The Heirs of Owain Glyndwr (9 page)

17

Friday 4 April 1969

Seán raised his glass
as a toast.

‘So, welcome to West Belfast, gentlemen,' he said. ‘Make yourselves comfortable. We want you to feel at home. We are going to chat for a while before we talk business. I think that's the accepted way of discourse in civilised societies, isn't it? Certainly in Ireland, and Klaus, I know that's true where you come from also.'

‘We are a very polite people in Germany,' Klaus said. He was a tall, thin man wearing a black and white checked shirt and blue jeans. He wore thick black-framed glasses and his long black hair was swept back. He fidgeted constantly, twirling a lock of his hair between his fingers.

‘Klaus knows the likes of Mr Baader and Miss Meinhof, you see,' Seán continued, ‘so he has clearly mixed in the best of circles. We are among friends here, so there's no reason to be nervous about us, no reason not to say whatever you wish. Nothing gets back to the Royal Ulster Constabulary from the Ring of Kerry, I assure you. But we do like to know who we are dealing with before we go into too much detail. You were very hospitable towards us when we were with you in Wales, Caradog, and I appreciate that very much. But you've brought two friends with you now.'

The Ring of Kerry was a dingy pub in a side-street off the Falls Road. Miniature Republican flags decorated the bar. Hanging proudly on the walls were photographs of St Patrick's Day parades of years gone by and, in pride of place, behind the bar, a photograph of the landlord as a younger man shaking hands with Éamon de Valera outside Leinster House in Dublin. At 8 o'clock in the evening, the bar was crowded and boisterous, the air thick with tobacco smoke. It already seemed an age since they had left Caernarfon to board the overnight ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. They had little more than two hours of snatched sleep before they disembarked into the fresh early morning air. There followed the almost 100-mile trip by road to Belfast in a left-hand drive Volkswagen Beetle which had seen better days, driven by a taciturn middle-aged man called Padraig, who had been sent by Seán. Although they negotiated the border and entered Northern Ireland without any apparent incident, they found themselves looking around anxiously when they entered the city. The route to their ultimate destination in West Belfast took them through unwelcoming, and sometimes overtly hostile areas, and did nothing to lift their spirits. The city was outwardly quiet, but there was an unmistakable tension and aggression in the air which was compounded by Padraig's relentless silence. By the time they were seated in the Ring of Kerry waiting for Seán to appear, their nerves were frayed. They were questioning the wisdom of the trip, but they knew it was too late for that.

‘I feel I know you already, Caradog,' Seán was saying. ‘And you know what I like? The idea of a man employed by the Inspector of Ancient Monuments taking a swipe at an ancient monument. I like that a great deal. Are you sure you've no Irish blood in you, Caradog? Because there's something very Irish about that. I think James Joyce himself would have approved of that, I really do. Don't you, Klaus?'

Klaus was sitting on a stool nursing a beer, and gave no sign of having heard.

‘Well, Klaus wouldn't know about that,' Seán laughed. ‘I don't know whether they read James Joyce in Germany, especially if they have to do it in English. On the other hand, God help anyone who has to translate him into German, or any other language for that matter. So, what about your friends, Caradog? Dafydd, isn't it? What account do you give of yourself?'

‘They call me Dai,' Dai Bach answered uncertainly. ‘It's a short form of my name in Welsh.'

‘Is it indeed?' Seán said. ‘I'm not sure that's such a good name for someone who wants to make bombs. Dai? Sounds just the same as “die” – D.I.E. – doesn't it? Just a tiny bit pessimistic, to my way of thinking. But only if you are speaking English, of course, and you would be speaking Welsh. So, I understand, and if you are known as Dai in Wales, you shall be known as Dai in Ireland. You're a teacher of chemistry, then?'

‘Yes.'

‘And a philosopher like Caradog?'

‘Not like Caradog, no.'

‘No, well, Caradog is a thinker, you can tell that about him. He can tell you every reason a Welsh man ever had to hate the English since the dawn of time, and every reason of logic why you are justified in doing whatever you have to do to drive them out, and when he puts all of this together, it becomes a storm in your mind of hurricane force that you can't resist; you just have to lie down and let it roll over you. We have such thinkers in Ireland too, and God bless them, because someone has to remind us why we do the things we do. But I don't think that's how you got there, Dai. What makes you so anxious to harm the Queen?'

‘I haven't said anything about our intentions,' Caradog said.

Seán laughed.

‘Quite true, you haven't. Well, then, we will just have to try to guess, won't we? So, let me review the situation. The Queen is going to create her son Prince of Wales in July, and here you boys are in Belfast in April not liking that idea one little bit and asking for our help in making a bomb. So, let me see. What could you possibly have in mind? Come on now, Caradog, give me some credit, please. I've done one or two laps of the circuit in my time, so please don't insult my intelligence. We were getting on so well. Don't be spoiling it, now.'

Dai Bach looked at Caradog, who nodded.

‘I apologise. I didn't mean to insult your intelligence. I was just being careful.'

Seán nodded. ‘Very well, then. Dai, what have you to say for yourself?'

‘They have raped our country,' Dai Bach replied, ‘and they have taken everything they want from us for hundreds of years. No, I can't give you a lecture like Caradog, but I feel it just as much. You have Oliver Cromwell to remember England by, don't you? I don't need anybody to tell me why we have to stand up against people like that. We've had the same kind of people in Wales, I assure you. Many of them, over the centuries, and even today it goes on. They won't stop – not until they have killed our language, wiped out every last trace of our culture, and stolen as much as they can from us.'

Seán looked at him thoughtfully.

‘Aye, we have had Oliver Cromwell and many others since. That's true enough, Dai. And you have had the same. And you want to do something about it. As do we. As would anyone who gave a damn about his nation.'

Seán turned towards Trevor.

‘And Trevor, what account do you give of yourself?'

‘I keep a book shop,' he replied.

‘Do you, now?'

For the first time, Klaus seemed to spring to life. He sat up, drained his beer, and slammed his glass down on the table. He suddenly laughed out loud.

‘My God, he is the most dangerous of all these Welsh men,' he said. ‘Anyone can make a bomb and blow a few people up. But with a book shop you can destroy whole civilisations.'

Seán stared at Klaus for several seconds. He then started to laugh also, and eventually the laughter spread to everyone.

‘Conor,' he shouted, in the direction of the barman. ‘Set up another round for us, there's a good fellow. These mad Welsh men are in town. Anything can happen. It calls for a drink.'

‘Klaus will take Dai into a room in the private area of the house,' Seán said. They had moved to a table away from the main throng in the bar, and were quieter now. ‘He is the real expert here. I'm telling you, these Baader-Meinhof boys – and girls too – are far more advanced than we are. We ask their advice ourselves, I don't mind telling you. He will show you what you need to know.'

He leaned across the table towards Dai Bach.

‘Make notes if you want, but make sure it's nothing that could be understood if you were to get yourself arrested on the way home. Nothing in writing leaves here unless Klaus and I both approve it. So listen to him very carefully and commit as much as you can to memory. Not that you're going to get arrested, of course. But we have to guard against every contingency, don't we? We are giving you some high-grade information here, state of the art, you might say.'

‘What about us?' Trevor asked.

‘You and Caradog can have another drink and keep me company,' Seán replied. ‘You can tell me all about your book shop.'

‘Have you boys thought through all the consequences of what you are doing?' Seán asked, when Klaus and Dai Bach had returned, over an hour later. ‘I mean, do you understand the forces you are calling down on your heads with this?'

‘We know there will be a big reaction, regardless of how far we are successful,' Caradog replied quietly.

‘A big reaction? Well, that's one way of putting it, I suppose, if you like under-statement. Caradog, if you harm one hair of Her Majesty's head or one hair of Prince Charles's head, they will pursue you to the ends of the earth and they will not rest until they have destroyed you; do you understand that?'

Caradog nodded.

‘They will spend any amount of money, employ whatever resources are needed, to hunt you down. Even if you don't harm them, the attempt itself will be enough. They will make sure there is no place for you to hide.'

‘We are aware of the consequences,' Trevor said.

‘Are you, now? Well, I'm glad to hear that. You see, Trevor, the reason I'm bringing this up is that I don't want myself or my friend Klaus being dragged into it. I don't want our names being bandied about, if you take my meaning. I have to think about the people I represent, you see, and things are getting hot enough for us in Belfast as it is. We already have enough of a British presence to worry about in our fair city, thank you, what with our Loyalist friends over in the Shankill Road and the RUC backing them up. We don't want you bringing them down on our heads in even greater numbers. So I strongly advise that you have your escape plan set in stone before you make your move.'

‘I understand,' Trevor said. ‘You're telling us not to come to you if things go wrong.'

‘I'm saying, don't come to Belfast,' Seán replied. ‘I'm not casting you adrift altogether. You are comrades in arms, after all, and I have to admire your spirit in taking on the target you are aiming at without any prior experience. I think I speak for Klaus and myself in saying that we are in awe of your ambition.'

He took a small folded piece of paper from his pocket.

‘If you choose to come in the direction of Ireland, which would be a natural enough choice from Caernarfon, go to Cork and find the pub named on this piece of paper. You will have to memorise it. I'm not giving you anything in writing. There are people there who will be on the lookout and will try to steer you safely to the Continent. You won't be able to stay in Ireland. It will be too hot for you here. But these gentlemen have some experience of helping folks on their way safely. You must understand that getting into Ireland in the first place will be the real challenge. You had better build yourselves a good legend.'

After they had left, Seán and Klaus sat quietly together in the bar.

‘So, did our friend Dai learn something?' Seán asked.

‘Yes. But whether he will blow up the Queen or only himself cannot be predicted. The chances are about even.'

Seán laughed. ‘Ah, so he is an own goal waiting to be scored, is he? Well, you can't blame yourself for that, Klaus. There is only so much any of us can do.'

They were silent for some time.

‘What did you make of our book seller?'

‘He is a serious man,' Klaus replied at once. ‘The most serious of them. The stakes are higher for him for some reason, I think.'

18

28 June 1969

Caradog lifted the duffle
bag gingerly from the trestle table and tried to sling it over his left shoulder. It still felt too heavy for him. It fell back on to the table, and all three men in the garage jumped involuntarily.

‘Damn it!' Caradog said. ‘Why can't you help me? I'm going to set the damn thing off.'

‘No you won't,' Dai Bach replied patiently.

They had been attempting the manoeuvre for some time, and Caradog was showing signs of frayed nerves. From his first night at work as a watchman at the Castle, Caradog had made the large duffle bag part of his legend. As he arrived for work each night with the bag slung jauntily over his shoulder, its vivid design – red, yellow and black shapes on a grey background – became familiar to those on duty, and after three or four nights it became routine, nothing to be questioned or examined. It was an effective way of taking items into the Castle. But the device Dai Bach was building posed a problem.

The device would fit snugly inside the large bag with careful placement, but for stability it was housed in a heavy steel carrying case. Its weight made it difficult to lift on to the shoulder and hold there for any length of time. Caradog had begun with light items, sandwiches and magazines. Gradually, he had started practising with books, and most recently with five heavy tomes supplied by Trevor from the
Tywysog
. But the practice had not prepared him for the reality of the device. It was now ready, and the Investiture was only two days away. Two days later he would have to walk from the far end of the
Maes
to the Castle, and then to the site he had chosen to plant the device, all without giving anyone reason to suspect him. He had to master the bag, with its increased weight, and so far he was not succeeding.

‘It's dynamite. I can't just throw it around.'

‘I've told you, man. It's not armed. There is no way you will make the connection by accident, and you're not going to make this stuff detonate by dropping it on the table. It's stable and it's in good condition, and it's in its carrying case, so it's not going to be flopping around. You just need to concentrate on getting it up on your shoulder.'

‘You jumped just as much as I did, the pair of you, when I dropped it,' Caradog said.

Dai Bach smiled. ‘Aye. Well, let's not pretend we're not nervous. It's hard not to react when you see it come down. It is safe, though.'

‘It doesn't
feel
safe.'

‘Couldn't he just carry it like a shopping bag?' Trevor suggested.

‘No. It's too heavy for that. He would be changing hands every few seconds, and with the distance he's got to cover, it would be far too obvious. Besides, he goes in every night with it over his shoulder. That's what they're expecting. He must look the same as he always does.'

‘It's too heavy to be over my shoulder,' Caradog protested. ‘Even when I get it up there it's almost pulling me over backwards. Besides, I don't think the bag will take the weight. It's going to fall out and smash all over the floor at the entrance to the Castle.'

‘No, it's not,' Dai Bach replied. ‘I've strengthened the bag. Look here, now. All the straps have stitched-in supports. It's not going to come apart that quickly. It's not much heavier than it was with those books you've been practising with.'

‘It feels much heavier. It weighs a ton.'

‘You should have played in the scrum for a couple of years.'

‘Well, I didn't, and it feels as though I'm going to drop it.'

‘That's because you're scared of dropping it. You need to throw it around a little more, get used to it, get some confidence in it. Throw it like you did when it had the books in it. Come on. Let's try it again.'

Caradog tried it again, with the same result. The bag fell back on to the table with a bang.

‘Look,' Trevor said, ‘why can't you help him, Dai? You are both going to be there for the handover.'

‘I can help him at the handover, but not if he needs to re-adjust it on the way. The bag could start to slip off his shoulder at any moment. He's got to be ready to put it back in place. Let's try again.'

This time, Caradog threw the bag over his shoulder so violently that it almost spun him round, and he had to fight to keep his balance. Trevor reached out both hands to steady him. Dai Bach applauded.

‘There you go, boyo. How does it feel now?'

‘As if it's going to yank my shoulder out of its socket.'

‘It won't. Try raising your shoulder a bit, to support the strap, like.'

Caradog took a few tentative steps.

‘How do I look?' he asked.

‘Like a night watchman carrying a bomb,' Dai Bach replied.