Harry's Game

by Gerald Seymour

  The faint sunlight that had seen them out of Belfast was long since gone as Harry drove back on the shiny, watered road into the city. They spoke hardly a word all the way, and Harry dropped her off where he had met her in the morning, on the corner of Grosvenor and the Falls. Just before he stopped he asked her where she lived, so that he could drop her at the door. She said it would be better at the main road.

  ‘When will I see you again?’ he said, as she climbed out of the car. The traffic was hustling them.

  ‘Next week, at Mrs Duncan’s. You’ll see me there.’

  ‘And we’ll go out somewhere? Have a drink?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  She knew so much more than she had wanted to, or was equipped to handle. What had started as something of a game had become considerable enough to subdue her into a morose silence most of the way home. She darted out of the car, and without a wave disappeared into the Clonard side streets.

  Harry dropped the car off at the garage and walked back to Delrosa. His mind was filled with that conversation he’d had with Davidson in the garden. The loneliness factor. Sounded so astonishing when the old chap was trying to put it over as a problem. What had he said? ‘Unless you’re aware of it, there will come a time when you want to tell someone.’ Fumbling his way into it because it embarrassed him that his chosen man could possibly fall into so well-signposted a pit, embarrassed even to suggest it. And that’s the way it was, because Davidson knew what it was about, was the only one of them who knew what it was about. How many of the others could transpose themselves into the hostility of this community, live day-in, day-out with the fear and the strain and the isolation?

  Don’t go on with it, Harry boy, let it rest there. Don’t let it infect you. The cancer of doubt spreads fast enough, Harry. Drop it.

  Billy Downs decided he would go for Rennie the next day, Sunday.

  The reports that were available from the minders who had been cautiously watching the policeman suggested that he made a habit of going to the interrogation centre on Sunday afternoons. He stayed a few hours and reached home around seven in the evening. It fitted with the plan that Downs had made. He discussed none of this with his wife, but as his preoccupation with the killing grew so they moved about their house, two strangers under the same roof. Life was carried on with a series of gestures and monosyllabic phrases.

  Downs had been informed of the arrangement by which he would take possession of the Armalite rifle that he would use for the attack, and he had reported up the chain on the timing and the date that he would want the operation set in motion. It had been suggested to him that the Armalite was an unsuitable weapon for a close-quarter killing, but in the face of his wishes the point had not been pressed.

  The huge power of the weapon excited him to such a degree that he could think of taking no other. The bullet that he intended should kill Rennie would leave the barrel at a muzzle velocity of 3250 feet per second. The statistics that he had read in a sales brochure astounded and exhilarated him. It weighed slightly less than seven pounds and would fit comfortably into the poacher-style pocket he had fashioned on the inside of his raincoat. And he would be far from his safe base area: if he were intercepted by the army or police then the sharp crack of the Armalite would be enough to send his enemy scurrying for cover for the few seconds he might need to get clear. He had asked for two thirty-round magazines for the weapon, just in case.

  A brandy in hand, Frost was sitting on his own in a corner of the mess at Lisburn mulling over the magazines of weekly comment with which he prided himself he kept abreast. He made a point of working his way through the dog-eared Spectator, Economist and Statesman, and it had become sufficient of a ritual for other officers of equal rank to leave him to himself, when on any other evening they would have joined him.

  The mess waiter came over and hesitated beside the chair, before plunging in.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. Sorry to trouble you. There’s a reporter from The Times on the phone. Says he needs to speak to you. Says it’s urgent. He said to say he was sorry to trouble you, but he thought you’d want to hear what he had to say.’

  Frost nodded, pulled himself up and followed the waiter to the phone cubicle.

  ‘Hello, Frost here. Ah, yes, we’ve met. A leaving party, in the summer, right? What can I do for you?’

  He listened without interruption as the reporter read over to him the story that was being prepared for Monday’s editions. The Provisional IRA had tipped off one of their favoured reporters in Belfast that they believed the British had infiltrated a new secret agent into the city on a mission so sensitive that only the GOC, General Fairbairn, had been told of it. The Provos were claiming that the operation had caused great anger among British army staff officers in HQ. On Monday the story would appear in Dublin papers as well as British ones, and the IRA would be calling for special vigilance from the people to seek out the spy. The Provos, Frost was told, were saying this was a special operation and one quite different from anything mounted before.

  ‘I’m not expecting you to comment on anything, Colonel. This is a private call, just to let you know what’s going on. Good night.’

  The colonel mouthed his thanks.

  He flicked the receiver’s buttons up and down till the operator came on the line.

  ‘Evening. Frost here. GOC at home, please.’ When he was connected he told the General he needed to see him immediately. There was no hint of an apology for disturbing the senior soldier in Northern Ireland at that time of night. That would not have been Frost’s style. His early-warning antennae were already jangling with the possibility of a major intelligence scandal.

  The General and Frost talked for an hour, and agreed to have another meeting at eight on Sunday morning with the benefit of further information. They would then, they thought, get on to the MOD and demand Harry’s immediate recall before the awkward business became necessary of dragging him out of some hedgerow with an IRA bullet in the back of his head.

  Across the city in Mrs Duncan’s boarding house Harry was asleep. He had been somewhat unnerved by the brutality with which his cover had been stripped aside by the girl. On his return he had lifted the carpets and floorboards at the place where the revolver was hidden. The Smith & Wesson, with its six chambers loaded, was now wrapped in a towel under his pillow, in the corner over by the wall. As a day it had been a fiasco. A shambles. Back in the reality of the city with the hardness of the gun near to him he felt lunatic at what had passed between him and the girl in the wind and rain on the hillside. Out of his tiny mind.

  Chapter 14

  Harry was up early again that Sunday morning, and out of the house well before eight to make his way down to the city centre and the phone that he could use to talk to Davidson. This time he took the revolver with him, in his coat pocket, with the roughness of its shape shielded by the length of the covering anorak. The decision to take the gun had been an instinctive one, but now that he had it, and out on the streets and loaded, the situation that he faced was all the more clear. For the first time since they had flown him in from Germany he felt uncertain. That was the girl. Up that mountain talking a load of slop when he should have been concentrating, then letting her go last night, back into the warren that she shared with his opposition. Madness, and it aggravated him. Perhaps also there was the knowledge that the trail that had seemed so warm a week ago had now chilled.

  The Smith & Wesson jarred against him as he stepped out down the Falls to the phone and communication with Davidson. There were no eyes watching him after he left Delrosa: the orders of the Battalion intelligence officer were being strictly obeyed.

  He dialled the number, four-seven-zero-four-six-eight-one. After several desultory clicks he heard it ringing at the other end. It was answered.

  ‘It’s Harry here. How are the family?’

  Davidson was in early too, and hoping for the call. ‘Very well, they liked the postcards.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem.’ Pause. �
��I’ve been blown by this girl, the one that helped me with the business I gave you last week. What a cock-up that was.’ Pause. ‘But anyway, putting the finger on that bird has led this girl straight back to me. She knows what I am. Not who I am, but what we’re here for. I want you to take her out. Get her out of the scene for the duration. You can do that, can’t you? She tells me that the man we want was at the same dance that we were at, a fortnight ago. I half-felt I remembered him. But the face wasn’t quite right on the photokit. If it’s the man then the army pulled him in, but that looked routine. He was just one of the ones that were rounded up. He had a woman with him, presumably his wife, in a yellow trouser suit. Have you got all that?’

  ‘I’ve got it on tape, Harry. Anything else?’

  ‘Hell, what more do you want? No, that’s all I have at the moment. But look, I don’t want the living daylights bashed out of this girl. I just want her lifted out so she doesn’t get involved any more. She’s Josephine Laverty, lives with her mother in one of those little streets in Clonard, up off the Springfield on the right. You’ll find her, but get to her quick, there’s a good lad.’

  ‘We’ll work something out. Don’t worry.’

  ‘There’s not really much else. It’s a bit chill here at the moment but I think I’m settled in here OK. If you don’t wrap it up on what I’ve just given you then it’ll be a very long time. Do we have time for that?’

  ‘We’ve plenty, as long as you think it worth it, Harry. But we ought, as you say, to kill it this time. It was a hell of a balls-up over the other girl. There was a lot of praise at this end for what you got. Great satisfaction. You’re all right yourself, are you? No-one following you about, no awkward questioning? Our assessment is that they would be right up to you by now if they were about to blow you, and that you’d probably have been aware of something. That’s not just supposed to cheer you up, but if no-one is sniffing around you then it should mean you’re OK.’

  ‘No, there’s nothing like that,’ Harry said. ‘I’m working too. Job in a scrap yard in Andersonstown, and paying well. Back to the scene, then.’

  ‘Harry, look, you ought to know this. I got well and truly chewed up over your living arrangements, us not knowing. It’s not only unusual, it’s unprofessional as well. Very unprofessional.’

  ‘The whole thing’s unprofessional,’ Harry replied. ‘Nothing’s going to change. You’re not going to order me, are you? I don’t think it would help, and it’s my neck. Thanks very much for caring. Cheers, maestro.’

  ‘Bye, Harry, I understand. No-one else does. Take care, and listen to the news. As soon as you hear we’ve got him, come whistling out. Give me a call first if you can, but head on up to the airport like you’ve got a bomb up your backside. Take care.’

  Harry put the phone down, and hurried out into the cold and the long walk back up the Falls. He was concerned that they should get the girl out of the quagmire, and fast, before her involvement became too great for her to extricate herself . . . before she followed the other girl he’d brought into the game.

  But things did move fast that Sunday.

  Twenty minutes after Harry had rung off Davidson called the Permanent Under-Secretary. He caught the civil servant on the point of going to early morning service. The bad news first. Always play it that way, Davidson liked to say. Kick them a bit, then produce the magic sponge. They like it better. The agent was still declining to name a contact point. Not refusing, but declining. Don’t want to make an order of it. Told him it’s stupid, but can’t do more than that. As he says, it’s his neck. Our scandal if he catches it, mind, but his neck for all that. Now the bonus. Good information out of our chap. He’ll like that.

  ‘Keep that for a moment,’ snapped the civil servant. ‘I’ve had calls in the night. GOC has been on, and that man of his, Frost of intelligence. Bloody misnomer that. They want our fellow out, and kicking up a hell of a scene. They think he’s blown.’

  Davidson bit his tongue. He heard at the end of the line the call for the rest of the family to go on.

  ‘There’s been some sort of leak. Like a sieve, that place. The papers have got a story from the opposition that they know a big man has been put in. There’s panic stations over there. Anyway the order is get the chap out or the General says he’ll go to the PM. Consolation is that the men over there say they don’t think the IRA have a name. But that’ll come soon enough. And you haven’t an idea where we could go and just take hold of him?’

  ‘All I have is that he works in a scrap merchant’s in Andersonstown. Nothing more.’

  ‘That won’t do us much good till Monday morning.’

  ‘He’s done well again, our chap. The man we want was actually at the dance where Harry was the other night. The military had him, and must have let him go, or are holding him on something else . . .’

  ‘Look, for God’s sake, Davidson, I’m at home. I’m going to church. There’s no point feeding me that sort of material over the phone. Talk to Frost direct. He’ll be in his office, prancing about. He’s having a field day. But if this Harry man should call again, get him out. That now is an instruction.’

  Davidson had always had to admit that he enjoyed the complicated paraphernalia of introducing the agent into the operations theatre. He could reflect on it now, with the phone quiet, and his superior racing down the country lanes late for his communion. Davidson had been on the old Albania team. There had been the months with the undercover Greeks and Turks in Cyprus. Three years’ secondment to the Singapore government to train bright-faced little policemen in the techniques of urban infiltration and maintaining men in a hostile environment. There was a gap in his wide experience. He recognized it. The men he sent into the field or discussed sending were all, as Davidson saw them, foreigners. The involvement with the men who listened to his lectures or acted under his orders was loose, and in no way binding.

  With Harry it had become quite different. The danger that he now knew his agent to be facing numbed Davidson to a degree that almost shamed him. He had long seen himself as a tough, near-ruthless figure, the man in charge who put his agents onto the ground without sentiment or personal feeling. His defensive walls were being breached, he realized, as he thought of his man across the water, with the enemy closing on him.

  And Harry didn’t just not know of it: he’d just been told that all was well and looked good. That made him vulnerable.

  Davidson had a growing feeling of nausea when he remembered how Harry had been brought to Dorking. Damn-all chance he’d had of backing out of the operation. The Prime Minister personally authorized the setting up of the team, and we’ve chosen you as the most suitable man. What chance did he have of sidestepping that little lot? He’d been belted off on the plane on a wild-goose chase. If he’s not out of there soon he’ll be number one thousand and bloody something pushing up daisies.

  He picked up his phone and called Frost direct, in his office where he’d been told he’d be. At the other end of the line the serving colonel in intelligence left the London-based civilian with no illusions as to what he thought of armchair administrators organizing undercover work without consultation or know-how. Davidson resigned himself to it, letting it blaze over him. Between the interruptions he read over the transcript of Harry’s message. He ended on a high note.

  ‘He did pretty well with the first lot of stuff we gave you. We were disappointed in our team it didn’t come to much. You should have it sewn up this time, don’t you think, old boy?’

  Frost didn’t rise. It was a juicy and wriggling bait, but the office was crowded, and it was not the day for telephone brawling. That would come after this merry little show was wrapped up and in mothballs – what was left of it. He called the Springfield Road police to request the locating and picking up of the girl Josephine Laverty of Clonard, and then turned his attention to the matter of the man having been in and presumably out of military hands on Saturday night two weeks back. Cool bastard he must be, appraised the colonel. In between
the calls he cancelled his Sunday-morning nine holes with G2 Ops.

  Other operations had gone wrong before, Davidson recalled. There were those endless nights when they parachuted Albanians into the marshlands between the sea and Tirana and waited in vain with their CIA colleagues for the chatter of radio signals that would let them know all was well. When the Cypriot agents he had controlled had disappeared there had been days of nagging uncertainty until the bodies showed up – generally tortured, and always shot through the back of the head. But they were only aliens, so that the recriminations were short-lived, the reprisals muted. But if they lost Harry then the ramifications would be huge, and public. The round-up of scapegoats would be spectacular, Davidson had no doubt of that. The Permanent Under-Secretary would have faded from the picture by then, would have fetched his sliding carpet out. The old hack would be left holding the baby.

  He called his assistant in from the outer office where, thank God, the man spent most of his time, and told him to watch the phones. He was to tape all calls, regardless, on the cassette recorder, whichever phone they came through on. He slipped out of the building. Sunday morning in Covent Garden. Some sunlight about on the upper reaches of the big buildings. Piles of fruit and vegetable boxes. No people. Davidson walked to the small grocer that he knew would be open to serve the flats, big and grey-smeared, to the north of the market square. He bought bread, and cartons of milk, coffee and biscuits, some butter, and lemon curd. He’d liked that ever since boarding school thirty-five years ago. The total was about all his cooking facilities would cope with.

  There had been no calls when he returned. He phoned his wife, told her he would be in town for a day or so, and not to worry. She didn’t sound as if she was. There was an army-issue camp bed kept in the wardrobe behind his desk, excruciatingly uncomfortable but better than nothing. It would be a long wait, and no-one to spend it with but the boring young man they’d sent along to give him a hand. Davidson had realized soon that they had not fully briefed his assistant on what was happening. He had no intention himself of enlightening him. They were on stand-by now, operational twenty-four hours.