by Duncan James
***
Quite how the media got hold of the document, nobody quite knew. It was a hand-written list of the names and positions of all the top terrorists on both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and quite a few politicians as well who were known to have close links with the terrorist organisations on one side or the other.
Many of the names, like McFosters, and Keenan, and O’Hara, had been roughly crossed off in pencil.
But copies of it appeared, as if by magic, simultaneously in Washington, New York, London, Belfast, Dublin and Brussels. Nobody worked out where it had come from, because nobody recognised the handwriting of Sergeant Catherine Wilson. The press went wild, and so did many of those not yet crossed out on the list when it was published. They scattered to the four corners, like chaff in the wind, just as Bill Clayton had hoped.
At a stroke, Ireland was virtually free of terrorists. The punishment shootings and the beatings stopped, and the extortion rackets dried up, and no one went round any more collecting protection money. Quite suddenly, life was taking on an air of normality not familiar to many of the population.
Most of the surviving names on the list were small fry, fleeing for their life, and of no great interest to Clayton and his team. The hard men of the leadership had gone, or else their whereabouts was known. Those who mattered, who still might pose a threat, could be picked off at leisure. Their movements could be monitored. Half a dozen of them had gone to London, and they worried Bill Clayton. He was sure they had gone to join forces with an existing small ‘sleeper’ unit of the Real IRA, somewhere in the capital. For some reason, though, the Yard’s special branch and anti-terrorist squad hadn’t been able to track them down.
So it was no real surprise, although a considerable embarrassment, when, at two in the morning a few days later, four shadowy figures appeared in the pedestrian precinct at Trafalgar Square. There were not a lot of people about to see them, as they jogged towards the foot of Nelson’s Column. Since the precinct had been created, most passengers for the night buses boarded them in The Strand, outside the Armed Services Careers Office as it happened, rather than on the Square itself, outside the National Gallery, which is where the buses used to stop.
The men made their way to the back of the Lions at each corner of the Column, and sat to get their breath, admiring the view. As if in unison, they rose to their feet, and trotted off to the far corners of the Square. Only the most observant would have noticed that their backpacks had been left behind. The four simultaneous explosions put hundreds of sleeping pigeons to flight. The bronze lions fragmented, just as the Empire had done, only much more swiftly. Nelson’s Column, its lower section blown away, settled gently on its foundations before the top 160 feet toppled towards Whitehall in a final, defiant gesture towards the British Government.
The shattered effigy of Nelson came to rest with his blind eye turned towards the Old Admiralty, a habit he had developed during his distinguished career.