Gerard Cappa's Blog

Betty's one line, one star Amazon review:
"Did not like this book due to the constant use of the "F" word. Is this really necessary?"

I can only assume Betty is one of those people more offended by the word 'fuck' than by the murder, maiming, rape, de-humanising humiliation and systematic oppression which is described in the book.

Well, Betty, given the context of the subject environment and the characters to be found there (killers, rapists and abusers are seldom choirboys, even if some of them claim a God given mandate to kill and oppress others), I would say, yes, it fucking is necessary.

I and Pangur Ban my cat
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

So goes the 9th Century poem Pangur Bán, penned by an Irish monk in the solitude of his German abbey.

I, too, create my own cell-bubble when I need to scratch out some words. But everybody needs a mentor or a saoi, as the exiled monk would have understood, and I have two: Jay A Gertzman for one, and John J Gaynard for another.

I read Gaynard with envy. Like many of the best writers, he manages to seduce the reader into a limbo where his fiction becomes the new reality. In particular, his clinical exposure of the de-humanising but endemic corruption long practised in Francophone Africa and the power salons of Paris introduced me to a world which was previously hidden by my own ignorance.
See my reviews of
and

That cell-bubble I mentioned isn't of the indestructible, protective kind:there are always self-doubts, rejections, disappointed readers. So, when a writer like John J Gaynard tips the nod of approval, I take it like Pangur Bán licking a bowl of sweet cream.

"This is a mechanical bull of a novel, whose every savage twist and turn needs to be respected, in which lackadaisical reading will result in the reader being bucked into oblivion. Cappa's preference is not for the pointillist pen. He uses a trowel-shaped painting knife to slap thick layers of horror, intrigue and doubt upon the page, contorting the distortions sprung into the heads of innocent people by the lives and crimes of people like Paddy the Brit, one of the perpetrators of collusion in Northern Ireland, still used by his MI5 masters in ways that Maknazpy can never quite figure out but which he is determined to bring to a stop.

There isn’t a superfluous word or sentence. The writing is tight, tight, tight. No empty spaces in which the motor of the mind can idle for a few minutes. Often very little air between the actions in which to draw a deep breath. But the reader will be amply rewarded for investing time in this fine book, especially if note is taken of each seed of evil Cappa sows in the first fifty or so pages. As in a good play, where everything you see in the first act must serve a purpose before the final curtain comes down, every seed planted on the first few pages results in an evil flower, the flower of collusion, the flower of Russian and other blood money playing hide and seek around the world, lying expectantly in the shadows of its virtual banks for the next transfer into the purchase of arms or the heat of war via a set of encrypted passwords."

See the full review here on John's book blog:
http://johnjgaynard.blogspot.co.uk/20...

And here on youtube, Pangur Bán in its original 9th Century Irish and as Seamus Heaney's translation into English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQcwI...

First review and it's from none less than the saoi scríbhinne of all things nóir, Jay A Gertzman:

“There was a panic swelling in my gut and rising thick in my throat, the brutal panic when the bubble of self-deception fractures and can’t smother the shame of being who I am.”
This is Con Maknazpy, now a veteran operative, a “grunt” in the army of spies serving in the war for international power. I use this quote because it shows Gerard Cappa’s ability to get inside his narrator’s psyche in direct language he uses himself.

Cappa is a very good writer. The world into which he initiates a reader is as murky as that in which Raymond Chandler situates Marlow: “Down these mean streets a man must go, a man who is not himself mean.”
The streets in _Two Graves_ are in several continents, haunted by the corporate goals of nations which include Britain, Russia, and the U.S. Basically, this novel is a thriller with vivid scenes of people staying one step ahead of Russian torturer assassins, putting up with broken jaws and ribs, hourly beatings, near-drownings, and threats to rape and slowly kill one’s family.

If such corporate and state entities were human, they would be hopeless psychotics. It is this kind of power that is perhaps the real cause for Maknazpy’s despair.

This being true, Cappa’s novel extends hidden sympathy to the other operatives he encounters, each of which is responsible for ending many innocent lives as well as those of opponents taught to be equally impassive as themselves.

_Two Graves_ deserves to be placed on the same bookshelves, virtual and real-world, as works by Le Carre, Stuart Neville, and the Irish Renaissance writer Liam O’Flaherty.

There are two fascinatingly devilish international menaces in the book.
One, Hamilton, is based on a man who, during the Troubles, worked undercover for British military intelligence. He was responsible for the ambush of several Irish nationalists, and had been shielded by the British. Later he worked in the drug trade, and his hacking abilities have kept him one step above and beyond the assassins of three nations.
The other is the charming, three-or-four faced Monsignor Artie McCooey, essentially an Irish Republican and also a money launderer (useful to the secret banking needs of three dark state entities). And then there’s the Vatican, who have kept McCooey’s guilt secret, as the Brits have kept Hamilton from prosecution.

At the end, Maknazpy corners an enemy, on the banks of the Danube as tourists click personal postcard scenery.
The shades of fulfillment, guilt, and gravity are tightly woven into a self-judgement. “I did it cold this time, no magic trauma demon, no out-of-body immunity. . . ."

It’s only very serious crime writers who could focus in close-up on characters and their psychic essence with the kind of skill that Cappa uses.

The smartphone-clicking tourists are a great touch. Maknazpy’s previous adventures, _Black Boat Dancing_, ended in another tourist spot, East Hampton.

The average European or American, comfortable, obedient and proud. If only . . .

A bow to David Goodis:


An elephant in steel boots stamped around the apartment above. Somebody in boxing gloves mangled a piano down below. PJ rattled the door handle but I had a chair wedged against it. The slice of sky was bright and blue through the window.
‘Con! There’s breakfast here for you. Are you getting up?’
Michael didn’t know how to use a stovetop espresso maker so we were having jasmine tea, with dry pancakes, orange cheese, and stale chocolate pastries.
‘Where’d you go last night?’ PJ asked. ‘I thought you were right behind us but it was after three before I heard you.’
‘Taking a look around town,’ I said. ‘I like to get a feeling about a place before a job.’
‘So? What feeling did you get?’
‘Forget about pulling Hamilton out of that apartment, for one thing,’ I said, ‘too heavy with security. Likewise the casino. No, we’ll pick him up somewhere else, somewhere easier. I’m on it, PJ, don’t worry about it.’
‘I was fucking worried last night when you went all weird on us, so I was. I hope you’re in better form today.’
I was in much better form today. Monsignor Beikle looked and sounded like a genuine banker, knew the mechanics of the system and what the officials needed to hear – Beikle could carry this thing off. I was also less down on PJ. Something in his eyes had spooked me last night but now, in the cold clear light of morning, I figured it was mostly this stab-in-the-back life getting to me again.
‘I’d be in better form without the jungle patrol above and Clair De fucking Looney Tunes below.’
‘Ach, wise up! It’s Saturday morning, so it is, the kids are doing their wee dance and piano classes. Isn’t it nice to see a bit of culture about the place?’ PJ’s breakfast was a toxic cigarette, he narrowed his eyes as he sucked the nicotine marrow from the thin white cylinder. ‘You finished, Michael, son? Here, leave the dishes, but away down there and shoot the piano player, will ye? Tell him he’s getting on Con Maknazpy’s nerves, and that’s not good news for the rest of us when that happens, sure it’s not, Con?’
We laughed, but I still probed PJ’s eyes for that Judas squint, and he knew it.

There is no border in Ireland, no border patrols, no checkpoints, no uniforms, and I only realized the coach had crossed when the African guy beside me swivelled his head to gape at the ragged British flags that suddenly appeared on the lamp posts. The elusive Irish border has been the recycled fuse paper at the core of their fighting for ninety years, or nine hundred, and somebody should have noticed it had gone, but then I figured saying there was no border in Ireland was like saying there was no slavery in the United States.

The sugar dusted hills above Belfast were coming closer now, alive in the early morning sunshine, waiting for me. I fingered my new passport - Conor McAnespie, Éireannach/Irish. I thought it would be green but Artie said all European passports were purple. I had half expected to be rumbled at the first passport control in Rio airport but Artie had somehow managed to fix me up with the real thing. I passed through Amsterdam with no problem, then the guy in Dublin hardly looked at it. So, either Artie could pull strings at a higher level than I had thought or there were other players in this game, maybe at the level where they get to decide who is expendable - I already knew where I sat in that hierarchy.

‘Once they activate their B code and start communicating with my A, our sleepers on their firmware will start to take over their servers. We’ll capture their source encryption, send it to good friends of ours in the United States and they will take it apart and reconstruct it, send us the new code, our firmware sleepers will infiltrate the new code on to the Russian servers, and we will control both sides of the communication. We’ll be A and B at the same time. They’ll be locked out of their own system.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then we take that dark bank out of suspended animation. Then we transfer the cash. Then we fucking disappear!’

Hamilton had that trick of using “we”, “us” and “our” to lure his prey into a brothers-in-arms illusion. Not this time, we shared our enemies but that’s where the alliance stopped.

‘We split 60:40, five mill, American,’ he said, ‘we move $2m to any bank account you want, anywhere in the world. You keep me free and alive, no McIntyre, no Yana, no fucking Yakov, you get me out of this shit hole and you’re $2m richer. McCooey has all the right contacts but the hoor would hand me over. You use his contacts, get me as far as Paris and I’ll be good.’

‘What about Artie?’ I said. ‘What about his friend Beikle you suckered in Rome?’

‘Beikle? He’s as guilty as sin! It was the Vatican tipped us off, for fuck’s sake! The new holy regime looked at the books and found that bastard was rinsing dirty money through the Vatican Bank for the Mafia Capitale. Been at it going way back!’

That probably wasn’t as unbelievable as it sounded.

‘Well? What about Artie?’ I repeated.

‘McCooey? He’s a priest! What the fuck’s he need money for?’ Hamilton twisted his face to mime disgust. ‘You can sub him out of your share if you like, brother, all he can expect from me is a boot in the hole or a nine mill behind his ear!’

‘That’s $5m taken care of,’ I said, ‘what about the other $25m?’

Hamilton snorted, made like he had an important sequence of code to inspect, tapped away at the keyboard, finished it off like a piano maestro in a hurry.

‘You’ve been listening too much to McCooey! Another $25m? Yeah, sure, it’s in there somewhere. Twenty five million virtual dollars, that’s true. But that’s gone, may as well be paper money thrown in an incinerator. That system is broken, completely and irrevocably. There’s just no way to convert that digital shit back into real cash anymore, forget it! The $5m I’m talking about was already converted and is sitting pretty and alone in a legit bank in Vienna, a stone’s throw from the Sigmund Freud Museum. We’ll take control of the dark bank and send instructions to the legit bank.’

Artie called me from the bathroom. His right leg was numb, maybe a trapped nerve. I helped him along the tiled corridor and into one of the two executive bedrooms.
‘What’s that lying bastard doing out there?’ he said.
‘He’s being a lying bastard,’ I said, ‘thinks he can palm me off with two mill, tells me there is only five million in total.’
‘What? What did you say?’
‘You know me, Artie. Sometimes I act stupid and let lying bastards think they’re so smart and superior that I’ll be no problem. You know that, right?’
‘I know, son,’ Artie chuckled, ‘I know well.’ He chuckled even though it ripped a pain across his ribs. ‘You’re not as stupid as you look. Sure I always knew that.’

I took the other bedroom, left the door wide open to keep Hamilton in my view, stowed the pistol in my waistband, and settled into the designer bed. A triple-bolt deadlock secured the apartment door, and the key was in my pocket. The balcony outside my room opened to a spiral fire escape. Not ideal, but if Yakov’s people got that far we would be fucked anyway. Or McIntyre’s people. Or Brigid’s. Or Yana’s...

He clicked the audio file, nodded for me to wait, the audio hissed, then a calm and determined voice.

“I want to take this opportunity to express the sincere gratitude of Her Majesty’s Government for your courageous service. Your bravery is an inspiration to us all and continues to fortify our message to the IRA – all attempts to destroy our British democracy by terrorism will fail!”

I knew this voice. It was a weapon. It was the Iron Lady.

“Thank you, Ma’am. We are only soldiers doing our duty and it is our honor to serve Her Majesty and our country!”
He sounded weak and nervous in comparison to Thatcher.

“Indeed, Mr Nelson, I dearly wish I could acknowledge our gratitude to you in the most public way but I know you will understand our enemies within would seek to manufacture difficulties for us if we were to be seen in public together. These subversive civil liberties charlatans in the Labour Party and their acolytes in the BBC and press are really as much enemies of freedom and democracy as the IRA terrorists themselves! They are either too blind or too wicked to see that their road is the road to anarchy and tyranny!”

“I understand, Ma'am, and perhaps if your enemies on the mainland were confronted with the terrorists they would change their minds.”

A voice in the background makes a comment, Thatcher laughs.
“Yes, yes, Lieutenant-Colonel, there may well soon come a time when we will have no recourse but to root out the leftist extremists who threaten democracy here in Great Britain. When that time comes we will defend our British way of life against all enemies, from within or without, using all means necessary. In the meantime, you know you have our support for your sterling work in Northern Ireland, Mr Nelson, our fullest support. We are all agreed that the IRA terrorists have forfeited their own right to life and those who refuse to defend our British democracy are equally culpable. We must prevail! They will be eliminated!”

Hamilton clicked the button.

‘That’s Thatcher licking Brian Nelson’s arse in 1989. He was chief intelligence officer for the Loyalists in Belfast. Nelson was our agent, we fed him the intell, we directed the hit squads through him.’

‘Sure this isn’t a fake?’ I said.

‘I was there! It was me brought Nelson over to meet her. This is Thatcher in her own words, and I have hours more of it – going back to their deceit regarding the Belgrano in the Falklands War, the hit squad in Gibraltar, and not only Thatcher, I have the New Labour cover up of the WMD fiasco!!’

If this was genuine then it was Artie’s Holy conspiracy Grail, the endgame of his lifetime pursuit of a truth he needed.

‘The Brits will kill to keep this buried, of course. That’s what PJ and “Jimmy” have been tasked to do, they’re here to get the evidence and then shut you and me up for good.’

‘You’ll be in the US this time tomorrow, Hamilton. My advice is play nice at the debrief and you really won’t need to worry about the Brits or anyone else ever again.’

‘Don’t worry! Those MI5 bastards shafted me when my only crime was loyalty,’ he said, ‘so fuck the lot of them! And I have plenty more like that for the Yanks, if they have the money.’
He pulled the disk out and tossed it to me.
‘See McCooey gets that,’ he said, ‘although it breaks my heart to give that two-faced prick more than the skin of my shite. And there is a copy in that envelope over there addressed to a human rights group in Londonderry. I’ll get the concierge to post it after we are gone.’

‘It’ll be time to get moving soon,’ I said. ‘I could send Michael to get food. You hungry?’

‘Hungry? I’m so hungry I could eat a donkey’s arse through a five-bar gate!’

‘And how exactly do I get my share of the cash?’ I said.
‘Yes! Now that is important!’ He dropped a hammer fist above my knee that hurt like a kick from a mule, though I swear his hand moved less than six inches. ‘How you get paid, that is what you need to think about, Maknazpy! Forget all the other shit!’
Yakov squinted close up into my face searching for my pain but I didn’t flinch.
‘Hamilton has the encryption package for the money exchange that was in Vienna. He gives us the package, it is like having keys to a bank. Simple.’
‘He gives it?’ I said. ‘Simple as that?’
‘He gives, we take. What matters?’ Yakov dismissed my question with a sweep of his palm across his jaw. ‘Look, Maknazpy, I can tell you how it works but what for? With respect, it is too complicated for a man like you to understand.’
Yakov managed to say it so his deep disrespect slapped my face.
‘Try me,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’m not as dumb as you think.’
Yakov sighed and pulled a twisted grin like he was an exasperated parent dredging up the last crumbs of indulgent patience for a lost cause child.
‘This business is done over the Web, yes? It has to be secure so it is encrypted, yes?’ He mouthed the words and his hot breath slowly into my face. ‘Two types of encryption key, public and private. The message is sent from A to B using the public encryption but still only A and B can read it, yes? But A also has his own private encryption key, and B must receive this also so that he confirms the message is really from A.’
‘Okay, so Hamilton is A,’ I said. ‘What about B? He’s still in Vienna? Why don’t your people just pay him a visit? What’s the big deal about Hamilton?’
‘Because Hamilton has locked the door with his code! He has fixed it so the B code is useless without his A code. And the people working the B code isn’t one person,’ Yakov gritted his teeth. ‘This B is a band of disgraced Swiss and Austrian bankers, merely banking apparatchiks, happy to operate outside the rules, they do what they are told. Either way, these bankers with dirty hands will be useful to us in future so they are permitted to continue.’
He meant they were permitted to continue living.
‘So where is Artie’s missing $30 million?’ I said. ‘Back in Vienna?’
Yakov did his couldn’t-care-less shrug.
‘Who knows? It could be in the Vatican Bank, it could be anywhere. But this is no problem, trust me. You will be well rewarded. There is plenty more where that came from. Just bring me Hamilton and I will take care of the rest, no problem.’
‘So what does this encryption key look like? I said. ‘Is it like a password or something?’
‘Fuck!’ Yakov’s patience was blown. ‘It is a piece of software! He will keep it close, so just get him and we get the key.’
‘And how do I get my share?’
Yakov tried the hammer to my thigh again but I snatched his wrist and pinned it to the table.
‘After you bring me Hamilton and we conclude our business with him, I will personally transfer $5 million to any account you want, anywhere in the world,’ he said. ‘You can stand beside me and watch me do it, if you don’t trust me.’
‘That’s before you whack him, right?’
‘What does that matter to you?’ he said. ‘You get your money, we work something out for your priest, what more do you want?’
‘And Michael Leeks won’t think it’s a problem?’ I said.
Yakov blinked like I was speaking backwards.
‘Your colleagues,’ I said. ‘As long as they don’t think I’ll be a problem and decide to take the risk free route.’
‘Don’t worry about them,’ he said. ‘I take care of them. I take care of you. No problem.’
‘That’s what I like about you, Yakov. You’re such a Good News guy, so full of positive energy and goodwill to all men.’
‘Of course, goodwill to all men. All men except your Hamilton.’ He caught me with a hammer fist again. ‘Hamilton I will crush. All his bosses will know. That will be good news!’

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Yakov’s indulgent smile said he couldn’t care less, his eyes said he might tear my head off my neck. He snatched my Moscow Mule mug and two thick fingers scooped out the lime and cucumber, tore the cucumber into two strips and bit into the lime wedge before ripping it apart. He arranged the fruit and my drink across the table; cucumber, lime, mug, lime, cucumber. The barman looked the other way. This was Yakov pushing the boundaries, flaunting his power, making it easier to insult and control me in future. The burn started its coil around my throat but I would keep my cool this time, no matter how far he pushed.

‘Virtual banking,’ he said, ‘on the dark market.’
I loosened my collar, suddenly too hot in here.

‘Say you want to move cash without moving cash, say you value your privacy,’ he said. ‘This cucumber is a bank, okay, just a normal bank like normal people put their little money in.’

He fingered the sliver of cucumber closest to him and performed a tight circle on the table like he was driving a Ouija board.

‘I walk into this bank, say it is in New York, and direct the nice people in there to wire my money to this particular place, okay?’

The particular place was now the wedge of lime on his side of the table.

‘It’s your money, they wire it anywhere you say, yes? So, they wire it here to this money exchanger, real money in the normal system.’

The lime oozed its pungent juice under the fat fingers.

‘Let’s say this exchanger is sitting somewhere beautiful, like Cayman Islands, okay?’

Now he tapped his oversized gold sovereign ring against the copper mug.
‘Pay attention! This is where it becomes interesting. Now say you have the virtual bank, the dark bank that serves its customer market without the attention of Big Brother and the government tax robbers.’

He swilled a long swallow from the mug and slapped it down on the table.

‘This dark bank is maybe sitting in Nauru or Niue or some other fucking rock in the ocean that no-one has ever heard of. The exchanger in Cayman, our lime friend here, is instructed to wire virtual currency to the virtual bank in Nauru, understand? That is one half of the deal. Then the virtual bank in Nauru wires virtual cash to a different exchanger,’ he bent forward to squeeze the second lime wedge, on my side of the table. ‘This exchanger is maybe somewhere like Switzerland or Austria, say maybe Vienna, you see? Then the exchanger in Vienna receives the virtual currency and converts it into real hard currency and then wires the real hard currency to an account in a real, normal bank in Vienna, get it?’

He scooped the second strip of cucumber up and dunked it into my drink before throwing it back on to his dirty yellow tongue.

I didn’t get it. Didn’t the real currency stick at the first exchanger in the Cayman Islands? How did the virtual bank in Nauru wire anything at all to the second exchanger in Vienna?

‘Fuck!’ Yakov exploded. ‘The first exchanger takes a cut from the hard currency, right? They all take a cut, maybe 10%, maybe more depending on how dark the deal has to be. The first exchanger keeps all the hard cash, okay, but these guys do business together all the time. The next time the transfer could be coming in the other direction, maybe the second exchanger is the one wiring virtual cash to the first one, it all evens out over time, it is a two way street!’

‘Okay, okay,’ I said, ‘I get you now, but when you say maybe Vienna, you’re telling me the second exchanger was in Vienna, aren’t you?’

‘Let’s just say some people are very interested to know what happened to a certain Viennese finance operation that was doing good business close to the Prater in Leopoldstadt. It started small about five years ago and then suddenly became a big time dealer, and taking only a little cut compared to the others.’

Yakov plucked the Viennese exchanger lime into his bear paw and squeezed it to pulp, squirting the juice into my face and all over the table top.

‘All of a sudden it disappeared,’ he said, ‘about the time your priest turned up in Rome with bags of dirty cash.’

‘He turned up with some of it,’ I said, ‘another $30 million is still out there somewhere, and I’m talking about real folding money, not that virtual crap.’

‘I know, I know,’ Yakov said, ’and thirty million must sound like a lot of money to you, Maknazpy my friend, but believe me, there is a lot more at risk here than your $30 million. My colleagues who are interested to find our Viennese lime sent the dogs after him, top people, ex-special forces and police insiders, no money spared. No ordinary person could stay free for long but two Polish manhunters were found floating in the Danube, a German ex-detective choked in a British police cell, and two others have disappeared. The trail stopped in London. I say our Viennese lime has friends, ass licking hypocrites rewarded with immunity and entitlement. There is much more than your $30 million to worry about.’

He didn’t say how much more and I figured that was good and bad; good for the obvious greedy reason, bad because I wasn’t the only one on Hamilton’s tail and maybe Yakov’s colleagues would be more persuasive this time when they told him I was a risk.

‘I know what you are thinking, Maknazpy,’ he said it in a low, laughing growl. ‘You think I came here to fuck you over and take all the cash for myself, isn’t that so?’

Yeah, that was exactly so.

‘Don’t worry about it!’ he said. ‘Some things are more important than money, like trust and like confidence in the economic system. Our businesses can’t function efficiently if the system is broken, if it isn’t honest.’ We both grinned. ‘These government desperados and bank robber barons aren’t honest but their system works for them because that’s the only way it can work – the more dishonest they are the better they are rewarded – but it doesn’t work like that in our world, my friend. A bad apple will turn the whole barrel bad. Bankers on the dark market must be honest, they must be kept honest, or else the whole financial model breaks down.’

Yakov wouldn’t let me leave until he bear hugged me, smearing lime and cucumber juice over the back of my neck and all down my jacket. I knew he had only told me as much as he wanted me to know, and I could work around that just fine. Artie also knew more than he had told but that was just another piece of fruit to be juggled.
I paused at the top of the sweeping entrance steps and let the damp Belfast air rinse over me. The game had started for real now, and the buzz was a reason to be alive.
A London-style black taxi choked into life and limped off in a cloud of fumes, turning down the lane of cobblestones before I could see the driver. That’s the way it was going to be, and I was ready.