For the first time since he had come to Belfast he felt the excitement that had been the hallmark of the Sheik Othman operation.
He used to leave little pencilled messages in English in an old fruit tin on the Sheik Othman-to-Mansoura road. Nothing as luxurious as a telephone. Sometimes he’d stay around in the afternoon heat the next day when the town was sleepy and out of gear and watch the military come bulldozing into the town in their Saladins and Saracens. He would watch the leather-faced, expressionless men hustled away into the armoured cars, resisting the show of force that came to get them only with the contempt in their eyes. That was the reward for the strange job he did — to see the clumsy boot of the army stepping into the exact footprints he had silently prepared for them.
It was a good two and a quarter hours before Davidson would be in the office. He had told Harry that for the first three weeks at least he would be there every day, Sundays included, at eight in the morning and stay till ten at night. Must be playing havoc with his marriage, thought Harry. Can’t really see Davidson with a wife, though.
He’d go into town, he decided, and make the call from one of those anonymous call boxes in the city centre. Now two hours’ sleep. That bloody woman. He was exhausted.
But she was a bit special.
Not like that at home. Couldn’t be really. Nothing in married life vegetating round a barracks square in a line of neat, desiccated quarters that matched the drawn bowstring of the city at war. Too many bombs, too many snipers, too many mutilations for people to hang about on the preliminaries. You’d want a few memories as you bumped about in the box up the Falls to Milltown Cemetery. That was the philosophy of life for Belfast. And not a bad one, thought Harry.
Across in Germany they’d be asleep now. The wife and the kids, tucked up in their rooms, the familiar bits and pieces round them. The things, semi-junk, that they’d collected from the duty-free lounge and the market places where they went shopping when he was off duty. Knick-knacks that brightened the service furniture they lived off. Josephine didn’t fit in there, was outside that world. They’d be up soon. Always had an early breakfast on Sundays. Someone would take the boys out for football. That was regular. And his wife… how would she spend a cold Sunday in North Germany? Harry was half asleep. Not quite dreaming but close. She’d go visiting, walk out along the line of officers’ detached houses for a coffee in mid-morning, and stay for a drink before lunch, and have to make her excuses, and there’d be laughter when she’d flap about the lunch in the oven. Perhaps someone would ask her to stay and share theirs. That would be par for the course. And they’d say how sorry they were that Harry was away, and how suddenly he’d gone, and fish for an explanation. The questions would confuse her, and embarrass her, because they’d expect her at least to have an idea of why he’d vanished so quickly. And she wouldn’t have an answer.
Could she comprehend it even if she did know? Could she assimilate this tatty, rotten job? Could she understand the man that was hunted, and the need to kill him? Could she accept what might happen to Harry? ‘I don’t know,’ Harry said to himself. ‘God knows how many years we’ve been married, and I don’t know. She’d be calm enough, not throw any tantrums, but what it would all mean to her, I’ve not the faintest idea.’
That would all sort itself. And when the answers had to be given then Josey would be a fantasy, and over.
Billy Downs was in his bed now, and asleep. He’d come back to find his wife sobbing into her pillow, disbelieving he could be freed, still suffering from the strain of the phone call she had made hours earlier. Many times he told her it was just routine, that there was nothing for them to fear. Relax, they know nothing. It’s clean. The trail is old and cold and clean. She held onto him as if uncertain that he was really there after she had mentally prepared herself for not seeing him again as a free man. The terror of losing him was a long time thawing. He put a brave face on it, but didn’t know himself the significance of his arrest. But to run now would be suicide. He would stay put. Act normally. And stay very cool.
As soon as he came off duty, in the small hours of Sunday morning, Jones asked to see his commanding officer. His platoon lieutenant asked him why, and about what, but the shuffling private merely replied that it was a security matter and that he must see the colonel as soon as he woke. He was marched up the wide steps of the mill, enclosed with the dripping walls festooned with fire- and parcel-bomb warnings and urging the soldiers to be ever vigilant, and shown into the colonel’s office. The colonel was shaving electrically and continued with the modern ritual as the soldier put together his report. Jones said that while searching a social club the previous night he had seen a man he definitely recognized as having been the transport officer at a base in Germany where his unit had refitted after a NATO exercise. He said that the man had given his name as McEvoy, and he explained about the kicked ankle, and the instruction to forget what he had seen. There was a long pause while the officer scraped the razor round his face, doubtful what action to take, and how he should react. The minute or so that he thought about the problem seemed to the young private an eternity. Then he gave his orders. Jones was to make no further mention of this incident to any other soldier, and was confined to barracks till further notice.
‘Please, sir. What do I tell the sergeant-major?’
‘Tell him the MO says you’ve a cold. That’s all, and keep your mouth shut. That’s important.’
When the soldier had about-turned and stamped his way out of the office the colonel asked for his second in command to come and see him. Sunday was normally the quiet morning, and the chance of a modest stay in bed. The second in command came in still wearing his dressing gown. To the colonel the position was now clear.
‘There’s all these chaps running round in civvies. I think we’ve trampled on one. If we say we’ve done it, there’s going to be a hell of a scene all the way round, lot of fluff flying and problems. I’m going to ship Jones out to Germany this afternoon and have the page of his log destroyed. We can take care of this our own way and with rather less palava than if it goes up to old Frost at HQ.’
The second in command agreed. He would ask for the log book, and deal with the offending page personally. Before his breakfast.
Early Sunday morning in Belfast is formidable. To Harry it was like the set of one of those films where there has been a nerve gas attack and no-one is left alive. Nothing but grey, heavy buildings, some crazily angled from the bomb blasts, others held up at the ends by huge timber props. Outside the city hall, vast and enormous and apparently deserted, the pigeons had gathered on the lawns. They too were immobile except when they ducked their heads while searching for imaginary worms in the ground. No buses. No taxis. No cars. No people. Harry found himself scurrying to get away from so much silence and emptiness. It was almost with a sense of relief that he saw a joint RUC and Military Police patrol cruising towards him. This typified the difference for him between Aden and here. When he was on his own in Mansoura he had shut himself away from the safety of the military and accepted that the run for home would be way too long if his cover was blown or he gave himself away. Now he had the army and police all round him. He was part of their arm, an extension of their operations.