He made only rare incursions into the talk, preferring to let it ripple round him while he weighed the ideas before coming down in support of any one in particular. He was a hard man with few feelings that did not involve the end-product. Like some cost-effectiveness expert or a time- and-motion superman, he demanded value for eflort. His training in military tactics had been thorough, and he had risen to corporal in the parachute regiment of the British army. He was in his mid-thirties now and had seen active service in Aden and Borneo. He"d bought himself out at the start of the troubles and set up briefly as a painter and decorator, before going underground. When he had been voted into the number one position in the Provisionals by his colleagues it was because they knew they could guarantee he would pursue a tough, ruthless campaign. Those who believed in the continuation of the war of attrition on British public opinion had felt threatened by those they thought might compromise. The new commander was their safeguard. He was no strategist, but had learned enough of tactics on the streets of the Lower Falls where he came from. He had sanctioned the killing of Danby, and was well pleased with the dividends.
The quartermaster took it up. "It"s the trouble with all spectaculars. You launch them, and they succeed and where do you go from there? Only upwards."
The older man in the group, a veteran of "56, who lived now in Cork, said, "It stirs the pot well and truly. How many bombs, how many "another soldier tonight" add up to a British Cabinet Minister?"
The quartermaster across the table was not impressed. "But what"s the reaction? If we did it again, they"d tear the b.l.o.o.d.y place apart. We"d not survive it. They"d be all over us. Down here as much as in the North."
"That"s what we have to weigh. What would happen to the whole structure? They"d go mad, knock b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.t out of us." The speaker was from Derry. Young, from the Creggan estate. Interned once and then released in an amnesty to mark the arrival of a new Secretary of State. He had been in the Republic"s prisons as well, and now lived on the run as much in County Donegal as in the maze of streets in the Creggan housing estate. "Our need at this moment is not to go killing Cabinet Ministers from Westminster, but winning back what we lost at Motorman when the army came into Bogside and Creggan. We have to play on the tiredness of those people across the water. There"s no stomach there for this war. They"re soft there, no guts. They"ll get weary of hearing of another soldier, another policeman, another bomb, another tout. It"s the repet.i.tion that hurts them. Not another big killing. All that does is get them going. It affronts their b.l.o.o.d.y dignity. Unites them against us. We have to bore them."
"The bigger man you get the better." It was a Belfast man. He was of the new school, and had come a long way since Long Kesh opened. He had pitiless eyes, wide apart above his ferret nose, and a thin, bloodless mouth. He chain-smoked, lighting cigarettes one after another from the b.u.t.t of the one he was discarding. "The big man himself wouldn"t hurt. They never believe we mean it over there. Somehow the f.u.c.king Micks won"t actually get round to it, they say. Get the old b.u.g.g.e.r, himself, that would sort them."
That quietened it. Then the Chief of Staff chipped in, cutting through the indecision of the meeting as he brought it to heel and away from the abstract.
"We"ll think about it. It has attractions. Big attractions. Total war, that"s what it would mean. Davie and Scan, you"ll work on it for a bit. Have something for us in a fortnight with something crete. I don"t want it done hasty ... something in a bit of detail. Right?"
They moved on to other business.
The process of arrests went on with seeming inevitability, with frequent reunions in the Crumlin and Long Kesh. The Provisionals" intelligence officer who should have seen the report of that conversation between the army Brigadier and the policeman overheard at their hotel lunch was taken into custody before the message reached him. When there was an arrest those still in the field shifted round their weapons, explosives, equipment and files, lest their former colleague should crack under interrogation and reveal the hiding places.
That message, closely written on two sheets of notepaper, remained in a safe house in the communication chain while the Third Battalian worked round to an appointment for the vacant position. The clogging in the system lasted more than a week, and when the new man came to sort through the backlog he had a table covered widi reports and doc.u.ments to wade through. He was into his second day before he got to the paper written by the waiter.
He was sharp enough to sense immediately the importance of what was in front of him. He read it carefully.
The man with the thin moustache looked like an army man, and from the kitchens I could see the big Ford out in the car park with the uniformed escort sitting there in the front. The other one was talking when the music stopped. He was a policeman, I think. That"s when I heard him say, "Special operator on the ground without telling." He must have realized I was standing there, and he just stopped and didn"t say anything else until I was right away from him. He looked very bothered...
That was the guts of the message. The intelligence officer had read it once, gone slightly beyond and then rapidly coursed his eyes back over it. He could imagine the situation. Military and police, not taken in on the act, and feeding their b.l.o.o.d.y faces, weeping on each other"s shoulders, stuffing the food in far away from the "Careless Talk Costs Lives" bit. It was the sort of place you"d expect to hear a major indiscretion uttered, when they couldn"t keep their big mouths shut. That was why the waiter had been introduced on to the staff of the hotel.
Undercover men working for the army or D16 were the particular dislike of the Provisionals. They believed there was a much greater secret intelligence and surveillance operation against them than in fact existed. Their traditional hatred was for the plain-clothes army squads who cruised at night round the back streets of the ghettos in unmarked cars, looking for the top men in the movement. But this had a more important ring about it to the intelligence officer than squaddies out in jeans and sweaters and armed. If a Brigadier and top copper were not in on the act, and thought they ought to have been, it meant first it was top secret, and second that they considered it important enough for them to have been briefed. Something of critical value to those English swine, so sensitive that top-ranking men had been left out in the cold.
Farther down the waiter"s report was a paragraph explaining that the tone of the exchange across the lunch table had been critical.
The officer wrote a three-line covering note on a separate piece of paper, clipped it to the original report and sealed it in a plain brown envelope. A courier would take it that night to the next man up the chain, someone on the Brigade staff.
Twenty-two hours later he met Seamus Duffryn for the first time. Duffryn had originally intended that his message should go by hand, but the combination of the new appointment and the nagging worry about this man, Harry McEvoy, had led to the direct meeting, risky as it was.
They met in a pub in the heart of the broken-up and ravaged triangle of the Lower Falls. Taking their pints of beer with them, Duffryn led the other to a corner table. With their heads huddled together he spoke of the stranger that had come to the guest house farther up the Falls. Looking for work. Said he"d been away a long time. Had this strange accent that was noted by those when he first came, but which his latest reports said was not so p.r.o.nounced. When Dufiryn mentioned the accent, the Battalion officer looked at him intrigued, and the junior man explained the apparent lapses in speech. Duffryn said that his men who followed McEvoy and heard him talk in the pubs, said the oddness about the speech was something very much of the past. Ironed out, muttered Duffryn. He had come to the end of his patience on the matter and wanted a decision. Either the man should be cleared or there would have to be authorization for more surveillance with all its problems of manpower. Duffryn himself had personally tried to observe McEvoy by spending three successive evenings in the pub on the corner where it was reported that the stranger came to drink, but he"d stayed alone those evenings, and the man he wanted to see had not shown himself.
Tm not that sure what it means," said the man from Battalion. "You never know with these things. It could mean he"s a man put in to infiltrate us. It could be nothing. It counts against the b.u.g.g.e.r that his accent is improving. Would do, wouldn"t it? With each day he spends here, it would improve. There"s something else we have that indicated a few days ago that they could have put an undercover man in. He"ll be a big b.l.o.o.d.y fish if it"s right. He"ll be a b.l.o.o.d.y whale if what we think about him is right."
He hesitated as to whether he should bring the young Duffryn further into the web of reports and information that was forming in his mind. He dismissed it. The golden rule of the movement was "need to know". Duffryn needed to know no more than he already knew.
"That"s enough. From now on--and this is important--and I want it b.l.o.o.d.y well obeyed to the letter--no more following this McEvoy. Let him ride on his own a bit. I don"t want the b.u.g.g.e.r flushed before we"re ready for him. We"ll just leave him alone for a bit, and if we have to we"ll move when it"s all nice and relaxed. I want it taken gently, very gently, you see? Just log him in and out of the guest house, and that"s the lot."
Harry had not been aware of the watchers before they were called off, and therefore had no idea that he had thrown off a trail when he had gone through the city centre shopping crowds to a telephone kiosk to call Davidson. On the Friday night when he had been in the city nearly three weeks he came down past the cemetery towards Broadway with his wage packet in his hip pocket, and the knowledge that there seemed to be no sign of suspicion towards him from the men he was working with. He had a hired car booked for Sat.u.r.day for his date with Josephine.
There was a Sinn Fein meeting that Friday night up on the junction of the Falls, and after he"d had his tea Harry wandered up to listen to the speeches. There were some familiar faces on the lorry that was being used as a speaker"s platform. The oratory was simple and effective and the message brutally clear. Amongst the committed there would be no easing in the struggle, the war would go on till the British were gone. The crimes of the British army, the Stormont administration and the Free State government were catalogued, but the crowd of three or four hundred seemed lukewarm to it all. They"d been listening to this stuff for five years or so now, Harry reflected. He"d be a b.l.o.o.d.y good orator to give them something new at this stage. The army stayed away and after hearing the first four speeches Harry left. He"d clapped with the rest, and cheered by consensus, but no one spoke to him. He was just there, ignored. G.o.d, how do you get into this b.l.o.o.d.y mob? How does it all happen like Davidson said, in that magic three weeks? It"ll take months, till the face is known and the background and every other b.l.o.o.d.y thing.
A long haul. He wouldn"t call Davidson this weekend. Nothing to say. Those b.u.g.g.e.rs had sent him here, they could sit and stew for a bit and wonder what was going on. The trail of the man he sought was well chilled now. It would be very slow, and his own survival would take some thinking about. But there"d be no coming out, no trotting up to Aldergrove. One-way to Heathrow please, my nerve"s gone and so has that of the controller, thank you very much.
No way. You stay in for the whole way, Harry boy.
THIRTEEN.
She was waiting at the lights at the junction of Grosvenor and the Falls when he pulled up in the hired Cortina. Tall in the brittle sunlight, her hair blown round her face, and shivering in the mock sheepskin coat over the sweaters and jeans he"d told her to wear.
"Come on, get that door open. I"m frozen out here." A bit distant, perhaps too off-hand, but not the clamouring alarm bells Harry had steeled himself to face.
He was laughing as he reached across the pa.s.senger seat and unlocked the near-side door, and pushed the handle across to open it. She came inside, a bundle of coat and cold air, stealing the warmth he had built up since he had collected the car.
"All right then, sunshine?" He leaned over to kiss her, but she turned her head away presenting her cheek for what he hadn"t intended to be the brotherly peck they ended up with.
"Enough of that. Where are we going?" she said. She straightened her back in the seat, and began to fasten her seat belt.
"You said you wanted some country. Somewhere we can stretch ourselves a bit, walk around. Where do you suggest?"
"Let"s off to the Sperrins. About an hour down the Derry and Dungiven road. That"s wild country, real Ulster stock. You"ve seen the slogans on the Proddy walls before the troubles started, "We will not exchange the blue skies of Ulster for the grey mists of the Republic," well, the blue skies are over the Sperrins."
"Well, if it"s okay for the Prods it"ll do for us second-cla.s.s Micks."
"I was brought up down there. My Dad had a bit of land. Not much but enough for a living. It"s a hard living down there. It"s yourself and that"s all, to do the work. We cut peat down there and had some cows and sheep. Stupid b.l.o.o.d.y creatures. We were always losing the little b.u.g.g.e.rs. There was no mains, no gas, no electricity, no water when I was born. He"s dead, now, the old man, and my Mam came to Belfast."
"Were you involved at all, with the politics? Was the old man?"
"Not at all. Not a flicker. Most of the farmers round were Prods but that didn"t make much difference. The market was sectarian", as they"d say these days. Different schools, different dances. I couldn"t walk out with Prod boys when I lived at home. But that"s years back now. There was no politics down there, just hard work."
He drove slowly out of town, on to the M2 motorway which runs within minutes into the open countryside, leaving the city with its smoke and its gibbet-like cranes and its grey slate roofs away behind the Black Mountain that dominates the south of the city. It was the first time Harry had seen the fields and hedgerows, farms and cottages since he came in on the airport bus. The starkness of the contrast staggered him. It was near-impossible to believe that this was a country ravaged by what some called civil war. For a moment the impressions were tarnished by the rock-filled petrol drums outside a pub, but that was a flash of the eye, near-subliminal, and then was gone in favour of the hills and the green of well-gra.s.sed winter fields.
Josephine slept in her seat, head back against the column dividing the front and rear doors, her seat belt like some pompous decoration strapped across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Harry let his eyes stray from the endless, empty road to her.
"just follow the Derry road, and wake me up when we get to the top of the Glenshane," she"d said.
The road slipped economically through the countryside till Harry reached Toome, where the Bann came through, high and flooded from the winter rain, forcing its strength against the medieval eel trapping cages that were the life-blood of the town. He slowed almost to a halt as he gingerly took the car over the ramps set across the road in front of the small, whitewashed police station. Yards of bright corrugated iron sheeting and mounds of sandbags surrounded the buildings. It looked deserted. No bulbs showing at the top. After Toome he began to pick up speed. The road was straight again, and there was no other traffic. In front was the long climb up to Glenshane in the heart of the Sperrins. The rain gathered on the windscreen, horizontal when it came but light and occasional.
As he came to the hills that divided the Protestant farmlands of the Ulster hinterland from Catholic Dungiven and Derry, Harry spotted a damp, out-of-season picnic site on his right, and pulled into the car park. There was a sign marking the Pa.s.s and its alt.i.tude, a thousand feet above sea level. He stopped and shook Josephine"s shoulder.
"Not so much of the blue skies and the promised land here. Looks more like it"s going to tip down," he said.
"Doesn"t matter. Come on, Mr McEvoy, we"re going to do some walking and talking. Walking first. Up there." She pointed far out to the right of the road where the hill"s squat summit merged towards the dark clouds.
"It"s a h.e.l.l of a way," he said, pulling on a heavy anorak.
"Won"t do you any harm. Come on."
She led the way across the road and then up the bank and through the gap in the cheap wire fence where a succession of walkers had made a way.
Farther on there was a path of sorts to the top of the hill, made by the peat cutters at first and then carried on by the rabbits and the sheep. The wind picked up from the open ground and surged against them. Josephine had pushed her arm through the crook of his elbow and walked in step half a pace behind him, using him part as shelter and part as battering ram as they forced their way forward into the near gale. High above, a buzzard with an awesome dignity allowed itself to be carried on the thrusts and flows of the currents. Its huge wings moved with only a minimum of effort, holding position one hundred and fifty feet or so above the tiny runs fashioned by the creatures the bird lived off. The wind stung across Harry"s face, pulling his hair back over his ears and slashing at his nose and eyes.
"I haven"t been anywhere in a wind like this in years," he shouted across the few inches that separated them.
No reply. Just the wind hitting and buffeting against him.
"I said I haven"t been in a wind like this in years. It"s marvellous."
She rose on her toes, so that her mouth was in under his ear.
"Wasn"t it like this at sea, sometimes? Weren"t there any gales and things all those years you were at sea?"
The cutting edge of it chopped into him. Retreat. Back out.
"That was different. It"s always different, sea wind, not like this."
Poor. Stupid. Not good and not convincing. He felt the tightening deep in his b.a.l.l.s as he went on against the wind. Up a cul-de-sac and got cornered. Slackness. The elementary error. He flashed a look down and behind to where her head nestled into his coat. He contorted his head to look into her eyes, and saw what he expected. Quizzical, half-confused, half-amused: she had spotted it. The inconsistency that he"d known the moment he"d uttered it. Phrase by phrase he went over it in his mind, seeking to undo the mistake, and evaluate its damage. The second time he"d said it, that was when she would have been sure. The first time, not certain. The second time, certain. He"d semaph.o.r.ed it then.
There were no more words as they went on to the summit. The low jigsaw of clouds scudded above them as they clung together against the power of the gale. In spite of the heaviness of the cloud there was a clarity to the light of the day. The horizon was huge. Mountains to the north and south of them, the road leading back into the civilization of the hill farms to east and west.
A few yards beyond the cairn of stones that marked the hill top the rain running down over the years had sliced out a gully. They slid down into it, pushing against the sandy earth till they were at last sheltered. For a long time she stayed buried in his coat, pressed against his chest with only her black tossed hair for him to see. He felt the warmth from her seeping through the layers of clothes. For Harry it was a moment of beauty and isolation and complete tenderness with the girl. She broke it suddenly, crudely and fast.
"You slipped up a bit there, Harry boy. Didn"t you? Not what I"d have expected from you."
Her face was still away from his. He couldn"t see into her eyes. It hit home. He said nothing.
"A bit mixed up then, weren"t you, Harry? Your story was, anyway. Merchant seaman who was never in a storm like they have in the Sperrins? A bit of a c.o.c.k-up, Harry."
She"d relaxed in her voice now. Easy. In her stride. Matter-of fact.
"Harry," and she twisted under him to turn into his face and look at him. Big eyes, mocking and piercing at the same time, and staring at him. "I"m saying you made something of a slip-up there. Not the first that you"ve had. But a good old b.a.l.l.s-up, a right big one. Harry, it"s a great b.l.o.o.d.y lie you"re living. Right?"
He willed her now to let it go. Don"t take it to the brink where explanation or action is necessary. Leave the loophole for the shrug and the open door.
In the town his inclination would have been to kill her, close his fingers on that white, long throat, remove the threat that jeopardized his operation. But on the mountain it was different. On the moorland of the upper hills, still crouched in the gouged-out hollow, and the wind singing its high note above and around them, it seemed to Harry ridiculous and time-wasting to deny what she had said. It wasn"t in his orders to go strangling girls. That was logical as the solution, but not here. Out of context.
"It"s a bad place this for strangers these days, Harry. It would be rather worse if the boyos find your story isn"t quite so pat as it should be. If they find you"re rather more of a handful than they took you for, then it could be a very bad place. We"re not all stupid here, you know. I"m not stupid. It didn"t take the world to put eight and eight together after Sat.u.r.day night, or ten and ten, or whatever you thought too much for an "eejit" Mick girl who"s an easy lay. It wasn"t much I said to you. Just a little bit of chat. But there"s half che British army round the wee girl"s house for Sunday lunch. What did they find to talk to her about? G.o.d knows. Do you know, Harry? It was enough for the poor wee b.i.t.c.h to hang herself, G.o.d rest her. I mean, you weren"t exactly covering your tracks, were you, Harry?"
The eyes that drove into him were still bright and relaxed, looking for his reaction. As he listened she grew in strength and boldness. She would close for the kill. She would make the point. Sure of her ground, she began to goad him.
"There had to be something odd about you. Obvious. No family. But you come right back into the centre of Belfast. But you"ve no friends. No one who knows you. People might have gone to a quiet place on the outskirts if they just wanted to come back and work. You"ve not come to fight, not for the Provos. They don"t go to war from a guest house. The voice worried me, till Theresa died. I thought about it and worked it out then. The accent. It"s good now. Very polished. You"re quite Belfast, but you didn"t use to be. So I don"t reckon your chances, Harry, not when the Provos get a hold of you. There is some who can talk their way out of it, but I don"t reckon you"ve a chance. Not unless you run."
Harry knew he should kill her. He looked fascinated at the soft skin, and the delicate line that searched down on either side of the little mound in her throat, saw the suspicion of a vein beneath the gentle surface. But there was no fear there, no terror in her face, no expectation of death.
They"d chosen Harry as a hard man, as a professional, able to do what was necessary, to go to the limits for his own survival. He could kill a man either in heat or from cold logic, and if the man"s eyes betrayed his fear that would make it easier, remove the complications.
The endless strands of black hair were playing across her face, taken past her eyes, encircling her mouth ... and the warmth of her body close to him...
There had not been women who had to die in Aden. He was now in an area beyond his experience. Harry had heard it said once that to kill in close combat you had to act instinctively, there were no second chances, the will to cause death evaporates quickly, and does not come again except to the psychopath.
His hands were numbed and useless in the big gloves, and the moment had pa.s.sed. He looked out on to the moorlands where the spears of sunlight played down from the cloud gaps. He had hesitated, and that would be enough. The buzzard still hovered high above him, and she was still talking.
She was tall, but not strong, he thought. She wouldn"t be able to fight him off. He could kill her now. While she yapped on. It would be a long time before they found her. Could be the spring. She"d struggle a bit but she had no chance. But she knew he wouldn"t. He could see that. There was no fear in her. The moment had gone earlier when he might have put his hands to her. It was gone now.
"If I went to the bookies more often," she went on, Td say you were a real slow horse. I"d say not to put any money on you reaching the finish. I mean it, Harry. I"m not just trying to frighten you, or anything daft. That"s the way it is. If I was in your shoes I"d be carrying spare knickers in my pocket. Well, don"t just sit there. Say something, Harry."
"There"s not much to say, is there? What would you like to hear me say? If you go off to Portadown and see people there, they"ll tell you who I am. Yes, I"ve been away a long time. That"s why the accent was strange. I"m acclimatized. The girl--I can"t explain that. How could I? I"ve no idea about it."
He could not have explained why he had gone back on the resolution he"d made so few minutes earlier not to get involved in a charade of deception. There was no conviction, no belief, and he communicated it to the girl.
"b.a.l.l.s," she said. She smiled at him and turned away to put her head back into the roughness of his coat. "That won"t do, Harry. I don"t believe you, neither do you. You"re not a good enough liar. Whoever recruited you, and for whatever, did a poor job there."
"Let it go, then. Forget it, drop it." Pathetic. Was that all he had to say to the girl?
"Who are you, Harry? What did you come here for? When you touted on young Theresa it was after I mentioned the man that did the killing in London. Is that why you"re here? You"re not just run of-the-mill intelligence. There"s more than that, I hope. I"d want to think my feller was a wee bit special. What"s the handle? The Man who Tracked the Most Wanted Man in Britain?" She snorted with amus.e.m.e.nt.
"But seriously, Harry, is that what you are? A little bit special? The Danby killing?"
She gave him time now. He was not ready. As an afterthought she said, "You don"t have to worry, you know. I won"t split on you or anything like that. It"s the national characteristic ... the Ulster Catholics, we don"t inform. But they don"t take well to spies here, Harry. If they find you, G.o.d help you. And you"ll need him."
Harry started to move.
"There"s not very much to say. What do you expect me to say? Confess, dramatic revelations? Shout you down? Walk away and leave you? Strangle you? What the h.e.l.l do you want me to say?"
He got up out of the ditch and moved back towards the summit of the hill, where the wind took him and fought him, coming in crude rushes that caused him to hesitate and sometimes give ground. The rain had intensified while they had been in the ditch and now it lashed across his body. He looked only at his feet, head hunched forward, with his anorak hood up as he stumbled across the gorse and the heather, slipping and falling because he would not give the attention to the ground in front of him. He"d gone a hundred and fifty yards from her when she caught him and thrust her arm into his. They went together down the hill to the car hurrying along the worn-out shace of the path.
They ran the last few yards to the car. She stood shaking by the pa.s.senger door as he looked for the keys. It was raining hard now and once they were inside he switched on the heaters. The water ran down the windows in wide streams, and they were as coc.o.o.ned and private as they had been on the hill.
"What are you going to do if you find him?" she said.
"Are we serious now, or sparring still?"
"Serious now. Really serious. What will you do?"
Til kill him. Take him out. He"s not for capturing. We pretend he is, and they mount the thing on that a.s.sumption. But he"s dead if we get close enough to him."
"Just like that."
"Not just like that. I"ve got to find him first. I thought we had him after the dance. It hasn"t moved from there. Up a bit of a blind alley now. Perhaps that"s just talk about killing him. It should happen ihat way, but likely it won"t. He"ll be picked up, and it"ll have sod all to do with me."
"Is that what you came for? Because a man kills a politico in England, then they send for you, and you come over here?"
"That"s what I came for."
"There"s a thousand and more have died here since it all started. And you come because of one of them. He was ... wait for it, I"m working it out ... yes, he was a tenth of one per cent of all the people that have died here. That"s not a bad statistic, is it? A tenth of a per cent. He wasn"t mourned here, you know. No one gave a d.a.m.n. Pompous b.u.g.g.e.r. Always on the box telling us how well he was doing flushing out the gunmen from off our backs. Why was he so special? They didn"t send the big team over when they shot the Senator in Strabane, or the UDR man who had all the land down the road in Derry. So why have you come?"
"They put the glove down, didn"t they? That"s what shooting Danby was about. To make us react and see how effectively we would counter-attack. They killed him as a test of strength. We have to get the man and the team that did it. Either we do, or they"ve won. That"s the game."