Dancing With Mortality
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Authors: Mark McKay
Dancing with Mortality
Mark McKay
Text Copyright © 2014
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Dancing with Mortality
PART ONE
The Politics of Violence
1981
County Cork, Ireland
Once, when he was about eighteen,
he’d been on a caving expedition in the South Island. They’d been underground
for about half an hour, and in his enthusiasm to find the stalactite-studded
cavern he was looking for he forged ahead, leaving his sluggish mates a minute
or so behind him. As he worked his way through a narrow gap in the rock he
brushed his helmet against something and the headlamp went out. The total
blackness, devoid of even a promise of light, was so dense and cloying he
thought it might smother him.
For a moment, when he’d turned off the engine and cut the
Land Rover’s lights on arrival here a few hours ago, he’d had the same
sensation. The blank overcast sky and the absence of anything, human or
otherwise, that might cast a light had blotted out the world. After a while,
when his eyes had adjusted, he could make out the shifting shapes of trees and
a small stretch of road, but not much else. Now he waited.
The sound of automatic gunfire shattered the stillness.
Harry looked towards the distant beach and saw intermittent flashes of white
light rip open the blackness. He stared out the window with a grim fascination,
one hand tight on the steering wheel, his heart pounding. A minute later the
firing stopped, and the echoes, then the sighing of the wind reclaimed the
darkness.
He was sure the noise must have been heard by the local
residents, but then remembered there weren’t any for at least two miles. He
turned to look behind him, but there were no approaching headlights, nor indeed
any sign of life in the blackness. He sat very still in the Land Rover, his
other hand holding the two-way radio. He was in a layby in a lane off the main
road to the beach, and now he waited for the call telling him he could safely
drive down there.
What the hell had happened? O’Riordan had warned him that
these men wouldn’t come quietly. They’d made a fight of it. Should he drive to
the beach? Better wait for the signal first. He realised how tense he was, and
he relaxed his grip on the steering wheel and took a few slow deep breaths.
Then he checked his watch – 5am and still pitch black outside.
He’d been parked since 1am, and although he knew there was a
team of SAS men nearby, he’d heard and seen nothing. The only things
discernible were the salty tang of the sea and the soft breeze rising and
falling.
Then, around 2.30am, just as he’d started to doze fitfully,
he was jerked into wakefulness by the sound of an engine on the main road.
Nothing to be seen; whoever it was had dispensed with the headlights. The
engine had faded as the vehicle – a truck he guessed – wound its way down the
incline to the beach.
Then everything was quiet again, until the gunfire just now.
But now he thought he could hear a new sound through the darkness, like a
distant staccato drumbeat. It was getting louder all the time. Suddenly the
sound changed its timbre, and he recognised the sound of a galloping horse
coming off the sand and onto the road. He sat mesmerised as the sound came ever
closer. He saw the shadow of the horse as it raced past his parking place. He
had just enough time to make out the shape of a man on its back, then all he
could do was listen as the hoofbeats faded into the distance. He doubted very
much that it was an SAS man riding. Now what?
The radio spluttered into life and he nearly dropped it in
alarm. Hanson’s voice:
‘Operation successful. It was definitely an arms shipment.
Tell Litchfield that we’ve secured both the boat and the arms. I haven’t
counted, but there are hundreds of Armalites and Kalashnikovs. And several
thousand rounds of ammunition. Tell Litchfield I’ll be in touch tomorrow. And
we don’t need you down here now. There were fatal casualties, on their side
that is.’
‘You shot all of them dead? How many?’
‘Eight men in all. One got away though. They had two bloody
horses in the back of their truck. One man managed to ride out before we could
stop him. He was lucky. If we hadn’t been surprised you’d have nine casualties.
Did you see him?’
‘Heard him. Do you know who it was?’
‘Not yet. Once we’ve identified this lot it might give us a
clue, but don’t count on it.’
‘Ok.’ Harry felt numb. ‘You shot them all, Jesus Christ.’
‘That’s right. Sorry about that. Stay there for half an hour
then go home lad.’
Harry sat quietly collecting his thoughts. He’d come all
this way as a supposed observer in the arrest of the men who’d been shot dead
on the beach. He hadn’t expected the fatalities, and he knew it shouldn’t have
happened. He’d been told the SAS were trigger happy when it came to the IRA
though. That hardly excused their tactics in his opinion.
It was his birthday tomorrow – well today actually. A great
place to start your 26th year of existence: a Land Rover in the middle of
nowhere. Natalie wouldn’t be pleased at his sudden absence either. His wife had
something planned for later in the day. He didn’t know exactly what, but he
knew he wanted to be back in Dublin for it just as soon as he could. He checked
his watch – 20 minutes had passed. Still no sign of life from the beach. What
the hell, he thought, I’m getting out of here.
He took his time driving back. He couldn’t quite believe
he’d been involved in the events of this morning, however peripheral that
involvement might have been. Working part time for the Secret Intelligence
Service had never been on the agenda when he and Natalie left their quiet
little house in the Western Suburbs of Auckland to come to Ireland. He knew
Natalie wouldn’t be happy about what had happened tonight, so of course he
couldn’t tell her. He’d already lied by saying there was an urgent parcel of
documents he had to collect personally in Cork. His lips pursed as he
contemplated the ramifications – once you start lying, where does it stop?
There had been very little time to
prepare for this operation. He thought back to the phone call that had set this
whole train of events in motion. He’d returned from Trinity College, where he
was studying Irish, to the one bedroom flat that he and Natalie rented in
Harcourt Street. It was about 5pm and she was already there, making dinner. She
walked through to the hall to greet him.
She smiled that vivacious smile that had got his attention
and kept it the first time he saw her.
‘Good day at Uni?’
‘As ever. What about you?’
‘Fine. I’ll tell you later, dinner will burn.’ She kissed
him and he just had time to stroke her long black hair before she turned away
and ran back to the kitchen. ‘It’s fish tonight, as it’s Friday and we’re both
good Catholics.’
‘Only by birth,’ he replied. ‘I’m agnostic, I like to keep
my options open. Let’s go with tradition though.’
Ten minutes later, they were sat down and eating when the
phone rang.
‘Great timing. I’d better get it, Nat. Won’t be long’. He
moved into the hall and picked up the phone.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Harry.’ O’Riordan’s deep Belfast
brogue filled the earpiece. Harry could feel the urgency in the man’s voice.
O’Riordan was their SIS intelligence source inside the IRA. His information on
their movements and upcoming activities in the North had been valuable on
several occasions.
‘What is it, Sean? I didn’t know you had my number.’
‘No one is answering your office phone, Harry. Mr Litchfield
gave me your number as a last resort. Is this line secure?’
‘Yes, we can talk. There should be someone in the office,
perhaps he popped out for a minute.’
‘Never mind that now. You need to get information to
Litchfield right away. Tonight, or should I say tomorrow morning around 3am,
there’ll be a large arms shipment coming in on a fishing boat to Ballyrisode Beach
near Goleen in Cork. It’s too late to get the Navy out to intercept them. If
you want them you’ll need to get some military lads down there in the next few
hours. Understood?’
Harry took a deep breath. Goleen was at least four hours
away by car.
‘You sure about this, Sean?’
‘Christ, man, do you think I’d be calling if I wasn’t? I’d
like it if we got off the phone and you found your Mr Litchfield right away.’
‘How many people are we dealing with?’
‘On the boat, I don’t know, but I expect no more than four
or five. On the beach I only have one name: Michael O’Reilly. He’ll probably
have three or four men with him to unload the boat. O’Reilly’s a dedicated
Republican, Harry. He’ll shoot in preference to surrendering, so tell your men
to watch themselves.’
‘Thanks, Sean, leave it with me, I’ll find Litchfield
straight away.’
‘Good luck, Harry.’ The line went dead.
Harry returned to the dining room. Natalie was looking at
him anxiously.
‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘You know I can’t say, Nat. He shouldn’t even be calling me
here. Listen, I need to go out for a while, sorry. Just to pass on this message.
I’ll be back in an hour.’
‘I wish you’d never agreed to work for these people. I
thought they just needed you to do some Irish language translations. That
didn’t sound like translation work to me.’
‘That is all they need me for. Unfortunately my caller
couldn’t get through to anyone else. But I need to pass this on. Put my dinner
in the oven will you? I’ll be back in plenty of time to eat it. Just need to
phone Litchfield first and set up a quick meeting.’
He met Kevin Litchfield at the
offices of Downey’s Accountancy Services, only five minutes walk from the flat.
Mr Downey was a myth, as was his accountancy business. Any potential customer
walking in off the street would be met with a notice on the door proclaiming Mr
Downey’s unfortunate indisposition due to illness, which precluded his
acceptance of any new business. An unmarked door further down the corridor was
a second entrance to the same office, which was in fact SIS headquarters,
Dublin branch.
Litchfield sat behind the absent Mr Downey’s desk. It was a
large wooden desk with a green leather inlaid top, populated by two black
telephones and a green shaded desk lamp. Papers of any sort were conspicuous by
their absence, until you glanced at the heavy Chubb safe on the floor behind
Litchfield. Nothing written stayed in plain sight after office hours.
The office had two smaller and less impressive examples of
the Downey desk, with three more telephones, two typewriters, and a telex
machine. Jack Hudson, who had been the absent man at the time of O’Riordan’s
first phone call, sat next to the telex looking slightly sheepish.
‘Sorry, Harry, I literally popped out for a packet of fags,’
said Jack. ‘Can’t have been more than five minutes.’
Harry said nothing. Judging by the smell of alcohol that
accompanied the words, he thought that five minutes might have been stretched a
little further by a visit to the Bleeding Horse around the corner. No time to
dwell on that now.
‘Spit it out then, Harry, what did Sean O’Riordan want?’
Kevin Litchfield was the SIS chief of station in Dublin. A public school
educated Englishman of about 45, he exuded confidence and charm in his public
persona of successful businessman about town. In his SIS incarnation, however,
he showed a calculated cold-bloodedness that Harry found a little
disconcerting. He had become progressively larger during his Dublin stint, as
evidenced by the tightness of his suit jacket around the shoulders and the
paunch overriding his belt buckle. His face had developed a florid complexion,
and his razor thin lips, slightly flattened nose and squinting gaze put Harry
in mind of a heavyweight boxer who’d taken one punch too many. But the man’s
mind was sharp, and there was a noticeable absence of charm in his manner this
evening.
Harry repeated Sean’s message, watching Litchfield’s eyes as
they opened fully and focused intently on him. Just as he was about to ask why
O’Riordan had his home number, Litchfield sat up ramrod straight and swore
profusely.
‘No bloody way of verifying this, and no bloody time either.
O’Riordan’s not been wrong yet though.’ Litchfield picked up the phone and
dialled quickly. Harry walked to the window on the far side of the office and
gazed over the lit street below. He felt a dim annoyance at being dragged into
operational matters. He’d been employed more in an academic capacity, in his
opinion. He was supposed to stay away from the rough end of the business.
He turned to the sound of the receiver being slammed back
onto the phone.
‘Alright, Harry, this is how it is,’ said Litchfield.
‘There’s a small team of SAS men who can be in place undetected by 2am. They
will wait until the cargo is unloaded, then they’ll arrest everyone involved.
There will be an interrogation on the spot, then the team will quietly
transport these men to Belfast, where the law will deal with them. The guns
will be taken somewhere safe.’
‘Good,’ replied Harry. ‘I’m going back to my dinner now,
glad to know it’s all in hand.’
‘Not so fast, Harry. I’ve given a Captain Hanson your name
as a contact. You’ll drive to Cork and meet him at this hotel,’ he said,
passing Harry a folded sheet of paper, ‘where you will identify yourself and
act as an impartial observer until these men are arrested. I want you present
at their interrogation. It’s more than likely that they’ll speak Irish amongst
each other, knowing full well that we won’t have a clue what they’re on about.
But you will. You may pick up something of interest. Take the Land Rover
outside, and you’d better leave now.’
‘Hang on sir, I’m only here to translate any suspicious
Irish language communications that we intercept. I’ve no training in the field.
Send Jack for God’s sake.’
‘Jack doesn’t speak the language. It’s perfectly safe,
Harry, they know full well you’re only there to confirm the success of the op
and to be present at the interrogation. There’s no time to waste, so get
going.’
