Pray for Us Sinners Page 2

  Davy tied the final knot and glanced through the window. Rain fell, splashing off the pane and making grubby streaks in the patina of industrial soot that clung to the glass. He looked at his watch. Jimmy was nearly an hour late. Had something happened to him? Christ, Davy had enough to worry about without having to be concerned about Jim Ferguson.

  Sometimes Davy worried whether he still believed in the Cause. Killing soldiers was all right, but too many civilians had died for Davy’s liking. They didn’t attack civilians back in the fifties. Davy still wondered why his commanders called that campaign off in 1962. That was when he’d quit the IRA, what was now called the Official IRA. And he’d kept out until 1970.

  When the riots started in Belfast in 1969, the remnants of the old IRA had been useless. Made no attempt to protect the Catholic ghettoes from the Protestant mobs. The folks who lived on the Falls said IRA stood for “I Ran Away.” Davy hadn’t even bothered to reenlist, not until a splinter group formed in 1970—a group that promised to go after the Brits, a group that called itself the Provisional IRA. They were the hardest of the hard men and they were not going to let anything stand in the way of their goal: Brits out and a united Ireland. And that was what Davy was after, had always been after.

  Freedom, he thought, was a long time coming, and was union with the Republic any closer? He nodded, reassuring himself. Aye, it was, and he believed all right, had to believe, that Ireland would be free. He owed it to Da and he owed it to himself to struggle on, until one day—one day soon—the British would be gone.

  Davy heard the knock, rose, and limped to the front door.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Davy spat his words.

  “I’m sorry, Davy.” Jimmy Ferguson’s thin weasel’s head twitched sharply to one side.

  “Come in.” Davy stumped back to the kitchen, leaving Jimmy to close the door and follow.

  Davy sat, watching Ferguson shrug out of his wet raincoat and drape it over the back of a chair.

  “Look, Davy”—Jimmy’s chin twitched forward and to one side—“I’m sorry. The fucking Falls is crawling with Brits. I’d to take the long way round.”

  Davy grunted. He hated the way his friend shot his jaw.

  “Don’t be mad, Davy.”

  “Sit down.”

  Jimmy sat. He reached into an inside pocket of his raincoat. “I got them. Here.” He handed over a wooden box.

  “Jesus, Jimmy, don’t tell me you let a few Brits scare you.”

  Jimmy’s jaw twitched again. “Come on, Davy. You know bloody well three of the First Battalion lads was lifted in that van two days ago.” He pushed the box closer to Davy. “I couldn’t have brought these if the peelers got me.”

  “You think someone touted?”

  Jimmy kept his gaze on the tabletop.

  “Jimmy, who the hell’s going to grass on us? Only Second Battalion command knows about us.”

  Davy could hear the scuffling of Jimmy’s feet on the kitchen floor. He’d no time for Jimmy’s worries. “Christ Almighty, the CO’s closer than fleas on a dog. What did he promise us when we joined up?”

  Jimmy shot his jaw.

  “Jimmy, what did Sean Conlon say?”

  “That he’d keep me and you out of the regular units. We’d just have to make bombs and deliver them to safe houses.”

  “Right. Sure you know we never get to meet the other men in the battalion. Who the hell could grass on us, Jim?”

  Jimmy looked up. “Nobody, I suppose.”

  “You suppose? Jimmy, you and me’s a cell. Like your man Che Guevara’s lot.” Davy saw Jimmy’s lower lip trembling. Davy leaned forward and, like a lover in a candlelit restaurant, laid one palm over the smaller man’s hand. “We’re safe as houses.” Davy’s blue eyes held Jimmy’s pale ones.

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Aye. Now. What’s in here?” Davy lifted the box and opened the lid. He smiled. “You done good.”

  Jimmy laughed, a high-pitched hee-hee. “I had to go away the hell up to Ardoyne, so I had, and get them from one of First Battalion’s lads.”

  Davy took a thin copper cylinder from the box. “Number sixes?”

  “Aye, and I’ve tested them on my galvanometer. They’re all dead-on.”

  “Great.” Davy pulled the TNT toward him. He slipped the cap into the cap well in the end of one of the blocks. “Just the job.” He removed the cap. “I’ll need to wire the circuit.” He untwisted the lead wires that came from the end of the cap.

  Jimmy watched. “It’s a bugger about the three lads in the van.”

  “Aye.” Davy joined one wire from the cap to one from the clothes peg. He used a Western Union pigtail splice.

  “Still,” Jimmy babbled on, “the timer worked, and the paper said the blast got another army bomb-disposal man. That’s two more of the buggers. Some Brit called Cowan got took out a few weeks back.”

  Davy finished connecting three double-A batteries to the lead from the other side of the timer. “Good. Them’s our proper targets, Jim. Soldiers and policemen.”

  Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “Bothers you, doesn’t it, Davy, hitting civilians?”

  “Aye. I don’t like it. Not one bit.” He busied himself covering the bare end of the cap’s other lead wire with a piece of insulating tape. “That’s her now. The Active Service boys can finish wiring the detonator.”

  Jimmy said, “Four pounds’ll make a hell of a bang. I wonder what it’s for this time?”

  “What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over. If it’s not the Security Forces, I don’t want to know.” Davy rose, closed the lid of the blasting-cap box. “I’ll hang on to these,” he said, as he carried the box to a cupboard and opened the door. He removed a bag of cat food and buried the box among the pellets. “It’ll be all right in McCusker’s grub ’til I get back.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Jimmy asked, eyes averted.

  “Not at all. It’s not too far to the drop.”

  “Thanks, Davy.”

  “Never worry,” Davy said as he reached for a small sack of spuds he wanted to use to camouflage the devices. “Away on home to the missus. I’ll take a wander past the nice British soldier lads that’s here to protect us poor Catholics.”

  THREE

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4

  The “nice British soldier lads” Davy was avoiding were men of 39 Infantry Brigade, which had Belfast as its tactical area of responsibility. The troops were headquartered at Thiepval Barracks on the outskirts of Lisburn.

  A small, dapper man, forty-four, clean-shaven, the whites of his eyes yellowed from too much quinacrine, sat in a cramped office in one of the Thiepval’s old red-brick buildings. He was worried—very worried—and as he always did when preoccupied, he toyed with a heavy signet ring. He examined the crest, a winged dagger beneath which the motto read, “Who Dares Wins.” It was the badge of 22 Regiment of the Special Air Service. The SAS.

  He’d fought with them in Malaya as an intelligence and counter-insurgency officer. He’d done a second tour in Indonesia, and there, despite the quinacrine, he had contracted malaria.

  In 1967 he’d been invalided out of the army, the only life he had ever wanted. He spent the intervening years living with his widowed sister Emily in the village of Bourn, outside Cambridge. Now he had a second chance, but if he didn’t produce soon that chance would be gone.

  Major John Smith ran his hands over his khaki pants. God, but it was good to be back in uniform. He knew very well he would not have been, but for that phone call last month from Sir Charles Featherstone, Permanent Under-Secretary to the Northern Ireland Office.

  Major Smith closed his eyes and recalled the interview in Whitehall with Sir Charles, the promise—and the threat.

  Sir Charles had not risen from his desk.

  “Have a seat, Smith.”

  He sat down. Why did he feel like a fourth-former summoned to the headmaster’s study? John Smith studied the man behind the desk
.

  Sir Charles Featherstone was in his early sixties, thick grey hair swept straight back, bushed at the temples. His nose was sharp and stood stiffly between deep-set blue eyes. His neck was wattled above his starched white collar. His Guards tie showed above the waistcoat of his pinstriped suit. He spoke. “I’ll come straight to the point, Smith.”

  “Sir.”

  “I got your name from Frank Kitson. You met him in Malaya, I believe.”

  “Brigadier Kitson? Yes, sir.”

  “He says you can be trusted.” Sir Charles cocked his head to one side. “Would you like to come back in?”

  John Smith looked directly into Sir Charles’s eyes. “Very much, sir. Very much indeed.”

  “You’d not mind working in Ulster?”

  “No, sir.”

  Sir Charles steepled his fingers. “I need a man I can rely on. An operative working for me and no one else.”

  John Smith sensed that he should remain silent.

  “The intelligence situation’s a shambles over there. Do you know how many units are operating?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Neither do we. Not completely. MI6 have pulled out. MI5—‘BOX,’ as they call themselves, because their address is a post office box—are still there. The Royal Ulster Constabulary have two departments. C is the ordinary criminal investigation bunch. E is their special branch, antiterrorist. And the civilian organizations are child’s play compared to the military.”

  Sir Charles cracked his knuckles. “Thirty-nine Brigade ran a mob called the Military Reconnaissance Force. Your old chum Kitson’s idea. Total flop. We packed them up this year. Replaced them with 14 Intelligence Company.

  “As if all that wasn’t bad enough, every regular army unit’s intelligence officer fancies himself to be Le Carré’s Smiley and runs his own agents. There might even be some of your old mob, the SAS, on the ground—not officially, of course.”

  Sir Charles harrumphed. “The Royal Ulster Constabulary won’t talk to the army. The army mistrusts the RUC. Even in the army, the daft buggers don’t talk to each other. It’s a bloody shambles.”

  Sir Charles scowled. John Smith saw the look and felt his muscles tighten as the civil servant continued. “And the Provos have begun to mount operations that could only have worked with the benefit of top-grade inside information. There’s a mole somewhere in our organization, in Thirty-nine Brigade’s tactical area of operations. Your job will be to find him—and gut him.”

  “Yes, sir.” John Smith sat rigidly at attention.

  “Remember, Smith, you’ll be working for me. No one else.”

  “Will I be working completely alone, sir?”

  “No. The CO of Fourteen Intelligence, Harry Swanson, has been briefed about you. He’s a Yorkshireman. Calls a spade a bloody shovel. He’ll provide you with logistic backup, documents, access to files.”

  “Sir.”

  “There’s another chappie who’ll be able to help you. He’s sound as a bell. Completely familiar with the local situation. Ulsterman. Catholic. Name’s Eric Gillespie. Detective Superintendent in the special branch. Give you the local colour.” Sir Charles’s smile was a puckered rictus. “I’m told it’s predominantly orange and green.”

  Smith mentally filed the name. “I thought the army didn’t trust the RUC, sir.”

  “Quite right. Neither do I. They’re the only ones who can mingle with the hoi polloi. Lots of chances to pass on information. The bloke you’re after might very well be a copper.”

  “But, Sir Charles, if there could be a leak in the police, why use their people?”

  Sir Charles grimaced. “You’ll need one local contact. It’s like a foreign country over there. Gillespie’s been screened, he’s a closemouthed bugger, and the previous chief constable, Sir Graham Shillington, is an old friend of mine. He vouched for Gillespie. He’s one of their best operatives. Trust him, to a point, but don’t tell him what you’re really after. He may be on our side, but he is still RUC, and he’s a Catholic.”

  Smith heard the distaste in Sir Charles’s voice as he continued: “And so’s the new chief constable—chap called Jamie Flanagan. If he found out through Gillespie that you suspected the coppers—what do our American cousins say?—the shit would hit the fan.”

  “What do I tell him I’m supposed to be doing, sir?”

  Sir Charles laughed. “You’re just another independent intelligence operative. After PIRA names, ammo dumps, the usual stuff.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now get over to NI. They’re expecting you at Lisburn Headquarters. The brigadier’s been told to leave you alone to get on with your job. You’ll have access to all the files.” He opened a drawer and produced two envelopes. “My minister’s written this.” He handed one to Smith. “It instructs the powers that be over there to ‘render all assistance.’”

  John Smith rose and accepted the letter, tucking it unopened into his inside jacket pocket.

  Sir Charles’s blue eyes fixed on Smith. “Take all the time you need over there—within reason. Report directly to me.” He held out the other envelope. “Your commission’s in here, Major.”

  Major Smith accepted the buff envelope. Major Smith. He’d hardly dared hope for so much. He heard Sir Charles say, “Pull this off and you’ll have the deepest gratitude of Her Majesty’s Government. Shouldn’t be surprised if I couldn’t find a half-colonel’s job for you. Of course, if you don’t…”

  Major Smith looked through his window at the razor-wire fence surrounding Thiepval. Pull this off? He was no closer to finding the Provos’ inside man than he had been when he’d arrived here a month ago. How much longer would Sir Charles wait?

  There was a way to try to find the leak. It would be risky and depended on identifying the right man for the job. The major’d considered the possibility for the last two weeks, working with a reluctant Harry Swanson of 14 Intel. Harry had not wrapped up his opinion. Putting a British officer on the street to infiltrate the upper echelons of the PIRA would be hazardous in the extreme. Having registered his protest, Swanson had started running background checks.

  The ringing phone interrupted the major’s train of thought. He lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

  “John?”

  “Yes, Harry?”

  “Can you come over to Palace Barracks in Holywood the day after tomorrow, the sixth? I think I’ve found the chap you’re looking for.”

  “What?” Major Smith’s fingers tightened round the receiver. “Who?”

  FOUR

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5

  At 8:14 A.M., as weak sunlight struggled through the lattices of the coal cranes on the banks of the Lagan and glinted from heaps of anthracite piled on the pier, a nondescript-looking man left from a Ford Prefect parked on Queen’s Quay. He carried a small suitcase.

  He dodged through the traffic and crossed the road to the entrance of the Belfast and County Down Railway station. A throng of commuters spilled from the portals. The man jostled his way through the crowd into the concourse. Before him a diesel locomotive stood at one platform, its engine leaking greasy exhaust fumes. He glanced up to the overhead clock. 8:17. The next commuter train would arrive at the other platform in fifteen minutes.

  He looked to his right. The porter’s trolley was where he had been told to expect it, parked beside a glass-fronted news kiosk. The kiosk was close to the gate where the passengers would be funneled to hand over their tickets to the ticket collector. There was no sign of the porter whose job it had been to leave the loaded trolley where it stood. The man smiled. The porter was a sensible lad. Very sensible.

  He slipped his case among the heap of luggage on the trolley, bent, opened the leather lid, straightened, and lit a smoke. He touched the lit cigarette to another bound to a clothes peg inside the case, closed the lid, shoved the case farther onto the trolley, and walked away.

  The ticket collector lounged, back turned to his gate, staring along the track.

  At 8:35, as the last of
the disembarking passengers queued at the ticket gate and those who had been allowed through hurried past the kiosk, the smouldering tobacco burnt through the string, and the words “High explosive. TNT. 1 pound net. Dangerous” vanished in an inferno of incandescent gas.

  The ticket collector was impaled on the broken cast-iron railings of his gate. He died before the jagged metal ripped into his chest. A woman was thrown ten feet to slam into a child pushing a toy pram. The girl’s arm was snapped by the force of the collision. She screamed for her mother, who struggled to stand, trying to ignore the grating agony in her three crushed ribs.

  The blast shattered the kiosk’s panes and hurled glass shards while torn pieces of magazines and comics—Tit-Bits and Woman’s Own, Beano and Dandy—fluttered in the smoke-filled air like demented confetti.

  And through the acrid fumes, the shrieks and curses, pleas and groans joined in a lamentation for a province torn by hatred and sectarian war.

  * * *

  The Ford Prefect crossed the Upper Falls Road. Its passenger grunted, “Let me off here.” Carrying no suitcase this time, he walked easily, making his way to a street corner.

  Another man leaned against a wall. He carried his right shoulder higher than his left, and the left lens of his National Health Service granny glasses had been replaced by an opaque leather disc. He barely nodded as the pedestrian passed, rubbed his finger under his nose, and strolled on.

  Brendan McGuinness smiled. The mission he had planned had gone off smoothly. He poked a finger under his leather patch and scratched the eye socket.

  McGuinness turned and opened a front door. He let himself into a dingy hall. He shrugged. Four pounds of TNT was small beans. One of Sean Conlon’s men’s efforts. Sean was fiercely protective of his men. McGuinness, commanding officer of 1st Battalion, had little time for Conlon and his 2nd Battalion volunteers. The man had a soft spot. That hadn’t mattered yet, as long as they could work together smoothly on brigade staff, Sean as adjutant and Brendan as information officer. This morning’s job showed how they could cooperate. First Battalion had needed a bomb delivered to a safe house, and Sean had readily agreed to have his 2nd Battalion bomb makers provide it.