The Exit Club: Book 4: Conspirators

by Shaun Clarke

  ‘Shit!’ Marty exclaimed.

  ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ Wallace said, ‘and unfortunately you’re going to have to eat it. They have a special job for you.’

  He turned the car away from the high wall and drove back through the stormy night.

  Chapter Five

  Already immersed in the esoteric language of the SAS with its bashas, bukits, casevacs, crap-hats, Head Sheds, percentage players, Ruperts, spiders, scran and wads and mixed-fruit puddings, Marty soon found himself having to adapt to another language altogether. Here, where the green slime of the Kremlin worked hand-inglove with the spooks of the 14th Intelligence Company, Marty was plunged into the murky world of MIOs and Milos and Fincos and COPs, as well as MI5, MI6, the RUC CID, and touts and turncoats and dickers. He soon learned that this new language covered a multitude of sins, most caused by the constant, bitter conflicts between Army Intelligence, MI5, MI6 and the RUC and even the green slime. He also learned that the nature of war was changing and that this war in Northern Ireland was dirtier than he could ever have imagined. It was war in a cesspit.

  The two main non-military intelligence agencies were MI6, the secret service intelligence branch run by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, never publicly acknowledged, and MI5, the security service openly charged with counter-espionage. Neither of these agencies trusted the other and each was always trying to block the other’s plans, even where valuable. Likewise, the RUC, which had an almost tribal secretiveness, was running its Special Branch agents with scant regard for the needs or requirements of British Army Security. At the same time, the RUC Special Branch was running its own, secret cross-border contacts with the Irish Republic’s Gardai Special Branch, which effectively left the other organizations floundering in the dark.

  Generally, then, as Marty soon found out, because of this complex web of mutually suspicious and secretive organizations, the few SAS intelligence men in the province, occupying key positions at the Army HQ in Lisburn and elsewhere, were often exposed to internecine rivalries when trying to coordinate operations against the paramilitaries. This was made even more difficult because the SAS were not trusted either and certainly their presence here was resented.

  Every regular army unit in the province had closeobservation platoons, or COPs, specially trained for undercover operations; but the SAS had been brought in, among other reasons, because regular army soldiers had often got into trouble when trying to pass themselves off as Irishmen in the pubs and clubs of the hard men. As the SAS were specially trained for covert operations, it was felt that they could act as observers more efficiently. Nevertheless, their presence was resented and they often came up against strong resistance when offering proposals.

  Indeed, while those repeatedly, usually in relationships between allies who did not even trust each other, let alone the SAS, soldiers from other areas were acting as Military Intelligence Officers (MIOs) or Field Intelligence NCOs (Fincos) in liaison with the RUC. Such men and women came from the Intelligence Corps, Royal Military Police, and many other sources. The link with each RUC police division was a Special Military Intelligence Unit composed of MIOs, Fincos and Milos (Military Intelligence Liaison Officers). Therefore, a MIO or Finco working as part of such a unit could find himself torn by conflicting loyalties to the RUC, Army Intelligence, and MI6.

  It was the death of such a Finco that had started the whole bloody mess.

  Marty’s CO in Intelligence, Lieutenant-Colonel LeBlanc, explained to him that a Finco called Corporal Jim Partridge had been one of the best of the 14th Intelligence Company’s undercover agents, infiltrating the most dangerous Republican ghettoes of Belfast and few SAS officers struggled vain, to create trusting collecting invaluable information. Unfortunately, he had been pressured by members of the security service into routing his information to his own superiors via MI5. In doing so, he had innocently sealed his own fate, as well as the fate of six informants. A few weeks ago, he had handed over six first-class sources of information to MI5 and within a week they had all been assassinated, one after the other, by the IRA. Filled with guilt and traumatized, Partridge committed suicide.

  Apart from the shocking loss of so many watchers, including Partridge, the assassinations proved that MI5 had a leak in its system. After investigating the case, LeBlanc discovered that the leak was the 14th Intelligence Company’s own source, Seamus O’Sullivan, who had always been viewed by the company spooks, or intelligence officers, as a hardline Republican not to be trusted. As LeBlanc found out upon examination of the facts, O’Sullivan was an active IRA member merely masquerading as a tout in order to pass on intelligence in two directions: valuable information to the IRA, damaging intelligence to MI5. However, having ignored the advice of‘14’ and used O’Sullivan without its knowledge, MI5, instead of punishing him, had tried to avoid embarrassment by simply dropping him and trying to cover his tracks.

  Outraged by this, a young officer with ’14’, Captain Peter Marsden, who had the reputation of a big-timer– someone working out on the edge and possessed of extreme braggadocio – determined to avenge the deaths of Corporal Partridge and his six unfortunate touts. He did so by driving without permission to O’Sullivan’s farmhouse in the ‘bandit country’ of South Armagh and killing him with a Browning High Power handgun while he was seated at his own kitchen table.

  ‘According to one of my touts,’ LeBlanc told Marty, ‘Captain Marsden has a reputation with the IRA as a percentage player who’s willing to take big chances and even bend the law of the land to gain a victory. For instance, he has an exceptional record of capturing IRA commanders in South Armagh and handing them over to the RUC. Most of those captured have insisted that Marsden crossed the border illegally to pick them up and deposit them back in Northern Ireland, where they could legally be arrested. Though Marsden has always denied this, we know it to be true, but naturally we accept his denials and let him get on with it. Nevertheless, such actions have gained him a high profile with the IRA and now, given the style of the O’Sullivan assassination as well as the weapon used – nine-millimetre bullets from a Browning High Power handgun were found embedded in the walls of the victim’s kitchen – they’re convinced that Marsden is the assassin, which I don’t doubt for a second.’

  ‘So what’s the sting in this tale, boss?’

  LeBlanc sighed wearily. ‘This war is a filthy business, Staff-Sergeant, and we have to do a lot of filthy things to win it. We close our eyes to the illegal activities of men like Captain Marsden, we use women to seduce Catholics into turning and becoming our touts, then, when the touts feel they’ve done too much for us and are under suspicion, we blackmail them into continuing until they are caught. We spy on people. We set up illegal ambushes and say we shot in self-defence. We do all that and an awful lot more and now we want you to help us.’

  Though thoroughly outraged by what he was hearing, Marty said, ‘I’m all ears, boss.’

  Pleased, LeBlanc continued: ‘Marsden’s high profile is beginning to cause us embarrassment and could lead to serious trouble. We have it from one of our touts that because of the killing of Seamus O’Sullivan, a particularly troublesome PIRA ASU – ’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Provisional IRA active service unit.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘This particular PIRA ASU of four men, led by Jack Flagherty, has earmarked Marsden for a revenge assassination. We want Flagherty. We’ve wanted him for years. He’s a leading hard man responsible for many deaths, including the six dead sources of Corporal Partridge. Flagherty also rules his own turf in the Falls with an iron fist, spying on his neighbours, holding summary trials in back rooms, and personally supervising the PIRA punishments. We can’t afford to let him damage Captain Marsden. Apart from personal considerations, it would be a great boost to the flagging morale of the IRA and we can’t afford that. So we have to neutralize Flagherty before he gets to Marsden.’

  ‘Which is where I come in.’

  ‘Correct
. One of my touts, Finn Riley, lives directly opposite Flagherty’s house. Riley’s the bookkeeper for his local IRA wing and started raiding the till to finance the high-flown tastes of his mistress. That woman was actually set up to seduce him on behalf of MI5. When the time came for Riley’s books to be examined, he needed to replenish the money and tearfully confided in the woman. Naturally she directed him to a member of MI5 who gave him the money required on the condition that he become a full time Fred, or tout, for them – which he did. Now he’s increasingly worried that his IRA mates will eventually tumble him and he wants out before they do so. We’ve agreed to set him up in Australia with new identification in return for the use of his loft for the next couple of weeks. I want you and a couple of your best men to set up an OP in that loft. We’ll also put a bug in Flagherty’s house, so you can overhear and record everything said there. Flagherty’s PIRA unit meets three times a week in that house and I’m hoping that your surveillance will produce the information we need to move against him and either put him in Long Kesh prison or in his coffin.’

  ‘How do we get into the loft?’ Marty asked as professionally as possible, concealing the fact that he was disturbed to be involved in such a murky, immoral business.

  ‘I’ll call for a cordon-and-search sweep of the lower Falls Road, with particular emphasis on that street. This will be a big sweep, using hundreds of troops. We’ll make a show of searching every house, throwing the occupants out into the street until the job’s completed. While the houses are empty, we’ll insert you and your men into Riley’s loft, directly facing Flagherty’s place. At the same time, we’ll bug Flagherty’s house with a miniaturized microphone probe tuned to the STG surveillance equipment in your OP.’

  ‘Sounds great, boss,’ Marty said, though he still had his doubts about the morality of this kind of operation, which seemed a long way from the honourable warfare he was used to.

  ‘I’m not finished yet,’ LeBlanc responded. ‘Flagherty also has a country cottage in South Armagh, close to the border. He holds some of his PIRA meetings there and, we believe, sometimes uses the place to store ammunition. While you men are keeping tabs on his house in Belfast, another two surveillance teams will be setting up rural OPs overlooking his cottage, one on the road that leads to Belfast, the other on the road leading to Dublin. Based on information we receive from the three OPs, we’ll decide just where and when to move against him. The assault will have to be lawful as well as highly public, so the situation has to be just right. Now do you want to be in on this?’

  Still filled with doubts, but willing to try anything to get out of this office, Marty said, ‘I’m your man.’

  Chapter Six

  He saw the awesome might of the state operating against its own citizens when, in the early hours of the following morning, Saracen armoured cars, armoured troopcarriers, or ‘pigs’, and RUC paddy wagons rumbled into the lower Falls with their headlights beaming into the darkness. The many vehicles moved ominously past fortified police stations and army barricades along the Falls Road without interference, then broke up into separate columns that turned into three parallel side streets to begin the early-morning cordon-and-search sweep. Within minutes the chosen area was surrounded and the streets were blocked off.

  When the roaring of an approaching helicopter was joined to the rumble of the advancing Saracens and pigs, a youthful ‘dicker’ looked up, saw what was happening, and shouted a warning, his voice echoing eerily in the silence. Instantly, his mates materialized out of shadowed doorways and narrow, littered alleyways to add their bellowed warnings to his own.

  Even as sleepy citizens started opening their front doors, many still wearing pyjamas or dressing gowns, British Army and the ‘maroon machine’ (Parachute Regiment troops) poured out of the pigs, into dark streets streaked with morning light. Wearing DPM clothing and helmets, but bulked out even more with ArmourShield General Purpose Vests, or GPVs, including ceramic contoured plates, fragmentation vests, and protective groin panels, they looked like invaders from outer space. Even more frightening, they were armed with sledgehammers, assault rifles and MP5 submachine guns, the last of these being particularly effective in confined spaces. Others, the ‘snatch’ teams, there to take in the prisoners, looked just as fearsome in full riot gear, with shields and truncheons.

  RUC policemen wearing flak jackets and armed either with Rugers submachine guns or batons jumped out of the back of the paddy wagons and surrounded their vehicles as the soldiers and paratroopers raced off in opposite directions along the street, hammering on doors with the butts of their rifles and bawling for the people to come out. At the same time, regular army snipers were clambering onto the sloping, slated roofs of the houses from lightweight aluminium assault ladders to give covering fire, if necessary, with LeeEnfield sniper rifles. Wearing earphones, they would be warned about any likely trouble spots either by officers on the street or by the Royal Marine Gazelle helicopter that was now hovering right above the rooftops, its spinning rotors creating a fierce wind that blew the rubbish along the gutters.

  ‘Come out, you Fenian bastards!’ a paratrooper bawled. ‘On the bloody pavement!’

  Sitting in the claustrophobic interior of a Saracen, beside Taff, TT and Corporal Alan Pearson, their new signals specialist, Marty looked out through the partially open doors and saw the soldiers pushing angry women and dazed children aside to grab their menfolk and haul them out onto the pavement. Other soldiers were forcing their way into the terraced houses to begin deliberately noisy, destructive searches of the premises.

  Shocked to see such a sight on British soil, Marty was even more shocked when, upon the refusal of certain tenants to open their front doors, soldiers with sledgehammers smashed the doors open and then rushed inside, either pushing the tenants back in ahead of them or hauling them out onto the pavement. As the older male residents of the street, most still in pyjamas, were pushed face first against the front walls of their houses and made to spread their hands and legs for rough frisking, women screamed abuse, children either did the same or burst into tears, and the adolescent dickers farther along the street hurled stones, lumps of concrete and obscene abuse.

  Still looking out of the Saracen, Marty saw two of the soldiers grab a ‘suspect’ wearing pyjamas, haul him away from the wall where he had been frisked, and push him roughly into the centre of the road, where an RUC policeman thumped him with a truncheon and forced him up into the paddy wagon. A single pistol shot was followed instantly by the sound of breaking glass.

  ‘Mick bastard!’ a soldier bawled as he cracked a teenager’s head with the butt of his rifle, making him topple back and drop the pistol that he’d just fired wildly into the air. The teenager straightened up, removed his hand from his temple and looked in a dazed way at the blood on his fingers; he was then practically jerked off his feet by the soldiers and kicked brutally towards an RUC officer who prodded him with a truncheon up into the paddy wagon like someone using an electric prod on a cow. ‘Get in there, you murderous Fenian bastard!’ the RUC officer bawled, giving the youth a final blow with the truncheon as he stumbled into the paddy wagon. Elsewhere, soldiers with riot shields were herding groups of men against the wall and using truncheons to force their legs apart.

  ‘Hands against the wall!’ another soldier was bawling, either genuinely enraged or behaving as instructed by his superiors to cause maximum distraction. ‘Spread your legs, then don’t make a fucking move!’

  As other soldiers poured in and out of houses, often smashing their way in with sledgehammers, housewives continued to scream abuse and attacked them with their clenched fists, children ran about like wild animals, some laughing, others sobbing, and the dickers farther along the street kept throwing stones and lumps of concrete at the line of soldiers forming a cordon of riot shields across the brightening road.

  Suddenly, as Marty was watching another couple of Catholic men being prodded up into the paddy wagon visible outside the Saracen, the half-open doors w
ere jerked fully open and Sergeant-Major Wallace appeared with a group of heavily armed paratroopers bunched up behind him.

  ‘Right,’ he said to Marty with an urgent wave of his free hand, the other clasping a submachine gun. ‘Let’s go. Your kit’s already been taken in, so let’s get over there as quickly as possible. Don’t stop for anything.’

  The four SAS men climbed out of the Saracen. Like most of the army troops, they were wearing DPM clothing, but with camouflaged soft combat caps instead of helmets and leather-and-Gore-tex Danner boots instead of standard-issue British Army boots. They did not have their Bergens, as these would have been spotted instantly; instead, they were carrying only what kit they could manage on their belts, in their pockets and in their hands. This included fourteen days’ high-calorie rations, mostly candy, chocolate and sweets. It also included, on the belt, bivvy bags containing changes of underwear and first-aid kit, torches and binoculars, and extra ammunition for the only weapons they were allowed on this operation: the Browning High Power handgun and the short Sterling Browning High Power handgun and the short Sterling round box magazine. However, as these alone would not have been enough for this lengthy urban OP, the rest of their kit was being carried to the OP location by an escort patrol from the maroon machine. Some of those paratroopers had already entered the house opposite and were ‘mouse-holing’ along the single loft space of the terrace to Riley’s loft, located directly opposite Flagherty’s house. The kit taken in by them included water in plastic bottles, spare radio batteries, medical packs, extra ammunition, cameras and rolls of 35mm film, tape recorders, thermal imagers and nightvision scopes. Also an advanced laser audio surveillance transceiver, plastic-backed notebooks and ball pens, sleeping bags, packs of moisturized cloths for the cleaning of faces and hands; towels, toilet paper, and sealable plastic bags for the storage of excrement and urine.