The Chinaman (15 page)

He stood up and put his hand gently under Mary's chin, tilting her head upwards. ‘There was a man came round to the office yesterday, a Chinaman. His wife and daughter were killed in one of the London bombings. He thinks I'm responsible.'

‘He came all the way to Belfast to see you?'

‘He wants me to tell him who's behind the bombing campaign. I sent him packing and a few minutes later our toilet exploded. Now this.'

She shook her head away from his hand. ‘Why haven't you told the police this?'

‘We're not sure it's him. And anyway, it's the sort of thing we can handle ourselves.'

‘Liam!' she said angrily. ‘You're playing with our lives here!'

‘If it is him we'll soon stop him, don't worry. He's Chinese, he won't be difficult to spot in Belfast.'

‘I hope you're right,' she said. The look of concern had gone now, and it had been replaced by something else, something that seemed to Hennessy to be uncomfortably like contempt. It was a look that his wife was giving him more and more often these days, he thought with a heavy heart. He couldn't seem to do anything right. He decided not to try to win her around, knowing that he was sure to fail.

‘I'll be in the study until Jim and Christy get here,' he said as he walked out of the kitchen. Jackie rushed out from under the table, her claws clicking against the tiles, and loyally followed him out.

He went into his study and closed the door. Jackie went to her wicker basket by the side of the french window which led on to the small patio and she settled into it with a deep and mournful sigh as if offering sympathy for the rough treatment he was getting from Mary. He knew that she would prefer him to take a tougher line with the Protestant extremists, and on more than one occasion she'd urged him to mount an all-out offensive against the UDA. It was so strange, he thought, the way that he himself had mellowed over the years and she had become more and more committed to an armed struggle. The more he tried to persuade her that the only solution was a negotiated one, the more she seemed to turn away from him, physically and emotionally. But he knew that he was right, that his way was the only way forward. Anything else would only end in bloodshed. Knowing that he was right didn't make him feel any better.

There was a safe set into the wall behind a framed hunting print over a cast-iron fireplace; Hennessy opened it and took out a brown A4 manila envelope. He flicked the open end with a thumbnail as he walked over to the desk. Inside was a sheaf of papers, each a report on an individual arms cache. There were fifteen in all, and he was expecting a further six by nightfall. He spread the sheets out on the desk and examined them. Three of the caches had been interfered with. In all, fifteen kilograms of Semtex had been taken, along with a dozen detonators, two mercury tilt switches, two handguns and a small amount of ammunition. Everything else necessary for the construction of bombs – wires, timing devices, transmitters – could be bought from High Street stores. Hennessy was sure that the maverick IRA team had been stealing from the organisation's munition dumps and he was equally certain that they were being helped by somebody inside the organisation. The trouble was that there was no pattern, no connection between the three dumps. They were the responsibility of three different IRA cells. He grunted and gathered up the papers. Jackie lifted her head and watched him put the sheets back into the envelope.

‘Maybe the remaining inspections will supply the answer,' he said to her and she chuffed in agreement.

Hennessy heard a car arrive outside and footsteps crunching on the gravelled drive before the doorbell rang. He waited to see if Mary would answer it, but he wasn't surprised when she didn't. He went and opened the door to let in Kavanagh and Murphy and a small sharp-faced man with a straggly moustache and grey, watery eyes, Willie O'Hara. Jimmy McMahon stayed outside in the Jaguar, reluctant to let it out of his sight. Willie was wearing his normal baggy grey suit, the trousers held up by a greasy brown belt, and he was carrying a paper bag. Hennessy took the three men into the study. ‘Was the car clear?' he asked O'Hara.

‘Other than this?' answered the little man, holding up the bag. ‘Yeah, this was all, but it would've been more than enough.' He reached in his hand and took out a coil of black wire and held it out to Hennessy. ‘Crude, but it would've done the job.'

There were two pieces of wire, each about ten-foot long, and both had been soldered to the flash-bulb.

Hennessy pointed to the red powder which covered the flash-bulb. ‘What's this?' he asked.

O'Hara's eyes shone. ‘Ground up match-heads,' he said. ‘Mainly potassium chlorate. Just to add an extra kick. Probably wouldn't have been necessary, but it's a nice touch.'

‘How does it work?'

‘Whoever it was had prised open the fuel cap and left the flash-bulb dangling just inside the tank, in the fumes above the petrol. You turn the key and up she goes.'

‘Guaranteed?'

O'Hara frowned, wondering what Hennessy was getting at. ‘Pretty certain. I mean, it's not the sort of gadget we'd use because there's always an outside chance that the bulb might fall into the petrol in which case it wouldn't ignite it. And it's also pretty easy to spot.'

‘A warning?'

O'Hara nodded eagerly. ‘Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. Is somebody giving you trouble?'

‘I've an idea who it might be, yes. Willie, thanks for your help.' Hennessy shook him by the hand and showed him out, telling Jimmy to drive O'Hara wherever he wanted to go.

Back in the study he sat behind his desk and told Kavanagh and Murphy to make themselves comfortable. He offered them tea or coffee but they declined. He didn't offer them anything stronger because even under stress Kavanagh didn't touch alcohol and he could already smell whiskey on Murphy's breath and they'd all need clear heads.

‘I'm coming round to thinking that maybe you were right about what you said yesterday, Jim,' Hennessy said to Kavanagh.

‘About going to the farm?'

Hennessy nodded. ‘I think it's best. The weekend's coming up, and I can just as easily run things from there, for a short time at least. Mary and I will go tonight, Jimmy and Christy can come with us and we'll take another couple of lads with us just to be on the safe side.'

‘Ye want me to stay here?' asked Kavanagh.

‘I want you to organise a search for this Chinaman. He shouldn't be that hard to find, not in Belfast. There can't be that many Chinese here, and this one's a stranger, from London. He's got to be staying somewhere.'

‘No problem,' said Kavanagh.

‘And I'm bringing Sean Morrison back.'

Both Kavanagh and Murphy smiled. They knew Morrison well and had worked together on many occasions.

‘He's still in New York?' asked Murphy. Morrison had left Belfast more than two years earlier.

‘Yeah, he's liaising with the various Noraid groups in North America.' Morrison had told Hennessy he wanted to get out of Belfast for a while and his request had come at a time when fund-raising in the United States had been going through a rough patch. Morrison had made a difference, not the least because his broad Belfast accent and typical Irish good looks went down so well with the Americans. He looked just like they expected an IRA activist should, tall, broad-shouldered, with curly black hair and piercing blue eyes. He spoke well and with conviction about the aims of the organisation and the Noraid groups had used him to full advantage. Morrison had also been a great help in arranging for forged passports and visas for IRA members who wanted to get in and out of the United States without being identified, and had recently begun to form links with arms suppliers. He had been a godsend. But right now Hennessy needed someone he could trust, and he trusted Morrison with his life.

He told Kavanagh to start the hunt for The Chinaman right away, and asked Murphy to step up security arrangements around the house. He waited until he was alone before picking up the phone and calling New York.

Morrison answered on the third ring, his voice thick with sleep.

‘Good morning, Sean. What time is it in the Big Apple?'

Morrison groaned. ‘Almost five o'clock,' he said. ‘What's wrong, Liam?'

‘I need you back here, Sean.'

‘When?'

‘Today.'

Morrison groaned again. ‘You don't ask much, do you?' He didn't ask why because he knew the security forces weren't averse to tapping Hennessy's phone, legally or otherwise.

‘I'd like you to come straight here, to my house,' Hennessy continued. ‘I'll explain everything when you arrive. How long do you think it'll take you?'

‘Ten hours or so, Liam, a lot depends on the timing of the direct flights.' His voice was clearer now. ‘I'll call you if there are any problems.'

Hennessy thanked him and replaced the receiver. He picked up the wires and flash-bulb that Willie had left on his desk and toyed with them, deep in thought.

Nguyen drove the Renault to a Chinese take-away and bought six portions of plain boiled rice, three of roast pork and three of roast chicken. He told the Hong Kong Chinese behind the counter that he didn't want any sauce or anything, just meat. The food came in the same foil containers with white cardboard lids that he'd used in his own shop in Clapham. He asked for a carrier bag, put the food in the back of the van and then drove to a pub in the countryside to buy ice. The landlord of the first place he tried said he didn't have enough for his own use, never mind to sell to someone who wasn't even a regular. The man behind the bar at the second pub was more sympathetic to Nguyen's story of a wife with an arthritic leg which the doctor said would be helped if she lay with it in an ice bath. He sold him three carrier bags full of ice-cubes shovelled from a large clanking ice-machine for a nominal sum and Nguyen drove back to the guest-house as quickly as he dared. He parked the van, put the packs of ice and one of the bags of fertilizer into two holdalls and carried them inside. Mrs McAllister was dusting the hall and she smiled when she saw him. ‘Lovely day, isn't it?' she said.

He smiled, nodded and slipped by her. He put the fertilizer on the bathroom floor, dropped the ice into the bottom of the shower and listened at the door until he heard the landlady go into the kitchen. He slipped downstairs and refilled the holdalls. He carried them back up the stairs, walking softly on the balls of his feet close to the wall so that he made the minimum of noise. The less he saw of the landlady and the other guests, the better.

He entered his room and slid back the brass bolt before placing the bag on the bedcover and unzipping it. He unpacked the bag carefully, first removing the two glass bottles of concentrated acids, which he took one at a time into the bathroom and put on the floor by the shower.

He tore open the plastic bags and tipped most of the ice into the shower and then fetched a box of salt and sprinkled it over the cubes before pushing the bottles of acid into the freezing mixture.

While it cooled he emptied the holdall on to the bed. There was the bottle of glycerine, a can of motor oil, several boxes of matches, a tube of glue, a jumble of plastic piping, plastic-coated wire, a box of baking soda, a pair of washing-up gloves, a thermometer, a Pyrex measuring jug, two large Pyrex saucepans and a Teflon-covered stirrer. He took what he needed into the bathroom and switched on the light so that the ventilator would start working. The acid fumes would be painful if he inhaled them.

Nguyen had worked with explosives a lot during the war. Whenever possible the Vietcong had bought explosives or used equipment captured from the Americans, but supplies weren't always easy to get and they were quite capable of manufacturing their own blasting gelatine, TNT, plastic or nitroglycerine. Most of the raw materials for explosives could be bought quite legally, though in the later years of the war there were restrictions on the sale of electric timing devices. Not that it mattered, though, because clockwork alarm clocks were just as good.

It took almost half an hour before Nguyen had completed the complex and dangerous series of chemical reactions that left him with an oily white substance forming a milky layer at the bottom of the measuring jug.

Nguyen settled back on the cold floor and sighed. His jaw ached and he realised he must have been grinding his teeth with the tension. He was starting to get a headache, a piercing pain behind his eyes that could be a result of the stress or more likely the effect of the fumes. He got to his feet, his knees cracking as he straightened up and walked unsteadily into the bedroom. He opened the window wide and then sat on the edge of the bed, breathing deeply to clear his head.

When he felt a little better he took the bag of fertilizer into the bathroom and tore it open. He spread out one of the empty plastic bags that had contained the ice and scooped handfuls of fertilizer on to it. it was important to get the ratio of motor oil, nitroglycerine and fertilizer right. He added the oil to the fertilizer first, kneading it like dough until it had been absorbed and then carefully poured out the nitroglycerine a little at a time, placing it back in the shower between pourings. The nitroglycerine could be used as an explosive on its own but it was dangerously unstable and would explode if knocked or dropped or if it got too hot. Once it had been mixed with the fertilizer and oil it would be quite inert until detonated but would be almost as effective.

Nguyen worked slowly and methodically and it took him the best part of an hour until all the nitroglycerine had been worked into the mixture and he had a dark-brown gooey paste on the plastic bag. He stripped off the gloves and laid them on the floor and went back into the bedroom. The headache was worse. He looked at his watch. It was six o'clock. He had plenty of time, so he lay down on the bed and rested.