Confessor (11 page)

The area close by the West End cul-de-sac was owned by the police at around six in the morning, and Herbie sat, with Apted and the Whizz, in a communications and control van parked with police protection close to Liberty’s in Regent Street, a quarter of a mile from the actual site of the bomb factory, yet with full color and sound on monitors fed by three cameras brought in by what the Office euphemistically called Technical Support.

At just after nine the door to the narrow little three-story house opened and the Gang of Four came out into the raw, cold morning air without a care in the world. The door was hardly closed behind them when the first two SAS men came into the picture, seeming to materialize from the far end of the cul-de-sac. At the time, Apted whispered, “Christ, they can walk through walls.”

There was a moment of indecision. Of all the dramatis personae, Herb remembered young Anne Bolan’s face running through a series of emotions ranging from surprise to puzzlement and, finally, to terror as a voice, off camera, shouted, “Police! Stop! Stand still!”

The owner of the voice, in fact the SAS Captain himself, came into view a moment later, blocking the camera angle for a couple of seconds but allowing a full view on camera and tape of Mary Duggan reaching for her shoulder bag. Everyone heard the word “Bailiff!” very clearly in their headphones, though during the later hassle nobody identified the voice.

On-screen it was sickening and almost in slow motion. Mary Duggan was lifted off her feet, her chest exploding crimson and the shots hurting eardrums—the noise, in fact, blew out one of the mikes. The other three had all moved: Anne Bolan in panic, hands moving towards Patrick Glass, who seemed, in a reflex, to go for a gun that was not there; Michael Connor trying to run towards the only possible exit, blocked by the SAS Captain and the fourth soldier. He ran two steps forward and then slid six steps back, his body whirling like a dancer’s, spinning in the crisp winter air to land, blood-soaked, across the body of Patrick Glass.

There were nine shots. Counted, heard and logged. Nine shots, four bodies. Then the SAS team disappeared, literally like magic, whisked away in police cars, while other cars and a pair of ambulances came haring in, sirens screaming.

One hour later, sitting in the Annex, with Vicki Grismer typing away as Herbie dictated and Apted sat looking grim-faced, the telephone rang.

“We’re going to need some damage control,” the Whizz said, and Herbie felt, rather than heard, the disquiet in his voice. “There’s nothing in the house.”

There was nothing: not a gun, not even a marble-sized piece of explosive; no primers, no wire, no batteries, no electronics, not even a child’s cap pistol. The Minister and COBRA were busy denying everything, while the politicos—from the opposition to highly placed members of the government—were screaming for a complete, in-depth investigation by an outside team.

THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS?
one hypocritical newspaper headline brayed that very afternoon, while by the following morning solicitors had already been retained by the families of the deceased Gang of Four. They were out to sue the British authorities for collective murder, and there was not even time or means to plant Semtex or weapons at the supposed bomb factory. The first press release actually called it a bomb factory and referred to the Gang of Four as known armed terrorists.

So, for the first time in that particular story, Gus Keene walked on, stage left—
a sinister
—and gave the performance of a lifetime.

Herbie riffled through the thick pages of documents that gave the true and complete story, and realized that this was only one small job in Gus the Confessor’s life. Yet it was the one that, presumably, gave the IRA—or any of their successors—the right to make him a prime target even ten years later.

He heard the outer door slam, and physically jumped, trying to make himself smaller, hearing again the terrible thud of bullets on that cold morning.

Bitsy Williams was back with the news that the Coroner had ruled on Gus’s death. Murder by person or persons unknown. Probably members of an unnamed terrorist organization.

“That make sense to you, Herb?” she asked. He nodded, and she then asked if he had heard the news from the States.

“What news?”

She related the three news stories they had heard in the car on the way back from the inquest. The car bomb in Manhattan, the explosion in the New York subway and the awful tale of a Boeing 737 blowing up in midair.

“It’s getting like Beirut and Bosnia,” he muttered. Then, as it suddenly struck him: “I wonder if they’re the same crew that did the London Underground?”

“Hardly.” Bitsy looked toffee-nosed. “Look at the time factor.”

“You ever been on Concorde?” Herbie sounded like a man who had scored a good point.

H
ERBIE RECALLED THAT AFTERNOON
in 1984 as clearly as he could remember the conversation during dinner at the Indian on the previous night. He could smell the coffee, and Vicki’s scent as she bent to the IBM typewriter, taking his dictation straight onto paper. Then there was Apted, and he realized that it was at some point during the long wait, getting a prepared statement down on paper, that he discovered Apted’s first name—Cyril. Cyril Apted, who, it turned out, knew more about the Provos than any of them, for he had watched the danger of the North from the beginning of the present troubles. That was 1969, when Protestant and Catholic met head-on in the streets of Belfast and Derry and the blood lust began again, for Ireland had been the U.K.’s Vietnam since Good Queen Bess’s Golden Days, and long before that. In 1969, August 14 to be exact, the Protestants tried to give the bum’s rush to the Catholics. Tried to burn them from their homes. Tried to smash into their communities. Cyril told Herb that he had been there that afternoon when it began, about teatime.

“Yes, it’s Cyril,” Apted said with a sly smile. “Could’ve killed my old man. Not a name I often own to.” He, as Herb knew, had owned to quite a number of different names in his time. At the Office there was a rumor that their sister service had Apted on their payroll as well. Cyril Apted, the Security Service’s long-term penetration within the Intelligence Service.

“Best do a resignation as well, while you’re preparing that statement,” Cyril said at one point. “They’re going to shoot us like fish in a barrel.”

“You sending in your papers, then?” Herb asked between trying to work out sentences, with Vicki doing her best to correct his grammar.

“Me? Don’t need to, old Herb. Me? I’m the cat with nine lives and I’m only on number five. Think I’ll go for a stroll and see if I can tie up some loose ends. I’ll see you later, so.” This last in a quick Irish brogue.

So Herbie prepared his statement, not knowing that Gus had already taken over and was sending people shooting around town doing good works; lighting bombs under them; doing, not just thinking; waving, not just drowning.

At around five the Whizz called to say get the evening papers. “Our bloody horoscopes prophesy death and disaster. Oh, yes. The Chief’s gone off to the South of France and his closest Deputy’s caught the first plane to Malta. No forwarding addresses.”

So Herb sent Vicki out to get the papers and she came back white-faced. Until then Herbie had hoped that, by some miracle, the press would trumpet a victory against the evil and illegal army in the North of Ireland, but they were taking the high moral ground. One of the evening papers had even hired a famous novelist, whose beat was the secret world and Whitehall, to put down the guidelines. “Can we stand by and see murder done in our streets by trained thugs who hide behind the government’s skirts, to shoot first and ask questions later? Questions
must
be asked now.” He went on to say something about seeing a glint of granite death in the eyes of policemen on the beat that day.

The lead story described the killings inaccurately and with an overabundance of gore, while the big news was that the PM had made a statement at two o’clock that afternoon. The words, as they often are, were fighting words, chock-full of reasonableness. A full and exhaustive inquiry would be undertaken. A judicial inquiry, by men and women who stood only by truth. “London is not a boom town of the old Wild West,” the PM had said. “If these deaths are, in fact, the result of illegality, and turn out to lie at the door of any government or police agency, then the true culprits will be brought to justice. But I suspect we shall find they can be laid at the door of the heartless and cowardly men of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.”

The Minister had stated that he had not been informed of any irregular operations being run against terrorists, and, no, certainly not, COBRA had not met for months.

Big Herbie Kruger prepared his second resignation. Then, around six in the evening, when he was wondering if it was worthwhile going home only to be called back in again, the Church Militants—Messers Parsons and Deacon—arrived, their faces wreathed in smiles and their eyes glittering with hope.

“Got the buggers,” Billy Parsons said, as though that explained everything.

“Bloody Met. Should have done their job with more care,” from Dave Deacon.

“Which buggers and what care?” Herbie asked, a shade angrily. Parsons and Deacon were, in fact, on his payroll. His responsibility.

“We were sent back.”

“With a couple of senior police officers.”

“Couple of Chief Supers.”

“Told to pull the place apart.”

They were like a pair of old music hall fast comedy men—boom-boom.

“What place?” Herbie asked, suspicious to the hilt.

“Bloody bomb factory.” Parsons.

“Where the Micks got chopped.” Deacon, arms outstretched as though he were about to do a buck-and-wing.

“What you talking about?”

“We were sent back to the bomb factory. Scotland Yard, it seems, gave it only the most cursory going over.”

“So?”

“So, we tossed the drum proper.” Again the boom-boom tag line from Deacon, which, oddly, Herbie understood very well. It meant they had torn the place apart.

“And?” Herb asked.

“And we come up with the goods. Four nine-mill, auto shooters, an Uzi and all their maps, plus some code words and a very interesting diary.”

“Very sloppy tradecraft.” Parsons.

“Really?”

“Of course, really. In front of the two Chief Supers. They took Polaroid pictures, time and date stuff. All Sir Garnet.”

“Sir which?” For a second Herbie was lost.

“All jonnick.”

“Honest,” Parsons finally translated. “Honest, aboveboard, Mr. Kruger. Straight up, only they were under the floorboards.”

“And who told you to return, go back?”

“Mr. Keene, sir. He’s, like, in charge of what they’re calling damage control. Good, isn’t he, Bill?”

“Shit hot. Oh, sorry, miss.” Vicki waved her hand as though swatting a fly.

“Mr. Keene told you exactly what?” Kruger lowered his head, like a charging bull, and gazed at the pair with an undisguised malevolence.

“He said he did not think the Plod had done the place over thoroughly enough. Said it
in front
of the Plod, Mr. Kruger. Told us to go back and find something. Anything. The Plod were to be witnesses.”

“And repeat what you found.”

“Four nine-mill. Brownings and enough ammo to blow away the Horse Guards. Also a pouch full of maps and drawings …”

“And the diary with instructions and code words for using on the blower.” Deacon.

“They’d committed these things to paper?”

“Stupid of them, eh?”

At that moment the telephone rang and the Whizz was on the other end, breathless. “Herb, you heard the good news?”

“Which particular piece of good news we talking about?”

“The cache of stuff at what we thought was the bomb factory for starters. Then there’s—”

“You got Gus Keene there, giving orders?”

“Gus’s in charge, actually, thank God.”

“So.”

“So, he wants you to attend a little soirée he’s holding over here at the witching hour.”

“You mean midnight?”

“Twenty-three fifty-nine, to use army lingo, yes. Everyone’s going to be there. Old chums’ reunion.”

The Whizz sounded so relieved that Kruger could hardly believe what he was hearing. Though he never at any future point admitted it to anyone, there was always a lingering doubt in his mind about the cache discovered at the so-called bomb factory. If he reached deep into his conscience, he had doubts about a great number of things concerning the saving of
Cataract
, but one fact could never be denied: Gus Keene made all the right moves and saved the day magnificently.

They met, like plotters, at midnight at Head Office. Deep in what were known as the bunkers. To be exact, Briefing Room Two, which was all done up like a private screening theater, with plush seats, subdued lighting and facilities for everything. All that was missing was the organ that rises from the bowels of the earth, follow the bouncing ball, and usherettes—as they used to be called—ready to serve choc-ices from those little trays hung around their necks by straps.

Instead, there were coffee and sandwiches—smoked salmon, to be precise—and as the Whizz had predicted,
everyone
was there, including Tony Worboys, looking content and more like a city broker than an Irish farmer, and the SAS team with their Colonel, plus a large contingent of cops.

Gus Keene was certainly there. Tall, imposing, his dark hair falling limply across his leathery brow. Completely imperturbable, and very much on the ball.

“We have to take care of certain matters,” he began. “The general reaction to the quite lawful killing of four terrorists this morning appears to have boomeranged and it is our job to get the fact across. This I propose to do in the Coroner’s Court, and I have already applied for anonymity for both members of my service and for the gentlemen from the SAS. Also for certain police officers. The Prime Minister may bleat about judicial inquiries, but we don’t need them, and we
shall
avoid such a thing, even though the latest intelligence is that the families of the dead terrorists are planning legal action against HM Government. In Ireland the deaths are seen as overkill.”