it here?” Madden asks. I can already see him plotting to get it away from me.

I shake my head. “It’s going straight to the freeport.”

“The freeport?” Fiona asks.

“Diamond Freeport. In Delaware. A domestic tax haven where I keep a gallery for things I want kept secret.”

“I knowwhata freeport is. I didn’t know which one you use.”

“Sam works there,” Madden says. He sounds like a kindergarten brat tattling on the girl who made him eat paste.