Harry's Game (32 page)

'Stupid bastard. We needed Rennie killed. Put a lot of planning in and a deal of work to have him rubbed. Then it's screwed. Could be they're just feeding us this crap." It was the Brigade quartermaster who came in.

'Doesn't sound like that. Sounds like Downs just threw it. Hardly going to fool us, are they? The bugger Rennie, he's alive or he's dead. We sent for him to be killed, he's not. So that means it's failure, can't be any other answer. What matters is that our man couldn't finish it.'

He pondered on the decision he was about to take as the other men waited for him. He alone knew of the link between Danby in London and the man Downs from Ardoyne. Later perhaps

he would include the others in his knowledge, he decided, but not now. At this stage, he felt, the fewer the better. Some of the commanders ran the office by committee, but not the man who now spoke again.

'On from there. What about the man they've put in? What do we have?'

'I think it's watertight." Frank had taken the cue and come in. Frank had been with the Provisionals since the split with the Officials, the "Stickies" as they called them, but this was the first time he had been in such elite company. It slightly unnerved him. 'The girl he was laying spills it all. It's incredible, what he told her. She was saying that he says to her that he was sent over to get the man that shot Danby in London. She told him about the girl, the one that was picked up and taken to Springfield, the one that hanged herself. It was because he shopped her that she was taken in. She says she challenged him about it yesterday afternoon.

He admitted it.'

The Brigade intelligence officer was sitting on the bed beside the commander. Hard face, tight pencil lips, and darting, pig‐like eyes.

'What's his name, the Englishman?'

'The name he's using is Harry McEvoy. I doubt if it's real or‐‐‐‐'

" "Course it isn't. Doesn't matter that. They must be a bit touched

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up then over there, if they send a man over on his own, to find us just like that.'

Duffryn spoke.

'But it all fits with what we had from the hotel. The army man and the RUG. The bit we had about them putting a man in and then not telling the brass. We thought we'd caught the buggers griping about it. It has to be some nonsense drawn up by one of them bastards sat behind a desk in London, in the Ministry.'

Duffryn was little more than a name to the commander. He looked at him with interest.

'You had a line on the man first, right? Through his accent? Where is he now? What's covering him?'

'He's at the guest house, where he has his lodgings. It's called "Delrosa", run by Mrs Duncan, off the Broadway. She's all right. He's there in a back room that he rents. The front and back are watched at the moment and the lads have been told in the last hour or so that if he goes out he's to be tailed. But they must stay right back.'

'And the girl you've talked to, won't she warn him?'

'We told her not to. I think she understood. She won't do anything,' Frank said.

The commander lit his fourth cigarette in less than half an hour, pulled at it, forcing the smoke down into his throat.

'I think we want him before we hood him. We would like to talk to him for a bit first. Pick him up and bring him in for a talk. Does he work?'

'In a strap yard. He leaves to walk there about eight, just a few minutes after perhaos.'

'Take him when he's walking. On the main road, get him into a car and take him up the Whiterock, into the Crescent, the house there we've used. I don't want him killed unless it's that or he's away. Remember that, I want him chatted with.'

For Frank and Seamus it seemed the end of their part in the evening. They rose out of the chairs, but were waved down by the commander.

'Where's Downs now?'

The Brigade quartermaster said, "The message came through just before I left to come here.

The wound he got, it's a light one, in the arm. Flesh. It's being fixed up now by the quack in the 169

"Murph. He's okay, but he hasn't gone home yet. The quack will want to keep an eye on him for the next few hours.'

The Brigade commander talked to no one in particular.

'What do they say when a driver's been in a crash? A lorry driver, bus, heavy truck? That sort of thing. What do they say? Send him straight back out again. Don't hang about fidgeting and mumbling about it. Get stuck in again. Downs can go on this one. His nerve wasn't too good last night. He'll need this to get him back into scratch again. He'll want to retrieve himself a bit.

Get him here in an hour. Downs can finish him after the talking to.'

It amused him: the fox turning back on the hound.

For Frank and Seamus the briefing was finished. They went out through the back of the house to where a car was parked some three hundred yards away, keys in the dash. Frank would drive on to the doctor and drop Seamus near his home.

Seamus Duffryn was frightened for the first time since he had become involved with the movement. He'd been present three months earlier at an interrogation. A kid from up in Lenadoon. The charge was that he had betrayed colleagues in the movement to the military.

The muffled screaming of the youth was still in his ears, bouncing and ricocheting about.

They'd burned his naked stomach with cigarette ends while he was strapped in a chair, with a blanket over his head folded several times to deaden the noise. He'd screamed each time the glowing ash met his skin, from a deep animal desperation and not with hope of release.

Seamus Duffryn had become involved that night, and would become involved again tomorrow.

The paper stuff he did, that was unimportant. This is when it mattered and you were either in the movement or you were out of it. There had been an awful, shaming thrill through his entire body when he saw the light grey material of the boy's trousers turn to heavy charcoal. As the urine ran down the kid's leg there'd been the steam rising through the trousers, and the hood had gone on, and the gun had been cocked. At the moment they shot him the kid was still screaming but uncontrolled.

If McEvoy was British army, how would he take it? Duffryn wondered. That was a nothing from Lenadoon. McEvoy would be different. How would he stand up to their interrogation and the ritual end?

He would find out by tomorrow night. He hurried on his way through the night to his home and his mother.

After he'd made his phone call to London Harry had spent the rest of the day in his room.

Before dark he gazed mindlessly into the

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abstract of roofs and walls that was the view from his window. He had not gone down to Sunday high tea, and to Mrs Duncan's inquiries only replied that he thought he had something of a chill coming on. He was going to have an early night, he shouted through the door. She had wanted to bring him a hot drink in his room, but through the closed door he managed to persuade her that there was no need.

He wanted to be alone, shutting out the perpetual tension of moving in company and living the falsehood that had been planned for him. That girl. It had upset him. Created imbalance in the delicate poise he had taken up. Blown by a silly girl who couldn't stop talking. Up on a mountain, wind and rain, like some cigarette advertisement, and he'd chucked the whole operation. Ridiculous and, worse, so bloody unprofessional. He brooded away the hours. He'd put faith down on the line of a girl who's address he didn't even know. What in Christ's name would they be thinking in London when he put the request in for the special treatment for Harry's bit of tail? Go raving mad, wouldn't they? And reckon he'd twisted. No way they wouldn't. And they'd want to get him out.

He'd heard all the radio broadcasts, searching for the formula announcement that would end it all. Arrest ... Man wanted for questioning ... London murder ... Big operation ... Tip off ...

Appear in court. That would be the jargon. There had been nothing.

He had steeled himself to what he would do if he heard of the capture of the man. He'd be out of the front door, straight out, with no farewells or packing or luggage, on to the Falls, and turn right along the main road, and then right again before the hospital and on down to the Broadway barracks, and in through the front door ... But without the news he couldn't end it.

He had to stay, finish the job. No arrest and it was all a failure, abject and complete. Not worth going back for, just to report how it all got boobed. Didn't really matter what Davidson said. No arrest, no return.

But where was the bloody army. Why wasn't it all wrapped up? Big enough, weren't they? Got enough men, and guns, and trucks. He's out there just waiting for you to go and get him. The National bulletins traced their way round the news; there was nothing from Northern Ireland.

The frustration mounted in Harry, welling up against his reason and his training. How much information had he pushed at them in London over the last two, three weeks? How much did they roani? All sewn up, it should be, cut and dried, taped and parcelled‐‐and

now more delay. Through Josephine, streak of bloody luck there, about as much information had come out as he was ever likely to get his hands on. The long term adrenalin was fading ...

he wanted out ... he wanted it over ... but when it was finished.

As the dusk came he unwrapped the Smith and Wesson. After locking the door he took the weapon to pieces and laid it out on a handkerchief on the bed. With a second, dirtied 171

handkerchief from his pocket he cleaned the firing mechanism, then reassembled the gun. He would take it with him next morning to the yard. Put it in the bag where the sandwich box went. It was a sort of therapy, the gun, the instant pick‐me‐up. It had gone wrong. Nothing on the radio when there should have been. The girl, that was where it had gone wrong, with that bloody girl. Lovely face, lovely body, lovely girl, but that was where it all loused up. Nothing else, that's the only point where it's gone wrong, but that's enough. Gossip, don't they, and she won't keep her mouth shut any more than the rest of them. Like she talked about Theresa, so she'll talk about me. A lonely man in a back room bed‐sitter. The gun was insurance, the disaster was less distinct.

When he went to bed he lay a long time in the dark of the room thinking about Germany, the family, home and the people with whom he worked. The other officers, easy and relaxed, none of them knowing where Harry was, and few caring. He envied them, yet felt his dislike of that easy way of life. His distrust of the others not committed to the front, as he was now, was all-consuming. It was only rarely that he turned his mind to his wife and the children. It took him time, and with difficulty he recreated them and home on the NATO base. The chasm between their environment and Harry's was too difficult for him to bridge. Too tired, too exhausted.

His final thought was salvation and made sleep possible. Of course the man was in custody, but they'd be questioning him. It would take thirty‐six hours at least. They wouldn't rush it, they'd want to get it right. Tomorrow evening they would be announcing it, and then home, and out of the hole, another forty‐eight hours perhaps, and then out.

In the early hours of that Monday morning, while Harry alternately dozed and dreamed in his bed, and while the Brigade nucleus sat up in Andersonstown waiting for Downs to come, Davidson in the Covent Garden office was scanning the first London editions of the papers.

Both The Times and the Guardian carried reports from Northern Ireland that the Provisional IRA were claiming that British intelligence had launched a special agent into the Catholic areas, and that people in those areas had been warned to be especially vigilant. Both the writers under whose byline the stories appeared emphasized that, whether true or false, the claim would have the effect of further reducing the minimal trust between the people of the minority areas, the front line housing estates of the city and the security forces. There was much other news competing for space‐‐on the diplomatic front, the state of the economy, and the general

"human interest clap trap" that Davidson raged about. The Belfast copy was not prominently displayed, but to the man propped up on his camp bed it presented a shattering blow. He lay deep in news print and pondered his telephone, wondering whether there were calls he should make, anything he could usefully do.

Those bungling idiots had still failed to pick up the chap Downs and the girl Josephine. Near a day to get them, and nothing to show for it. He was astonished, too long after the war, too long after the organization had run down, too many civilians who'd never been up the sharp 172

end. Without the arrest the scheme of which he was an integral part would collapse, and at a rate of knots. In all conscience he could not ring that man Frost again, supercilious bastard, and once more expose himself to that sarcasm. On the wall by the door the clock showed after two. For a moment he comforted himself that Harry might see the report for himself and do a bunk on his own.

No, that wouldn't fit, scrap men don't take The Times or the Guardian, that wouldn't match the cover.

Davidson tried to shut the problem out of his mind, and closed his eyes. He fumbled unseeing above him till his fingers caught at the string that hung down from the light switch. By the time he drifted into sleep he had worked out his immediate future. The early retirement and professional disgrace, and all because that hoof‐footed army couldn't pick one man up. The unfairness of it all.

Frost had gone to bed a little after midnight, and lain half awake expecting the phone to ring, and unwilling to commit himself to the task of sleeping. It had to come, the message that either the man or the girl had been found. The bell's shrill insistence eventually woke him. The army in Ardoyne reported no known entries or departures at the house in Ypres Avenue. He authorized the unit to move in and search at 05.30 hours.