Shard at Bay

by Philip McCutchan

  Briefly Hesseltine reported to the brass, still in session, remaining a cohesive group until the situation jelled one way or the other. He said, “I advise letting them have their way for now. Or else.”

  Sir Edmund, grey-faced, gave a nod. “No option. Provide transport for wherever they want to go. I want a report immediately the destination’s known.”

  Hesseltine passed it on. The Permanent Under-Secretary called Hedge at Stormont. “What’s the situation?” he asked.

  “Tricky, Under-Secretary. There’s an extraordinarily fraught atmosphere … it’s on a knife-edge. I understand there’s tremendous tension in the Catholic enclaves — Falls Road, Bogside in Londonderry, you know the —”

  “Yes. That damn broadcast! Now there’s something else.” Sir Edmund passed the word that the men had left the tunnel. “It can go up at any moment, Hedge. Any moment, that is, after those men have got to safety. We don’t know where safety is … but we assume it’s outside the UK itself. I doubt if they’ll blow while they’re airborne and that may give us time, we don’t know how long. Possibly not very long. They may head for the Republic and it’s my bet they will.”

  Anywhere in the Irish Republic wasn’t more than about an hour or so from anywhere in the UK — one hour maximum was the safest assumption. Sir Edmund said Dublin was being informed of the British Government’s assessment.

  Hedge asked, “The Irish as well as ourselves will track any aircraft, presumably, Sir Edmund? When they pick it up, what happens?”

  “To O’Carse and his thugs? That’s still in their own hands. The threat from remote control will remain. My mind is running along the lines of a possible parley, probably somewhere on the border.”

  “Yes, very likely, I agree, Under-Secretary —”

  “And that’ll be up to you in the first instance — the man on the spot. Highly suitable. The right level, you see. It would be inappropriate at this stage to play this thing at too high a level — you’ll understand that, of course. You’ll be kept informed and so will Dublin. They’ll be told you’re immediately available in Belfast.”

  Hedge didn’t like any of it. He felt an onset of near panic, the walls of Stormont closing in on him and swaying away again, a nasty feeling. His mind seemed to shoot out from the top of his head and dwindle into the sky and then come back with a thump. The future was going to be extremely dangerous in a physical sense and also appallingly difficult to handle, even though he was being entrusted only with the initial stages — being used, he tended to suspect, knowing the Permanent Under-Secretary, merely as an agent for delay until Whitehall had gathered its wits and its response. But in the meantime he had to put up a good show. And there were compensations: he would be out of Belfast. But the border would be no picnic, of course. It was soon after this that reports began coming in of full-scale mobs on the move, the start of riot. Some RUC men had been shot up and missiles used against the troops, and a number of explosive devices had gone up without warning in shops and banks. There were bloody clashes between Catholics and Protestants.

  *

  There was hysteria in the coaches. When the armed men had gone the drivers got out and gathered round Shard, arms waving, faces tense. Why had he been left behind, who was he? They asked their questions in good English. He told them who he was but couldn’t be sure they believed him. He told them not to approach the tunnel entrance and to make sure the children didn’t either — he told them the full facts about that; the knowledge could worsen the incipient panic but they had to know.

  “The children,” Shard said. He had half a mind to get them out of the coaches: they might be safer near the exit, they just could make it or could be blown clear without the wholesale slaughter that would come if they were caught in the coaches, dead centre and confined. But children were children, there were four coach-loads of them and they couldn’t all be watched all the time, and if just one of them should make a break for what looked like a clear exit, then the end would come. It just wasn’t on. He said, “Keep the kids in the coaches and make damn sure they stay there.” Lying in his teeth he went on to say the situation was in hand from outside. The Metropolitan Police were there in strength and would cope. They were going to get out. They didn’t believe that. They were done for. Panic was going to be fatal and Shard did all he could to nip it in the bud and stiffen the drivers. The children, he said, depended on them, the men in authority, the familiar faces that had been with them all the way from home and would see to it that their passengers came to no harm. He said, “I’m going to get up into one of the HGVs and have a look around. I’m leaving you to your jobs. All right?”

  He turned away, found himself thinking of Beth. He’d already put her in danger once by reacting automatically to a chance. But he couldn’t have done less and he mustn’t dwell on private matters. He swung himself up to the big rear doors of the northernmost HGV, double doors that stood open with the wires running down to the TV-like box that had been placed on the sidewalk platform just inside the exit. If he wrenched out those wires. … no, that would activate the explosion, probably, just as surely as if the beam itself were broken. Too great a chance to take. He got inside. The HGV’s interior was filled with packed high explosive with the primers and amatol detonators ready and the beam leads from the northern end of the tunnel running into another large, square metal box of similar size to the others. A fast examination told him that the box was completely sealed against any interference. And if, say, he should interfere with the detonators, that also could be lethal. Any pulling at wires and leads and connections, even any heat applied by hand to the amatol, might tip the balance of a delicate and intricately organised spider’s-web.

  Sweat ran into his eyes. He dashed it away. A feeling of total hopelessness almost overwhelmed him. He looked at his watch: 1030. They had been in the tunnel — what — more than three hours now. He was shaking, he could be a danger in himself if sheer vibration close to the detonators set anything going — amatol was a very, very volatile explosive and one that would have needed very careful packing for the journey in.

  He got down from the vehicle, heaved himself up into the second HGV in rear. A similar set-up: and the other beam box would be positioned at the southern end.

  Nothing to be done. Nothing — except try to keep the children happy as time passed, so slowly, towards what seemed an inevitable end. He spoke again to the drivers and suggested ways of keeping the children occupied. Word games, singing. They’d sung before; they sang again, each lot in its own coach with its driver acting as choirmaster. It could go on for days … Shard thought about starvation, thirst. Rationing … the EEC party had brought things in cellophane packets and bottles.

  Beth kept intruding.

  Beth and the remote control … just a faint, faint chance? He couldn’t be entirely certain where it might be situated. For one thing it could be mobile. But he still believed it could be in what the villains had spoken of as the depot. In Woolwich. It wouldn’t be at the Grays house, that had been shut down once his own intrusion had put it at risk. But Woolwich: he’d not been blindfolded on the way out and he could pick up the route in reverse as it were.

  He might be able to get it across to the police outside; if he could, it was worth a long shot, but they would have to be pretty bloody careful or the remote control might be activated and the whole tunnel would go up — but would it, without orders from O’Carse?

  Shard moved fast for the northern exit. Shouted instructions to the police … but he had approached the tunnel’s end, standing well clear of the intruding beam, when there was a racket from behind him, shouts and crying.

  He turned, fear piercing like a knife.

  A number of children were racing down for the exit, pursued by two of the coach drivers, coming past the abandoned police car.

  Shard yelled out, “Get back! Get back for your lives!” He stood like a goalkeeper, arms wide, body ready to jump this way or that to field the running children from the exit. But h
e couldn’t be everywhere at once. Three or four of them evaded him and as the first passed through the beam there was whirring sound from the metal box on the sidewalk. From deep inside the tunnel, in the sector below the river where the lorries and coaches stood, there came a series of loud clicks, clicks like revolver shots.

  *

  A telephone rang; Hesseltine answered. “Airborne,” a voice said. “Two light aircraft, SD360 commuter planes —”

  “Where from?”

  “Just a field, sir. Near Biggin Hill. Heading north-west and being tracked.”

  “Keep me informed,” Hesseltine said. He reported to the Permanent Under-Secretary, who nodded and took up another telephone.

  This was answered immediately by Hedge in Stormont. Sir Edmund was ordering the stand by. Dublin would be contacted immediately, he said, and would be asked to call Hedge direct when more was known. Sir Edmund was now making the firm assumption that the aircraft were heading for the Irish Republic. This, he said, would be confirmed as soon as more reports came in.

  Hedge dabbed at his cheeks as he waited, got up, prowled about, sat again with his hands shaking and face wobbling. Within an hour the confirmation came: the aircraft had crossed the coast over Anglesey and were heading north of Dublin.

  The Dublin government would take over now.

  *

  The children who had run through the beam were met by uniformed police. They were picked up and run to the police line as fast as they could make it. Reports went at once to Whitehall, Downing Street, Scotland Yard. In the tunnel’s vicinity the mobiles were being pulled back, with the foot men now aboard with the escaped children. Inside the tunnel, Shard, expecting the big blow at any moment, had run back towards the coaches between the HGVs, shouting to the drivers to get their passengers out pronto. He fancied there was a smell of burning from the lorries but if so it didn’t last. Something small could have burned out; this was no time to stop for a look.

  Now the children and the handful of hysterical mothers were streaming out through the exit, disregarding the beam, showing every sign — naturally enough — of panic. No explosion came. It passed through Shard’s mind that there had been a monumental coincidence: O’Carse’s remote control could perhaps have been activated in the precise moment that those children had run through and one set of controls had reacted against the other … something like that. But no: it was much too soon for O’Carse to blow the tunnel, it must be. With that remote control on his mind Shard ran from the tunnel to contact the police line. Ahead of him a small girl fell flat, screaming; Shard picked her up and raced on. Police were coming now, picking up the slower runners and then beating it fast to the rear.

  Shard reached the mobiles.

  A chief superintendent, a man he knew, had arrived to take over. Shard looked at him warily: there was a constriction, even in this situation, as though the chief super was in half a mind to arrest him, wondering if he should do his duty or not. As the children were piled into a convoy of police vans Shard said, “You’d better report pronto. Situation changed! Then I want a mobile … destination Woolwich. I want to find my wife.”

  Some of the vans and mobiles were already on the move out as the report went through. There was no explosion. Bluff? Shard didn’t believe it had been — the high explosive was real enough, so were all the trappings. Before Shard was in the mobile, armed now with a police revolver, the Foreign Office had come through: for the time being all word of the tunnel’s evacuation was being held under wraps as far as possible. In case of accidents not even Hedge or Dublin would be informed yet. Detachment X had to believe they were still in command.

  *

  The call came through from Dublin, for Hedge: the light aircraft had touched down near the village of Ballymullion, in County Cavan, around four miles from the border with Ulster. O’Carse had been in touch by radio, demanding a meeting with representatives of both governments.

  “That’s what we expected,” Hedge said.

  “Yes. We know. The meeting’s to be at Clones, that’s just our side of the border. O’Carse reminds us of the children. We have to play along so far as we can … and our understanding is that your people feel the same way.”

  “Yes, quite so.”

  “You’ll also understand that we in Dublin, no more than you, want to see terrorists set free from our gaols —”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Then if you’ll arrange to be in Clones as soon as you can, Mr Hedge.”

  “Yes, very well,” Hedge said. “Mind, I shall make no decisions and I shall agree to nothing. I shall dismiss nothing. I shall in fact say as little as possible. I shall commit neither myself nor my government. Good-day to you.”

  The man in Dublin rang off sourly, wondering why anybody was bothering to send a speechless mouthpiece. Hedge busied himself, making quite sure that no aspect of safety had been overlooked in regard to his forthcoming trip across an uneasy border to Clones: he was to be helicoptered as far as the border itself, continuing into the Republic by road, in a mobile to be provided by the Garda. There were niceties to be observed, the Republic’s sovereignty respected.

  *

  Shard had the route well in mind. When he was within one street of the disused dairy he told the mobile’s driver to stop: he would go the rest of the way, circumspectly, with just one plain clothes man. The mobile — and others were following up — would remain on station to give assistance if and when called upon. Shard had been given a two-way radio, which was now clipped to an inside pocket. He and the plain clothes man, a detective sergeant from the Yard named Farrow, went at a run towards the target premises. En route from the Blackwall Tunnel’s vicinity Shard had given Farrow a detailed description of the lay-out and their objective was to be the one-time office into which Shard had First been taken on his arrival from Grays. He wouldn’t, he said, expect to Find many of the villains loafing about the yard, but there would almost certainly be someone on watch, just in case. Someone who would be keeping hidden himself.

  Farrow said, “It’s likely this O’Carse will have passed back information, sir. That he’s away and clear.”

  “So?”

  “May have dropped their guard a little, sir.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on it,” Shard said.

  They went on; when the premises were in view at the end of the street Shard called a halt. “Time’s of the essence,” he said, “but no bulls at gates. There’s an alley ahead there, see it —”

  “On the right, sir, just this side of the —”

  “Right. I’m going in there. I want you to go ahead, drift past and take a dekko, then come back and report. All right?”

  Farrow nodded and went on as Shard broke off into the alley. Shard had already seen that the gates into the dairy were shut; but beyond the premises there was rising ground, a short, steep hill and from its top Farrow should be able to look down into the yard. Shard had remarked on the time factor: that counted still, even though the children and the rest were out. No-one wanted an explosion beneath the Thames, no-one wanted the casualties that could result in the immediate area of the Blackwall Tunnel. And a baulked O’Carse, if baulked he knew himself to be by this time, could radio through at any moment to the dairy set-up.

  *

  The helicopter from Belfast had taken off, Hedge shivering though the day was warm. He was about to come face to face with murderers and anything could happen to him and probably would. From the windows as the machine swung away from the city Hedge could see the red glow of fires and shooting flames and more explosions, and army vehicles, armoured troop carriers and such, on the move.

  The border was reached quickly. Hedge was put down and transferred; the Garda mobile, driven by a grim-faced, taciturn man, lost no time in heading south for the Clones rendezvous.

  At Clones there was a strong presence of the Irish Army and the Garda to meet and accompany Hedge: the British troops and the RUC were conspicuously absent, another reminder to Hedge that he was no lon
ger on British soil. In the circumstances he found that a naked feeling. At a roadside, a lonely spot a little way south of the town itself, the hard core of Detachment X waited, headed by O’Carse. It was O’Carse who started the parley. He shouted across the gap between the two sides.

  “That’s far enough. Who’re you?”

  Hedge called back, “My name doesn’t matter. I am from the British Foreign Office and as such I represent the British Government. I have to say this: Your demands can never be considered —”

  “Can they not indeed? Just listen: kids. EEC countries. You know what’ll happen.” The voice was without any feeling, and was entirely confident. Hedge felt his stomach loosen. He really had no bargaining counters at all. “Well?”

  Sweat poured from Hedge. Hoarsely, desperately, he called out, “I’m not negotiating. My function is to liaise, that’s all. I shall transmit anything you say to Whitehall … and Dublin will also, of course, be informed.” He paused. “That is all I can say, all I can promise.”

  They waited for O’Carse to speak. The tension was at a very high point now, the whole thing on a knife-edge. O’Carse was fingering a sub-machine-gun. It would have a very wide spread of fire and unless someone acted very fast there would be nothing between it and Hedge.

  *

  Farrow wasn’t back yet. Cautiously Shard peered round the corner of the alley. Then he saw the DS coming into view from the top of the rise. Just as he saw him, there was a bleep from his pocket transceiver. He pulled it out, flicked a switch and a voice came through. “Chief Superintendent Rice, from the tunnel exit.” There was a pause. “Not all those kids came out — the teachers have just reported after calling a roll. Panic … some were injured, I suspect. Some of my lads have gone in to get them out. Over.”

  Shard blasphemed.

  Rice said, “Just be careful, Shard. Just be careful. And bloody fast!”

  Shard pushed the transceiver back into his pocket. Farrow, not hurrying, sauntered round the corner, looking unobtrusive. “Well?”