Bearings: The Compass Trilogy Part One

by Mr Iain F Johnston

  Sarah’s packet was impressive. Twenty seven years old. Single… She had excellent language skills, fluent in German, Swedish and Italian she also spoke Dutch like a native according to one of Charlie’s comments. A degree in Political Science, useful… Her test scores for Box were amazing…. No political affiliations, healthy sex life when it suited her, good… She’s no one’s arm candy… Both of her parents were alive. Her mother is a housewife, her father owned two Rover franchises aptly named ”Collins Rover”, one in Windsor the other in Ruislip, nice…! Two brothers, one older, Robert, he worked as a salesman at the Ruislip garage and one younger Paul, again good, she knew how to share… Paul was a tank driver in the Gulf, injured in combat… Wonder what he was doing now…?

  Ah, was lacking confidence in large groups and appeared to want to be overlooked, well we’d certainly work on that. This woman could be a superstar. It was about time she had the backing she needed.

  I’d read enough. Sarah was bright, intelligent and skilful. She’d do for us. I passed her packet to Chris with a little nod…

  “Sarah, when does your official employment end with Box, I assume the new Station Chief would want to keep you on even if in the short term to aid the transition…?”

  “1st April. He’s not keeping any of the senior station staff. A clean sweep he calls it, a new station for a new Belfast he says…”

  “And what do you say…? Honestly.”

  “I say it’s a mistake. He wants to be a politician. He sees it just as a stepping stone toward it. He’ll drop the ball there. The place is too real for characters like him. He just doesn’t understand that if it were a new Belfast, there wouldn’t be a Station Chief because they wouldn’t need a Station. The last time they had someone like him was in the mid-seventies, look what happened then… Can I say something else…?”

  “You can say whatever you like to us love…” “There is no PA to inter whatever is there…?”

  “No Sarah, there isn’t but I’ll say this… There will be a job for you, a senior position too. None of the positions have been filled yet simply because none have been created yet…We haven’t even got one for Charlie as the section hasn’t even really been created yet…”

  “We have active intelligence we’re working on I’d like you to have a look at it with us today and speak your mind, be as candid as you feel you need to be, using whatever language you feel you need to… Oh and by the way, Sarah…?”

  “Yes Section Chief…?”

  “The Adonis who is holding the doorframe up is Norman…” “Hello Norman…”

  “Hi there…!”

  I nodded at Chris and he followed me out into the lift foyer… “Lads…”

  “We know, you want the space for a few…”

  “She’s a star Iain, no mistake I can see why Charlie sent her…”

  “Are you ok with her looking at the INTEL, a female mind works different she may catch something we’ve missed…”

  “Yeah, I’ll ring the Mess and get some coffee and sandwiches up here, oh and tea…”

  We stayed in Janet’s office for obvious reasons…

  “We have very strong INTEL on McQueen; its light on the German and French side but Norman is working on that. One area we have nothing on is her detour into Belgium and her motivation for doing that. We are fairly confident Morris travelled to Belgium on Wednesday too but again our INTEL in this area is poor…”

  She nodded knowingly…

  “One of the main obstacles Sarah, is Box aren’t being particularly helpful and the Belgians are giving us the silent treatment. We’re not really known to them so we’ve hit a bit of a brick wall. We are waiting on Charlie, hopefully he’ll fair better…”

  Chris added…

  “Failing that we will have to escalate it to Robin, which is something we don’t want to do at this preliminary stage…”

  “Oh no problem, I can speak to VSSE and ADIV…”

  The Belgian State Security Service, Veiligheid Van de Saat-Surete de L’Etat (VSSE) and their General Intelligence and Security Service, Algemene Dienst Inlichting en Veiligheid (ADIV), were particularly cautious who they dealt with… If we could have communicated with them without the need to involve Robin, it would be a major feather in Sarah’s cap…

  I sat up…

  “Really…? You’ve just had another pay rise…! Norm…? Pack yer bags sunshine…!”

  “With pleasure boss, with great pleasure…!”

  He was growing in stature and becoming more confident. Ok, a pay rise helped but you didn’t get one of those by sitting at the back of the class, not here at any rate. Chris and I both looked at him approvingly.

  Sarah smiled and continued…

  “I handled signals traffic from them quite often. Their direct number, it’ll be in my sealed pouch at Brize.”

  Chris was taking notes, as all good interviewers should; he looked up studiously and said…

  “And the Dutch…?”

  “The Dutch…? Oh even more so… Many of the POIs visit Holland, PIRA has many sympathisers there. We also heard a very strong rumour that they have been funded on occasion by certain major players in their sex trade. I have the numbers for AIVD and the MIVD in my pouch. I have Arjen Van der Gruut’s number too. I’ve visited Zoetermeer on a number of occasions for conferences.”

  We had hit a brick wall a little with the Dutch, mainly due to our weak language skills. Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst, or AIVD, were the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service… We certainly would need their assistance…

  Chris looked at me and smiled as he said…

  “Are you packing me off too…? You two could clearly conquer the world…! Watch him Sarah pet, he’s a canny bastard that one. Norm’s already christened him Station Mis-Chief…!”

  “Norm…?”

  “I’m already on it boss. Brize’s number ringing as we speak…” “Are you three always like this…?”

  “We are aye, what’s wrong with us like pet…?”

  Chris’s use of Geordie spoke volumes. She was in, one of us now.

  “You’re nothing like I imagined… It’s all usually so formal like a classroom, asking permission to speak and everyone checking the cut of the other ones suit. This is more like a University common room… Charlie was right though, you act and bounce off each other like you’ve been doing this together for years. He said you were different…”

  “Aye pet, different is one word to describe it…! Janet treats us like naughty school boys, never be afraid to do it yourself or tell us if you think we’ve gone too far. You’ll be in here because we think you’ve earned it and that big feller in the corner would be gutted if he thought you were offended…There’ll be no PA job for you here it’ll be something special we’ll see to that… It’s up to you now to show us what you got…”

  Sarah wrote her pouch details on a post it note stood up and scrutinized the boards.

  “Can I write on these…?”

  It was Norman who answered her…

  “Any information useful or not, any thoughts, ideas or connections don’t ask us just do it. If you need more boards Iain will steal them from the third floor…”

  “Norm, I’m hurt mate… I’ll have you know I merely misappropriate and circumvent…”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot, sorry boss…”

  The double act over Sarah stood, gathered her thoughts and began…

  “OK, I want to lay some background so you see where I’m going with this…”

  We all nodded, she wrote a name on the board under connections.

  “John Kinkenny travelled as a foot passenger to Ostend in December ’92 he continued on to Zeebrugge where he picked up a tractor trailer and drove to a farm in Keizerhoek, north of Diksmuide. He then back tracked; left the trailer at Zeebrugge then crossed the channel at Calais. From there he visited a known safe house in Chiswick. We think he went to Ireland until the beginning of February ’93…

  The trail
er contained Semtex which was removed we believe by an “unknown” who travelled from Hull, a known vehicle had been clocked but no “positive”…

  The Semtex reappeared at Warrington in both the February and the March bombings...”

  SO13 arrested Kinkenny’s brother Derek more or less at the scene of the Feb’ blast…”

  At that point Chris stood and walked to where Sarah was standing. I knew he had something on his mind he had sat upright in his chair when she had mentioned the farm. Clearly the two of them were on the same track…

  “Sarah, if I may…?” “Yes, please do Chris…”

  There was a pause then Chris continued…

  “As you know there has been something nagging at me about Hull…?”

  He waited until Sarah had sat then he continued…

  “In July ’93 we received intelligence from ADIV. Chemicals had been found leaking, contaminating a canal which ran past the rear of the farm Sarah mentioned. The chemicals were specific to Semtex. When ADIV searched the outbuilding adjacent to the waterway they found a large cache of the stuff nearly 3000lbs of it to be precise. They also found two boxes of grenades, detonators which when inspected had also degraded and fifty 9mm Berettas with spare clips and ammunition. With their bomb disposal teams active in the area diffusing WW1 ordnance, the farm was sealed off rapidly…”

  Chris stopped to grab a sandwich and went on…

  “As all friendly Western Nations do, the chemistry of the explosive was shared throughout Europe, matching a similar cache discovered on a campsite in Northern Spain two years previous and again, as Sarah has already mentioned, the Warrington bombs…”

  He allowed us to digest this information by writing “COPYCAT WARRINGTON M.O??” Up on the board…

  “Robin sent me over. There were also heavy vehicle tracks discovered at the farm which ADIV took casts of and circulated, briefing local law enforcement to search the ports and distribution centres. They found the trailer at Zeebrugge empty, of course…

  When the trailer was analysed, identical chemical residue was discovered. ADIV also lifted fingerprints off the trailer which matched prints lifted off a padlock at the farm. SIS, with the help of Charlie in Belfast and SO12 matched them to John Kinkenny. It’s how the CPS secured his conviction.”

  Just in case one or two of us had been daydreaming he added…

  “You’ve seen what I’ve written on the board. That’s one fuckin’ shit scary scenario…!”

  After we had absorbed and digested the impact of what Sarah and Chris had explained we decided to strip all the boards, there were now six, start at each end with a different subject and work in. The photo of the “unknown” was placed in the centre at the very top.

  Sarah assured us that Box had images of their “unknown” from December ’92 which obviously we wanted a copy of but that would have to wait, our only opening for that was at home packing for his move to London. It was now 1520. We had taken what we had as far as we could for now there was only one thing left to do to try and wrap up a loose end or two. Retrieve the camera recordings from Hull.

  Sarah’s pouch had arrived from Brize Norton, she and Norman were busy in Janet’s office trying to contact the Belgians for whatever Intel they had collected from Robert Morris’s trip. It was a large piece of the jigsaw and we needed to correlate it with what we had. I was giving it until 1600 then calling it a day. It was Saturday after all.

  I walked over to the boards and focused on the centre picture…

  “Christ, look at him. He’s just a kid, twenty one if that. What does a boy know about politics…? He’s probably been romanced by notions of being a freedom fighter, a rebel for the cause with a mental image of ammunition belts strapped crisscrossed his chest. We now have another generation who won’t sit and talk, who have no alternative idea but just want you gone because that’s what their Father’s, Uncle’s and Grandfather’s wanted. Another generation who won’t stand but will hide explosive devices then runaway so they don’t have to watch people die and haven’t the stones to fight faced to face. Mass murder by remote control…”

  It sickened me the sterile stupidity of it. Chris slapped me across the shoulders and said…

  “Come on yer crusty bugger, have a custard cream and think of that traffic warden in her negligee and fishnets. She fancies the knackers off you she does…”

  Christopher Ellison a man skilfully adept at bringing me round…

  “I swear she’s following me around Westminster, every bloody day this week…”

  He saw the face change and was happy…

  “Chris, I’m going to shoot up to Hull to replace the micro tapes, they’ve stopped recording now anyway. I’ve Raven replacing west and was thinking of tasking Puffin on the four Norm laid”.

  “Good idea, I’ll come with yer. I’m not watchin’ the Toon lose on Match of the Day again. Besides Claire an’ the kids are in Newcastle sortin’ the last of the gear for the move…”

  “Are you sorted…?”

  “Aye… A nice semi in Richmond… Took the savings mind but she’s ‘appy an’ the kids love their rooms.”

  I nodded, pleased he was settling…

  “An’ just because I love yer I’m goin’ to bitch aboot the price of the new beds they want all the way up the M1… Teenagers, never have ‘em. Now there’s a thought… I can bitch aboot them to…!”

  He walked of muttering something about daughters and how they’re man’s punishment. Me…? I had another custard cream and wandered into Janet’s office…

  “How are we doing here…?”

  “Well, she’s onto her fourth department, which is her last one and all of them are saying the same thing. No one saw him and none of the cameras picked him up. Half of their CCTV is down as the port is under reconstruction and with the new motorway extension being built as well trying to tail anything would be a nightmare…”

  Sarah put the phone down…

  “He’s right, nothing. We’re welcome to review their tapes if we send someone but not a sniff… If they’d seen him they’d have said…”

  “Well, we can’t win them all and we’ve had decent results this week. Norm, Do you have anyone earmarked to change your det camera tapes…?”

  “Yeah Puffin did it this morning, I was about to ring him to see how he got on. He was travelling from Newhaven…”

  Norm replaced the phone as Chris walked back in…

  “He has the four; He’ll bring them in on Sunday night…”

  “Ok, thanks Norm… Sarah, it’s been a pleasure, the job you mentioned this morning, Head of Service Liaison, yes…?”

  “Yes that’s right…”

  “It’s yours if you want it…”

  “PA to Head of Service Liaison does have a nice ring to it…”

  “I don’t think I mentioned PA Sarah you’ll be the one with the PA” You could see by her face she thought the idea a bit daunting…

  “Have a think about it, can you return on Monday for a real interview with Robin, Chris and myself, say 1130…?”

  “Certainly…”

  “Good…! Chris and I can discuss it more thoroughly on our drive to Hull. Where do you live…?”

  “I’m staying at my parent’s house in Windsor…”

  Chris picked up the phone…

  “Stuart, could we have a driver at the main entrance in five minutes please…? Yes certainly, driving Miss Collins home to Windsor…Thank you.”

  She stood, shook our hands and smiled…

  “Thank you gentlemen I appreciate the time you’ve given me today and the escort home…”

  As she reached the door I shouted after her…

  “Eh don’t get used to it, besides expense accounts are more fun, you’ll see…. And short skirts with stilettoes…!”

  As she turned we all saw the glint in her eye when she replied… “Piss off…! I’m an Angel, remember…!”

  PART TWO

  Chapter Nine

  “I nee
d the rest of my money…”

  “You need to keep your voice down for a start and then you need to finish what you started. I don’t need to remind you Angie what we usually do to whores like you with bastard kids. Donna’s little sister or not. Besides we won’t be seeing her anytime soon and she supports the plan…”

  “You’ve changed your tune haven’t you…? There was a time you couldn’t wait to hand over your money…”

  “I’m doing what I’m told, making sure you do what you’re told…”

  McQueen and the man were sitting against the wall in a cheap greasy café on Royal Street, Belfast. The two Box officers who sat in a car opposite in William Street had a camera that would produce crystals in true colour 10x8s, they hadn’t been shadowing her. The male was the POI. McQueen had been taken off the list two weeks ago by the new Station Chief who believed her to be too low profile for him to be expending resources on. He felt the new London based section known as “Compass” which was headed by SIS (the cheeky sods) was knee-jerking over nothing. Didn’t they know there was a ceasefire…?