Prince Hunter

by Garrett Russell

  ‘Ready, Sean?’ said Gaffney.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ said the man holding the box.

  ‘Honour guard to the ready,’ Gaffney called softly.

  The three men snapped up their weapons and aimed high in the sky.

  Gaffney nodded his head and the man with the box released a safety catch.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Gaffney. He stepped forward and pressed a red button in the centre of the box.

  The trawler erupted into a huge ball of orange flame. A second later, the crackle of the explosion rippled across the deck of the patrol boat. The three gunmen together fired one shot into the air, inverted their weapons and hung their heads in a well-practised IRA salute.

  A mile away, chunks of timber and debris floated and fell back down through a tall column of black smoke towards the empty sea. There was nothing else left of the trawler.

  ‘Now,’ said Gaffney when he deemed it time to break the minute’s silence into which they had all fallen. ‘Time to get on with the job. Let’s get this tub pointed towards mother Ireland. There’s a quiet little island off the west coast where some lads are preparing a hide out for us.’ He sniffed the breeze. ‘You know, I swear I can smell the aroma of a good head of Guinness already.’

  21:30 British Summer Time

  Anne Hawker tucked Elizabeth into bed in the cosy back bedroom. She had turned off the overhead light, leaving just the warm glow of the bedside lamp to throw a pool of light around the head of the bed.

  ‘Mummy, when will we go home to Daddy?’ the little girl asked drowsily.

  ‘Soon, darling,’ Anne replied soothingly. She brushed fine wisps of hair from her daughter’s forehead.

  ‘Tomorrow or the next day?’

  Anne sniffed back a tear. ‘Maybe a little longer. Daddy’s gone off sailing, and you know how long that can take.’

  She sat on the edge of the bed until Lizzie fell asleep. She was reaching to turn off the lamp when the light went off by itself.

  She stumbled as quietly as she could across the darkened room and out into the hall. The light there was out, too.

  The whole house was in darkness.

  Anne felt the first prickle of alarm. She had a torch in a kitchen drawer, so she felt her way along the hall into the living room and around past the dining room.

  A scream rose and died in her throat, muffled by the big black hand which had shot out of nowhere and clamped over her mouth.

  She struggled against the grasp, but another arm was around her waist, holding her tight in a grip of iron.

  ‘Mrs Anne Hawker?’ said a muted voice in front of her and she became aware of the dark shape of a man against the gloom. A big man, and all black. His face was blackened under a dark beret. He wore black fatigues and, though he tried to hold it out of her sight, she could see enough to know that he carried a tough looking gun.

  The man holding her from behind eased his grip slightly and she renewed her struggle against him.

  ‘Please, Mrs Hawker, we need your help,’ said the man in front of her. ‘I am Lieutenant Rupert Cattlin, SAS. The man holding you is Sergeant David Oliver. We’re sorry to alarm you but there’s no other way. I have a message from your husband Paul that he is safe aboard HMS Invincible but that you and Elizabeth are in extreme danger. Now, if we let you go, do you promise not to scream or call out?’

  Anne nodded, wide eyed. The hand eased its grasp around her jaw, and she gasped to get her breath back. Her heart was pounding in her chest so hard she thought the men would be able to hear it.

  Cattlin said, ‘I don’t have time for details now, but there are two cottages each about fifty yards from your house, one to the left and one to the right. Now I need you to tell me which is the one called Fox’s Cottage.’

  ‘The right one,’ Anne gasped.

  ‘Thank you. So, that’s the one the Irish workmen have rented?’

  Anne nodded again.

  ‘Please stay here. Sergeant Oliver will look after you and your daughter,’ Cattlin’s black face split for a second with the white flash of a smile. ‘Those workmen aren’t what they seem, and they intend to do you harm. I’m off to sort them out.’

  He slipped away to the back door of the kitchen. Anne could hear the murmur of orders being issued to other men outside in the back garden, then there was silence. Not even the rustle and pad of men walking.

  Twenty minutes later the lights in the kitchen were on again and Anne Hawker was trying to get tea leaves into the pot without spilling them. She overheard Cattlin and Oliver speaking in hushed tones in the dining room.

  ‘How many?’ asked Oliver.

  ‘Two. Looked like they were working shifts. The others are in for a surprise if they attempt to come back,’ said Cattlin.

  ‘Any trouble?’

  ‘None. We encountered them on their way over here. The lights going off must have made them suspicious. They were running up the road, weapons in hand as if they had nothing to hide from. Never knew what hit them.’

  ‘Known suspects?’

  ‘That’s for plod to say. We’ve handed the bodies over …’ Cattlin abruptly switched from his cool professional tone to a bright conversational tone as Anne came into the room. ‘… you and your daughter are safe now. The police are in charge over there and they’ll be staying around for some time. We’ll also leave a few men tonight just to be sure.’

  ‘And you say Paul is aboard Invincible?’ she said to Cattlin a few minutes later as she poured him a cup of tea. Her hands were less shaky now.

  ‘It’s one of the few things I do know about this operation,’ he replied. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because the last time I spoke to him he was in Buenos Aires.’

  Thursday 20 May 1982

  Two Falcon sedans squealed to a halt outside a stately old block of apartments with a noise that split the calm of the autumn night. It was late. So late that even in this fashionable quarter of Buenos Aires where residents did not deign to dine until midnight, most of the lights in the apartment building and along the rest of the street were out.

  Two men in plain clothes climbed out of the first car. One took up station at the base of the steps leading up to the apartment block’s vestibule. The other sauntered down to the basement and through to the rear fire escape.

  A few moments later the rear door of the second car opened and a thickset man in heavily braided naval uniform stepped out. He marched up the front stairs, followed by two more men in plain clothes who had emerged from the front of his car. They went through the door and straight to the elevator without pausing to check the directory of residents.

  On the fifth floor the uniformed officer found the apartment door he wanted, motioned his men towards it, and stepped back against the opposite wall of the corridor. The two men lined the door up. One muttered a brief countdown and they kicked it together. Their heavy military boots smashed the polished timber to splinters. The latch screeched its protest but held. The two men kicked in unison again and this time the latch gave in. The door burst open with a crack like a rifle shot.

  One of the men stayed in the corridor, his back to the wall where the door now hung open. The other disappeared inside the apartment. There was a pause until he found the switches, then the apartment filled with a dazzle of light that spilled out into the corridor. The officer blinked his eyes to get used to the new light level and stepped into the apartment.

  He marched across the living room straight towards the bedroom door. Before he reached it, a man with tousled hair and bleary eyes came out. He was hurriedly pulling a silk kimono around his naked body and he was having some difficulty because of a heavy plaster cast up to above the elbow on his right arm.

  ‘Comodoro de Marina Raoul Grivas,’ the uniformed man’s voice resounded with officiousness. ‘You are under arrest.’

  ‘On what charge?’ Grivas did not look surprised.

  The officer pulled a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and read, ‘Operating clandestine operati
ons without the knowledge or permission of responsible senior officers. Subverting the authority of the Junta. By your insubordinate actions, directly causing the loss of the vessel ARA Inconquista with all hands. Misappropriating naval ordnance, viz. three Exocet missiles and associated equipment … there is more but do you really want me to go on?’

  ‘I’m sure you have much more,’ said Grivas, his voice beginning to show the first edge of tension. ‘Each charge more preposterous than the one before it.’

  ‘You will have your opportunity to answer them at the court martial.’

  ‘I’ll do more than that. I will show that every action with which you charge me was carried out under command from Admiral Jorge Anaya. I will produce the documents to prove it.’

  ‘All of which will prove to be false. Any signatures you claim to have will be fake.’

  ‘How do you know I had Anaya sign them?’ Grivas challenged, now suspicious.

  ‘I know nothing,’ the officer ignored his own slip as if it meant nothing. ‘In any case the court martial will find any evidence against the admiral to be inadmissible.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Because I am arresting you under the direct and signed orders of Admiral Anaya himself. Now get dressed, please, on the double. Your court martial is scheduled for 0500 hours and there are subsequent arrangements for the dawn.’

  Grivas’ mouth went dry. ‘So, that is the reason for your grand performance bursting into a sleeping man’s home.’

  ‘Not entirely. I am also ordered to personally obtain evidence for another charge against you.’

  The officer pushed past Grivas into the darkened bedroom. He flicked on the light, looked around briefly, stepped around to the far side of the bed, reached down to the floor and yanked hard.

  A sharp squeal of pain pierced the night. The officer straightened up and brought with him a naked young man. He was about 20, soft faced with a slim dark body. He was terrified, his head pulled over at an ugly angle to his shoulder by the officer’s hand which had a vicious grasp on his hair.

  ‘Get dressed, Grivas,’ the officer snarled. ‘But not in uniform.’

  ‘You would deny me the dignity of my rank at a court martial?’ Grivas’ eyes flared with a last shred of defiance.

  The officer let go of the boy’s hair as if dropping a dead rat.

  ‘You will not disgrace us by dying in it,’ he sneered.

  Friday 21 May 1982

  In the early hours of the morning the British landed in Falkland Sound. Hawker heard the news of the landings over Invincible’s public address system. Later in the day he also heard of the sinking of HMS Ardent. He shared the grief that swept the ship.

  More casualties were brought into the ship’s hospital. Hawker vacated the bed he had been assigned to and did what he could, within the limits imposed by his own wound, to help the orderlies handle the extra load. He was under open arrest, confined to the hospital quarters. Even during the endless round of interrogations over the past few days he had been kept isolated from the ship’s open areas, and especially away from the officers’ mess deck.

  That was where the contingent of journalists and cameramen covering the conflict were based, and the Royal Navy was keeping Hawker’s presence on board under strict wraps.

  The bodies of O’Hara and Linda Kelly had been committed to the sea with minimal ceremony by the ship’s Catholic chaplain in the dark hours of Wednesday morning. It was the only time since his capture that Hawker was allowed out on deck.

  The interrogations were thorough with no belligerence. The intelligence interrogators even brought in a few officers from other operational areas who remembered Hawker from his days of secondment with the Royal Navy. At times it felt more like a messroom reunion than a military debriefing, but even with those men it always got back to business in the end.

  Hawker told them the full truth about Linda because he thought her family deserved to know and it would come out eventually in any case. Intelligence had taken fingerprints and photographs which would be shared with other services and allies.

  They had also struck a deal with Hawker.

  ‘This IRA man, Gaffney,’ the senior interrogating officer said in the last session. ‘Certain people in Whitehall are rather anxious to, shall we say, have a serious chat with him. Since you’ve caught a glimpse of his South American operation, you are in a somewhat unique position to help us track him down. If you were to volunteer your assistance, you may find that Her Majesty’s government can have a very poor memory for some matters. If you get my drift.’

  Hawker got his drift. He volunteered without hesitation. He had his own reasons to want to meet Gaffney again. He also knew he was locked out of his old life in Buenos Aires, at least for as long as the Junta ruled Argentina. And he owed Her Majesty’s forces at least one favour, for the lives of Elizabeth and Anne.

  It was late in the night of that busy day before Harris, the medical officer who had been in the helicopter, cornered Hawker to check the dressing on his wound.

  ‘This is just the sorry beginning,’ Harris said, nodding his head toward the pathetically crowded sick bay. ‘All I pray is that your countrymen in the islands don’t struggle on too long. It can only lead to more waste of young men on both sides.’

  ‘I know only too well,’ Hawker said. ‘That’s why I tried to stop it before it got too far out of hand.’

  ‘Your crazy kidnap plot? It’s made you something of a hero among the few of us allowed to know about it. The intel chaps have taken to privately calling you The Prince Hunter,’ Harris chuckled. ‘But we all know it would never have worked. Too many odds against it.’

  ‘I knew the odds,’ Hawker shrugged. ‘But what else could I do? There was no chance but to make an attempt.’

  ‘More than an attempt,’ the doctor gave Hawker’s good shoulder a solid pat. ‘By God, man, from what I saw and have since heard, you gave it a sight more than that. You gave it a bloody good try.’

  Copyright © Garrett Russell 2020

  This e-book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purp[oses of private study, research, criticism or review permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be stored od reproduced by any process without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the author.

  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

  ISBN: 978-0-6488726-0-3

  COVER DESIGN: Kevin Goldwater