The Watchman (39 page)

"When I got there he told me that Proinsas had got drunk, turned himself over to one of the nut ting squads and confessed he was touting for the FRU. In theory PIRA's always run an amnesty system for touts spill your guts and you're off the hook but in practice it's more likely to be a debriefing followed by two to the head. In this case, untypically, the nut ting squad was bright enough to consult Byrne and he told them to hang on to Deavey he'd debrief the man himself.

Which he did and then set up Proinsas to feed disinformation back to the FRU.

"Now at this stage you have to remember what's going on politically. The Crown forces don't know it yet, but the cease fire is at an end. Southern Command's England Wing is about to detonate the Canary Wharf bomb and Padraig Byrne -a very ambitious man, remember, keen to move from the Army Council to the Executive sees a chance for a spectacular of his own. He's going to take out a pair of FRU agents.

"He tells me this. He tells me something else. I'm a junior member of PIRA GHQ staff by then a sort of assistant to the Quartermaster General. There's been a major technical updating and I've had to play a big part in that training operators and so on.

"Byrne wants me to kill the FRU guys. In person, in public, in front of a big volunteer crowd. The ultimate commitment, the ultimate statement of loyalty. Do that, he says, and you're on the Army Council, guaranteed. You can forget all that paper chasing at GHQ you'll have proved yourself heart and soul. So of course I say yes what the fuck else can I say and ask for details. And he fills me in. Tells me exactly what's going to happen.

"So the next day I work late at Ed's. File an encrypted report to London on a client's machine, wipe the hard disk people are wising up to the insecurity of email by then and hope to God that the FRU people are pulled out in time. I ask to be pulled out too: the finger's going to be pointed straight at me if these guys are miraculously whipped off the streets just days before they're due to be whacked.

Byrne, like I said, is a very sharp, very switched-on operator.

"The next day I got a call from the rep of a company called Intex, saying they'd ceased production of the software I'd enquired about. Intex was Five, of course, and the call meant that my message had been received and I was to sit tight."

Alex stared at him.

"Let me get this right. Are you saying that Five knew that Ray Bledsoe and Connor Wheen were due to be picked up, tortured and murdered, and did nothing?"

"Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. A bunch of us were driven down to a farmhouse on the border that the nut ting squad often used for interrogations and executions a horrible bloody place, stinking of death. The boyos, needless to say, were pissing themselves with excitement at the chance of seeing a pair of Brit agents chopped at close range. The hours passed and I tell you I have never prayed like I prayed then: that London would pull those boys out in time.

"They didn't, of course, and Bledsoe and Wheen were brought down to the border that evening. I had drawn a Browning and a couple of clips from the QM, so that I could at least make it fast, but in the event I wasn't even able to do that."

Meehan fell silent. His eyes were as cold and blank as pack ice.

"They had a generator there and one of those heavy-duty compressed-air staple guns .. . Do you have any idea what happens when you fire one of those things into someone s eye?"

Alex opened his mouth to speak, but found that he could say nothing.

"As the eye explodes and it goes fuckin' everywhere the staple blasts its way out through the roof of the mouth. The guy's kicking, meanwhile, and pissing himself, and generally going berserk, but the thing he can't do is make any sound, because his blood and his sinuses are pouring out of his nose and mouth. The pain has to be beyond anything you can imagine..."

"You did that?" whispered Alex disbelievingly.

"No, thank God, some other volunteer did it to Wheen. But the point is not who did it, the point is that Five, knowing what Byrne and his nut ting squads do, allowed it to happen. They had the information and they deliberately failed to act on it.

"So what happened next?"

"Byrne figured that Wheen was the tough guy and Bledsoe -if he scared him enough was going to do the talking. Well, he scared him all right. The guy was out of his head with sheer terror. But just to make sure, Byrne had the volunteer do Wheen's other eye. And then just to make the point that it was Bledsoe who was going to do the talking he cut Wheen 's tongue out. Have you ever heard a man trying to scream when his tongue's been cut out?"

Alex shook his head.

"It sounds like percolating coffee. Anyway, I stood there, my brain fuckin' turning itself inside out at this sight terror, horror, disbelief, whatever the fuck and telling myself one thing: smile, or go the same way yourself And everyone else was smiling, but I tell you they were all pretty quiet at that point."

Alex nodded.

"So then Byrne told me to do Wheen once and for all so I pulled out the Browning ready to give him one. And Byrne says no. Hands me, of all things, a fuckin' lump-hammer and a six-inch nail ..

"And you did him with that?"

"It made this kind of .. . pl inking sound," said Meehan reflectively.

"The guy died immediately."

"And Bledsoe?"

"Bledsoe coughed. Told them everything. Every last thing he knew. It took hours almost light by the time he was finished."

"And?"

Meehan nodded expressionlessly.

"Yeah, I did him too. Same way. And as I did so I promised myself that the people responsible would know the pain and the terror that these brave men had known. Whatever it took whatever it fucking took -I would make them understand."

"Surely the people responsible were Padraig Byrne and his Provos," suggested Alex quietly.

"Those people were evil," said Meehan, 'but they knew they were evil. They looked evil in the eye, they embraced evil and they knew themselves for what they were. Fenwick and her people, though, were evil at a distance. They never saw the floor of that PIRA abattoir running with blood and shit, never had to look at brave men like Wheen and Bledsoe dying in indescribable terror and agony and tell themselves: yeah, I did that .

"Wise monkeys," murmured Alex.

"For every action, there's a reaction," said Meehan.

"My father taught me that. The universe demands balance. For as long as the lives that I had taken were unavenged, there would be no balance."

Alex stared at Meehan. Was this insanity? he wondered. Or was it logic? Or both?

"Within the week I had been promoted to the IRA's Army Council and Padraig Byrne to the Executive. I continued to file reports to London, but I no longer had the slightest confidence they would be acted upon. I warned them of two bombs:

one in a Shankhill pub, one in a Ballysillan supermarket. Both were made by men I had trained, both were set by Bronagh Quinn. Five dead, in total, and over twenty injured. Women and children mostly, in the supermarket. One little girl was blinded when the lenses of her glasses were blown backwards into her eyes.

"There are seven people on the Provisional IRA's Army Council. At the first meeting I attended I looked round the other six faces and I realised that I had done at least as much for the movement as any of them. I had dicked, trailed, scouted, bugged, planned, organised, designed, strategised and taught. I had brought the movement's bomb-making skills into line with the best in the world. And finally, with my bare hands, I had killed. By ignoring every warning I ever sent, Fenwick and her people had made me part of the thing I had dedicated my life to destroying. Can you imagine can you imagine what that feels like?"

Alex said nothing. Didn't move. Carried on the buffeting wind distant at first and then louder was the pulse of an approaching helicopter. If Meehan heard it he ignored it.

"At that first meeting a former OC of the Armagh and Fermanagh Brigade got up. Nasty bastard, name of Halloran."

"Dermot Halloran," said Alex.

"The same," confirmed Meehan.

"And he didn't fuck about.

He told us, "Boys .. . We have a problem. We have a mole."

There had been indications for some time, he said, that information concerning upcoming operations was reaching the Crown. Top-level information, not foot-soldier stuff. In recent days, he said, these suspicions had become cast-iron. MI-5 had an agent in place an agent whose minimum possible level of seniority was membership of the GHQ staff. That put every man in the room squarely in the frame. The Executive had men on the case, he went on. It was a process of elimination, and until that process had run its course it had been decided that all operations and meetings should be suspended."

The rhythmic beat of the helicopter's engine and the slash of its rotors was very close now, filling their ears. The sound seemed to hold its volume for a moment, then died away. Again, Meehan showed no sign of having heard it.

"Presumably," said Alex, 'they wanted to see who cut and ran."

"That was my calculation. If they'd been sure they were going to identify the mole they would have just let the wheels turn. Said nothing."

"So what did you do?"

"I drove back to the city and went home. There was a nut ting squad waiting for me and I knew then that Five had sold me out. Well, I'll spare you the details but there was a fuck of a battle. I dropped a couple of them, dived through a window and drove like fuck for Aldersgrove."

"The airport?"

"Yeah. I was on a flight to the mainland within the hour. From that point I was totally on my own. The next morning I cleared the account MI-5 had been paying money into all those years and set about establishing a new identity."

"Did you contact MI-5?"

"Are you joking .. . If I'd contacted them they'd have dropped my co-ordinates to PIRA. Within the week of my leaving Belfast every Provy stiffer in the Command was on my tail as it was. No, Five didn't want me alive and compromised -my story would bury them."

"But why do you think they ignored all those warnings and let Wheen and Bledsoe and the rest of them die?"

"I thought for a long time that they simply couldn't risk me. That if they'd started acting on my warnings they'd have had to pull me out, whereas as things stood I was their man inside the IRA, the justification for their budget, their meal ticket from the Treasury. That was what I thought at first."

"Go on."

"And then finally I figured it out. There had to be another British mole. An agent who had been in place not for years but for decades. A man I'd been set up to take the fall for."

He fell silent for a moment.

"It was something Barry Fenn had said years earlier about there being suspicion in the senior ranks of PIRA that a British agent was defusing the bombs the organisation was making. At the time, all that I heard were the words that applied to me i.e. "suspicion", "PIRA" and "British agent". I didn't stop to ask myself the vital question: how the fuck did Barry Penn know what the senior ranks of PIRA were thinking? I didn't know, so how did he?

"They had someone all along. One of the very top men, is my guess. And in case such a man ever came under the faintest suspicion of providing information to the Crown forces, it would be necessary to have a decoy set up. Another agent who could be exposed, proved to be the real source and fed to the wolves."

Alex shook his head and sank back against the granite.

"Enter the Watchman," he murmured.

"Congratulations!" said Dawn Harding.

"I do believe you've got there at last."

She was standing above and to one side of them, and her Walther PPK was levelled straight between Alex's eyes.

TWENTY-NINE.

She had brought back-up with her, a blank-faced man in a flying jacket carrying an MP5 Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun.

Had the two of them found Meehan dead, Alex knew, there would have been no problem. Anything that Meehan might have told Alex would have been cancelled out by the fact that Alex had killed him the SAS officer could hardly broadcast a story that culminated with a murder committed by himself.

But with Meehan alive and Alex in possession of the facts about Watchmen even just the basic facts the position was hopeless. A glance at Dawn and the icy flatness of those sea-grey eyes told him that she was prepared to watch him die rather than risk him telling the story. Their one-night stand, and that is all it had been, after all, counted for nothing less than nothing.

You stupid.

She and her back-up man would kill the pair of them, and place their disposal in the hands of a cleaner team. One thing was certain: neither body would ever be found.

Having said that, he was still holding the Glock. Still had Meehan's Browning in his pocket.

"Why isn't this animal dead?" Dawn asked, glancing scornfully at Meehan.

"I wouldn't worry yourself," said Alex coldly.

"I don't think he's going to grow much older."

She shook her head sorrowfully.

"You idiot," she spat.

"You arrogant fucking idiot, Alex! Why didn't you do as you were asked? Can't you see what you're forcing me to .

She continued, but Alex was no longer listening. He was holding his Glock in his right hand; with his left, which was concealed beneath his smock, he was trying to inch Meehan's Browning from his waistband. His only chance of escaping what would effectively be an execution was to trust Meehan. The man was two parts insane to one part brilliant soldier, that much was obvious, but... The Browning was clear of the waistband, now, and heavy in his hand. With infinite slowness he lowered it to the ground beneath his smock.

"And this man,~ Alex asked Dawn, indicating the expressionless figure of Meehan.

"Can you begin to imagine what your people have forced him to do? To torture and kill British agents? To stand back and watch as bombs that he has designed cut women and children to pieces?"

Alex's question was designed to allow him to turn to the former agent.

Catching the other man's eyes, he glanced downwards once, saw from the swift flicker of response that Meehan had understood him, felt the first unmistakable rush of adrenalin.