‘Any news?’
‘Not a bloody dicky bird that matters.’
The men on duty in the intelligence section moved quietly round the room, unwilling to attract Frost’s attention. He was slumped ungracefully in his chair, his eyes half closed, half focused on the ceiling. He was a man of method and neatness, following his own individual rule book, but following it closely, and expecting others to ape him. Harry McEvoy violated the rule book. The theory, the preparation and the execution of the McEvoy operation all contravened the requirements of this sort of business. His subordinates had detected the inner anger and knew enough to keep their distance.
Frost could see the weakness in the whole affair. This lunatic fighting between departments and services. Point-scoring at a grand level and at the expense of the man out there on the streets. He was as guilty as any. But the issue had to be settled so there would be no repetition. That was where it was all so amateurish. The Prime Minister and the GOC . . . They should have their heads knocked together. But rivalries don’t come from a victory march, they don’t surface when the show’s going well, they’re the product of long-drawn-out failure.
The chatter of the teletype machines and the noise of men shuffling round the room, doors opening, muted talk were insufficient to disturb his train of thought.
It’s because we’re all lashing around, stranded by the tide, looking for the way out when there isn’t one, that a damn-fool thing like this gets launched. And after five endless years of it, and the promise of how many more to come, the inevitability that the professionals are going to be cold-shouldered, that the outsiders will want to have their say. Inevitable. And the price we pay for it is having that poor devil McEvoy or whatever his real name is out there on the streets, working for God knows who.
Frost straightened up in his chair. ‘Get me some coffee, please. Black, and make sure there’s plenty there this morning.’ He was tired, exhausted by it all. They all were.
The postcard was lying on the mat, colour side down, when Mary Brown responded to the flap of the letter box in the front door.
‘There’s a card from Daddy, darlings,’ she called into the back of the house where the boys were having their breakfast.
‘Not a letter, Mum?’ her elder boy shouted back.
‘No, just a card. You know how awful your father is about letters.’
There was a market scene on the card. Men in kaffiyehs and futahs staring blankly from the gold market that stood in the middle distance.
‘Hope to see you all soon. Still very hot, and not much to do. Love you all, Harry.’ That was all there was on the card, written in Biro and in Harry’s large hand.
Josephine Laverty was late, and hurried in a frantic mixture of a run and a walk down the Falls to the mill where she worked. She couldn’t go fast as the pain still bit into her ribs. She too had heard the early radio news, half expecting in an uninvolved sort of way to hear that Harry McEvoy had been found face down, hooded and dead. It had surprised her that there was no mention of him. This morning she had wondered for a wild moment whether to go to see if he was still at Delrosa, but there was no will power and the emotion he had created was now drained from her.
Perhaps she would go to Mrs Duncan’s tonight to help with the teas. Perhaps not, but that could be a later decision. There was now an irrelevance about Harry McEvoy. Forget him. The pillow eavesdropper who had a girl killed. Forget the sod.
With their photographs of Harry the troops from Fort Monagh raided the five scrap yards in Andersonstown. No-one in the operation had been told why they were to pick up the smiling man in the picture who wore his hair shorter than their more general customers. The orders were that if the man was found he was to be taken straight to Battalion headquarters and handed over. Amongst those NCOs who were the foremen of the military factory floor and who knew most of what mattered there was surprise that so many men were occupied in looking for a man whose picture was not on the operations room wall, whose name was completely fresh. They had their regular batch of photographs, top ten for the week, top thirty for the month, four for each day of the week. Made up on little cards and issued to the troops to study before they went out on patrol. But this face had never been among them.
At the scrap yards the employees who had arrived before the troops stood sullenly against the walls of the huts, hands above their heads, as they were searched and then matched with the photograph. From the five locations the initial report was that a blank had been drawn. But the troops would lie up in the yards till nine at least in the hope that the man they wanted would still come – was just late. At the yard where Harry in fact worked there was disbelief when they were shown the picture. Never involved, never talking politics, just an ordinary man, too old to be with the cowboys. The little man who ran the yard looked round the armoured cars, and the soldiers, reckoned Harry must be important and determined to say nothing. He confirmed the picture, that he employed a man called Harry McEvoy, that he had started work recently, that was all. Let them find the rest out for themselves.
‘Where does he live?’ the lieutenant who led the raid asked him.
‘Don’t know. He never said. Just down the road somewhere, that’s all he said.’
‘He must have given some impression where he lived?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What about his stamps, his insurance?’
The little man looked embarrassed. The answer was clear enough.
The lieutenant was new to Northern Ireland. The man opposite him seemed of substance, a cut above the yobbos, respectable even.
‘Look, we need this man rather badly.’ He said it quietly, out of earshot of the other men.
‘Well, you’ll have to wait for him, won’t you.’
But time was ticking on its way, and as the soldiers crouched behind the wrecked cars and buses and waited there was no sign of the face in the photograph. Even the little man became worried by Harry’s non-arrival. His first reaction had been that it was a case of mistaken identity, but that Harry should be absent at the same time that the military launched this reception led him to suppose that his newest hand was a rather more complex figure than he had believed.
The soldiers radioed in, hung about a few more minutes and drove back, empty-handed, to Fort Monagh.
Chapter 18
The Secretary of State spoke to Downing Street from the single-storeyed red-brick building that was the RAF Reception at Aldergrove. They’d offered him a car to take him to the officers’ quarters and the use of the group captain’s phone, but he’d declined. The message waiting for him was of the sort the Prime Minister rarely burdened him with, must be important and should be returned at speed.
It took several minutes for the connection to come through. The delay came from the need to patch in the speech distortion apparatus that would safeguard the security of the call and prevent any casual telephone user listening in on the conversation. When the instrument rang out in the partitioned office indicating that the call was ready the service aides discreetly backed out through the door. The Secretary of State’s men stayed with him.
‘Morning, Prime Minister. I’m returning you call.’
‘I won’t keep you long. I wondered how thoroughly you’d read your papers this morning. Guardian and Times. Provisionals claiming they’ve identified an agent of ours, warning the population. All a bit melodramatic but enough to cause anxiety.’
‘I haven’t seen it, I’m afraid.’
The Prime Minister replied, ‘We’re a little anxious at this end that it could be the fellow we sent over for Danby. Could be difficult if they nabbed him, and he talked.’
‘Trifle awkward, no doubt about that. Well, we’ll get the people who run him to move him out right away. Get him back to UK and snappy. That’s the simple answer.’
‘The problem lies right there,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘It’s a bit incredible, but the chaps controlling him in London cannot contact him. Seems he just calls in when he has something to s
ay.’
The Secretary of State winced. ‘Bit unusual that, isn’t it? Bit unique. Not standard procedure. What you are saying is that he may not know he’s blown if in fact he is. That we may not be hearing too much from him in the future.’
‘You’re not a million miles away from it.’
‘And what do we do …? Sorry, I’ll rephrase that one. What do you want done about it?’
‘I’m just letting you know the situation. There’s not very much we can do about it beyond the obvious. Stand by to catch the cradle.’
‘If it comes, it’ll be from a fair altitude.’ The Secretary of State played a slow smile round his lips at the head of government’s discomfiture.
‘Could be a bit tricky.’ The Prime Minister was sounding old, tired, and a long way away.
‘I’m glad it wasn’t down to me, this one,’ he paused, to let it sink home. ‘Still, we’ll see what comes out of it. It may be just a kite they’re flying. They often do that. I’ll keep a weather eye out for the storm clouds. Goodbye, Prime Minister.’
There were no confidences with his staff as the group left the building and walked to the big Puma helicopter for the ride to Londonderry. He asked his army liaison officer to keep him informed if there should be any assassination victims during the day.
His remark of ‘hare-brained scheme at the best of times’ was heard only by the Scotland Yard detective, his bodyguard, sitting next to him as he adjusted his safety harness while the rotor blades gathered their impetus.
The ambush was in position.
It was a proven, brutally simple piece of organization. A stolen Ford Escort was parked sixty yards up from Delrosa just before the junction with the Falls Road. The car was empty and unlikely to cause suspicion. The number plates had been changed. Harry would walk along on the opposite side of the pavement and turn into the main road. He would be watched by three men who had placed themselves behind the lace curtains of the house in front of which the car was parked. With Harry safely round the corner the men could come out of the house, start up the car, and cruise up from behind him to surprise their target. It was a fast and effective method and over the years had come to be considered fail-safe. The three men in the room, back from the lace curtains, were Downs, Frank and Duffryn. All were at this stage without their guns, but in the Escort’s glove compartment was a Luger, and underneath the driver’s seat a folded-down Armalite, placed in position, ready loaded and cocked.
To both Frank and Duffryn this was a novel situation. Neither had ever been entrusted with a mission of such importance before, and the tension they felt was reflected in the frequency with which both of them came forward and tugged at the flimsiness of the curtain to view the other side of the road. They talked quietly in staccato style to each other, avoiding the eyes and attention of Downs, who stayed at the back behind them. Neither Frank nor Duffryn knew the third man’s name, only vaguely his reputation as a marksman. That was something both had reflected on overnight to comfort themselves, as the few hours slipped away before the rendezvous.
Since he had been told of the operation Downs had had little to say. He burned up his anger and frustration inside himself till he was as taut as a stretched catapult. The pain of his injury told on him, too, and though that was slightly compensated for by the tablets he had taken he felt weak and, above all, disorganized.
Both Frank and Duffryn looked to the third man for leadership, but he buried himself away from them, not communicating the confidence and expertise they were looking for. He wore a loose overall sweater, with his left arm in a sling underneath it, with the sleeve hanging free at his side. He knew he was not fit enough to get into a fire-fight like that, but for a pick-up and at close range he’d see it through. To back him up he had the strength and fitness of the other two men. He would sit in the front with Duffryn to drive, and Frank in the back with the Englishman for the short ride from Broadway to Whiterock.
Frank said, ‘He’s late now. He can’t be much longer. He’s a big fellow. We’ll not miss him. He’s the only visitor at the house.’
‘How long do we leave him after he’s away round the corner?’ Duffryn asked. He’d been told the answer three times but kept on asking with the insecurity of a small boy who needs to quiz his teacher in class so that she won’t forget his presence.
‘Hardly at all,’ said Frank. ‘Just a few yards. We want to pick him on the bend near the cemetery, so we need him to move about a hundred yards, not much more.’
‘Hope the bloody car starts,’ Duffryn giggled weakly, and looked at Downs. ‘You done this sort of thing before?’
Duffryn saw the pale, pinched, hating face. Sensed the quality of his anger and hostility.
‘Yes,’ said Downs.
‘It works like they plan it, does it? I mean, it all seems so straightforward when you put it on paper and work out a timetable and that. But does it really happen as easily as that?’
‘Sometimes. Other times it doesn’t.’
‘The thing that worries me –’ like a bloody tap, drip, drip, drip, thought Downs as Duffryn chattered on – ‘is if they have a Pig going by as we jump him. Christ knows what we do then.’
He said the last to himself, as the anxiety built up in him about the calibre of the morose and injured man that he and Frank were depending on for success. Just as Duffryn put it out of his mind, Frank stiffened and edged forward again towards the window.
‘He’s coming. Here comes the English bastard.’
Duffryn pushed his friend to the side to see for himself. The tall figure in the distance, blurred and in soft focus, closing the wicket gate at the front of Delrosa behind him, that was their enemy. He’d thought about him most of the night, about the killing of him, now he came, walking straight without a sideways glance. Looks as if he owns the place, thought Duffryn.
‘Keep back from the window, you stupid buggers,’ the man behind them hissed.
Harry was stepping out, aware of his slow start to the morning, and conscious that whatever speed he walked to the yard he would still be late. The combination of Mrs Duncan’s chatter and her insistence on the fresh coffee that had percolated interminably had delayed him. He came up the familiar pavement fast, with his sandwiches and flask in the bag bouncing on his shoulder and the weight of the wrapped revolver thudding against his right hip.
He saw the car, one of several parked on the other side of the road. It was small, neat and well kept, but slightly different, something strange . . . the keys left in the ignition. Daft idiot, who leaves keys in his car down the Falls. People didn’t leave the keys in the ignition round here unless they’d gone inside for something shorter than a quick crap.
Harry moved on past the car and up to the junction of the side street and the Falls, where the Catholic community came into town, and where the traffic snarl-ups were beginning.
The side of the road that Harry walked on, though, was virtually clear, with just an occasional car speeding past him. He was a punctual man. The army and his aunt’s upbringing had disciplined him in this, and his lateness this Monday morning annoyed him. He checked with his left wrist to see how far behind the morning schedule he was, and realized with a suppressed oath that he had left his watch behind . . . Where? . . . Not in his room, not at breakfast . . . in the bathroom after shaving. He was thirty yards into the Falls, the guest house some seventy-five back round the corner. Damn and blast it. Only a hundred yards back to get it. He wavered. And then, a hundred yards back to where he was now. Two hundred yards. Nothing. It’s a naked feeling without a watch. Not as bad as leaving glasses behind, or your fly unzipped, but an irritation. Harry swung on his heel and walked back towards Delrosa.
As he turned the corner Duffryn was beside the driver’s door of the car, at the handle and in the process of opening it. Frank was already in the back seat, and the man coming out of the house last was halfway between the front door and the car.
For a moment all four men froze.
Harry, min
d racing like a flywheel, trying to put a situation and background to the familiarity of the face in front of him.
Where? Where did that face come from? Find it.
It was fractional, the lapse of doubt before the image slotted. The dance, the woman in yellow, the army crashing in, and as the concentration lasted so the face confronting him across the street suffused into the detail of the photokit picture. Outline of cheekbone structure, that matched. More so than when the man had been at the club, the contours of the flesh on the face merged with the painstaking impression built up in London. Perhaps it was the strain Downs had been under these last hours, or the pain from the wound, but the features at last resembled those the old lady had seen in the park, that the girl in the Underground station had stared at as she fought to keep her balance.
The first movement. Harry reached into his anorak pocket, thrust deep with both hands to pull out the pistol. He dragged at the white towelling, and ripped it from the blackness of the gun, tearing a ladder of bright cotton on the foresight. Thirty feet away Duffryn flung himself face down behind the car, his mind clouded by the sight of the gun in the enemy’s hand. Frank jack-knifed his body over the front passenger seat to open the glove compartment where the Luger lay, stretching himself over the obstacle of the headrest. Downs bent low, ducking forward towards the back of the car. Out of sight and to the rear right door beyond which his beloved Armalite was resting.
Aimed shots, Harry boy. Don’t blaze. Aim and you’ll hit the buggers. He shrugged the duffel bag from his shoulder onto the paving stones, and, legs squat and apart, brought the revolver up to the aim position. Knees slightly bent, body weight forward, both arms extended and coming together with the gun at eye level. The classic killing position. Hands and gun as one complete sighting apparatus. Squeeze, don’t jerk the trigger. Take it gently. The thumb of the right hand fumbled forward, rested on the safety catch in the ‘on’ position, and eased it forward.
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