by Jack Higgins
'In other words you mean business?'
'I hope I've made that clear enough.'
'And Norah?'
'She's okay,' he said callously. 'When last seen she was giving herself an injection from that bag of hers. Of course she'll have a fair old scar from now on, but then I always say that kind of thing gives a person character.'
He was baiting me, I think, but I played him at his own game. 'Just like a broken nose?'
'Exactly.' He laughed, yet frowned a little. 'By God, but you're a cold fish, Vaughan. What does it take to get you roused?'
That usually comes half way through the second bottle of Jameson,' I said. 'There's this click inside my head and ...'
He raised a hand. 'All right, you win. We'd better see how Binnie is getting on. You haven't got much time.'
The garage had obviously been the coach house in other days and stood on the far side of the courtyard. Binnie was checking the engine of a green Cortina GT when I went in, watched impassively by the guards. He dropped the bonnet and wiped his hands on a rag.
'Where did you knock this off?' he demanded.
Barry grinned. 'According to the papers in the glove compartment, it's on loan from a car hire firm in Belfast, which is exactly as it should be. When they're in plain clothes the Field Security boys don't like to use military vehicles.'
'You think of everything,' I said.
'I try to, old lad, it's the only way.' He glanced at his watch. 'It's just after four so you should be there by seven at the outside. Six o'clock tonight is your deadline. Nothing to come for after that, which I trust you'll make plain to Small Michael for me.'
Binnie slid behind the wheel without a word and I got in the passenger seat. Barry leaned down to the window. 'By the way, Field Security personnel are supposed to go armed during the present emergency so you'll find a couple of Brownings in the glove compartment. Army issue, naturally, only don't try turning round at the gate and coming back in like a two-man commando. That really would be very silly.'
Binnie slipped the handbrake and took the Cortina away with a burst of speed that wouldn't have disgraced the starting line at Monza and Barry had to jump for it pretty sharply.
The needle was flickering at fifty as we left the courtyard and it kept on climbing. The result was that we were skidding to a halt in a shower of gravel at the private gate giving access to the main road within no more than a couple of minutes.
I got out, opened the gate and closed it again after Binnie had driven through. When I returned to the car, the glove compartment was open and he was checking a Browning, a grim look on his face in the light from the dashboard.
I said, 'I wouldn't if I were you, Binnie. He meant it. Dooley is her shadow from now on with orders to kill at even a hint of trouble.'
For a moment, he clutched the Browning so tightly that his knuckles turned white and then something seemed to go out of him and he pushed it into his inside breast pocket.
'You're right,' he said. 'Only the Small Man can help now. We'd better get moving.'
'Can I ask where?'
'He has a place in the Sperrins - an old farmhouse in a valley near a mountain called Mullaclogha. We need to be on the other side of Mount Hamilton on the Plumbridge road.'
'Do you anticipate a clear run?'
'God knows. I'll use what back roads I can. For the rest, we'll just have to take it as it comes.'
He drove away at a much more moderate speed this time and I dropped the seat back a little, closed my eyes and went to sleep. I was out completely for the first hour which passed entirely without incident and dozed fitfully during the next half, so that it must have been somewhere around five-thirty when he nudged me sharply in the ribs with his left elbow.
'We've got company, Major. Looks like a road block up ahead.'
I raised my seat as he started to slow. It was raining again, a slight, persistent drizzle. There were two Land-Rovers, a barrier across the road, half-a-dozen soldiers, all wearing rubber capes against the rain and looking thoroughly miserable, which, in view of the time and the weather, was understandable enough.
I leaned out of the window, identity card and movement order in hand, and called, 'Who's in charge here?'
A young sergeant got out of the nearest Land-Rover and crossed to the Cortina. He was wearing a flak jacket and camouflaged uniform, but no cape. He was prepared to be belligerent, I could see by the set of his jaw, so I forestalled him quickly.
'Captain Hamilton, Field Security, and I'm in one hell of a hurry so get the barrier out of the way, there's a good chap.'
It worked like a charm. He took one look at the documents, saluted swiftly as he passed them back, then turned to bark an order at his men. A moment later and the lights of the road block were fading into the darkness.
'Like taking toffee off a kid,' Binnie crowed. 'I can see now what Barry meant about you having the right manner, Major.'
As a junior officer I once served with an old colonel who had spent a hair-raising three months on his journey to the Swiss border after escaping from a Polish prison camp. Three miles from his destination he paused in a village inn to wait for darkness. He was arrested by a colonel of mountain troops who only happened to be there because his car had broken down on the way through. It seems he had been a member of a party of German officers who had visited Sandhurst in 1934 when the old boy was an instructor there. He had been recognized instantly in spite of the circumstances, the years between and the brevity of the original meeting.
Time and chance, the right place at the wrong time or vice versa. Fate grabbing you by the trouser leg. How could I speak to Binnie of things like these? What purpose would it serve?
The truth is, I suppose, that I was experiencing one of poor old Meyer's famous bad feelings, which didn't exactly help because it simply made me think of him with some sadness, and other good men dead on sombre grey mornings like this.
We pulled in at a filling station which was closed as far as I could see. In any case, according to the gauge there was plenty of petrol in the tank.
'What's this?' I demanded.
'I need to make a phone call,' Binnie said as he opened the door. 'Ask a friend to tell a friend we'll meet him in a certain place.'
He was beginning to sound more like an IRA man in one of those old Hollywood movies by the minute. I watched him go into the telephone-box at the side of the building. He wasn't long. I noticed it was six o'clock and switched on the radio to get the news.
To my astonishment, the first thing I heard was my own name, then Norah Murphy's.
Binnie got back in the car. 'That's all right then. We're expected.'
'Shut up and listen,' I said.
The announcer's voice moved on, 'The police are also anxious to trace James Aloysius Gallagher.' There followed as accurate a description of Binnie as any hard-working police officer could reasonably have hoped for.
He was behind the wheel in an instant and we were away. I kept the radio on and it couldn't have been worse. The bodies of Captain Stacey and Sergeant Grey had been discovered by a farmer during the past hour and the absence of the Brigadier and the three of us could only lead to one conclusion.
'God save us, Major,' Binnie said as the broadcast finished. 'At a conservative estimate I'd say they've got half the British Army out on this one.'
'And then some,' I said. 'How much further?'
'Ten or fifteen miles, that's all. I bypassed Draperstown just before I stopped. You'd see the mountains on the right here if it wasn't for the rain and mist.'
'Have we any more towns to pass through?'
'Mount Hamilton, and there's no way round. We take a road up into the mountains about three miles on the other side.'
'All right,' I said. 'So we go through, nice and easy. If anything goes wrong, put your foot down and drive like hell and never mind the gunplay.'
'Ah, go teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Major,' he said.
The young bastard was enjoying it,
that was the thing. This was meat and drink to him, a great wonderful game that was for real. Always for real. He sat there, hunched over the wheel, cap over his eyes, the collar of his undertaker's overcoat turned up, and there was a slight pale smile on his face.
We were entering Mount Hamilton now. I said, 'You'd have gone down great during Prohibition, Binnie Al Capone would have loved you.'
'Ah, to hell with that one, Major. Wasn't there some Irish lad took that Capone fella on?'
'Dion O'Bannion,' I said.
'God save the good work. With a name like that he must have gone to mass every day of his life.'
'And twice on Sundays.'
We slowed behind a couple of farm trucks and a milk float, all waiting their turn to pass through the checkpoint. There were four or five Land-Rovers, at least twenty paratroopers and a couple of RUC constables who leaned against a police car and chatted to a young paratroop lieutenant.
The milk float moved on through the gap between the Land-Rovers and I repeated my previous performance, holding my identity card and movement order out of the window and calling to the young officer.
'Lieutenant, a moment, if you please.'
He came at once, instantly alert, for whatever else I had become, I had spent twenty years of my life a soldier, and, as they say in the army, it takes an old Academy man to recognize one.
'Captain Hamilton, Field Security,' I said, 'We're in a hell of a hurry. They've got a terrorist in custody in Strabane who might be able ...'
I didn't get any further because one of the policemen who had moved to join him, a matter of idle curiosity, no more than that, leaned down at my window suddenly and stared past me, the eyes starting from his head.
'God love us, Binnie Gallagher!'
I put my fist in his face, Binnie gunned the motor, wheels spinning and we shot through the space between the two Land-Rovers, bouncing from one to the other in the process.
But we were through. As he accelerated I screamed, 'Head down.'
A Sterling chattered, glass showering everywhere, the Cortina skidded wildly. And then he had her again, in full control, we were round a bend in the road and away.
* * *
It was raining harder now, mist rolling down the slopes of the mountains, reducing visibility considerably. Beyond that first bend the road ran straight as a die for about a mile. We were no more than a hundred and fifty yards into it when the police car came round the bend closely followed by the Land-Rovers.
Binnie had the Cortina up to eighty now, the needle still mounting, and the wind and rain roared in through the shattered wind-screen so that I had to shout to be heard.
'How far?'
'A couple of miles. There's a road to the right which takes us up into the hills. Tanbrea, they call the place. We'll be met there.'
We were almost at the end of the straight now and when I glanced back, the police car seemed if anything, to have closed the gap.
'They're moving up,' I yelled.
'Then discourage them a little, for Christ's sake.'
When it came right down to it, I had little choice in the matter. As far as the police or the army were concerned, I was an IRA terrorist on the run, or as good as, so they would have no qualms about putting a bullet into me if necessary.
I wondered what the Brigadier would have said. Probably shoot the policeman and be damned to the consequences on the grounds that the end justified the means.
But life, after all, is a matter of compromise, so when I drew my Browning, turned and fired back through the shattered rear window at the pursuing vehicles, I took care to aim as far above them as possible.
The policeman who fired back at us out of his side window had understandably different intentions and he was good. One bullet passed between Binnie and me, shattering the speedometer, another ricocheted from the roof.
We skidded violently, Binnie cursed and dropped a gear as we drifted broadside on into the next bend. In the end it was his undoubted driving skill that saved us, plus a little of the right kind of luck. For a moment things seemed to be going every which way, but when we finally came out of the bend into the next straight we were pointing in the right direction.
The police car was nothing like as fortunate, bounced right across the road, turned in a circle twice and ended half way through a thorn hedge on the left-hand side of the road.
Binnie could see all this for himself, for strangely enough the rear-view mirror had survived intact, and he laughed out loud. 'There's one down for a start.'
'And two to go,' I shouted as the first Land-Rover came round the corner followed by the second.
A signpost on the left-hand side of the road seemed to be rushing towards us at a rate of knots. Binnie braked violently and dropped into third, the car drifting into another of those long-angled slides and then, miraculously, we were into a narrow country lane that climbed steeply between grey stone walls.
Things became a little calmer then. Such were the twists and turns that he had to drop right down, for it was the sort of road where thirty miles an hour would have been construed as dangerous driving in some places.
'How far now?' I demanded.
'To Tanbrea? Five miles, but how in the hell can we stop there with the British Army snapping at our heels and the Small Man waiting? Might as well serve up his head with an apple between the teeth. We'll have to drive straight on through.'
I leaned out of the window and looked down through the mist and rain to where the road twisted between grey stone walls below. I caught a brief glimpse of one of the Land-Rovers and then another. They were several hundred yards in the rear now.
I said to Binnie, 'Is this the only road through the mountains?'
He nodded. 'On this section.'
'Then we'll never make it. I've got news for you. Marconi has very inconveniently invented a thing called radio. By the time we get to the other side of the mountains they'll have every soldier and policeman for miles around waiting.' I shook my head. 'We'll have to do better than that.'
'Such as?'
I thought about it for a moment and came up with the one obvious solution. 'We'll have to die, Binnie, rather nastily, or at least make them think we have for an hour or two, and preferably on the other side of Tanbrea.'
Tanbrea was a couple of streets, a pub, a small church, a scattering of grey stone houses on the hillside. The only sign of life was a dog in the centre of the main street, who got out of the way fast as we roared through. The road lifted steeply on the other side, climbing the mountain through what looked like a Forestry Commission fir plantation.
About half a mile beyond the village, we rounded a sharp bend and Binnie braked to a halt in the centre of the road. There was a wooden fence on the left-hand side. I got out of the Cortina and glanced over. There was a drop of a hundred feet or more through fir trees to a stream bed below.
'This is it,' I said. 'Let's get moving.'
I'd intended a good solid push, but Binnie surprised me to the end. Instead of getting out, he moved into gear and drove straight at the fence. For a heart-stopping moment I thought he'd left it too late and then, as the Cortina smacked through the fence and disappeared over the edge, I saw him rolling over and over on the far side.
As he picked himself up there was the noise of metal tearing somewhere down below, a tremendous thud and then the kind of explosion that sounded as if someone had detonated around fifty pounds of gelignite. Pieces of metal cascaded into the air like shrapnel. When I peered over the edge what was left of the Cortina was blazing furiously in the ravine below.
Somewhere near at hand I could hear engines roaring as the Land-Rovers started to climb the hill. When I turned, Binnie was already running for the fence on the other side of the road. I scrambled over, no more than a yard behind him and we plunged into the undergrowth.
We were half way up the hillside when the two Land-Rovers braked to a halt on the bend below, one behind the other. The paratroopers got out and ran to the edge of the
road, the young lieutenant from the checkpoint in Mount Hamilton well to the fore.
We didn't hang about to see what happened. Binnie tugged at my sleeve, we went over a small rise, and I followed a stream that dropped down through a narrow ravine to the village.
As we came out of the trees at the back of the church, one of the Land-Rovers came down the road fast. I grabbed Binnie by the arm, we dropped behind the graveyard wall and waited until the Land-Rover had disappeared between the houses.
'Come on,' he said. 'Follow me, Major, and do exactly as I tell you.'
We went through the graveyard cautiously, moving from tombstone to tombstone. When we were almost at the rear entrance of the church, a couple of paratroopers appeared on the street side of the far wall. We dropped down behind a rather nice Victorian mausoleum and waited in the steady rain, a grey angel leaning over us protectively.
Binnie said, 'Sure and there's nothing better than a nice cemetery. Have you ever seen your uncle's grave at Stradballa, Major?'
'Not since I was a boy. There was just a plain wooden cross as I remember.'
'Not now.' He shook his head. 'They bought a stone by public subscription about ten years ago. White marble. It says: Michael Fitzgerald, Soldier of the Irish Republican Army. He died for Ireland. By God, but that would suit me.'
'A somewhat limited ambition I would have thought.' He stared at me blankly, so I pulled him to his feet, the soldiers having moved elsewhere. 'Come on, let's get out of this. I'm soaked to the bloody skin.'
A moment later we were into the shelter of the back porch. He opened the massive oak door, motioning me to silence, and led the way in.
It was very quiet, winking candles and incense heavy on the cold morning air, and down by the altar the Virgin seemed to float out of darkness, a slight fixed smile on her delicate face.
Half a dozen people waited by a couple of confessional boxes. Someone turned and looked at us blankly, an old woman with a scarf bound round her head, peasant-fashion. Binnie put a finger to his lips as, one by one, the others sitting there turned to look at us. Beyond the great door at the far end a voice shouted an order, steps approached outside.
