The Chinaman

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Where’s the money?’

  ‘A Swiss bank account. It’s yours, Liam, I promise. You can have the fucking lot. Just get him away from me, get him the fuck away from me!’

  Hennessy waved Morrison away and he reluctantly took his gun away from McGrath’s leg. Hennessy picked up a notepad and a pen. ‘I want the number of the account, and I want the names and addresses of the bombers.’

  ‘What then?’ asked McGrath. ‘I give you the names and then what?’

  ‘I won’t kill you,’ said Hennessy. ‘You give me the names and I’ll take you down to Dublin and you can plead your case to the High Command. That’s the only deal you’re going to get from me. Now do I get the names?’

  McGrath swallowed and coughed, and spat out more bloody saliva. ‘You get the names,’ he said.

  Despite the sun being almost directly overhead, Kerry began to find the going easier, helped by the fact that The Chinaman appeared to be heading due east, albeit sticking to the hedgerows wherever possible. It would have been harder to follow him if he’d cut across the fields where the grass was thick and springy. As it was she found several good examples of his footprints in muddy places formed where rainwater ran off into the ditches.

  It was just after 12.15 p.m. when she came across the B180 and Tollymore Forest Park beyond. She pulled a twig from the hedge and stuck it into the ground like a miniature bonsai as she’d done every hundred yards or so as a signpost for Sean. She took a plastic bottle of water from her rucksack and drank as she planned her next move. He’d obviously crossed the road but it would take some time to find out where. The better bet would be to cross the road straightaway and check the trees where she was more likely to spot evidence of his passing on the forest floor.

  ‘Sean Morrison, where the hell are you?’ she said to herself. She wanted to go into the trees immediately, knowing that he’d be certain to be hiding somewhere in there. She felt the same as she did when she got within shooting distance of a deer that she’d stalked for hours, the adrenalin flowed and the desire to get in close was so strong that she could almost taste it. Only one thing held her back, once in the woods she wouldn’t be able to see the flare and she’d have to keep the radio off at all times because she’d have no way of knowing if The Chinaman was within listening distance. She could sit down and wait, but she didn’t want to. She took out the walkie-talkie and switched it on and pressed the talk button.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ she asked, remembering Sean’s instructions not to use any names over the air. There was no answer, just static. ‘Is there anybody there?’ she asked. When no one replied to her third attempt she took that as a sign that she was on her own and that Sean Morrison had no one to blame but himself if he couldn’t find her. She put the walkie-talkie and the bottle of water back into the rucksack, waited until the road was clear and then dashed across, into the cool, enveloping greenness of the woods.

  Hennessy left Morrison and Murphy in the lounge as he went to use the phone. He took the notebook because the four names McGrath had given him were new to him. He dialled the number and it was answered by Bromley himself.

  ‘It’s Liam Hennessy,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bromley. Hennessy heard the sound of a pipe being tapped against an ashtray. The thought suddenly came to him that Bromley probably recorded all his calls, but he’d gone too far now to worry about that. He read out the list of names and gave Bromley the address of the flat in Wapping where McGrath said they could be found. Bromley repeated the names and the address back to Hennessy and then asked if there was anything else.

  ‘Such as?’ asked Hennessy.

  ‘Such as the name of the man in your organisation who planned all this?’

  ‘You’ll have to leave that side of it to us, Bromley. We’ll be washing our own dirty linen.’

  ‘You won’t even give me the satisfaction of knowing who it was?’

  Hennessy laughed harshly. ‘No, I’m afraid I won’t. Just be assured that we’ll take care of it.’

  ‘Permanently?’

  ‘You have what you wanted, Bromley. Just do what you have to do.’ He replaced the receiver.

  He went back into the lounge.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ said McGrath, squinting up at Hennessy.

  ‘Gag him,’ Hennessy told Murphy.

  ‘Oh for the love of God, Liam, you won’t be needing a gag,’ said McGrath, panic mounting in his voice.

  ‘Gag him,’ Hennessy repeated. Murphy took a large green handkerchief from his pocket and forced it between McGrath’s teeth before tying it behind his head. McGrath grunted and strained, but nothing intelligible emerged. His eyes were wide and frightened, but Hennessy ignored his pleas. ‘Christy, take him out and shoot him.’

  Murphy didn’t express surprise or argue, he’d killed on Hennessy’s orders before, always without question. He moved to untie McGrath from the chair, but the man went wild, thrashing about like a mad thing and trying to scream through the gag. Murphy calmly clipped the butt of his gun against McGrath’s temple, knocking him senseless without so much as a whimper.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ said Morrison as Murphy slung the unconscious man over his broad shoulders.

  ‘No, Sean, you stay with me,’ said Hennessy. ‘Do it in the barn, Christy. You can bury him in one of the fields tonight.’

  Hennessy waited until Murphy had carried McGrath outside before speaking again. ‘I want to explain why McGrath is being killed, so that you don’t get the wrong idea,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Wrong idea?’

  ‘Dublin were quite explicit about what they wanted doing. They wanted the bombings stopped and they wanted the man responsible out of the way. I explained that I thought McGrath was the man, and they said that didn’t make a difference.’

  ‘But you told him he’d get a chance to plead his case.’

  ‘That was to encourage him to talk, to give him hope. But they’d already said that if I was one hundred per cent certain then he was to be taken care of here. No appeal, no trial, no publicity. No corpse.’

  ‘Why did he do it?’

  Hennessy shrugged. ‘I guess the money helped persuade him. Gaddafi and Hussein have their own axes to grind against the British Government, and someone like McGrath would be a godsend. McGrath earns a small fortune from his smuggling operations, he’s been playing the border like a bloody one-string fiddle. But most of that disappeared with the European Community’s single market, so recently he’s had to depend even more on his other sources of income in Belfast, and they in turn depend to a great extent on the Troubles. He’s behind a number of protection rackets in the city. Most of the cash goes into IRA funds, but I doubt if he passed it all on. I’d be very surprised if some of it didn’t find its way into his Swiss bank account, along with the Libyan and Iraqi money.’

  ‘His men won’t be happy.’

  ‘Dublin will take care of that. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point I’m trying to make, Sean, is that McGrath is being killed because he was a traitor to the Cause, because he betrayed the IRA, not because of Mary.’

  They heard a muffled pistol shot in the distance, but neither of them showed any reaction to the noise.

  ‘I love Mary,’ said Hennessy. ‘Despite everything. We’ve been together a long time, and sometimes I think I know her better than she knows herself. I’m the rock over which she breaks, if you understand what I mean. I give her stability, a base, security, but she’s always needed more than that, more than I can give her.’ His voice began to falter. ‘I’m not explaining myself very well,’ he added.

  Morrison felt embarrassed. It wasn’t often that Liam Hennessy was lost for words, his oratory skills were legendary in the courts of Belfast. Morrison didn’t know what to say and he looked out of the window, hoping that he would finish and he could get back to Kerry and the hunt for The Chinaman, where at least he’d be out doing something. ‘What I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to worry. I’m angry, sure eno
ugh, but not to the extent that I’d tell Christy to take you out to the barn. I’m angry at Mary, too, but that’s something I’m going to have to work out myself. You’ve hurt me, Sean, but I’ve been hurt before and I’ll get over it. And your loyalty to the Cause has never been in question. Neither has hers, funnily enough. McGrath might have been doing it for the money, but Mary I’m sure was doing it because she felt it was in the best interests of the Cause. And for revenge, maybe. Because of that I’ll try to protect her, though God knows it’s going to be hard.’

  He looked at Morrison, his face unsmiling, but there was no hatred in his eyes, just sadness. In a way, thought Morrison, hatred would have been easier to deal with. Compassion and understanding just made him feel all the more guilty.

  ‘One more thing,’ Hennessy added. ‘When all this is over, I’d be happier if you went back to New York, but I guess that’s what you’d want, anyway.’

  Morrison nodded. ‘Liam, I’m . . .’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ interrupted Hennessy. ‘I don’t want your pity, Sean. Just help me get The Chinaman out of my hair and then go back to the States.’

  Morrison realised there was nothing more to be said so he went through to the kitchen. Hennessy’s walkie-talkie was lying on the kitchen table and he picked it up. He tried to call Kerry but got no reply and that worried him. Surely she wouldn’t have left it switched off, not when she was out there on her own? He retrieved his ski-pole and the canvas haversack, checked his gun and stepped into the courtyard. Murphy walked over from the barn. He appeared to be totally impassive, no sign that he’d just taken a man’s life.

  ‘You’re off then?’ he said to Morrison, his voice cold.

  Morrison wondered what Murphy was thinking, and how he would have reacted if he’d been told to take Morrison into the barn and put a bullet in the back of his neck. He wondered too how much he could actually trust Hennessy now and what would happen once The Chinaman had been dealt with. He would have to be very, very careful.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got to catch up with the girl.’

  ‘Be careful,’ said Murphy. Morrison smiled, but he realised as he did so that he had no way of knowing if Murphy’s words were a genuine expression of concern, or a threat.

  Roy O’Donnell was driving one of the Land-Rovers while Kavanagh sat in the passenger seat scanning the roadside. The Land-Rover containing Tommy O’Donoghue and Michael O’Faolain was about a quarter of a mile behind them. They drove slowly and on many occasions impatient drivers had sounded their horns and they’d had to wave them on. At one point a convoy of army vehicles had come up behind them and they’d had to speed up so as not to attract attention. A Lynx helicopter flew low above the army patrol, keeping watch. That had cost them half an hour because when they’d eventually found a place where they could turn off they had had to wait until the convoy was well out of sight before they could drive back along the road and restart the search.

  Now they had an excuse to dawdle because ahead of them rumbled a large, mud-covered red tractor. Kavanagh was looking for gaps in the yellow-flowered gorse and the trees, anywhere where a van could be driven. They’d stopped at half a dozen possibilities on the right-hand side and gone into the woods as far as they could but found nothing. Kavanagh’s plan was to go all the way through the forest and then to drive back, westwards, checking the other side of the road.

  ‘Slow down,’ he said to O’Donnell. ‘Och, too late. Do a U-turn and go back.’ O’Donnell indicated and pulled hard on the steering wheel. The Land-Rover behind them copied the manoeuvre. ‘There,’ Kavanagh pointed.

  ‘I don’t see anything,’ said O’Donnell, screwing up his eyes. ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘There’s a track there. Look.’ They drove by a gap between the trees.

  ‘Could be, I suppose,’ said O’Donnell. ‘Shall we go down it?’

  ‘Let’s give it a go,’ said Kavanagh. They did another U-turn and this time when they reached the gap O’Donnell indicated a left turn and drove slowly between the trees. When both Land-Rovers were off the main road Kavanagh told O’Donnell to stop the vehicle and he got out. He waved at O’Donoghue and O’Faolain to come over. The four men stood on the track with their shotguns, like a group of country farmers out on a rabbit shoot. Kavanagh looked down at the muddy ground, but he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. There were some tyre tracks but he had no way of knowing how long they had been there or what had made them.

  ‘We’ll leave the Land-Rovers here and walk,’ he said. ‘Spread out and keep your eyes open.’

  Nguyen heard them coming from almost a quarter of a mile away. He was sitting next to a thick gorse bush by a patch of bluebells eating rice and chicken with his fingers. The first thing he heard was a group of startled birds flapping out of the trees. He put the cartons of food on the ground and stood up. He listened carefully, moving his head from side to side to get a bearing on where they were coming from. Eventually he heard the crunch of a boot on a twig and a sniff from the direction of the track. He couldn’t tell how many there were because he was too far away, but he was sure there were more than one. He put the lids back on the foil cartons and packed them in the rucksack next to the pipe bomb. There was no point in using the bomb, for it to be effective it had to be in a confined space. The gun would be better. He checked the magazine before slipping the rucksack on his back and moving in a crouch through the undergrowth towards the track. There was no point in running blindly away, first he had to see who it was. It might be nothing more sinister than a group of forestry workers.

  He moved parallel to the track, placing each foot carefully so as to make no noise, stopping and listening every few steps. He took cover behind a leafy horse chestnut and waited for them to draw level with him. There were four of them, three well-built men and a thin youth, all of them carrying shotguns. He recognised one of the men from Hennessy’s farm. They were moving slowly, watching the ground more than the forest, and Nguyen doubted that they would fail to find the van, despite the effort he’d made in covering his tracks. None of the men spoke and they were obviously trying to make an effort to move quietly, but to Nguyen they sounded like water-buffaloes. Feet were crunching on twigs, kicking leaves aside, squelching into damp soil. Nguyen could have followed them with his eyes closed.

  He crept from tree to tree, flitting from cover to cover like a shadow. The men came to the point where he’d driven the van off the track, and for a moment he hoped that they’d missed it because they continued on, but then the man who appeared to be the leader of the group held up his hand for them to stop. The man knelt down and studied the ground and then went back along the track. He motioned for them to gather around him and then began to whisper earnestly, making small movements with his hand. Nguyen was too far away to hear what he was saying but it was clear that he was telling them that they were to spread out and move through the trees.

  Nguyen knew that he had to make a decision now. He could abandon the van and vanish into the woods until the time came to confront Hennessy again, but that would mean that when it was all over he’d have nowhere to go, no way of getting out of the country. He’d be stuck with only what he was wearing and what he carried in his rucksack. And while that was ideal for living rough it would give him a lot of explaining to do when he tried to board a ferry or a plane. But if he killed the men it wouldn’t be too long before Hennessy would send more to investigate. And he doubted that he’d be able to conceal four bodies plus whatever transport they had arrived in, not well enough to survive a full-scale search of the woods. He could kill them and then bring his plans forward, go back to Hennessy’s farm for the final confrontation. But if he did that then there was a good chance that Hennessy would be none the wiser about the bombings and he’d have to kill him and start all over again with one of the other Sinn Fein names that the London journalist had given him. He’d have to move to a different hiding place, take his van somewhere else. It was possible, he decided. He heard an excited shout and rea
lised that his van had been discovered. He took the safety off the Browning and crept towards them. The leader was standing by the front of the van, pulling away the ferns and branches Nguyen had used to conceal it. He was joined by the red-haired youth and then the two heavyweights came trampling through the undergrowth. They cleared away all the vegetation covering the Renault while Nguyen moved as close as he could without being seen. He hid behind a bush half a dozen steps from the rear doors of the van.

  ‘Open the bonnet, Tommy,’ he heard a voice say. ‘And, Michael, check what’s in the back.’

  The gangly youth walked round to the rear of the van. He transferred his shotgun to his left hand and with his right twisted the door handle. It wouldn’t move, because Nguyen had locked it. Nguyen put the safety back on and stuck the gun into the waistband of his trousers before slipping the hunting knife out of its scabbard on the rucksack strap. He was reluctant to go in shooting because it was one against four and as soon as they heard a shot they’d all start firing.

  He held his left hand up in front of him, his right ready to stab with the knife, because a stab always went deeper than a slash. He took three quick steps, centre of gravity low.

  ‘It’s locked,’ the youth called.

  ‘Well force it,’ the leader shouted. ‘Are yez stupid or what?’ There was a smash of glass as one of the other men broke the driver’s window with the butt of his shotgun.

  Nguyen sprang the remaining distance and forced his left wrist across the youth’s trachea and simultaneously drove the knife horizontally into the kidney. He twisted the knife to do the maximum amount of damage. The wrist across the windpipe stopped all noise but Nguyen could feel him struggle and tense and then relax and slump as he died. He eased the body on to the ground and put the knife back into its scabbard.

  The man who’d smashed the window had opened the door and was looking for the bonnet-release catch. Nguyen took one of his throwing knives and moved to the right-hand side of the van. He risked a quick look and saw that the man had his back to him. Nguyen ducked away, took out the gun and slipped the safety off once more, holding the gun in his left hand.