‘Well, then,’ said the man, sighing. ‘You’d better be getting back, I suppose.’
He reached into his pocket and placed a card on the table between them. He straightened it before Francis.
‘Perhaps this isn’t your only chance,’ he said. ‘If you should change your mind this is my number.’
He placed his index finger on the card. Francis looked up and into his eyes. After a few moments his gaze drifted to the card. It was blank apart from a handwritten number.
‘You’re welcome to take the card if you want. But I’d advise against it. Best to memorize the number. Call me any time.’
‘Are we done?’ asked Francis.
‘Oh no. I don’t think so, do you? Not by a long chalk. But you may, of course, go. In fact I’d suggest you do if you don’t want to be missed.’
Francis stood.
‘Before you go,’ said the man, ‘I wouldn’t plan on telling your bosses if I were you. I know your standing instructions say you must, but experience shows it’s generally not the best course. The cloud of suspicion. You know the realities of the situation as well as I do. Better, probably.’
He nodded to the guard, who opened the door and with a gesture of politeness, as if he were a hotel doorman and Francis were a guest, ushered him out.
Richard Mercer remained seated. His notes, previously neatly arranged, were forgotten, now somehow strewn haphazardly before him. Even his spectacles looked untidy on the table. He ran his hands through his hair. Disgusting. He’d not had time to get it cut before leaving London three days earlier; today he hadn’t even been able to shower before the urgent call to the hotel informing him that Francis O’Neill was on the move. And alone. He’d been waiting a good five hours for O’Neill to reappear at the crossing.
He put his arms on the table across the papers and laid down his head. Despite the chill of the air conditioning he was sweating. He thought he might be sickening for something. His glasses fell to the floor but he didn’t pick them up. Instead he moaned. He might easily fall asleep here. Perhaps then this would all go away.
A young man going places, that was how they considered him, an assessment that brought out jealousy in Charles.
‘I was once the rising star myself,’ Charles had said sourly in his office a few weeks back as he conducted Richard’s annual appraisal interview. ‘A word of advice. Don’t listen to the siren songs. They’ll draw you to the rocks.’
He’d been sent on a wild-goose chase – Charles’s description – and didn’t feel up to the job. As confident as he was, uncertainty and inadequacy flooded his thoughts, along with the inevitable jet lag.
Charles had rung him in his office in Lisburn on the Sunday. He’d been catching up on some paperwork.
‘Get your arse over here,’ Charles said. ‘Apparently our friend Francis O’Neill is off on his travels. Singapore of all places. Bring your warm-weather gear and plenty of it. You may be a while. Brief you when you get here.’
He dashed home to pack, caught the first shuttle to London and spent the evening reading the file. The next morning he met Charles and listened to his plan of action.
‘Hopeless, of course. You don’t stand a chance of getting him on board. The man is a fanatic. The legal issues don’t bear thinking about. He’s in up to his neck. But the powers that be insist that if these blighters pop their heads above the parapet we have to have a go. Wherever it is. You know the mantra. Well, have a good time. If you need to take anyone with you as backup, OK. But only one.’
Should this thing be done obliquely, bewitching O’Neill with subterfuge, or should it be full-frontal with a figurative – or actual – suitcase full of used fivers?
Charles waved the question away. ‘Up to you, old man. Fuck knows why we bother with this after-you-Claude nonsense at all. Fuck knows why we don’t just string the bastards up. Still, one day sense may prevail. I shall be one of the first to say I told you so. Good Lord, is that the time?’
Events, as it transpired, determined what happened.
Having heard Charles out, Richard had the whole day to devise his own plan. He was less pessimistic about the venture than Charles, but it was difficult to be more pessimistic than Charles on any subject, from the England cricket team’s chances to the prospects for world peace. He spoke to people, booked the tickets and then knocked at Charles’s door again, holding his operational proposal.
‘No need, old chap,’ said Charles, ‘I’m sure you have it all in hand.’
So Richard took the Tube to the airport.
The Singaporeans had been watching Francis O’Neill for the best part of three days, waiting for a moment when he was on his own. And now after fifteen minutes, much of it spent in uncompanionable silence, it was over.
Christ, the double jet lag, the paperwork, thought Richard. Christ, the cross-questioning from Charles that would inevitably come.
‘You mean, you didn’t have a go while he was out carousing?’
‘Insecure. He was never on his own.’
‘You didn’t suborn any of the wedding guests? Still better, these friends of theirs? They’d have helped you.’ Suborn was a Charles word.
‘I didn’t think it would be right.’
‘Not right? So it’s right that this blighter can get away with whatever he likes?’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘What did you say, then? Am I being dense? Did you achieve anything? Did you tell the bastard in no uncertain terms that the SAS would come knocking on the door if he didn’t play ball?’
‘No. Of course bloody not. I didn’t realize that was in the training manual.’
‘Training manual? No. You’re a field officer. Supposed to show initiative. Not leaf through the training manual.’
‘I was being facetious.’
‘Damn right you were being facetious.’
‘Facetious rather than tell you where you can stuff your job.’
But of course the conversation would not take this course. Instead, Richard would say, equably, offering a crumb, ‘We did make some progress, Charles.’
‘Damn little from where I’m sitting.’
Richard groaned as he pictured it and sat upright again, gathering his glasses and swiping his hair back from his brow. He felt grease on his hand. The state of me, he thought.
Word came from the team watching O’Neill that evidently he had been strongly affected by the meeting. He was going around in circles muttering to himself and looking desperate. He seemed to be gasping for air. Someone might need to guide him gently on to the last bus back to the city. Out of character for him. He was known as a cool customer too. Poor bastard. Richard had seen that Francis O’Neill’s terror had not been feigned when he’d asked whether Richard intended having him killed. Possibly if the likes of Charles had their way his fears would not have been so misplaced. Sodding mess, thought Richard.
It was all over bar the shouting, most of which would take place in London. The Singapore Special Investigations senior officer with impeccable grooming, impeccable diction and impeccable manners would simply shake Richard’s hand, murmur some soothing platitudes and hand him a branded souvenir of the force, then he would be on his way.
He wandered around the crossing point for a number of minutes, looking backwards, glaring at anyone who took an interest. He felt unbearably hot and wanted to tear his clothes off. He was conscious of just how peculiar he must look, but it was some time before he began to care about it. Then, bit by bit, he started to control his breathing and quieten the screaming in his head. The throbbing diminished. At the same time he was aware that he might still be in danger. Who knew what this man might do to him? Some accident or other? A bus crash? A fall from a height? No one here would ask any questions. The island of Ireland would mean very little here.
Get a grip, he told himself, he can’t do anything. He did not believe anything the man said, but common sense told him that they couldn’t just do away with him. Surely not. Not here.<
br />
Just at that moment a polite Singaporean lady approached him and told him with an obsequious smile that the next bus back to the city was about to leave.
By the time he was let out near his hotel he still could not think for all the noise in his head. He knew this was panic, had heard these voices in the past and been able to quell them. Not so easily this time. He was not delivering a car full of explosives to an RUC station in Antrim. He was not lying in the cold, wet undergrowth of County Fermanagh armed with a Kalashnikov. He was not undergoing interrogation at Bessbrook Barracks. He was on his own in a strange and dangerous place. He must think, think, not least what he would say when he reached home. Nothing, he concluded immediately, unless he wanted to sign his own death warrant. Your man was right about that, at least.
He decided he must have a drink and subsided into a dark corner of a nearby bar with a large whisky. The burn at the back of his throat both awakened and calmed him. It cauterized something. Or that was how he felt. His hand still shook, but reason was returning.
He decided to walk for a while from bar to bar in the dusk, to use his training to gauge the size of things. It was a hopeless task. He would not be able to spot their men behind him in this swirl of colour, smell and humanity. This was their ground. But each drink made him feel a little better. Finally he decided it was time to return to the hotel. He would make no secret of what he planned to do next. He asked the concierge to check whether any seats could be found on flights that night. It was as well to leave as soon as possible. There were seats, but they came at a hefty surcharge, so he left it that they would fly out as scheduled on the midnight Lufthansa flight the next evening.
He took the lift back up to the room. It was empty: Bridget would be at the hen night. He had forgotten all about the stag party but had even less appetite for it than he did for the wedding itself. He drank three beers from the minibar before falling asleep fully clothed.
The next morning, she was already up, dressed to the nines.
‘We’re not going,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, Francis?’
‘We’re not fecking going. We’re going home.’
‘But we’ve come all this way.’
‘You think I don’t know that? Anyways, I thought you didn’t want to come.’
‘That’s different, Francis. We’re here now and we have to go.’
‘No, we don’t. Not if I say so.’
‘But why, Francis? Why?’
‘Because I don’t feel like it. All right?’
She did not reply, did not push him. For which he was moderately grateful. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel well. I just want to get home as soon as I can.’
‘What is it, Francis? Should I fetch a doctor to you?’
‘No. Stop fussing over me. I’ll just stay in bed for a while. Will you just be telling them I’m not well?’
He watched as, sitting on the edge of the bed and biting her lip, she contemplated what she would say. She picked up the phone.
‘And while you’re at it you’d better say you’re sick too. I don’t want you to be going either.’
‘But I thought if one of us –’
‘Don’t you be worrying about thinking. Just tell them.’
She made the call while Francis watched her intently.
They remained in their room, he sullen and she nervous, both silent, until the evening, when it was time to take the rapid transit to the airport. They checked in early for their flight. It took off on time, almost at midnight, and twenty hours later they arrived at a cold and misty Dublin at eleven forty-five in the morning. By the time they reached home it was almost four in the afternoon. Bridget lit the fire and began to unpack while Francis went out in the car on some unspecified errand. The adventure was over. No longer could she imagine herself as a strong, independent woman like Cheryl or Sarah, even in a distant dream. No doubt Sarah would forget to keep in touch, or had never intended to, and that would be the end of that. The end of it all.
1991
* * *
5
Richard Mercer had that feeling of inferiority he always experienced when entering military premises. Not absolute, but momentary and distracting, the sense of being a less developed life form when coming into this world of order, control and discipline where everything had its place. As did everyone.
In fact Mercer outranked all of them in this office according to the tables that codify such things, drawing cross-government lines between colonels and assistant chief constables and deputy PUSs, and between WO2s and third secretaries and HEOs. But he still felt less than them, with his reliance on feel and doubt rather than process and certainty.
The majors came and went, young, thrusting and enthusiastic when they began, all darting eyes and relief when they left eighteen months later. Provided, that is, there were no debacles in the interim. If there was a disaster they would be short-toured immediately and an old salt put in place to steady the ship until the next bright-eyed youngster came off the production line. This posting was a rite of passage before moving on to bigger and better things: perhaps a spell in MOD Main Building or as staff officer to a brigadier before a taste of real command. For some reason, being in charge of this covert unit was regarded as important, or at least formative for the military soul. Its criticality, though, was in not dropping a bollock, rather than making real headway. Everyone knew progress was impossible: until something dramatic happened politically the army, like everyone else, was stuck. But it seemed that none of these eager young men had been told. Each was determined to make his mark. Until after a year or so it all sunk in.
David Pope-Norton was no different. Bland aside from his punctilious military sharpness, he used language that was carefully strained and filtered to convey nothing other than an unshakeable certitude and positivity. This was what they taught them at Camberley these days. It passed for leadership. Thank goodness he hadn’t followed the advice of the careers adviser at university, thought Richard.
Pope-Norton was one of a modest dynasty of army officers. His uncle had been a full colonel, his father only half. That must have made for fun fraternal relations. At least it would have provided young David with his aiming point. He was a nice enough man, though, and the times they were a-changing. No doubt he would have been briefed by his superiors in MOD Main Building to do his best to clear out the stables, put a calm hand on the tiller, keep his head below the parapet and the rest of those military clichés. Whether he was up to even beginning to shovel away the shit of decades and jettison the multitudinous hulks of five-tour mammoths like Freddie Spencer was open to question. But he was a nice enough young fellow.
Richard was shown in by a uniformed non-com with a snap in his step. Four government-issue seats were arrayed around the coffee table. Easy chairs they might have been called had they offered any semblance of comfort. David Pope-Norton, the only one of the three in uniform, sat in one; Freddie Spencer, the retired emeritus operational adviser who answered to a captain’s rank but no longer wore military uniform, occupied the second; and in the third, in his jeans and Shetland sweater, was Geordie Smith, the senior warrant officer who had been cycled through Northern Ireland three or four times on successive roulements and who actually knew the job. Richard knew that it was the warrant officers, with whom he felt marginally more comfortable, who kept the ship of state in the source unit afloat.
A glance at Geordie told him that this was going to be one of those meetings.
‘Richard,’ said Pope-Norton with a broad smile. ‘How goes it?’
‘David,’ he said. ‘Well, thanks. And you?’
‘Never better. Extraordinarily well, as a matter of fact.’
David Pope-Norton was around thirty-two, fresh-faced and with a shock of dark brown hair. He’d want to be on his way onwards and upwards before too long.
Richard said, ‘Freddie. Geordie.’
‘Richard,’ said Freddie Spencer, blinking slowly and flattening his brilli
antined hair with a greasy palm, smiling his plumply complacent smile. A lurid flaming-red polka-dot handkerchief sprouted profusely from the pocket of his sharkskin double-breaster. Freddie had risen from the ranks – without trace, it seemed to Richard – and his tenure as an officer had been studded with gossip of narrow escapes and foolish ventures from which he was saved only by his own men. Freddie wasn’t, though, one of the officer class by birth and destiny. His nasal tones and ill-at-ease demeanour betrayed that he was not the product of some terrible and terrifying public-school upbringing and that his origins must be closer to Richard’s own than was comfortable. They did not, however, occupy the same philosophical space. Freddie, by his own lights, had arrived, and Richard doubted he ever would. Freddie strove to identify with these people; Richard could not. Yet something in each of them nodded at the other in contemptuous recognition.
‘Sir,’ said Geordie Smith.
They waited for tea to be brought in by a nervous squaddie, the standard-issue stainless-steel pot polished to within an inch of its life and the thick china crockery that would not break when dropped from clumsy, podgy fingers. Predictably the tea came nuclear strength and red as the young man’s cheeks, requiring several spoonfuls of sugar to make it palatable. David Pope-Norton served, as if to demonstrate that this was an egalitarian show.
‘Congratulations, by the way, on the new job.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Charles moving somewhere interesting?’
‘Oh, you know. Bigger and better things.’
‘Good, good. And when do you leave us?’
‘I think I’ve got about six weeks.’
‘And counting?’
A Traitor in the Family Page 7
