Читать книгу Once A Pilgrim - James Deegan - Страница 22

10.

AT AROUND THAT moment, a call was being made from a secure line at 10 Downing Street in London.

The man making the call was a major in the Royal Anglians who was on military liaison attachment to Mrs Thatcher’s personal staff.

The man receiving the call was the 3 Para adjutant in Belfast.

The call was to confirm final arrangements for an event which the two men had been discussing over the previous three days – an unannounced flying visit to Belfast by the PM.

The previous Thursday, gunmen from the Provisional IRA’s Belfast Brigade had shot three off-duty RUC men in a pub off the Shankill Road, killing two and seriously injuring the third. It came hot on the heels of the deaths of three members of the Parachute Regiment in the Mayobridge bombing, and together they demanded a political response.

At some time after 6pm that evening, Mrs Thatcher would be flying in for a secret visit to Knock, to meet grieving family members, and to rally the troops.

A pre-Christmas morale booster.

And, because of that, the city would be crawling with extra Army patrols, cars full of Special Branch, undercover members of 14th Intelligence Company – the surveillance specialists known as ‘the Det’, whose job it was to infiltrate both the Republican and Loyalist communities – and various other watchers, followers and shooters.