Harry's Game (5 page)

His arrival and needs, after four years of warfare, were unremarkable. In the "Murph" his name could be kept secret, not his reason for running‐‐not after the Scotland Yard photokit had been flashed up on to the screen during the late‐night news. On orders from London the photo had been withheld until after the intelligence

mat

and Special Branch officers had attempted to identify the killer. With their failure the picture had been released. The family gathered round the set to hear the announcer.

Scotland Yard have just issued a photokit picture of the man they wish to interview in connection with the murder of Mr Henry Danby, the Minister of Social Security, at his home in central London yesterday morning. The picture has been compiled from the description of several eye‐witnesses. Scotland Yard say the man is aged about thirty, has short hair, with a parting on the left side, a narrow face, with what a witness calls "pinched cheeks'. The man is of light build, and about five feet nine inches tall. When last seen he was wearing grey trousers and a dark brown jacket. He may also have a fawn‐coloured macintosh with him. Anyone who can identify this man is asked to get in touch immediately with the police on the Confidential Line of Belfast 227756 or 226837.

High on the fireplace over the small fire grate was a carved and painted model of a Thompson machine gun, the present to the family from their eldest son Eamon, held for two years in Long Kesh. It was dated Christmas 1973. Below the gun the family registered no reaction to the picture shown on their screens.

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In the small hours Theresa, Eamon's sister, tiptoed her way round the scarred door of the back room. She eased her path over the floorboards, still loosened and noisy since the army came to look for her brother. In the darkness she saw the face of the man, out from under his blankets with his arms wrapped around his pillow, as a child holds a favourite doll. She was shivering in the thin nightdress, transparent and reaching barely below her hips. She had selected it two hours before to put on before waiting to be sure her people were asleep. Very gently at first, she shook the shoulder of the man, till he started half out of bed, gripped her wrist, and then in one movement pulled her down, but as a prisoner.

'Who's that?" he said it hard, tautly, with fear in his voice.

'It's Theresa." There was silence, just the man's breathing, and still he held her wrist, vice‐like.

With her free hand she moved back the bed clothes and moved her body alongside his. He was naked and cold; across the room she saw his clothes strewn over the chair by the window.

'You can let go," she said and tried to move closer to him, but only to find him backing away till the edge of the single bed stopped his movement.

'Why did you come?'

'To see you.'

'Why did you come?" Again harsher, louder.

'They showed your picture ... on the telly ... just now ... on the late news.'

The hand released her wrist. The man flopped back on the pillow, tension draining out of him.

Theresa pressed against his body, but found no response, no acknowledgement of her presence.

'You had to know, for when they move you on. I had to tell you ... we aren't your enemies.

You're safe with us ... there's no danger.'

'There are six men in the city who know I'm here‐‐and you...'

A little more nervously she whispered back, "Don't worry yourself, there's no narks here, not in this street... not since the McCoy girl ... they shot her." It was an afterthought‐‐Roisin McCoy, soldier's girl friend, part‐time informer, found shot dead under Divis mountain. Big outcry, no arrests.

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Tm not saying anything.'

'I didn't come to talk, and it's freezing, half out of the bloody clothes.'

He pulled her down, close now against him. the nylon of her nightdress riding up over her hips and her breasts. She pushed against him, screwing her nipples against the black hair of his chest.

'Not much, are they?" she murmured. "Couple of bloody bee stings.'

The man smiled, and the hand that had grasped her wrist to the point of half stopping the blood flow now stroked and rubbed urgently at the soft white inside of her thighs. She reached down and felt his stomach back away as she took hold of him, limp and lifeless, pliable in her hand. Slowly, then frantically, to match her own sensations she stroked and kneaded him, but without success.

Abruptly the man stopped his movements, pulled his hand away from the moist warmth.

'Get out. Bugger off. Get out.'

Theresa, nineteen years old, four of them spent on the mill weaving line, had heard and seen enough in her life to say, "Was it that bad ... London ... was it...?'

The interruption was a stinging blow across the right side of her face. His cheap onyx wedding ring gouged the skin below the eye. She was gone, out through the door across the passage to her bed; there she lay, legs clenched together, fascinated and horrified at the knowledge she had.

In her half‐sleep she heard the whisper of voices and the footsteps m the stairs as the man was taken to his next place of hiding.

In the Cabinet Room the Prime Minister was showing little patience for the lack of a quick arrest. He had heard the Commissioner say that the case was static in London now, and that the main police effort was to establish how and where the man had entered the country. The boarding house in Euston where he had slept the night before the shooting had been searched, but nothing found. As expected the gun had yielded no fingerprints, and the same process of elimination was being used on the car. Here it was pointed out that the police had to identify the fingerprints of everyone who had handled the car over the previous six weeks or so before they could begin to come up with a worthwhile print and say this was the killer's. It would take a long time, said the Commissioner, and involved drivers, Avis staff, garage personnel. Nothing had been found on the basics‐‐steering wheel, door handle, gear lever. He reported >n the new security measures surrounding Ministers, pointed out that they were nearly if not totally a 23

waste of time if politicians did not co‐operate, and urged no repetitions of the situation by which the murdered Minister had been able to decide for himself that he no longer wanted protection. He finished by putting the proposition that the killer had no contact in Britain, and had operated completely on his own. Reservations for tickets in Dublin, Heathrow and Amsterdam had all been made over the phone and were untraceable. He fell back on the theme that the solving of the crime would happen in Belfast, and that yesterday a Chief Superintendent from the Murder Squad had gone to Belfast to confer with the RUC.

Frank Scott, the Chief Constable, reported nothing had come in on the confidential phones, and as yet there had been no whisper on the Special Branch net. "Now we know he's in the city we'll get him, but it may not be fast‐‐that's the situation." It had been left to him to report the finding of the Amsterdam duty‐free bag.

'That's what you said two days ago," snapped the Prime Minister.

'And it's still the situation." The Chief Constable was not prepared to give ground. The Northern Ireland Secretary chipped in, "I

think we all accept, Frank, that it's near impossible to stampede this sort of operation.'

'But I have to have results." The Prime Minister drummed his knuckles on the table. "We cannot let this one hang about.'

I'm not hanging about, sir, and you well know that no one in my force is." The Ulster policeman's retort caused a certain fidgeting down the sides of the table from Ministers who had begun to feel their presence was irrelevant to the matter in hand‐‐other than that by their arrivals and departures the cameras could witness the activity and firm hand of government.

The Commissioner wished he'd come in faster. One up to the RUG.

The Prime Minister, too, sensed the chilliness of the situation, and invited the opinion of General Fairbairn. As the GOG Northern Ireland, commanding more than fifteen thousand men there, he expected to be listened to. He weighed his words.

'The problem, sir, is getting inside the areas the IRA dominate. Getting good information that we can trust and can then act on fast enough while the tips are still hot. Now, we can thrash around as we did yesterday morning, and as we have done to a more limited degree this morning, and though we pick up a bit‐‐a few bodies, a few guns, some bomb‐making equipment‐‐we're unlikely to get at the real thing. I would hazard the motive behind the killing was to get us to launch massive reprisal raids, cordon streets off, taking house after house to pieces, lock hundreds up. They want us to hammer them and build a new generation of mini-martyrs. It's been quiet there these last few weeks. They needed a major publicity attracting operation, and then a big kick‐back from us to involve people at street level who are beginning to want to disengage. The raids we have been mounting these last thirty‐six hours are fair 24

enough as an initial reaction, but if we keep them up we'll be in danger of reactivating the people who had begun to lose interest in the IRA.'

'What about your intelligence men, your men on the inside?'

'We don't go in for that sort of thing so much now, we tend to meet on the outside‐‐after the young Captain was murdered three months ago, horrible business ... the Ministry wasn't happy, we suspended that sort of work.'

'Suspended it?" The Prime Minister deliberately accentuated the touch of horror in his voice.

'We haven't had an operation of anything like this size to handle for around a year; things have been running down. There hasn't

been the need for intelligence operatives. Now we would have to set up a new unit completely‐

‐the men we have there at the moment are too compromised. I don't think in your time‐scale, Prime Minister, we have the time to do it.'

lie said the last drily, and with only the faintest hint of sarcasm, sufficiently guarded to be just about permissible for a Lt‐General in the Cabinet Room at No 10 Downing Street.

'I want a man in there ... nothing else to think about," the Prime Minister was speaking deliberately, the Agriculture man thought‐‐ lice and slowly, just right for the transcript being scribbled in the corner.

'I want an experienced agent in there as fast as you can make it. A ;good man. If we've picked the killer up by then nothing lost, if not .. I know what you're going to say, General: if the man is discovered I will take the rap. That's understood. Well?'

The General had heard enough to realize that the interchange of ,dcas had been over several minutes earlier. This was an instruction by the Head of Government.

'For a start, sir, you can get the gentleman taking the notes over i here by the door to take his last page out of the book, take it over to the fire and burn it. You can also remind everyone in the room of the small print of the Official Secrets Act. Thank you.'

The General got up, flushed high in his cheeks, and, followed hurriedly by the Chief Constable, who was sharing his RAF plane back to Belfast, left the room.

The Prime Minister waited for the door to close, and the angry footsteps to hasten down the corridor.

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'They're free enough with advice when they want us to play round with political initiatives, but the moment we come up with a suggestion ... That's the way it's always been. I've had four generals in my time at Downing Street telling me it's all about over, that the Provisionals are beaten, that they're finished. They reel off the statistics. How many sticks of gelignite they've found, how many rifles, how many houses have been searched, how the back of the opposition is broken. I've heard it too often‐‐too often to be satisfied with it.'

His eyes ranged up the shining mahogany table, along the line of embarrassed faces till they locked on to the Minister of Defence.

'Your people have the wherewithal for this sort of thing. Get it set up please, and controlled from this end. If our friend the General doesn't like it, then he won't have to worry himself.'

That afternoon in an upper room above a newsagent's shop near the main square in Clones, just over the border in County Monaghan, half of the twelve‐man Army Council of the Provisional IRA met to consider the operation mounted two days earlier in London. Initially there was some anger that the killing had not been discussed by all members in committee, as was normal. But the Chief of Staff, a distant, intense man with deep eyes and a reputation for success in pulling the movement together, glossed over the troubles. He emphasized that now the shooting had taken place, the priority in the movement was to keep the man safe.

Unknowingly he echoed the British Prime Minister five hundred miles away in Whitehall when he said, "Every day we keep the man free is a victory. Right? They wanted to pull two battalions out next month; how can they when they can't find one man? We have to keep him moving and keep him close. He's a good man, he won't give himself away. But at all costs we have to keep their hands off him. He's better dead than in Long Kesh.'

It was getting dark when the RAF Comet took off from Temple hof airport, Berlin, with its three passengers. Half‐way back and sitting in an aisle seat Harry still felt bewildered. Two hours earlier he had been called to the Brigade commander's office at HQ under the shadow of the old Nazi Olympic stadium, and instructed he was going to London on urgent military business. He was told he wouldn't need to go home to get his bag, that was being done, and no, it would not be suitable for him to phone home at this moment, but it would be explained to his wife that he had been called away in a hurry.