It was an incongruous sight. Hughie Dougan, in old corduroy slacks and shirtsleeves, was seated at the huge refectory table, warmed by the wood-fired kitchen range. He was oblivious to their presence, humming happily to the overture blasting from a portable CD player on the windowsill, the whole paraphernalia of the bomb maker spread out before him. There was a pile of neatly glued plywood boxes to house the time and power units, known as TPUs, a hot glue gun and soldering iron, cardboard boxes full of Memo Park timers used in the manufacture of parking meters, tilt switches, microswitches, batteries, tremblers, universal counters, thyristors and printed-circuit boards.
He looked up, suddenly aware of their presence. Fitzpatrick was struck by how much older he looked than the most recent photograph he had seen. The man’s past nine years in the Kesh had taken their toll; the thick hair on his crown had all but gone, leaving just wisps of grey on the freckled pate, the skin of his jowls slack and wrinkled. But his eyes were dark and bright like those of a young man.
Clodagh said: ‘Our friends have arrived, Da.’
Dougan smiled, climbing quickly to his feet and wiping his hands on his trousers before greeting the two men. ‘Sure you’ll be wanting a wee wetty after your journey. Put the kettle on, Clodie, there’s a sweet.’
As she went to the sink, McGirl said: ‘I see you haven’t been wasting your time, Hughie.’
The bomber shrugged. ‘I’ve had a long time to think about this. Eighteen years designing things in my head. I can’t tell you how it feels to be putting my ideas into practice. To smell the glue and the soldering iron again.’ He laughed nervously, embarrassed that these hard men at the top wouldn’t understand. Then he indicated the pile of completed TPUs. ‘These are my masters. Clodie and I have been working together — she knows so much! New developments and techniques, it’s all changed so much. We’ve been experimenting, making sure all the ideas work. The best of the old and the best of the new.’
‘That’s why we wanted you, Hughie,’ Fitzpatrick assured quietly.
The Chief of Staff was impressed, even more so when they took out the maps and the plans and the revisions that McGirl had made following his reconnaissance trip to London. He could almost hear the crackle and fizzle of Hughie Dougan’s brain cells as the man studied the details, grasping even insignificant points instantly, making countersuggestions and improvements that he and McGirl hadn’t even begun to consider. There was no doubt about it, the man was a genius.
Before the two Provisional officers left, details of the experimental ‘dry run’ campaign in Ulster were agreed. After test explosions of ANS mix south of the border in rural County Leitrim, devices would be tried out in Ulster. While serving its own purpose, it would enable them to refine ideas and technology and to gauge the amounts of explosive required to achieve certain results before the mainland campaign began.
From past experience both Fitzpatrick and McGirl realised that targeting innocent civilians like the Guildford and Birmingham pub bombings and later Harrods, even if in error, could prove counterproductive. Nevertheless, the creation of a degree of ‘terror’ would be necessary in order to stir public opinion and force the British Government’s hand.
Dougan and his daughter clearly appreciated that fact. Their proposals were twofold. To disrupt the daily lives of as many ordinary people as possible in a spectacular and visible way, but without casualties if possible. And secondly to create fear afld public paranoia by aiming specifically at the police and other emergency-service personnel. This included London’s bomb disposal officers from the Metropolitan Police Explosives Section. Dougan appeared to have a particular appetite for this aspect of the campaign, because he had heard that they were all ex-army bomb-disposal operators — the very people he seemed to hold responsible for his last nine years in confinement.
Neither Fitzpatrick nor McGirl were in any doubt that, despite their intentions, there would be innocent civilian casualties. It was always the case, because mistakes inevitably happened, however carefully one planned. Nevertheless neither man thought to point this out. They all knew the facts of life and death.
When his daughter drove the two men away back to their car, Dougan was overwhelmed by his sense of elation. His head was spinning with new ideas and he saw vividly in his mind the flashes of explosive and the chaos and destruction he would take to London. Only then might he play a part in achieving a just peace, the cause to which he had devoted and sacrificed so much of his life.
He poured himself a straight Black Bush and thought how much he loved his daughter, how much he owed her.
Even now he remembered that particular day. It must have been 1968, a year before the latest troubles began. Having retired from the British Army, he had been working as an electrician for a house-building contractor in England. It was his first time at home on a twelfth of July for years. He was dozing in his armchair after a lunch-time drink when he was awakened by the drum and Clodagh’s scream of terror.
He found the petrified three-year-old clutching at his legs, crying, inconsolable, the pitch of her yells rising with each exploding thud of the gigantic Lambeg wardrum.
The Loyal Lodges were on their annual march, full of grim and righteous wrath, with sash and bowler and gilded banners flying to the triumphant call of the flute bands.
To this day Dougan could recall how he’d hugged the child in his arms until, slowly, the noise had faded away. All that day she remained unsettled and tearful, frightened of what was going on outside. Yet she knew nothing of the pompous prayers, the raging bonfires, the frenzied crowds and the burning effigies of the Pope. But Hughie Dougan did. Then it all came back.
Of course, by the time she was ten years old, Clodagh did know what was going on. That was when she had made her pledge to him, when they had made their pact. Even now he could see that small angelic face, those cute pigtails, those innocent eyes filled with so much dark anger that it broke his heart to see it in one so young. Her voice so full of hatred as she whispered to him on visiting day: ‘I’ll help you get back at them, Da, honest I will. However long it takes. I promise you.’
He thought little more of it at first. Only gradually had he come to realise that she had meant every word. Never very academically minded as a child, she began to study hard. And before her death, Dougan’s wife had proudly told him how their daughter had come top of her class in almost every subject. By the time she was eighteen and at the Jordanstown Campus at the University of Ulster, he finally realised she had no other ambition in life than to fulfil her pledge to him.
A year later he was released from the Maze. That time his homecoming had been a quiet affair at his own request. Uncle Tommy had gone to visit his sister so that Dougan could spend his first weekend in peaceful readjustment. Young Caitlin was still in Magherafelt with her aunt and, with his wife long dead — a result of depression, too many tranquillisers and alcohol — it had fallen to Clodagh to prepare the house for his homecoming. On the first night they had sat on the rug in front of the two-bar electric fire in the front parlour, laughing together and sharing a bottle of Bushmills. He had listened as she eagerly told him how she wanted to join with her father in the fight against the British, to help him make bombs. He could recall every word, see the tears of happiness in her eyes.
Then, with the bottle nearly empty, she had done something that unnerved him. Taking his hand, she placed it on her left breast. ‘Da, if you have need of a woman, you don’t have to go looking for a whore. I am a woman and I am here.’