Vagabond (14 page)

Almost prematurely aged, but only fifty-four, a survivor of hard times and now basking in the success that had brought him millions, he would have accounts, Karol Pilar assumed, in Dubai, Gibraltar, St Kitts and Nevis, those atoll islands in the Pacific, Cyprus and probably in the City of London. The phone rang in his pocket. He lit a cigarette. ‘Untouchable’, protected by a ‘roof’. The detective could dream – the ram, the door swinging open, the charge of masked men, dawn coming up, flashes from press cameras, and the man being brought out in handcuffs. To dream was free. He answered his phone. He was told by his line manager where he should be, when, and his duties. He no longer argued. He had talked the last summer with a British officer, a contact that was made to seem by chance, had spoken of his special interests and must have made a fair impression. What was it about? He was told. He ground out the cigarette close to the monument for the murdered woman. He let the man pass him – the dogs lunged at him – and Timofey Simonov crossed the road, went into his garden and climbed the steps to the door. It was opened. A ‘servant’ stood with the towels to clean the dogs. He had been a brigadier. The door closed.

To Karol Pilar, it was humiliating that there were ‘untouchables’ in his country, who strolled beyond his reach.

She flew from Belfast to Stockholm. A second passport, not in Frankie McKinney’s name, and a change of appearance for the CCTV would take her out of Sweden to Berlin, then a connecting lift to Prague.

She had dressed as if she were going for an interview at an investment bank or a firm of international lawyers. She would have seemed – as those who had tasked her had demanded – to be one of the scores of young women with professional jobs who flocked in and out of Europe’s airports. Her makeup was subdued and her jewellery discreet: they had said she would be seen but should not be noticed. She felt consuming pride that she had been chosen for the mission, and would work alongside one of the Organisation’s principal fighters.

Malachy kept his hands clasped behind his back. It was because of the graves that he continued to fight. He would never give up on the struggle. There were graves in the Six Counties for volunteers of the Provisional wing of the IRA, the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, the Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Regiment, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Royal Irish Rangers and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. There were the graves of those killed by ‘mistake’ and more graves for those who had strayed into crossfire. They were spread across the length and breadth of Northern Ireland. Nothing was forgotten or forgiven. The dead kept alive the conflict.

His grandfather’s grave was further down the hill in a churchyard nearer to the Townlands and Dungannon. He stood in front of the plot where his father, Padraig, lay. He was often there and was well known to the workers at the church and the Parochial House. A grave-digger had discarded his pickaxe and leaned on the handle of a shovel. He smoked quietly and wouldn’t disturb him. Another man had stopped spraying the gravel with weedkiller. Both men would have thought that soon the mourners would come along the path from the church to put him down beside his father. The lettering was in gold on the black marble headstone:
Padraig Riordan 2nd Batt East Tyrone Brigade Irish Republican Army Killed on Active Service 28 April 1989 Aged 36
. The marble was expensive, quarried in South Africa, China or India and imported by a stone mason in Armagh City. He had heard the gravedigger tell a man, who had been planning for the future, ‘Order the best, spare no expense, because you’re not around to pick up the bill.’ Also on the stone was
Mary, Queen of the Gael, Pray for Him
. He would not have considered the call for people to ‘move on’ with their lives.

It seemed that every village, every parish, owned its own grave. It was not possible for any man of honour to step back from the graves, he thought. Many had. They had been in the hedgerows with the rifles and at the end of the command wires but now they sat in lonely bars and lived off handouts, benefits and pensions. Many times each week he drove his lorry through the village of Cappagh where the biggest monument stood, with words engraved on the ebony marble from Patrick Pearse, executed by the Crown ninety-eight years before:
This is the Death I should have asked for if God had given me the choice of Deaths, to die a Soldier for Ireland and Freedom
. He had not been there, but had been told of a plaque in St Anne’s, Church of Ireland, in the centre of Dungannon, for soldiers of the part-time Ulster Defence Regiment, shot dead or bombed by Malachy’s people:
They died before their day but as soldiers and for their country
. One day, perhaps, he might go and read it.

He could remember being in bed and his father bending to kiss his forehead, then turning out the bedside light. The big roughened hand had rested a moment on his shoulder and he had heard footsteps on the stairs, then low voices, the kitchen door opening and shutting . . . and he could remember the priest coming with the dawn. Anything other than what he did would have been ‘sell-out’, the worst betrayal.

His cheeks were dry. He walked past the gravedigger, who straightened and stood almost to attention, and went to his car.

They couldn’t move. Danny Curnow felt irritation well in him. The dawn had come and the day had moved on. She was a powerful woman.

He was trapped, and there was nothing that he or Sebastian could do about it. They were in the hedge, squashed together. The target, Malachy Riordan, had kissed her, then heaved the kid under his arm, and they’d all laughed. Time to move, but she had blocked them. She had gone through the house, then appeared at the back door, stepped into her boots and picked up a bucket, then a sack. First she’d fed her fowls, then moved up the lower field. The cattle had stampeded towards her as she’d shaken the cake sack. She had the dogs with her.

They quartered the field, followed scents – foxes or rabbits, perhaps a hare, and there would have been badgers. Danny Curnow had no more to stay for: he had seen his target, locked onto the body language and thought he had learned more than pretty much any file could tell him. He had squirrelled away the relevant points and—

‘Excuse me.’

‘What?’

‘You were here? Right where we are now, in this hole, the night the father was killed?’

‘And if I was?’ The cold was in his bones, made worse by tiredness and hunger. He hadn’t slept or eaten.

‘It’s intelligence work, FRU work, and there was an ambush waiting for the father?’

‘Try a back number of the
Tyrone Courier
.’

The woman, Riordan’s wife, was some hundred yards from them and what wind there was blew up her skirt and punched at the sack. Most important, it was behind her so the dogs were not alerted. They would be if Danny and the young man rose from the hedgerow and headed off.

‘Did the father and the others who were killed have a chance to surrender?’

‘There was a war.’

‘So they were fair game?’

‘It was what we did, the way we fought.’

‘Worthy of pride?’

He flared. ‘Hindsight’s great, but not if you didn’t experience it. It’s how we were and it’s what we did. A tout fingered them and I ran the tout. Did he get much? No. Lucky if I paid him a hundred quid a month.’

‘Your agent was . . . ?’

‘You’ve read the file.’ The woman shook the last of the cake from the sack and moved confidently among the beasts. Some nuzzled her but most searched for the last crumbs of food beside their hoofs. She was a good-looking woman – Danny would have called her handsome. Padraig Riordan’s widow had been attractive. He had not seen her that morning, when the priest had come up the lane and broken the news to her, but knew her from previous surveillance. He thought that both women would have strength and dignity. They would not cave, would likely take a sack of cake, go up the field with the dogs and weep there – but not where they could be seen. She moved sideways. He wondered if she considered whether danger – beyond its usual scope – was closer because her husband was about to travel. The young man had spoken of the risk of a
mistake
. It would be difficult if she kept on wandering about, came to their hide and the dogs found them. She lingered, but her back stayed towards them and the dogs hadn’t caught their scent.

‘Your agent was X-ray 47, Damian. He had learning difficulties but could manage simple carpentry. He had a small funeral but the day was noticeable for the address of the father, who took it from another priest’s remarks at a Belfast informer’s service. He spoke of ‘‘secret agents of the state with a veneer of respectability on their dark deeds that disguises the work of corruption. They work secretly, unseen, making little victims whom they can manipulate’’. It was pointed out to me when I took over the Riordan file. Today we don’t send informers to unpleasant deaths.’

‘And you’re not winning.’

‘Five years later the family blamed a different agent – a bakery driver, Aidan.’

‘Another was better protected, more useful.’

‘You would have swung out of bed in the morning, had a mug of tea and gone to Operations for the day’s schedule. As I see it, you’d have been flicking the pieces round the board, deciding which one stood and which was sacrificed, pawns slotted, knights and bishops preserved.’

If she found them, how would she react? Would she go for their eyes? No chance. She’d look down at them with contempt and say nothing.

‘The more valuable the asset, the better he was looked after.’

‘One man would be denounced so that another stayed in place.’

‘Obvious.’

‘The piece that fell over on the board – you knew what would happen to him.’

‘It was a war, and we were winning. I did what I was asked to do.’

‘The teenage boy killed the wrong man.’

‘An unpleasant man had his career cut short. Used to shift stuff with the loaves. He was trusted, and we dropped a couple of hints, in a roundabout way, so that suspicion fell on him. It’s good when they feel threatened and betrayed – it makes them panic.’

Abruptly, she went briskly down the hill. They were strong women on the mountain. They didn’t whine and were loyal to their men.

‘Totally forbidden now. For that I’d be before a court.’

‘We were winning, and you aren’t.’

‘A last question.’

‘Shoot.’

‘Your call-sign was Vagabond.’

‘A long time ago.’

She was past the barns and smoke veered from the chimney. The dogs tracked her. The young man had started to gather together the kit and Danny passed the binoculars back to him. They were later than he’d expected, but had not yet missed the flight.

‘I was with some old Branch men, chewing over the Riordan family. Did the work, went to a bar. They spoke of a call-sign, Vagabond, and a guy who was a bit of a legend, a handler who ran agents.’

‘You shouldn’t gossip, Sebastian, not in taxis, on the phone, in clubs and bars, at football matches, at home with friends, anywhere. “Whatever you say – say nothing.” The Provos made posters with that printed on them.’

‘The Branch boys said of you, “He was the best because he was the coldest, not a degree of warmth in his veins. The best because he’d no sense of mercy. A man wants to come out, but can’t. A man wants to back away, but the hooks are in him. A little man’s death may protect a bigger asset – so it’s time to book the hearse, the priest and the grave-digger. The best because he’d no feeling.” I think we can move.’

If Matthew Bentinick had been preparing a lecture for young officers on launching a mission, he might have said, ‘Those working under you do not need chapter and verse on aims and end games. What they need to know is what is expected of them in a field, however narrow. That way they are less likely to be confused with ethics – always a substantial enemy.’ But he did not lecture young officers.

The tourists would have arrived at Dunkirk. They would have been sobered over an early lunch in the bistro on Place Jean Bart. Stories of the town and the significance of the battle fought there, seventy-four years and a few months before, would have been etched in their minds. They’d be driven from the bistro up a narrow street named after a resistance fighter, Louis Herbeaux, who had been executed by firing squad in 1943: some of the men on the minibus would have wondered in silence how they might have been, or their fathers, if an army of occupation had moved into their town. The evacuation of Dunkirk, in the last days of May and the first days of June, had been controlled from a nineteenth-century fortress by a quayside, now a museum. They’d have been there in dull light and could hardly have failed to imagine the terror and confusion of the last stage of the retreat. A film played, black-and-white images, with a soundtrack at full volume relaying the scream of the diving Stuka bombers. They would see the rifles and machine-guns that old relatives might have handled in a desperate defence of the harbour, the dunes and the beaches. Within an hour of entering the museum, a few might have shivered. They would have felt better, already, to walk alongside the men who had suffered in that place, and a guide might have spoken of the nation’s debt.