Kane’s eyes flickered to the other two shotguns aimed at him then he slowly brought both hands up into view.
“Move away from the desk!” the Belfast voice snapped.
“Who the hell are you?” Kane demanded. “And why–”
“I said move away from the desk!”
Kane did as he was told.
The Belfast man approached Kane and slammed the butt of the shotgun viciously into his midriff. “The Army Council send their regards.”
Kane crumpled to the floor, his hands clutched over his stomach in agony. When he finally managed to get up on his knees one of the men moved behind him and pressed the shotgun against the back of his head.
“My God, what’s all … this about?” Kane stammered, still struggling to catch his breath.
“It’s about a meeting you and Brady had with Commander Maurice Palmer of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist squad earlier this evening,” the Belfast voice told him.
“The Army Council knew about that,” Kane blurted out. “Kevin cleared it with them before he made the arrangements with Palmer.”
“Brady never informed the Army Council about any meeting tonight.”
“That’s absurd,” Kane retorted. “He told me that he’d cleared it all with them and that they had sanctioned the meeting. He would never have done it behind their backs.”
“The Army Council only found out about the meeting from one of their touts inside the RUC. They also heard a rumor from the same source that Brady taped the whole meeting. Is that true?”
Kane swallowed nervously as he felt the barrel of the shotgun press harder against the back of his head. He said nothing.
“Your loyalty to Brady’s very misguided, Sammy,” the Belfast voice said disdainfully. “The Army Council are well pissed off with him right now. And if he is relieved of his command because of what happened tonight, you can be sure they’ll be very critical of those around him as well. And as you virtually live in his shadow, you’d be the first to go down with him. Think about it, Sammy.”
Kane used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “Yes, he taped the meeting. But how would the RUC know about that?”
“Because Brady’s lost his touch. He used to be innovative. Now he’s just predictable. And it seems that the RUC are very interested in hearing those tapes.”
“Tapes?” Kane said hesitantly.
“Don’t piss us about, Sammy. It’s obvious that Brady intended to send an edited version of the tape to the Press just so that he could save his own miserable skin. As I said, he’s become very predictable. Why else would he have taped the meeting? And if those tapes do fall into the hands of the RUC the Army Council are going to have a hell of a job explaining the deception to our supporters abroad. You received a delivery not five minutes ago from a courier on a motorbike. And it wasn’t a bloody pizza. So where are the tapes?”
“How do I even know the Army Council sent you? I don’t recognize your voices. You won’t even show your faces. You could be from the RUC for all I know.”
“We’ve got our orders,” the man behind Kane said to the Belfast man.
The Belfast man shook his head slowly. “I don’t like it. He’s one of us.”
“You tell that to Pat Taylor!” the man snarled.
“Sammy, for God’s sake, man. We were given strict instructions to execute anyone who tried to stop us from getting those tapes. I don’t want to have to give that order.”
“You kill me and you’ll never get the tapes,” Kane replied coldly, sensing he now had the edge.
“We know that package contained the tapes,” the man behind Kane announced. “It had to be. So they’re obviously somewhere in the house. Probably here in this room. So if I have to kill you, I will. It’ll just take longer for us to find them. It’s your move, Sammy!”
The radio in the holdall suddenly crackled into life. The third man, who had been watching the street from the window, was quick to answer it.
“I can hear police sirens in the distance,” the man in the car shouted over the radio. “And they’re headed this way. We’ve got to move out.”
“OK, Sammy. Decision time,” the Belfast voice told him. “Either you give us those tapes now or else we find them ourselves and leave the remains of your head on the wall for the constabulary to scrape off.”
“Bottom drawer of the desk,” Kane said sullenly.
The Belfast man jerked open the drawer and withdrew a sealed brown envelope. “What’s inside it?”
“The original and a copy of the edited version.”
“How many copies are being made?”
“We’ve got the tapes, now let’s go,” the man behind Kane hissed.
“How many copies did Brady want made?” the Belfast man repeated, his eyes riveted on Kane’s face.
“A dozen.” Kane’s eyes narrowed anxiously when he heard the approaching police sirens. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here. There’s a secret tunnel in the cellar. We can use that.”
The Belfast man nodded to the man behind Kane, who cracked the butt of his shotgun against the side of Kane’s head. Kane was already unconscious before he slumped forward onto the carpet.
The look-out tossed the radio to the Belfast man and crossed to the telephone to dial out as the first of the police cars screeched to a halt outside the house. It was answered immediately at the other end.
He pulled off his balaclava and wiped his hand across his sweating face. “Detective-Inspector Reeves here, sir. Mr. Whitlock’s plan worked a treat.” He glanced across at the other two policemen who had already discarded their balaclavas, and grinned triumphantly. “We’ve got the tapes.”
Whitlock’s plan had worked solely on the premise that Brady had taped the meeting at the hotel. It would have been a very different story had he been wrong …
But he had never entertained that idea. It was the obvious ploy. Why else would Brady have dragged Palmer to Ireland knowing that he would never agree to his terms? Whitlock had decided on using the two Belfast policemen with Reeves as an added precaution. If the Army Council hadn’t known about the meeting they would have sent in a cell from out of town, knowing that they couldn’t trust the locals in case they tried to tip off Kane in advance. But he didn’t know whether the meeting had the Army Council’s approval. It obviously did. And he knew Brady would have dealt with that himself. So by casting doubt on Brady’s word, that would throw Kane off-guard.
Brady had been allowed to leave Warrenpoint, as Palmer had promised. But Kane had been tailed to the safe house on the outskirts of the city by the four policemen. They had orders to wait until the tapes were delivered to Kane. Whitlock had been positive that Brady would put the tapes in the care of the one man he knew he could trust. It had just been a question of when the tapes would arrive …
All three men had been wired when they went into the house so that both the “look-out” and the local RUC, who were parked a few hundred yards away from the house, would know exactly when to make their moves.
With Kane unconscious, the RUC could claim either not to have found the three masked men when they entered the house or else to have lost them in a subsequent chase. Whitlock had left that decision to the police. Kane would be none the wiser. And with Kane in custody, Brady would have lost his one real ally. It would isolate him even further. And when the Army Council found out that Kane had lost the original tape, the noose would tighten a little more around Brady’s neck …
Chapter Fourteen
The young constable flagged down the Mazda as it neared the RUC roadblock on the outskirts of Dugaill. “Morning,” he said politely, crouching down beside the open driver’s window. “I’m afraid this road won’t be opened again until early this afternoon. Where are you headed?”