Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  Miller opened the plastic bag at his feet. The bag was full of stun grenades for close quarters work. They produced a deafening explosion, but no real danger of permanent injury. He gave three to Charlie.

  “Only if we have to,” he said. “Nothing flash.”

  Charlie nodded, but said nothing. They both put on gloves, tight black leather. For the first time, Miller realized he was sweating. He reached back and retrieved a big canvas holdall, the kind used by plumbers and carpenters. He put four stun grenades and his own gun inside, leaving the top open for easy access. He looked at Charlie for the last time. Then they both got out of the car, two workmen, calling at the wrong address.

  They walked across the road, Charlie whistling, Miller carrying the canvas holdall. They pushed in through the creaking gate. Miller could hear the Escort’s engine starting again, and the whine of the transmission as it slowly backed up towards the house. Miller and Charlie paused on the front path. Miller glanced across at Charlie, and nodded at the narrow line of paving stones that led to the side of the house. Charlie did his bidding, strolling towards the side entrance, gazing up at the paintwork, assessing the job. Miller gave him a moment or two to step through the wooden gate at the side, hearing the Escort stop on the other side of the front hedge. Then he stepped towards the front door, high profile, wide open, wondering how many eyes might be watching.

  He rang the door bell. Nothing happened. He rang again, and then a third time, cursing the sudden change of plan, the risks he was forced to take, the lives he was putting at stake. Finally, deep in the house, he heard footsteps. He lifted the canvas holdall, frowning, the frown of a man who’s suddenly realized he might have forgotten something vital. He began to rummage in the holdall, shaking his head, hearing the scrape of bolts, and the creak of an unoiled hinge as the door swung open, then the gun was in his hand, and his body was down at the half squat, and the hand was way out in front of him, the big black muzzle of the Parabellum, his other hand down in the bag at his feet, feeling for the stun grenade. He paused for perhaps a tenth of a second. An old man was standing in the doorway. He must have been eighty. He had a round face, and wispy grey hair, and a pair of ancient horn-rimmed glasses. He had a hearing aid, and his body was bent over a walking stick that had seen better days. He wore an old cardigan. He stood in the doorway, blinking in the low winter sunlight.

  “Yes?” he said blankly.

  Miller pushed inside. The house smelled faintly of breakfast: bacon and burnt toast. In the kitchen he found an old woman in a chair. There was a cat in her lap. She was trying to knit. Back in the hall, he met the old man again. The old man was peering at him. Then he turned and opened the door to the living room at the front of the house. Miller stepped quickly past him. The room was empty, a heavy, dark, well-furnished room, with brocade curtains and a huge brass fender around the fireplace. The walls were lined with framed photographs, mainly portraits, heavy-set men in suits and ties. Over the mantelpiece was an oil painting. It showed a large chamber, lined with benches, crowded with men, one or two on their feet, makers of speeches, passers of laws, legislators, politicians. For the first time, Miller began to feel uneasy, He turned to the old man.

  “Who else is here?” he said, not bothering to disguise his accent.

  The old man gazed at him, his mouth catching up with his eyes.

  “My son,” he said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Upstairs.” He put a hand on Miller’s arm. “Careful now,” he said, “the boy’s ill.”

  Miller nodded. Back in the hall, he mounted the stairs. A single door faced him. He turned the handle. It was locked. He took a step back, and kicked it in. There was a splintering of wood, then a roar of anger from the other side. Miller stepped into the room. A man of about forty was sitting up in bed. He wore a T-shirt and a cardigan. There were a pile of books by the bed. He looked at Miller, the gun, the overalls, the eyes. He didn’t seem remotely frightened. And he definitely wasn’t the target in the briefing photos.

  “Who the Jesus are you?” the man said.

  Miller looked at him for a moment. Downstairs, there was a deafening explosion. Miller turned, taking the stairs at the run. There was smoke everywhere. Then Charlie emerged from the living room.

  “Some old man,” he said briefly. “On the phone.”

  Miller looked at him for a moment, the anger flooding through him, the certain knowledge that they’d been set up, that they’d stepped into a neat little trap, and turned a mistake into a disaster.

  “Out,” he said softly. “Get out.”

  The two men ran from the house. Miller paused briefly at the kerbside while Charlie sprinted for the VW. The Escort’s engine was still running. Thompson was bent over the open boot, the car between him and the house, waiting. Miller could see the gun in his hand.

  “On yer bike,” he said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Wrong fare.”

  Thompson looked at him, pure disbelief. Then he pocketed the gun, slid into the driving seat, and accelerated away. Miller watched him go. The boot was still wide open.

  The blue Datsun eased off the main road, drove slowly up the long drive, and came to a halt outside the hotel’s main entrance. The whine of taxiing jets was clearly audible from the airport, barely a mile away. The driver glanced over his shoulder. He looked pleased with himself. He nodded at the big, revolving doors, and Leeson followed his gaze. What he could see of the hotel lobby was dominated by a huge chandelier.

  “Interesting drive,” he said drily, “I take it we’ve arrived.”

  The driver’s smile widened. “My pleasure,” he said, “gentlemen.”

  Connolly and Leeson released themselves from the seat belts and got out. The girl they’d met at the airport appeared from the revolving doors. The clipboard had gone.

  “Mr Connolly,” she said.

  Connolly nodded. He felt like the man from Federal Express. “This is Mr Leeson,” he said, “I think he’s expected.”

  The girl smiled, but said nothing. They followed her inside. The hotel smelled of money. The carpets were thick, and the porters’ uniforms were brand new, and even the flowers looked real. The girl led the way across the lobby, towards the lift. Connolly glanced at Leeson. Leeson, he could tell, approved. He was back in his element. Decent hotel. Proper service. People who obviously understood what they were doing. They got in the lift. The girl pressed the button for the fourth floor. She was wearing a wedding ring, third finger, left hand. She had nice nails, no varnish. The lift whirred upwards, stopped. They got out, following the girl along the corridor, to a room at the end. Connolly made a mental note of the number. 416.

  The girl paused for a moment outside the door, knocked twice, and went in. Connolly and Leeson followed. The room was large, a sitting room, well furnished, acres of carpet, full-length windows, and a small balcony beyond. There was a drinks cabinet, a television, a couple of deep armchairs, and a three-seat sofa. By the window was a round table. At the table sat the man Connolly recognized from the evening at the cottage. He got up. He was wearing a plain dark suit, with a dark green tie. Except for the tie, he might have been dressed for a funeral. He extended a hand to Leeson. It was the first time Connolly had seen him smile.

  “Mr Leeson?”

  Leeson nodded. “The same,” he said softly, the diplomat’s tilt of the head, the slightest touch of flesh on flesh.

  The man at the table looked across at Connolly, no hint of recognition, no word of welcome, no thanks. “There’s a meal for you both downstairs,” he said, “in the dining room.”

  Connolly looked at the table. The table was set for two: full dinner placing, two kinds of wine glass, a basket of fresh bread rolls, generous swirls of butter. He glanced across at Leeson, marvelling at the man’s composure. He looked flattered and pleased, the distinguished guest, duly impressed by the scale of the hospitality.

  Maura, the girl, touched Connolly lightly on the arm and led him b
ack towards the door. As they left the room, he could hear the man in the suit inviting Leeson to take a cocktail, a quite different tone in his voice to the one Connolly remembered, respect as well as authority.

  Connolly and the girl returned to the ground floor. In the hotel dining room, they shared a table next to the window. Outside, there were peacocks strutting between empty flower beds, and a croquet lawn, ready mown, waiting for spring. At the girl’s insistence, they ordered wine, a good Chablis, which they drank between courses while she told him about Dublin, the sights, where to go, what to eat, where best to see the real city, the Dublin they never told you about in the brochures.

  Dazed by it all, by the wine, and the food, and the starkness of the contrast with the last time, out in the country, the gun on the table, the chill in the man’s eyes, Connolly did his best to keep up. Once or twice, Maura hacking at her Beef Wellington, he tried to prise a little of the truth from her, what they were here for, where it might all lead, but the only answer he got in response was a warm, practised smile, and yet another enquiry about the Irishness of his own name. Sure now, he might indeed have come from Clonmel. There were a thousand Connollys down in that part, so there were, and a beautiful part it was too. Connolly listened to it all, letting it wash over him, knowing only too well that the day had slipped out of his control, and that his sole remaining duty was to survive it.

  Over coffee, an hour and a half later, Leeson appeared in the dining room. He was unescorted, quite alone. Of his host, there was no sign. He paused by the table, and beamed down. He’d clearly enjoyed himself.

  “OK?” Connolly said blankly.

  “Extremely civilized.”

  “Finished now?”

  “I suspect so.”

  The girl organized a cab to the airport. There was no bill for the meal, no cash, no credit card. The cab arrived within five minutes. The girl escorted them both to the hotel lobby. She might easily have been a tour guide, the luxury end of the market, real class. At the kerbside, she extended a hand.

  “Thanks,” Connolly said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  They got in the cab. Looking back, Connolly answered the girl’s departing wave with a limp movement of his right hand. Only an hour later, twenty thousand feet over the Irish Sea, did he finally coax any sense from Leeson.

  “So what did you talk about?” he said. “What did he want to know?”

  Leeson toyed with the last of his complimentary cashews, and took another sip from his second Scotch and water.

  “In the end,” he said, “or to begin with?”

  “Either. Both.”

  Leeson smiled, gazing out of the window.

  “In the beginning there was the usual nonsense. The kind you’d expect. Bombs in briefcases. Access. Names. You know what I mean …” he trailed off and yawned. “Not my game, really. I think he understood that.”

  “So what did you discuss? Afterwards?”

  Leeson’s head sank back against the seat. The eyes were half closed.

  “Afterwards?” The smile softened. “Afterwards, we talked about the Falklands. He was a perceptive man.” He looked at Connolly. “He understood it all.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes.” He licked the last of the salt from his fingers. “The folly. The blindness.”

  “And does that …” Connolly frowned, hunting for the right word, “matter?”

  Leeson said nothing for the moment. Then he reached for the Scotch and emptied it at a single gulp. “I don’t know,” he said, wiping his lips.

  ELEVEN

  Miller held the post-mortem the following day, Sunday. It was a private affair, just the five men on the unit, the ad hoc team he’d put together to lift the man they called the Reaper, and bring him safely home for supper. In theory, it had seemed the simplest of operations, a clean, surgical incision, the heart torn out of the Provo’s Away Teams. In reality, as he now knew, it had been a disaster.

  He’d received the worst of the news past midnight, back at Bessbrook, on the secure line to London. The home they’d targeted had belonged to a Mr O’Donovan. Tommy O’Donovan had, in his time, been a leading Fianna Fail politician on the Dublin City Council, highly respected, much loved. His son, Kieron, had inherited his father’s mantle, and now represented his City ward. He still lived with his parents, and had been housebound for the last week or two with a bad attack of flu. There was one other fact about the O’Donovans Whitehall had thought worth a mention. Both father and son were implacably opposed to the Provisionals and seized any opportunity to say so.

  Sunday morning, a grey day, Miller recited the facts without comment. The men sat around him, on the hard, grey, Army-issue chairs, studying their hands. They’d all got back to Bessbrook after dark. They’d had a few drinks. They’d not said much. And then they’d drifted away and gone to bed. Now, one of them looked up, Thompson, the Cockney, Unit Three, the only man to drive through central Dublin with his car boot wide open.

  “So what happened?” he said.

  Miller looked at him. There was nothing in his face to suggest that he hadn’t slept for over thirty-six hours. “What happened to who?” he said.

  “The old man. Tommy O’Donovan.”

  “He died.”

  Thompson blinked. “You stiffed him?”

  “No,” Miller said drily, “Charlie blew him up.”

  Thompson whistled softly. “Nice one,” he said.

  Charlie was staring at Miller. “You’re joking,” he said. “It’s a joke.”

  Miller shook his head. “No. He had a heart attack. By the time they got him to hospital, he was dead.”

  “Natural causes?”

  “Hardly.”

  Charlie nodded. He began to roll a cigarette. Miller watched him, the long fingers working the shreds of tobacco along the thin tube of Rizla, the slightest tremor as he lifted the paper to his lips, licked one edge, reached for his matches. Then he looked up, his face clouded in tobacco smoke.

  “So the old fella’s dead,” he said. “Is that the worst of it?”

  Miller shook his head. “No. The son’s raising hell. He’s got a story about wild Brit soldiers. Some kind of hit squad.” Miller paused. “He has credibility, this man. His own people believe him. Potentially, it’s …” He shrugged. “Explosive.”

  “And what are London saying?”

  “London are denying all knowledge.”

  “What about the evidence?”

  “What evidence?”

  “The stun grenade. What’s left of it.”

  “Ah …” Miller sighed. “I gather we’re awaiting the forensic. When they give us the details, then we’ll be able to confirm where it came from.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “Part of a consignment that went missing,” he smiled thinly, “last week.”

  “Ah.” Charlie nodded. “Clever.”

  “Obvious.”

  “Will they believe it?”

  “Probably not. But that doesn’t matter. That’s not what really bothers me.”

  Miller paused and got up. He walked to the window. Outside, it had begun to rain. He turned, and looked at them all. Unit Two, the heroes in the white Vauxhall, had already been debriefed. They’d offered no excuses. The guys in front had simply got the better of them. They’d taken every risk in the book, and they’d driven like maniacs, and they’d been lucky. At those kinds of speeds, in that kind of area, they’d had a choice between maintaining their cover, or keeping up. Not that there was any cover left to blow. The blokes in the blue Datsun had spotted them from the off. The interesting question, the real question, was why.

  Miller leaned back against the window sill, the word echoing in his skull. He’d lived with it all night. Soon, he had to find an answer. Otherwise, Whitehall might get there first.

  “So,” he said to Charlie, “why …?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did we go to number 112.”

  Miller looked
at Charlie. Even within Nineteenth, even within this room, just the five of them, sources were sacrosanct. If you were wise, you never told a soul where your information came from. When you found a source, you kept him strictly to yourself, your tightest secret. You gave him money, and bought him drinks, and nurtured him, and won what little confidence he had. He became your friend, this man. You had a pact, mutually acknowledged. He kept his ears and eyes open, and went along with the plot, and told you everything he knew, and in return, you offered him protection. That meant total anonymity. No names. No photos. Not one single clue.

  The system was far from perfect, but when the information was kosher, the facts correct, then everyone was happy. Now, the information was dud. They’d been sent to the wrong house. And in the wrong house, they’d played it like infants, doing the opposition a grand favour, disposing of one of their sternest critics. The results, an old man dead, his wife and son in mourning, were already in the Dublin papers. Soon, there’d be the makings of a scandal. For public consumption, the Brits would doubtless shrug the incident aside – black propaganda, yet another spoiling raid by avenging Provos from the North – but that was hardly the point. The point was that he, Charlie, this protégé of his, had found himself downwind of the Reaper.

  The Reaper was the man they’d been after for nearly two years. He had a name now, and – all too briefly in a suburban Dublin street – an address. At least there’d been a way to get at him, to lift him, to knock him off the plot. Only the Reaper, somehow, had spoiled the party. Instead of a thirty-second snatch, and the Intelligence windfall of a decade, they’d been had. Their target had vanished. The Reaper had gone. Why?

  Charlie looked up at Miller. His roll-up had gone out. “You’re saying I should have checked the place out? Gone to Special Branch? The London boys?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He paused. “They might have told me, though. They might have known who really lived there.”

  “I’m sure. But then they’d want in. All of them. Death or glory.”

  Charlie nodded. “That’s what I thought,” he said, “that’s why I – ” he shrugged “ – played it the other way.”