There he gave himself up to the ARVN, the Army of South Vietnam, and applied to join Chieu Hoi, the ‘Appeal to Return’ programme. He’d read about Chieu Hoi in the jungle after a low-flying helicopter had thrown out handfuls of propaganda leaflets. The VCs kept them and used them for lighting fires and as toilet paper.
His wife and children were resettled in a safe village south of Saigon while Nguyen was sent to a rehabilitation camp. He wasn’t there long. He’d never had any great love for Communism and the ARVN realised how useful Nguyen would be. When he crossed over he hadn’t thought that he’d be fighting for the South, he’d had some vague hope that they’d simply allow him to go back to what he enjoyed doing, working in a garage somewhere and spending the nights with his wife and daughters. He was wrong. The ARVN didn’t threaten to put a bullet in his head, but they didn’t have to. The South was infiltrated with VC soldiers and agents and if Nguyen and his family weren’t kept in a safe village they’d be killed within weeks. Their survival depended on the goodwill of the Government of South Vietnam. And the price exacted for that goodwill was for Nguyen to serve them in the best way he could.
Once he’d satisfied them that he wasn’t a VC agent he was sent to the Recondo School, run by the 5th Special Forces Group at one end of Nha Trang airfield, near Saigon. The Recondo School was where the US army trained the men who made up the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols – or Lurps to the men who served in them. The Lurps operated in six-man teams deep in enemy territory as the eyes and ears of the army, and often as its assassins.
It soon became obvious to the instructors that there was nothing Nguyen could learn from them. Within two days he was teaching them about VC booby traps and camouflage techniques and then the top brass got to hear about his talents and inside a month he found himself seconded to a Lurp unit on the edge of the Iron Triangle.
Time and time again, Nguyen was sent into enemy territory, along the same trails that he’d travelled when he was a VC. He knew many of the hiding places and the supply dumps and the secret trails, and he had a sixth sense for spotting the VC trip-wires and traps.
Nguyen was allowed regular visits to his wife and daughters, and as he drew regular US army pay, life was good fighting for the Americans, until it became obvious that the NVA were going to overrun the South. Nguyen began to worry about what would happen if the Americans pulled out, but he was always assured that he would be taken care of and that his family would be given sanctuary in the United States. He’d believed them.
Nguyen tossed fitfully on the bed, sweat beading on his forehead. His breath came in ragged gasps as he relived in his mind what had happened to his wife and his three daughters, how they’d died and how he’d been powerless to help.
Mary Hennessy was sitting alone in the lounge watching television when the doorbell rang. She got to her feet and smoothed down her dress before going into the hall, but Murphy had got to the front door ahead of her. There were four suitcases by the door, mainly clothes that she wanted to take with her to the farm. Liam had said they were only going for the weekend, but she could see that he was holding something back, and realised that he’d been badly shocked by the two bombing attempts and that they’d probably end up staying on the farm until it had been sorted out.
It was ten o’clock already, but Liam had said he was waiting to see someone before they left and it was a desire to see who the mysterious visitor was rather than a sense of politeness that had taken her to the hall. He was hidden by the door, all she could see was a sleeved arm shaking hands with Murphy, but then she heard his spoken greeting and she gasped, her hand flying involuntarily up to her mouth. The door opened wider and he stepped inside. Morrison was holding a blue holdall in his left hand and he bent down to put it on the floor by her suitcases and it was only as he straightened up that he saw her. He smiled and his eyes widened.
‘Mary,’ he said, in a voice that could have meant a hundred things. He seemed unsure how he should greet her, stepping forward as if to kiss her on the cheek but then holding himself back and offering her his hand instead. Was that because Murphy was watching them, or because he knew Liam was nearby, or was it something else? It had been two years since she had seen Sean Morrison and she couldn’t read him as easily as she used to. His hand felt strong and dry and she pressed her fingers into his palm, holding him a little longer than was necessary. He squeezed her gently and he seemed reluctant to take his hand away. That’s what she told herself, anyway. She was immediately glad that she’d worn her blue silk dress which showed her figure off, especially around her waist. She wanted to look good for him. He looked wonderful, his hair was longer than when she’d last seen him but otherwise he hadn’t changed: smiling blue eyes, his mouth which always seemed ready to break into a grin, and a body that could have belonged to a dancer.
‘It’s good to see you again, Sean,’ she said. ‘How’s New York?’
‘Hectic,’ he said. ‘A lot different to Belfast, I can tell you.’
‘You’re here to see Liam?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, is he in the study?’
She wanted to keep him in the hall, to talk with him and find out why he was back, but she knew that she’d already spent too long looking at him, any longer and Murphy would suspect there was something going on. Mary smiled to herself. He’d be wrong, of course. There was nothing going on between her and Sean. There hadn’t been for two years, but she could tell from his touch that the electricity was still there between them.
‘He’s waiting for you,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I’ll see you later.’ She held his gaze for a couple of seconds and then turned and went back into the lounge. She poured herself a brandy and held the balloon glass between both hands and breathed in its rich bouquet. ‘Welcome back, Sean Morrison,’ she said quietly to herself, smiling.
In the study, Morrison shook Hennessy’s hand and sank down into one of the chairs in front of the desk. ‘The boys seem nervous,’ said Morrison, and Hennessy explained briefly what had happened, the phone calls from London, the visit from The Chinaman, the explosion in his office and the attempt to blow up the car. Morrison listened without comment, but when Hennessy had finished he was frowning, not sure what was wanted from him.
‘You’ve brought me back to deal with this Chinaman?’ he asked.
Hennessy shook his head. ‘No, no, we’ll take care of him. No, Sean, I need your help to stop this bombing campaign on the mainland.’ He told Morrison about his fears of a rogue IRA unit, and the missing ordnance.
‘That explains a lot,’ said Morrison. ‘At first the bombings were good news in the States, donations poured in, but some of the recent stuff has produced a real backlash. The Tube bombing especially. The Irish Americans are keen to support us, but massacres like that . . . I’ve got to tell you, Liam, I’m bloody pleased to hear you hadn’t sanctioned it. How can I help?’
Hennessy spoke to Morrison for another quarter of an hour and then the younger man left for the airport to catch the last shuttle to Heathrow.
Mary Hennessy looked up when her husband entered the lounge and tried to hide her disappointment when she saw that he was alone.
‘It’s been a long time since Sean Morrison was in Belfast,’ she said. Hennessy went over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a double measure of whiskey.
‘I need his help,’ he said.
‘With The Chinaman?’
Hennessy swirled the whiskey in his glass and shook his head. ‘Something else. I need someone I can trust, somebody without an axe to grind, and he’s been away for almost two years now. He’s, how can I put it, untainted. Yes, that’s the word I’m looking for. Untainted.’
‘So he’ll be coming to the farm with us?’ she asked.
‘No, I need him to go to London.’ He saw from her face that she didn’t understand and he smiled down at her. ‘I need his help to get to the bottom of the bombings. Despite everything that’s happened, that’s the more important issue at the moment.’
&n
bsp; Mary’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve got a plan?’
‘Something like that.’ He finished his drink and put the empty glass down on the cabinet. ‘Are you all packed?’
She said she was, and they went together to the car where Jimmy McMahon opened the door for them and put the luggage in the boot. They sat together in the back while Murphy slid into the front seat. Jackie squeezed under Hennessy’s legs and woofed quietly to herself. A red Ford Sierra with three young men waited at the entrance to the drive, its engine running. Four other heavily built men got into a dark-brown Range Rover and followed the Jaguar out into the road. They drove in convoy, the Sierra first, then the Jaguar, and the Range Rover bringing up the rear, down the Antrim Road, through the city centre and on to the A1, the main road south.
Nguyen was jolted awake by a distant siren. He lay for a while on his back staring up at the ceiling and trying to calm his breathing. He was soaking wet, drenched with sweat as he always was when he came out of the nightmare. The visions were always the same: the small boat drifting in the South China Sea. His daughters screaming for help. The helplessness. The anger.
He focused on what he had to do, driving all other thoughts from his troubled mind and gradually his breathing steadied. He sat up slowly and looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. He checked his watch. It was six o’clock in the morning. Time to go.
The ice in the shower had melted away and Nguyen stepped in and washed himself all over. He didn’t use any soap or shampoo because he didn’t want any lingering smell of perfume. He towelled himself dry and put on a pair of loose jeans, a faded grey sweatshirt and an old pair of black sneakers before packing the rest of his stuff in his suitcase. He checked the room carefully to make sure he’d forgotten nothing and then he looped the holdall and its deadly contents around his neck and carried the case and the black plastic bag of rubbish down the stairs. He took out his key and left it and a ten-pound note by the telephone and then slipped the catch on the front door and gently eased it closed behind him. He took the rubbish bag down the side of the house and put it in the bin. The case he put in the back of the van, the holdall he slid under the passenger seat. The van started first time and he drove slowly down Wellington Park and turned left into Lisburn Road, the A1. On the seat next to him lay several large-scale maps that he’d bought from a newsagent in the city centre. Ian Wood had told him that Hennessy had a farm between a town called Castlewellan and a place called Haltown in County Down, about forty miles south of Belfast. He hadn’t been able to say exactly where, but Nguyen didn’t expect to have any problem finding it. The van identified him as a landscape gardener, he’d just drive around claiming to have mislaid Hennessy’s address and eventually he’d find someone to point out the right farm.
Sean Morrison had booked into the Strand Palace Hotel late on Friday night so he waited until Saturday morning before calling the offices of the Anti-Terrorist Branch and asking for Detective Chief Inspector Bromley. He wasn’t surprised to be told that he wasn’t in, because it was Saturday, after all. He asked the duty officer if Bromley was at home or away on holiday and was told that he’d be in the office on Monday.
‘Can you get a message to him for me?’ Morrison asked.
The duty officer was crisp and efficient, not the least because of Morrison’s Irish accent, and he confirmed that he could pass on a message to Bromley.
‘Tell him Sean Morrison wants to speak to him.’
‘Can you give me your number, please, sir?’ asked the officer. Nice try, thought Morrison. Either the guy was naïve in the extreme or he had a very dry sense of humour.
‘Just tell him Sean Morrison needs to talk to him urgently. I’ll call back at noon. Tell him to either be in the office or to have you give me a number where I can reach him. Got that?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Morrison cut the line.
Morrison’s next phone call was to Liam Hennessy but a woman’s voice answered. ‘Mary?’ he asked.
‘Sean? Where are you?’
‘London,’ he said. He wasn’t sure what to say to her. Two years was a long time.
‘Do you want to speak to Liam?’ she asked, and he realised from the edge to her voice that her husband was in the room with her. He immediately felt relieved, as if Hennessy’s presence solved the problem of which way the conversation would go.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Morrison heard the phone being handed over and then he heard Hennessy’s voice. ‘Everything OK?’ said Hennessy.
‘Everything is fine. I was just calling to let you know where I am. I’ve booked into the Strand Palace . . .’ Hennessy interrupted him, telling him to wait while he got a pen and paper. ‘OK, go ahead,’ he said.
‘I’m at the Strand Palace Hotel,’ said Morrison, and he dictated the number to Hennessy, who repeated it back to him before hanging up.
Jim Kavanagh had press-ganged a dozen IRA men to help him with the search for The Chinaman, most of them teenagers, but their lack of experience didn’t matter because most of their enquiries were done over the phone. They’d moved into Hennessy’s office in Donegall Square, the air still acrid from the explosion. Kavanagh divided them into six pairs and distributed copies of the city’s Yellow Pages and tourist guides he’d obtained from the Tourist Information Centre in the High Street. The Chinaman had arrived from London, which meant that, unless he had friends or relatives in the city, he’d have to have booked into a hotel or guest-house. He distributed the telephone numbers of all the places where a visitor might stay among the teams, one member to make the phone calls, the other to keep a record. There were more than enough telephones to go round. He hoped they’d be lucky because if not the next stage would be to visit every Chinese family in Belfast and that could take a hell of a long time.
Kavanagh made himself a cup of coffee and settled down on the sofa in the reception area. He was preparing himself for a long wait when a gangly red-haired youth burst into the room, breathing heavily.
‘I think we’ve got it!’ he said.
His partner, a head shorter with shoulder-length brown hair, came running after him waving a notebook. ‘A guesthouse in Wellington Park. The landlady is a Mrs McAllister, she says there was an Oriental man staying with her for two nights.’
‘Is he still there?’ asked Kavanagh, getting to his feet.
‘She said he left this morning.’
‘Damn his eyes!’ cursed Kavanagh. He called over two men, bigger and harder than the teenage helpers, Roy O’Donnell and Tommy O’Donoghue. He went with them to collect his car and they drove to Wellington Park.
Mrs McAllister showed them into her lounge, a fussy room with a statue of the Virgin Mary in one corner, dozens of small crystal animals on the mantelpiece and lace squares on the backs of the easy chairs. She was a Catholic, a good Catholic, and whereas she didn’t have much sympathy for the IRA she knew better than to obstruct them. Kavanagh asked her to describe her former guest and she did her best but found it difficult: not very tall, black hair, brown eyes, rough skin. She was able to give a better description of his clothes and Kavanagh knew she was talking about the same man that he’d seen in Hennessy’s office.
‘How did he get here?’ he asked.
‘He had a van, a white van. It was some sort of delivery van, I think, with writing on the side.’
‘Can ye remember what it said?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, son, I can’t.’
‘Not to worry, Mrs McAllister. Can ye show me his room?’
She took him upstairs leaving O’Donnell and O’Donoghue sitting uncomfortably in the lounge. ‘You keep a very tidy house, Mrs McAllister,’ soothed Kavanagh as she led him to the bedroom door. She waited outside while Kavanagh checked the room. There was nothing under the bed or in the cupboard drawers. He went into the bathroom but it too was spotless and smelt strongly of pine.
‘Yez’ll have already tidied up the room, then?’ he asked the landlady.
‘Aye, so
n. I dusted and ran the Hoover over the carpet this morning. He was very clean, though, you’d have hardly known the room had been slept in. Except for the bathroom, there was a funny smell in there. Like vinegar or something. I had to spray air freshener around.’
‘Vinegar?’
‘Something like that, a terrible bitter smell.’
Kavanagh looked around the gleaming bathroom, not sure what he expected to find.
‘I don’t suppose he left anything behind, did he Mrs McAllister?’
‘No, nothing. He even made the bed before he left. He went early this morning, before I was up. He’d paid the bill in advance, even left me a tip.’ She was burning with curiosity but knew it was pointless to ask what it was he’d done. If they wanted her to know they’d have told her.
‘And ye’ve no idea where he went? He didn’t ask for directions or anything?’
The landlady shook her head. ‘I barely spoke to him.’
Kavanagh tut-tutted to himself, not sure what to do next. The van was a possibility, but a white delivery van with writing on the side wasn’t much to go on. Still, it would probably have English plates which would make it a bit easier to find. ‘OK, Mrs McAllister, thanks for your help. I’m sorry we disturbed yez.’
They went back downstairs. O’Donnell and O’Donoghue were already waiting in the hall, expectant looks on their faces. Mrs McAllister opened the door for them and watched them go down the path. She suddenly remembered something and called after Kavanagh. ‘Oh, son! You might want to check the dustbin round the back. When I was emptying the Hoover I saw he’d left some rubbish there, in a black bag.’
Kavanagh’s hopes soared and he practically ran down the path to where two dustbins were standing. The first one he looked in contained nothing but kitchen refuse, but in the second, under a layer of carpet fluff and dust, he found a black plastic bag, knotted at the top and sealed with insulation tape. He pulled it out, ignoring the cloud of dust that billowed over his trousers. He opened the bag and looked inside and frowned.
The Chinaman Page 13