Читать книгу Provo - Gordon Stevens - Страница 10

The Army Council met at ten. Outside there was sleet in the wind; inside the air was mixed with cigarette smoke and the aroma of fresh coffee. Doherty was looking older, Conlan thought, the first cobweb of dark and wrinkled skin beneath his eyes and the eyes themselves darting as he had never seen them before. The evening before the doctor had confirmed what the Chief of Staff already assumed.

For the major part of the morning they discussed general issues – the escalating rounds of shootings and bombings, the income from the various fund-raising activities operated by the Movement and the laundering of that money through front companies on the British mainland. It was only as they approached midday that Doherty moved them to the item they had all anticipated.

‘Sleeper and PinMan.’

Doherty had organized it well, Conlan thought, had guided the previous discussions so that the Council was already predisposed to agree to the PinMan project. Had added his weight only when necessary, and then merely to divert the tide of opinion in the direction he wished. Doherty was dying: he had suspected before but now he knew for certain, now he understood. Doherty wanted PinMan and what PinMan would give them as much as he himself did.

Doherty indicated that Conlan should brief the meeting. So what would Quin do, he wondered, how would Quin seek to counter Conlan?

‘Sleeper has been activated, and is engaged upon preliminary research. I anticipate the project will take another three to six months.’ He spoke for another two minutes only, deliberately vague about timings and other details, withholding as much as he could and knowing the direction the discussion would take when he had finished.

‘Do we know which member of the royal family will be the target?’ Quin stared at him through the cigarette smoke.

‘Not yet.’ Conlan wondered why he considered it necessary to lie.

‘Assassination or kidnapping?’ It was Quin again.

For the next two hours they discussed the range of alternatives and the various options within each, including the short-, medium- and long-term implications of whatever decision they reached. If assassination, what would be the effect on world opinion, including the Movement’s supporters in the United States? How would the Catholic population in Northern Ireland react? What would be the response in the Republic? If kidnapping, what demands? Would the British try to hush it up? Would the Council let them? The discussion circled back on itself. What was the long-term aim, how would the various reactions further that aim?

Doherty had discussed it with Conlan the night before, Quin suddenly realized. Doherty knew who the target was and how it was to be done. Doherty dying – he looked into the man’s eyes and knew for certain. Doherty on his way out and Conlan about to give him his footnote in history.

‘I suggest we vote.’

Quin knows, Conlan suddenly realized: that he and Doherty had done the deal, that he enjoyed Doherty’s full support.

The vote was unanimous. Outside it was already dark.

The following morning Conlan activated those he had already placed on stand-by.

McGuire, from Belfast. In his mid-thirties, lean and thin-faced, short dark curly hair. Married with two children. A good operator, one of the best.

McGinty, whose priest’s collar and gentle manner gave him the perfect cover. Who loved fishing and who so matched Conlan in age and build that from a distance he could pass for him. Especially when he was wrapped in oilskins, woollen cap or dark glasses against the glare of the sun or the bite of the wind on the shores of Lough Corrib.

Plus the foot soldiers, the expendables. Clarke and Milligan, Black and Lynch. Hoolihan and Lynan.

But not Logan. Not yet. Logan was to come.

The morning was bright but cold, the white of the first snow lying on Divis Hill to the south-west of the city. When McGuire returned to the house his wife was in the kitchen.

‘I’ll be away a few days.’

Eileen McGuire was small, with bright eyes that hid her fear. She bit her lip and nodded.

‘Don’t worry. No problems this time.’

At least he was honest, she thought, at least he didn’t say that every time he went away. He went upstairs to the bedroom at the front of the house. One day they would get him, the fear was always coiled in her. One day a shoot-to-kill unit from the RUC or the SAS would lie in wait for him and gun him down like a dog. One day the UFF would find out about him and slaughter him in his own front room. And in the meantime she would tell the children he was going away to work, a building site in Derry or wherever, and that he would soon be home again. She followed him upstairs and watched him pack the handful of clothes. When he finished she. put the small bag into the large plastic laundry bag she used for shopping, went to the Sportsman’s, dropped his bag in the back room, then returned to the house and carried on cooking.

At seven McGuire left the house and walked the three hundred yards to the bar. If he was under observation – from undercover motor vehicles, informants, OPs concealed in the roof spaces of surrounding houses, or high-altitude surveillance helicopters – there was nothing to suggest that he was doing anything other than going for a drink.

The Sportsman’s was busy. After thirty minutes he muttered his excuses and went to the toilets at the rear, collected his bag and stepped into the alleyway behind. The car was waiting.

The shooting took place shortly after five the following day, outside a betting shop at the top of the Crumlin Road, on the edge of the Catholic Ardoyne area and close to the Protestant Shankill. The victim was a 32-year-old Sinn Fein politician whom the UFF alleged was a member of the Provisional IRA. The planning for the shooting which followed it took place the following evening and was led by the officer commanding the North Belfast Brigade of the Provisional IRA. The first part of the discussion was strategic – whether or not a shooting of a UFF activist was not only necessary but politically and militarily sound at that point in time; whether the UFF reaction to the execution of a member of its ranks would be counterproductive. The second part, which followed once the decision had been made, was tactical. The target would be a man known to be a planning officer for the UFF. The location and timing would be confirmed by the intelligence officer, the details to be supplied to the team assigned to the killing, and the weapon would be an AK47 supplied from one of the Provisionals’ arms dumps in Myrtle Field Park, a middle-class street in a non-sectarian area of the city. The execution, as the Provisionals would describe it in the communiqué they would release later, would take place from a car stolen from the city centre. The driver would pick up the man carrying the gun fifteen minutes before the hit and the gunman himself ten minutes before. The gunman would leave the car as soon as they were clear of the area and in a neighbourhood considered safe; the man carrying the weapon immediately after, and the driver would abandon and torch the vehicle as soon as he could after that.

They came to those who would carry out the shooting, the gunman first.

‘Clarke or Milligan.’ The intelligence officer’s suggestion was straightforward and logical.

‘Out of circulation.’ The OC – officer commanding – had not been told why.

‘Black.’

The Bossman shook his head. Something happening, he had assumed when he had been informed by the Northern Command; something big if it required his three most experienced gunmen.

‘Lynch.’

‘Out of town.’

‘Hoolihan?’

‘Out as well.’

Five of the most experienced IRA gunmen in North Belfast suddenly out of circulation.

‘Lynan?’ The intelligence officer knew the answer before he suggested the name.

The OC shook his head.

Six out of six. ‘Who then?’ Douglas, he knew, except that Douglas was young and still slightly brash, and the officer commanding would only use him if the rest of the team were older and more experienced.

‘Frank.’ Frank Hanrahan had been one of the best, but was now in his late thirties. He had begun his Provo career as a teenager, done his time in Long Kesh without complaint; he had been on the Blanket then the Dirty Protest and – though he had denied it at the time, though he had volunteered for active service immediately he had been released – the years of confinement and hardship had taken their toll. He had married young, his boy and girl were now in their mid-teens, the boy coming up seventeen, but still Frank did the occasional job. Only when no one else was available, however, and only when they wanted an older hand to rein in the recklessness of the youngsters.

‘Freddie’s picking up the gun, Mickey’s driving.’ Both were young and both would be good. If they survived that long. But send them out with the gunman called Douglas and they would either wipe out half the Shankill or crash the car on the way.

Frank Hanrahan, they agreed.

Lisburn was quiet. Nolan sat back in the chair and looked again at the reports from the various agents which it was part of her job to analyse. She had returned to Northern Ireland four weeks before. When former colleagues recognized her she said simply that she was on a secure task, and no further questions were asked.

Perhaps something was running, perhaps not.

Clarke on the move. On the gallop, as the Provos called it. The information from E4A, the RUC undercover surveillance division.

Milligan on the move. From an informant in the FRU, the Forward Reconnaissance Unit, the wing of Military Intelligence dealing with agents and informants in the Catholic and Protestant paramilitary organizations.

She punched the names into the computer, checked on the background of each, and read through the reports for the third time. Nothing concrete yet, but something to keep her eye on. She left Lisburn and took one of the five alternative routes she had established to the flat she had rented in Malone Park in the south of the city.

Relatively speaking – everything in Northern Ireland was relative – the area was secure, not plagued by the violence suffered by the communities in and around the city centre. Most of her neighbours were young and professional class. Despite this she maintained a strict personal security. Each time she drove into the street she checked for the obvious signs of surveillance; each morning, when she went to the garage at the rear of the house where she had a first-floor flat, she checked the car for bombs before she started it, even though she had fitted the garage with special locks and an electronic door. Even when she went out to dinner in what was considered a secure area, with friends or colleagues, she timed the interval between ordering a meal and its being served in case someone on the staff was a Provo or UFF informant and had recognized her, had delayed the meal while a hitman was summoned.

Her cover story matched what appeared to be her life-style. She had lived in England for eight years, married, but was now divorced and living off the settlement paid by her former husband while she looked for a job. In case either side – PIRA, the UDA or the various organizations springing from them – had sources in the estate agent’s office from which she had rented the flat, every month a cheque was paid into a bank account she had established. And in case the same organizations had a source in the bank, the money was paid from another account set up in England by a man alleged to be her former husband. In the flat itself, in case she was burgled, she kept solicitors’ letters referring to the case, as well as the divorce papers themselves.

She hung up her coat, placed the Browning in the bedroom, and went to the kitchen. It was a strange life, she would have admitted; most people would not understand it. But in the end you were who you were. Even at the beginning . . .

. . . she was nine, almost ten; long legs and awkward body. It was spring, going on summer, the children playing at the foot of the hill above the town. The game was hide and seek, the children divided into teams. She was on the catcher team, hunting through the trees and undergrowth for those hiding from them. The wood was quiet. She paused, not moving, not even shifting balance, totally alert, listening for the slightest rustle which would tell her where her quarry was hiding.

The teams changed, the hunters becoming the hunted. Some of the children hid in pairs, but she was different, preferred to be alone, to take her chance alone.

The tree was covered with foliage. There was barely enough time to pull herself up and conceal herself before she saw the searchers below. The blood thudded through her head and she did not dare breathe. She knew the boys were looking for her, knew they knew she was close by them, looking at them. For five minutes she looked down on them, willed them not to look up, willed them to look for her somewhere else.

They moved off and she knew she had won, tasted the triumph and waited for them to come back, waited for the excitement of the moment again. The thudding eased and she was aware of the other sensation, though she would not have been able to express it, perhaps not even to identify it. Not just the emptiness of suddenly being out of the game. Something else. The emptiness of no longer being on the edge, no longer being in danger …

The following day she checked the reports for fresh information on Clarke and Milligan. The two were still on the move, one in Belfast and one in Londonderry. Plus a third gunman – Black, Alex – the intelligence on Black’s movements from an SAS observation post.

Hanrahan reached the pick-up point thirty seconds early. The evening was dark and it was drizzling slightly. He waited, hunched against the weather, then the car stopped, the back door opened, he stepped in and the car pulled away. The men in the front seat were in their late teens, he guessed, certainly not in their twenties. The way they had all begun, what he himself had been like so many lifetimes ago.

‘Which side?’

‘Left.’

Hanrahan’s mac was wet; he took it off and placed it on the seat. The man in the front passenger seat turned and handed him the gloves. Hanrahan pulled them on then took the Kalashnikov. The others were jumpy, he sensed, almost too keen, would go ahead with the job even if the Prods were waiting for them. It was already two minutes to seven. The car turned into Tennent Street. He checked the gun and wound down the window. The takeaway was fifty yards away.

‘There he is.’

The driver pulled in to the pavement. Slightly too fast, Hanrahan thought, might have given the target some warning. He pressed the trigger and the car screeched away.

Farringdon was informed at eight the following morning; at 8.30 he included the information in his first meeting of the day with Cutler. Cutler had been Dol, Director of Intelligence, Northern Ireland – the most senior MI5 position in Belfast – for the past three years; for the past eighteen months Farringdon had been his deputy.

The previous evening a man with links to the UFF had been gunned down in the Shankill, responsibility being claimed by the Provisional IRA. Cutler’s briefing was to the point. The normal sort of job – the shrug said it – except that the driver of the vehicle used for the killing hadn’t dumped it quickly enough. An RUC undercover car had spotted the vehicle, recorded as having been stolen earlier, and had arrested the driver for taking and driving away. At first it was thought that he had stolen the vehicle for a joy-ride; only later had it been tied in with the shooting. The driver’s name was Flynn. During his interrogation he had admitted involvement in the shooting, but had denied knowing the identities of the others. Under pressure, however, he had given a description of the hitman which matched that of a Frank Hanrahan, a known Provisional IRA gunman with a prison record. Because of the possibility of Flynn being turned and acting as an informant, RUC Special Branch had been informed and had taken over the case, and had in its turn informed MI5.

‘When are they picking up Hanrahan?’

‘Now.’

‘Any possibility of turning him?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Who are you assigning to the case?’

‘Nolan.’

Nolan was relatively new, but she had come to him with a background unsurpassed by many of her more senior colleagues.

‘Fine. Keep me informed.’

The interview room at Castlereagh was bleak and featureless, the desk and chairs of grey metal. Nolan sat patiently and watched the interrogation. Hanrahan against Brady – who had been with her in the forward surveillance car in Beechwood Street – and a Special Branch inspector named McKiver.

We all know why we’re here, Frank. So what were you doing on the evening in question? How can you account for your movements? What were you doing between five in the afternoon and ten that evening – the hours were deliberately vague and loose, an attempt to draw Hanrahan in, make him admit something, anything, that they could check out. What clothes were you wearing, Frank? Same clothes that forensic are looking at now? You know about forensics, of course, what they’ll be looking for? Fibre matches between your clothes and the car, traces of lead on your coat where you fired the gun.

Hanrahan was looking at his interrogators, absorbing their questions but saying nothing, not even acknowledging their presence.

They would get nowhere, Nolan knew: Hanrahan had done his time before and would do his time again. Not the breathtaking cold of the nights during the Blanket Protest, when the IRA prisoners had refused to wear uniforms; not the cells smothered with human excrement as they had been during the Dirty Protest which followed. Fifteen years, even twenty, cut by half in line with official policy, but a long time anyway.

Be careful with the questions, the interrogators knew. When Hanrahan was sent to Crumlin Road he would be debriefed by the IRA security section within the prison. Then the Provos’ intelligence people would try to establish what the Brits or the RUC already knew from the questions his interrogators had asked him.

You won’t make it this time, Frank. The two SB men were facing him, the use of his first name sometimes friendly, more often threatening and hostile. You remember what it was like when you were young, Frank, just imagine what it’ll be like this time. So why do it, Frank, you hadn’t done a job for a long time, why now?

Clarke, Milligan and Black still on the move – Nolan had checked that morning. Plus two more overnight – Lynch and Hoolihan.

Hanrahan’s face was as grey and expressionless as the walls of the cell, eyes staring straight ahead, the thin scar which Flynn had described and which had pointed them to Hanrahan down the corner of his left eye. Somebody grassed, she read it in his face, somebody turned stag and when they find out who the boys will take him for his cup of tea.

The first day of the interview ended and Hanrahan was returned to the cell.

The overnight reports on the Provisional gunmen came through an hour before the interrogation of Hanrahan resumed the following morning. The five gunmen still on the move, now joined by a sixth – Lynan. Foot soldiers, Nolan knew, expendables like Hanrahan.

The interview recommenced at eight. Overnight they had assessed the possibility of Hanrahan cracking, had also looked at the possibility of Hanrahan turning, of Hanrahan becoming a CT – converted terrorist. Had gone through the files for the single piece of intelligence which might provide the key – gambling debts or affairs with other women were favourites; once it had been found that a Provo shooter had been having an affair with the wife of an RUC man.

You know the results of the forensics, Frank. You know we can put you in the car and that we have witnesses to say that that was the car used for the murder on Tennent Street. You know that we can prove that you fired a gun that evening. So be fair on yourself, Frank, have a think about it.

Hanrahan still had not said a word. Would not say a word, the interrogators knew. At eight that evening they finished the second day. The following morning they would formally charge him and the following afternoon, unless he said something worth listening to – unless he said anything at all – they would give up on him as they had known they would from the beginning, and Hanrahan would be detained at Crumlin Road jail. And two months after he would appear before a single judge sitting in a so-called Diplock Court – no jury because of the threat of intimidation – and be sent down for the required period.

That evening they scanned the Hanrahan file for what Nolan assumed would be the last time, that evening she returned to the flat in Malone Park and thought about the man who had still said nothing, about the details on his file. At six the following morning – two hours before Hanrahan’s last interview was due to begin – she returned to Lisburn; at seven she made the request, at 7.45 she ran through the updates on the Provo gunmen still on the move in the North.

Clarke and Milligan. Black and Lynch. Hoolihan and Lynan. Plus a seventh.

McGuire. Not seen for four days.

She knew who and what he was but checked on the computer anyway.

McGuire, Kevin. Born 11.4.59. Married, two children. The details flickered on to the screen. Not a bomber or gunman, one of the men who ran the bombers and the gunmen. What the intelligence services would call an LO, a liaison officer.

She ran the reports together, logged a synopsis, and requested immediate reports on McGuire once he was sighted. Logical, she thought. The troops on the move and the handler out of sight. Almost too logical.

She left the office and went to the interrogation centre at Castlereagh. Brady and McKiver were eating breakfast in the canteen; she collected a coffee and joined them.

‘No problems about me asking a couple of questions today?’

McKiver was the problem, she and Brady had agreed: McKiver didn’t even think MI5 should have been informed. The last day, they understood, therefore nothing would happen. Therefore she could join in.

‘Fine.’

They went to the interrogation room, McKiver and Brady taking their usual positions along one side of the desk, the prisoner opposite them.

The forensics, Frank. Confirmation that the car was the murder vehicle and that you were in it. Ballistics suggest that the weapon has also been used in three other killings. The chances of them being put down to you, Frank. Might not carry in court, of course, but could affect the sentence.

Hanrahan sat impassive and said nothing, not even a flicker in the eyes. No response when they offered him coffee or a cigarette. At 10.30 they broke for five minutes. And when they returned Hanrahan would sit in the same position and not move until they led him out after charging him. There was a feeling of inevitability about the way they left the room, the knowledge that they had been through it before.

The documents she had requested had arrived. They probably wouldn’t work, but it was worth giving it a try. She wouldn’t mention it to McKiver though; despite his appearance and manner he was a good operator, knew when he was winning and when he was losing. And as long as he stood even the faintest chance he’d hang in. But the moment he knew he’d lost he saw no point in carrying on.

They returned to the interrogation room.

The evening in question, Frank. What time did they pick you up? Where did you leave the car after the job? What did you do after? Who told you about the job, gave you the instructions? Who decided it should be you, Frank, who gave you that pair to babysit?

There was no response, no reply or change in the facial expression.

‘You were inside with Slattery, of course.’ It was the first time Nolan had spoken. Fergal Slattery, gunman and bomber. So what the hell did Slattery have to do with it, thought McKiver. Slattery had decided to call it a day, of course, get out while he could, but what bearing did it have on Hanrahan?

‘You know what Slattery said, of course, don’t you, Frank?’

So what the fuck should I know about what Fergal said, they read it in his face, in his eyes. Read something for the first time.

‘He said that his children were nearing the age when they would be caught up in it, and that he didn’t want them to go through what he’d gone through.’

The curtain drew again across Hanrahan’s face.

‘Good kids, Frank. How old are they now?’

She’s blown it, Brady saw the look in McKiver’s eyes as he glanced at Nolan. We had him going, were about to turn him. Now she’s threatened his kids. Okay, so they weren’t about to turn him, weren’t about to make him even say a dickie bird. But kids were out of it. No way they threatened anyone’s kids, not even someone like Hanrahan’s.

‘Good school reports, Frank. Boy did well at GCSE, A levels in a couple of years. The girl also expected to do well.’ She put the copies of the reports on the desk. ‘Pity they’re going to end up like you, though. Because you know what’s going to happen when you go down, don’t you, Frank? The boy will end up like that pillock who was supposed to get rid of the motor. Be with you in the Crum by the time he’s twenty. If he’s lucky.’ She leaned forward and moved the reports slightly. ‘Same with the girl. End up pushing a pram for the rest of her life with the kids strung along behind and somebody like you for her husband.’

Know what I mean, Frank? Know what I’m talking about? ‘Pity really.’ As if there was an alternative. It was in her voice, in the way she leaned forward again and began to take the reports away then left them on the table. She sat back and the interrogation continued.

So what about the day in question, Frank? Where were you that afternoon? Go for a drink at dinner time? Where’d you go, what did you have? There were no answers, no movement in the body or the face. What about after, Frank? Did you go straight home? Or to a bar? Tell the lads the job was done?

‘What’s on offer?’ Hanrahan stared past the two men at Nolan. No other words, no change in the face or the eyes. Just the three words.

‘Good A-level results for the boy. You’ll have to kick his arse, of course, make sure he doesn’t let up.’ I can fix the grades, but not that much, not so much it would make everyone suspicious. ‘Place at a good university.’ She looked straight at him. ‘On the mainland. Not Dublin, not Trinity. You wouldn’t want him becoming a thinking man’s Provo, would you, Frank?’

Hanrahan smiled, Brady suddenly thought, Hanrahan the hard man actually fucking laughed.

‘Same for the girl.’

Hanrahan’s head and eyes dropped as quickly as they had risen and the interview continued.

So what about the gun, Frank? What about the fact that three other jobs have been done with it? Who did you see after? Suppose you had a Black Bush, celebrate like? Them telling you what a good job you’d done?

‘What do you want?’ It was only the second phrase Hanrahan had spoken since his arrest.

‘You in the sweenies.’

She had balls, McKiver made himself admit. Nobody got anyone in what the Provos nicknamed the sweenies. The security section was the unit of the Provisional IRA which dealt with those suspected of being agents or informants for the Brits or the RUC. Get somebody in there and you struck gold.

Somebody else might have picked up on Nolan’s suggestion, Brady thought; somebody else might have reinforced her offer about the kids. Somebody else might have blown it. Instead McKiver sat still and impassive, as if he and Brady were no longer there, nobody speaking – neither them nor Nolan nor Hanrahan. Five minutes, ten, gone fifteen. McKiver didn’t even dare look at his watch. Probably twenty-five, almost half an hour. Nobody come in, dear God, nobody knock on the door and blow it.

‘How?’ Hanrahan had looked up again. How will you get me off the charge? How will you swing the forensics? How will you do it in a way that guarantees I don’t get my brains blown out by my own people?

‘You’re charged, put in the Crum, appear before the court. With the evidence against you, you don’t stand a chance. Except we’ll change something. Everyone will know you’re guilty but you’ll get off on a technicality.’

‘Guaranteed?’

‘Guaranteed. You don’t do anything for us until you’ve walked.’

Hanrahan wrapped himself inside himself again, head sunk into his chest and shoulders rounded. Not the way he had sat earlier, however, not the stance of prolonged and stubborn resistance. Everyone came to the end of the road sometime, he thought. Everyone came to the point where they looked back and saw what little they’d had, and how much more they wanted for their kids. Where they realized that all this stinking fucking cesspit was about was giving your kids a better start than you had.

‘A good job afterwards.’ He looked again at Nolan. ‘The girl as well.’

‘Agreed.’

The village of Rathmeen was tucked inconspicuously into the rolling hills some ten miles south of Lough Neagh, the border with the Republic twenty miles to the south as the crow flies, and the main A3 road between Craigavon and Armagh four miles to the west. The country road which wound down from the hills and ran through it served as its main street, most of the shops clustered round the small square in the centre and the houses running in terraces away from it.

Father Donal McGinty left shortly before eleven, driving south then picking up the A28 to Newry. The morning was cold and crisp, fresh snow in the fields. Half an hour later he drove through the town and began the climb up the hill to the border at the top. The first checkpoint was half-way up, the soldiers and police armed and wearing flak jackets, the machine gunner positioned in the sangar to his left and the Land-Rovers parked in the middle, armed patrols moving up the pavements behind him and a surveillance helicopter hovering in the sky to his right. The line of cars edged forward; he handed his driving licence to the RUC policeman, waited as the man scanned the details and waved him through. Ten minutes later, in the toilet of the Carrickdale Hotel, nine miles north of Dundalk, he took off the dark suit, ecclesiastical collar and black shirt, and replaced them with a sweater and sports jacket.

When he reached Dublin it was a little after two. He parked near the post office, put on an overcoat, and walked down O’Connell Street. The Joyce Bar at Madigan’s was almost empty, only three people left from lunchtime. He asked for roast beef and Guinness and sat with his back to the wall opposite the bar from where he could see both the stairs at the rear and the door at the front. Conlan entered ten minutes later, bought a drink and sat at a table to his right. McGinty waited ten minutes, then rose and went to the toilets on the left of the stairs. As he came out, exactly two minutes later, Conlan went in. The envelope was switched as they passed.

McGinty finished his drink and returned to the car. The envelope which Conlan had passed to him contained a sheet of instructions and a second envelope. McGinty read the instructions, walked to the office of the Irish Times on D’Olier Street and placed an advertisement in the paper for the day after next, paying cash.

The afternoon was growing dark. He left Dublin and began the drive north, changing back into the priest’s collar and black shirt and suit in a lay-by near Dundalk and reaching Rathmeen in the early evening.

Three mornings later McGinty drove to Aldergrove and caught the 1030 shuttle to London Heathrow. He was wearing his cloth of office. The flight was on time and because there was no computer file on him he passed through the security and immigration checks at both ends without being stopped.

In Belfast the morning had been cold but dry, at Heathrow it was beginning to drizzle. He ignored the signs to the cab ranks and walked briskly to the underground, choosing a seat next to a door. It was late morning, the stations busier as the train approached central London. The train reached Piccadilly, the platform crowded, people getting on and off. He sat still and waited. The doors began to close. Without warning he rose from his seat and squeezed between them, glanced left and right to check if anyone had jumped off the train after him. On the wall next to the exit was an underground map. He appeared to study it, waiting until the platform was almost empty, then walked briskly up the stairs marked no entry, turning sideways against the people coming the other way. At the top the hallway opened out, escalators leading up. He hurried past the busker playing Dvořák, checked if anyone had followed him, and took another escalator down. At the bottom he turned right again, along a second passageway marked NO ENTRY, and on to the Bakerloo Line platform. A train was leaving, the platform emptying. He ignored the exit signs and took an iron spiral stairway at the end of the platform to the labyrinth of interconnecting passageways at the bottom. Only when he was sure he was not being followed did he rejoin the Piccadilly Line, leave it at Finsbury Park in north London, and take the 106 bus to Stoke Newington.

Abney Park cemetery was on the right, entered through a set of large wrought iron gates. Opposite was a line of shops, two of the windows boarded up, and a café on the corner, flats above them and street stalls along the wide pavement outside. The pavements were wet, the coloured lights glowing on the stalls. McGinty left the bus, crossed the road, and went through the gates.

A straight gravel drive led from them to a dark red brick church 150 yards away. The first section of graves was well tended, the grass cut and the gravel of the drive free from weeds. Fifty yards in, however, it changed abruptly, as if he were crossing a border. The graves – with the occasional exception – were badly kept, weeds and grass growing round and over them. The church itself was drab, almost dirty, grime on its brickwork and the heavy wooden doors padlocked. Beyond it the cemetery degenerated into a jungle. The traffic hummed in the background and the water dripped from a broken gutter. McGinty confirmed he was alone, counted eight bricks to the right from the corner, three up, removed the loose brick, placed the envelope in the space behind, replaced the brick and left.

Walker wiped the condensation from the café window and confirmed that no one had gone into the cemetery after him and no one had followed as he left. She was wearing denims, sweater and a donkey jacket, her hair tucked under a woollen hat. She bought another cup of tea and waited. After half an hour she left the café, turned left down Stoke Newington High Street and right along Stoke Newington Church Street. A hundred and fifty yards along she turned right into Fleetwood Street, a cul de sac with the southern side wall of Abney Park cemetery at the bottom. It was empty. She checked again that she was not being followed, climbed the wall, dropped on to a path which was overgrown, the brambles reaching across it, and made her way to the church at the centre.

Eight bricks from the corner, third up – the drop was one of five she used. She removed the envelope, zipped it into an inside pocket, replaced the brick, and walked quickly through the trees and shrubs growing between and in some cases through the graves, to the northern side of the cemetery. The undergrowth was thick and the headstones ran up to the wall. She climbed on one, checked that the small crescent of houses on the other side was deserted, and dropped over. Only when she had returned to the flat near Primrose Hill did she open the envelope and decode the instructions inside, burning them when she had read them.

Her meeting with Saunders was at eight. She telephoned Iberia, the Spanish national airline, and booked a flight to Seville for the following morning, leaving the return open.

Saunders’s day had been straightforward, no big stories and no scares that another paper had something he had missed. By five he had finished what he considered a minor item on the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York but which would still make the front page, copied it on to a floppy disk, entered the names and home telephone numbers of two new contacts into the computer notebook, and left the building.

He returned to the flat, copied the article and the contacts on to the relevant files on the PC in the spare bedroom which also doubled as his study – the bed a fold-up and the bookshelves filled with reference books – booked a minicab, then showered and changed. Forty minutes later the telephone rang and the minicab controller informed him that the car was waiting. He put the computer notebook and Cellnet in his pocket, locked the flat and was driven to Joe Allen’s.

Philipa Walker arrived ten minutes later.

Sometime, he assumed, she would agree to go to bed with him. Meanwhile she was good company – intelligent and attractive.

Sometime, she assumed, he would let slip the remark that would give her the way in. And if he didn’t, or if he wasn’t the key she wanted, then she would have to look elsewhere. Meanwhile he was good company. Except that she was already three months into the schedule Conlan had given her.

‘So what are you doing this weekend?’

‘Wiltshire.’ Wife, the girls and the ponies. ‘How about you?’

‘I’m away.’

‘Skiing?’ He had seen the snow reports.

‘Spain. Way down south for the sun.’

‘All right for some people.’

‘The advantage of working for oneself.’

‘Send me a postcard.’

By the time she returned to Primrose Hill it was 11.30. Twelve hours later she left the flat and took a cab to Heathrow . . .

*

. . .it was the middle of the spring term, her first year at university. That summer she and the students with whom she shared a flat had decided to drive across Europe to Greece. The previous afternoon, therefore, she had collected the passport application form from the post office.

She’s done all right. Considering.

It was five years since she had stood on the stairs of the house in Orpington and heard her mother’s voice, yet still the words haunted her. Not every hour of every day, not even every day of every week, yet always hanging in the recesses of her mind, sometimes conscious though most times not.

Birth certificate and two photographs – she checked the requirements for a full passport then went downstairs. The telephone was in the hall. She sat on the bottom stair, dialled directory enquiries and asked for the Orpington office of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. The line was engaged. She waited two minutes then tried again. The woman who answered the enquiries number was friendly and helpful.

There were two types of birth certificate, both sufficient for a passport application. The short certificate gave merely the details of her name, date of birth and the registration district in which she had been born, and would cost £2.50. The full certificate would be a copy of her original birth certificate and would cost £5.50. She could come in person, or send a postal application stating full name, place and date of birth, plus a stamped, addressed envelope and a cheque for the relevant amount.

‘How long will it take by post?’

‘A week, perhaps ten days. No more.’

Post, she decided; there was no hurry and it would be simpler. She thanked the woman, returned to her room and wrote the letter.

Name: Philipa Charlotte Louise Walker. The names came from the two sides of the family.

Date of birth: 12.3.61. Each year, for as far back as she

could remember, her parents bad always given her a party.

Place of birth: Orpington.

She would have the full certificate rather than the short one, she also decided, even though it cost more. The document wasn’t just a piece of paper, it was part of her life. She wrote out the cheque and posted the application that evening.

The stamped, addressed envelope which she included came back nine days later. It was lying on the hall floor when she and the others returned to the flat in the early evening. She slit the envelope open, already smiling. Her name, her date of birth. Her, officially recognized as a person for the first time. The thought was innocent and enjoyable.

There was no birth certificate. Instead was her cheque and a standard letter.

Dear Miss Walker

I refer to your recent application for a birth certificate. I have made a search of our records for the relevant district and period but I regret that I am unable to trace an entry.

The letter was signed by the Deputy Superintendent Registrar. Typed below the signature was a note suggesting she applied – in writing or personally – to the General Register Office, St Catherine’s House, Kingsway, London WC2 . . .

. . . the late afternoon sun was low and the land was patch-worked brown and yellow, only the occasional green. The 727 banked to port and she saw Seville: the heart of the old city with the newer part sprawling out from it; the Guadalquivir snaking its way south-west towards the Atlantic. Twenty minutes later Philipa Walker cleared immigration and customs, collected a hire car and picked up the N4 motorway south, then switched to the toll road.

The temperature was still a pleasant 65°. A little over an hour later she cut right towards Cadiz Bay. The city was opposite her, across the causeway, the off-white concrete of the modern city at the neck of the peninsula and the honeycomb streets of the old quarter at the tip. She skirted Puerto de Santa Maria and took the road to Rota. Three kilometres on she turned left into the housing development called Las Redes, its streets named after the oceans of the world, only the line of sand dunes between it and the Atlantic.

The house on Mar Timor was two hundred metres from the sea, protected by a whitewashed wall. She entered the security code, drove into the garage, locked the door behind her, then tapped the security code of the front door and went inside. The house was cool and well-furnished, and the safe was concealed beneath the flagstones of the small courtyard round which the house was built.

She had not been operational for two years. She was still sharp, her basic talents and instincts still intact, but it was logical both that Conlan should recommend a refresher and that he would arrange it this way.

That evening she ate in a fish restaurant close to the river in Puerto de Santa Maria, the streets cobbled and the smell from the sherry bodegas hanging in the warm night air. The next morning she placed her passport and personal documents in a deposit box in the Banco de Andalucía in the town centre, then spent three hours exploring the maze of streets and alleyways of old Cadiz; that afternoon she drove south to Tarifa, passing an hour in a cafe on the long, windswept beach to the north and two hours in the fortified part of the old town. That evening she filled out the postcards which had been placed in the floor safe.

Cadiz. Amazing streets and houses. Can imagine Drake coming in with all guns blazing. To her parents.

Tarifa. Windy City, and I can see why. Great sailboarding if I wasn’t too old. Southernmost point in Europe, you can almost smell Africa. To her brother and his family.

Tangiers. Couldn’t resist a day trip. Soukh amazing. Another world. To Patrick Saunders.

The cards would be posted over the next few days, confirming her holiday in Spain, the mileage on the hired car would show she had travelled a total of 500 kilometres, and her passport would be stamped to confirm the trip to Morocco.

At six the next morning she rose and showered, then dyed her hair blonde – including her pubic hair. At seven she left the house, picked up a bus into Puerto de Santa Maria, took the slow train to Seville and the AVE to Madrid. The Prado was ten minutes from the city’s Atocha railway station, and the Mercedes was parked on schedule by the Goya entrance, the driver waiting. Walker recce’d the area for thirty minutes then closed on the car. Forty-eight minutes after she had arrived in Madrid, and under the identity of Katerina Maher, cover for an unnamed member of the German Red Army Faction, she approached the driver, gave the code, received the reply, and began the next stage of her journey to the training ground in North Africa.

The only thing she would not know, and Conlan could not have allowed for, was that on the day the postcard to Patrick Saunders was posted in Tangiers, whilst the main ferry service from the Spanish port of Algeciras sailed on schedule, the ferry from Tarifa, on the windswept northern promontory of the Straits of Gibraltar, was cancelled because of an engineering problem.

* * *

The sky was lead grey, Dublin waiting for the snow it had so far escaped. Quin parked at the side of the Post Office and waited for one of the telephone booths to become free.

It was not that he opposed Conlan’s plan, the royal family was as legitimate a target as anything else British. Nor was it the first time one of them had been a target: Mountbatten had been blown up in his boat off Mullagh-more in 1979. And if a successful action against one of them was undertaken in central London, then the British and Protestant reaction against the Catholic population of Northern Ireland would be fearsome. That, in the long term, would serve the Cause far more than all the violence which had dominated the country for the past decades.

It was Conlan he opposed, just as Conlan opposed him.

Doherty was dying, and once Doherty went there would be a new Chief of Staff. If Conlan’s plan succeeded then the chances were that he would take Doherty’s place. And if that happened, then Quin was finished.

It was as simple as that.

Almost.

If Conlan’s plan failed to give Doherty his place in history, then Doherty might even switch his support. Then his position would be up for grabs. Then it might well be he, Quin, who was in and Conlan who was out.

He stepped out of the car and into the telephone kiosk. There were three numbers from the time before, he had committed them to memory then, not dared write them down, and even now he still remembered them. The chances were that one at least would have been changed, two and he would be unlucky. Three disconnected and the Devil himself would be against him.

Nothing in life was ever straightforward, he supposed, yet in a way life repeated itself, the same pattern appearing time and time again. The conflict between the Provisionals and the Brits; the conflict in the Provisionals’ camp and, he assumed, among the British as well. Yet sometimes, not often and not for long, the sides changed, allies became enemies and enemies became allies.

He lifted the receiver, inserted the phone card and dialled the Belfast code and the first number, cursed as he heard the unavailable tone. He dialled the second and heard the same tone. Even the Devil on the side of Conlan. He dialled the third and heard the ringing tone.

‘Yes.’ The voice was neutral.

‘Is Jacobson there?’

Jacobson would not be there. Jacobson had been on the way up last time, would have moved on years ago.

‘Who wants him?’ There was no detail of the establishment he was calling and no confirmation that Jacobson existed. The same as last time, Quin thought, the alliance as unholy as they came, but something in it for both of them.

All games were dangerous, but that on which he was about to embark was more dangerous than most.

‘Tell him Joseph wants to speak to him.’ The biblical reference had amused them both. ‘I’ll phone tomorrow for a number.’

The telephone message from the man calling himself Joseph was logged at 3.56 PM, at 4.04 the codenames Jacobson and Joseph were run against the MI5 computer at Lisburn. Both files were blocked. At 4.18 it was passed to Farringdon and from Farringdon to Cutler. On the Dol’s instructions the names were run again through the computer and the files – if any files existed, other than as simple acknowledgements that the codewords had once been used – were confirmed as blocked. At 5.18 PM, one hour and twenty-two minutes after Quin had made the telephone call, his message was passed to London.

In all except one detail, what had happened in MI5’s offices in Belfast was now repeated in Gower Street. The two words Jacobson and Joseph were computer-run, and both files – again if they existed as more than codenames – were found to be blocked, with the single additional point of information that any reference or enquiry concerning the two should be made to T Department. At 5.53 the duty officer in T was informed and ordered a check to be run against the department’s own computer system. The files were again blocked, with the instruction to refer any enquiry to the DDG.

Michaelmass was informed at 6.17.

John Petherington Michaelmass (Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford) was 53 years old, tall, dark hair with the first traces of silver. After Oxford he had spent two years in the States, then returned to Britain to work with ICI. Three years later he had been loaned to the security services to assist in an enquiry in an area in which he was considered a specialist, and had remained. Like all intelligence chiefs he had the ability not only to absorb a considerable quantity of information, but to identify the strands or themes which might run through it. He was married with two children, a daughter who had graduated the previous July, and a son now in his final year. He lived in Kensington, with a country house in Buckinghamshire, both afforded by family money on his and his wife’s side rather than his Security Service salary.