The Chinaman

by Stephen Leather

  Ryan pulled a chair out and sat down, helping himself to a mug of coffee. ‘Has this Chinaman got hand grenades or what, Liam?’ he asked.

  ‘Nitroglycerine,’ said Hennessy. ‘He made his own nitroglycerine in Belfast.’ The kitchen was full now, men standing or sitting, some of them still coughing to clear the smoke from their lungs. Ryan’s daughter, Sarah, stood behind her father, smoothing down his hair, more to calm her own shaking hands than anything.

  Hennessy stood with his back to the sink and cleared his throat loudly to attract everybody’s attention. ‘We’re all going to have to be on our guard,’ he said. ‘I’ve underestimated The Chinaman up until now, and that’s not a mistake I intend to repeat. For the rest of tonight I want six of you on guard outside.’ He nodded or pointed to the six men to indicate those he’d chosen. ‘Jimmy McMahon can sleep in the kitchen and I’ll have Christy Murphy stay by the front door. Joe, you and Sarah should lock yourself in the cottage, and keep Tommy with you. Everyone else try to grab some sleep. By tomorrow I’ll have worked out what we’re going to do.’

  The men assigned to guard duty finished their whiskey, checked their guns and went outside. Ryan and his daughter went back to their cottage with Tommy O’Donoghue in tow.

  Murphy came back into the kitchen. ‘Jim’s on his way.’

  ‘Good,’ said Hennessy. ‘Mary and I are going to bed. Jimmy’ll sleep here tonight. Can you stay in the hall? We’ll get a proper rota fixed up tomorrow after Jim gets here.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ said Murphy.

  Hennessy and Mary went up the stairs together. She carried a bright-yellow mug of coffee cupped in both hands. To Hennessy, though, it appeared that she was more annoyed than upset by the disturbance. In the bedroom, she put the mug down on her bedside table and brushed her hair with short, attacking strokes.

  ‘I don’t think you should stay here, not with all this going on,’ said Hennessy, taking off his dressing-gown and hanging it on the back of the door.

  ‘I was thinking the same myself,’ she answered, watching him through the dressing-table mirror as she brushed her hair. He walked over to the open window and looked down at the courtyard. There were two of his men there, one with a shotgun. They waved and he waved back before shutting the window to keep out the smell of smoke. He drew the curtains with a flourish.

  ‘The house in town isn’t safe, even while The Chinaman’s here,’ he said. ‘Abroad would be best, just until we’ve solved this problem.’

  ‘This problem!’ she said, and laughed, her voice loaded with irony. ‘This problem, as you call it, Liam, is stalking around our farm with nitroglycerine bombs intent on God knows what and you call it a problem. You can be so pompous at times!’ She shook her head, sadly, while Hennessy stood confused, not sure what to say. She made the decision for him. ‘I thought I’d go and stay with Marie.’ Marie, their daughter, was studying sociology at university in London and there were still some weeks to go before summer holidays. They’d rented her a one-bedroom flat in Earl’s Court and Mary had been to stay on several occasions.

  ‘I’d prefer it if you went well away, to America or the Caribbean, London is still a bit close to home,’ he pressed.

  She turned to look at him, still brushing her hair. ‘Liam, I’ll be perfectly safe in London,’ she said frostily. ‘In the first place, he’s hardly likely to know about Marie’s rented flat, and in the second, it’s you he’s after, not me.’

  Hennessy couldn’t argue with that, so he reluctantly agreed.

  ‘Besides, I’ll fly over and I’ll make sure I take a very close look at everyone else who gets on the plane. If I see anyone who looks vaguely Chinese, I’ll call you,’ she said. She put down the brush and switched off the light. He heard the rustle of silk against her skin and then she slipped under the quilt. He got into his side of the bed.

  ‘Good night,’ she said. He felt a light kiss on the cheek and then she turned her back on him, drawing her legs up against her stomach. Liam lay on his back, his eyes closed tight.

  The French window was wide open allowing the fresh river air to stream in along with the early morning sunshine. Denis Fisher sat on the white plastic chair, a stack of Sunday newspapers on the circular white table. He was wearing a white T-shirt and faded blue Levis and a pair of black plastic sunglasses. His feet were up on another chair, he had a cup of strong coffee at his elbow, and he appeared to be at peace with the world. He ran his fingers through his blond hair and stretched his arms above his head.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he called into the lounge.

  MacDermott, the one they called The Bombmaker, was sitting at the dining-table in front of a collection of electrical equipment, wiring, batteries and timers, and peering into the innards of a laptop computer.

  ‘Fine. There’s acres of space here. More than enough. What I’m trying to do is to use the computer’s internal clock as a timer and to connect the detonator to its internal battery. If I can it’ll save a hell of a lot of weight. All I’ll be adding will be the explosive, the detonator and a few inches of wire.’

  By the side of the computer was an oblong slab of what appeared to be bright-yellow marzipan, covered in a thick film of plastic. It was less than one inch thick but almost nine inches wide and twelve inches long. On top of the block, under the plastic, was a white paper label with a black border containing the words EXPLOSIVE PLASTIC SEMTEX-H.

  The explosive had come a long way. It had been manufactured years earlier in the Semtex factory deep in the woods in western Czechoslovakia in the days when it had been behind the Iron Curtain. Production of the high-performance military explosive stopped in 1980, but between 1975 and 1981 the Czechs sold 960 tons to Libya for six million US dollars through the Omnipol trade agency and several tons of that had found its way to the IRA. The Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi had filled six brick and sandstone warehouses a few miles outside Tripoli with boxes of the high explosive. The Libyan leader had been a staunch supporter of the IRA throughout the early seventies, but it was after the siege of his embassy in London in the summer of 1985 that he began to help them with a vengeance, as a way of getting back at the British Government.

  In October 1986, six months after President Reagan ordered a US bomber strike on Tripoli, a converted oil industry safety ship sailed into Libyan waters and over two nights took on board eighty tons of weapons, including a ton of Semtex. The Semtex was unloaded at a small beach in south-east Ireland and over the next year or so much of it was secretly transferred to caches in Britain. The two packages on the table were from the 1986 consignment.

  Fisher put down his Independent on Sunday and walked back into the flat. He watched over The Bombmaker’s shoulder.

  ‘It looks hellishly complicated,’ said Fisher.

  ‘I’ve never done anything like this before,’ said MacDermott. ‘I’m testing it with this torch bulb here until I’m sure it’ll work. The timing is the crucial thing. The amount of explosive we’ll be using is so small that it won’t do much damage if it goes off in the wrong place. And there’s no room for booby traps or secondary circuits.’

  ‘How much will you use?’ asked Fisher.

  ‘Two hundred grams is more than enough to blow a hole in the fuselage and cause decompression. It was three hundred grams that brought down the Pan Am jet at Lockerbie. Mind you, it’s the Lockerbie fiasco that’s making it so hard now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You remember that doctor whose daughter died on the flight, the one that took a fake bomb on a BA jet to New York to show how lax security was? He filled a radio with marzipan and a battery but he proved his point and now the airlines routinely check all electrical equipment.’

  ‘Does that mean they’ll take it apart?’ said Fisher, frowning.

  ‘They won’t take it apart, but they will ask to see it working, and they’ll peer through the grilles and any gaps. And they’ll X-ray it. Before the summer of 1990 they’d let you take them on board without putting them t
hrough the X-ray machine, but the Secretary of State for Transport changed the rules.’

  ‘Won’t the explosive show up?’

  ‘It’s supposed to on the new models, but I’m hollowing out the transformer and taking out the modem circuit and packing most of it in there. It’ll look OK, no matter how good their equipment is, don’t worry. Anyway, this is the sort of thing they expect people to take on planes, so if it works OK and the right person is carrying it they won’t suspect anything. And it will work, I’ll make sure of that.’

  Fisher put his hand on MacDermott’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘If anyone can do it, you can. How’s the Ascot bomb coming on?’

  The Bombmaker nodded at a metal camera case on the floor. ‘That’s child’s play in comparison. I’ll finish it tonight.’

  Fisher smiled, satisfied.

  ‘Have you any idea which plane yet?’ asked The Bombmaker.

  Fisher shook his head. ‘We’re going to have to be careful, bloody careful,’ he said. ‘We can’t hit a flight where there could be Irish on board, or Americans, or kids. What I’m really after is a plane in the Queen’s Flight, or one carrying the Prime Minister or any of the Government bastards. Or maybe an RAF plane. I just want to have the bomb ready so that we can use it immediately we get an opportunity. And a mule. We need a mule to carry it on board. Someone with access. A pilot, a journalist, a policeman, someone who can get close without raising suspicion.’

  ‘It’s risky, mixing with people like that when we’re trying to keep a low profile.’

  Fisher grinned. ‘I know it’s risky, but think of the rewards. Just think about it. It’d be like another Brighton bombing, another Mountbatten.’

  The phone rang and O’Reilly put down the gun he was cleaning, a Smith & Wesson 9-millimetre automatic pistol, on the coffee-table. ‘Shall I get it?’ he asked, but Fisher already had it in his hand.

  ‘Yes, yes, understood. Yes,’ he said to the voice at the other end and hung up.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said, rubbing his chin. O’Reilly and The Bombmaker looked at him expectantly. ‘The code-word has been changed,’ he explained. ‘As of tonight.’

  ‘Good of them to let us know,’ smiled O’Reilly as he picked up the automatic and began stripping it down. ‘They might not have taken us seriously.’

  Hennessy was alone in the large pine bed when he awoke. He bathed and dressed and went downstairs to find his wife in front of their stove frying eggs and bacon and grilling toast. Jim Kavanagh, Willie O’Hara, Christy Murphy and Jimmy McMahon were sitting around the table drinking coffee.

  Despite the bomb shattering their sleep, Mary looked radiant and seemed to be relishing her role as a short-order cook.

  ‘Right Christy, here’s yours,’ she sang, and plopped down a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. Willie O’Hara was already halfway through his breakfast, mopping up egg yolk with a piece of fried bread. Kavanagh had finished and was buttering a slice of toast. Liam had heard him arrive in the early hours and he didn’t look as if he’d had any sleep, either. Mary broke another two eggs into the pan and put them on the burner, took four more slices of toast from under the grill and slotted them into the toast rack on the table.

  ‘Good morning, Liam,’ she said cheerfully, and poured him a glass of orange juice. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Just toast,’ he said. He had never been a big eater, and considering the stress he was under just now he doubted if he’d be able to force down much toast. ‘Thanks for getting here so quickly, Jim,’ he said to Kavanagh.

  ‘I’m just mad at myself for not getting him in Belfast, then none of this would’ve happened.’

  ‘Where are the men who came down with you?’

  ‘They’ve relieved the guys who were on duty during the night, and they’re over in the cottage having breakfast. We didn’t think it fair to all impose on yez good lady wife.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mary, walking over with another plate of food. ‘Jimmy, here’s your breakfast.’

  Hennessy pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘How many men are here at the moment?’ he asked Kavanagh.

  ‘There’s the six that came down with me, plus the seven who came down with ye and Christy. And there’s three farmworkers who we can use if necessary. And Mr Ryan and his daughter have offered to help. I think they’re a bit reluctant to be out working the farm with this Chinaman on the loose.’

  Hennessy nodded thoughtfully and sipped his juice. ‘We can’t use the farmworkers, or the Ryans, not for this. If we need more men we’ll bring them in from Belfast. So we’re talking about thirteen men, plus you four.’ He saw a look of panic pass over O’Hara’s egg-streaked face. ‘Don’t worry, Willie, I won’t be asking you to carry a gun.’ Willie O’Hara was notoriously afraid of firearms, despite being one of the organisation’s foremost explosives experts. ‘And Christy, I want you to take Mary to London later today.’

  ‘Och Liam, he doesn’t have to go all the way to London with me,’ chided Mary over her shoulder as she fried more eggs.

  ‘To London,’ insisted Liam. Murphy nodded. ‘Jimmy, you’ll be driving them to the airport.’ McMahon grunted through a mouthful of food.

  Hennessy asked Kavanagh how many men it would take to make the farm secure.

  ‘Nothing can ever be secure, ye know that,’ he answered. ‘Yez could put a hundred men on guard but a determined man could still get through.’ He could see that Hennessy was not pleased with his answer so quickly added: ‘Three guards could secure the courtyard, but there’s a risk then that he could throw something in through one of the windows of the outside of the building, or get to the barns. Yez’ll need a man guarding the barns, two by the stables, one in the courtyard, and three covering the front of the farm.’

  ‘So seven men in all?’

  ‘That’s at night. During the day four should do it because this place is surrounded by fields and yer’ll see him coming for miles.’

  ‘That’s still eleven men and that doesn’t include sleeping time.’

  ‘That’s right enough. Yer’ll need at least twenty-two, and if it goes on for any length of time, Liam, yer’ll need as many again because they’re going to get tired and careless.’

  Hennessy slammed his hand down on the table, rattling the breakfast plates. ‘Damn this man, damn him,’ he cursed.

  Mary put a filled plate in front of Kavanagh and he thanked her. ‘Are you sure you don’t want anything else, Liam?’ she asked, and when he said no she took off her apron and put it over the back of a chair. She was wearing tight ski pants and a blue sweater and Hennessy could see O’Hara and McMahon watch her backside twitch as she walked to the door. Did she know that men took such pleasure from watching her move? Hennessy was pretty sure that she did. While he took pride in having such an attractive wife, many were the times that he wished she’d age just a little faster, that she’d look a little less attractive so that men would stop looking at her with lust in their eyes. He wished she’d join him in middle-age and not keep acting like a teenager. Maybe she’d give him more of herself then.

  ‘Christy, get on the plane with her and see her all the way to my daughter’s flat. If at any time you even remotely suspect that The Chinaman is anywhere near, get to a safe place and call for help. Don’t take any risks. This bastard is out to get me and he might just decide to hurt me through my family.’

  Murphy put his knife and fork together on his plate. ‘She’ll be safe with me, Liam, I promise you.’

  McMahon drained his coffee cup and stood up. ‘I think I’ll take the car to the garage in the village and fill her up so that we don’t have to stop on the way. Are they open on a Sunday?’

  ‘The sign’ll say closed, sure enough, but sound your horn and old man Hanratty will come out and serve you,’ said Hennessy.

  McMahon wiped his hands on his trousers and went out into the courtyard. They heard the car start up and drive out of the courtyard.

  ‘Willie, I want you to go through what’s
left of the outbuilding and find out what caused it, whether or not it was one of the home-made bombs you described. Then I think we ought to arrange a . . .’

  His words were cut short by the echoing thud of an explosion in the distance, as if a huge pile of earth had been dropped from a great height. Kavanagh got to his feet first and he led the way as they rushed through the hall and out of the front door.

  The Jaguar was lying on its side in the field next to the track about fifty yards before it joined the road. There were clouds of steam coming from under the bonnet which had burst open and the engine was racing. Three of the IRA guards were already running down the track to the car and two more came running from the stables, guns at the ready. One of them reached through the side window and switched off the engine.

  ‘Oh God, Jimmy,’ said Hennessy under his breath as he began jogging towards the Jaguar. By the time he arrived there, with O’Hara in tow, they’d pulled McMahon out of the car and lain him on the grass. His face was cut in a dozen places, there was blood on his shirt and he was mumbling incoherently. Hennessy knelt down by McMahon and held his hand. It was covered in blood.

  ‘Get a car here, we’ll have to take him to hospital,’ he said to Michael O’Faolain, the gangly, red-haired youth who’d come down from Belfast. ‘We don’t have time to wait for an ambulance.’ O’Faolain ran back down the track towards the farmhouse. ‘Willie, find out what the hell happened,’ he said to O’Hara. O’Hara went to look at the car, but Hennessy had already seen the crater in the track and knew what it meant. ‘The fucking Chinaman,’ he hissed.

  McMahon groaned but didn’t open his eyes. His trousers were burnt and ripped and through the slashed material Hennessy could see blood pouring from the injured legs.

  O’Hara appeared at his shoulder. ‘Nitroglycerine bomb by the look of it, Liam, buried a couple of feet down in the track. Detonated by wire.’