Harry's Game (7 page)

31

Davidson paused in his stride, jolting Harry's attention. Ha fidgeted and shifted in the chair. He hated the pep talks. This ( was damn near a carbon copy of the one he'd had in Aden, though then the PM's name had been left out, and they were quoting secret instructions from GOC

Land Forces Mid East.

Davidson suggested coffee. The work would start after the breakfast

The Prime Minister had been hearing a report on the latest spei to a Bulawayo farming conference of the rebel Prime Minister‐‐

'illegal counterpart', as he liked to call him. He scanned the pages quickly and deftly, assimilating the nuances the Rhodesian's speech writers had written in for the reader on the other side of the world. It was a static situation, he decided, not one for a further initiative at this stage. When his secretary had left him he turned back to his desk from the window and dialled an unlisted number at the Ministry of Defence.

The conversation was short and obviously to the point. It lasted about twenty‐five seconds.

The Prime Minister put his opening question, listened, and rang off after saying, "No ... no ... I don't want to know any more ... only that it's happening. Thank you, you'll keep me informed, thank you.'

Off the Broadway, half‐way up the Falls, the man and his minder locked the doors of the stolen and resprayed Cortina and moved through the protective cordon of white‐painted petrol drums to the door of the pub. The minder had been there from the morning, not knowing and not asking who was the man he had been set to protect. With the job went the PPK Walther that pulled down his coat pocket. The gun was a prize symbol of the old success days of the local IRA company‐‐taken from the body of a Special Branch constable ambushed as he cruised late at night in the Springfield Road. It was now prized, partly for its fire power, partly for its value as a trophy.

The man led the way into the pub. It was the first time he had walked the streets of the city since his return, and after two days on the move from house to house and not a straight night's sleep at any of them he showed the signs of a life on the run. The Army Council had anticipated this and had decided that for his own safety the man should as soon as possible be reintroduced to his old haunts, as the longer he were away the more likely it was that his name could become associated with the shooting in London.

The pub boasted a single bar, dark, shabby and with a pall of smoke hanging between shoulder height and the low ceiling, A sparse covering of worn lino was on the floor, pocked with cigarette burns. As always most eyes were facing the door, and conversation died as the man 32

walked in and went towards the snug, away to the left of the serving area. The minder gripped him by the arm, and mouthed quickly in his ear.

'They said in the middle of the bar. Show yourself. That's what i hey told me.'

The man nodded his head, turned to the bar and ordered his drinks. He was known only slightly here, but the man with him was local, and that was the passport to acceptance. The man felt the tension easing out of him, as the conversation again spread through the bar.

Later he was asked by one old man how come he'd not been in. He replied loudly, and with the warm beer moving through him, that his Mam in Cork had been unwell. He'd been to see her, she was better now and he was back. His Mam was better known in these streets than he was, and it was remembered by a few that she'd married a railwayman in Cork three years after her first husband died, and moved away to the South from Belfast. Lucky I was too, she'd say. The railwayman himself had died now, but she had stayed south. The man's explanation was more than adequate. There was mutterings of sympathy, and the subject closed.

His main worry had been the photokit picture. He had seen it reproduced on the front page of the Belfast Newsletter on his second day back and read of the efforts to track him down. He'd seen pictures of the troops sealing streets off, looking for him, and looked at quarter‐page advertisements taken by the Northern Ireland office urging people to tell all they knew about the killing to the police via the Confidential phone. There were reports that a huge reward was to be offered for his capture, but if any of the men in the bar linked him with the picture there was no sign of it. The man had decided himself that the picture was not that similar to his features, too pinched in the face, the word the woman had used, with the hair parting too accentuated.

He was on his third pint when the patrol came into the pub.

Eight soldiers crowding into the small area, ordered everyone to stay still and keep their hands out of their pockets. With the shouting from the troops and the general noise of their entry, no one noticed the minder leaning against the bar slide his gun down towards the washing‐up bowl. Nor did they see the publican, ostensibly drying his hands before displaying them to the troops, put his cloth over the dark gun‐metal. With his final action he flicked cloth and gun on to the floor and kicked them hard towards the kitchen door. The design of the building prevented any of the soldiers seeing the young girl's hand that reached round the door in answer to her father's short whistle, gather up the gun, and run with it to the coal shed. The men in the bar were lined against the side wall by the empty fireplace and searched. The man's search was no more, no less

thorough than that of the other men. They searched the minder very thoroughly, perhaps because he was sweating, a veil of moisture across his forehead, as he waited for their decision 33

on him, not knowing what had happened to the gun that bore his palm prints and could earn him five years plus in the Crumlin Road.

Then, as suddenly as the soldiers had come they were out, barging their way past the tables, running into the street, and back to their regular routine of patrolling. There was noise again in the bar. The publican pushed the washing‐up cloth, now filthy with coal smuts, across the wooden bar to the minder. The man felt noisy. He'd come through the first big test.

At the big house in Surrey the team round Harry had worked him hard the first day. They'd started by discussing what cover he would want, and rejected the alternatives in favour of a merchant seaman home after five years, but with his parents dead some years back.

'It's too small a place for us to give you a completely safe identity you could rely on. It would mean we'd have to bring other people in who would swear by you. It gets too big that way. We start taking a risk, unnecessarily.'

Davidson was adamant that the only identity Harry would have would be the one he carried round on his back. If anyone started looking into his story really deeply then there was no way in which he could survive, strong background story or not.

Harry himself supplied most of what they needed. He'd been born a Catholic in one of the little terraces off Obin Street in Portadown. The houses had been pulled down some years ago, and replaced by anonymous blocks of flats and small houses, now daubed with the slogans of revolution. With the destruction of the old buildings inevitably the people had become dispersed.

Portadown, the Orangeman's town with the ghetto round the long sloping passage of Obin Street, still had its vivid teenage memories for Harry. He'd spent his childhood there from the age of five, after his parents had been killed in a car crash. They'd been driving back to Portadown when a local businessman late home on his way back from Armagh had cut across

them and sent his father into a ditch and telegraph pole. Harry had stayed with an aunt for twelve years in the Catholic street before joining the army. But his childhood in the town gave him adequate knowledge‐‐enough, Davidson decided, for his cover.

For four hours after lunch they quizzed him on his knowledge of

the intricacies of Irish affairs, sharpened him on the names of the new political figures. The major terrorist acts since the summer of 1969 were neatly catalogued on three closely typed sheets. They briefed him particularly on the grievances of the minority.

'You'll want to know what they're beefing about. You know this, they're walking encylopedias on every shot we fired at them. There's going to be a lot more, but this is the refresher,'

34

Davidson was warming to it now, enjoying these initial stages of the preparation, the thoroughness of which would be the deciding factor whether their agent survived. Davidson had been through this before. Never with Ulster as the target, but in Aden before Harry's duty there, and Cyprus, and once when a Czech refugee was sent into his former homeland. That last time they heard nothing, till the man's execution was reported by the Czech news agency half an hour after a stony protest note was delivered to the British Ambassador in Prague.

Post‐war Albania had involved him too. Now it was a new operation, breeding the same compulsion as the first cigarette of the day to an inveterate smoker.

Harry had come up to the table. The papers were spread out in front of him, ringers reaching and pointing at the different essentials for him to take in.

Later he was to take many of them to his room, ask for some sandwiches and coffee and, sprawled in front of the gas fire, read them into the small hours till they were second nature.

On his own for the first time in the day he too was able to assess the importance of the preparation he was undergoing, and alone in the room he allowed himself to think of the hazards of the operation in which he was now involved.

It was past two in the morning when he undressed and climbed into bed, the papers still strewn on the rug in front of the fire.

FOUR

Over the next fortnight the street scene in Belfast returned to its pre Danby level of violence. It was widely recognized that in the wake of the killing the level of army activity had risen sharply, initially in the use of major cordon and search operations, merging into an increase in the number of spot raids on the homes of known republicans on the run. The army activity meant more men were charged with offences, but alongside their appearances in court was an upsurge in street rioting, something that had previously been almost eradicated. The army's posture was sharply criticised by the minority politicians, who accused the troops of venting on innocent Catholic householders their frustrations at not being able to find Danby's murderer.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland agreed to appear on the local Independent TV

station and the regional BBC news programme to answer the allegations of Protestant papers that not enough was being done‐‐that a British Cabinet Minister had been shot down in cold blood in front of his wife and children yet his killers were allowed to go free for fear of offending Catholic opinion.

Before appearing on television the Secretary of State called a meeting of his security chiefs, and heard both Frank Scott and General Fairbairn urge caution and patience. The General in particular was concerned lest a show of strength spread over several weeks undo the gradual return to something like normality. The three men were soon to leave for their various 35

destinations‐‐the politician for the studio, the General for Lisburn and the Chief Constable for his modern police headquarters‐‐but first they walked on the lawn outside the Stormont residence of the Secretary of State. Away from the listening ears of secretaries, aides and bodyguards the General reported that his intelligence section had heard nothing of the killer in Belfast and there was some concern about whether the man they sought was even in the city.

The Chief Constable added to the politician's cross in reporting that his men too had been unable to uncover any hard information on the man. But the head of his

Special Branch favoured the belief that the killer was in the city, and probably back in circulation. The Chief Superintendent in charge of picked detectives had a fair insight into the workings of his enemies' minds, and had correctly read the desire of the Provisional IRA Army Council to get their man back into the main stream. For three minutes they talked in the centre of the lawn. The conversation ended when the Secretary of State quietly, and more than a little hesitantly, asked the General,

'Jocelyn, no news I suppose on what the PM was talking about?' 'None, nor will there be.'

The General made his way back to his car, turned and shouted a brusque farewell.

As the military convoy pulled away, the politician turned to the

policeman, "We have to have this bastard soon. The political scene

won't hold up long otherwise. And there's a lot of restiveness among

the Loyalists. We need him quick, Frank, if the sectarianism isn't to

start up again. There's not much time ...'

He walked quickly now to his big maroon Rover with its reinforced sides and extra thick windows, with machine guns, field dressings and gas masks alongside his official cases in the boot. He nodded to his driver, and then winced as the detective sitting in front of him loaded the clip of bullets into the butt of the 9 mm Browning.

The car swung out into the open road for the drive into the city, with his escort close behind to prevent any other car clipping between them. "What a bloody carry‐on," the politician observed as they swept through the traffic towards the television studios. The interview of the Secretary of State was embargoed until 18.01

hours; its full text was issued by the

Northern Ireland press office to

Belfast newspapers. In essence the BBC and ITV transmissionswere the same, and the