The crew changed but the routine seldom varied.
I would usually spend the night shift with two other intelligence officers in the Ford Transit watching the house in Tongham through night-vision binoculars or on the infrared scanners. It was smelly and a bit uncomfortable but one of us could usually get some kip while the other two kept their eyes on the house.
At eight in the morning Tom or Ricky would meet us with the day shift and then we’d drive the short run back to Brighton.
I’d usually go immediately to bed and sleep until two in the afternoon. The safe house was on Hove Street near a kebab shop and a video rental place.
Sometimes I’d walk down to the beach, but most of the time I’d lounge around with the others, playing cards and watching movies on the VCR.
By the beginning of Day 9 even I was now convinced that Mary had somehow fucked up or betrayed me, getting from me what she wanted and giving me nothing in return.
And now the environs of Brighton seemed a very unlikely place indeed for any kind of IRA activity. The Conservative Party conference had begun and the place was chock-full of law enforcement. Because of the IRA’s bombing campaign and several death threats from disgruntled mineworkers, Special Branch and the Sussex constabulary had flooded the town with beat cops, special constables, riot police, and plainclothes detectives. You couldn’t swing a stick without hitting a bunch of peelers looking for something to do or someone to stop and search.
As a man with an Irish accent and a week’s facial hair I was stopped three times in two days and asked to provide proof of ID. My warrant card usually did the trick but not always. But that wasn’t the point. An attack in Brighton this week seemed well outside even Dermot’s capabilities. Mrs. Thatcher’s hotel and the conference center had been thoroughly searched and MI5, Special Branch, and even the SAS were providing the security for all cabinet officers going in and out of the various conference venues.
On the third day of the Tory conference, after another fruitless night in the watchers’ van, I went out for a lunchtime drink with Tom and told him that I felt we should probably pack it in at the weekend.
“So you’re giving up on your informant?”
I took a sip of lager. “It looks like the tip she got was old information.”
“Who was this mysterious Mata Hari, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I’d rather not say. But she’s not someone who is operationally involved with the current Provisional IRA command. She’s someone from the previous generation.”
Tom nodded and took a gulp from his bottle of Budweiser. We were sitting in a beer garden that overlooked the beach and the English Channel. It was pleasant. The wind off the water was mild and there was plenty of autumn sunshine.
“Or it could be that she just straight conned you,” Tom said.
“Aye.”
“It’s a shame, though. We have absolutely no other leads on Dermot’s whereabouts, apart from that Germany tip, and I haven’t seen any follow-up on that in the green sheets.”
I finished my pint. “I did what I could.”
“I know,” Tom said. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I’ll be transferred out of Northern Ireland.”
“You’ll be glad about that. It’s got to be a shite posting.”
“Not really. They’ll probably put me on the fucking miners’ strike.”
“MI5 are bugging the miners?”
“Of course we are. Fucking Trots.”
For an intelligence officer Tom was very lippy, but I liked him.
“Do you want another one? We’re getting a nice tan here,” Tom suggested.
I nodded and thanked him when he brought back two Stellas.
“Cheers, mate.”
“Cheers yourself.”
“Why don’t we give it until Sunday morning? What do you think about that?” I suggested.
“I’ll tell Kate. She’ll be pleased. The forms she’s had to fill in over this. Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
Kate called me later that afternoon.
“You’re packing it in?” she said with neither approval nor disappointment in her voice.
“It’s been nearly two weeks. He’s not coming here. Brighton’s too hot now anyway.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“We’ll give it until Sunday morning and then I’ll fly back to Northern Ireland. I’ll talk to Mary again. Maybe she’s got more up-to-date information.”
She said nothing.
There was nothing to be said.
It was over.
We had tried but Dermot was an escape artist.
An escape artist with lots of money and passports and identities.
He was a mover. A gypsy. A ghost.
“Have you tried looking in the Libyan embassy?” I asked.
She laughed and then added in an undertone: “Yes. We have.”
“I’ll see you on Sunday,” I said.
“I’ll see you on Sunday,” she agreed.
Tom, Ricky, and I walked to the Grand Hotel to gawk at the BBC camera crews and the Tory Party faithful. The only place that wasn’t packed was the Kentucky Fried Chicken where we got dinner.
After that we walked back to the house and Tom, Ricky, myself, and an officer called Kevin (a Brummie who had only arrived that afternoon) drove up to Tongham to relieve the day crew.
We got there shortly after seven. It was dark now and of course the house across the fields was its usual black and empty self.
“Anything new, lads?” I asked.
They rolled their eyes and said nothing.
“He asked if there was anything new,” Tom repeated angrily.
“You can read the log. There’s nothing new.”
Kevin, Ricky, and myself climbed into the Ford Transit.
Tom drove the others back to Brighton.
Kevin took the first shift sitting in a camp chair and looking through the window of the Transit with the night-vision glasses. Ricky sat up front and read the newspaper and I lay on the camp bed on the van’s floor listening to my Walkman. Every fifteen minutes Kevin had to log what he had seen on a clipboard.
Every fifteen minutes he muttered “sweet Fanny Adams” to himself in an amusing Wolverhampton accent.
A couple of hours had gone by and we were well settled in when there was a polite knocking on the rear door of the van.
I was listening to Leonard Cohen on the Walkman and I didn’t hear it but Kevin must have because he put down his clipboard and opened one of the back doors in a very relaxed manner.
Maybe he thought it was a local bobby wondering why we were parked outside the scrapyard or maybe it was somebody who had got lost. We were so lulled by tedium that none of us could really contemplate anything but an innocent explanation.
Even so I don’t think I would have opened that door as blithely as he did.
There was a flash of light and Kevin tumbled backwards into the van with a hole in his head. At the same moment there was a flash of light up front in the cab. Another flash of light and an animal shriek and I knew that Ricky was dead.
Kevin had a gun in a shoulder holster but before I could even think about making a try for it a man in a balaclava tore open both doors of the Ford Transit and pointed a suppressed 9mm Glock at me.
Leonard Cohen was still playing loudly in my head.
At least it was a decent soundtrack to die to.
I couldn’t think what else to do so I put my hands up.
“What are you listening to?” the man with the gun asked in a Derry accent.
I swallowed.
“What are you listening to?” he repeated.
“Leonard Cohen.”
“Leonard Cohen, did you say?”
“Yes.”
“Which album?”
“New Skin for the Old Ceremony.”
“Which track?”
“‘Chelsea Hotel #2,’” I said.
The man in the balaclava was joined
now by another man in a balaclava.
“I topped him,” the second man said.
“Aye, I saw.”
“What’s going on here?” the second man asked.
“He’s listening to Leonard Cohen, so he is,” the first man explained.
“What?”
“He says he’s listening to Leonard Cohen. New Skin for the Old Ceremony.”
“Never heard of it,” the second man said.
“You wouldn’t. Ignoramus.”
The first man took off his balaclava.
Of course it was Dermot. His hair was a long blond mane. He was tanned and fit. His eyes were clear blue pools in the desert. His face was lined and his jaw like a fucking anvil. He looked young and strong and merciless. A stone-cold killer. An usher for Mag Mell.
“Do me a favor there, pal. Pass me the Walkman. Do it slowly now, though,” Dermot said.
I sat up and gave Dermot the Walkman. He put it on and listened to the track. He watched me while the song played. He watched me without so much as blinking. When it wasn’t quite over he gave it to his mate.
His mate wasn’t impressed. “What was that all about?” he asked when the song was done.
Dermot took the Walkman back and pressed the stop button.
“It was about Janis Joplin,” Dermot said.
“Janis Joplin?” the second man said dubiously.
“Isn’t that right, Sean?” Dermot asked me.
“Aye, that’s right, Dermot,” I said.
Dermot looked at me for a moment and grinned.
So this is it, then, I thought bitterly. Bested by Dermot yet again. Just like every day in fucking St. Malachy’s. This is how it fucking ends . . . And it was in St. Malachy’s too that Father Pugh had told us that the dead would sleep for a million years and be resurrected on the Day of Judgment when they would join the Mother of God in Heaven, whereas the bad, the bad would burn forever in a lake of fire.
Where would I go?
Could you work for Mrs. Thatcher’s government and still be a good man?
Could you shoot a man in cold blood and expect to avoid the fires of hell?
And Dermot, what about him? Could you blow up innocent people and still make it to Paradise? What would Father Pugh think of the pair of us now?
“Well?” the second man asked Dermot.
Dermot nodded. “Aye, you best get out of the van, Sean. Anyone could be along in a minute. We can’t stand here gabbing all night.”
“Get out?”
“Aye, get out, and I don’t need to tell you that you better not try any sudden moves, ’cos, you know . . .”
“You’d fucking shoot me,” I said.
“I really would,” Dermot said with a little chuckle.
“I don’t doubt it.”
I got out of the van while the second man dragged Ricky’s body from the front cab and tumbled it into the back. Poor Ricky. He was a good bloke. I knew almost nothing about him but I’d liked what I did know.
Dermot patted me down and the second terrorist closed the two rear doors of the Ford Transit. He went back to the front cabin and got inside.
“Destroy the radio, take the log books, throw the keys away!” Dermot said.
Dermot walked back over to me.
“I watched you change shifts at eight o’clock. Now is it six hours on and six hours off or twelve hours on and twelve hours off? Or maybe four?” Dermot asked.
“Twelve.”
“So your friends won’t be by for you until eight tomorrow morning?”
“That’s right.”
“If you’re lying . . .”
I had always found it difficult to lie to Dermot. “It’s the truth. Twelve-hour shifts.”
“Radio check, anything like that?”
“Nothing like that, Dermot. The new shift comes in and reads the log. That’s it.”
Dermot nodded. “Well, that gives us a few hours, then, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Have a wee seat there, Sean. Just there on the ground. That’s right.”
I sat down on the moss.
“It’s a lovely night, isn’t it? A gorgeous night. Crisp, cold. Morrigan the crow is flying tonight, isn’t she? Looking down with her black eye. Looking down on you and me,” he said.
“Yes, Dermot.”
“Do you ever read Hobbes, Sean?”
“No, Dermot.”
“You should. It’s all there.”
He squatted in front of me, pointing the 9mm casually in my direction. “The state of nature is a state of war.”
“I expect you’re right, Dermot.”
“I am right! Look at us! We exterminated the great grazing herds of mammoth, elk, and buffalo. We grew in numbers, painted images on cave walls, and we drove our poor cousin Homo sapiens neanderthalis to the fringe of the western sea. That wasn’t very nice, was it?”
“No, Dermot.”
“And when the ice retreated and a time of plenty began we turned our bellicose passions inward! Inward, Sean. We just can’t help ourselves,” he said, and for emphasis poked the barrel of the Glock into my chest.
“No, Dermot,” I said, trying not to sound afraid.
He gave me that easy handsome grin of his and patted me on the head.
“You get it. I know you do. You were always a smart lad. ‘War is the locomotive of history.’ You know who said that, don’t you?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Trotsky! Come on! You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Trotsky. I visited his house. They’ve buried him in the front garden. Imagine that. Huge place. Lovely part of the city. Very close to the house of Fri—”
“Dermot, I think we should bloody go!” his mate said.
Dermot turned on him furiously. “Don’t you fucking interrupt me, you fucking ingrate!” he screamed.
“All right, take it easy,” his friend said.
“And don’t fucking tell me to take it easy!”
“OK.”
Dermot turned back to me. “Now where were we?”
“Frida Kahlo.”
“Oh aye. Forget that. It’s not important. The point, Sean, is that violence is the only way to bring down the Empire.”
“Gandhi?”
“Fucking Ben Kingsley is the exception that proves the rule! Right?” he said.
“Right.”
“On your feet. Walk to the car.”
“OK, Dermot.”
“Yes, Dermot, no, Dermot, OK, Dermot, is that all you fucking say? Jesus!”
He gave me a shove and looked at me with utter hatred for a moment, but then he put his hand under my shoulder and pulled me upright.
“Come on! Let’s go over to the house. We’ll be more comfortable there. We’ll take him with us, Marty. I’m sure Sean’s got a lot more information he’s willing to spill.”
“Not the house. It might be bugged, they might be listening in,” the second man said.
“We just killed the listeners, Marty,” Dermot said, and then he turned to me.
“Is it bugged, Sean? You can tell me, just between us, like.”
“No. There are no bugs. We didn’t want to have anything in the house to give the game away. It was all just observation.”
“And then what? What were you supposed to do when you saw us? Don’t lie to me, Sean boy!”
“As soon as we saw you guys appear we were supposed to call the SAS Rapid Response Unit. They would have been down here sharpish.”
“A death squad.”
“No. We wanted to take you alive. You were a potentially valuable source of intelligence what with the whole Gaddafi angle and everything.”
Dermot nodded. “Aye. That makes sense. Of course, I would never have told youse anything.”
I nodded.
“Come on! This way, Sean boy.”
We walked around the bend in the road, where a black sports car had been parked. Dermot put a glove
d hand on the back of my neck and squeezed.
“And speaking of valuable sources of intelligence. You don’t mind coming for a wee ride with us, do you, Sean my lad?”
“No,” I said.
“You’ll like the wheels. Toyota Celica Supra. Bit of a squeeze in the back but you won’t mind that either, will you?”
“Not at all, Dermot.”
“It’s just a short run for you anyway. We’ll go to the house. I mean, why not, eh, Martin?”
“You’re the boss,” Martin said.
Dermot grinned at me and looked at his watch. “Not too long now anyway, Sean,” he said.
“Too long for what, Dermot?”
“We’ll talk over a cup of tea,” Dermot said. “Here, mate, put those on for me, will you?”
It was a pair of handcuffs. I put them on with a bit of give in both wrists but Dermot quickly saw through that little scheme and squeezed the ratchets so that they were good and tight. He pushed me into the back of the Toyota. Martin kept the 9mm pointing at me while Dermot drove.
“Not too long for what, Dermot?” I asked again.
“Until Guy Fawkes Night!” Dermot said, laughing.
Somehow in the hilly half-mile between the scrapyard and the safe house he managed to get the Celica Supra up to 70 miles per hour. We pulled up to the cottage with a squeal of brakes and the smell of burning rubber.
“This isn’t exactly low key for an IRA car, is it?” I said.
Dermot laughed. “That’s what everybody tells me!” he said delightedly. “Last time I saw you I couldn’t even drive!”
“Out!” Martin ordered.
I got out. Dermot produced a key and let himself inside.
“So MI5’s been all over this place?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I hope you didn’t touch my tea. It was vacuum sealed. If you’ve gone and spoiled it there will be hell to pay.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
“Why don’t you have a seat in the living room there, Sean, while I get the kettle on. Martin, do me a favor and keep an eye on him. A beady eye. He’s a character is Sean, could get up to anything.”
“How long are we going to stay here?” Martin asked. “The original plan’s fucking broke, isn’t it?”
“Aye, it’s broke. We’ll debrief Sean here and then we’ll head up to London,” Dermot said.
In the Morning I'll Be Gone Page 26