As he read the message that the aide gave him his attentive smile had switched to a frown of public concern, studied by the bankers round the table with him in the first-floor salon of No. 10. They looked for a clue as to the contents and information that was important enough to intercede in discussions on the progress of the floating pound, albeit the end of the discussions. The Prime Minister noted their anticipation and was anxious to satisfy it.
‘Just on a final note, gentlemen.’ He refolded the typewritten sheet. ‘You will all be reading it in the papers tomorrow morning, but you might be interested to hear that we have caught and killed the man that assassinated Henry Danby. He was shot in Belfast this morning after being hunted down as part of a special investigation that was launched from this building a few hours after our colleague was murdered.’
There was a murmur of applause round the table and a banging of the palms of hands on the paper-strewn mahogany surface.
‘But you will be sorry to hear, as I am, that the man we sent to find this terrorist was himself killed in the shooting exchange. He’d been operating under cover there for some weeks, and obviously carried out a difficult task extremely successfully and with great bravery. The whole concept of this intelligence operation really goes back to the last war. My family were involved in Special Operations – you know, the crowd that put agents into the occupied countries. I had a hell of a job getting the military and police to agree to it. But it just shows, you sometimes need a fresh approach to these things. Perhaps we should get that general over there, who always seems to be wanting more troops, to have a try at banking and running a budget!’
There was general and polite laughter.
‘He’ll get a medal, won’t he? The man you sent over there? They look after the families and all that sort of thing, I suppose?’ the elegantly-dressed deputy chairman of the Bank of England said.
‘Oh, I’m sure he will. Well, I think we can adjourn now. Perhaps you would care to join me for a drink. I have a luncheon, but I’m not off to that till I’ve had a drop of something.’
Later in the day he called the Under-Secretary to express his appreciation of the way the operation had been handled.
‘It’ll get a good show in the papers, I trust,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘We ought to blow our own trumpets a bit when we chalk one up.’
‘I don’t think there will be too much of that, sir.’ The civil servant replied decisively. ‘MOD have put out a short statement only. I think their feeling is that under-cover is bad news in Ulster, and that apart from anything else it was a damn close thing whether our man got theirs first or vice versa. They’re playing it rather low key I’m afraid, sir.’
‘As you like. Though I sometimes feel we don’t give ourselves the pat on the back we deserve. I’ll concede that. One more thing. The man we sent over there, I’d like a medal for him now it’s over. What sort of chap was he, by the way?’
‘I’ll see to that. He already had an MC from Aden. We could make it a bar to that, but perhaps that’s a bit on the short side. I personally would favour the OBE. The George Cross is a bit more than we usually go for in these circumstances, and it would obviously provoke a deal of talk. You asked what sort of chap. Pretty straightforward, not too bright. Dedicated, conscientious, and a lot of guts. He was the right man.’
The Prime Minister thanked him and rang off. He hurried from his study to the Humber waiting outside the front door of the official residence. He was late for the House.
The Army Council of the Provisional IRA, the top planning wing of the military side of the movement, had noted the killing of Downs. The Chief of Staff had received a letter from the Brigade commander in Belfast relaying the collapse of their man’s morale and his failure in the last two missions assigned to him.
The two members of the Council who had been asked to report on the practicality and desirability of further assassinations in the political arena, particularly the plan involving the British Prime Minister, delivered their assessment at the first meeting of all members after the Ardoyne shoot-out.
They advised against the continuation of attacks on the style of the Danby assassination. It had, they said, been disastrous for fund-raising in the United States: the picture of Mrs Danby and her children at the funeral had been flashed across the Atlantic and coast to coast by the wire syndication services. The Provisionals’ supporters in the States reported that November’s fund-raising and on into December would show a marked drop. They said that if there were a repeat or a stepping-up of the tactics the results could prove disastrous. And money was always a key factor for the movement: RPG7s and their rockets did not come cheap, not from Czechoslovakia or Libya nor from anywhere else.
The Chief of Staff summed up that in the foreseeable future they would not consider a repetition of the Danby attack, but he finished: ‘I still defend the attack we carried out against Danby. That bastard deserved to go. He was a straight, legitimate target, and it was well done, well carried out. They acknowledge that on their side, too. There’s been no trumpeting on their side even though they’ve shot our lad. They’ve been keeping their heads down for more than a week.’
There was criticism in the Council, that had not been voiced while Downs was still on the run, of the way the Chief of Staff had monopolized the planning of the attack. That would stand against him in the future, being one of the factors in his eventual replacement and consequent demotion.
Little of the credit for the killing of Billy Downs landed on Davidson’s desk. It jumped with no small agility to the name of Harry McEvoy via the desk of the Permanent Under-Secretary.
Frost put in a long and detailed complaint about the amount of work the independent and, for so many days, unidentified agent had meant for the security services. He logged the man-hours involved in the search for Harry at the scrap yards, and for the girl round the Clonard, and described them as wasteful and unprofessional. The control of the agent received scathing criticism, particularly the inability of London to reach their man when they wanted to draw him out. The paper concluded with the demand that such an operation should not be repeated during the following eighteen months that Frost would be on the staff of Northern Ireland headquarters.
The Under-Secretary who had a copy of the document forwarded to him read it over the phone to Davidson. The response was predictably angry.
‘He forgets it was over there and on his side of the fence that some big mouth let the cat out of the bag.’ Davidson already had the transcript of the interrogation of the stricken Duffryn. Still suffering from shock, the young man had given Special Branch all of his limited knowledge of the Provisional IRA and its affairs relating to Harry McEvoy.
‘He forgets that our man got the fellow, not all their troops and police and Special Branch and SIB, and whatever they call themselves, SAS and the others.’ Davidson roared it into the receiver.
The Under-Secretary soothed. ‘They have a point, you know. This bit how you couldn’t reach him, and he didn’t stay where he was supposed to, that was a bit irregular.’
‘The way they clod about over there, I’m not surprised he didn’t go to the house they fixed for him. The fact is we were set a mission, and carried it out, with success. Is that cause for a bloody inquest?’
Davidson had not been told how Harry had died. That was to be kept very close in London. ‘Need to Know’ was being applied with rigour. The Under-Secretary decided that if the PM wasn’t on the list then Davidson ranked no greater priority.
‘Of course the mission was a success, but it’s put a great strain on inter-service and inter-department co-operation. The feeling at MOD is that a similar operation would not be mounted again. That means, I greatly regret to say, that the team we set up to direct our man will have to be dismantled.’ There was no change in his voice as he delivered the hammer blow. It gave him no pleasure, but Davidson was so excitable that one really did have to spell it out in simple words and get it over with. He went on: ‘I did have hope
s at one stage that if this went off without a hitch we might have had something a bit more regular going through Dorking. Make a habit out of the place. But that’s not to be.’
Davidson could recognize the shut-out. The shouting was over. He asked, ‘And what now? What happens to me?’
‘It’s recognized here, Davidson, that in fact you did very well on this one, particularly in the preparation of our man. You made him ready for a difficult and dangerous task, which was subsequently carried out with great expertise. You must not take all that Frost says too seriously. You’ve a great deal of experience to offer, and this showed in the way you got the fellow ready. I want you to think about it carefully, and not come to any hasty decision, but the feeling is that there’s a good opening abroad for you.’
Here it comes, the old pay off, reckoned Davidson. What would they have for him, sewing blankets in the Aleutians?
‘You’ve built up great experience of counter-terrorist operations.’ ?The civil servant kept going – don’t lose pace, don’t let him interrupt – ‘I won’t beat about the bush. Hong Kong wants a man who can advise them on the posture they should be in. Now don’t say anything hasty, the terms are first class. You’d get more than I’m getting. Good allowances, good accommodation, and pretty much of a free hand. Probably live off expenses and bank the rest, I’d say. Don’t give me an answer now, but sleep on it and call me in the morning. Cheers, and we all think you did well.’
The conversation was over.
Davidson ranged round the office, fumbling at his papers, diving into the drawers of the old wooden desk. He aimed a kick at the folded camp bed away in the corner, not used since the last Sunday night of his vigil. It took around an hour to find the will and inclination to exert some order to the anger of his feelings. The documents and maps of the operation filled two briefcases. The rest was government property. Some bloody man could clear that up. Sort it out themselves.
He made a call to his wife. Didn’t speak much, just said he’d be home early, that he had some news, they would be going out for a meal. Then he locked up. He’d thought about Harry considerably since the shooting, and by the time he had reached his commuter train his rage had subsided and he brooded in a corner over the evening paper about the young man who had died in Belfast . . . sent away across the water with all that damn-fool optimism coursing through him.
For days Mrs Duncan talked of little more than the strange events that preceded the death of her favourite lodger.
That the man who shared her bathroom, her front room and occasionally her kitchen, who lived in her best back bedroom should have turned out to be an English agent was rather too much for her to serve out in a single session of conversation. Her neighbours came several times to hear the full saga, culminating in the eye-witness description of the final shoot-out beyond the front garden gate.
She was to remain unaware of her full role in the death of Harry and Billy Downs. She never discovered that it was her chatter over the back fence about the strange accent of the man who lived under her roof that was to start the process that led, near-directly, to the gunfire in the street (interrupting her late Monday morning breakfast). She told those who came to listen to her that the thing she found the strangest was the confidence and authority with which Harry was holding the gun as he shot down Duffryn against the lamp-post (a few feet from where she stood at the door). The cold methodical power with which that quiet man, a man she had grown to like but knew little about, executed the youngster, had shaken her more than any of the other horrors of five years of living on the Falls.
The army had come mid-morning and backed a Saracen right up to the gate. Two men in civilian clothes had waited till the doors were opened and screened them from casual view from the pavements, then hurried into the house. They had searched Harry’s room slowly and carefully while soldiers hovered round the house and the street was sealed to all cars. When the men left it was with all Harry’s possessions slung together into big transparent plastic bags.
Later that same day Josephine arrived to help with the teas. It was a wasted visit, as the guests had cried off. There were no takers for the lodging used by British intelligence. Some telephoned their apologies and listed excuses, others simply failed to turn up. Instead Josephine was told the events of the day. She listened without comment, and sat on a straight chair in the kitchen, sipping her tea, and smoking a cigarette. She was another who would never learn her full part in the affair. She went home that night believing her information alone had led the Provisionals to Harry. In the months ahead she was to stay distant from any connection with politics and with violence. Left alone by the IRA, she took to remaining at home in the evenings with her mother, shutting out the memories of the few hours she had spent with Harry, of how he had betrayed her, and of how she had betrayed him.
Billy Downs’s funeral was a bigger day than any in his young life. A huge and winding crocodile of relatives and friends marched behind his tricolour-draped coffin up the Falls Road. It had been the army’s intention to prevent the firing of the traditional volley over the body, but the procession diverted into the back streets of the Lower Falls and before it emerged again the shots had been fired. Photographers were icily warned of the consequences of taking pictures.
Eight men from Ypres Avenue took the weight of the coffin on their shoulders for the first part of the journey to Milltown Cemetery. Grim, set faces, they marched at the head of a crowd estimated by police at around three thousand. Behind them came the display of force, youths and girls in semi-uniform, the green motif dominating, polished Sam Brownes, shouted commands and the tramping of feet.
At the bleak, over-ornate, Milltown gates faces in the crowd were recorded by the Asahi cameras of the military from behind the sandbags on top of the walls of the Andersonstown bus station. Inside the cemetery the Chief of Staff of the movement, who arrived and departed unseen by those who were hunting him, delivered the graveside oration. They played the ‘Last Post’ while small children in their best clothes played and skipped among the stones that marked the last resting place of other heroes of the Cause.
As weeks and months passed by, so increased the adulation and estimation in which Billy Downs was held. They named a club after him, and wove his picture into a big, wide banner. It was some eight feet across, with slots for two poles, one at each end, so that it could be carried high in procession on the marches the Provisionals organized.
The songs followed, sung with the nasal lament in the bars of Andersonstown and the Ardoyne to drinkers who sat silent and rapt. They were heavy with sentiment, helping to cement the legend that in Ulster solidifies so quickly. The brave soldier of the songs had been gunned down by the British killer squads while his woman and bairns were round him. It was as his wife had said it would be.
The Secretary of State had refused the request by Billy Downs’s wife that she be allowed to attend the funeral of her husband.
Early on the morning of her husband’s burial she was transferred from the police station where she had initially been held to Armagh women’s prison. She was declared an ‘A’ category prisoner, an automatic classification that took into account what she was accused of, not her potential as an escape risk. They flew her, with a prison escort, by Wessex helicopter from Belfast to the parade square of Gough barracks in the old cathedral town. When she stepped out onto the tarmac, half deafened by the rotor blades, and dominated by the armed men round her, she seemed to some who watched a pitiful and harmless creature. She still wore the green coat that she had put on the previous Monday morning to go and get her groceries from the shop on the corner in Ypres Avenue. By the time they had hustled her from the helicopter to the armoured car that waited on the edge of the square, she was shivering. It would be warmer when they reached the cells just down the road, and she would get a mug of tea then.
The Royal Air Force flew Harry out on a Hercules transporter, along with a cargo of freight and two private soldiers going home on compassionat
e leave.
The two boys, both in their teens and only just old enough to serve in the province, huddled in their canvas seats away from the tin box wrapped in sacking and strapped down with webbing to the floor of the aircraft. There was a brown label attached to the box, filled in with neat handwriting.
‘Says he’s a captain.’
‘It’s the one that did that shooting on Monday morning, and got it himself.’
‘Says on here he’s got an MC and all.’
‘Took one of their big men with him, didn’t he?’
‘He tracked this joker for weeks. The officers were talking about it. I heard it when I was on dinner-waiting. Lived right in amongst them.’
‘This is the first time I’ve been over, but I’ve nearly had a full tour, done three and a half months, but I’ve never seen an IRA man, or anything like one. All we do is patrol, patrol, patrol, but we never find much.’
‘Undercover agent, they called him in the paper.’
‘Didn’t do him much good, whatever he was.’
That terminated it. They spoke no more of Harry as the plane brought them down to Northolt, where it had all started six weeks earlier.
They buried Harry Brown in the village churchyard close to where his wife’s parents lived. By army standards it was a conventional funeral. There was an honour party, immaculate and creased. A staccato volley was fired over the grave. An army chaplain gave a short address by arrangement with the local vicar. In the event it was not much different from the funeral accorded to Billy Downs. Smaller, less stylized, less sentimental, but with all the same ingredients.
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