Q. What happened here, Colonel?
A. This is really a most shocking attack, a most cowardly murder. One of my soldiers was shot down in cold blood, quite without warning. A horrible, despicable crime.
Q. Did your men get a sight of the gunman?
A. No, it wasn’t till we were engaged in an extensive follow-up operation — which you will have seen for yourself — that we found the place where the gunman was hiding. He was up in the roof of a derelict house, and he aimed at my patrol through the gap left by a missing tile.
Q. Would this have been the work of an expert?
A. An expert — in terrorism, yes, in killing, yes. We found sixty-eight cigarette butts in the roof. He’d been there some time. He’d put four chairs on the staircase of the house — it’s very narrow anyway. If we’d been chasing him and had run into the building those chairs would have lost us several seconds. That’s the work of an expert killer. He’d chosen a house which had a communicating passage down the length of the terrace roof. That’s the way he got out.
Q. Did anyone see anything on the street?
A. I’m sure half the street knew what was going on. Lots of people, masses of them, must have known a young man was going to be shot down in the gutter outside their homes. But I think your question is, did they identify the gunman to us? The answer there is decisively, No, they didn’t. But many of them must know who the killer is — I appeal to them to use the police Confidential phone and stamp out this type of cruel, cowardly attack.
Q. Thank you, Colonel.
The programme changed to an interview in the studio. A Protestant politician and a Catholic politician were arguing over the same ground, with some minute variations, that they’d been debating on the same channel for the last four years. Between them was a linkman who had been hosting them, feeding them their questions and winding them up over the same period. Before the talk was a minute old Mrs Duncan came forward like a battleship under power, and reached for the off switch.
‘There’s enough politics on the street without bringing them into my house. Just words. Won’t do that young man any good. Mother of Jesus rest with him.’
A youngish man, across the table from Harry, said, ‘If they stayed in their barracks they wouldn’t get shot. If they weren’t here there wouldn’t be any shooting. You saw what they did when they came round here a few days ago. Taking the houses apart, lifting men, and blocking the streets. Claimed then it was because of that man that got shot in London. But the searches they did were nothing to do with it. Aggro, what they were looking for, nothing more. Harassment.’
Nobody in the room responded. The young man looked round for someone to join in argument with. Harry sided with him. ‘If they were as busy chasing the Prods as us, they’d find things easier for themselves.’
The other looked at him, surprised to find support, if not a little disappointed that it was an ally who had put his cap in the ring. Harry went on, ‘I’ve been away a long time, but I can see in the few hours that I’ve been back where all the troops are. I’ve been abroad, but you still read the papers, you still see the news on the telly bought from the BBC. You get to feel the way things are going. Nothing’s done about those Prods, only us.’
It was not easy for Harry, that first time. With practice he would gain the facility to sing the praises of the IRA. But the first time round it was hard going. Never like this in Mansoura. Never went down the souk and shouted the odds, about what a fine bloke Quahtan As-Shaabi was, victory to the NLF, out with the imperialists. Just kept quiet there, and scuffed around in the dirt, and watched. But a different scene here. Got to be in the crowd. He excused himself, saying he was tired and had been travelling all day, and went to his room.
Chapter 6
It was just after seven when Harry woke. He knew soon enough that this was the day he started working and move on to active service. The euphoria of the farewells, the back-slaps and good-luck calls, were over. He had arrived. Now would begin the hard work of moving on to the inside. He checked his watch. Well, twenty minutes more and then it could all begin, then he would get up.
He’d known since his training started that the initial period of infiltration was going to be the difficult part. This was where the expertise and skill entered in his file after Mansoura would count. They had chosen him after going over those files, and those of a dozen other men, because they had thought that he above all of them stood the best chance of being able to adapt in those early critical hours in the new environment.
They’d told him he must take it slowly, not lambast his way in. Not make so much of his presence that he attracted attention and with that, inevitably, investigation. But they also stressed that time was against him. They pointed to the enormous benefits the opposition were gaining from the failure of the vast military force to catch the assassin.
The dilemma was spelled out to him. How much speed could he generate? How fast could he move into that fringe world which had contact with the gunmen? How far into that world must he go to get near the nucleus of the organization where the man he hunted was operating? These were his decisions. The advice had been given, but now he had to control his own planning.
They had emphasized again and again at Dorking that his own death would be bad news all round. Enormous embarrassment to HMG. No risks should be taken unless absolutely essential. It had amused him, drily. You send a man to infiltrate the most successful urban terrorist movement in the world over the last twenty-five years, and tell him if he gets shot it would be awkward. Not much time to mess about with the frills. They’d said if it was going to work out for him it would be in the first three weeks. By then they expected something to bite on… not necessarily the man’s full name but a regular haunt, the address of a friend. A hint. Anything on to which they could turn the huge and formal military and police machine. The great force was poised and waiting for him to tell it where to hit, and that pleased him.
He was starting with little enough to go on. The same available to everyone else in the city — or virtually the same. He had in his mind the photokit picture, with the knowledge that it was superior to the one issued in police stations and army posts. But that was all that tipped the scales in his favour. Nothing else, and not much to set against the disadvantages of arriving as a stranger in a community beset by informers and on its guard against them. His first problem would be the infiltration of the Catholic population, let alone the IRA, and becoming known to people already haunted by the fear of army plain-clothes units cruising in unmarked cars, laundry vans and ice-cream trucks with hidden spy holes, of the Protestant UVF and UFF killer squads. He had to win a degree of confidence among some small segment of these people before he could hope to operate with success.
Davidson had struck a chord when he said, ‘They seem to have the ability to smell an outsider. They close ranks well. It’s like the instinct of a fox that’s learned to react when there’s a hostile being close by. God knows how they do it, but they have a feeling for danger. Much of it is how you look, the way you walk, the way you go along the pavement. Whether you can look as though you belong. You need confidence. You have to believe that you’re not the centre of attention the whole time. The first trick is to get yourself a base. Establish yourself there, and then work outwards. Like an upside-down pyramid.’
The base was clearly to be the good Mrs Duncan. She was in the kitchen and washing up the first sitting of breakfast when Harry came down the stairs.
‘Well, it’s good to be back, Mrs Duncan. I’ve been away a while too long, I feel. You miss Ireland when you’re away, whatever sort of place it is now. You get tired of the travelling and the journeys. You want to be back here. If these bastard British would leave us to lead our own lives then this would be a great wee country. But it can’t be easy for you, Mrs Duncan, running a business in these times?’