Harry's Game (11 page)

securely inside their heavy dark coats. It surprised Harry how much there was to see that could have been a part of any other British industrial city‐‐buses, cars, people, clothes, paper stands‐‐

all merging in with the great military, umbrella that had settled itself on Belfast.

At the bus station Harry switched to another single decker that went high up on the Antrim Road to the north, speeding past the troubled New Lodge junction before cutting into residential suburbs. The houses were big, old, tall, red‐brick and fading. Davidson had given 51

him the name of a boarding house where he'd said Harry could get a room, three stops up past the New Lodge.

Harry got off the bus at the stop, and looked round to find his bearings. He spotted the house they had chosen for him and moved away from it farther down the long hill till he was one hundred and fifty yards from the seedy board with its "vacancies" sign. Then he waited. He watched the front door for twenty‐five minutes before he saw what he'd half expected. A young man came out down the steps that led to the short front path. Clothes not quite right, walk too long, hair a fair bit too short.

Harry boiled. "Stupid bastards. Davidson, you prime bastard. Send me to one of your own bloody places. Nice safe little billet for soldiers in a nice Proddy area. Somewhere you won't find anything out, but you won't get shot. No, not Davidson, some bugger in intelligence in Belfast, having his own back because it isn't his caper. Sod 'em. I'm not going through all this to sit on my arse in Proddyland and come out in a month with nothing to show. No way.'

He took the next bus into central Belfast from the other side of the road, walked across to the taxi rank in Castle Street, and asked for a lift up to mid‐Falls. Not Davidson's game, that. He wouldn't know addresses in Belfast, it would have to be one of the minions, flicking through his card index, this looks right to keep him out of mischief. Couldn't infiltrate Mansoura from bloody Steamer Point, nor the Falls from Prod country.

To the cab driver he said, "I'm working about half‐way up, and looking for someone who takes in lodgers. Not too pricey. Yer know anyone? About half‐way, near the Broadway. Is there anyone?'

He waited in the cab for several minutes for the other seats to be taken up in the shuttle service that had now largely replaced the inconsistencies of the bus time‐table. The journey he'd made in from the airport, out on to the Antrim Road, his wait there, the trip back,

the walk to the taxi rank, that delay sitting in the back waiting to go all had taken their toll in time.

Deep greyness was settling over the city, rubbing out its sharp lines, when the taxi, at last full, pulled away.

The first soldier in the patrol was up to the corner and round it before the man had reacted to the movement. The second gave him a chance to identify it as an army patrol. On the third and fourth he had begun to get an aim, and for the next man he was ready. Rifle at the shoulder.

The upper part of the shadow cut out by the V of the leaf mechanism of his rear sight, and sliced by the upward thrust of the front sight at the far tip of the barrel. The fifth soldier had come fast round the corner, too close to his colleague in front, and paused for the other to 52

move farther away before starting off again himself. He was stationary for one and a half seconds before the man fired. The shadow fell out from the darkness of the wall towards the corridor of light from Mrs Mulvenna's front room.

The man had time to see the stillness of the form, half on the pavement and half on the street, before he wormed and scrambled his way to the centre of the roof space‐‐and ran. His escape route took him along a catwalk of planks set across the gaps between the roof beams, in all traversing the roof space of four homes. In the last house the light shone up among the eaves where the ceiling door had been left open for him. He swung down on to the landing, and then moved to the stairs leading to the back of the house and the kitchen. The Armalite was grabbed from him by a teenager who had been listening for the clatter of the escape across the ceiling. Within three minutes it would be in a plastic bag, sealed, and dropped under the grating in the back yard, with a thin line of dark cord tied to the bars to retrieve it later.

The man went out into the back yard, scrambled over the five‐foot high fence, ducked across the back entry, and felt for the rear doors on the far side till he came to the one off the hook. It remained for him to cut through that house, and he was out in the next street. Here he didn't run, but ambled the three hundred yards farther away from the killing where he rang a front-door bell. A youth came out immediately, motioned him to a waiting car, and drove him away.

There had been no pursuit. No soldier had seen the fractional flash of the barrel as the man fired. Five of them, shouting and waving, fear in their eyes, had sunk to firing positions in the doorways of the street. Two more gathered beside their dead colleague.

Before the ambulance came it was plain that their efforts were pointless, but they fumbled the medical dressing clear from his webbing belt and placed it over the bloody chest wound.

Harry heard the single shot from far up the road when the taxi was caught in stationary traffic at the lights just beyond the huge bulk of the hospital building. As the taxi stayed unmoving, log jammed in the sea of vehicles, a convoy of armoured cars swept by up the wrong side of the road, horns blaring and headlights on. Soldiers jumped from the moving column to take up their shooting positions on the main road, while others poured into the side streets. Harry saw the blue flashing light of an ambulance swing sharply out of a side street, one hundred and fifty yards up on the right, and turn down towards them. The ambulance was a Saracen with huge red crosses on white background painted on the sides. Turning his head Harry saw through the flapping open doors at the back two dark shapes bent over the top end of the stretcher. The handles of the stretcher, between them a pair of boots stuck out beyond the tailboard of the armoured car.

It was some minutes before the traffic moved again. None of the other passengers in the cab‐‐

the old lady with her month's best shopping, or the two office girls from Andersonstown‐‐

spoke a word. When the cab reached the street corner where the ambulance had emerged the soldier in the middle of the road waved them out and to the wall. He ran his hands fast and 53

effectively over the shoulders, torsos and legs of Harry and the driver, contenting himself with examining the women's shopping holder and the girls" bags. He looked very young to Harry.

'What happened?" Harry asked.

'Shut your face, you pig‐arsed Mick.'

The taxi dropped him off seventy‐five yards farther on. He was to try Mrs Duncan's. First left, twelfth door on the right: "Delrosa'.

It didn't take Harry long to settle into the small room that Mrs Duncan showed him at the back of her two‐storey house‐‐about as long as it takes to unpack the contents of a small suitcase and put them into a medium‐size chest of drawers and a wardrobe. She suggested he wash his hands and then come down to the big room where the other guests would gather, first for tea, then to watch television. She asked no questions about him, obviously prepared to give the stranger time to fill in his background at his own pace. Looking across from his window, Harry could see the Falls Road

where the army Land‐Rovers and Saracens still criss‐crossed back and forth.

There were six at tea, all eating urgently and with concentration. the way to avoid talking, thought Harry. Stuff your face, with just a mutter for the milk or the sugar, or the fresh‐cut bread, and you ilnn't have to say anything. No one mentioned the shooting, but it

nc into the room with the BBC local television news. Mrs Duncan ( ame from the kitchen to the doorway, leaning there, arms folded, in licr apron. A single shot had killed the first soldier to die in Northern Ireland for three weeks. The pictures showed troops illuminated in doorways and manning road blocks. Over the sound track but half drowned by the report came the words Tut that bloody light off.' Then there was only the meaningless picture of the tarmacadam with the dark stain on it, something for the colour TV people but just a shapeless island on Mrs Duncan's set. Then out of the blackness the overlit whitened face of the young reporter as the hand light picked him up at close range.

He had little to say. A routine foot patrol in the Broadway district of the Falls had been ambushed. A single shot had been fired, fatally wounding a soldier just as darkness was falling.

He said that an extensive follow‐up operation was still in progress, that the area had been cordoned off, and that all cars leaving it were being searched. The camera cut to a harassed-looking officer.

Q. What happened here, Colonel?

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A. This is really a most shocking attack, a most cowardly murder. One of my soldiers was shot down in cold blood, quite without warning. A horrible, despicable crime. Q. Did your men get a sight of the gunman? A. No, it wasn't till we were engaged in an extensive followup operation‐‐

which you will have seen for yourself‐‐that we found the place where the gunman was hiding.

He was up in the roof of a derelict house, and he aimed at my patrol through the gap left by a missing tile.

Q. Would this have been the work of an expert? A. An expert‐‐in terrorism, yes, in killing, yes.

We found sixty eight cigarette butts in the roof. He'd been there some time. He'd put four chairs on the staircase of the house‐‐it's very narrow anyway. If we'd been chasing him and had run into the building those chairs would have lost us several seconds. That's the work of an expert killer. He'd chosen a house which had a communicating

passage down the length of the terrace roof. That's the way he got

out.

Q. Did anyone see anything on the street?

A. I'm sure half the street knew what was going on. Lots of

people, masses of them, must have known a young man was going

to be shot down in the gutter outside their homes. But I think your

question is, did they identify the gunman to us? The answer there

is decisively, No, they didn't. But many of them must know who

the killer is‐‐I appeal to them to use the police Confidential phone

and stamp out this type of cruel, cowardly attack.

Q. Thank you, Colonel.

The programme changed to an interview in the studio. A Protestant politician and a Catholic politician were arguing over the same ground, with some minute variations, that they'd been debating on the same channel for the last four years. Between them was a link man who had been hosting them, feeding them their questions and winding them up over the same period.

Before the talk was a minute old Mrs Duncan came forward like a battleship under power, and reached for the off switch.

55

'There's enough politics on the street without bringing them into my house. Just words. Won't do that young man any good. Mother of Jesus rest with him.'

A youngish man, opposite across the table from Harry, said, "If they stayed in their barracks they wouldn't get shot. If they weren't here there wouldn't be any shooting. You saw what they did when they came round here a few days ago. Taking the houses apart, lifting men, and blocking the streets. Claimed then it was because of that man that got shot in London. But the searches they did were nothing to do with it. Aggro, what they were looking for, nothing more.

Harassment.'

Nobody in the room responded. The young man looked round for someone to join in argument with. Harry sided with him. "If they were as busy chasing the Prods as us, they'd find things easier for themselves.'

The other looked at him, surprised to find support, if not a little disappointed that it was an ally who had put his cap in the ring. Harry went on, "I've been away a long time, but I can see in the few hours that I've been back where all the troops are. I've been abroad, but you still read the papers, you still see the news on the telly bought from the BBC. You get to feel the way things are going.

Nothing's done about those Prods, only us.'

It was not easy for Harry, that first time. With practice he would iviin the facility to sing the praises of the IRA. But the first time lound it was hard going. Never like this in Mansoura. Never went .lown the souk and shouted the odds about what a fine bloke Quahtan As‐Sbaabi was, victory to the NLF, out with the imperialists. Just kept quiet there, and scuffed around in the dirt, and watched. But a different scene here. Got to be in the crowd. He excused himself, saying he was tired and had been travelling all day, and went to his room.

six

It was just after seven when Harry woke. He knew soon enough that this was the day he started working and moved on to active service. The euphoria of the farewells, the back‐slaps and good luck calls, were over. He had arrived. Now would begin the hard work of moving on to the inside. He checked his watch. Well, twenty minutes more and then it could all begin, then he would get up.

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He'd known since his training started that the initial period of infiltration was going to be the difficult part. This was where the expertise and skill entered in his file after Mansoura would count. They had chosen him after going over those files, and those of a dozen other men, because they had thought that he above all of them stood the best chance of being able to adapt in those early critical hours in the new environment.

They'd told him he must take it slowly, not lambast his way in. Not make so much of his presence that he attracted attention and with that, inevitably, investigation. But they also stressed that time was against him. They pointed to the enormous benefits the opposition were gaining from the failure of the vast military force to catch the assassin.