Читать книгу Two Souls - Henry McDonald - Страница 13

5

COMMS 1

1987

Skyscraper’s friends are closing in on us. Although we few in here remain united and strong, we are without a dick to defend ourselves. They imagine their numbers give them the whip hand. Also, it’s possible they have brought in gear from the outside, so we can’t take any more chances. If we could get a package in here, anything at all – even a Derringer or a Pen Gun – that might make a big difference. Knowing we had something would be a blow to their morale.

For now, only rumour is keeping us alive. We have put it about that our friends beyond these walls have delivered the shopping, although soon the opposition will be trying to provoke us to produce product. We hear from bigger boys – the rosary-bead rattlers – that Skyscraper’s people fear being attack on the wings, landings, kitchens and yards, so they stay very close together.

Your name, of course, keeps coming up in their conversations. Even Skyscraper keeps mentioning you. He has his own team convinced that even though you are not in his gang, you are still someone who can be got at – someone who they can put pressure on to make us dissolve and go away. At least, that’s what those who follow him around like a pack of docile dogs keep insisting. They’re the ones he recruited as kids – who joined his very own merry wee band. They feared him giving them cold steel then; they still fear him now. They might be cowering, callow and stupid, but he’s not! You know and I know that Skyscraper isn’t as stupid as the rest of them. We believe his so-called faith in you is a front – a cloak to hide his true plot. He’s been in to see his boys several times and, like us, has heard that all the charges ranged against them are on the verge of collapse. The only trouble is, by the time we are all released and walking out the jail gates onto the Crumlin Road, there will be blood flowing even before we get to Carlisle Circus.

So, as the Bolshevik’s Eagle once asked: What’s to be done?

Well, if he wants a purge let’s give him one. A first strike seems to be our best option but naturally none of us in here are presently in a position to do that. On the outside, you are the only one we can trust to get the job done. If you can knock him out of the game then the entire rotten structure that he has established will collapse.

If he agrees to a meeting, you stress that you are only a third party and that all you want is the prevention of Irishmen killing Irishmen again – that we are free to operate our own struggles independently of each other and that maybe, just maybe, one day we will all reunite under a minimum programme that we can all agree on in the fight for national liberation … all the usual sentimental ballicks.

You suggest it should be somewhere he and his clowns will feel safe in. Somewhere far away down in the south – away from the attention of the Brits and the cops up here. But you plan in advance to make the strike en route and be certain to have your own people in place.

Finally, yes, we have all drunk from the bitter cup of factionalism and it is indeed sour. Yet we have no other option given that he and his allies – his wee praetorian guard – will eventually move against us. If what we do is rapid and surgical, we can bring this to an end without a prolonged shooting match. We are interested in your thoughts on where we go from here. How do we restructure the army and the party? How do we formulate a new leadership? Remember this – speak and write only in ‘Braille’. Keep your reply broad and clipped. All comms will arrive via the usual back channel, if you pardon the pun.

Yours in struggle … Comrade T.