Pray for Us Sinners (3 page)

Major John Smith ran his hands over his khaki pants. God, but it was good to be back in uniform. He knew very well he would not have been, but for that phone call last month from Sir Charles Featherstone, Permanent Under-Secretary to the Northern Ireland Office.

Major Smith closed his eyes and recalled the interview in Whitehall with Sir Charles, the promise—and the threat.

Sir Charles had not risen from his desk.

“Have a seat, Smith.”

He sat down. Why did he feel like a fourth-former summoned to the headmaster's study? John Smith studied the man behind the desk.

Sir Charles Featherstone was in his early sixties, thick grey hair swept straight back, bushed at the temples. His nose was sharp and stood stiffly between deep-set blue eyes. His neck was wattled above his starched white collar. His Guards tie showed above the waistcoat of his pinstriped suit. He spoke. “I'll come straight to the point, Smith.”

“Sir.”

“I got your name from Frank Kitson. You met him in Malaya, I believe.”

“Brigadier Kitson? Yes, sir.”

“He says you can be trusted.” Sir Charles cocked his head to one side. “Would you like to come back in?”

John Smith looked directly into Sir Charles's eyes. “Very much, sir. Very much indeed.”

“You'd not mind working in Ulster?”

“No, sir.”

Sir Charles steepled his fingers. “I need a man I can rely on. An operative working for me and no one else.”

John Smith sensed that he should remain silent.

“The intelligence situation's a shambles over there. Do you know how many units are operating?”

“No, sir.”

“Neither do we. Not completely. MI6 have pulled out. MI5—‘BOX,' as they call themselves, because their address is a post office box—are still there. The Royal Ulster Constabulary have two departments. C is the ordinary criminal investigation bunch. E is their special branch, antiterrorist. And the civilian organizations are child's play compared to the military.”

Sir Charles cracked his knuckles. “Thirty-nine Brigade ran a mob called the Military Reconnaissance Force. Your old chum Kitson's idea. Total flop. We packed them up this year. Replaced them with 14 Intelligence Company.

“As if all that wasn't bad enough, every regular army unit's intelligence officer fancies himself to be Le Carré's Smiley and runs his own agents. There might even be some of your old mob, the SAS, on the ground—not officially, of course.”

Sir Charles harrumphed. “The Royal Ulster Constabulary won't talk to the army. The army mistrusts the RUC. Even in the army, the daft buggers don't talk to each other. It's a bloody shambles.”

Sir Charles scowled. John Smith saw the look and felt his muscles tighten as the civil servant continued. “And the Provos have begun to mount operations that could only have worked with the benefit of top-grade inside information. There's a mole somewhere in our organization, in Thirty-nine Brigade's tactical area of operations. Your job will be to find him—and gut him.”

“Yes, sir.” John Smith sat rigidly at attention.

“Remember, Smith, you'll be working for me. No one else.”

“Will I be working completely alone, sir?”

“No. The CO of Fourteen Intelligence, Harry Swanson, has been briefed about you. He's a Yorkshireman. Calls a spade a bloody shovel. He'll provide you with logistic backup, documents, access to files.”

“Sir.”

“There's another chappie who'll be able to help you. He's sound as a bell. Completely familiar with the local situation. Ulsterman. Catholic. Name's Eric Gillespie. Detective Superintendent in the special branch. Give you the local colour.” Sir Charles's smile was a puckered rictus. “I'm told it's predominantly orange and green.”

Smith mentally filed the name. “I thought the army didn't trust the RUC, sir.”

“Quite right. Neither do I. They're the only ones who can mingle with the hoi polloi. Lots of chances to pass on information. The bloke you're after might very well be a copper.”

“But, Sir Charles, if there could be a leak in the police, why use their people?”

Sir Charles grimaced. “You'll need one local contact. It's like a foreign country over there. Gillespie's been screened, he's a closemouthed bugger, and the previous chief constable, Sir Graham Shillington, is an old friend of mine. He vouched for Gillespie. He's one of their best operatives. Trust him, to a point, but don't tell him what you're really after. He may be on our side, but he
is
still RUC, and he's a Catholic.”

Smith heard the distaste in Sir Charles's voice as he continued: “And so's the new chief constable—chap called Jamie Flanagan. If he found out through Gillespie that you suspected the coppers—what do our American cousins say?—the shit would hit the fan.”

“What do I tell him I'm supposed to be doing, sir?”

Sir Charles laughed. “You're just another independent intelligence operative. After PIRA names, ammo dumps, the usual stuff.”

“Oh.”

“Now get over to NI. They're expecting you at Lisburn Headquarters. The brigadier's been told to leave you alone to get on with your job. You'll have access to all the files.” He opened a drawer and produced two envelopes. “My minister's written this.” He handed one to Smith. “It instructs the powers that be over there to ‘render all assistance.'”

John Smith rose and accepted the letter, tucking it unopened into his inside jacket pocket.

Sir Charles's blue eyes fixed on Smith. “Take all the time you need over there—within reason. Report directly to me.” He held out the other envelope. “Your commission's in here, Major.”

Major Smith accepted the buff envelope. Major Smith. He'd hardly dared hope for so much. He heard Sir Charles say, “Pull this off and you'll have the deepest gratitude of Her Majesty's Government. Shouldn't be surprised if I couldn't find a half-colonel's job for you. Of course, if you don't…”

Major Smith looked through his window at the razor-wire fence surrounding Thiepval. Pull this off? He was no closer to finding the Provos' inside man than he had been when he'd arrived here a month ago. How much longer would Sir Charles wait?

There was a way to try to find the leak. It would be risky and depended on identifying the right man for the job. The major'd considered the possibility for the last two weeks, working with a reluctant Harry Swanson of 14 Intel. Harry had not wrapped up his opinion. Putting a British officer on the street to infiltrate the upper echelons of the PIRA would be hazardous in the extreme. Having registered his protest, Swanson had started running background checks.

The ringing phone interrupted the major's train of thought. He lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

“John?”

“Yes, Harry?”

“Can you come over to Palace Barracks in Holywood the day after tomorrow, the sixth? I think I've found the chap you're looking for.”

“What?” Major Smith's fingers tightened round the receiver. “Who?”

 

FOUR

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5

At 8:14
A.M
., as weak sunlight struggled through the lattices of the coal cranes on the banks of the Lagan and glinted from heaps of anthracite piled on the pier, a nondescript-looking man left from a Ford Prefect parked on Queen's Quay. He carried a small suitcase.

He dodged through the traffic and crossed the road to the entrance of the Belfast and County Down Railway station. A throng of commuters spilled from the portals. The man jostled his way through the crowd into the concourse. Before him a diesel locomotive stood at one platform, its engine leaking greasy exhaust fumes. He glanced up to the overhead clock. 8:17. The next commuter train would arrive at the other platform in fifteen minutes.

He looked to his right. The porter's trolley was where he had been told to expect it, parked beside a glass-fronted news kiosk. The kiosk was close to the gate where the passengers would be funneled to hand over their tickets to the ticket collector. There was no sign of the porter whose job it had been to leave the loaded trolley where it stood. The man smiled. The porter was a sensible lad. Very sensible.

He slipped his case among the heap of luggage on the trolley, bent, opened the leather lid, straightened, and lit a smoke. He touched the lit cigarette to another bound to a clothes peg inside the case, closed the lid, shoved the case farther onto the trolley, and walked away.

The ticket collector lounged, back turned to his gate, staring along the track.

At 8:35, as the last of the disembarking passengers queued at the ticket gate and those who had been allowed through hurried past the kiosk, the smouldering tobacco burnt through the string, and the words “High explosive. TNT. 1 pound net. Dangerous” vanished in an inferno of incandescent gas.

The ticket collector was impaled on the broken cast-iron railings of his gate. He died before the jagged metal ripped into his chest. A woman was thrown ten feet to slam into a child pushing a toy pram. The girl's arm was snapped by the force of the collision. She screamed for her mother, who struggled to stand, trying to ignore the grating agony in her three crushed ribs.

The blast shattered the kiosk's panes and hurled glass shards while torn pieces of magazines and comics—
Tit-Bits
and
Woman's Own, Beano
and
Dandy
—fluttered in the smoke-filled air like demented confetti.

And through the acrid fumes, the shrieks and curses, pleas and groans joined in a lamentation for a province torn by hatred and sectarian war.

*   *   *

The Ford Prefect crossed the Upper Falls Road. Its passenger grunted, “Let me off here.” Carrying no suitcase this time, he walked easily, making his way to a street corner.

Another man leaned against a wall. He carried his right shoulder higher than his left, and the left lens of his National Health Service granny glasses had been replaced by an opaque leather disc. He barely nodded as the pedestrian passed, rubbed his finger under his nose, and strolled on.

Brendan McGuinness smiled. The mission he had planned had gone off smoothly. He poked a finger under his leather patch and scratched the eye socket.

McGuinness turned and opened a front door. He let himself into a dingy hall. He shrugged. Four pounds of TNT was small beans. One of Sean Conlon's men's efforts. Sean was fiercely protective of his men. McGuinness, commanding officer of 1st Battalion, had little time for Conlon and his 2nd Battalion volunteers. The man had a soft spot. That hadn't mattered yet, as long as they could work together smoothly on brigade staff, Sean as adjutant and Brendan as information officer. This morning's job showed how they could cooperate. First Battalion had needed a bomb delivered to a safe house, and Sean had readily agreed to have his 2nd Battalion bomb makers provide it.

McGuinness entered a scruffy kitchen. He ignored the pile of pots and a grease-encrusted frying pan lying in a pool of scummy water in the kitchen sink.

It was one thing for Sean Conlon to help out with little things, but had he the stomach for something really big? He'd better have.

McGuinness's job as Brigade IO was to sift incoming information and use it to ensure the security of the Provo volunteers, as well as to advise on the targets that, when hit, would do the most damage to the British. His old sources were working well but hadn't been used to plan today's raid. This morning's attack had been little more than a diversion. Random violence on a small scale kept the Security Forces on the hop and could not compromise his most precious intelligence asset.

His eye socket itched, and he poked his finger in to scratch. He might have only one good eye, but his ears were everywhere in Belfast and, after the move out of these cruddy quarters in a couple of weeks, he'd have one more listening device. One that neither Sean nor even the Officer Commanding the Belfast Brigade would be privy to.

It would need to be tested. It would take a week or two to have the system set up, but once it was working the Belfast Provos could truly inflict major damage on the Brits. And when the PIRA began to go for major targets, ones that would carry serious risks to attack—like the one his prime source had suggested as a real possibility—then they'd see what Sean Conlon was made of.

 

FIVE

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4

“You'll be leaving this evening, Lieutenant Richardson.” The young nurse smoothed the corner of the sheet. “Now take these.” She handed him two painkillers.

He popped the pills in his mouth and washed them down with a mouthful of water.

“Good.” She took the glass.

Marcus wished he could hear her more clearly, but the ringing in his ears refused to go away. He felt so bloody useless, stiff and bruised and stuck in hospital. At least no bones were broken. Nothing smashed up inside. But it had been a near thing on Saturday. Too bloody near. It had given him pause for thought. He shuddered but said, “Thank you.”

She smiled, showing small white teeth. She had great eyes, green and feline. He wondered what she'd look like in civvies—or, better still, out of them. She must have noticed his look. Pink spread from beneath her white starched collar. “Now settle down,” she said, but the smile remained. “The ambulance will be here soon.”

Her name tag said J. L
OUGHRIDGE
. She hadn't been on duty when he'd regained consciousness yesterday. They'd told him he'd been out for twenty-four hours. The blast had been on Saturday, so this must be Tuesday.

He tried to give her his best smile, but the split in his lower lip stung. “Ouch!” He dabbed at his mouth with the tips of the fingers of his right hand. “What's the J for?”

“None of your business.” She turned to leave, then paused and looked at him, the smile returning. “If you must know, it's Jennifer.”