GRANITE reversed in next to Jayne’s car. She studied him as he got out. Dennehy had a mustache and floppy mop of dark hair with gray streaks and he was wearing the kind of black leather jacket that seemed ubiquitous all over Northern Ireland.
He climbed into the rear seat of the Toyota and shut the door. “You’re lucky to get me,” he said. “All manner of shit is flying around.”
The conversation proved to be less awkward than she had feared. GRANITE kept things factual, unemotional, and told it how he saw it. He spoke rapidly, as if he wanted to get the meeting over with as quickly as possible—which was without doubt the case.
First he dealt with the situation in the bunker. He outlined exactly where Johnson was being held, what the conditions were like, and responded to O’Neill’s questions about the options for an exfiltration operation.
GRANITE took a piece of paper and a notebook from O’Neill and sketched out a rough map of the layout of Duggan’s den and the maze of tunnels that linked to the diesel tanks and the house.
Jayne didn’t tell GRANITE she already had a map of the underground complex that Ronnie had given to Johnson. But she noted with some relief that GRANITE’s diagram matched Ronnie’s. This man wasn’t obviously trying to set them up, though she would definitely take further precautions.
“Your best bet is in and out through the emergency exit in the field,” GRANITE said, “so you’re going to get covered in cow shit. The problem is that Duggan is in and out of that den all the time, quite unpredictably. Could be anytime. If he catches you, you’re going to be fed to the pigs alongside Johnson, you know that? If he’s in a good mood he might shoot you first.”
GRANITE sank into his seat, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes. Jayne guessed he was mulling over the consequences if Duggan discovered what he had done. In that instance the pigs would be the end game, not the opening act, of his punishment.
“And what about the message you sent me?” O’Neill asked. “How serious is it?”
“Feckin’ serious. I’m on a short list of two for the pig trough, and the only reason there’s two on it is because I got smart,” GRANITE said. He went on to explain how the information he had previously passed on to O’Neill about the Irvinestown pipe bomb—which had saved the policeman’s life—had come from McCormick, who was now a prime suspect in Duggan’s eyes.
“It’s a matter of time—this is the end,” GRANITE said softly, his eyes still closed. “You realize that, don’t you? I’m gonna need an exit out of here, a safe house, a change of identity, a new house for me, Tess, and the kids. There’s no way I’m gonna be able to ride this one out with Duggan. If you take Johnson out of there, he’ll know it’s me who’s given them away.”
GRANITE opened one eye and looked at O’Neill. “If you can’t give me that, you’re serving me with a death sentence.”
In that moment Jayne felt sympathy well up inside her for Dennehy, who appeared to be an honest man and was probably doing what he was doing to feed his family.
“That’s assuming we don’t trap Duggan,” O’Neill said. “If we do, which is my immediate intention, your problem has gone away.”
Jayne felt tempted to contradict the blatant lie from O'Neill about trapping Duggan immediately but kept her mouth shut for fear of making him look like a fool. It didn’t take long before she felt bad about it.
“What if you don’t trap Duggan?” GRANITE asked.
“I don’t know,” O’Neill said.
Jayne assumed from her own knowledge that it would be difficult for O'Neill to request a safe house somewhere in the south of England, a new identity, police protection, a resettlement package, and a payoff for not just GRANITE but his entire family without extremely good reason. He would have to give extensive details about his dealings with his agent and the information and value received from him. The cost of such resettlements was huge, not least for housing, and the budget was restricted. The police and MI5 had done it before, a few hundred times since the Troubles began, but it was always an uphill battle through bureaucracy to make it happen.
She felt torn. She desperately needed GRANITE to stay in place until Johnson was rescued. Doubtless O'Neill was more worried about the G8 than about Johnson, given that Dennehy might be able to provide the vital snippet of information that could save the life of the president or the prime minister.
Jayne knew exactly where GRANITE was coming from. Why would any man take the risk of informing on violent dissident terrorists—for which certain death was the punishment—unless the intelligence service committed to whisking him out if his cover were blown? No matter that the monthly salary he collected was keeping his family afloat. Not that GRANITE was probably being paid much anyway, in relative terms, given the risks he was taking.
She tried to imagine how GRANITE was feeling right now. Was O'Neill issuing him a death sentence by ignoring his pleas? But then she told herself to harden up. They all had a job to do.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” O’Neill said, momentarily closing his eyes. He clearly hated these conversations. “I’ll go and discuss it with Phil, my boss. You met him. I’ll see what is feasible.”
Jayne leaned forward. “The important thing now is to get the details of this rescue operation nailed down,” she said.
She and O'Neill ran through the options and timings and signals that GRANITE might be able to give them when the time came to go in. Eventually, after an additional half hour of discussion, they agreed on a plan.
GRANITE hesitated. “If you need any more guidance, go and see a guy up the road in Forkhill who knows this place. Ronnie Quinn.”
Jayne fought to stop her eyebrows from rising. This really was a tight-knit, interlinked community in south Armagh. Everyone seemed to know everyone else.
“Ronnie Quinn? Who’s he?” O’Neill asked.
“He used to be one of Duggan’s favorites,” GRANITE said. “He did all the building work on the underground complex. But they’ve grown apart. He’ll help you—might even go in there with you if needed.” GRANITE gave him Ronnie’s address.
“I have to go,” GRANITE said. “Been here too long already. I’ll be in touch when and if I can.” He climbed out of the Toyota and got back into his car.
As Jayne watched GRANITE drive away down the lane, she glanced at O'Neill.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had to get my hands dirty on this kind of job,” he said.
“Me too.”
“I keep thinking, wouldn’t it be easier just to let the police take care of it?” he said. “I could be at home, watching TV, or enjoying a quiet beer, while they steamed in.”
Jayne said nothing.
“Anyway,” he went on. “Interesting that he mentioned this guy Ronnie Quinn. I spent quite a lot of time in the early and mid-’90s trying to recruit him as an agent. Never managed it.”
Jayne turned to look at him. “Bloody hell, so you just lied to him. Several times,” she said. “I visited him with Joe only a couple of weeks ago. He gave us a map of the underground complex at the farm.”
“You’re joking?” There was a note of disbelief in his voice.
“No, I’m not,” Jayne said. “Ronnie was an angry man. He was close to Duggan’s ex-wife, his stepdaughter’s mother. And Duggan had his stepdaughter killed, from what I can gather. So why did you lie about Ronnie to GRANITE?”
O’Neill shrugged. After a few seconds, he said, “I think you’re right about the stepdaughter. Maybe that’s why Ronnie’s changed his allegiances since I saw him last. We’d better go and see him.”
Friday, January 25, 2013
Forkhill
The noise of the hatch door scraping against the floor woke Johnson from a restless sleep. He lifted his head and looked up to see Dennehy appearing through the entrance from the tunnel, closely followed by McGarahan, carrying his Browning as usual.
The two Irishmen stood at the foot of the mattress; then Dennehy crawled across it and untied Johnson’s wrists and legs while McGar
ahan remained still, his gun pointed directly at Johnson’s chest.
“You can get up for a few minutes, walk around, take a piss,” McGarahan said. He looked steadily at Johnson, who waited for Dennehy to get out of the way, then shuffled on his backside to the edge of the mattress.
After yet another four-hour stint of lying motionless on the mattress, Johnson’s knees, ankles, and hips were feeling stiff and immobile. It took a few seconds to get them working properly again.
He walked slowly around the den. This was a new development. They hadn’t invited him to walk around before, so why now? It wasn’t clear.
Johnson shuffled across to the recess on the other side of the main room, a mirror image of the one his mattress was in. As he had noticed on his previous, brief covert visit, this one had a dartboard mounted on the gray cinder block wall. Six darts were stuck into the board; three of them had flights in the orange, white, and green colors of the Irish Republic flag, the other three the American Stars and Stripes.
Stuck on the wall next to the dartboard, Johnson also noticed the sheet of paper he had seen before. Someone had used a black marker pen to write a series of letters across the sheet. Some of them were crossed out in red ink. The paper was riddled with small holes where darts had clearly been thrown into it. It had obviously been pinned to the dartboard at some point and used as a target.
Johnson stared at the sheet. ESGJWDMDBOCC. The letters that were crossed out, all peppered with dart holes, were deleted in pairs, and the only letters left untouched were BOCC.
“What are you doing?” Dennehy asked, his voice rising a little. “Walk, don’t stand. I’m not going to have a game of darts with you. This is your pissing and exercise time. You’ve got three minutes.”
Johnson turned and walked into the toilet stall and shut the door behind him, then undid his belt and pulled his pants and shorts down. The squatter toilet stank, although the surrounds were clean. Maybe the drainage system, presumably to the same septic tank used by the house, wasn’t working properly.
A few minutes later Johnson was tied up again on the mattress. His legs and backside hurt and he realized he could get bedsores.
Dennehy peeled two bananas and fed them to Johnson, without speaking. Then Dennehy put a plastic beaker of water to Johnson’s lips and instructed him to drink. This was humiliating. Why not let him eat the banana and drink the water while he was untied? Johnson mentally cursed his captors.
Once the two Irishmen had gone, closing the hatch door behind them, Johnson’s thoughts went back to the sheet of paper on the wall next to the dartboard.
What did the letters signify? Were they something to do with darts? A competition? A knockout, in which the loser was crossed off? Sets of players’ initials?
If nothing else, it had given him something to think about that took his mind off his situation and the possible fate Duggan had lined up for him. He lay there, staring up at the gray concrete ceiling.
A large spider, the same one he had seen earlier, scuttled out of a crevice located part of the way up the wall and slowly made its way to the ceiling, where it came to a halt, as if resting after the exertion of its ascent.
Johnson again tried to mentally compute the chances of success if he attempted to overpower Dennehy the next time he was untying his wrist and ankle restraints. But although he liked his chances, Dennehy’s colleague McGarahan appeared to be fully concentrating on his task as an armed backup. That wouldn’t work.
Johnson still wasn’t able to work out what was going on in Duggan’s mind. Why was he doing what he was doing? Why had he killed the men he had?
The more he thought about it, the more he was sure he had been coming at the problem from the wrong angle. He and Jayne had spoken to the victims’ wives, but he was growing increasingly certain that the key lay with them. If he ever got out, they would be his first port of call for another visit.
But that seemed a big “if.” It was a damn pity he hadn’t been able to get hold of Will Doyle’s journals. He still felt Beth hadn’t told him all she knew, and the same went for some of the other victims’ wives.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Belfast
The text message from GRANITE was short and to the point. Saturday night Duggan dining in Cross 8pm. Your best chance.
Jayne looked at the phone that O'Neill pushed across the table at her.
They had been sitting in the early morning blackness of his kitchen in the Holywood area of Belfast, sipping cups of strong coffee, the room illuminated only by a single lamp, when the missive had arrived.
At least GRANITE was doing what he had promised, Jayne thought. She had taken up O'Neill’s offer of a bed in his spare room, viewing it as more practical if they were going to properly plan a rescue operation.
Jayne immediately recognized the opportunity. “How long would it take him to get back to the house from Cross, if he were tipped off or if there were an alarm or something?” she asked.
“A quarter of an hour, maybe a bit more. It’s around ten or eleven miles.”
“Is that going to give us enough time to get him out?” Jayne asked.
O'Neill shrugged. “It’ll have to,” he said.
Although Jayne preferred to keep any exfiltration operation small and not involve officialdom, she was nevertheless curious about the lack of coordination between O'Neill and his superiors at MI5.
She knew that normally, any MI5 officer contemplating the type of operation they were considering would liaise with everyone from the head of MI5 in Northern Ireland downward. They would have a full team in support from A4, the section within MI5’s A branch responsible for surveillance, as well as A1, the technical operations team that got involved in covert entry, and the police.
“Have you still not discussed any of this with your boss?” she asked.
“No, I can’t,” O'Neill said. “It’s just going to open too much of a can of worms. I might regret it, but I don’t have a choice right now.”
Jayne shrugged. It suited her.
The two of them had a quick discussion about the choreography of the operation. Then O'Neill swapped a couple more text messages with GRANITE to make arrangements for exchanging green or red go-ahead or danger signals, information, and timings.
Jayne and O’Neill studied the two maps of the underground complex drawn by Ronnie and GRANITE. Obviously, entering through the barn, as Johnson had done earlier, would be too risky; they needed to use the emergency exit under the cattle trough in the field.
They tried to calculate distances, their likely crawling speed in confined underground tunnels, and the inevitable delays generated by three people being involved in the return journey.
Jayne could see they would need some help to create, if needed, a distraction somewhere on the farm complex, diverting the attention of Duggan’s gang away from the emergency tunnel entrance in the field and the underground complex. That would hopefully give them enough cover to get in and extract Johnson.
Either she could go into the tunnels, with O'Neill creating the diversion if required, or vice versa. The only other alternative was for them both to go in and enlist Ronnie’s help to create the diversion. But how much could they rely on Ronnie? He was old, and it was uncertain how he would perform in a high-pressure situation.
“This might sound paranoid, but do you think there’s any chance we’re being set up?” Jayne asked.
“I don’t think so. But what other option do we have, anyway? There’s no time to resolve it. We’ll just have to take precautions. Actually, I’m pretty certain GRANITE’s not setting us up.”
He was right about one thing—the clock was ticking.
Jayne started to run through the equipment they would need, like vehicles and communications and surveillance gear.
She suggested making another check on the feeds from the hidden cameras planted at Willows Farm.
This time, instead of the eleven cameras that had shown up
on the grid the previous day, there were now only eight. The one in the kitchen ceiling in the house appeared to be out of action, as was the one in the master bedroom and another in the tunnel.
Jayne swore. On the positive side, if the cameras had been discovered, then the ensuing thorough search would have found the others. That had not happened. So she assumed the batteries were dying. How long would it be before they all faded? After all, it was now two weeks since Johnson had planted the devices.
“We’ll have to hope the two cameras in the den stay live,” Jayne said.
O'Neill nodded. “Yes, they’re critical.”
He clicked onto those two cameras, which were thankfully still operational, but there was nobody in the shot and nothing coming over the sound feed. Jayne rubbed the back of her head. She hoped the quiet simply meant Johnson was tied up in an area of the room they couldn’t see.
After they each showered and ate a quick breakfast of cereal and toast, she began to sketch out a possible plan of action.
“We’re going to need some gear,” Jayne said. “I don’t know if you can put your hands on the kind of stuff I think we’ll need.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking of.”
Jayne ran through a short list of items and explained what she had in mind. To her surprise, O'Neill said he had all of them.
Once they had each packed a small bag with warm clothing and raincoats, he drove her to a lockup garage half a mile from his safe house in Newtownards that he rented for cash. The garage, which looked nondescript from the outside, had an external door that was slightly rusty in places and had an impressive array of dents, as if someone had been throwing a golf ball against it. But once O'Neill lifted the external door, Jayne could see there was a high-security, pull-down metal shutter door inside it, secured by three padlocks. No burglar would easily gain entry.
O’Neill unlocked the door and they went inside. He turned on a light and locked the door behind them. From a rack, O'Neill pulled down two black plastic bins and removed the lid from one of them. Inside were three packs of orange-colored material tied up in clear plastic bags.
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