Back in the car, I checked the petrol gauge. In my rush from the airport I somehow hadn’t. The needle flickered around empty. Boxing Day at the end of nowhere. The Atlantic in one direction and peat bog in the other. I headed back to Galway city. The engine faltered near a garage. It was closed. I coasted to a stop by a petrol pump. It was 7.30 p.m., the place deserted. Had to sleep in the car. This morning someone finally arrived. Gave me a funny look and filled up the car. I drove back. Decided to wait at the bus station and hope to intercept her. Just before two, she was there. She said, ‘What the fuck are you doing? You’re not supposed to be back.’ I said, ‘I want to be with you.’ Didn’t mind her being spiky. I’ve never before been so pleased to see someone. She resisted at first but came back to flat. Afterwards, in bed, it all came out naturally. I said I had to meet her family. We’d never be properly together otherwise. She fought but gave in. I told her I love her.
Sunday, 23 January 1994
The trip home is done. Her ‘Ma’ and ‘Da’ were great. Really welcoming. I even was beginning to wonder if this could all sort itself out. Then the brother looked in. Came back with Joseph later. The brother is numero uno. You wouldn’t think him a hard man, but it’s there in his eyes. I suspect Joseph would like to step up to be leader. Also suspect he and the girl were once sweet on each other.
The plan to stay the night worked. She was seriously angry. Then trouble. The four of them came back together in the middle of the night. Interrogated her about me. The walls are thin, I could hear most of it. The way the brother drilled her was heavy. I could smell Joseph thinking windbag when he was giving her the sermon. O’Donnell and Black said little. Doers, not thinkers. Then the weird thing happened. It turned out the reason for the interrogation was the brother said my name rang some kind of bell. A connection to Brit military. In the North. I didn’t get it. Maybe he came up with it as he’s suspicious of me. It’d be a way of her getting rid of me. She took fright. We left in the small hours. Back in Dublin, she told me what he’d said. I was screaming to say the brother was wrong. There was never a Brit soldier name of Vallely! But, because I’d told her my father was a soldier, she could trust me. So we’re intact.
The weirdness now hit Anne-Marie. What had Martin really known about David? Did he discover more than he was saying and was he trying to offer her a way out? Without damaging her? Perhaps without even damaging David – instead giving him a sign that he knew something and he should get out? With a recurring sadness, she knew it was a mystery she could never resolve.
As she thought back, it seemed remarkable to her for how long David maintained his duality more or less intact. Eventually, the crack in the double life widened – and she herself was the unwitting cause.
Thursday, 17 March 1994
I need to wrap this up soon. I slipped up today. Got away with it. But one more mistake and suspicion will begin to dominate her other feelings towards me. I was on the phone to Fiona – I’d wanted to speak to her about Uncle Bob. It seems he’s got prostate cancer. She overheard my phone call. Asked who I was talking to. I forgot myself and gave a truthful answer. ‘My sister.’ She said, ‘You don’t have a sister.’
I’d laid a minefield for myself. Reckoned the only way to crawl through it was pretend I was using the ‘sister’ for cover. So confessed I was actually talking to an old girlfriend ahead of chucking her. I’m realizing that deceit in my relationship with Maire cannot go on for ever. It’s just not practical. Never mind the damage that could be done to her – or me even. When I’m the person I’m being with her, I tell her I love her. And I do.
She read it again, and then for a third time, trying to interpret the full meaning. Ultimately, he had failed as a deceiver both of her and of himself. An overwhelming pity for him swept through her as she realized, for the first time, the crushing weight he was carrying.
With stark clarity, she saw that the victim of this tragic play was not her, but him. ‘Or me, even.’ They should have noticed the crack and pulled him out.
CHAPTER 27
James Beresford Brooks did notice the crack. Now, as he lay in bed on the night of Carne’s visit, his normally untroubled sleep was interrupted by recurring thoughts. He rose, retrieved the full file for a second time and descended to his study.
It never occurred to him to withdraw Wallis. On the contrary, he needed to keep him firmly in line because, by the early spring of 1994, the clock was ticking. Secret ceasefire negotiations between the IRA and the British state, brokered in part by the United States and supported by President Clinton himself, were progressing. The influence of the anti-ceasefire faction, specifically the Gang of Four, loomed as an ever larger spectre. IRA leaders themselves were raising the problem of the four, while also trying to use it to win concessions from the British.
In March 1994 the IRA attacked Heathrow Airport. Two mortars hit runways, five missed. Miraculously, no one was hurt and air traffic hardly disrupted. But Brooks and the senior official with whom he had instigated the Hawk operation decided that ‘action’ was now urgent.
The Heathrow attack had been approved by the IRA leadership as a concession to the Gang of Four to show the organization could still mount a spectacular at will. But, to Sean Black and Brendan O’Donnell in particular, the operation was an abject failure. No deaths. No planes shot down. One surveillance report stated that Black had been overheard saying he was going to do something that would make Enniskillen look like ‘kid’s stuff’.
Brooks’s senior colleague confided in his minister and the friendly shadow minister that, unless ‘action’ was taken, the possibility of an outrage so barbaric as to scupper the peace talks for years, a generation even, was horribly real. He explained the problem of any such ‘action’. The Gang of Four had become so watchful, ingenious and agile that ‘exceptional’ tactics were required.
The solution hung pregnantly, but silently, in the air; impossible to discuss, unthinkable as a state or government-approved operation. The politician said one sentence only to the official: ‘We must not allow this once-in-a-lifetime chance of peace to be blown away.’ It was the green light. And there was one big plus. This would be a limited operation with a clearly defined endgame; those to be taken out of the picture amounted to no more than the fingers of a single hand.
Operation Hawk meant that Wallis’s penetration of the McCartney home in Belfast gave him an up-to-date observation of the targets. Wallis was also seeking a conclusion and had complained to Jimmy that he was sitting in Dublin doing nothing. Brooks, in possession of his fuller picture, ordered him to stay put and keep a low profile.
In late March 1994 Brooks decided he needed to test Wallis’s resolve. He suggested an evening stroll by the river. Their paths met just beyond Wood Quay and they walked slowly east towards the darkening mouth of the Liffey.
‘Last time,’ Brooks began, ‘you expressed some concern about our friend, the sister.’
‘I wouldn’t want her to come to any harm,’ replied Wallis.
‘What harm do you have in mind?’
‘I’ll have to leave her sooner than later, won’t I?’
‘Has she grown too fond of you, dear boy?’
Wallis stopped by a railing and leant over it, watching the river flowing calmly by on its way to its embrace by the sea.
‘It’s not easy, Jimmy.’
‘You didn’t have any trouble with that little honey pot in South Armagh.’
‘That was different. Her brother had an M90 in his hand.’
Brooks cast him a narrow-eyed glance. ‘Bloody hell, David, don’t tell me it’s the other way round and you’ve got too fond of her!’
‘For God’s sake, it’s not that,’ Wallis rounded on him. ‘I’m a professional, damn it. But do whatever’s going to be done.’
‘In that case, your timing is perfect. It’s been agreed that we will engineer their disappearances one by one, with suitable intervals between.’
‘You didn’t tell me it would lead to t
hat,’ said Wallis coldly.
‘For fuck’s sake, David,’ began Brooks with an anger so out of character that Wallis recoiled.
‘OK, OK,’ replied Wallis.
‘We’re not a charity,’ continued Brooks.
‘All right. I get it.’ He paused. ‘Including Martin McCartney?’
‘Yes.’
Wallis pushed off from the railing and marched away. Brooks caught up and fell in beside him, breathing deeply. Zeal displacing his habitual game-playing, he looked fiercely into Wallis’s eyes.
‘Remember Enniskillen?’
‘Of course.’
‘Black and O’Donnell have been overheard planning something that, in their words, will make that look like child’s play.’
‘I see.’
‘It won’t just kill and maim: it will blow up the chances of peace. And God knows who Kennedy’s got on his kill list. They have to be stopped. Quickly. And efficiently. No trace.’ Brooks left the thought hanging and fell silent for a few seconds. ‘There’s no one better than you.’
He could sense the calculations going on in Wallis’s head – the agonizing over good and bad, right and wrong, loyalty and betrayal. Understanding his man more completely than ever before, Brooks played his best card. ‘This is the right thing to do, David. Morally right. The means are a tiny number of deaths, the end is peace for a nation. How can that possibly be wrong?’ Further seconds passed, Brooks holding his breath, nothing left in his hand.
‘I won’t do McCartney,’ Wallis finally said. ‘The others, OK. Better than some paramilitary cowboy you rope in messing it up.’
‘When it comes to McCartney, we will only require you at the point of capture. We need your skills to help with that and to confirm identity. Your visit to Belfast has put you in a unique position. You will then be free to leave Ireland.’
‘Immediately?’
‘Yes.’
‘With a job offer?’
Brooks replied without blinking. ‘Yes.’
‘I’ll need a reason for taking these mini-breaks.’
Brooks could see Wallis beginning to narrow his focus to the business in hand. He appeared on-side. ‘You’ll think of something.’ He patted him on the shoulder. The only risk was any return of sentimentality when he was back with the girl. ‘One piece of friendly advice, David, from your uncle Jimmy. Cool it with her. She’s served her purpose. See if you can wind it down a bit.’
‘You’re a hard-hearted bastard, aren’t you?’ He said it ferociously. The mention of the girl had made him flare up. Despite the satisfactory outcome to the meeting, it left Brooks with a niggle of discomfort.
‘And you must be, too.’ They glowered at each other and walked off in opposing directions.
The Gang of Four had decamped from Belfast to South Armagh. These were men embedded in the harsh rolling hills of the border country who saw any compromise by their smooth-talking city colleagues as surrender. There were plenty of supporters and safe houses to protect them – and rest and recreation was easy to find in the border town of Dundalk. It was there, outside United Kingdom jurisdiction, that Brooks earmarked for his operation. What no one else knew was that he was in possession of information that would give him potential times and locations to carry out a snatch. How smoothly the first one went would always remain a source of wonder.
It required a squad of three: Wallis, Brooks and a third man brought in by Brooks for the job. Brooks knew that Sean Black was having lunch with an associate in a café just off the high street, after which he was likely to attend a local Gaelic football match. They waited in a car within sight of the café and Wallis, using old-fashioned, lo-tech binoculars, was able to confirm a preliminary ID on Black. The associate was wearing a high-collared coat with his back to the window, making him less easy to pick out.
Around 2 p.m. – Brooks had decided daylight was safe given the stealth of the operation – the two men left the café, Black casting glances around him. His associate headed straight for the driver’s seat, his back constantly to the watchers and still preventing any identification. They tailed the car as it headed out of the town. After a mile or so, it stopped by a tobacconist and the associate got out, presumably to buy cigarettes or other refreshments for the match. They drew up behind the car.
Brooks and Wallis were both dressed in duffle coats, Wallis wearing a beret and Brooks a brown cap. Wallis walked to the rear passenger door, climbed in and stuck a pistol to Black’s temple. Black, confused and shocked, failed to put up the instant show of resistance that could possibly have made a difference. By the time he tried to struggle, he was already in Wallis’s grasp. One crunching blow to his solar plexus, enhanced by the knuckleduster Wallis wore on his left-hand fingers, snuffed out any further fight.
Brooks jumped into the driver’s seat, started the engine – the key was still in the ignition, though a reserve plan was in place to force Black into the tailing car if necessary – and drove off. The tailing car followed. A few seconds later, when they were a couple of hundred yards away, Brooks could see, through the nearside wing mirror, the associate emerge from the tobacconist, cast bewildered glances and walk away.
A few minutes later, they turned into a country lane and stopped. Brooks and Wallis applied handcuffs to Black’s wrists and bound strong adhesive tape around his mouth and back of his head. They moved him and themselves to the tailing car, abandoning Black and his associate’s original car. Its number plate might be rapidly communicated to those with an interest in retrieving Black.
They embarked on a silent drive southwest on minor roads that took them through small market towns with long names: Carrickmacross, Bailieborough, across the main N3 road to Ballyjamesduff. Their careful, lawful progress, mindful of speed limits, amber lights, and blind corners, brought them after an hour and a half or so to a stretch of water, Lough Sheelin. They pulled up in a wooded cove by a bay. Black was shaking, trying to mumble through his gag. They said nothing to him, and not a single word to each other. There was no interrogation. Nothing needed to be known or was not already known. The car smelt of his piss and the bowel contents that he had been unable to restrain.
A modest fishing boat with an outboard motor was moored to a jetty. They loaded Black onto it like a limp pack of cargo, the driver pulled the cord and, with a few wisps of exhaust, the motor chugged into action. It was late afternoon and as they made their way out into the lake, a few fishermen dotted the shoreline. They steered away from a couple of other boats and the driver began to circle, speeding up the engine and increasing its noise. One shot was fired to the head, a second to the heart. Lead weights were strapped inside Black’s trousers and jacket and clipped securely with steel cord. Brooks never forgot the curious spectacle of the driver making the sign of the cross over the corpse before it was gently and carefully pushed overboard.
They headed back towards Dublin. The driver dropped Wallis and Brooks at a shopping centre car park on the outskirts, where they had left their car. Only when they were inside it did the two men talk. Brooks remembered well precisely what Wallis had said.
‘I feel like I’ve just taken part in a Mafia execution. It could have been a scene from The Godfather.’
‘There is one difference, David,’ Brooks replied. ‘We are not criminals.’ That response afforded him as much satisfaction today as when he uttered it twenty years ago.
‘What about the driver?’ asked Wallis.
‘What about him?’
‘Criminal or angel?’
‘No need to ask, David. We’ll just call him “the man”. He comes highly recommended, though not, perhaps, from a source one might have expected.’
‘Does he know who we are?’
‘If you mean, did I give him CVs, of course not. The cash advance showed our credentials.’
‘Well, he’d bloody well better keep his mouth shut.’
‘Stop worrying, David. It’s a walk in the park. Three to go. We succeed, we’ve served our country.’
This time the snatch was in Drogheda, where O’Donnell had family. At the point of capture, O’Donnell, unlike Black, tried to jump from the car. This required Wallis to smash his face with the butt of his pistol, resulting in blood seeping unstoppably from O’Donnell’s mouth and teeth. The disposal of the body in a different lough went smoothly.
Brooks realized that O’Donnell’s DNA would be all over both the car he was captured in and the car in which he travelled to his death. The latter presented no problem as ‘the man’ would dispose of it. The former was more awkward. This was not because of any trail of evidence: Brooks himself was sufficiently clothed and gloved to have left no trace. As for Wallis, it was the height of improbability that the Irish police, the Gardaí, would ever make any connection that would put him under suspicion. However, the abandoned car, with O’Donnell’s blood all over it, provided a wealth of clues as to how he had disappeared.
The messiness of the snatch meant that Brooks would have to devise a new strategy for the two remaining targets: Joseph Kennedy and Martin McCartney.
There was a further awkwardness – the parting conversation with Wallis.
‘That was a fucking mess, Jimmy,’ Wallis began when they were alone in their own car after ‘the man’ drove off.
‘It was a successful operation,’ replied Brooks. ‘But, I agree, not a work of art.’
‘My blood’s in that car too.’
‘You’ll be out of the country in no time.’
‘We’ve got two. Isn’t that enough?’
‘We need to remove the head, David. Stop the beast rearing up again.’
‘Why not do that first?’
‘It’s like a tree. You lop off the branches, then chop down the trunk. Same principle.’ He could see that Wallis was unconvinced. So too would he have been, had he only seen the same partial picture.
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