The Chinaman

by Stephen Leather

  Hennessy leant forward and placed his hands flat on the highly polished table. ‘I’m all too well aware that there are hotheads within the movement who would prefer to see us blowing up police stations in London, but they must learn to understand that there is a time for violence and a time for negotiation,’ he said.

  Sewell grinned. ‘And if they don’t agree?’

  ‘Then, Patrick, you are free to blow their fucking kneecaps off, sure enough.’

  Hennessy grinned and so did Sewell and the group burst into deep-throated laughter. The two men were best of friends and they went back a long way. A hell of a long way. They both had a powdery dry sense of humour and took great pleasure in winding each other up.

  Hennessy waited for the laughter to die away before continuing. ‘There is a second line of enquiry which we must pursue,’ he said. ‘Whoever is behind the bombing campaign appears to have a ready source of explosives and bomb-making equipment. I want every single stockpile of arms checked, both here and on the mainland. And I don’t mean that we just check that they are there, I mean every item must be verified. Verified and then re-hidden. It could be that they have access to more than one of our stockpiles and have taken a small amount from each place. You see what I mean? A few pounds of Semtex from here, a detonator there, a transmitter from somewhere else. Hoping that we wouldn’t notice.’

  A thin, angular man with tinted glasses and slicked-back greying hair caught Hennessy’s eye with a wave of his hand. His name was Hugh McGrath, and his main job within the organisation was to liaise with the Libyans, providers of much of the organisation’s money and equipment.

  ‘Liam, you can’t be serious. The whole point of these stockpiles is that they remain untouched until we need them. Disturbing them unnecessarily risks drawing attention to them,’ he said.

  Hennessy took his hands off the table and stood upright. He could understand his concern, McGrath had personally supervised the importation of much of the IRA’s ordnance and was all too well aware of what it had cost, in terms of hard cash and lives lost.

  ‘We’ll be careful, Hugh. We’ll be damned careful. But I think that a thorough examination of all our stockpiles will give us our best indication of who is behind the bombing campaign. I agree it’s a risk, but it is a calculated one. It’s a risk we must take, right enough.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said McGrath, but Hennessy could tell from his tone that he wasn’t convinced. He made a mental note to massage his ego after the meeting.

  ‘What I need from you all is a full list of all your ordnance stocks. And I mean every single one, authorised and non-authorised. I know that we all like to have a little something tucked away for a rainy day, but the list must be comprehensive. And alongside the contents of each stockpile I want the names of all the people who know its location.’

  There were a few heavy sighs from his audience.

  ‘A list like that will be a very dangerous thing, Liam. In the wrong hands it could be fatal,’ said Sewell.

  ‘I know that. There will be only one copy, and I will have it. I will arrange for the stockpiles to be checked, and I will arrange for different teams to do the checking. Only I will know all the locations. And the men I get to visit the stockpiles will not be told why. If all goes to plan I will eventually know which have been tampered with, and then by cross-referencing the names I should be able to identify the common links. Now, if you don’t object, I suggest we compile the list as best we can. Any omissions can be made good later, but only directly to me.’

  The men reached for their pens as Hennessy sat down again. He waited until the men had finished writing. It took several minutes until the last man replaced his ballpoint pen on the table. Hennessy asked for the written sheets to be passed to him and he placed them in a neat pile and then carefully folded it three ways and slipped the sheets into his inside pocket. He then asked them to tear off the top half dozen sheets from the pads and he gathered them together and screwed them up before dropping them into a wastepaper basket. He used a silver cigarette lighter to set the papers alight. He realised it looked a bit theatrical, but at least it proved that he was serious about secrecy.

  At the end of the room was a table covered with a starched white linen cloth, and on it were bottles of spirits and a selection of mixers, an ice bucket and a row of crystal glasses. Hennessy personally poured drinks for the men in the room, never once having to ask what they wanted. They stood in two groups, drinking and talking, mainly about horse-racing and football, there being an unwritten rule that business was discussed only at the table. Hennessy was the first to leave, shaking them all by the hand as he went.

  Outside the room he was joined by his two bodyguards, Jim Kavanagh and Christy Murphy, big-shouldered men with watchful eyes. Even here, on home territory, they were constantly alert. Kavanagh led the way, six paces ahead of Hennessy, while Murphy walked one pace behind, covering his back. Kavanagh pressed the button for the lift, checked it when it arrived, and then he and Murphy stood to one side to allow Hennessy in. They then stood together between the door and their boss. The three men moved smoothly as if their actions were well choreographed, and in a way they were because they had been together for more than a decade and had been through the actions many thousands of times. Murphy and Kavanagh knew without looking where Hennessy was and in which direction he was moving, where the danger points were and where they had to stand to get in between their boss and any attackers. Twice they had saved Hennessy’s life, and both bore their scars with pride – Murphy’s left shoulder was a mass of tangled scar tissue where a soft-nosed bullet had ripped away a chunk of flesh but thankfully had missed the bone, and Kavanagh’s legs still bore the burn marks of a badly placed car bomb that had exploded as he was about to pick up his boss.

  Hennessy’s car, a black Jaguar, was waiting outside the hotel with his regular driver, a small, intense man called Jimmy McMahon, at the wheel. Hennessy stood patiently while his bodyguards checked the pavements and then the three men quickly moved to the car.

  They drove through the Belfast traffic, and McMahon’s skilful touch on the wheel had them back at Hennessy’s office in Donegall Square within five minutes. Only when Hennessy was safely behind his desk did Murphy and Kavanagh relax. They sat on two large, green sofas in the legal firm’s reception area until they were needed again. Hennessy’s secretary, a buxom redhead, put cups of coffee down in front of them before knocking twice on Hennessy’s door and entering before he had the chance to respond. Like Murphy and Kavanagh, she knew her boss well. He was sitting in a high-backed leather chair, his eyes closed in thought. In front of him on his well-ordered desk was a file of outgoing letters awaiting his signature. Hennessy opened his eyes and smiled.

  ‘I’m getting to them, Beth.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘We’ll miss the post, Liam, sure enough we will,’ she admonished like a schoolteacher scolding a naughty pupil. She was a good fifteen years younger than Hennessy, but she knew there were times when the lawyer needed a good push to get things done. And she always used his first name, unless there were clients around.

  Hennessy sighed and took a gold fountain pen from his inside pocket.

  ‘You’re a hard taskmaster, Beth, that you are.’ She stood in front of the desk, her arms folded across her ample bosom, as Hennessy scanned each letter and signed his name. When he’d finished she scooped them up with a flourish and rewarded him with a smile. She was hellish pretty, thought Hennessy, as he did at least a dozen times a day. If he was younger, and single, and if she wasn’t the proud mother of twins, and if he hadn’t been married to a woman who made his heart ache. God, there were so many ‘ifs’ that it was laughable. He smiled and her lime-green eyes twinkled as if reading his thoughts.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked, replacing the top on his pen.

  ‘Mr Armytage would like you to call him about his case, and you have a four o’clock appointment with Mr Kershaw. And there’s a man trying to get hold of you.’
>
  ‘A man?’

  ‘A foreigner. Calling from London.’ She saw Hennessy smile and she held up her hand. ‘No, I don’t mean he was a foreigner just because he was phoning from England. He sounded foreign, Oriental. Chinese, maybe.’

  ‘And what did he want, this Chinaman?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say. Said he had to speak to you. If he calls again, do you want to speak to him?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. Right, can you get me Tom Armytage’s file? He must be getting nervous about tomorrow.’

  Beth nodded and left his office. Hennessy watched her hips swing as she went, then caught sight of his wife’s smiling face in the brass frame on the right-hand corner of his desk, her arms around their two teenage children. Hennessy grinned at the picture. ‘I was only looking, darling Mary, only looking. You know that.’

  The phone on the desk rang, making him jump. It was Beth, telling him that The Chinaman was calling again.

  ‘Put him on,’ said Hennessy, his curiosity aroused.

  Nguyen introduced himself and explained what he wanted, speaking softly and slowly, sometimes so quietly that Hennessy had to ask him to repeat himself. When Hennessy finally realised what the caller was requesting he was stunned, unable to believe that the man could be so naïve.

  ‘What on earth makes you think that I know the men who killed your wife and daughter?’

  Nguyen was insistent. Polite but insistent. There was a rustle of paper on the line as if he was reading something. ‘Because you are a political adviser to Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.’ The phrase came out so confidently and smoothly that the contrast with his earlier carefully controlled speech and ungainly vocabulary convinced Hennessy that The Chinaman had indeed read it, from a newspaper cutting perhaps.

  ‘I do offer advice to politicians, that is true. But I condemn, as do they, violent acts against innocent members of the public, both in England and here in Northern Ireland.’ Hennessy realised he had shifted into the standard speech he gave journalists or visiting MPs, the words slipping off his tongue as easily as The Chinaman’s when he was reading from the cutting. ‘You have the wrong man.’

  ‘If that is so, Mr Hennessy, could you tell me who in the IRA would tell me?’

  Hennessy marvelled at the man’s stupidity. ‘Offhand, I can think of no one who would be in a position to help you. And I would add that the sort of men you are talking about are not the sort who would take kindly to being approached with such accusations.’ Hennessy kept the threat veiled, aware as always of the possibility that the security forces had his lines tapped. ‘I suggest that you speak to the police, I am sure they are doing their best to identify the men responsible. But I can assure you that I do not know.’

  Nguyen fell silent for a while. Hennessy was just about to hang up when he spoke again. ‘I am afraid I do not believe you, Mr Hennessy. You are their adviser. You know who they are.’

  Hennessy snorted angrily. ‘I have already explained, I advise politicians, not terrorists. There is a world of difference.’

  ‘I think that IRA politics and IRA terrorism are different ends of the same snake,’ said Nguyen. ‘It does not matter which end you seize, you still have the snake.’

  This, thought Hennessy, was like talking to a fortune cookie. ‘Using your analogy, I would suggest that it makes a great deal of difference which end you attack,’ he replied. ‘One end will fight back.’ Hennessy felt pleased at the turn of phrase. It had given him the same sort of buzz that he got in court demolishing his opponent’s legal arguments.

  Nguyen was not deterred. ‘I have chosen, Mr Hennessy. You will tell me who is responsible.’

  Hennessy’s temper flared. ‘You are wasting my time. Goodbye.’ He cut the connection and then buzzed Beth on the intercom.

  ‘Yes Liam?’

  ‘If The Chinaman rings again just tell him I’m unavailable. I don’t want to speak to him again. Ever.’

  Nguyen knelt down in front of the red-painted wooden shrine and lit a stick of incense with an old Zippo lighter. He snapped the top of the metal lighter back in place and then held it with both palms pressed together. He rubbed his hands slowly, caressing the smooth metal. The sweet-smelling smoke curled upwards, drifting in the air, and he breathed it in. He opened his hands and looked at the lighter. On one side there was an insignia etched into the metal. There was a short-handled dagger, superimposed on a badge the shape of the blade of a spear, and across the dagger were three bolts of lightning. Above the badge was a banner containing the word ‘Airborne’. Nguyen had had the lighter for many years, but it had never let him down. His wife had carried it out of Vietnam and had proudly presented it to him when they were reunited in a refugee camp in Hong Kong. She had never let him down, either.

  He slipped the lighter back in his pocket and sat back on his heels, his eyes closed and his hands together in prayer as he emptied his mind of everything save his wife and three dead daughters. When his first two daughters had died he had been powerless to help and by the time he was in a position to do anything the men responsible were hundreds of miles away. He’d thirsted for revenge then, he’d wanted to tear the men apart with his bare hands, but there was nothing he could do. It had been a long time since the two young girls had suffered, all those years ago in the South China Sea. He remembered how he’d had to watch. How they’d screamed and begged him to help, and how something inside him had died. The urge for revenge had never died, in fact if anything it was stronger now than it had ever been, though it was tempered by the knowledge that he had done everything he could. But this time he would not allow the deaths of Xuan Phoung and Kieu Trinh to pass unresolved into memories. He would not allow the men responsible to escape unpunished. He swore to himself he would not. On the souls of his family he swore it. He didn’t move for almost an hour and when he opened his eyes again they were moist, though no tears rolled down his cheeks. He slowly stood up, his joints clicking and cracking as he stretched his legs. He had decided what he was going to do, but he knew there would be a thousand details that he still had to work out, so he took a pencil and one of his daughter’s unused exercise-books from a drawer in the kitchen and sat down at the dining-table and began writing.

  It was dark, so dark that the man could see the car’s headlights from more than a mile away, carving tunnels of light through the blackness. He lay down in the grass and waited for it to pass. It was two o’clock in the morning so cars were few and far between along the road connecting the A4008 with the A409 near Bushey Heath, just south-west of the M1. The man was lying face down on farmland, his nose close to the dew-damp soil, listening to the engine noise grow louder and then fade away. He got to his feet, picked up the spade and the metal detector by his side and walked towards a small brook that cut through the fields. He had memorised the location and if he was unlucky enough to be caught he’d say that he was just a treasure hunter out looking for buried coins, but getting caught was the last thing on his mind. He heard the trickling water before he reached the bank of the brook, and turned left and followed its meandering path to a small copse. He pushed his way through waist-high bushes until he came to the base of a towering beech tree. One of its roots, as thick as a man’s thigh, crawled along the peaty ground for six feet or so before plunging into the earth, and it was midway along its length where the man began to dig. He was well-built and used to physical exercise, and though he was breathing heavily after half an hour he had dug a hole four feet deep and three feet across. He began to take more care then, and before long the spade clunked into something that sounded vaguely metallic. He bent down and pulled up a long thin package, wrapped in polythene. He laid it on the ground next to the tree and unwrapped it. Under the polythene was a sack, tied at one end with a piece of wire. He undid it and pulled the sack down.

  Inside were three Armalite rifles and two handguns, along with several boxes of cartridges. There was a plastic-wrapped package labelled Semtex and a polythene bag containing detonators. The ma
n slowly counted them. His eyes were used to the darkness and he could see enough to identify the contents. He had already memorised the list he’d been shown, the list of what the cache should contain, and he mentally crossed them off one at a time. Eventually, satisfied that nothing was missing, he packed up the munitions and put them back in the hole. He replaced the soil and then stamped up and down to flatten the earth before kneeling down and gently smoothing it over. He walked some distance away from the beech tree and gathered twigs and small branches and placed them haphazardly over the freshly dug soil. It would fool most casual observers and in a day or so it would have blended in perfectly with its surroundings. There was little chance of it being discovered. That’s why the hiding place had been chosen in the first place.

  Nguyen came out of Charing Cross Tube station and walked to the Strand. He found the shop he wanted and stood looking through the window. It was packed with camping equipment, everything from compasses to water-bottles, a huge range of knives, racks of anoraks, sleeping-bags, dehydrated food in silver-foil packets, first-aid kits, crossbows and a range of martial arts equipment. It was all so different during the war, Nguyen thought. So very different. Equipment then was what you could beg or borrow, or take from a fallen comrade or steal from an enemy. And to think that now you could simply walk into a shop and buy it. If they had been able to get hold of equipment like this thirty years ago, then perhaps none of this would have happened and he and his family would be together in a free Vietnam. He shook his head, trying to disperse the thoughts, knowing that there was no point in dwelling on the past.

  He walked into the shop and looked through the racks. A young man tried on an army-type pullover with reinforced patches on the shoulders and elbows as his blonde girlfriend looked on admiringly. A skinhead in a shiny green bomber jacket weighed a small throwing knife in his hand and then ran a finger along the blade. A father and son examined a two-man tent as an elderly shop assistant rolled it out along the floor for them. Nobody gave Nguyen a second look.