Yet he felt the very closeness of the security forces was unnerving. The agent operating in hostile territory has to be self-sufficient and self-supporting. All just as applicable to the British agent working in Great Britain. Can’t be like the little boy with the bloody nose running home to Mum. In Mansoura it had been quite conventional and therefore more acceptable.
Not only was the city deserted of people. It was battened down for the day. Iron railings, their tops split into sharp tridents, blocked off the shopping streets that fanned off Royal Avenue. The turnstile gates into the security precincts were padlocked. Shops inside and outside the barricades had their windows barricaded and shuttered.
Down near the post office he found a bank of empty phone boxes, with only the work of vandals to prevent him taking his pick from a choice of six. It was cold inside the booth, with the wind cutting through the gaps left where the kids had kicked out the glass in the days before the army operated in strength in the city centre.
He took from his pocket a pile of ten-pence pieces and arrayed them in formation like fish scales on the top of the money box, and dialled the London number he had memorized in Dorking. If he had gone through an operator some of his call might have been overheard. This was the safe way. The phone rang a long time before it was answered.
Davidson heard the ringing when he was at the bottom of the stairs.
Against its shrill persistence he fumbled with his key ring to release the three separate locks on the heavy door, and stumbled across the darkened room where the blinds were still down. He picked up the receiver.
‘Four-seven-zero-four-six-eight-one. Can I help you?’
‘It’s Harry. How are the family?’
‘Very well, they liked the postcards, I’m told.’
That was the routine they had agreed. Two sentences’ chatter to show the other that he was a free agent and able to talk.
‘How’s it going, Harry boy?’
‘Middling. I’ll get the report over first. Then we’ll talk. Going in ten from now.’
That was time enough for Davidson to get the drawer in the leg of his desk open, switch on the cassette recorder and plug in the lead to the telephone receiver.
‘Going now, OK? The man is in Belfast still. I’m sure of that. He is apparently under great stress and while on the run shortly after the shooting was with a girl called Theresa. No second name. She’s from the Ballymurphy area. He tried to screw her, and she’s telling her friends that he couldn’t make it, because he was so wound up about the shooting. She’s late teens or early twenties. She was at a dance last night in a green-painted hut in the Ardoyne. She was wearing pink, tight skirt. The army heifered their way in, and picked up about a dozen blokes, some of them in Theresa’s group. They should be holding them still, unless they work bloody fast. One of them can identify her. So she’s worth a bit of chat and then I think we’ll be homeward bound. Seems straight sailing from here. That’s the plus side. Now the anti. In the club I was lined up for an ID check. Lance-Corporal from Wales asking questions, a young boy writing down the answers. The boy recognized me. God knows from when, but he did. I’d like it sorted out. I’m going to lie low for today, but I may have a job of sorts coming up. That’s about it, basically.’
‘Harry, we were worried when we didn’t hear anything.’
‘I didn’t want to call in till I had something to say.’
‘I won’t mess you about. But I know you’re not staying where we planned for you.’
‘Too bloody right. Right little army rest house. Right out of the interesting areas, and I take a peep at the place and out comes some squaddie in plains. Shambles that was. You should crucify whoever sold you that pup.’
‘Thanks, Harry. I’ll kill them for it. I’ll go high on it.’
‘I’ve made it on my own. Quite snug, on the other side of town. Let’s leave it that way. I’ll call you if anything else shows up.’
‘We’ll do it your way. It’s not usual, but OK. Nothing more?’
‘Only tell the people who pick the girl up to go a bit quietly. Don’t ask me what the source of this is, but I don’t want it too obvious. If you can get her in without a razzamatazz you should have your man before anyone knows she’s gone, and can link her to him.’
‘I’ll pass that on. Anything else?’
‘Nothing more. Cheers. Good hunting.’
Davidson heard the phone click down. The call had lasted one minute and fifty-five seconds.
Harry let the receiver stay a moment in his hand after he’d pressed down the twin buttons with his fingers to end the call. He would have liked to talk with Davidson, unimportant small talk. But that would be unprofessional. Dangerous. Soft. Diverting. Pray God they would get the bastard now. He began to walk back to a lonely day at Delrosa, as the city on half-cylinder sparked to life.
Davidson had been surprised that Harry had rung off so fast. He reached down into his drawer and spun back the spools of his tape a few revolutions to check that the recording had operated correctly. He then wound the tape back to the beginning and played it from start to finish, taking a careful shorthand note of the conversation. He then rewound the tape again and played it once more, this time against his shorthand. Only when he was satisfied that he had correctly taken down every word spoken by Harry did he disconnect the leads between the tape and the telephone. He searched in his diary, at the back in the addresses and useful numbers section, for the home phone number of the Permanent Under-Secretary.
‘I thought you’d want to know, after our talk the other day. He’s surfaced. There’s some quite useful stuff. Should give a good lead. He sounded a bit rough. Not having much of a joyride, I fancy. I’ll call you in the office tomorrow. I’m quite hopeful we may be on to something. Yes… I’m going to pass it on now.’
His next call was to an unlisted extension in the Ministry of Defence.
Minutes later Harry’s message was on a coded tele-type machine in the red-brick, two-storey building that housed the intelligence unit at army headquarters, Lisburn. It was of sufficient immediate importance for Colonel George Frost to be called from his breakfast. Cursing about amateurs and lack of consultation he set up an urgent and high-level conference. He summoned his own men, the 39 Brigade duty operations officer, Police Special Branch, and the army officer commanding the unit that controlled the Ardoyne. The meeting was called for nine, and the unit officer was given no information as to why he was wanted at HQ, only told that on no account were any of last night’s suspects to be released. Davidson had somewhat shortened Harry’s message. Believing that an arrest was imminent now, he too had decided that the report of the recognition should be suppressed and should go no further. A million-to-one chance. It could happen again. Could be forgotten. Only cause a flap if it went official.
Whilst he was waiting for the meeting Frost reflected on the punched capitals in front of him, deciphered from the code by one of the duty typists. It was detailed enough to impress him, improbable enough to sound likely, and the sort of material you didn’t pick up sitting on your backside in the front lounge. When he had read his riot act at the General about being kept out of the picture he’d heard of the three weeks’ crash training course, and been told the arrival date. The source was now about to start his second week. Five lines of print that might be the breakthrough — and might not.
It was the sort of operation Frost detested. Ill-conceived and, worst of all, with the need for fast results dictated by political masters. If he’s working at this pace, involved enough to get his nose stuck into this sort of stuff, then Frost reckoned he had about another week to go. That would be par for the course on a job like this. That was always the way. Crash in hard while the trail is still warm. You might get something when you stir the bottom up. But not discreet. No, and not safe either.