The Glory Boys

by Gerald Seymour

  Her telephoned call to her news editor reported 'massive security, an unknown and anonymous Israeli VIP, police tracker dogs on the tarmac, an escort of armed Special Branch men, the waiving of customs formalities, and a high speed convoy into London'. The news editor liked it too, gave it a further gloss of his own, and put it on the wires, along which it would be carried to the newsrooms of all Fleet Street papers.

  Immured between the shoulders of the security attache and Mackowicz, Professor Sokarev saw little of the countryside bordering the M4 motorway between the airport and central London. If he strained his head there were occasional glimpses of fields and football pitches before the cars sped on to a stilted flyover, and only the roofs and upper office windows of the taller buildings were visible.

  He could sense the tension that now gripped Mackowicz, the way he peered into the cars that they passed, or, when they slowed, clogged in traffic as the motorway narrowed from three lanes of traffic to two, the way he heaved himself across the window pressing his whole upper torso against the glass. Sokarev had stared in the other direction for the moment or so before the convoy had started off, while the bodyguard had loaded the heavy black-painted pistol before returning it to his shoulder holster. It was an unpleasant, angular weapon, outside the scientist's experience, and he was unable to give it a name.

  In thirty-five minutes they were at the door of the hotel that had been chosen for him. More detectives were waiting here, easily recognizable. His own car had jerked to a halt, and Mackowicz had said in his ear, 'Don't stop, don't hesitate, straight inside.' Then an arm had taken his and half-bundled him through the moving swing doors.

  Across the hall a man stood with one foot in the lift, holding the button to keep the door open. Sokarev was kept moving, across the lavish carpet, then bustled into the lift. As the doors closed he found himself pressured by the shapes of his own men, the attache, the one who called himself Jimmy, and the elegant, dark-suited fellow he presumed to be from the hotel. They went to the fourth and top floor. At the extreme right-hand end he saw two men rise from their chairs, one of them turning to unlock and open the door of a corner room. The pace was maintained till the door slammed shut behind him.

  'Welcome to our hotel, Profesor Sokarev,' intoned the man in the dark suit. He spoke with the necessary formality that concealed the management's displeasure at playing host and having responsibility for such a guest. There had been no breath of this when the reservation had been made, no mention of policemen, or of detectives who wanted to sleep in corridors, watch the front desk, and slump in lounge chairs. That had all started early in the morning, too late to insist on a cancellation.

  'There is a connecting door to the other room and your two colleagues.'

  One room only for the two of them, thought Sokarev.

  The attache read his thoughts.

  'At night one will be sleeping, the other awake. They will take it in shifts. In addition there are the men outside.'

  Soon the group dispersed, the manager through the main door, Mackowicz, Elkin, Jimmy and the attache into the adjoining room. Sokarev was alone, able to unstrap his case, and begin to put in the drawers the clothes that his wife had folded with such care. He could reflect that whatever fears he himself entertained for his own safety they were matched by the anxiety of the Security Services of Israel and of Britain. The realization chilled him.

  Next door Jimmy was on the telephone, through to Jones, and the other men waited in silence for him to finish speaking and then relay to them the latest information.

  Jimmy gave nothing away to those who looked for a sign.

  He listened poker-faced, said he'd be in later that evening, and rang off.

  'There's been a flap since Friday morning, but it's really buzzing now. Bit over an hour ago one of them called the contact man. We've traced the call to the south-west. They're saturating a town called Richmond. Nice, comfortable, posh place. And it's crawling with coppers now. They think there's a good chance they have the bastards bottled up. But then they always say that. And then make the excuses twenty-four hours later.'

  'How many of them are there?' Elkin asked.

  'Just two,' said Jimmy. 'One from Northern Ireland. Cut above the usual grade. Good record, good operator. The other we think is from your part of the world. No name, but we've a face, not a bad one we think, to fit to him.

  He's a bit homesick, made a phone call he shouldn't have.

  That's how we're pressuring them right now. Special Branch will be round in about twenty minutes, an inspector; he'll have the files and the pictures for you.'

  Jimmy sensed he was the odd man out in the room, that they wanted to talk in their own tongue, discuss their problems among themselves. It was the time for him to assert himself, make the position clear. There must be no doubts, no misunderstandings.

  'My orders, gentlemen,' he said, 'are very clear. I have to be beside your man every moment he's out of that room. Not five yards, or four yards, or three yards away from him. Right beside him. My orders are very explicit on that. He's not to leave this building without me knowing it. This isn't a scene you'll run yourselves. We are in charge, and you will listen to us. And a final point. If I see something out on the street and open fire and hit the wrong bloody target there'll be a hell of a row, but it'll blow over. If one of you does it, you'll be in court before you know what's hit you; it'll stink for months. So go a bit careful.'

  Jimmy went out into the corridor — to have a smoke, chat up the Branch men, and to allow the men he'd left behind in the room to vent their feelings. With amusement he heard the raised voice that he recognized as Mackowicz's rich in aggrieved anger, and Elkin's quieter but in a harmony of protest, and then the calmer tones of the attache soothing the hurt pride, salving the wounds.

  That poor little sod in the other room, Jimmy thought.

  Lonely, frightened and going through this hoop just to make one bloody speech. He could just as well have put it in the post, all neatly typed out, and everyone would be just as wise. But that's not the way it works. He's going to stand out there like a tethered goat, put out as bait, with us up in the trees and him praying we get the bastards before they get him.

  Jimmy went back into the room. Mackowicz was still hard-eyed, uptight; Elkin was a bit better, not much, but they both knew where they stood. The attache had done a good job. Their clothes were already scattered around the room. The radios and the Uzis were on one of the bedspreads. They were settling in.

  'No appointments tonight, right?' Jimmy said to the attache.

  'Correct. He was to have dined at the university. We've put that off, said he had a heavy cold. He'll eat in the room tonight. He'll be tired from the journey. Tomorrow he can stay in till we go out in the evening.'

  'And Wednesday to the States?'

  'He goes to New York on Thursday. His arrangements there are from that day. We saw no reason to change them.'

  'I hope he likes his room then,' snapped Jimmy. 'Because if he's going to be here for an extra day that's where he's going to have to stay.'

  The wind had raised its pitch, gathering power and determination as it swept across the great open spaces of the park. It sought out the body of McCoy where he lay, shirt unbuttoned to the waist, forced its currents across his chest so that in his sleep he shivered, and wriggled to hunch his frame and protect himself. And then he woke. He saw the girl beside him with her clothes still in the casual disarray that he had left them, legs outflung, arms behind her head, staring vacant and uncaring into the deep distances of the sky.

  He looked at his watch. Past seven. Less than an hour to the rendezvous, and the light beginning to drift away.

  The afternoon had been lost, and soon would come the cover of darkness that he needed for movement.

  'Come on, girl. Time to be on our way.' He said it without noise, but there was none of the tenderness in his voice that she sought and expected. She lay motionless, unwilling to look at him.

  'Come on, girl.
I said it was time to move.' There was a cutting edge in his voice, sharp and unfamiliar. She reacted, fumbling with her jeans, pulling them over the slight hips.

  She turned away from him to contort her arms round her back to refasten the clasp he had unhooked. He brushed the grass and dried earth from their clothes and together they started to walk toward the heavy wrought-iron gates, through which the cars flowed in and out of the park.

  They walked in silence, Norah with her head down, avoiding him.

  They were still a hundred yards from the gates when McCoy saw the policemen operating the road block. He counted six of them. One was far in the distance on the road toward the town waving his arm languidly in the air, slowing and warning the oncoming traffic. Another had a clip-board and was taking down registration numbers.

  Another talked to the drivers, peering inside to scrutinize the passengers. A fourth and fifth searched under bonnets and in the boots of the cars, and a sixth sat in a police car facing away from the block, his engine ticking over.

  McCoy understood the scene. Last man there for a break out, revved and ready to give chase. It was professional, he accepted that.

  Too many for anything routine. Too heavy a force for local crime. Then he thought of Famy. Unwilling to be left on his own, nervous of what might happen to him if he were abandoned to his own devices for just a few hours, suspicious of where McCoy had gone. And now the road block; not a casual one, but thorough and painstaking. He had to be sure where the bloody Arab was, had to know what had happened.

  Stretching on either side of the gates were the eight-foot-high walls of matured brick that ringed the park.

  'I can't go through the check,' he said, 'I have to get across the wall, somewhere away from the main roads, but near to the town.' The girl hesitated, uncertain. The policemen would hear her if she shouted. One scream and they would be running, sprinting towards her. And what then? That was where the equation defeated her. What would she say? Tell them the man they sought had lain with her, that she had opened her legs to him, pulled him down on to her?

  She was not long in deciding. She took McCoy's hand and led him across the grass, cut short by the sheep, past the great oak trees, and then where the wall dipped down following the contours of a gully she stopped.

  She had chosen well, he could see that.

  McCoy reached up to the top of the wall and levered himself a foot or so off the ground. It was perfect. The wrong end of a cemetery where the trees grew close together, where the leaf-mould and grass-cuttings had been piled against the bricks. He slipped over, landing easily on the piled vegetation. He put his right arm back over the wall, grabbed Norah's wrist and heaved her over the barrier. They crouched behind one of the big yews, the necessary precaution till he was certain they had not been observed.

  'I want somewhere that I can lie up, somewhere safe,'

  he whispered to her.

  'Just out of the cemetery there's a building site they've cleared. There's nothing there now. Just scrub and that.

  What are you going to do then?'

  'Get me there, I'll tell you then.'

  They walked along the narrow tarmac path between the disordered rows of stones, past the jam jars that held single wilting tulip-stems, skirted the fresh rectangular shapes of earth, and came to the gate.

  'Where to from here?' McCoy said.

  'Across the road, and about a hundred yards down, that's where the site is.'

  'But there's a bloody great fence round it. I can't climb that on the main road.'

  'Down at the side, the second turning, no one'll see you there.' She was involved now, part of his team. The moment of crisis had gone. She would do as he told her, he had no doubt of that. Usually did, the little bitches. He sensed he now had in his possession something quite priceless. He had a courier. Someone who could run for him, who could be his eyes and ears. God knows why they want to dip their fingers in, he thought, but they do. Don't think it out, too stupid to do the addition and multiplication.

  There was traffic on the road, but no policemen. He had his arm round her shoulder as they waited for an opening and then crossed. They fitted a conventional image, boy and girl, out for a walk, fond of each other, and very distant from the picture any motorist who saw them might have had of a hunted killer of the Provisional IRA. They walked down the side road, not fast, taking their time.

  McCoy spoke to her closely, and anyone who saw them would have imagined it was endearments he was whispering against her hair.

  'Listen carefully,' he said. 'Do exactly as I say. Near the station there's a tea bar, on the far side of the road, toward the river. You'll find a man in there, a darkie. Taller than me, no moustache or anything, short hair. He'll have a grip-bag with him. Just say the word "Mushroom" to him, and tell him to follow you. Take him through to here, not on the big roads, down the side streets and get him here.

  And tell him to go carefully.'

  is he the other one they're looking for?' Norah said it with excitement pitched in her voice.

  'I've told you. You don't need to know. Just go and do it, girl. The way I've told you. If he's not there, wait for him. At least an hour. But get him here.'

  He scanned each end of the road. Empty, deserted. Then he was on the buckling, bending wire, monkey-like, before he tumbled down on the far side and was gone. She heard his running feet crashing in the undergrowth, and after that nothing.

  From his seat in the cinema Famy heard the sirens in the street outside. He remembered the urgency of the instructions over the telephone to set distance between himself and the station, and he huddled in the darkened seat as the raucous noise blotted out the sound track of the film whenever the police cars passed outside the cinema. He bit at his fingernails as he watched the Technicolor heroics that filled the screen. The images meant nothing, failed even to divert his attention from the problem that now preyed upon him. It was the immediate problem of survival. The bag was there against his legs, reassuring in its bulk, and he quietly slid open the zip and felt with his hands for the cotton surface under which were the awkward, angled shapes of the grenades. He lifted one out, small, the size of a shrunken apple, and put it in the pocket of his coat. The rifles were too large, too cumbersome, but one grenade would be sufficient to stave off immediate pursuit. It could be concealed, not like the guns, and it gave him the confidence that he would need to walk out into the unknown of the middle-light of the evening.

  Sometimes his thoughts wandered back to his friends, the men he had hardly known, but whose companionship in the short-term he had valued, to Dani and Bouchi. Their laughter on the plane out of Beirut, the banter about Nablus and the olive groves as they had driven across France, and the fear that had bound them on the route to Boulogne. He recaptured again, so that it overwhelmed him and blotted out the meaningless antics of the celluloid pictures, the blood of his friends that had spattered and soaked the seats of the car. He could still hear Dani's words. Their exhortation before the colour in his soft brown cheeks had faded to the greyness that preceded death. The words knifed through his subconscious, controlling him, providing the momentum he needed to go on.

  He left the cinema before the completion of the second film. He'd already seen well into the second reel, and the story had still not attracted him. But his motives were clear. He wanted to be away before the big rush to the doors, and the exit he chose was at the side. It was simple reasoning that if a hunt for him were in progress that the entrance hall of a cinema would be an obvious place for them to look. With the bag in his hand and the grenade in his pocket, he slid back the iron bar that kept the fire door shut. He went unnoticed and without impediment.

  It took him many minutes to make his way to the rendezvous. He walked with a shuffling, almost sideways gait along the front of the shop windows, ready to spin his head toward the loaded shelves of merchandise on the occasions that the squad cars cruised past. There were men on foot too, and to avoid them he twice entered shops, mingling in front
of the counters till he had seen through the plate-glass windows that the danger had passed. With each step he took there was greater confidence. They're stumbling about, he told himself, uncertain what and whom they seek, thrashing in the dark.

  In the cafe he took a seat at the back, again sideways on to the door, so he could observe the comings and goings and at the same time swing his head away should he wish to obscure his face.

  He saw the girl come in, noticed the nervous, switching eyes that took in the customers sitting at the tables and on the stools at the counter. The look of grateful recognition she gave him stiffened Famy and his hand moved instinctively to the pocket that held the grenade, his fingers seeking out the circular pin that was the safety device of the V40. He stared at her, hand clasped round the metal-work as she came close, eyes riveted to her pale, pretty face.

  She bent down toward him as she reached the table. She was trembling, and when her lips moved, at first there was no sound.

  'Mushroom.' She blurted it. 'He said you were to follow me. I'll take you to him.'

  And Famy understood. Why had he been so anxious to split up that afternoon? Needed a girl. Not a woman who would reason things out, but a girl who would follow blindly where he led. Dangerous, he thought, but probably better than someone older. As she turned back toward the door he saw the hard-etched creases in her blouse. Not bad, McCoy, he thought. A roll in the grass and you have the loyalty of the whore.

  She took him through the back streets of the old town, climbing the hill over which sprawled the fashionable residential homes of the previous century. Past almshouses and churches, past homes that had been neatly outlined in white gloss, past blocks of flats where those for sale were advertised as 'luxury' on the estate agents' boards. Sometimes the streets were narrow, in other places they widened out, but none of them was busy with cars. There were children playing their games with balls, men walking in company to the pubs, women hurrying home with their baskets of late shopping, and no policemen. Famy held the girl's hand, and she let it rest there, inanimate and without feeling. But it was better that way, more secure. They went mostly in silence, Famy occasionally speaking, but meeting only non-committal response.