The Exit Club: Book 4: Conspirators

by Shaun Clarke

  ‘Let’s go!’ Wallace snapped.

  Protected by the ring of heavily armed paratroopers, temporarily deafened by the roaring of the helicopter right above them, and increasingly shocked by the sheer brutality of the phoney cordon-and-search sweep, Marty ran with the other three across the road, through bawling RUC officers and watchful soldiers, past Saracens and armoured pigs, up onto the pavement on the opposite side. There, as soldiers were dragging reluctant men and women out of their homes, the paratroopers pushed their way into one of the houses. Once inside, a couple of them proceeded to ‘search’ the place by noisily swiping ornaments and bric-a-brac off tables and cupboards, removing drawers and tipping their contents onto the floor, and generally smashing up the place, causing maximum distraction, while the others led the four SAS men upstairs to the already opened trapdoor in the hallway ceiling. There, one of the hefty paratroopers formed his hands into a stirrup and the four SAS men, led by Wallace, took turns at letting themselves be hoisted up into the dark loft. Once all five were in the loft, the big paratrooper below the open trapdoor handed up the rest of their kit. When it was all in the loft, the men divided it between them and then mouse-holed their way along the terrace, practically the whole length of the street, until they reached the space above Riley’s house, where the kit already brought in by the paratroopers was stacked around the solid, wooden edges of the dusty floor.

  ‘This is it,’ Wallace said, indicating the piled-up kit. ‘And there’s your OP window.’ He pointed to where a slate pin in the roof had been removed and replaced with a rubber band that allowed the slate to be raised and lowered, providing a peephole for the naked eye, binoculars, cameras and thermal imagers. ‘One of our signals specialists is putting a miniature microphone probe near the ceiling of the adjoining wall in the house next to Flagherty’s without the occupants knowing about it. It’ll be tuned to your laser system and enable you to hear, see and record most of what goes on in that bastard’s place. Any last-minute questions?’

  ‘No,’ Marty said.

  ‘Right. I’ll take my leave now. The best of luck, lads.’

  Wallace patted Marty on the shoulder, then made his careful way back along the terrace to the open trapdoor. Marty followed him. After Wallace had dropped through the small, square hole, back onto the landing, Marty replaced the trapdoor, checked that it was secured, then returned to join the others above Riley’s house, where he found Taff squinting through the peephole.

  ‘What’s happening down there?’ Marty asked.

  ‘The greens have got Flagherty out on the pavement and he’s going apeshit. They’ve just left the house next door, so the probe must be planted. I think the greens’ll start pulling out now, taking some prisoners with them just for show. Yes, they’ve just taken Flagherty.’

  ‘Clever,’ Marty said. ‘They’ll pretend they came here justfor him. They’ll take him to Castlereagh, interrogate him at length, then release him and let him come home, thinking he’s fooled them again. I don’t think he’ll check his own loft. He’ll believe this is genuine. And that they’re also arresting the tout who owns this place will make the raid seem even more genuine.’

  Taff turned away from the peephole and motioned Marty over. ‘Here, take a look.’

  Before going to the peephole, Marty told TT and Corporal Pearson to start unpacking the kit and equipment. ‘And be quiet about it,’ he added. ‘From this moment on we’ll have to be as quiet as mice and make damned sure that we’re not heard from below. Loud noises will still be heard in adjoining houses, so keep it down.’ Glancing at the adjoining loft, he said, ‘That’s going to be your bog, so be particularly quiet there. It belongs to the house next door.’

  Catching TT’s sardonic grin, he went to the peephole, raised the slate and looked down on the street. The hard man he recognized from the intelligence photo as Jack Flagherty was struggling violently and bawling abuse as two RUC officers with truncheons dragged him off the pavement and manhandled him up into the paddy wagon. Another man, whom Marty suspected was the tout, Finn Riley, was being half-dragged from the pavement directly below the loft, obviously hauled out of his own house, to be thrown into the same RUC vehicle.

  ‘They’ve got Riley,’ Marty said. ‘That’s good. Flagherty’ll now think that Riley’s also on the SF’s wanted list. It’ll make Riley look good in the eyes of his mates and they’ll be less likely to suspect he’s part of this.’

  ‘If they do, he’s fucking doomed,’ TT said.

  ‘It’s a rotten business,’ Marty said.

  When the doors of the paddy wagon had been slammed shut on Flagherty and Riley, the people on the pavements bawled even more abuse at the soldiers and RUC officers. But the latter were already getting back into their vehicles and the engines were roaring into life.

  As the first of the Saracens and armoured pigs moved off along the street, an even louder roaring came from directly above the house. Looking as high as he could through the narrow peephole, Marty saw the Gazelle helicopter flying directly overhead, heading back to Armagh. By the time it had disappeared beyond the parallel rows of rooftops, the last of the Saracens, armoured pigs and paddy wagons had also disappeared from below, leaving the street to the irate or shocked inhabitants. Some of the women hurried back into their houses, only to rush out again, complaining tearfully about the devastation inside.

  Disturbed by that sight, Marty dropped the slate back over the peephole and turned around to face the other three in the loft. Taff and TT had already unpacked a lot of the kit and were balefully examining the plastic bags provided for their own shit and piss. Meanwhile, Corporal Pearson was opening the tripod for the audio surveillance transceiver that would be in his charge. Marty told them to take off their boots, which would cut down on the noise, and not put them on again until it was time to leave the OP.

  ‘I’ve stayed in better places,’ Marty murmured, gazing around the dark, bitterly cold, cobwebbed loft.

  ‘It’s rent-free,’ Taff said.

  Chapter Seven

  It did not take them long to realize just how uncomfortable their rent-free accommodation was going to be. By the end of the first day and night they felt tired, dirty and cramped, with nerves already stretched to breaking point. When the second day and night had passed, they felt grubby, exhausted, claustrophobic and increasingly tense. Also, the loft was freezing cold, with snow falling outside, frost on the pavements, and the winter winds howling constantly. In the loft, minus their boots, they could only wear extra layers of socks, but their feet still turned numb and their bodies, likewise wrapped in extra clothing, were cold more often than not.

  The main problems, however, were domestic. As no food could be cooked, they had to subsist on dry, highcalorie rations such as biscuits, cheese, chocolate and sweets. Although they had a couple of thermos flasks of hot tea and coffee, this did not stay hot for long and, when it was finished, they could only drink tepid water from plastic bottles. With nowhere to wash, they could only clean themselves with moisturized cloths and clean their teeth, or freshen their mouths, with chewing gum. Even worse, the loft space of the adjoining house was designated as their toilet area, with the men shitting and pissing into plastic bags that they had to seal and store carefully after use. The newcomer, Corporal Pearson, found this business particularly humiliating and never got used to it.

  ‘I promise not to look,’ TT whispered the first time Pearson was going for a piss, ‘on the grounds that it’s probably not worth seeing anyway.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ Pearson whispered back, scrabbling carefully over the wood joists to the next loft, holding a sealable plastic bag in one hand. ‘I don’t need your aggro.’

  Worst of all, however, was the fact that they could rarely rest properly, being compelled to sleep sitting upright against the brick walls of the loft, wrapped in a blanket for warmth, a cushion under the backside. They rested two at a time, with one sleeping while the other, though nominally resting, kept his eye on the first in case
he talked or cried out in his sleep, which would have alerted the neighbours on either side of the house directly below. For these reasons, they were all soon exhausted.

  ‘That friggin’ tout down below sleeps more soundly than we do,’ Taff whispered to Marty. ‘At least he has his own bed.’

  Spying through the peephole, they had observed Flagherty and Riley returning separately from their brief incarceration in Castlereagh detention barracks. Also, they could hear Riley moving about the house below and could more or less tell what he was doing from the various noises he made: the flushing of his toilet, the voices from his radio and TV, the opening and shutting of doors, drawers and cupboards, even conversations with visitors to the house or on the telephone. From some of these conversations they learned that Riley was becoming increasingly concerned for his personal safety and kept phoning that big-timer Captain Marsden to check when he was going to be lifted out for his promised new life in Australia. They also learned thatMarsden, ignoring Riley’s fears, was promising to arrange everything only when the SAS team in his loft had finished their work. For this reason, each time Riley phoned Marsden, he sounded increasingly nervous.

  ‘A big -timer and a percentage player in one,’ Taff whispered to Marty. ‘That Captain Marsden is trouble.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Marty whispered back.

  In fact, for Marty the surveillance was a welcome distraction from the more oppressive aspects of the loft, where their movements were severely restricted and they were forced to be unnaturally quiet, talking only in whispers. Unable to release his mounting tension through the customary bullshit, he concentrated on the surveillance and found himself gradually drawn into the dangerous, murky world of Jack Flagherty and his PIRA cohorts. The surveillance was conducted with a variety of advanced audio-visual aids, including a handheld thermal imager that Marty hung on a string around his neck; a 35mm Nikon camera with a heavy-duty titanium body, telescopic lens, and image-intensifier, also used as a night-vision scope; and a miniature fibreoptic probe camera inserted near the ceiling of the wall in the house next door. This interacted with an advanced laser system that picked up the minute vibrations created by conversations in Flagherty’s house and transmitted them to the tape recorder in Riley’s loft.

  When Marty used such instruments, he realized just how advanced technologically the SAS had become and how different this kind of war was from everything he had known before. The kind of war he had fought in the North African desert with the LRDG– an honourable war fought by men who respected the enemy– was now far behind him. That war had been fought out in the open, against a visible enemy; in contrast, the war in Northern Ireland was much darker, less honourable, fought with dirty tricks, torture and advanced technology in back rooms, dark alleyways and dusty lofts. He wasn’t at all sure that he approved, but he knew that nothing would stop it. The SAS was heading into the future and that future looked less bright than the past. Marty was chilled by the thought of it.

  Taking numerous photos of Flagherty as he entered and left his house across the road, seeing him magnified through the viewfinder, his every blemish exposed, his every expression exaggerated, and listening in on the many conversations that took place in his house and were picked up by the miniature probe, Marty gradually built up an invaluable, increasingly hair-raising picture of the world of the terrorists and their hunters.

  Released from Castlereagh with Riley, Flagherty had returned to his home and called an immediate meeting with the other three members of his PIRA murder squad. During that meeting, every word of which was picked up by the fibre-optic probe, Flagherty confirmed that Captain Marsden, sometimes alone, occasionally with other officers of the 14th Intelligence Company, had made numerous illegal trips across the border to snatch wanted IRA men and bring them to Northern Ireland where they could be ‘captured’ by the RUC and imprisoned. Flagherty also had strong reason to believe that Marsden had personally shot Seamus O’Sullivan as retaliation for the deaths of Corporal Partridge and his six Freds, or turncoats. Intending to retaliate in kind, Flagherty was going to assassinate Marsden and seriously damage British morale into the bargain.

  Picking up this information, but still needing to know when and where the hit would take place, Marty relayed his intelligence in short-burst radio transmissions to Lieutenant-Colonel LeBlanc, then resigned himself to more days in Riley’s oppressive loft.

  Temporary escape from the tension and claustrophobia of the loft came through communication with the outer world by means of the transceiver, operating in the VHF/UHF frequency range, or through the UHG band on the portable radio. Marty and the others were able to do this even when manning the surveillance equipment because they were personally equipped with Davis M135b covert microphones with standard safety-pin attachment and ear-worn receivers, positioned on the collars of their jackets, with the ON/OFF switches taped to their wrists. One of these was tuned into the military command network at Lisburn, where LeBlanc was now stationed; the other to the surveillance network that includes the QRFs, or quick reaction forces, waiting to bail him and the others out of the OP should trouble arise.

  Hoping to learn just when and where Flagherty was planning to ambush the troublesome Captain Marsden, Marty continued observing the street in general and Flagherty’s house in particular, by day and by night, with the aid of his hand-held thermal imager, the image-intensifier on the camera and, most importantly, the fibre-optic probe inserted in the wall of the adjoining house and transmitting back to the STG laser system in the loft. He was able to build up an even more complete picture of exactly what Flagherty and his men were doing and how they lived.

  In the course of this surveillance he learned that although the ‘Troubles’ may have sprung out of legitimate grievances, Belfast was now a city increasingly ruled by graft, blackmail and mercenary violence, with protection rackets proliferating and gangs competing to rule their own patch, rewarding those who pleased them, punishing those who did not, and in general using the political conflict as a route to personal power. In this unsavoury stew, therefore, it was difficult to tell if a man was a sincere ‘freedom fighter’ or just another gangster.

  This difficulty presented itself when Marty and the others observed Flagherty. Certainly it was evident that he ruled his own street, was given due respect from his neighbours, and received a constant stream of visitors to his terraced two-up, two-down house. Most of the visitors were men, either seasoned PIRA co-workers or adolescent dickers who came to Flagherty for discussion or instruction. It was clear from the conversations that weapons were being handed over and taken back, usually accompanied by murmurs about ‘single shot’, ‘both knees’, ‘six pack’, ‘house call’, ‘post office’ or ‘bookies’, suggesting a combination of PIRA punishments, doorstep assassinations and armed robberies of local establishments. It also appeared, from the conversations, that Flagherty doled out the weapons and that they had to be returned when the relevant job was done.

  Money also changed hands. It was usually brought in by the older men, who would hand it over while mentioning the names of various pubs, fish-and-chip shops, general stores or bookies, occasionally saying things like, ‘We fire-bombed some sense into the stupid fucker and now he’s really agreeable.’

  Since getting out of Castlereagh, Finn Riley had visited Flagherty’s house once, attending a PIRA meeting. During a conversation about ‘funds’ and ‘more cash for groceries’, meaning weapons, the ‘books’ were mentioned by Flagherty and Riley said he would have them ready soon. When Marty noted that Riley sounded nervous, Taff, sitting beside him at the tape recorder, responded, ‘Well, I can understand that – what with us being up in his loft and all. How would youfeel?’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ Marty said, whispering.

  At least once each day, Flagherty drove with some of the others to his house in South Armagh. Judging from some of the bugged conversations, he went there to receive daily supplies of weapons, ammunition and explosives being brou
ght in from across the border, probably in hidden compartments in the vehicles used. As it would have been too dangerous for him to use his country house as an ammunition dump, Marty could only assume that the increasing number of trips he was making for those supplies indicated that he was planning some outrage, apart from the assassination of Marsden.

  ‘With that amount of weapons and munitions,’ Taff whispered to Marty, ‘he could only be planning a major attack on a British Army barracks or RUC police station.’

  ‘That’s what I think,’ Marty replied, also whispering. ‘And since he keeps mentioning Captain Marsden, it may be against Bessbrook itself. I’m going to talk to LeBlanc’

  But before he could do so, Taff, who had been at the peephole, let out a gasp, then glanced back over his shoulder and said, not whispering: ‘Shit! Flagherty and some of his men have just stormed out of his house and are heading for here. They’re all carrying weapons.’

  ‘Damn!’ Marty snapped. ‘We must have been rumbled. We’ll have to fight our way out.’

  The first noise they heard from below was the urgent hammering of fists on Riley’s front door. They didn’t hear Riley opening the door, but the sound of angry shouting from the hallway indicated that Flagherty and his PIRA ASU group had entered and were accosting Riley. Riley screamed, ‘No!’ and then a pistol shot rang out, followed by the sounds of running feet and the banging of doors. The PIRA team, having shot Riley, were on their way up the stairs.

  A woman down below screamed hysterically. Instantly, Marty ordered everyone to put their boots back on. When they had done so, he told Pearson to get on the radio and call up a quick reaction force. He then told Taff to keep the trapdoor in the adjoining loft covered with his Browning High Power.

  ‘While you hold those bastards at bay,’ he said, ‘TT and I will pack up this equipment and have it ready for transportation with the QRF. Okay, lads, shake out!’