Taking the Tunnel

by James Adams

  He was still a smart-ass, with his trademark cocky walk and high laugh. But now he almost glowed with power, exuding a strength that made him appear even more menacing. Rita steeled herself.

  His mouth met hers, tongue thrusting between her parted lips, wet and slimy. She almost recoiled but then met him, her tongue flicking back against her tooth. After a moment of panic when nothing happened the tooth came loose and she felt the tiny packet in her mouth. His tongue slithered around her mouth one final time and then took the packet and stored it in his cheek.

  They parted and for the next twenty minutes engaged in the strained small talk of partners who should have separated years ago. They had nothing in common and Morrison’s tales of the petty squabbles and victories of prison life held no interest for her. He was eager for news of the campaign in England, happy that there had been another successful strike. But she knew little more than he had seen on the television and certainly nothing that she could tell him in this room where every gesture and every word was recorded for later analysis.

  When the warder signalled that it was time for her to go, she stood up and once again they embraced. This time his tongue pushed a package into her mouth and, as they clung together, her tongue eased it into the tooth and pushed the tooth back on to its stump. An operation that took seconds now had taken her many minutes the first time she had tried it. When they parted, there was no hint that her mouth contained anything other than tongue and teeth.

  With a casual “Slan,” or goodbye, they parted.

  She had arranged to meet Adams at his house in Norfolk Drive in Andersonstown, an easy ten-minute walk from where she was dropped off by the bus. The Falls Road was one of the last unchanged bastions of Catholic Belfast and Rita always found travelling along it a depressing reminder of the failures of the Movement really to change things. Over the years the British had gradually knocked down and replaced most of the Catholic slums and so had given many of the people who would have supported the IRA a stake in their future. It was a sensible tactic in a long war that was paying off. It was no coincidence then that the slums around the Falls Road remained an IRA stronghold.

  Half a mile from the Sinn Fein headquarters, Rita walked down some steps and into the ladies’ lavatory, a dirty, graffiti-marked Victorian public convenience that smelled of urine and stale sweat. She went into one of the cubicles and sat down, her tongue already working on the tooth. The tiny plastic-wrapped pouch dropped on to her palm and her fingers wrestled with the plastic film. She knew she had only minutes because Gerry would know the time the bus was due and the time it took to walk to his house. A few minutes was explicable but any more and she was in trouble.

  Her nails prised apart the film and set it to one side and then, careful not to tear the fragile sheet, she gradually opened out the rectangle of cigarette-packet paper. She peered at the tiny writing, struggling for a moment to decipher the minute letters. She stretched back, her head leaning against the wall, and groaned. That bastard Danny had written his message in code. The jumble of numbers meant nothing to her, the whole operation had been a complete waste of time.

  Fifteen minutes later she pressed the doorbell of Gerry’s home in Norfolk Drive. A simple terraced house, the security camera panning the front path and doorway, combined with the mesh screens on all the windows facing the street to deflect a bomb blast or a thrown grenade, showed that this was the home of a politician or a terrorist — or, in Adams’s case, both.

  Rita sensed hidden eyes on her and then the door opened and she saw Gerry’s wife, Colette.

  “Rita, come along in. The boys are in the back.” She gestured with a flour-stained hand towards the rear of the house. Colette was in many ways the perfect antithesis to her husband. She rarely spoke about politics, instead she concerned herself with providing her husband with a comfortable sanctuary and bringing up their son, Gerald. Her efforts had counted for little in recent years as Gerry never spent more than two nights at a time in Norfolk Drive to avoid attack by Protestant terrorists and to keep British Intelligence on the hop.

  Rita walked along the passage, passing an open door to her left where Eamon McCaughley, one of Gerry’s two bodyguards, sat in front of the TV monitors. Past the stairs, which were protected by another steel cage in case of a night attack, Rita turned right into the room Gerry had recently finished constructing. This was the room he called The Safe, where most sensitive conversations took place hidden from the prying eyes and ears of the British.

  Until recently these talks had happened in the parlour, a room at the back of the house which also acted as Gerry’s study. But then he had read in one of those helpful articles published by the newspapers that the Brits had developed a new laser microphone that could pick up the tiniest vibrations from window curtains and make out every word spoken in the room. Adams had brought in an IRA contractor to build a new room in the centre of the house. This one was shielded by lead panels and as an additional defence had hollow-foam soundproofing lining all the walls.

  In meetings with the faithful, Adams can quote from memory the bad poetry written by inmates from H-block, the saccharine ballads of the Movement that commemorated feats of heroism or martyrdom, and the writings of the great Republican thinkers. But in private he is different; he has a broad intellect and wide tastes, in particular a fondness for classical music and the more traditional English writers like Trollope and Thackeray. As Rita walked into The Safe, she heard the final movement from Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, its dark and dramatic cadences somehow appropriate for the place and the time.

  Adams had been in power for so long that his normally sensitive political antennae had become dulled. He didn’t understand that this love for intellectual pursuits, which in any other man or organization might have been considered an attribute, was a cause for concern among the Boys. They saw a lack of political certitude, an ambivalence to his heritage that some thought suggested deeper doubts about the Movement.

  Now he rose from his comfortable leather armchair to welcome Rita. “A Rita, a chara,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks. She knew that the greeting had almost exhausted his grasp of the Irish language, another source of complaint from the traditionalists.

  Adams drew her over to the table in the centre of the room and gestured to the one free seat. As she sat down she looked around and saw that she had interrupted a meeting. To her left was Spike Murray, the familiar glass of Guinness half empty in front of him. He seemed more flushed than usual and she assumed they had been arguing just before she arrived.

  To her right, Gerry Kelly, Danny Morrison’s replacement inside the IRA hierarchy outside the Kesh, looked at her impassively. In a group of complex individuals, she found Kelly one of the most confusing. As a woman, she found him very attractive. He was a shade over six feet, with a thin face and high cheekbones, light blue eyes and dark hair which he swept back from his forehead. Unlike most of the Boys, he favoured smart clothes and invested large sums in keeping up with fashion. Today he was wearing a dark green double-breasted baggy suit, a pale grey silk shirt and a tie which had champagne corks, bubbles and bottles dotted all over it. His steel-rimmed glasses magnified his eyes, making them appear almost luminescent. If it weren’t for his record of ruthlessness and courage, he might have been considered a gadfly. As it was, no one crossed Gerry Kelly.

  He had risen to prominence after he had escaped from the Maze prison in 1983. He fled to Europe from where he had successfully organized IRA operations on the Continent. He had planted explosives and killed British soldiers with great success until he was arrested at Amsterdam docks with the raw materials for a bomb in a container. Rather than go through the expense and risk of a trial, the Dutch authorities had extradited Kelly to Belfast where he completed his sentence. It is one of the peculiarities of the British system of justice in Northern Ireland that although both the police and the intelligence organizations had plenty of evidence about Kelly’s terrorist acts in Europe, they could not produce that evi
dence in a Belfast court and expect to get a conviction. So, Kelly walked out a free man to assume a position at the top of the IRA Army Council, the organization’s policymaking body.

  Now he was the heir to Morrison’s mantle. He was the hard man who wanted to attack and attack again until the Brits were driven from Northern Ireland.

  “So, Rita, what have you brought us from Danny boy?” he asked, leaning forward expectantly.

  Once again her tongue poked out of her mouth and she lifted off the tiny plastic-coated ball and handed it to Adams. He carefully unwrapped it and then unfolded the paper on the wooden table in front of him. The code was obviously no problem to him and he reached behind him to the bookshelf and brought down a paperback copy of his own autobiography, Falls Memories. She had read it and, although she admired the man, she had found his self-indulgent romanticism about his childhood in Belfast almost impossible to swallow. She knew the reality of poverty and the slums was far removed from the friendly, help-my-neighbour pastiche that he had painted. But then she supposed the book was fodder for the unquestioning faithful or propaganda for the uncommitted, particularly in America.

  Adams looked up, seeing the surprise she was careful to paint on to her face. “Since the Brits cracked down on the old Comms we devised a more secure method. It’s always in code and it works on a combination of the day of the month and a page from a different book each month. That way only Danny and I know the codes and even if the British find the message, they’d never be able to crack it.”

  He was scribbling as he wrote, his familiarity with the system making him fluent in the transcription. But as he wrote his brow furrowed and then a flush spread into his cheeks from his beard making it look as if a small fire had started in the undergrowth.

  “Christ Almighty,” he exclaimed. “The stupid bugger wants us to launch a new phase on the mainland. Hit civilians, the royal family, anyone we can get at. The man’s mad. The Kesh has scrambled his brains.”

  “What’s so mad about it?” The question was put softly by Kelly, and made all the more forceful by its quiet delivery. “After all, we’re doing well. Two strikes and we’re still intact in England. The politicians are calling for our blood and so are the media. We’ve even had a couple of editorials in the Tory press that have questioned the military commitment to the North. We’ve had nothing like that for years. Maybe now’s the time to turn the screw tighter, to squeeze and squeeze until they pop.”

  “Don’t be so fucking stupid.” Adams glared across at Kelly, furious that he should be so openly challenged by his own creation. “Sean fucking Thomas has gone off the deep end. The killing of Royce’s wife and kids was bad enough but then to knock those people off at Winchester was just plain dumb.” He raised a hand to silence Kelly’s protests. “You just don’t bloody well understand. We think it’s a triumph. We say it’s a strike against the British establishment. Fine. And so it is. Down the Falls Road they raise their glasses to our man. But they’re the converted. We know we have them, come what may. What matters is England. We have to convince the British public that Northern Ireland is too high a price so they tell that to their politicians. Well, for every innocent we kill, the Brits have another propaganda weapon to shoot us with.”

  “But they weren’t innocent,” protested Kelly.

  “Oh for God’s sake, Gerry. You know that. I know that. But that is not the point. What matters is what the British public think and I’m telling you that they’ll believe what the Tory press publish and they’re saying we’ve let a madman loose in Britain and that we’re a bunch of heartless terrorists who should be strung from the nearest lamppost.

  “And now you want us to increase the violence! We’ve gone that route before. The Brits will never concede to military action. It has to be done by Sinn Fein to give them a political escape. Fight with guns alone and we’re all dead men.”

  “Ah, Gerry, that’s crap and you know it,” Kelly replied. “Look where ten years of politics has got you.” He began to tick off his fingers. “The hunger strikers dead, some of our best men gone for nothing; the Anglo-Irish agreement in place and we didn’t even get a chance to put our views; we no longer even have an MP at Westminster; political support is so far down in north and south as to be almost off the measuring scale.” He breathed heavily, the exhalation somewhere between a snort of disgust and a sigh of exasperation. “We’re becoming a political laughing stock. The only thing we have left is the gun and now is the time to use it.”

  To buy time, Adams began thumbing Condor into his pipe bowl. The tamping finished, he struck a match and started puffing. The airless room quickly filled with the sweet-smelling smoke, making Rita desperate for a glass of water. But the scene was too tense, the byplay of personalities too dramatic to risk an interruption.

  “Look, Gerry,” Adams began. “If we give up the political struggle now, then we have lost everything we have fought for all these years. You and I both know that we cannot win militarily, that the Brits will never concede a victory to us. It would bring down their government.

  “And if we do what Bangers wants and escalate the military campaign, kill more civilians, we’ll lose what little support we have left. We’ll be nothing, just a few people trying to keep the flame of Republicanism alive in the face of public indifference.”

  Adams was voicing a fear that had been central to his thinking for many years. Above everything, he dreaded the obscurity of indifference. He had grown used to the media attention, to the adulation that leadership bestows. Personally he could not face banishment to the exile of failure. But it was politics and not the armed struggle that gave him his credibility. For him to survive, the political struggle had to go on.

  “The trouble is that you have failed to deliver the ballot half of the strategy,” Kelly told Adams, his voice cold and hard. “You promised all of us success at the polls and we’ve seen nothing but fewer votes year after year. I don’t believe that you can deliver what we need. We have only two choices: give up or escalate the armed struggle. And I for one am not prepared to give up. I vote we go with Danny.”

  “And I forbid it. Such a decision would have to be ratified by a full meeting of the Council and they will never support such a change in policy,” Adams said.

  Until now Spike Murray had held his peace. He had chosen his moment well.

  “I will vote with the others,” he told Adams. “If you push this one, you might lose at the Council. It’s a different world now. There’s no mood for compromise. There will be no return to the old days when you told us the Brits would sit down and talk terms. If you fight this one, Gerry, if you take it to the Council, you could lose everything.”

  Adams had always been able to conceal his feelings behind his beard. But such open rebellion forced his lips to compress and whiten with anger, his eyes to narrow in calculation. As a politician he had lost this round. As a tactician he also knew that he was about to set the Movement on a course to destruction. But he could see no way to stop them.

  CHAPTER IX

  Dai Choi cursed as the boat ploughed into another swell that appeared to come rolling from nowhere. Visibility was down to fifty yards or so now and as he peered forward the mist began to take on swirling shapes, first a huge, snarling dog, then a house, then a rock. It was a series of terrifying visions that disorientated him and sapped his confidence.

  Each plunge down the back of a wave ended in a jarring crump that seemed to push every bone in his body together in one long and painful crack. Much longer and he believed that his brain would be shaken loose from its mountings to rattle around inside his head. He grunted once more as the boat slammed down into a trough, sending a jolt of pain up his arms which were braced on a supporting handrail in front of him. Each climb through a wave pushed him up against the supporting rail and then flicked his head back as the boat paused at the top of the arc before plunging down to begin the whole painful process again.

  “How much longer, for God’s sake?” he asked the he
lmsman, a tall, thin, unshaven Englishman he knew only as George.

  It was the third time he had asked the question and Dai Choi despised himself for showing such weakness. He sensed rather than saw the white of the man’s teeth as he laughed into the darkness before giving the same reply as before. “We’re nearly there. Just a few more minutes.”

  For the fiftieth time Dai Choi cursed his arrogance, furious that he had not listened to the Turk and bought a cabin cruiser. Instead of plodding stealth he had opted for flashy speed and bought a boat that suited his flamboyant personality. Nestling at the quayside he had thought the sleek craft was so graceful, forty feet of raw power. Dark blue with a single white stripe down either side, the Fire-Eater had six huge Evinrude outboards at the stern which the skipper told him could punch out 1,200 horsepower, enough to push them along at over a hundred m.p.h. — if the passengers could stand the crashing, bucking and rolling that would result.

  This was exactly what Dai Choi had asked for when he arrived in England four days earlier. It was something familiar in a foreign land; the same kind of boat he had used in Hong Kong for the smuggling run to China. He had told Vincent Sum that he wanted something fast and smart that would defeat any British patrols and his English associate had duly obliged.

  Sum was a third generation Englishman whose family had originally arrived from Guangdong province at the turn of the century. Now, the thirty-year-old lived the dual life of many of London’s Chinese. He ran a vast underground empire on behalf of White Lotus in London’s Chinatown next to Soho, an area that appeared impoverished but which actually disguised great wealth. By night he lived in Chigwell in Essex, north of the city, a fashionable haunt for the nouveaux riches, who had often made their money by illegal or questionable methods. His house was a white-and-black marble palace complete with indoor swimming pool, gold taps and a private cinema.