by Finn Óg
“Tell me about it, snorey head,” Sinead said.
They walked Sinead up the pontoon to her car, Isla carrying a small bag, Sam a larger one that weighed a tonne. He didn’t ask what was in it.
“Thank you for a lovely trip.” She bent down to give Isla a cuddle. “And thank you, Sam, for asking me. If you ever need a crew again, you know where I be.”
He stepped forward and she fell into his embrace with ease. They lingered there for a few moments longer than they ever had before, his arms tightening around her ribcage. She, surprised at first, reciprocated with a strong grasp. Then the moment faded and with a gentle regret they dropped apart. And she was gone. Again. And Isla and Sam went to sea.
The opso went for a long walk. He’d been putting in the hours in front of the bank of screens, constantly looking up, neck crooked, watching, waiting. He needed to look down for a while, to look around at the beautiful scenery over Magilligan Beach, Lough Foyle and beyond.
Yet the exercise failed to lift the fog. All the way up he stewed. Every fall of a foot and stab of his stick slammed into the head of whoever pulled Libby’s strings. It wasn’t Libby’s fault, but the opso had been around long enough to know when it was his turn to get screwed over. He’d seen it before – previous operators blamed and disciplined while the faceless walked away without even being questioned.
He’d really grown to like Libby, to admire her, but knew she didn’t have the flying time to stand up to the suit who’d visited her quarters. The opso had seen him coming on the cameras and understood that his arrival spelt bad news for him. The soft-shoe brigade only ever turned up when the wheels were about to fall off – and they always ensured that their own agency never got the blame.
He had taken altitude to breathe the air and stretch his muscles, yet the higher he got the more indignant he became; frustrated that a thirty-year career in the military was about to end with indignity – probably discharge. That would impact his ability to score one of those well-paid security advisor positions on civvy street.
He should have got out years ago, with his mates, he thought. Do ten years, maybe even fifteen, and offski. Yet he’d hung on because at the time he felt it was worth it. He’d got a kick out of crushing terrorists, of preventing them making real on their plans. His drive dated back to the seventies when he’d been robbed of a father by an unidentified insurgent.
The opso had worked for promotion to ensure he stayed in the DET. For many bereaved in the province Northern Ireland held nothing but hostile thoughts, but he had grown to love the countryside and the peace of the hills around the base. The ability to leave a town or city and within minutes be in the hills – hiking, walking, camping, never ceased to amaze him. He had all but made the place his home, rarely heading back to Liverpool on leave. Instead he took to the mountains, north or south – often against protocol, and as peace broke out across the country he engaged more frequently with the natives and he found he liked them.
When the bomb had detonated in Ballycastle he’d felt a real shock of failure. During the daily violence, some disasters were inevitable, but they’d become accustomed to success in recent years. Now, his position as a faceless protector of the people he met had been plunged into confusion. How had they let that car sit there? Why hadn’t they sent in the engineers in the alley cats to deal with it?
He had failed to speak up and make his case. All that time spent being a hard-ass with his team, running a tight ship of disciplined and skilled operatives, had dashed against the rocks of that harbour. It could have been prevented if Libby’s lot had allowed it. The people who had made the bomb and placed it there could have been apprehended and the device defused – yet games were being played, for some unfathomable reason.
And now he was going to get the blame. The DET were characterised as the failing strong-arm of a security wing that was increasingly seeking technical alternatives to old surveillance challenges. It was political and financial as much as it was about sanction, he realised. And worst of all, the people who made the thing – the bomb, and the people who took it there – they were free to do it all over again.
Grim always assumed he was monitored. Not that he could see anyone, he didn’t expect to – but the Brits had been at it for long enough. They’d managed to turn so many in the movement – even the most committed republicans had been persuaded or forced to change sides. Grim knew that couldn’t have happened without boots on the ground watching every weakness and predisposition play out.
He had no desire to go back to jail; that wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. At his age he expected the young bucks to get caught – like it had been when he was a junior. He’d done his time and risen in stature as a result. He’d been full of courage and commitment back then, game for absolutely anything, and he’d hung on every word of the old hands. They’d coaxed and educated him on the wings, in the cages, in the classrooms. It was incredible to be a part of the struggle back then – all men together for a common cause. The lines of command were clear, there had been respect and awe and determination. He missed it more than he cared to admit.
The ceasefires had changed all that. The peace process had drawn the leadership into bureaucracy and administration, slipping ever more distant from the values and aspirations that had pulled him in. He’d watched those old heads get well-paid jobs as community leaders or in fabricated businesses funded by the state they had tried to destroy. Many were elected to Stormont – the seat of political power that they had once sought to annihilate. They’d forgotten about the grunts in the sticks, outside the big towns. In east Tyrone, parts of south Armagh, Fermanagh, Craigavon, Lurgan. He and his type had become little more than an annoyance – branded traitors to a movement that had sold out. And it filled him with absolute rage. How dare they brand him a traitor when it was them who had abandoned the struggle and forgotten their patriot dead? There were men and women pirouetting in their plots at what was happening above their heads. This was not what his friends and family had died for; they hadn’t gone to jail to allow those brave men in suits to take full wages and forget about the goal of a socialist and united Irish Republic.
And yet here he stood, an also-ran, with a boss who didn’t trust him and a comrade who’d scarpered across the border. He looked at the wrought angle iron to which the name of his estate had recently been tacked, and realised they had been defeated. Totally and utterly beaten by a cunning force that had adapted from military engagement to an altogether more devious warfare – turning them against one another, blowing them up from within.
He hated the manager for running away. He felt abandoned, ashamed and even afraid of returning to a jail in which camaraderie was no longer present. The prison wings were filled with flailing, fading inked limbs of a war fought and willingly abandoned in favour of simpler lives, raising families and paying the bills.
Grim’s regret almost brought him to tears, not for the kid who had been obliterated in the car or the lives that had been shattered by what he had helped create, but for himself.
Sam stared straight through him.
“He’s on the move.”
The opso turned to the bank of screens and peered over the shoulder of the woman tasked with monitoring Grim.
“Ok, can we get a camera on him?”
“Tricky. He’s still in the estate. We have a remote covert in the waste ground to the south, so it depends what way he goes.”
“Bring it up.”
A second monitor flickered and a dew-dripping blade of grass came into focus. The woman turned the knob on top of a joystick and the lens pulled to sharpen a distant image of the open entrance to Grim’s estate.
“That’s not him,” the opso said, noting a broad figure walking into shot.
“No,” agreed the woman, staring at the GPS tracker attached to Grim’s clothing, “but he’s headed that way. That bloke’s just a random.”
“Keep on him,” said the opso. “Maybe it’s a meet.”
The woman shrugged and k
ept both screens live. They watched Grim’s progress as the random man – head covered by a beanie, chin by a buff, walked out of frame.
“He’s gone,” said the woman. “Here’s the mark.”
Grim entered the right side of the screen and paused, staring, it seemed, at a street sign. At least it would have been a street sign had it not recently been removed.
“What’s he doing?” the opso said.
“Staring,” said the woman.
“Where’s the random – did they make contact?”
“Can’t tell. If they did, it was only in passing – the mark’s signal didn’t pause.”
There was a low growl from the opso.
“The mark is just standing there,” the woman said.
“I can see that, thank you,” he replied, dry as a bronchial hack.
“Weird,” came the analysis.
“Insightful,” muttered the opso. “Rotate the remote camera and locate that randomer if you can.”
The woman jostled her joystick and the camera juddered and panned. “He’s coming back,” she said surprised.
The opso couldn’t help being interested in this new presence, although he knew that it was more in hope than expectation. “Get a car on standby. I want that person identified.”
“Do you want the car to follow the mark or the randomer?” the woman asked.
“Get another vehicle into the area,” said the opso, following his gut. “We have Grim covered by the GPS tracker for the moment, so put the car on the random.”
“Ok,” said the woman in a doubtful tone that the opso tried to ignore.
Both men began to move in opposite directions and a few minutes later the random bloke appeared on a third monitor. The opso was intrigued. The man was clearly fit – his shoulders were broad and his gait betrayed his agility; he didn’t pound the pavement so much as spring along it. Yet he was moving slower than he appeared able for, suggesting he was seeking something.
“I want a face match,” said the opso. “Get the op on his tail to give me a frontal shot.”
The monitor went to black for a few moments as the car in which the camera was concealed moved location. When it flicked back to vision, the image was relayed from a rear-view unit mounted in the boot through the number plate. The car was still moving, as was the random man.
“Where’s he going?” muttered the opso.
“I don’t think he knows,” said the woman.
It was true that the man appeared to be looking around him, his footfall at times uncertain. And then, with a flick of his heel, he skipped onto a small wall and over into a rough patch of wasteland.
“Shit,” said the opso. “See if the car can get round to the other side of that park or whatever it is.”
The screen went blank again and the operations room fell silent waiting for a signal. Seven whole minutes elapsed before a picture was offered again.
“Is that him?” The woman leaned forward towards the monitor as if proximity would improve her understanding.
“Affirmative,” crackled over the net.
The man was leaning into a white van and taking off his coat.
“Can you offer a facial?” the woman said into the mic.
The camera adjusted as the random bloke climbed into the cab of the van and removed his hat, then the buff around his neck. The image was very poor until he turned with his elbow raised to wipe condensation from the side window and at that moment the opso’s neck stiffened and his jaw tightened.
“Is that enough for a match?” the woman asked the colleague beside her, who took a screen grab.
“Forget about it,” the opso said suddenly. “He’s nobody. Get back on the mark. Send the car to find him.”
The woman turned to peer at him.
“Now! I want to know where the mark is,” the opso growled.
The woman shrugged and turned back to her computer. The opso turned and left the room. He was done with Libby’s superiors. At the top of Binevenagh Mountain he’d decided that if he was to be forced out as a fall guy, it wouldn’t be before the bomb team got its dues. Regret and guilt could kill a man – wear him away and grind his mind. He would not follow his colleagues into that state of distress. Whatever lurking long game Libby’s superiors were playing was of no interest to him. It had failed when the bomb exploded, but he would not.
Libby’s senior was sufficiently self-aware to realise that he suffered from a superiority complex, but well versed in the affliction he was comfortable with that. What he wasn’t comfortable with was an official historical inquiry looking into the dealings of the security services.
The added irritation was that there was nobody left to blame. He alone had given assurances to London that he would “sort things”. The goal was clear: remove any and all incriminating documentation that may betray the extent to which Britain infiltrated, controlled and manipulated paramilitaries to do its will. Just as problematic was the constant suspicion that intelligence chiefs had turned a blind eye when agents within all the paramilitary outfits had attended, directed or actively taken part in torture, murder and atrocity. No current members could be tarnished. The dead could be blamed, but with reluctance. Best it just went away.
Which is what he had arranged, and what had failed. The bomb had been designed to destroy the inquiry’s offices when the incriminating documentation arrived there. Its premature detonation had ruined that. The simple response would be to try again – a fire or an explosion ought to do the trick, yet it screamed of unprofessionalism. Coupled with that was his annoyance that so many people now knew of his – or Box’s, interest in monitoring an explosive-laden vehicle. He had confidence in his ability to control covert military surveillance units, but in every organisation there were defectors and even those whose conscience got the better of them.
The documentation was about to be delivered to Belfast from London. Buried in there, and subject to inevitable unearthing by overeager and overpaid barristers, were papers that hinted – at the very least – of who the service had in their pockets all along. No names, of course, but indications of seniority. Were such information to be exposed, a jigsaw could be easily assembled by assiduous investigators that would not only show that his unit was aware of heinous acts at the point of planning – and did little to prevent them taking place, but also – and more worryingly in his view – that the peace deal brokered between Britain and the insurgents, had, in fact, been drawn between Britain and people who, in effect, were in Britain’s pocket. It could prove to be the first peace deal signed on both sides of the table by the same side.
The superior could nobble the inquiry’s chairman – almost anyone could be compromised, but it was unlikely to have the desired result. His instinct, as ever, was to make it someone else’s problem; to weigh pressure upon someone to remove or destroy the papers, but the chairman wasn’t hands-on enough to achieve that.
So he decided to go low-rent. At the heart of any court’s legal proceedings is a clerk – a qualified and able lawyer. The inquiry’s clerk had access, she had impeccable credentials and a rather ambitious air about her. She would become his way in and out of this debacle. He would forget all about the Ballycastle bomb for it was no longer anything to do with him.
19
Sam saw the car as his crooked elbow painted a wide stroke in the condensation.
“Fuck,” he said out loud.
He had no doubt what it was – the vehicle had turned rear-to, a manoeuvre Sam had performed himself a hundred times. It allowed the op in the car to aim a camera at him while monitoring the framing from his device in the front without the mark being able to see him doing it. Sam whipped up the hat and buff and put them back on, aware that it was probably too late. They’d almost certainly got something of his face already, which was the worst possible outcome. If they had him on camera, he would need an explanation as to why he was there – and, worse, he wouldn’t be able to do what he wanted to do anywhere near that location.
; But the DET’s presence did have one advantage: it meant he was in the right area. They wouldn’t have been following him – they had no reason to, and he’d hired the van using cash, so there was no paper trail. He was certain he hadn’t been picked up in Ballycastle during the incident with the old woman and her family. So the DET had obviously picked him up while they were watching someone else.
He started the engine and pulled off, watching for the follow, but none came. He began to wonder whether he’d been paranoid. Perhaps it was just a car with a man in it? Perhaps he was waiting on waste ground for a dalliance with a woman, or a man?
Yet Sam knew. It was DET. The careful positioning in the middle of nowhere, the pointlessness of turning away like that, the subtle weight of the vehicle on the suspension – it was all indicative of a car laden with armour and kit. Which suggested again to Sam that he’d been right: they’d been watching someone else when they picked him up. And that suggested Grim was close.
As he drove he picked through what he’d seen. All he’d had was the name of the estate – he refused to use Google Maps to confirm it because that would place him in the vicinity. He’d parked the van, made his way through the grass and soil and rubbish of the waste ground, rounded the corner onto a main road and wound his way into the estate. Most of the cul-de-sacs still had street signs, but none of them sounded remotely like the name given to him by the old woman, so he’d kept going, deeper into the warren, until he happened upon a signpost where the name was removed. That felt promising. The IRA used to do that.
He’d passed a bloke who had given him a wary look before stopping to stare at the street sign, but Sam had carried on. He had no idea which house might contain the Grim character, so he had turned and walked out again – wary of loitering. As he’d left he caught sight of the man ambling away in the distance before making his own way back as he had come, through the waste ground to the van.
