The Sea and the Sand

by Finn Óg

  Sam caught the creasing of his colleague’s eyebrow. “I don’t mean what happened. I mean operations that we were told next to nothing of the background. If you dig too deep, you end up going mad.”

  “So … you don’t care?”

  Sam had to concede Libya had been different, so he made an admission. “I care. I care about that one because of what happened. So, well, I made it my business to find out what had been going on.”

  “Oh?” said Dyer, probing without probing.

  Sam didn’t care enough to be on his guard, and suspicious as he had become in recent years he didn’t suspect that Dyer had been sent to find out how much he knew. The oddities of their reunion were too random.

  “I asked a man about a year after the op. He hooked me up with another bloke who knew what was going on.”

  “Where?”

  “Back home. Sure the whole thing was about Northern Ireland. I know that much for certain.” Sam was letting Dyer know not to blow smoke about.

  “Just so you know, Sam, I didn’t have all the details back then either – and to be honest, I’m still not sure I have them all.”

  “Sure that’s how they like us, isn’t it? They tell us just enough to get the job done, and the rest they keep to themselves and their Machiavellian plotting.”

  “My agency is excellent at that.”

  “No shit.”

  “So what do you know?”

  “Tell you what,” said Sam, “for a change, why doesn’t the spook go first and then you can hear from the oily rag.”

  “You’re no oily rag,” said Dyer grunting. “You were an officer, the one special forces chose to lead the thing. You also got us out of there.”

  “Was pretty messy though.”

  “Aye.” Dyer glazed over a little, and then after a while, “Ok, Sam, I’ll tell you what I knew.”

  “Oooh, MI6 secrets,” said Sam, and pinged a few more lids off the local brew.

  Dyer ignored the goading. “It was about home. I was told that a high-level asset had been discovered by the ESO.”

  “Libya’sMI6?”

  “The External Security Organisation – so pretty much. Thing is, though, they were friends of ours at that stage.”

  “I’d believe almost anything of your crowd,” said Sam.

  “It was after 9/11 and the Yanks and Tony Blair had decided that Gaddafi was of great value in finding out about the jihadists, so they cuddled up to him.”

  “Right. You needn’t go into the geopolitics, just tell me how that ended up in a bloodbath.”

  Dyer breathed deep and sucked on his beer. “Well, as you know, the asset was in jail and my bosses were worried that the interrogation would lead to him talking too much.”

  “About what?”

  “About Ireland, Northern Ireland and his contacts there.”

  “Sure, what did that matter? I’ve never understood that bit.”

  Dyer regarded Sam curiously. “Well, why don’t you tell me what you know and then I’ll see if I can fill in the blanks.”

  Sam was impatient and a little looser after four beers. “The man I met was from West DET.”

  “A detachment – a military detachment?”

  “Yeah, in the south-west.”

  “Of Northern Ireland?”

  “Yes, where else?”

  “Right.” Dyer was clearly surprised.

  The DET was a specialist surveillance unit deployed in largely autonomous teams around the country and made up of a mixture of special forces, intelligence agents, highly trained troops, mechanics and technical signals experts. Some of them had proved incredibly adept at gathering information. Sam neglected to mention that he himself had been seconded to the DET in the past.

  “This bloke told me about an IRA man who was shagging some DET agent out Fermanagh direction. I’m guessing late 80s or early 90s. She was a right hard nut and had a key to this RA man’s house. Anyway, she was lifting his post before he got it and giving it to her DET handler who was reading it and feeding it up the chain.”

  “She was a good get for the DET.”

  “Aye. And some of his post was coming from Tripoli.”

  “Right,” sniggered Dyer, clearly impressed.

  “So this RA man turns out to be the point of contact for the Libyan arms that Gaddafi sent to Ireland.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Dyer.

  “I don’t know a lot more than that except that the Libyan who was writing to this IRA man was the same fella we lifted out of that prison.”

  “You sure?”

  “No,” said Sam firmly, “but I’m not an idiot. My DET contact reckons the same bloke knew who the high-level informers in the IRA were – who was really working for the Brits, and that worried your lot.”

  “Well, it would, wouldn’t it? That was the start of the talks that led to the peace process. If the IRA found out that some of its senior people were working for the Brits, then the whole thing would have fallen apart.”

  Sam pushed his friend. “What I can’t figure out was how a Libyan found out who MI5’s agents within the IRA were.”

  “Sure, that’s simple enough,” said Dyer. “If he was making arms deals and British Intelligence found out, they’d have done two things.” Dyer counted on his fingers. “One – they’d have turned him, and two – they’d have directed him to deal with their own agent within the IRA – wouldn’t they?”

  That made sense to Sam. “But wouldn’t the IRA would get suspicious if he started dealing with someone else?”

  “Not if his original contact got lifted.”

  “Ah.” Daylight dawned. “Funny enough …”

  “That’s what happened, aye?”

  “That’s exactly what happened. He was arrested and got nine years.”

  “Then a senior IRA member – who is also working for the Brits, suggests he takes up the Libyan contact himself. The Brits know the arms route, the secret silos within the IRA’s quartermaster operation are exposed, MI6 is seen to help MI5 and we have a happy outfit.”

  “So,” said Sam, reasoning it out. “It is possible that this Libyan – the bloke we were sent to get – knew who the top British agents in the RA were?”

  “Or one of them, I reckon.”

  “And that was enough to send us in like that?”

  “Yes, Sam, if he’d been caught by his own and was interrogated by the ESO, there would have been a problem cos of Bush and Blair and their cosy relationship with Gaddafi’s intelligence services. All of that information was being fed to the CIA. Now, seriously, we might be friends but there’s no way MI5 or MI6 wants the CIA to know who their high-level assets in the IRA are.”

  “Ok,” said Sam, prepared to accept that as fact. “So we extract him under the noses of the CIA?”

  “Sure, Sam,” said Dyer, “that’s why they fought so fucking hard. That’s why it became such a bloodbath. And that’s why the informant never made it to your boat.”

  “Right,” nodded Sam, realising that they hadn’t been sent to retrieve him. They’d been sent to execute him.

  Fourteen

  Plucking dollars from the air. That was what he’d done as he leapt around the exercise yard, undignified, inglorious, greedy and ridiculous. Years had passed since Gaddafi had been ousted, yet it seemed like weeks. And still the information had currency.

  Habid often thought of what now led him to slither down that ladder. It had been forged into the wall of a Banghazi quay and largely forgotten for almost three quarters of a century. Its rust had left it vulnerable to knocks and thumps – various vessels had taken the top of the rungs with them as they’d arrived and departed. Habid had found it through due diligence and a pair of field glasses during his meticulous research. He’d scoured harbours hunting for an undercut after being inspired by the scrolls, and thinking of Judaism it occurred to him to find a gap in the stones. In his head was Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall into which he’d watched Jews place papers – prayers he imagined, but he hadn’
t cared enough to clarify. Could he hide his papers in such a wall?

  One thought had led to another and to him locating the half ladder and scaling the harbour stone face to reach it. Once on the rusted rungs he clambered down further and further until the water lapped his chin. One deep breath and he pulled himself beneath the surface, his body’s natural buoyancy surprising him and he was forced to propel himself down the ladder deeper into the sea. When there were no more steps to be taken he unfastened a stainless steel chain from his belt and opened his eyes to the salt. The light was poor and his chest began to heave at the lack of air replenishment, but his hands didn’t fumble his invaluable deposit. The steel links and the exterior padlock were clipped tight against the bottom of the ladder, and Habid took extra effort to roll the canister behind the old frame, wedging it tight into the wall. Satisfied with his work, he felt the ladder’s uprights and allowed nature to float him to the surface, too afraid and inexperienced to expel air as he rose for fear of exhausting it before he broke cover. And then with a bellow and a suck he heaved oxygen into his lungs. Smug and soaked he reversed his motions and worked through what he would do with his treasure.

  It had all happened by chance. As a border guard he’d been obliged to interrogate those attempting to leave Libya. That meant he occasionally identified enemies of the state – it wasn’t hard, they were issued new intelligence images of people who had fallen foul of the regime on a daily basis. Never one to miss an opportunity, Habid often accompanied such miscreants to Tripoli or Benghazi for further interrogation and incarceration. That way he stood to exploit the unfortunate by offering to let them go for a fee, which he duly extracted. Then, regardless of the ransom, he betrayed and delivered them as directed to jail. Nobody cared that he had made a pit stop to gather cash. In those troubled times such behaviour had been expected and admired.

  The last such occasion had been different though. As he and his fugitive neared Benghazi, the scale of unrest had become apparent. Never before had he believed it possible that Gaddafi could be deposed. The leader had been too strong and been there too long. Yet the rumours they’d heard in the eastern desert proved true – Benghazi was once again returning to a pockmarked shell of itself, a cratered ruin of Aleppan proportions.

  Habid had driven up to the prison entrance to find the gates ajar. He’d nudged them with the bull bar of his Isuzu truck, driven through the covered alley and out into the open courtyard where once a fortnight prisoners were permitted a solitary stroll. He gazed up from under the sun visor at the curling and fluttering above him and drew the jeep to a halt. His captive was equally mesmerised by the show, as swirls of air caught the leaves and bellowed them upwards, before the outside breeze lipped the sheets and sent them back to the soil.

  Habid alighted and hopped to catch an A4 page. On it was a photograph and a description – a name and an intelligence assessment. His eyes widened as he realised what was in his hand. He turned to retrieve more of the documents, like a desperate contestant in a ridiculous television show. His sandals flopped and fell off but his energy was boundless as he stuffed the papers under his oxter and began to fill the glove box in the pickup. For an hour Habid ignored the shouts of his prisoner pleading to pee as he skimmed each page before stuffing it in safety. He refused to let so much as one document escape for that could be his passport to wealth.

  Eventually every page was in his possession and he sat in the driver’s seat and read greedily, ignoring the hiss of his prisoner’s piss. What a story he had stumbled upon. What a glorious repository. Habid felt the moisture of the urine beneath his toes and turned to his charge with anger.

  “You will be in here,” he told him, brandishing the papers. “And then I shall know your real crime.”

  The man stared back at him, exhausted, dejected, defeated.

  The Arab Spring was giving up Libya’s secrets and a rat from the eastern desert had managed to obtain most of them.

  “I was in the Special Boat Service when I was in your country. It is a unit that performs missions mostly at sea.”

  She stared at him.

  He waited but had to shake her out of her fix. “Your turn.”

  Alea adapted to the format carefully. “I working in bank. My husband was banker. We had good life. Your turn.”

  “Then why did you leave?”

  “Ah-ah,” she wagged her finger, “you tell about you. I tell about me. No questions.”

  “Ok,” said Sam. “Well … well, what do you want to know?” He was suddenly at a loss. Talking was not his strong suit.

  Alea sighed. “Who you really are.”

  “I am a dad,” he said, “and I am a widower, I suppose,” which was the first time he’d ever acknowledged that in words.

  “I am a mother and I am widow,” said Alea looking stunned at what she had just said.

  “It seems we have something in common, so,” he said softly.

  “More,” she snapped at him, shaking herself from hurtful thoughts.

  “I have been sailing on and off since my wife was killed.”

  She gathered pace as if spitting it out would make it easier, like ripping off a plaster.

  “I am wanted better life for Sadiqah. We were living in hole in ground.” She fixed her stare at the horizon. He could just make out the sheen on her left eye as the light faded.

  “I wanted Isla to heal, but I went about it the wrong way. I took her away from other kids. I was being selfish. I wanted her close to me. I didn’t want to lose her too.”

  “We were rich. We were rich and other people poor. They hated us. When Gaddafi killed, they hunted us. We lived like animals. In filth. In yards. We could not keep living like this.”

  Sam didn’t know what to say without a prompt. Conscious of the rules he resisted the urge to ask a question.

  “You did the right thing for Sadiqah. You got her out.”

  “I got my husband murdered,” she said, which seemed an odd phrase to use for drowning but Sam could just about see the logic.

  Although the light was gone he knew she was weeping. He reached out to place his hand on her shoulder but she drew away and eventually went below. He knew he wouldn’t see her again that night.

  It didn’t take long for Habid to work out what had happened. His gluttonous imagination allowed him to envisage it unfolding.

  The sky had been peppered with rounds from reckless runts and their trigger-happy Kalashnikovs. Dozens must have died as gravity dictated – a law lost on idiots issued with rifles they have no idea how to use. They would have besieged the jails hunting for their comrades – enemies of a state that was crumbling around their ears. Gaddafi was on the run, the Jamahiriya was over. Prisons doors would have been rammed and the guards would have fled. The inmates would have wrecked and ruined as they left, destroying the fabric of their incarceration. Furniture and filing cabinets would have been tossed from the landings, fires might have been set. But above all, they would have groped for the gates, for freedom, for open space and their families and revenge.

  They would have hunted the wardens, their torturers. They’d have beaten them to the ground, seized their weapons and summarily executed them in a frenzy. Then they would have streamed into the streets, kicking up dust, jubilant and ignorant of the papers they’d left coasting in the breeze at their backs.

  And then came cunning in the shape of Habid, a man able to play for both sides and none, with no ideal greater than himself.

  “Let me go,” he pleaded. “The regime is collapsing. If you show me mercy, I shall tell them you are to be spared.”

  Habid lifted the butt of his rifle and swung it into the teeth of the moaning prisoner in the back. He laughed at the notion. He knew it was over – that anyone with a whiff of the opulent scent of the leader and links to the regime would be dragged out and slaughtered. It was convention. Saddam, the Baathists, dug up from the dirt and swung by the throat. It would happen to Gaddafi’s men too if they were lucky. The man in the back coul
d identify him in such a manner, so he hauled the wounded wretch from the jeep and bundled him into the prison searching for a cell far from the front entrance where cries wouldn’t be heard. Inside he found cage doors thrown open, defecation smeared on the cell soles. The escapees must be ripe, he thought, as he plunged deeper into the darkness. They found a staircase and descended slowly, a sixth sense cautioning them. There was no noise, no reason for alarm, yet Habid and his prisoner adopted the same approach, their instinct being to creep, alert to movement. They were afraid of attack but neither knew why.

  Down corridors they padded as silent as their moist sandals allowed. The stench came like steam barrelling towards them – a mixture of faeces and decomposition. Their heightened senses insisted they turn but Habid’s greed drove him on. He had an opportunity like no other and he wanted no loose ends. The prisoner could not be allowed to share his story.

  Yet Habid had not the appetite for killing. Not directly. He didn’t care if people died, so long as he was in the clear. If he just did what he was told, then he was fine: he had delivered the accused to prison – no problem. He knew they would die there but not by his hand. He had been in a firing squad once but hadn’t pulled his trigger. He’d felt nothing for the victim yet ensured his prints weren’t on the corpse.

  Similarly, he had chosen not to dispatch the prisoner in the yard. He would leave him in the bowels of the jail and his questionable conscience clear. Death, if it came, would be natural, not of Habid’s doing.

  Then a shuffle, like a dog on a chain, alerted them to the presence of a stranger. Habid froze and his prisoner stiffened beside him. They stood in silence for a full minute hunting for confirmation. Had they heard metal links drag? In the unlikeliest of alliances, prisoner and guard looked at one another bound by a predicament in which a greater enemy might unite them. Habid took his hand from the man’s arm and gently reached out to undo the cuffs. The prisoner’s jaw had been badly broken by the rifle butt – he was unable to speak, yet he looked up with gratitude. Habid doubted his usefulness in a fight but if their enemy was animal, surely it would attack the weaker target first.