by Ted Bell
Mountbatten knew then that he could only stave off the inevitable for a very short time. He could only present a front of supreme confidence until that wretched hour when England would have little choice but to abandon her responsibilities and slip away.
It had come to this, he told his wife one night in bed: he could watch the Indian pot boil but he could not, ever, extinguish the flame beneath it.
Delhi was already gasping in the first searing blasts of the hot season. In the mornings, beyond the opened windows of his study, scorching breezes fried the dhak trees in the Mogul garden, the branches seeming to emit sparks in the sun’s phosphorescent white glare.
With each passing day, there was fresh evidence of increasing violence and bloodshed. Just five days after Mountbatten’s arrival, an incident between Moslems and Hindus took ninety-nine lives in Calcutta. More recently, a conflict in Bombay left forty-one mutilated bodies on the pavement. And, now, the violence flared unabated throughout the land.
Mountbatten, at his wit’s end, summoned India’s senior police officer to his study and asked a simple question.
“Tell me the truth, Chief Inspector. Are the Indian police capable of maintaining law and order in India or are they not?”
“No, Your Excellency, we can no longer maintain law and order.”
That night Lord Mountbatten put in a call to Buckingham Palace.
He told his King the time had come.
England must prepare at once to abandon India.
The cost in blood and treasure would be incalculable. The once great land that had been England’s shining pride of empire would be ripped asunder for all time. For the glorious British Empire that had been, this was the beginning of the end.
EIGHTEEN
COUNTY SLIGO, NORTHERN IRELAND, JUNE 1979
FIVE INVISIBLE MEN SAT AROUND the battered kitchen table staring at each other through eye slits in their black balaclavas. It was a bit odd, Smith thought, all of them including himself wearing these bloody ski masks, sharing a bottle of Irish whiskey. There was no heat in the house but for what was in that bottle, so unseasonably cold on this rainy June night that they all wore leather gloves.
The two gentlemen who had transported him from the IRA pub in Belfast out to the safe house in the County Sligo countryside had been sent outdoors with a bottle of Tullamore Dew and a pair of automatic rifles. Sentry duty. He doubted they’d be disturbed.
The safe house was an old place, long abandoned. There was a crooked sign over the door, faded and peeling. The Barking Dog Inn. The old building sat deep within a thick wood at a bend in the river. Despite the shutters, there was heavy black paper taped to all the windows in the small, plain kitchen and also in the parlor filled with musty-smelling furniture, the only two rooms he’d seen. A flight of stairs led up into total darkness.
“And yer name would be?” the largest of the four heavily armed men finally asked.
“Smith,” he said automatically. It was the only name he ever used now.
“Smith?”
“Yes. Just Smith.”
“Awright, Smith. And what might yer first name be, then?”
“Mister.”
“Mister, is it? He’s funny, ain’t he, lads? I need your full fuckin’ name, Mister Smith. We’re bleeding sticklers on that kind of detail, ye can well understand.”
“John,” he said, using the first name that popped into his mind. Red rage was blooming inside him and he wanted to kill this filthy, sarcastic bastard. But he needed him too badly. Hell, he needed all of them too badly.
“Bloody hell, John Smith. Where are you from, then?”
“Mutton Island. I doubt you’ve heard of it.”
“Desolate place, ain’t it? Hainted by banshees.”
“I need my privacy.”
“You’d better have a right good reason for being here,” one of the anonymous black woolen heads said, looking at him over the rim of his mug. “You ain’t leavin’ alive if ye don’t.”
He was mildly unnerved. Odd. Nothing unnerved him, ever. But finding oneself alone in an abandoned old house with four heavily armed killers seemed to have adverse effects. He found it quite interesting from a psychological point of view. He spoke, keeping his voice calm and deliberate.
“You kill people quite easily. So do I. Kindred spirits, that’s what we are.”
A silence ensued, in which his fate was clearly being privately debated by the four Provos. Finally, the big IRA soldier spoke.
“You have something for me?”
Smith withdrew a manila envelope, slid it across the table, and the IRA officer eagerly rifled through the contents. He studied a few pages very carefully and then, seemingly satisfied, looked up at the man with a hard eye.
“This is good intelligence, Mr. Smith, the genuine article it would seem. How did you happen to come by all this information?”
“I find people who have information and force them to tell me things by whatever means necessary.”
“British soldiers?”
“Certainly not. That would be suicide. My informants are those who are close to British soldiers. People with whom they share sometimes valuable information.”
“And how do you make these people tell you things?”
“Unbearable pain.”
“Cold bastard, ain’t he?”
“Are you Billy McKee, sir?” Smith asked.
“Might be. Might not. There’s many a Billy McKee in this godforsaken land of ours.”
“Let us assume you are. Then, Mr. McKee, I should think your colleague in Dublin would have explained the reasons behind my desire for this meeting. This British military intelligence of mine, an endless supply of it, is yours for the asking.”
“How much?”
“I don’t want your money, Mr. McKee. I want your help.”
“Why don’t you tell me and my colleagues here exactly what you’ve got in mind, Smith.”
Smith cleared his throat and placed his gloved hands palm down on the rough wooden table.
“I wonder if I might first have a taste of that whiskey. It’s been rather a long journey. I’m parched.”
McKee filled a cracked glass with whiskey.
Smith drank it down and it blistered his throat.
“Another, if you don’t mind?”
“Pour him another crapper, Sean.”
“Crapper?” Smith said, worriedly.
“Don’t worry, mate. Irish for a half-glass of whiskey.”
“Thanks,” Smith said, and downed the second tumbler. He looked round the table into the eyes of the four rather fearsome-looking IRA Provos. The moment had finally arrived.
“Well, Mr. Smith?” Billy McKee said. “Sometime tonight, I hope?”
“Sorry,” he croaked. The whiskey burned his throat, and he was trying to suppress a cough with a fist to his mouth, “I want to do much more than provide military intelligence to the IRA. I want to—to assassinate someone.”
“Who doesn’t?” one of the anonymous men said, to general laughter.
“Point taken,” Smith said. “You fellows have perfected the art of political murder. I admire your skills, your tactics. I can’t do this killing alone, you see. The chance of failure is too high. I’ve come because I need to ask for your help.”
“I wouldn’t think an island hermit would make that many serious enemies, Smith. Besides, why the hell should we help you assassinate anyone?”
“Quite simple. I will assume all the risk. You gentlemen will get all the credit.”
“Look. Let me cut past the chase to the outcome. I don’t want to waste time here, Mr. Smith. Anyone who you’d be interested in killing would likely not be anyone of interest to us. So, any notion of us helping you, or—”
“Oh, I think you’ll consider my intended victim someone of enormous personal interest. I would not be here were that not true.”
“Who is it then, for the love of God?” Billy said, draining his whiskey. The Provo commander was beginning
to believe his Dublin colleague had found someone who could be genuinely useful. What the man said next confirmed that belief.
“I intend to murder Lord Louis Mountbatten.”
There was a moment of astonished silence, and then Billy and three other IRA soldiers broke into laughter, long and loud. Pushing back from the table, Billy said, “You? You’re going to kill Mountbatten? Yer a bloody fool. You must be insane. No one can get within a thousand miles of that imperial toff. We’ve looked into it, believe me.”
“It can be done.”
“You seem pretty sure of that.”
“For some months now I’ve been spending a good deal of time here in Northern Ireland gathering intelligence on the British Army and, at the same time, deciding how best to assassinate that pompous bastard. In point of fact, I know precisely how to do it.”
“Why in God’s holy name do you want to kill him?”
The Provos couldn’t see it, but deep red anger flushed Smith’s face beneath his balaclava. His breathing became shallow. His temples were throbbing and his heart was thudding with an abiding anger and hatred, seeded in his boyhood, that over the years had grown into a now uncontrollable passion.
But Smith managed to keep his emotions in check as he spoke. It would not do to have these men realize the depths of his madness, nor his willingness to kill anyone who thwarted him or got in his way. He needed them too much.
“Personal reasons,” Smith said quietly. “Suffice it to say, I hate these English Royals as much as you do, if not more.”
“Listen to me, Mr. Smith, traveling IRA sympathizer with yer fluty toff accent. You think we wouldn’t have taken out Lord Louis long before this if we thought it was possible? It ain’t, believe me. There’s no way to get close enough to a member of the Royal Family to even spit on ’em.”
“That’s not a good enough reason not to try, if one wants something badly enough. I, for one, want it more than badly enough, believe me.”
“Shall we just kill this crazy bugger and have a drink? Or let him speak his piece, mates? We’ve already got his information,” Billy McKee said.
“Let the bugger speak his mind if he’s a mind to,” Sean, the man next to Smith, said. “We come all this way out here t’night, why not? Worth a laugh.”
The others nodded, and McKee leaned forward over the table, shoving the whiskey bottle out of his way with his beefy forearm.
“So let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” Billy said, smiling. “You yourself intend to do the dirty deed. Alone.”
“Correct.”
“But we get all the credit. The Irish Republican Army claims sole responsibility for the execution? In the unlikely event you’re successful.”
“Correct.”
“Why kill him, in particular? Aside from the fact that he’s an arrogant, preening, aristocratic bastard who made a mess of your bloody country and now bedevils our own?”
Smith looked down into his lap, his shoulders heaving.
For the first time, the Provos could sense the burning hatred and powerful passion for revenge that had driven this man to them. It was in his body language. Murderous hatred poured off him in hot waves.
“Vengeance will be mine!” he cried, looking up and slamming his fist down on the table with enough force to upset their liquor glasses. “Do you people understand me? Listen closely, Mr. McKee. I want to murder all these Royal bastards. Every fucking one of them. Why, if I could, I would roam the graveyards of England digging up British monarchs long dead and crushing their bones to dust beneath my heels. And smash every last one of their bloody skulls against their own tombstones!”
The four men stared at him in stunned silence.
“Good enough for me,” McKee said, astounded at the depths of the man’s feelings. “What say the lads?”
“Aye,” they murmured, nodding their heads as Smith had expected. They now knew they had little to lose, and the world to gain, after all.
“What’ll you be needing then, from me?” McKee asked.
“Explosives, for starters,” Smith said, getting his emotions once more under control.
“What kind of explosives?”
“Untraceable. Compact. Easily transportable. Waterproof. Completely reliable. What do you recommend?”
“How close you think you can get to the fella?”
“Very close.”
“Within five hundred yards?”
“Closer. But I’d err on the side of more is more. Leave nothing to chance.”
“Fifty pounds of gelignite ought to do it, mate.”
“Familiar with gelignite. Never used it, however.”
“We use it all the bloody time. A kind of blasting gelatin, easily moldable, dissolved in nitroglycerine and mixed with wood pulp and potassium nitrate. Very stable. And very cheap. And very fuckin’ serious.”
“I’ll need a remote detonator.”
“You bloody well will unless you plan to join his bleeding lordship in hell,” the Provo said, earning a few guffaws and bottoms up around the table.
Smith said, “It’s done, then? That’s it? You’ll help me?”
“When I’m completely satisfied you are who you say you are, yes. That envelope of yours looks pretty good to me. But we’re all still alive because we are extremely thorough in our investigations. Until then you’ll be ensconced in a little locked room upstairs. Pip and Scottie McBain standing outside will rotate. Feed you and make sure you don’t stray from yer quarters. Understood?”
“Completely. I’d do the same myself.”
“All right, then.”
Smith took a breath, then said, “All right, then. Good. Thank you.”
“We’re done here, looks like, mates. You’ll be hearing from us, one way or the other, Mr. Smith. Let’s hope, for your sake, you’re an honest man. Or you’ll not leave this house alive.”
“I never claimed honesty, sir, only truthfulness.”
“Sounds like ruddy Mahatma Gandhi himself, don’t he, boys?”
“Mahatma never killed a flea,” one of the Provos said as they all rose from the table. “Much less the last Viceroy of India. But here’s a queer bloke seeming determined to do just that!”
“Bloody unlikely, ain’t it, Pad?”
“Dunno. This one’s got a look in his eye like I’ve never seen. He just might do it. He could bloody well pull off the impossible.”
NINETEEN
MULLAGHMORE, NORTHERN IRELAND, AUGUST 1979
THE MONTHS PASSED QUICKLY. NOT SURPRISING, Smith thought, what with his normal responsibilities coupled with all the travel, meticulous planning, and intelligence gathering he had done, plus certain “extracurricular” activities he had been conducting out on the island. Weekend jaunts from his remote digs off the coast, slipping into Mullaghmore harbor of an evening for a quick look round before fading away, returning by boat to his perfect hideaway on Mutton Island.
The fishing village of Mullaghmore overlooked a small harbor. A few commercial boats and pleasure boats bobbed at their moorings on warm summer days. Only twelve miles away lay the border with Northern Ireland, so the town was a popular vacation spot for terrorist IRA volunteers.
It was also the vacation home of one of the Royal Family’s most venerated and public figures, Lord Louis Mountbatten. A powerful member of the family, it was Lord Louis who had arranged the courtship of his nephew Prince Philip and then Princess Elizabeth, now the reigning monarch.
If Mountbatten was sanguine about his security, it was with good reason. There had never been a single attempt on his life. The only terrorist attack in Mullaghmore had come one night courtesy of some lads at the pub. They’d sneaked down to the harbor and drilled holes in the bottom of Shadow V, Mountbatten’s beloved fishing boat, hoping she’d sink with the morning tide.
She didn’t.
A mile or so away from town, atop a hill known as “Fairy Rock,” which overlooked the bay, stood Classiebawn Castle, the summer home of Lord Mountbatten. It had bee
n the site of many jolly family holidays for over thirty years. It was not a castle, really, just a large Victorian mansion. But it had a turret, and it was the home of a Royal, so historically, it had been called a castle. Built in 1874, it overlooked the forbidding rock-faced cliffs and the tide-washed strands of Donegal Bay, with the windswept island of Inishmurray visible in the near distance, and the open sea in the far.
IT HAD RAINED LIKE MAD every day all summer long. But tonight, stars appeared and the clouds seemed to be scudding away; a slice of yellow moon glimmered on the dark bay. The forecast for tomorrow was sunny. Good boating weather, with any luck at all, Mountbatten thought, closing the seaward bedroom windows before retiring, and about time, too.
Smith, standing in the stern of the small fishing boat, was reassured by the sound of her motor chugging steadily. The Rose of Tralee, she was called. The two IRA men, Tom McMahon and Francie McGirl, had provided her, no questions asked.
Smith, his balaclava pulled down over his face, put a pair of high-powered binoculars to the eyeholes. He raised the glasses to the great manse atop Fairy Rock. Though it was quite late, lights still shone in a few of the upper windows, and he could make out Mountbatten’s flag fluttering from its standard atop the turret. The banner only flew when the lord of the manor was in residence.
Smith’s most recent intelligence indicated a number of family members in residence in addition to Mountbatten himself. His grandson, Nicholas; Lady Brabourne; Lady Patricia, her husband and son; and Timothy Knatchbull. There were others, but their names were not known to him.
It didn’t matter. Only one of them mattered.
McMahon, at the helm, was running just above idle speed. They had kept their navigation lights on, after some debate, as it was felt the chances of anyone taking notice of Rose of Tralee were slimmer. Still, they’d taken precautions. The rucksack filled with fifty pounds of high-powered explosives was weighted with lead. It sat tethered to the transom where it could easily be lowered silently and sunk should they be approached by the local Gardaí patrol boat, whose schedule was famously unpredictable.
