by Ian Barclay
The security car was hit head-on by a van. Its rear end swung around and hit the second security car, which was on Ali’s tail. These two wrecked cars blocked all traffic westbound, and the van with its cracked windshield and steaming radiator completed the barrier. The two attack cars made good time to High Holborn with no one in pursuit, left down Kingsway, right at Aldwych into the Strand, and then into the Mall, which had comparatively light traffic.
Naim and Hasan did not speak. There was nothing to say now. Naim had not listened to the more experienced Hasan. Hasan had been right. But then Naim had been right at Oxford, which Hasan hadn’t liked either. They hàd escaped unhurt. That was enough. Ali was still close behind them.
At the western end of the Mall, as they swung around the Queen Victoria Memorial, they saw a large crowd of people streaming out the gates of Buckingham Palace.
“This is it!” Naim yelled to Hasan, excitedly winding down the left side window. “Slow down a bit! Give me time to get the gun.”
He poked the barrel and plunger cup out the car window and aimed for a stone pier of the gate. If he hit someone with the missile, its impact against soft flesh would probably not be strong enough to set off the detonators in the explosive. He aimed for solid stone.
A bright flash, a loud bang, people falling, others running… Hasan drove along Constitution Hill. They dumped the cars a minute later at St. George’s Hospital and went into the Hyde Park Corner Underground station. There they took the Piccadilly Line four stops to Earl’s Court and walked to the Redcliffe Square apartment.
“They have our fingerprints,” Ali said.
“But they don’t have our balls,” Hasan answered. He was very pleased by their day’s work, regarding Buckingham Palace as a more prestigious hit than the Old Bailey and having been proved right in his warning against alert security. He asked in a voice almost purring with satisfaction, “What do we do now, Naím?
Naim crossed the room. “We turn on the television.”
General Gerritt van Gilder and Group-Captain Godfrey Bradshaw were still inside the palace railings near the gates when they saw the flash and heard the explosion. They rushed through the crowd of people, most of whom were too stunned or bewildered to do anything.
Bradshaw stopped over the first victim they came to, a man about thirty in a morning coat and striped pants, who was lying on his side lifeless and smeared with blood. Bradshaw pointed to the head of a steel nail protruding from the side of his head, behind his left eye.
The blast had been about nine feet high against the gate pier, well above head level, and consequently much of its power and many of the nails had been dissipated harmlessly into the air. But those who were hit were struck on the head and upper parts of the body. Seven were dead. Two more looked bad. The rest of the casualties were not seriously injured, apart from one man with extensive burns.
“Considering the crowd here, things are not so bad,” Bradshaw said in a low voice. “If it had been the same mode of operation as at Oxford, we’d have had thirty or forty killed. All the same, those bastards get to chalk this up as a success, I’m afraid.”
The Dutchman looked after the departing ambulances. “We came closer to meeting them today than I thought we would.”
CHAPTER
6
Dartley was sitting in a pub with an untouched glass of Coca-Cola in front of him when a special newscast came over the television. The barman turned the sound up, and conversation died as everyone watched and listened to a description of this new terrorist attack.
“Should hang these buggers, that’s what I say,” the barman announced in his broad Yorkshire accent. “The rope’s too good for scum like that.”
Capital punishment had long been discontinued in Britain. Immediately after camera coverage of the carnage scene, the newsman said that the government denied that these atrocities had anything to do with the upcoming announcement of Britain’s intention to sign the Ostend Concordance. He added, almost as an afterthought, sources in Dublin earlier today said that the Irish government had agreed to sign and would shortly announce their intention to do so.
Dartley left the pub, took the Underground to South Kensington, and walked down to the Fulham Road. He looked for a pub of which he had forgotten the name and exact location. He would know it when he saw it. And he did. Finch’s. In the back bar he ordered another Coca-Cola, which he also left untouched. He asked the barman if Frankie Grady had been in lately.
“That man doesn’t come in here anymore,” the Irishman responded in tones that hinted there were good reasons why he didn’t.
Another Irish voice by Dartley’s side said truculently, “Frankie Grady’s a pain in the arse.”
Dartley looked at him, a grim-looking individual with sunken eyes and lantern jaws about to raise an imperial pint of Guinness stout to his mouth. The man took a huge draft of the thick brew and Dartley motioned to the barman to draw him another.
“Frankie has done some dumb things,” Dartley said.
“You a Yank?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
That seemed as much as the man was willing to say for the time being, so Dartley let him be. When the fresh pint was served up, Dartley paid for it.
The man picked up the glass, shot Dartley a look, and said, “Slan teat.”
“Slainte” Dartley said, which along with “Erin go breagh” comprised his total knowledge of Gaelic.
“An bfhuil an Gaeilge agat?”
“I’m afraid I don’t speak: Irish,” Dartley said.
“There’s many a decent Irishman who doesn’t either,” the man said in a friendlier way than he had spoken before. Then abruptly his manner changed. “I was just thinking that Frankie Grady is a stupid son of a bitch.”
“You probably know him better than I do,” Dartley said.
“No, I don’t. Last I saw of him was about three months ago up in Walthamstow, in a place called the Stag and Hounds. He was working behind the bar there, though he wasn’t answering to the name of Frankie Grady. I forget now what he was calling himself.”
“Where’s Walthamstow?”
“It’s a northern suburb, by the Epping Forest. What do you want to see him for? If you take my advice, you’ll stay away from him. Unless of course you’re involved with that side of things?”
Dartley pretended not to understand what he was talking about, and the man asked no more question’s. He had been referring guardedly to Grady’s ties to the IRA provisionals, curious to know if Dartley too was involved. He might be a police informer and he might not.
Frankie Grady’s name at the Stag and Hounds was Tom Boyd. He dropped an empty glass when he saw Richard Dartley walk in, and it shattered on the floor.
“I’m glad to see that your memory is in good working order,” Dartley said to him pleasantly as Grady swept up the broken glass.
The Irishman had good reason to be startled at Dartley’s sudden appearance in this out-of-the-way part of London. Last time he had seen him the American had been looking down the barrel of a rifle at him. Grady knew that the only reason he had been spared was that he had held back an ambush in order to let two children escape from the line of fire. The American had seen him do that and had later spared his life in recognition of it.
But Dartley didn’t bother to chitchat about old times. The big pub was nearly empty, and no one could hear them.
Dartley said, “I don’t suppose the Provos are too happy about Britain and Ireland signing this concordance.”
“I suppose not.”
“They could be badly affected by it.”
“I imagine so,” Grady replied, as if he had no special knowledge on which to have an opinion.
“Frankie—”
“Tom Boyd, sir. Tom’s my name here.”
“Tom, I think there’s a good chance that three or more Palestinians are on their way to Ireland right now or in the very near future. I also think there’s a good chance that a certain ill
egal organization in Ireland might decide to help them, since all of them oppose the concordance. Do you think that at all likely?”
Grady pointed the neck of a whiskey bottle at Dartley, who shook his head, then poured a generous measure for himself, which he downed in a single gulp. He said, “I’ll have to ask.”
“Fair enough. There are a few pros and cons about this situation which I think they may not know about. I’ll stick with the cons. The first is that the British intend to blame the Provos for the Oxford and Buckingham Palace killings—that’s plain already from the slant of newspaper and television reports. They’ll use this mainly to alienate Provo sympathizers throughout Europe. If the Provos did these things here, they must have done them in Holland too. And next in Ireland. The IRA will lose a lot of sympathizers. But that’s only the first disadvantage of being associated with these Palestinians. The second is that the British army and police will have total public support no matter what they do in retaliation against the IRA. These are not isolated incidents. This is just the beginning. The Provos have no choice now. It’s in their own backyard. They have to come down on one side or the other. If they have helped these Palestinians in any way, and it can be traced to them, it will set back their movement several years.”
“You think they ask me to make their decisions?” Grady asked.
“Some of the people who make decisions might be willing to listen to you.”
“What do you want?”
Dartley took his time. “I only need to locate the Palestinians. Tell me where they will be at a certain time.”
“That’s a tall order.”
“I can make it worth your while.”
A look of anger crossed Grady’s face. “Keep your filthy dollars. I’m not in any of this for money.”
“When will you know?”
“Come back tomorrow.”
“I need to know before then.”
“Well, you’ll have to find out some other way.” Grady went down the long bar to serve a customer and stayed down at that end until Dartley left.
Traveling separately but all on the same train, Naim, Hasan, and Ali left Paddington Station for Swansea, Wales. They reached Swansea shortly after eleven at night. The red Opel Kadet was where it was supposed to be, the left front door was unlocked, and the keys were in the dashboard ashtray. The three men got in quickly and Hasan drove.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Camarthen,” Naim said. “Watch for signs.”
Swansea was bigger and more heavily industrialized than they had expected. Naim saw the wisdom of having three foreigners get off the train there instead of in some rural town full of curious idlers. They finally found the road to Camarthen, and from there they went north to Llandyssul and New Quay. It was after one in the morning when they arrived in the little seaport. A fine rain was falling and they could hear waves breaking in the darkness. Nothing stirred in the town, and probably hadn’t since about nine the previous night. They saw some lights on the deck of a trawler, parked the car, and walked down the dock toward the ship. The name on the fishing boat’s stem was Pride of Aberystwyth. Naim hailed a man in yellow oilskins on the deck.
They waited for more than an hour below decks in a filthy fish-smelling cabin before the boat got underway and headed out to sea. After a couple of hours at sea they were called up on deck. Another boat was approaching them. They could see its green starboard light. The boats heaved about on the water and the decks were slick in the fine rain. As the trawler came alongside, a man waited until the two decks were about even and jumped aboard. He shook their hands and told them to jump also. It had looked not too difficult when he did it, but only Hasan managed it with any kind of dignity. Both Naim and Ali fell on the other deck, and Naim would have fallen between the boats if he had not been caught and hauled on deck by his coat.
Frankie Grady was washing glasses when Richard Dartley walked into the Stag and Hounds next day. He sat on a barstool opposite Grady and waited without saying anything. The place was again nearly deserted, with no one in earshot.
“I was able to get you something,” Grady said, concentrating his efforts on a pint glass. “Some units are for these Arab fellas and some are against—there’s been big arguments over it. The Arabs are going to kill Morton Schiff, the Wall Street financier. Him being an American and a Jew, they kill two birds with one stone.”
“Where?” Dartley asked.
“He has a horse in a big race at the Curragh tomorrow. They wanted to do it there, but the top men said no. You know what we Irish are like about racehorses. The IRA would be blamed and it would turn the entire country against us. We made that mistake before when we killed the Aga Khan’s horse.”
“Where is the hit set for?”
“I don’t know that. Schiff arrives on his private jet in Dublin sometime today. He owns a castle in County Waterford, so I suppose he’ll stay there tonight and tomorrow night. I have a Dublin phone number where you can arrange to buy a gun. That’s all I know, except that there’s three men involved. They were taken into Ireland last night on a fishing boat to the Waterford coast. It can’t be far from Schiff’s castle. They might be setting up a reception party already for him. I had to tell my connection that an American was out to get these Arabs. You owe him a favor for his information.”
“Who is it?” Dartley asked.
“You’ll be the first to know when he needs your help.”
Dartley couldn’t remember for the moment what alias Grady knew him under. He was certain Grady had no way of contacting him. That would be one favor hard to call in.
“Do you have change for the phone?” he asked. “A lot of change, enough for a transatlantic call.”
Instead of using the phone in the Stag and Hounds, he went down the road to a public call box.
* * *
Naim had been handed an envelope by his contact in London. It was filled with newspaper clippings about the financier and bloodstock-owner Morton Schiff. Because of his hostile takeovers of major companies, there was plenty written about him, but mostly business articles of little value to Naim. There were a number of pictures of him, though none of good quality. Photographs taken at race meetings in both Europe and America showed him and his wife with trophies. He had gray hair and bushy black eyebrows, was in his late fifties, was tall, had an aggressive thrust to his chin. Naim learned things about his personal life from gossip columns and articles in magazines.
All Schiff’s cars were maroon Rolls-Royces. He was always accompanied by two armed bodyguards, having been the object of a failed kidnapping attempt in Italy and a failed assassination attempt by a deranged accountant in Chicago. He loved horses but had never ridden one. He bred them, bought and sold them, and raced them in six countries. His castle in County Waterford was a fortress with walls of stone six feet thick. He slept only four or five hours a night, and when in Ireland he could be counted on appearing at his trainer’s each day for the dawn gallop. Naim found some pictures of the trainer, J. J. Fitzpatrick, who had a hooked nose and a tweed cap.
The fishing boat set them down on a granite jetty in a deserted cove. They had to walk a mile through drizzle to a farmhouse, where they slept for most of the day. They had a BMW and an Audi at their disposal, three Armalite automatic rifles, .38 ammo for their Spanish pistols, smoke grenades, plastic explosives, electronic time-delay detonating devices, and hand-held transmitter-receivers.
“I say the hell with what they want,” Hasan said. “We should kill him and a lot of others before the big race. They might even catch it live on television. We couldn’t get wider coverage than that.”
It was tempting. Naim thought it over. “We’re depending on the Provos to supply that boat to take us from here to France. There’s a good chance they won’t cooperate if we break our agreement with them. Then we’ll be stuck here, on an island, with all ports and airfields watched. We can’t risk it.”
“They’d still have to help us escape,” Hasan argued. “If
we get caught, there’s always the chance we’ll say the Provos helped us get here. We’d certainly be tempted to reveal their role if we got caught because they let us down. They can’t take a chance on that. They have to help us to France.”
Naim laughed. “You assume they’re all rational. You know even better than I do all the crazy things that have happened in the PLO. Why do you think the IRA is any saner? We both have a lot of loose cannons and quick tempers. I say don’t cross these IRA people if we don’t have to. Let’s hit Schiff at dawn at his trainer’s gallop. If we don’t get a chance then, at least we tried. So we can say we had to do it at the big race.”
They left the farmhouse long before first light next day, Naim and Hasan in the BMW, Ali behind in the Audi. Although Schiff was not far from them and might be taking the Same road, they decided against an ambush when there was a much easier way. They would just walk up to him and shoot him.
J. J. Fitzpatrick’s place was in County Kildare, less than two hours away. It was located somewhere outside Athy, a small country town. The streets were empty and the stores still closed at this early hour. They stopped a slow-moving truck loaded with hay bales and the driver gave them directions. He said to look for a big gateway with stone lions on each side. They turned in at the gateway, passing over the parallel steel bars that prevented horses and cattle from going in or out. Trees lined a long gravel drive, branches meeting overhead. The drive forked, the left side heading for a large gray house. Hasan took the right fork, and Ali followed.
They left the cars in a gravel lot and walked to an archway. Through it they saw a square lined with long, low buildings on all four sides. The buildings had red wood doors, with independently opening top and bottom halves. Horses’ heads looked out of many open top halves. Other horses, some in blankets, were being led or ridden in the open space. Small, lightweight men and young boys hurried around, some carrying metal pails, others riding crops.
