Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  Davidson nodded. “Unfortunate,” he said, “I agree.”

  Miller got up and went to the window. It was a flawless spring day. The river was nearly blue, the first of the season’s pleasure boats pushing downstream against the flood tide.

  “We have indications,” he said, “that they’re planning the big one. We’ve coded it Reaper.”

  “How picturesque.”

  Miller glanced round, recognizing Davidson’s inflection for what it was, slightly fastidious, slightly disapproving, the tone of a man who bothered about language.

  “The big one,” Miller repeated, “something special. The hit that evens the score. The one that really matters.”

  Davidson picked a shred of chicken from his back teeth. He looked at it, frowning.

  “They all matter,” he said.

  “Quite.”

  “But you think …?” He paused.

  Miller nodded, emphatic. “Yes,” he said, “the Prime Minister.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s the obvious target.”

  Davidson looked at him. He was still frowning.

  “I understood these people … this character of yours …”

  “Scullen.”

  “Scullen was good.”

  “He’s very good.”

  “Then he may do something else.” He paused. “May he not?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Something far from obvious?”

  Miller shrugged. “Yes,” he conceded. “If he gets the chance.”

  “And will he get the chance?”

  “Not if we get to him first.”

  “And will you?”

  Miller looked him in the eye.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think we will.”

  There was a brief silence. Big Ben chimed. The single stroke. One o’clock.

  Davidson was looking out of the window.

  “You said that before,” he said, “didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And we had the Irish on. Most of the following week.”

  “So I believe.”

  “Extremely tiresome.”

  “Of course.”

  Davidson registered the point with another silence. Then he cleared his throat.

  “We have procedures already,” he looked at Miller, “for protecting the Prime Minister.”

  “So I understand.”

  “And there’s a lot going on. God knows.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But you still think we should be cautious?”

  “Very.”

  “Despite the … ah … inconvenience?”

  Miller nodded. “Yes,” he said, “that’s why I’m here.”

  Davidson looked at his briefcase a moment, as if debating whether or not to open it. Then he glanced at Miller again. “If nothing materializes,” he said, “she won’t be best pleased.”

  Miller shrugged. “If nothing materializes,” he said, “at least she’ll be alive.”

  “Quite.”

  There was another silence, longer this time, and Miller knew that he’d underestimated the young civil servant, permitted himself to be pushed into a corner of someone else’s making. The unspoken warning was quite clear. This time, they were saying, you’d better be right. This time, there’d better be a real threat, a real attack, not some clever props work in the wings, noises off, scaring the daylights out of everyone, crying wolf. Miller glanced up. Davidson was wiping the crumbs from the table and folding his greaseproof paper. The meeting was evidently over. He stood up.

  “By the way,” he said, reaching for his briefcase, “the RUC have been on this morning. They’re apparently missing a key witness. Young woman.” He smiled. “Wouldn’t have any ideas, would you?”

  It took Mairead most of the morning to borrow a washing line.

  She tried first at the next billet in the camp, another of the hideous concrete slab prefabs she’d last seen under the bulldozers in West Belfast. The woman next door couldn’t stand the Irish, and she saw it in her face as soon as she opened her mouth and the woman heard the harsh Belfast accent, and shook her head at the word “borrow”.

  Mairead gave up at that point, tugging Bronagh down the road, heading for the NAAFI, her purse still bulging with the twenty five-pound notes they’d given her on the plane over. But the NAAFI didn’t stock washing lines either, so in the end, determined to rescue something from the morning, she sat the kids round the brand-new video, and phoned for a taxi, and rode down to the local town where she found what she needed. The local town was called Borden. She hadn’t a clue where it was, and she wasn’t much bothered. Only the kids, keeping them safe, now mattered.

  An hour later, she was back. There were, she had to admit, odd moments of consolation in this strange new life of hers, and this was one of them, the kids sat around on the floor, a cartoon video on the telly, food in the fridge, money in her purse, and the assurance from the man in the leather jacket that they would all – sooner or later – be shipped back to Belfast. She’d no idea who he represented, whether he worked for the police, or the military, or some other organization, but she knew she needed someone to trust, and in the absence of anyone else, it had to be him.

  He appeared in the late afternoon. He said he’d been up in London. He stepped out of a small green car and asked where they might talk. Mairead suggested the garden, out the back. The kids were onto their third video. It was a nice day. She’d make him tea.

  They talked for nearly an hour. He explained he was Charlie’s boss. He said he’d got to know the boy very well, had loved him like a father. He said that Charlie’s job was to pass on all the information that she’d been able to give him, either up front, or without really knowing that she’d said anything of value. He said she’d helped them greatly in certain respects, and that they were now closer to finding a man who was causing a great deal of concern, a very dangerous man. She listened to him throughout without making any comment of her own, topping up his tea-cup, passing him the sugar, and when he ended up by saying that essentially they were all on the same side, allies in the same war, against murder and violence and suffering, she nodded.

  “They all say that,” she said.

  “All?”

  “You. The priests. The doctors. My lot,” she paused. “Even Charlie.”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Of course,” she said, “I believe you all. But it still goes on.” She looked at him. “Doesn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  There was a long silence. She could hear Bronagh screaming inside. The kids had persuaded her to hire a horror video. Bronagh was easily frightened. She looked at the man in the leather jacket.

  “So what do you want?” she said. “Why have you come?”

  He bent his head a moment and looked away, realizing for the first time how direct this woman could be, how difficult it must have sometimes been for Charlie. He plucked a blade of winter grass and sucked it. It tasted of nothing.

  “I want you to talk to Connolly,” he said.

  Mairead nodded. “How do I do that?”

  “He’ll phone. Sooner or later.” He nodded towards the house. “Your Belfast number’s been transferred. Any calls, they’ll ring here.” He looked at her. “So don’t go out, please. Stay in.”

  “And?”

  “When he phones, find out where he is.”

  “And?”

  “Tell us.” He hesitated. “Tell me. I’m staying around for a bit. I may even be here. On camp.”

  Mairead looked away, squinting in the bright sunshine. Bronagh had stopped screaming.

  “But what will you do?” she said. “What will happen to him?”

  Miller extended a hand and laid it lightly on her forearm. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing can. Nothing will. He’ll be in the Republic somewhere. Bound to be. That’s a foreign country. He’s abroad. He’s safe.”

  Mairead frowned, confused. “So why bother?”
she said. “Why find out in the first place?”

  “Because he’ll take us to someone else. Someone we want very badly.”

  Mairead nodded. “And won’t he be in the Republic too?”

  “Probably.”

  “But won’t that matter? Won’t he be safe there?”

  Miller looked at her for a long time. Then he shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Not this time.”

  Scullen handled the Great Victoria Street debrief himself.

  He went back to Buncrana, and drew up the report, spending even more time than usual getting it exactly right, the prose elegant, the structure tight, each paragraph striking the perfect balance between information, atmosphere, and the remorseless onward march of the narrative. Charlie McGrew. A confirmed member of Nineteenth Intelligence. A target of opportunity. Handed to them on a plate. The operation put together at short notice by the pick of Scullen’s Belfast apprentices. And then the hit itself, a masterpiece, a Brit finger on the trigger, one more recruit to the cause, a quite unexpected dividend.

  Scullen typed the report himself, and made the phone call. The Chief said he’d come the same day, and bring company.

  Company turned out to be O’Mahoney. Scullen hadn’t seen him for nearly six months, not since the start of the current mainland campaign. He’d put on weight. Never talkative, he’d become even more withdrawn. He didn’t bother to take his coat off. Unshaven, hostile, he sat on a pile of historical reviews in a corner of the office, a brooding presence on the very edges of the conversation.

  The Chief read Scullen’s report over coffee. Then he put it down.

  “It says you did well, Padraig,” he remarked, “saves me the trouble of forming my own opinion.”

  “We did,” Scullen nodded. “We did.”

  The Chief studied the closely typed pages again, then looked up. “The Brits are going to war,” he said, “it seems you were right there, too.”

  Scullen smiled. The Chief was watching him closely now.

  “So tell me,” he said, “when can we expect some action?”

  Scullen shrugged. There was something in the Chief’s voice, something close to anger, something perhaps for O’Mahoney’s benefit, but he couldn’t quite place what.

  “Action?” he said.

  The Chief nodded. “You promised us an operation. We were going to blow up a battleship or two.” He paused. “Wasn’t that the heap?”

  “Ah …” Scullen smiled again. “Yes.”

  “So when will it happen?” The Chief paused. “And who’s in place to do it? Do we get any clues? Only some of the boys are getting confused.”

  He glanced across at O’Mahoney. O’Mahoney grunted, burying his nose in his mug of coffee. Scullen looked at him a moment, trying to gauge the depth of the man’s resentment, the reasons for it. The Leeson hit had been unfortunate. He’d never intended to give O’Mahoney problems, and he’d written to him since, a careful note of apology. Now, looking at him, it plainly hadn’t done the trick. The Chief picked up Scullen’s report and began to fold it.

  “I take it there will be a hit?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Soon?”

  “Yes.”

  The Chief nodded. “Good,” he said, “because you’ll fucking need it.”

  He glanced across at O’Mahoney again and got up. Both men headed for the door. Scullen watched them, not beginning to understand.

  “Where are you going?” he said.

  The Chief got to the door and paused. He turned round. Scullen had never seen the expression on his face before. It was a dark fury.

  “I’m off back to Belfast,” he said, “to postpone a funeral.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose funeral?”

  “Yours.”

  “Why?”

  There was a long silence. The Chief began to tuck the report into his inside pocket.

  “Because Charlie McGrew was ripe for turning,” he said, “the boy was a real prospect. And you had him fucking killed.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Argentinians had been ashore on the Falklands for twenty-four hours before Buddy next appeared on Portsmouth Harbour.

  He’d driven over from the cottage and hired a small speedboat from a yard in Gosport. The boat had a 50hp outboard and a nice turn of speed, though the harbour itself had a tightly policed limit of ten knots. Now, midmorning, he cruised slowly up and down on the edges of the buoyed channel, watching the warships on the Portsmouth side of the harbour, fixing the picture in his mind.

  The first Home elements of the fleet, he knew, were due to sail on Monday morning, two days hence. According to the morning’s news on the radio, the Admiralty had announced that three capital ships would be involved, the old aircraft carrier Hermes, the new jump-jet carrier Invincible, and the amphibious assault ship Fearless. All three ships were now visible in the dockyard, Invincible tied up at South Railway Jetty, broadside on to the harbour, Hermes further north, tucked around the corner, with Fearless berthed near by.

  Buddy took the little speedboat up the harbour, beyond the commercial ferry port, and then cut the engine, letting the ebb tide push the bow round and ease her slowly back down-harbour, towards the open sea. MOD police would, he knew, have men afloat, more vigilant than usual, keeping an eye on the dozens of small craft nosing around the dockyard. There were no restrictions on this stretch of water, no ban on private shipping, but all the same it wouldn’t pay to write notes, or stay too long, or appear to be anything but a casual gawper, eager to share the glow of this small moment of history.

  The speedboat drifted along, Buddy relaxing against the padded mock-leather seat. He’d taken some care to dress for the part, T-shirt, jeans, wrap-around sunshades, and he wondered for a moment whether he shouldn’t have let Eva come too. She’d have looked good beside him, completing the tableau. She might even have behaved like a human being, relaxing for an hour or so, instead of playing the tight-lipped full-time revolutionary she felt the job demanded. Funny woman, he thought.

  Last night, Friday, she’d stayed late again at the cottage, trying to persuade him to do without an extra pair of hands. He’d gone through the thing time and again, the help he’d need with the boat, with the gear, with the pick-up afterwards, but each time he described a particular task she’d simply said it would be no problem. Taking the yacht round to Portsmouth? She’d do it. Preparing the diving gear? She’d help. Manhandling the explosives, and the other gear, over the side? Her job. In every possible respect, she was totally inexperienced. She’d never sailed in her life, never dived. Yet still she insisted.

  Finally, getting to the bottom of it, Buddy had asked her point blank: what’s the problem? Why not get help? She’d refused to answer for a minute or two, and then told him it was absurd. They couldn’t possibly go out and simply hire someone. He’d said of course not. They’d have to ask the people in Dublin for reinforcement. But this, too, she turned down flat. They were, she’d said, unimpressive. That was the word she’d used. Unimpressive. One or two were good, she’d said, but the rest were schiess. Better, and safer, to handle the job themselves. In the end, two in the morning, he’d given up. “OK, then,” he’d said, “it’s you and me. Versus the entire fucking Navy.” She’d shrugged at the odds and reached for her duffle coat. “No need to swear,” she’d said, heading for the door.

  Now, eyeing the line of grey warships, he thought about the odds again. He’d finally decided to limit the amount of explosives, cutting his order with Harry by half, causing damage, but little possibility of injury or death. By placing two ten-pound charges aft, close to the vital glands that protect the main propeller shafts, he’d guarantee to stop a ship in its tracks. Damage to the steering gear would also be likely, making it doubly certain that the ship would have to return for expensive repairs. This, as he understood it, was the whole point of the exercise. To inflict the maximum humiliation in front of the biggest possible audien
ce at a key moment in the nation’s history. The papers were already stirring the national pot, talking about the biggest naval encounter since the Second World War, and he could imagine the kind of capital the Provos would make of a successful pre-emptive strike. The tabloids, of course, would rant and rave about betrayal. Politicians would bang on about the Fifth Column. But most blokes, he knew, would have a quiet think about the reach and the calibre and the motivation of a guerrilla army that could stop the Royal Navy in its tracks. Wouldn’t it be simpler, they might conclude, to just get out of Ireland altogether? To leave it to the Irish and come home? That was the real prize. That was why they’d gone to the trouble of kidnapping Jude. That was what they were looking to him for.

  Buddy eased the speedboat off to starboard as a big Sea King helicopter clattered in from the west. They were drifting down towards Invincible, and the last thing he wanted was attention. He gazed up at the huge hull of the warship. She was almost brand-new, but already under offer to the Australian Navy, part of yet another Defence Review. She was big, nineteen thousand tons, with a ski jump at the bow for the new Sea Harrier STOL jets. She had a bridge, and two funnels, and a massive radar array in a command island offset to one side, while the rest of her deck was dedicated to aircraft. Looking up, he could see men working through the open scuttles on the side, and he could picture the scenes on the quay, the lorries grinding in from the supply depots inland, the big dockyard cranes winching aboard the heavier items, machinery, guns, spare parts, crates of ammunition, the human chains on the gangplanks, passing stores aboard, hand to hand, hour after hour. There’d be Petty Officers on the quayside, clipboards, endless lists of stores. There’d be NAAFI blokes dispensing buns and cups of hot coffee. There’d be dockies running around with spanners and tins of grease, civvy lorry drivers helping with the heavier loads. God knows, even the police probably had a smile on their faces. Buddy grinned and shook his head. It was a fairytale, he thought. Everyone off to war. Everyone delighted. And here he was, trying to wreck the party.

  He glanced across the harbour, back towards Gosport, measuring the distance between Invincible and the marina where the girl had booked a berth. He’d already decided that Invincible would be the target, chiefly because she was liable to take the lead as the capital ships left the harbour, but also because she was the easiest ship to attack. His plan would call for the yacht to drift slowly down the middle of the harbour after dark on Sunday night. At half past midnight, the tide would be slack high water. Abeam Invincible, he’d slip into the water on the blind side, and swim submerged on a compass bearing to the carrier’s stern. The charges would be magnetic, already shaped and prepared. He’d attach them both and prime the detonators. The detonators he’d asked for were sonar-sensitive, tuned to a frequency he suspected was never used. After he’d planted the charges, he’d return underwater on a back bearing. With no tidal flow, he’d only need a time estimate to the marina. The girl would have returned the yacht to the marina, and he’d join her there. Ten hours later, with Invincible slipping out through the harbour narrows, he’d detonate the charges with a single press of a single button. An underwater sonar signal, and the watching television cameras, would do the rest.