Harry's Game

by Gerald Seymour

  The Secretary of State for Defence was in his office early, clearing his desk for the start of a short holiday, and arming himself with persuasive and informed argument that he would need for his nine holes with the Prime Minister. The civil servant who was briefing him on the missile gap and the sagging morale of denuded units in Germany continued his lecture in his usual professorial manner. He had a turn of phrase that had infuriated a series of Ministers as the civil servant had progressed upwards to his position of a Man Who Ran Things. His role in the vast department was all-commanding, his power and influence huge. One of the smaller cogs in his well-oiled machine was Davidson, and one of the less frequently mentioned properties on his books was the house near Dorking.

  Tentatively the Minister spoke to him.

  ‘That suggestion of the PM about the Danby killing – you remember, putting a chap in there. He’ll want to know . . . what’s happening?’

  ‘Yes. He phoned last week. I wouldn’t worry about it, Minister. We’re still going over feasibility et cetera at the moment. It’s not a fast business, you know; not a thing we can successfully knock off overnight.’

  ‘Nothing definite yet, then? You’ve already spoken to him? That’s a bit odd, isn’t it? On to you direct, and by-passing me? He may be in charge of security and all that, but it’s a bit off. What did you tell him?’

  ‘That things were in hand. That he’d get a briefing the moment there was something to report, when there were developments.’

  ‘I think you see me as some sort of security risk or something.’ The Minister grimaced. The civil servant smiled generously. The subject was terminated. It was back to rocketry and more conventional theatres of war.

  Twenty-five thousand feet up, between Liverpool and the Isle of Man, Harry was working things out. The reality of it all had been brutally clear as he had stood in the queue waiting to be searched by the Securicor team at the departure gate. Whoever heard of an agent getting his own bags taken apart by his own bloody side? It was painfully clear why his promised Smith & Wesson would have to be picked up at the Belfast main post office, where Davidson was to send it to await collection. He tried to concentrate on his cover story. Merchant seaman going home after years away, land in turmoil, oppression over the minority. Time for all true Irishmen to get back to back, together to withstand the English bastards. Three hundred years post Cromwell, and nothing changed. Blood of martyrs on the streets again. Would anyone be daft enough to come back to that stinking hole, just because things were getting worse? Be out of their minds. Irish might be daft enough, have to be daft. One thing – bloody English wouldn’t come home, they’d all go off to Australia or South Africa. Wouldn’t catch them risking their precious lilywhite backsides.

  The story was as firm in his mind as it ever would be.

  He lay, half awake, half asleep, in no man’s land. What of the commitment he had taken on? Motivation was vague and unthought-out. It wouldn’t be as strong as the other side’s. No chance. Motivation was against the code with which he had been instilled. Officers didn’t need motivation. It wasn’t all clear.

  Rights and wrongs, pluses and minuses, blacks and whites were all vague. In Northern Ireland things don’t divide and coalesce neatly. That’s too easy. What was it the politicians had said? ‘Anyone who thinks he knows the answer to Northern Ireland is ill-informed.’ Good, that. Lots of ill-informed types in the mess in Germany then. Came back with the solution worked out. One big swoop, one big push, the tough hand, the gentle hand, the ‘saturate them’, the ‘pull the plug and leave them’. All the answers, none the same, but all spoken with such authority. Amazing how you can learn three hundred years’ bigotry in four months looking after five blocks in a scruffy council estate.

  Harry, heavy with sarcasm, had once congratulated a brother in uniform on the good fortune the other had in being able to see things so clearly. To be able with such confidence to apportion his blame and praise, culpability and credit – that made him a lucky man. In Mansoura, just out of Sheik Othman, where the gunmen were running round while the boyos in Ulster were still on their iced lollies and sing-songs, it had been so much easier. The Red Cross man from Switzerland, in his little white suit, even with a big bright cross on his hat so they wouldn’t throw a grenade at him from a rooftop, had come to visit the unit once. He’d said to the colonel something like, ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’ The colonel hadn’t liked that. Pretty heady stuff, they all thought in the mess. Such rubbish. Terrorists they were then, wog terrorists at that.

  But in Aden Harry had thought it was obvious to even the most stupid that British society was in no way being protected by their efforts . . . business perhaps, but nothing else.

  Whatever else men died for in the sharp staccato engagements of small-arms fire, the green fields of home were a touch removed from the Mansoura roundabout picket, Checkpoint Golf or the Chartered Bank in Crater. As an Ulsterman, and so never allowed a posting home to fight, Harry had often wondered whether soldiering there was any different to Aden. Did all the stuff about duty, purpose and reason mean that much more just because the fighting was down by the local supermarket and not six hours away on a VC10? He reckoned he was as disinterested now in the welfare of the great body of society as he had been then. He had been given a job to do, and he was doing it because someone had to, and by a series of accidents he was better equipped than most.

  But by the time the Trident was arching over the landfall to the south of Strangford Lough, Harry had decided he was not a little flattered he’d been asked. He had been chosen for a mission, after all, called for by the Prime Minister. In the close heat of the plane he thought of his wife, warmth and closeness flooding through him. It was a pity she couldn’t share in his pride. The passenger across the aisle noticed the slow smile spreading across the cheeks of the man slumped by the window.

  For a few more seconds Harry indulged himself, conscious of the softness of the moment. He knew from the other times of great danger that he had faced that he could cocoon himself in sentimentality for his family, for Mary and the boys. It was part of the mechanism of protection which Harry understood and cherished.

  As the airliner began its approach across the small fields towards Aldergrove Harry fastened his belt strap, and let his thoughts turn to the man whose image was imprinted in his mind. He could see the man, could put flesh and colour and dimensions on to the dark lines of the photokit. The target. Was he an enemy? Not really. What, then, if not an enemy? Just a target. Still to be killed, no question of that. Eliminate – it rolled off Harry’s silent tongue. It was the word he liked.

  He was jolted awake as the wheels suspended below the wings banged down onto the scarred tarmac. The plane surged forward in the air at a little more than ninety miles an hour, bounced again, and began to slow with the application of the engine’s reverse thrust.

  Terminal 1, Heathrow, the first-floor cafeteria. Davidson was breakfasting with the team who had come up to see Harry off. It was a subdued meal without the frills of conversation. Not much had been said after Harry had disappeared towards the security checks. Davidson had muttered, almost audibly, ‘Gutsy little sod.’

  ‘I’ll take the bill,’ he had added, as they rose from the table, and then, as an afterthought, ‘I think we’ve told him all we could in three weeks, but it’s bloody little time. To do that job properly you’d need six months. And then you couldn’t be sure. Always the same when the politicians dip their toes in – short cuts. That’s the order of the day. To come through with three weeks behind him he’ll need to be lucky, bloody lucky.’

  The anomaly of going to war in your own country was not lost on Harry. He came down the steep steps from the plane and hurried past the RAF Regiment corporal, who held his rifle diagonally across his thighs, right-hand forefinger extended along the trigger guard. There were coils of barbed wire at the flanks of the terminal building, sprawled across the flower beds that had once been sufficient in themse
lves to mark the perimeters of the taxi-ing area. The viewing gallery where people used to wave to their friends and relatives was now fenced with high chicken wire to prevent a missile being thrown onto the apron; it was out of bounds to civilians, anyway. After getting his bag in the concourse Harry walked out towards the coach pick-up point. Around him was an avenue of white oil drums with heavy planks slung between them – a defence against car bombers moving their lethal loads against the walls of the buildings. He moved by a line of passengers waiting to take the Trident back to London. They stood outside, occasionally shuffling forward with their baggage. Up at the front the searches went on in two green prefab huts. Only rarely did the faces of the travellers match the brightness of their going-away clothes: children silent, women with their eyes darting round, the men concerned with getting the cases to the search and then eventually to the plane. Greyness, anxiety, exhaustion.

  Harry climbed on the bus, and was quick enough to ensure himself a window seat near the back.

  By the time the coach had left the fields behind and was into the top of the Crumlin Road the man directly behind Harry was in full voice. Taking upon himself the role of guide and raconteur, outmatching those who lead crocodiles of tourists round the Tower of London and Hampton Court, he capitalized on the quiet of the bus to demonstrate his intimate knowledge of the campaign as fought so far.

  ‘Down there on the right – you see the small lane – just round the corner where you can’t see – that’s where the three Scottish soldiers were murdered . . . the pub . . . the one that’s blown up – the one we’re passing – they took ’em from there and killed them down the road when they were having a slash. There’s nothing to see there now . . . people used to put flowers, but not now, nothing to see except there’s no grass in the ditch where they got it . . . Army dug it all up looking for bullets, and it never grew since. Now on the left, where the road climbs up, towards the quarry, that’s where the senator was killed . . . the Catholic senator with the girl, they were killed up there, stabbed. Last year it was, just before the elections. Look now in front, there she is, the greatest city on earth. Down below, left, not hard left, that’s Ardoyne . . . over to the right that’s Ballymurphy . . . we’re coming into Ligoniel now.’

  It’ll be bus trips for the Japanese next, thought Harry. Once they’ve stopped looking round Vietnam you’ll be able to flog them Belfast. By special demand after the world’s greatest jungle conflict, we offer you reduced rate to the longest-ever urban guerrilla war. Roll up! Roll up! Get your tickets now!

  ‘Now wait for the bumps.’ The man behind was away again, as the bus had slowed to a crawl. ‘Here we go now. See we’re outside a barracks . . . there on the left . . . they all have bumps outside now . . . stops the Provos belting past and giving the sentry a burst with a Thompson. They used to have luminous paint on them, the bumps, that’s gone now . . . if you don’t know where they are you give the car a hell of a bang . . . hit one of those at fifty and you know about it . . . that’s Ardoyne, now, over on the left, where the policeman is. That’s a sight for the English, policemen with bullet-proof coats and machine-guns . . . won’t use the army flak jackets, have their own. We cut across now, they don’t rate going down the Crumlin in Ulster buses. We’ll use the Shankill. Looks all right, doesn’t it, quiet enough? See that hole on the right? That’s the Four Steps bar . . . killed a fair few when that went up. Not a breath of a warning. Look there on the same side, see it? That hole . . . that was a furniture shop . . . two kiddies died there – not old enough to walk.’

  ‘Shut up, Joe, nobody wants to know. Just wrap it.’

  Perhaps Joe felt he had given his virtuoso performance. He fell silent. Harry watched out of the window, fascinated by the sights. At the traffic lights the driver nudged up to the white line alongside a Saracen armoured car. Soldiers were crouched inside the half-open steel back doors, rifles in hand. On the other side of the crossroads he watched a patrol inching its way through the shopping crowds. On all sides were the yards of pale-brown hardboard that had taken over from glass in the display windows of the stores. The policemen here had discarded their sub-machine-guns, but let their right hands rest securely inside their heavy dark coats. It surprised Harry how much there was to see that could have been a part of any other British industrial city – buses, cars, people, clothes, paper stands – all merging in with the great military umbrella that had settled itself on Belfast.

  At the bus station Harry switched to another single-decker that went high up on the Antrim Road to the north, speeding past the troubled New Lodge Junction before cutting into residential suburbs. The houses were big, old, tall, red-brick and fading. Davidson had given him the name of a boarding house where he’d said Harry could get a room, three stops up past the New Lodge.

  Harry got off the bus at the stop, and looked round to find his bearings. He spotted the house they had chosen for him and moved away from it farther down the long hill till he was about a hundred and fifty yards from the seedy board with its ‘vacancies’ sign. Then he waited. He watched the front door for twenty-five minutes before he saw what he’d half expected. A young man came out down the steps that led to the short front path. Clothes not quite right, walk too long, hair a fair bit too short.

  Harry boiled. ‘Stupid bastards. Davidson, you prime bastard. Send me to one of your own bloody places. Nice safe little billet for soldiers in a nice Proddy area. Somewhere you won’t find anything out, but you won’t get shot. No, not Davidson, some bugger in intelligence in Belfast, having his own back because it isn’t his caper. Sod ’em. I’m not going through all this to sit on my arse in Proddyland and come out in a month with nothing to show. No way.’

  He took the next bus into central Belfast from the other side of the road, walked across to the taxi rank in Castle Street, and asked for a lift up to mid-Falls. Not Davidson’s game, that. He wouldn’t know addresses in Belfast, it would have to be one of the minions, flicking through his card index, this looks right to keep him out of mischief. Couldn’t infiltrate Mansoura from bloody Steamer Point, nor the Falls from Prod country.

  To the cab driver he said, ‘I’m working about half-way up, and looking for someone who takes in lodgers. Not too pricey. Yer know anyone? About halfway, near the Broadway. Is there anyone?’

  He waited in the cab for several minutes for the other seats to be taken up in the shuttle service that had now largely replaced the inconsistencies of the bus timetable. The journey he’d made in from the airport, out onto the Antrim Road, his wait there, the trip back, the walk to the taxi rank, that delay sitting in the back waiting to go, all had taken their toll in time.

  Deep greyness was settling over the city, rubbing out its sharp lines, when the taxi, at last full, pulled away.

  The first soldier in the patrol was up to the corner and round it before the man had reacted to the movement. The second gave him a chance to identify it as an army patrol. On the third and fourth he had begun to get an aim, and for the next man he was ready. Rifle at the shoulder. The upper part of the shadow cut out by the V of the leaf mechanism of his rear sight, and sliced by the upward thrust of the front sight at the far tip of the barrel. The fifth soldier had come fast round the corner, too close to his colleague in front, and paused for the other to move farther away before starting off again himself. He was stationary for one and a half seconds before the man fired. The shadow fell out from the darkness of the wall towards the corridor of light from Mrs Mulvenna’s front room.

  The man had time to see the stillness of the form, half on the pavement and half on the street, before he wormed and scrambled his way to the centre of the roof space – and ran. His escape route took him along a catwalk of planks set across the gaps between the roof beams, in all traversing the roof space of four homes. In the last house the light shone up among the eaves where the ceiling door had been left open for him. He swung down onto the landing, and then moved to the stairs leading to the back of the house and the kitchen. The Arm
alite was grabbed from him by a teenager who had been listening for the clatter of the escape across the ceiling. Within three minutes it would be in a plastic bag, sealed, and dropped under the grating in the back yard, with a thin line of dark cord tied to the bars to retrieve it later.

  The man went out into the back yard, scrambled over the five-foot-high fence, ducked across the back entry, and felt for the rear doors on the far side till he came to the one off the hook. It remained for him to cut through that house, and he was out in the next street. Here he didn’t run, but ambled the three hundred yards farther away from the killing where he rang a front-door bell. A youth came out immediately, motioned him to a waiting car, and drove him away.

  There had been no pursuit. No soldier had seen the fractional flash of the barrel as the man fired. Five of them, shouting and waving, fear in their eyes, had sunk to firing positions in the doorways of the street. Two more gathered beside their dead colleague. Before the ambulance came it was plain that their efforts were pointless, but they fumbled the medical dressing clear from his webbing belt and placed it over the bloody chest wound.

  Harry heard the single shot from far up the road when the taxi was caught in stationary traffic at the lights just beyond the huge bulk of the hospital building. As the taxi stayed unmoving, log-jammed in the sea of vehicles, a convoy of armoured cars swept by up the wrong side of the road, horns blaring and headlights on. Soldiers jumped from the moving column to take up their shooting positions on the main road, while others poured into the side streets. Harry saw the blue flashing light of an ambulance swing sharply out of a side street, one hundred and fifty yards up on the right, and turn down towards them. The ambulance was a Saracen with huge red crosses on a white background painted on the sides. Turning his head, Harry saw through the flapping open doors at the back two dark shapes bent over the top end of the stretcher. The handles of the stretcher, between them a pair of boots, stuck out beyond the tailboard of the armoured car.