The Ghosts of Belfast (The Twelve) jli-1

by Stuart Neville

  The tinted rear window rolled down and Paul McGinty, smooth-skinned and handsome, smiled out at him. “Hop in, Gerry,” he said.

  14

  When the Northern Ireland Office and the security forces worked in unison, they could be impressively efficient.

  A pity they don’t do it more often

  , Campbell thought as he tossed the holdall on the bed. They’d organised a flat in the Holylands, the warren of streets called so in honor of their names - Palestine Street, Jerusalem Street, Damascus Street - not their inhabitants. It was a smart move, putting him here. The area was almost entirely populated by students attending Queen’s University, the sprawling complex of Victorian and modern buildings at the bottom of the Malone Road. The students came and went at all hours of the day and night. They were noisy and careless of their environment. Campbell could slip in and out without drawing attention.

  He went to the window of the small living room. He was on the top floor of a house on University Street, just off Botanic Avenue, overlooking a church. Students, shoppers and workers slipped past one another on the pavement below. His rusted Ford Focus sat at the curb across the way. He’d picked it up in a retail park just south of the city. An extra mobile phone and a Glock 23 were waiting for him in the glove box, the phone never to leave the flat and only to be used to dial one number.

  It had almost broken his heart to swap his BMW for the Focus. The journey from Dundalk to Armagh, then up the motorway, was the first time he’d driven the Z4 in a month. He had to remind himself it was this work that paid for the car. But then, why do it if he never got to enjoy the spoils?

  That was a good question, one he asked himself constantly. He was thirty-eight years old and had been an impostor for the last fifteen. He could admit a perverse pleasure in living a lie. The permanent risk of discovery had a strange sweetness. There was certainly a dark thrill in watching those around him accept a counterfeit, but surely there was more to it than that?

  He had spent many nights staring at one ceiling or another, turning it over in his mind, but every time he came close to the answer he looked away. One day he might have the strength to see that part of himself.

  When he joined the Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment at the age of twenty, David Campbell had no concept of where his life would lead him. He was following the path of many boys from Glasgow, and knew full well he’d end up in Belfast, patrolling the streets, dodging bricks and bottles. The first time a woman spat on his boots, he had stopped in his tracks, staring at her in shock.

  “Fuck away off home,” she’d said.

  “Ignore her, lad,” the sergeant called from behind.

  Belfast was a different place now. When Campbell approached the city just an hour before, he was impressed by the number of cranes dotting the skyline. These metallic signals of prosperity towered over every corner of Belfast; in the west where the Republicans’ power was strongest; in the east where the Loyalists held sway; in the south where the city’s wealthy had always lived; in the north where Protestant and Catholic fought over every inch of ground.

  The city’s invisible borders remained the same as when Campbell first walked its streets holding a rifle eighteen years ago. The same lowlifes still fed off the misery they created, deepening the divisions wherever they could. The same hatreds still bubbled under the surface. But the city had grown fat, learning to mask its scars when necessary and show them when advantageous.

  He turned from the window, went back to the sole bedroom, and dumped the holdall’s contents into a drawer. A flash of color caught his eye. There, among the worn clothes, pistol and loose rounds, lay his old Red Hackle. He lifted it, feeling the plume between his fingers. He hadn’t been able to wear the Black Watch’s traditional insignia for long.

  Campbell was just five days past his twenty-third birthday, with less than three years of service, when he had been called to see the Commanding Officer. Lieutenant Colonel Hanson was a gruff man with a deeply lined face, who instilled fear into all under his command. Campbell’s chest fluttered as he knocked on the door.

  “Enter,” a voice barked from inside, the Scots accent thick and hard.

  Campbell opened the door, stepped inside, closed the door without showing the colonel his back, marched five paces, snapped his heels together and saluted. The colonel casually returned the gesture from behind his desk. Campbell kept his eyes straight ahead, ignoring the third man present.

  “You may sit.” The colonel indicated the empty chair facing him. Campbell did so.

  “Congratulations on your promotion, Corporal,” Colonel Hanson said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’ll get straight to the point. Have you heard of Fourteen Intelligence Company?”

  “I’ve heard rumors, sir,” Campbell said. His nervousness intensified. Fourteen Intelligence Company was undercover, annexed to the SAS. It didn’t officially exist, but it was no secret. Fourteen Int did the dirty work, the stuff no one owned up to, the kind of things ordinary people go to prison for.

  “Then you’ll know Fourteen Int is charged with intelligence gathering, and plays a vital role in our operations in Northern Ireland. It works closely with, but independently of, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Special Branch, MI5, Force Research Unit and regular Army. It handles agents and informants in all the paramilitary groups in the Province and has saved countless lives.” Major Hanson indicated the third man, seated to his right. “This is Major Ross.”

  “Good morning, Corporal,” Major Ross said. He wore no uniform but was instead casually dressed. His accent was Birmingham, or maybe Dudley.

  “Good morning, sir,” Campbell said. Sweat trickled down his ribs.

  Major Ross lifted a file from the desk and opened it. “David Patrick Campbell. Born in 1969 to a mixed-religion marriage, rare in Glasgow, and raised Catholic. Do you practise?”

  “Sir?”

  “Your religion. Do you go to Mass?”

  “Not since I was at school, sir.” Campbell kept his back stiff, his hands on his knees.

  “You left school at sixteen, no real qualifications, despite having above-average intelligence. Various menial jobs, a few stretches on the dole, before you joined the Black Watch. Why did you sign up?”

  Campbell shifted in his seat. “There was nothing else to do, sir. No job. No future.”

  Major Ross smiled. “I see. And what did your parents make of it?”

  Campbell stared at Major Ross while he searched for a lie.

  “Answer the major,” Colonel Hanson said.

  A lie wouldn’t come, so Campbell was left only the truth. “I wasn’t speaking with them at the time, sir.”

  “And why was that?” Major Ross asked.

  “We’d had a falling-out a couple of years before, sir.”

  “Over what?”

  “I’d rather not say, sir.”

  Colonel Hanson’s face reddened. “You’ll answer the question, corporal.”

  “I had some trouble with the law, sir. My parents didn’t take it very well.” Campbell looked down at his hands.

  “Some trouble with the law,” Major Ross echoed with a sly smile. “That’s one way to put it. You kicked the shit out of a nightclub door-man is another way.”

  Campbell looked the major in the eye. “The charges were withdrawn, sir.”

  “Yes - very conveniently for you, several witnesses changed their stories. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you, Corporal?”

  “No, sir.”

  Major Ross looked back to the file. “Your record since joining the Black Watch has been good, but not exceptional. With your brains you should have been corporal a year ago. You’re a quick thinker, you’re tough, but you lack discipline. I’m told you’re good in a scrap. In fact, I’m told you’ve got a serious mean streak. You came close to a court martial last year after assaulting a protester at a Loyalist parade. Care to comment?”

  “It was self-defence, sir. The charges were dr
opped.”

  “Conveniently for you, yet again.” Major Ross smiled and placed the file back on the desk. “You’ve no family that you’re in contact with, and no friends outside this barracks, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.” Campbell watched the two officers share a glance. “Can I ask what this is about, sir?”

  Colonel Hanson went to shout some admonishment, but Major Ross raised a hand to silence him. “I want you to come and work for me,” he said.

  So in the following months Campbell began to spend days at a time in England, at RAF Cosford and the Commando Training Center in Lympstone, being brutalised for the good of the country. When he flew back to Belfast he frequented some of the bars he and his colleagues had been warned to avoid. He wore a Glasgow Celtic shirt to pubs where matches were being screened, cheering loudest when they scored against Glasgow Rangers. An insider in Fourteen Int’s pay introduced him to some men, vouching for him. He answered questions about his Black Watch regiment, about the patrols he walked in. When they got more specific, when they asked about times and dates, he played coy. When he was discharged from the Black Watch a few months later for a contrived disciplinary breach, he grew less shy with the details. He worked his way into the enemy’s ranks, a little deeper every day, while once a week he met a handler in a car park or a country lane and reported on what he’d learned. Occasionally he would check a savings account, opened under another name, to see he had been well paid.

  The first time he had to kill to protect his cover was difficult. They’d warned him it would happen eventually, but even so, the image of executing his old sergeant still woke him in the night, even fifteen years later. It was the wild hope in Sergeant Hendry’s eyes that burned in Campbell’s memory. Not the begging, not the weeping, but the moment Hendry recognised him, believing he was saved. Hendry’s hope died an instant before he did, when he watched Campbell’s finger tighten on the trigger.

  Campbell shivered, suddenly cold despite the sun breaking through the bedroom window. The church bell signalled two o’clock. It was time to go. Time he went to McKenna’s bar to meet his contact.

  15

  McGinty’s imported Lincoln Town Car floated along the lower Falls Road like a magic carpet. The boys had swapped rumors about how much it cost to bring over from America. They said the leadership considered it distasteful, a vulgar display unbefitting the current climate. A glass screen separated Fegan and McGinty from Declan Quigley, the politician’s driver.

  “You never got a driving licence, did you, Gerry?” McGinty asked.

  “No,” Fegan said.

  “Me neither. I can’t afford to take a chance on driving without one these days, so . . .” McGinty waved a manicured hand at the car’s black leather interior. “As needs must,” he said.

  Fegan felt as if he was in a steel cocoon. The tinted windows appeared black from outside, and he imagined the car could withstand any attack from bullet or bomb.

  “You wanted to see me,” he said.

  “We’ll get to that,” McGinty said. Fegan could see his rictus smile from the corner of his eye. “I was hoping we could catch up a wee bit first.”

  “All right,” Fegan said.

  McGinty patted Fegan’s knee. “So, what’s the story? What’s been going on?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “How’s the Community Development job going?”

  “I cash the checks.”

  “You’re entitled to it, Gerry. You gave us twelve years. We won’t forget it. That job will keep paying as long as you want it, no questions asked.”

  Fegan spared McGinty a sideways glance. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Shame about Michael, eh?” McGinty said.

  “Yeah,” Fegan said.

  “And Vincie Caffola now, too.”

  Fegan kept his eyes on the glass divider and the road beyond. They passed the right turn into Fallswater Parade, moving further away from McKenna’s mother’s house. The gable walls were painted over with murals, propaganda messages written as art. “You really think the peelers did it?” Fegan asked.

  “Maybe,” McGinty said. “That’s my public position, anyway.”

  “You said you had witnesses.”

  “Of course I do, Gerry.” McGinty gave a short laugh. “Of course I do.”

  He placed his hand on Fegan’s knee and kept it there. “The thing is . . . look at me, Gerry.”

  Fegan closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, turning to face McGinty.

  “The thing is,” McGinty continued, ‘somebody might have done me a favor, all things considered.”

  “How?” Fegan asked.

  McGinty smiled. “Well, Michael, God rest him, was getting mixed up in things he shouldn’t have. See, times have changed. Some of us - not all, but enough of us - want Stormont to succeed. On all sides. Us, the Brits, even the Unionists. This is a different world. The bombs won’t work any more. The dissidents put an end to that in Omagh. The people won’t tolerate violence like they used to. Then 9/11 came along. The Americans don’t look at armed struggle the same way. Used to be we could sell them the romance of it, call ourselves freedom fighters, and they loved it. The money just rolled in, all those Irish-Americans digging in their pockets for the old country. They don’t buy it any more. We’ve got peace now, whether we like it or not.”

  Fegan watched the murals drift past, images and slogans, portraits of Republican heroes next to expressions of solidarity with Palestine and Cuba. Another mural declared Catalonia was not part of Spain. Fegan couldn’t say if it was or it wasn’t, but he sometimes wondered what it had to do with anyone on the Falls. Then there was an image of George Bush sucking oil from a skull-strewn Iraqi battlefield, declaring it

  America’s Greatest Failure

  .

  McGinty continued, “We’re walking a tightrope, and we can’t go upsetting the balance. Sure, the Brits allow us a certain leeway these days - you know, turn a blind eye to keep things stable - but we’re pulling away from all the shady stuff. We have to. We can still embark on our little enterprises, turn a few pound, so long as we’re careful. So long as we keep it quiet. But I’m in a difficult position now. I’ve put the years and the work in, along with everybody else. I put my neck out just like the rest of them, and I want my share of the rewards. But if I want my place at Stormont, then I have to be clean. Spotless, you understand.”

  McGinty’s smile dissolved. “But Michael had become a problem. I told him to keep out of trouble, that any shit he got into would stick to me, but he didn’t listen. People smuggling, for Christ’s sake. The Liths were bringing in girls from the South, and Michael was dipping his toe in the water. Fair enough, there was good money there, but Jesus, kids? I mean fifteen-, sixteen-year-olds. Even the Brits wouldn’t let that go. He should’ve left all that to the Loyalists; they’re too stupid to know any better. If he’d been caught he could have done me a lot of damage. The leadership was concerned about him. They went to the old man about it.”

  Fegan’s thigh tensed and he ground his shoe against the Lincoln’s carpeting as McGinty squeezed his knee.

  “And then there’s Vincie. Now, don’t get me wrong, Vincie was a good volunteer. Best interrogator we ever had in Belfast. But he was mouthing off, how he didn’t like us sitting at Stormont, how he didn’t like us supporting the peelers, how we were selling out. And you know how the old man is, Gerry. Bull O’Kane doesn’t like dissent in the ranks. It unsettles people. I was called down to the farm just last weekend, and he told me to sort things out. Clean house, you know? Get everyone in line or I’d be out.”

  Fegan knew the farm he meant, a few acres of land and a modest house that straddled the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, where County Armagh became County Monaghan. O’Kane ran his empire from that remote bolt-hole, and Fegan sometimes heard whispers of how much cash the old man turned over. Millions, some said, maybe hundreds of millions. He buried it in property investment all over the world - England, Spain, Por
tugal and America - and kept layers of paperwork between him and the money.

  These days, most of that money came from the endless demand for cheap fuel. The Bull ran dozens of laundering plants on farms along the border, each churning out millions of gallons of chemically stripped agricultural diesel - government-subsidised fuel intended for cash-strapped farmers. This diesel was processed, cleaned of its dye, and resold to petrol stations, motorists, hauliers and anyone else who wanted to get their hands on cheap fuel. Bull O’Kane now fought for Ireland by poisoning its countryside with chemical waste.

  “How is the Bull these days?” Fegan asked.

  “Oh, you know Bull,” McGinty said. “He’s kicking the arse of seventy, and he could still take any man came near him. Still as smart as a fox. You only met him a few times, didn’t you?”