Old Enemies

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘No, sir. You pay me for my judgement. And it’s my gut reaction that we just caught him out, that he’s in Italy after all. And if we knew that it would be a great help to us.’

  ‘I think he’s right, J.J.,’ his father joined in. He didn’t often do that, join in, so that when he did, they listened.

  J.J. responded by marching to a side table and pouring himself a large cognac. The decanter clinked against the glass; his hand was trembling. He stared into the goblet, swirled his thoughts around, sulked, then swallowed. He didn’t offer anyone else a drink. His selfishness goaded Terri from her corner.

  ‘For God’s sake, do what they say, J.J. Give them what they want!’

  ‘You know I can’t.’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort. All I see is you bloody men, all of you, playing your wretched games while the life of my son is at stake!’ She couldn’t stay silent, but neither could she look them in the eye. She knew she was being unfair. ‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted. ‘It’s just . . . I’m so exhausted. Not sleeping.’

  ‘None of us are,’ her husband replied, in a manner that implied it was she who was being self-centred.

  ‘I’m keeping you awake.’

  ‘We’re keeping each other awake.’

  ‘My fault.’

  ‘It’s nobody’s fault,’ he insisted bleakly.

  ‘Best if you sleep in the spare room for a few nights, perhaps. Let us both get some rest.’

  It was a conversation that should have been conducted in private, but they had discovered there was no such thing as a private life when your son had been taken hostage. J.J. hesitated, listening to the crack that was forcing its way between them and growing substantially wider. ‘OK,’ he said quietly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Harry’s leg was agony. His knee was swollen and locked stiff, as was much of the rest of him, and there was a cut and vivid purple bruising on the side of his temple, yet somehow they’d missed any vital part. Nothing had been broken. His attackers had been disturbed, scared off before they could complete their job. Harry stayed hidden at home, licking his wounds.

  He had plenty of distraction, there was never any shortage of that in the run-up to Christmas. His parliamentary work had piled up, and with less than a week to go before the recess the system had slipped into its usual pre-holiday panic and produced an even thicker forest of paperwork for him to chop his way through. The previous evening he’d signed more than a thousand Christmas cards with their embossed green House of Commons logo, a huge pile of synthetic goodwill that had been sent over to him by his secretary. Many of the names on the envelopes, too many for comfort, he hadn’t even recognized, it was so wretchedly impersonal – Happy Christmas, whoever you are! Remember to vote for me next time! But was there to be a next time? He wasn’t even sure of that. Sometimes he just wanted to walk away from it all. Downing Street was still pushing for a decision on the Foreign Secretary’s job, but he’d asked them to wait another week. Couldn’t make up his mind about anything. He was beginning to sense frustration in Mary’s voice, but so what? It was nothing compared to what Ruari and Terri were doing to him. As he sat in his den, with winter rain beating intermittently against the window, he wished he had more cards to sign. Sometimes the wretchedly impersonal was a relief.

  On the third day he stretched and was delighted to discover that he could now almost straighten his leg, although every move felt as though it was part of a clumsy student’s anatomical experiment. He wriggled his toes, relieved that everything still worked, and decided he’d been sitting by his hearth long enough. He might need a stick to get around but he didn’t need to hide away any longer. It was time, he decided, to nail the bastard who’d beaten him up.

  Harry limped his way up Dean Street in Soho, his head lowered into a sharp northerly wind that was blowing sheets of abandoned newspaper along the gutters and wrapping them around lampposts. Christmas was celebrated in a different fashion on these streets; a poster in the window of one of the many sex shops instructed him to have a Horny Christmas, while the varied items of underwear on show were covered in suggestive strands of tinsel. A bored woman with too much mascara stared at him from behind the glass-fronted door. He hobbled on. He was headed for the Toucan, a pub that lay just off Soho Square. It was small, unpretentious, with a black-painted facade and the feel of a comfortable but over-worn jumper found at the back of a closet. On a summer’s evening the drinkers from the advertising and media companies that thronged together in this part of London would spill out onto the pavement in their bright shirt sleeves and at times even block the road, but when Harry arrived on a winter’s afternoon of frozen ankles and monochrome skies there was as yet almost no one. He clambered down the stairs to the small cellar bar. Everything was cod-Irish, except for the barman, who was from Naples. The bar itself offered two pumps of lager and six of Guinness, which stood like cranes on the dock waiting to unload cargo. A dusty accordion hung overhead alongside an old brass clock that had stopped many years ago. Somehow, down here, time didn’t much matter. A couple in overcoats stood at one end of the bar sharing a plate of Rossmore oysters, and in an alcove, his wallet on the table in front of him, an unlit hand-rolled cigarette in his hand, sat Sean Breslin. He looked up as Harry shuffled awkwardly down the stairs, his gaze running from the cane to the leg and all the way up to the lacerated cheek before he met Harry’s eyes.

  ‘Mr Jones, this is a surprise. Had an accident?’

  ‘No accident, Sean.’

  Breslin didn’t invite him to sit, but Harry did so nonetheless. He waved at the barman and ordered a pint of the black liquid. Neither of them spoke as they waited for the drink to be poured.

  ‘No, not an accident,’ Harry said again, sipping through the head of the beer when at last it arrived and savouring the bite of burnt barley.

  ‘Keeping bad company, then.’

  ‘That’s for sure.’

  Breslin picked up his own beer, slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. ‘Why are you here, Mr Jones?’

  ‘To tell you that if ever you set any of your friends on me again, I’ll break every bone in your own legs and enough of those in other parts to ensure you’ll never be able to take a crap in comfort again.’ There was no animosity evident in Harry’s voice, this was professional, like two farmers discussing the weather.

  Breslin raised his eyes. ‘Ah, been busy jumping to conclusions, have we, Mr Jones?’ His accent seemed less polished, more rolling than on their previous encounters, as if this place took him back to earlier days of sea cliffs and mist-filled breezes.

  ‘Take it as a compliment. It seems you’re a man of your word, Sean. No sooner have you threatened me than I get chosen for a little Irish punishment. They always liked going for kneecaps in your time, didn’t they, the Boys? Not so much with baseball bats but with bullets. Seem to remember they even used the occasional electric drill.’

  Breslin drank, wiping the cream from his top lip with the back of his hand. ‘This is fine stuff, wouldn’t you say, Mr Jones? Best beer in central London. But I’m surprised to see you drinking it, with your prejudice about all things Irish.’

  ‘Not prejudice.’

  ‘Almighty God, but you go getting yourself beaten up, add two and two together and already you’re making it a full Irish dozen.’

  ‘Just three, that’s all. You know, we were really close, face to face, the sort of thing that happens when you’re having the bejesus beaten out of you. And one of them had been drinking this stuff less than half an hour before. I took it as a small clue.’

  ‘So, it’s innocent until proven Irish, still. Not much changes with you people.’

  ‘Let’s just put it down to experience, shall we? And I came here to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.’ He stared at Breslin, who held his gaze, not blinking or faltering. ‘We don’t need all this, not with a kidnap to deal with.’

  ‘Know a thing or two about kidnap, do you?’

  ‘As, I think, do you.�
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  ‘I’ve heard it happens.’

  ‘Happened a lot back home, didn’t it?’

  ‘So it’s said.’

  ‘Then let’s say we’ve both got a bit of previous.’

  As they stared into each other’s eyes, Breslin realized that Harry understood, about him and about his past. Sloppy had filled in some of the detail. Breslin had started out as a bookkeeper in Dundalk, in those days a dump of a town that squatted only minutes away from the hated border with the North. It was a place of squalor; the lane where Breslin was raised had neither running water nor inside toilets. It was also a place of deep-rooted nationalism, where the bars openly displayed their hardline sympathies and where the outhouses and the fields beyond hid a history filled with gruesome secrets. Breslin had started off in the building industry, becoming one of the big players, making his fortune bulldozing the sordid concrete boxes of the slum estates and rebuilding his home town on a tide of European money – a good chunk of which had ended up in the pockets of the IRA. Find a clever bookkeeper and every lorryload of bricks or cement or lumber or steel joists would have a percentage added on, insurance companies would be scammed for building-site accidents that never happened, dirty money would be laundered and its grubby roots buried beneath new roads and concrete foundations. No one had ever been able to nail Breslin for it, but you didn’t survive in those days without playing the game, and if you played it well, you prospered. Sean Breslin had not only prospered but branched out, given his son the education that in his day his parents could never afford, then set him up in a local newspaper business. Two very different generations and, according to Sloppy, the divide was still apparent. The father remained as hard-nosed as he was hard-line, while the son seemed to have put much of his Irish past behind him. Sean didn’t care for that, not a bit.

  Yet if the father had any reservations about his relationship with his son, they were as nothing compared with what he felt about Harry. If it were a fault to be born British, in Sean’s eyes it was a crime to have been in the army in Northern Ireland, and nothing less than damnation to have served in the hated SAS. A record like that could mean only one thing. Harry had blood on his hands. Irish blood. All the way up to his elbows. Even sitting with a man like this was enough to curdle a decent pint. These two men shared a past, and their mutual loathing spilled over in each other’s eyes.

  ‘Well, at least we understand each other, Sean.’

  ‘I think we do, Mr Jones.’

  ‘Since neither of us wants to ruin our reputation by being seen with each other,’ Harry said, ‘I’ll be off.’ He swallowed the last of his beer and rose stiffly from his seat. ‘But one last thing. A bit of advice.’

  Breslin sighed. ‘Don’t let me be delaying you. I swear you’ve tried to give me more than enough advice for one day.’

  ‘The kidnappers.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘All my instincts tell me they’re hired hands. Mercenaries. And kidnap isn’t their usual style of business. I may be wrong but right from the start they seem to have been in one hell of a hurry, like they have a deadline. Kidnappers often let the family wait for days, weeks, before they get in touch, let them stew, but not this lot. It seemed they couldn’t wait to get on with it.’

  Breslin stared, didn’t respond.

  ‘Don’t delay too long, Sean. Time’s not on your side in this one.’ He leaned on his stick and was limping for the stairs when Breslin spoke.

  ‘In the name of God, sit down and finish yer drink.’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘Then have another.’

  Harry stopped, startled, turned slowly. ‘With you?’

  The eyes remained as cold as a winter’s dawn, but Breslin waved a paw and ordered two fresh pints. He waited until they were making damp rings on the table and the barman had retreated before he spoke. ‘I’m beginning to think you sit next to the Devil himself.’

  ‘Because I’m English.’

  ‘Because all too often you turn out to be right.’ The admission seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth, which he attempted to wash away with another swig of beer. ‘They’re in Italy, just like you said. Their man took a real wobble when Hiley threw the suggestion at him, then those very strange people back in the voice lab say it hit him right where it hurts.’

  Harry nodded, but said nothing. Being right about Italy didn’t give him bragging rights with a man like Breslin.

  ‘But this stuff about them being in a hurry. Hiley – clever fella, that one – he told them we couldn’t be burying the diaries forever, that we needed a time limit. They came back and said six months, but he said that wasn’t good enough, that we’d have to start publishing something or the whole feckin’ lot would leak. Very persuasive, he was.’

  ‘He’s right.’

  ‘Six months. Does that sound like they’re in a hurry to you, Mr Jones?’

  ‘Depends what they come back with. There’s something in those diaries that simply won’t be relevant in six months. And if you were sitting on their pot, you’d give yourself a good margin for safety, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what I was thinking, too.’

  It was the first time they had agreed about anything. They sipped in silence for a moment.

  ‘They’ve sent proof of life?’ Harry asked.

  Breslin nodded.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Happy as a lamb in April, what do you expect?’ Breslin spat sarcastically. He sucked at his unlit cigarette, but seemed to derive no satisfaction from it. His lips grew thin, as though sewn together by someone who’d made a pretty poor job of it.

  ‘Tell me, Sean, how deep were you into things? Back during the Troubles?’

  ‘Let’s just be saying that you and I will probably both end up in Hell, but squatting on different sides of the fire.’

  ‘Not on different sides, not on this one.’

  Breslin’s lips were working now, the first sign of emotion his face had betrayed, and as they parted they poured forth scorn. ‘For the love of God, this is not about you and me, nor even you and my daughter-in-law. This is about Ruari.’

  ‘I understand. Your son as good as said you’d crawl across broken glass for him.’

  ‘God help me but I’d even sit down and drink with you.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d prefer the broken glass.’

  ‘Any day.’

  ‘I’d still like to help. If you want it.’

  Breslin took a deep swig of his beer, swilling it around to wash a bad taste out of his mouth. He ran a hand through his hair so that it stood up on end as though it had a mind of its own, was cussed, awkward, like the man himself. ‘In my country we’re forced to hack our living from a hard soil, Mr Jones. We hold on to what we have. We learn to love with a fierce passion, even when we know how often that happiness is sure to be ripped from our hands. I love Rauri, and with every part of my Irish soul. He is the future, my future, even after I’m dead and long gone. So I will accept your offer of help, because you are my enemy’s enemy.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘And even if fairies build their nests at the bottom of my garden and it turns out that I should live for a thousand years, there’s not one of them when I’ll be of a mind to trust you.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A bulbous silver moon hung over Harare, swollen with rain. The clouds had cleared, at least for the moment, leaving a sky filled with a million angels’ eyes, yet down on the streets the city still sweated. Concrete and Africa made an uncomfortable combination. In Chombo’s view it had been a mistake for Africans to mimic the colonial master and adopt his clothing, his language, his way of life. The white man was not suited to this place and neither were his habits, least of all this city, which blotted the landscape like a mausoleum. It had been known as Salisbury but they had wiped that away, given it the Shona name of Harare, yet its puddles were still the same and its stench had grown even worse. In some ways Chombo missed the old days.
As he sat on his balcony and listened to the buzz-saw sound of mosquitoes cutting through the rumble of traffic, he reflected on how much simpler many things had been in colonial times. Four words, that was all they had needed in those days. Hate The White Man. A straightforward creed made all the easier by the stupidities of the white-pimp Prime Minister Ian Smith and his absurd henchmen. But old habits die hard, the hate lingered on, except now all too often it was turned on themselves.

  During his time in Boston, Chombo had given a lecture to his fellow students about the situation back home in what was then called Rhodesia. He gave many such talks on the campuses that crowded the Charles River basin, evenings of colour and passion, pizza and beer, when he had described the fight for freedom in his home country. Often there was a fee for his labours, and always he found a choice of gullible young women keen to show off their liberal East Coast consciences by inviting him into their beds. One evening in a crowded library he had offered his usual performance, the eyes of his audience filling with indignation as he had denounced the imperialist oppressor, when a young man stood up at the back of the hall to ask a question. He had dark eyes and beard, and was wearing a yarmulke, no surprise there. ‘Hey, Chombo, enjoyed the talk, almost as much as I did last year. Long live the revolution,’ the young man called out, to the accompaniment of many nodding heads and a scattering of applause. ‘You’re dedicated, that’s for sure, gotta give you that. But if the revolution’s over there, man, what the hell you doing here?’

  Even then Chombo had known how to play the martyr. ‘That is a very good question, my friend. And the answer is this. It is because the revolution cannot succeed without your help, your moral support and your money. And also because,’ he proclaimed to the rows of young, eager faces, ‘Mr Ian Smith’s bullets do not recognize the fact that I, Moses Chombo, have a Ph.D.’ Well, not quite true, he had a master’s and was intending to work towards a doctorate, he’d even got a grant for it, although in the event he would never manage to finish it. That night he had crashed his car, with two drunken teenagers on board, sisters, they’d been badly injured, and his life had taken a different course. Yet in all the years since, and no matter how fast and how far he ran, he could never escape those days and the lie they gave to his legend.