She bent down and picked it up. It was heavy, c.u.mbersome in her small hand. Her index finger had to strain forward to find by feel the metal coldness of the trigger arm. She didn"t look at the gun, or check it as a man used to handling firearms would have done. Those people at their doors who saw themselves in line with her and Harry backed away, seeking the safety of their front doors, but the uninvolved stayed to see what would happen.
Eighteen inches from his head a door slammed, its noise breaking into Harry"s thought, diverting his attention from his sole occupation of taking himself beyond the pain of Ypres Avenue, and then he heard the brush of her feet, scurrying closer to him. She walked on past him and then spun round, blocking his way till his face was close to her legs. Harry subsided backwards, his hand still holding his body up, but his weight down on his hips. He could see all of her from there, not just the legs and the feet, but her coat that was old and tired, her face once pretty and now hideous from the grief and shock of the last few minutes, and her short narrow arm, and the tight, pale-skinned clenched fist. And the revolver, too big for her, grotesque. The barrel of the gun was steady, so were her eyes, nothing distracting her from the man near p.r.o.ne in front of her.
She said, "You didn"t have to shoot my man. What was Billy to you? What did it matter to you, what happened to him? He was finished, broken, and you cut him down like a rat in the gutter. And you talk about rules and challenges. What rule was that, to kill Billy, hurt and unarmed?"
There was no fear in Harry now. It had all evaporated a long time back. The words came hard to him. "You know why he died, what he did. He was against us. Each was determined to destroy the other. He understood that."
"You never knew anything of him--what sort of man he was, how good he was to us. And yet you come to our street, and shoot him down, defenceless."
Harry struggled to speak again to her. So difficult, so exhausting, this twisted, shattered face above him, not understanding the world of her man, not understanding the war that was being fought out on her own streets. It was all so simple, so easy, but Harry felt the waves of tiredness pouring over him, and no longer had the strength to reason with the woman.
She went on: "You think we"re all animals over here. But what"s it to you if Danby gets killed, or a soldier, or a policeman, what"s it to you, over from England? Do you think you"re any better than our people?"
Harry stayed silent a long time as he struggled to concentrate his thoughts. "He deserved to die. He was an evil little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He"s better off..."
The fingers wrenched at the trigger. The noise mingled with her sobs as Harry rolled slowly and with precision over on to his back. At the top of Ypres Avenue the first two Saracens were arriving.
The soldiers looked over the two bodies, made the decision that both were beyond medical help, and left them where they had fallen. Both Harry Brown and Billy Downs were in the awkward, sack-like form that the troops could recognize as death. Downs lay a few feet from the curb, out in the road. The blood had run from him to create a lake, dammed from escaping farther by the debris of the gutter. His wife was beside him again, and still holding the revolver loosely and without interest. The sergeant of the platoon walked towards her and, with nervousness showing in his voice, asked her to hand over the gun. She opened her fingers and it clattered noisily on the road. When the soldier spoke again to her there was no reply. She stood, quite still, swamped by her emotions.
Harry was sprawled face up close to the wall of a house, his head beneath the front room window from which a face, old but without the softness of compa.s.sion, looked down on him. The women of the street edged their way closer to Billy Downs"s wife, the men gathered in clumps, leaving the business of comforting and abusing to their women.
In their shawls and head scarves and short skirts they shouted at the officer who came with the platoon. "He"s one of yours. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d dead over there."
"He"s a f.u.c.king Englishman."
"Shot a man without a gun."
"SAS killer squads."
"Killed an unarmed man. In front of his wife, and he never in trouble before."
The crescendo gathered round the young man. In a few moments his Company commander and Battalion commander would be there, and he would be spared, but till then he would take the brunt of their fury. Faced with the accusation that Harry was one of theirs the soldiers looked curiously at the body of the big man. They knew a certain amount about the undercover operations of the army, particularly the Mobile Reconnaissance Force (MRF), but to the men in uniform it was a different and basically distasteful world. The soldiers had their rules and regulations to abide by. The book was near to G.o.d.
In exasperation the lieutenant shouted above the babble.
"Well, if you say the chap who shot Downs is one of ours, who shot him then?" He"d phrased it clumsily, said it in anger and expected no answer.
The chorus came back, gloating, satisfied. "The Provies got him.
A Provie gunman. One shot. From the bottom of the street."
The far end of the street down the hill was deserted, dominated only by the ma.s.sive red-brick wall and grey-slate roof of the old mill. The lieutenant looked up at it, and winced.
"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," he said.
His sergeant who had been examining Harry came over to him. "The chap on the pavement, sir. He"s been hit twice. First I would say was high velocity, there is an entry and exit wound and a big blood marker, looks as if he tried to get away, you can follow the trail, about fifteen yards to where he is now. He was shot again then, right in the head, no exit, and it must have been a hand gun or something, that killed him."
"Thank you, sergeant. The woman who was holding the pistol, you"d better put her in the Saracen. Go easy with her, she"s in shock, and I don"t want a riot here."
"It"s just as we found it, as you requested," they told Frost when he arrived.
The Battalion commander briefed him. "The chap by the wall shoots Downs and then is shot himself. I"m not a hundred per cent sure where the second shot comes from. Still waiting for all the reports. Indications are that it"s my OP in the mill roof. We"re rather quiet about that position, but I haven"t spoken to the men up there yet. Seems they wounded the fellow, then Downs"s wife, she"s in the Saracen now, came in and finished him off."
There was no reaction on Frost"s face. His eyes travelled round the street taking in the faces and the scene. He walked over from one body to another, his bodyguards hovering at each shoulder. He recognized Harry from the photograph that had been sent the previous evening from England. It should never have worked, but it had. And now right at the end was all loused up. Poor devil.
He paused where Downs lay, looking into the profile of the face and running a check against the picture they"d issued. We"d have been lucky to spot him from that, the colonel thought, not really good enough, something to be learned from that. He went past the open door of the Saracen. Mrs Downs sat huddled deep in the shadow of the interior. She sat totally still staring at the armour plated sides, festooned with pick axes, CS gas-grenade canisters, ammunition boxes. Two soldiers guarded her.
"It"s not for general release," he said to the Battalion commander, "but you"ll hear about it soon enough anyway. The Prime Minister ordered a special man put in, with the sole job of finding Danby"s killer, right? The Cabinet Minister shot in London, what is it? six or so weeks ago. Downs was the a.s.sa.s.sin. By something of a miracle, and a quite unaccountable amount of good luck, the agent tracked him down. That"s not a generous a.s.sessment, but that"s how I evaluate it. He tracked him and shot him dead about fifteen minutes ago. I think your OP has just shot the Prime Minister"s man."
Frost knew how to play his moment. He stopped there, let it sink, then went on.
"We"ll deflect it as much as we can, but I suggest you leave it to Lisburn to make the statements. It may be some consolation to you, but I didn"t know much about the agent either. He wasn"t working to me. I wouldn"t worry about the role of the OP in all this."
"I wasn"t worrying----"
Frost cut across him.
"It"s happened before, it"ll happen again. Marines shot their own crowd in the New Lodge. RUG have shot our people, we"ve killed theirs. Bound to happen."
The other man considered. They stood alone in the street away from the people of Ypres Avenue, with the bodyguards and troops giving them room to talk. He remembered now the soldier they had sent to Berlin; what he had seen in the green-topped social club less than three hundred yards from where they stood. There was nothing to say, nothing that would help the p.r.o.ne figure by the wall, nothing that would achieve anything beyond unnecessary involvement. Businesslike, brisk as always, he said to Frost: "Is there any reason for us not to clean this lot up now? Our photographer has done his stuff, and the RUC people won"t want to come in here."
"No reason at all. Get it out of the way before the press and cameras start showing up."
"Will there be much aggro, the fact that this fellow Downs wasn"t armed when he was killed?"
"I wouldn"t have thought so," said Frost, "there isn"t usually when we get one of the real ones. They seem to accept that, part of the game. Right at the beginning there used to be mayhem. But they"ve become tired of saying it. They"re all unarmed men--that"s the charm. Doesn"t work them up any more. Be interesting to see what sort of show he gets in the death notices in the press tomorrow morning. We"ll see how highly they regarded him then. A big man can get three or four columns. Be interesting. Come from the Brigade command, their Battalions, Companies and a good number from the Kesh. Costs them a fortune--and keeps the papers going." They walked together back towards Frost"s Land-Rover.
Frost was gone by the time Rennie was brought to Ypres Avenue in a Saracen from Battalion headquarters. He climbed gingerly out of the protection of the personnel carrier and jumped down on to the road. First time in Ardoyne for sixteen months. The Special Branch had no love for parading their faces on the streets of the Provisional heartland. He was conspicuous, he knew that. Anyone in civilian clothes who needed five soldiers and a three-ton armoured car to take him in and out would attract attention. He was conscious of the eyes at the doors, blank and subdued but watching him.
"Are the bodies still here?" he asked the Battalion commander.
"We"ve shifted them, I"m afraid. My people have taken the necessary pictures. There"s not much to see now. That"s where Downs died, the blood on the road. The other fellow, McEvoy, he was shot on the pavement by number twenty-nine. There"s a small blood pool there."
"Who"s McEvoy?" said the detective.
"I fancy you"ll hear of him from your own office. But he"s a rather sensitive creature right now. One of ours, they tell me. Trailed Downs back here and shot him. I"m still waiting for the details of the rest. Looks a bit black, though. I think one of my OPs shot him. McEvoy was waving a gun round, in civilian clothes. It"s pretty definite."
He had no need to ask about Downs. The wild, staring face that had confronted him fourteen hours earlier across the width of his bright living-room remained vivid in his mind.
But Downs was dead now. Rennie thanked the officer and hurried back to the Saracen.
The press statement from Lisburn was short and took something more than two hours to prepare. It was the result of a series of compromises but owed most of its drafting to the civilian deputy head of the army public relations department who had recently transferred from the Treasury, and had experience of the art of communique writing.
Billy Downs, a known IRA gunman, was shot dead at 09.10 hours in Ypres Avenue where he lived. He was involved in an exchange of shots with a member of the security forces, an officer engaged in plain-clothes surveillance duties. The officer, who will not be named till his next of kin have been informed, was. .h.i.t by a single shot in the chest and died before medical treatment reached him. Downs was high on the army"s wanted list in Northern Ireland, and was also wanted in London for questioning by detectives investigating the murder of Mr Henry Danby.
The main object was to keep it short, pack it with information and deflect the press away from the sensitive bit. There was, he said when he had finished typing it, more than enough for the scribes to bite on without them needing to go digging round any more.
A solitary journalist moved towards the delicate area that first day, but without knowing it, was easily put off.
"Then this man Downs was carrying a gun?" he asked the duty press officer.
"Obviously, old man, it says in our statement that there was an exchange of shots. Have to be armed, wouldn"t he?"
There were no other questions to be asked. Amongst the resident reporters in McGlade"s pub that night interest was warm but not exceptional, and the treatment of the story was straight and factual.
Locally it was denied that Downs had been armed, and three hours of rock-throwing followed the news bulletin that contained the army statement. By then it had started to rain.
TWENTY.
The Prime Minister learned the news at lunchtime. The message had been framed by the Under Secretary, Ministry of Defence, with an eye to the political master"s taste, and the order in which he would read of the events in Ypres Avenue had been carefully thought out. First, Billy Downs identified as the killer of Henry Danby had been shot dead. Second, he had been identified by the agent specifically sent to Northern Ireland by the Prime Minister. Third, and unfortunately, the agent had been shot in the chest during the incident and had died.
As he read the message that the aide gave him his attentive smile had switched to a frown of public concern, studied by the bankers round the table with him in the first-floor salon of No. 10. They looked for a clue as to the contents and information that was important enough to intercede in discussions on the progress of the floating pound, albeit the end of the discussions. The Prime Minister noted their antic.i.p.ation and was anxious to satisfy it.
"Just on a final note, gentlemen." He refolded the typewritten sheet. "You will all be reading it in the papers tomorrow morning, but you might be interested to hear that we have caught and killed the man that a.s.sa.s.sinated Henry Danby. He was shot in Belfast this morning after being hunted down as part of a special investigation that was launched from this building a few hours after our colleague was murdered."
There was a murmur of applause round the table and a banging of the palms of hands on the paper-strewn mahogany surface.
"But you will be sorry to hear, as I am, that the man we sent to find this terrorist was himself killed in the shooting exchange. He"d been operating under cover there for some weeks, and obviously carried out a difficult task extremely successfully and with great bravery. The whole concept of this intelligence operation really goes back to the last war. My family were involved in Special Operations --you know, the crowd that put agents into the occupied countries. I had a h.e.l.l of a job getting the military and police to agree to it. But it just shows, you sometimes need a fresh approach at these things. Perhaps we should get that general over there, who always seems to be wanting more troops, to have a try at banking and running a budget!"
There was general and polite laughter.
"He"ll get a medal, won"t he? The man you sent over there? They look after the families and all that sort of thing, I suppose?" the elegantly dressed deputy chairman of the Bank of England spoke.
"Oh, I"m sure he will. Well, I think we can adjourn now. Perhaps you would care to join me for a drink. I have a luncheon, but I"m not off to that till I"ve had a drop of something."
Later in the day he called the Under Secretary to express his appreciation of the way the operation had been handled.
"It"ll get a good show in the papers, I trust," said the Prime Minister. "We ought to blow our own trumpets a bit when we chalk one up."
"I don"t think there will be too much of that, sir." The civil servant replied decisively. "MOD have put out a short statement only. I think their feeling is that undercover is bad news in Ulster, and that apart from anything else it was a d.a.m.n close thing whether our man got theirs first or vice versa. They"re playing it rather low key I"m afraid, sir."
"As you like. Though I sometimes feel we don"t give ourselves the pat on the back we deserve. I"ll concede that. One more thing. The man we sent over there, I"d like a medal for him now it"s over. What sort of chap is he, by the way?"
"I"ll see to that. He already had an ME from Aden. We could make it a bar to that, but perhaps that"s a bit on the short side. I personally would favour the OBE. The George Cross is a bit more than we usually go for in these circ.u.mstances, and it would obviously provoke a deal of talk. You asked what sort of chap. Pretty straightforward, not too bright. Dedicated, conscientious, and a lot of guts. He was the right man."
The Prime Minister thanked him and rang off. He hurried from his study to the Humber waiting outside the front door of the official residence. He was late for the House.
The Army Council of the Provisional IRA, the top planning wing of the military side of the movement, had noted the killing of Downs. The Chief of Staff had received a letter from the Brigade commander in Belfast relaying the collapse of their man"s morale and his failure in the last two missions a.s.signed to him.
The two members of the Council who had been asked to report on the practicality and desirability of further a.s.sa.s.sinations in the political arena, particularly the plan involving the British Prime Minister, delivered their a.s.sessment at the first meeting of all members after the Ardoyne shootout.
They advised against the continuation of attacks on the style of the Danby a.s.sa.s.sination. It had, they said, been disastrous for fundraising in the United States: the picture of Mrs Danby and her children at the funeral had been flashed across the Atlantic and coast to coast by the wire syndication services. The Provisionals" supporters in the States reported that November"s fund-raising and on into December would show a marked drop. They said that if there were a repeat or a stepping-up of the tactics the results could prove fatal. And money was always a key factor for the movement: RPG7s and their rockets did not come cheap, not from Czechoslovakia or Libya nor from anywhere else.
The Chief of Staff summed up that in the foreseeable future they would not consider a repet.i.tion of the Danby attack, but he finished: "I still defend the attack we carried out against Danby. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d deserved to go. He was a straight, legitimate target, and it was well done, well carried out. They acknowledge that on their side, too. There"s been no trumpeting on their side even though they"ve shot our lad. They"ve been keeping their heads down for more than a week."
There was criticism in the Council, that had not been voiced while Downs was still on the run, of the way the Chief of Staff had monopolized the planning of the attack. That would stand against him in the future, being one of the factors in his eventual replacement and consequent demotion.
Little of the credit for the killing of Billy Downs landed on David son"s desk. It jumped with no little agility to the posthumous name of Harry McEvoy via the desk of the Permanent Under Secretary.
Frost put in a long and detailed complaint about the amount of work the independent and, for so many days, unidentified agent had meant for the security services. He logged the man-hours involved in the search for Harry at the sc.r.a.p yards, and for the girl round the Clonard, and described them as wasteful and unprofessional. The control of the agent received scathing criticism, particularly the inability of London to reach their man when they wanted to draw him out. The paper concluded with the demand that such an operation should not be repeated during the following eighteen months that Frost would be on the staff of Northern Ireland headquarters.
The Under Secretary who had a copy of the doc.u.ment forwarded to him read it over the phone to Davidson. The response was predictably angry.
"He forgets it was over there and on his side of the fence that some big mouth let the cat out of the bag." Davidson already had the transcript of the interrogation of the stricken Duffryn. Still suffering from shock, the young man had given Special Branch all of his limited knowledge of the Provisional IRA and its affairs relating to Harry McEvoy.
"He forgets that our man got the fellow, not all their troops and police and Special Branch and SIB, and whatever they call themselves, SAS and the others." Davidson roared it into the receiver.
The Under Secretary soothed. "They have a point, you know. This bit how you couldn"t reach him, and he didn"t stay where he was supposed to, that was a bit irregular."
"The way they clod about over there, I"m not surprised he didn"t go to the house they fixed for him. The fact is we were set a mission, and carried it out, with success. Is that cause for a b.l.o.o.d.y inquest?"
Davidson had not been told how Harry had died. That was to be kept very close in London. "Need to Know" was being applied with rigour. The Under Secretary decided that if the PM wasn"t on the list then Davidson ranked no greater priority.
"Of course the mission was a success, but it"s put a great strain on inter-service and inter-department co-operation. The feeling at MOD is that a similar operation would not be mounted again. That means, I greatly regret to say, that the team we set up to direct our man will have to be dismantled." There was change in his voice as he delivered the hammer blow. It gave him no pleasure, but Davidson was so excitable that one really did have to spell it out in simple words and get it over with. He went on: "I did have hopes at one stage that if this went off without a hitch we might have had something a bit more regular going through Dorking. Make a habit out of the place. But that"s not to be."
Davidson could recognize the shut-out. The shouting was over. He asked, "And what now? What happens to me?"
"It"s recognised here, Davidson, that in fact you did very well on this one, particularly in the preparation of our man. You made him ready for a difficult and dangerous task, which was subsequently carried out with great expertise. You must not take all that Frost says too seriously. You"ve a great deal of experience to offer, and this showed in the way you got the fellow ready. I want you to think about it carefully, and not come to any hasty decision, but the feeling is that there"s a good opening abroad for you."
Here it comes, the old pay off, reckoned Davidson. What would they have for him--sewing blankets in the Aleutians?
"You"ve built up great experience of counter-terrorist operations." The civil servant kept going--don"t lose pace, don"t let him interrupt --"I won"t beat about the bush. Hong Kong wants a man who can advise them on the posture they should be in. Now don"t say anything hasty, the terms are first cla.s.s. You"d get more than I"m getting. Good allowances, good accommodation, and pretty much of a free hand. Probably live off expenses and bank the rest, I"d say. Don"t give me an answer now, but sleep on it and call me in the morning. Cheers, and we all think you did well."
The conversation was over.
Davidson ranged round the office, fumbling at his papers, diving into the drawers of the old wooden desk. He aimed a kick at the folded camp bed away in the corner, not used since the last Sunday night of his vigil. It took around an hour to find the will and inclination to exert some order to the anger of his feelings. The doc.u.ments and maps of the operation filled two briefcases. The rest was government property. Some b.l.o.o.d.y man could clear that up. Sort it out themselves.
He made a call to his wife. Didn"t speak much, just said he"d be home early, that he had some news, they would be going out for a meal. Then he locked up. He"d thought about Harry considerably since the shooting, and by the time he had reached his commuter train his rage had subsided and he brooded in a corner over the evening paper about the young man who had died in Belfast... sent away across the water with all that d.a.m.n-fool optimism coursing through him.
For days Mrs Duncan talked of little more than the strange events that preceded the death of her favourite lodger.
That the man who shared her bathroom, her front room and occasionally her kitchen, who lived in her best back bedroom should have turned out to be an English agent was rather too much for her to serve out in a single session of conversation. Her neighbours came several times to hear the full saga, culminating in the eyewitness description of the final shoot-out beyond the front garden gate.
She was to remain unaware of her full role in the death of Harry and Billy Downs. She never discovered that it was her chatter over the back fence about the strange accent of the man who lived under her roof that was to start the process that led, near-directly, to the gunfire in the street (interrupting her late Monday morning breakfast). She told those who came to listen to her that the thing she found the strangest was the confidence and authority with which Harry was holding the gun as he shot down Duffryn against the lamp post (a few feet from where she stood at the door). The cold methodical power with which that quiet man, a man she had grown to like but know little about, executed the youngster, had shaken her more than any of the other horrors of five years of living on the Falls.
The army had come mid-morning and backed a Saracen right up to the gate. Two men in civilian clothes had waited till the doors were opened and screened them from casual view from the pavements, then hurried into the house. They had searched Harry"s room slowly and carefully while soldiers hovered round the house and the street was sealed to all cars. When the men left it was with Harry"s possessions slung together into big transparent plastic bags.
Later that same day Josephine arrived to help with the teas. It was a wasted visit, as the guests had cried off. There were no takers for the lodging used by British intelligence. Some telephoned their apologies and listed excuses, others simply failed to turn up. Instead Josephine was told the events of the day. She listened without comment, and sat on a straight chair in the kitchen, sipping her tea, and smoking a cigarette. She was another who would never learn her full part in the affair. She went home that night believing her information alone had led the Provisionals to Harry. In the months ahead she was to stay distant from any connection with politics and with violence. Left alone by the IRA, she took to remaining at home in the evenings with her mother, shutting out the memories of the few hours she had spent with Harry, of how he had betrayed her, and of how she had betrayed him.
Billy Downs"s funeral was a bigger day than any in his young life. A huge and winding crocodile of relatives and friends marched behind his tricolour-draped coffin up the Falls Road. It had been the army"s intention to prevent the firing of the traditional IRA volley over the body, but the procession diverted into the back streets of the Lower Falls and before it emerged again the shots had been fired. Photographers were icily warned of the consequences of taking pictures.
Eight men from Ypres Avenue took the weight of the coffin on their shoulders for the first part of the journey to Milltown Cemetery. Grim, set faces, they marched at the head of a crowd estimated by police at around three thousand. Behind them came the disolay of force, youths and girls in semi-uniform, the green motif dominating, polished Sam Browns, shouted commands and the tramping of feet.