Inside, the curtains were drawn at the high, cell-like strip of window and the bleak fluorescent tube light switched on although it was midday. The three men from Dublin sat on plastic chairs at the peeling Formica-topped table and waited impatiently, smoking and drinking coffee from paper cups.
It was to be another ten minutes before Donny Fitzpatrick arrived; the Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA had driven down from his home in Scotstown, County Monaghan.
Next to appear was the organisation’s Quartermaster General, Maedoc Mallally, known to all as Q, from Black Rock in Dundalk. Two more Army Council executives arrived before the final member’s car pulled up in the car park.
Pat McGirl, commander of Northern Brigade had farthest to come. He shared his home in Bundoran, County Donegal, with a former bank clerk who had planted numerous bombs at her lover’s behest.
Travelling with McGirl was Killy Tierney of the ‘Sweenies’ the movement’s notorious security section which dealt with suspect agents and informers within their ranks.
The only members absent were Martin McGuinness from Londonderry and Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams. Respectively the Armalite and the ballot box of PIRA twin-prong strategy, they had become important figureheads but were now too high profile to attend planning meetings of this nature. Nevertheless their views were well known and it was the trusty Killy’s job to see that both were kept fully informed.
As soon as McGirl took his seat, Chief of Staff Fitzpatrick opened the meeting; there was only one item on the agenda. The talks.
He addressed the three men from Dublin. ‘Have you got the tape?’
A machine was placed on the table. ‘It goes on some. I think the last hour is the most relevant.’
‘We’ve got all the time it takes.’
‘It’s not — er — let’s say it’s not for the squeamish.’
Fitzpatrick’s eyes were unblinking. ‘Just play it.’
They listened in silence watching the recorder with its irritating scratch of cassette cogs, the rasping whisper of words extracted syllable by syllable from the unwilling speaker. Words that nevertheless seemed to fill the room along with the accumulation of cigarette smoke, their significance as shocking and awesome as anything the men around the table could have imagined in their worst nightmares.
When the dialogue was punctuated by a series of sickening screams, Fitzpatrick lifted his cup and sipped cold coffee. Q scratched at his nose, studied his fingernails. McGirl leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as though listening to his favourite Sinead O’Connor number on his Sony Walkman.
The final, single slam of the gunshot came as a relief, breaking the spell. Someone switched off the tape.
Silence continued, heavy*, until Fitzpatrick cleared his throat. ‘Do they know that we know yet?’
‘His body was found at first light this morning. We heard it on the radio on the drive up. They made it sound like it was suicide.’
McGirl gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘They would.’
‘The thing is,’ Fitzpatrick said slowly, ‘do we believe it?’
A Dublin man said: ‘Sean Shevlin believed it. With his dying breath.’
‘Then we have a problem.’
‘It’s a load of crap,’ McGirl intervened, ‘whatever Shevlin believed. Dublin is never going to change Articles Two and Three in the constitution and remove its claim to the Six Counties. Never! They just hint at it when it suits them. They’ve watched the North tear the heart and soul out of itself for over twenty years and haven’t conceded, so why should they now? Any more than they’d agree to internment this side of the border. What would Dublin get out of that — except alienate its own people and betray its own historical rights?’
The leader of the Dublin men said: ‘Shevlin said it’s all part of the secret protocol that’s already been agreed by both governments. That and internment on both sides of the border, including the Orange paramilitaries, is the cornerstone on which everything else will be agreed. You heard him say it, the Americans are insisting that everything else is on the table. And he quoted that Yank- “There must be a big solution or no solution.” It’s all up for grabs, open negotiations on a constitutional settlement between all parties.’
McGirl angrily stubbed out his cigarette end in the foil ashtray. ‘And us left with our noses pressed up against the window. That’ll be the Brits, insisting we’re excluded.’
‘I know what Brownie would say,’ Killy Tierney interjected, referring to Gerry Adams by his old Republican News pen name. ‘We have elected politicians who’ve done things the democratic way and yet their words still cannot be heard directly by the people. Banned from visiting England. We should expect nothing better from Whitehall.’
Fitzpatrick asked: ‘Do we know anything more about this secret protocol?’
The Dublin man shook his head. ‘Shevlin told us everything of what little he knew, believe me.’
The Chief of Staff was inclined to. ‘Look, these talks have got to be stopped unless we are part of them. With us and the UDA excluded there is every chance of an agreement. And almost certainly that will leave us marginalised, rebels without a cause. They can do it. They set a precedent with the Anglo-Irish Agreement, then the Downing Street Declaration. The door was opening, we thought then. Just one more long, hard push… But we were wrong. Now we know just how wrong.’
‘You make it sound hopeless,’ Q observed disapprovingly.
‘There’s something I’m sure Brownie would point out if he was here,’ Killy Tierney said. ‘That is Dublin’s insistence that nothing will be agreed until everything is agreed. I read that as meaning the secret protocol — whatever that really is — may be already signed, but it cannot be implemented until the whole final package is agreed by all sides. And that is going to take some time.’
The Dublin man agreed. ‘Shevlin anticipated the talks would continue for a year or more. Obviously there will be no quick fix.’
Fitzpatrick smiled gently. ‘Then thank the Lord that there are still some sane heads at Leinster House. They may have given us the breathing space we need.’
Q said abruptly: ‘We should interrupt the talks — a fucken great bomb, that’ll stop ‘em talken.’
The leader of the Dublin men leaned forward over the table, his voice low and earnest. ‘First we have to know where. They move the talks down here in the South around like we do. The Garda Special Branch vets all the locations and they’re chosen at random just one day before. Even if we find out, it’s hardly enough time.’
‘Hit Dublin,’ McGirl urged. ‘It’s time they tasted blood in their mouth. They’ll buckle soon enough.’
‘Shit on our own doorstep?’ Fitzpatrick sneered. ‘That’s very clever. It’s something we’ve never done and never will.’
McGirl said: ‘Then it has to be London. Teach them it’s just not worth carrying on unless we’re included. The Brits can’t take that. Campaigns in England are always what got things moving, one way or the other. Nothing like the blood of voters on the pavement to concentrate their minds.’
‘I’m not sure Brownie will approve of this,’ Killy Tierney said.
‘He doesn’t have to,’ McGirl replied darkly. ‘He’s had his chance to try his way and it hasn’t worked. It’s our turn now.’
The faces around the table were impassive. They all knew it was easy to agree, but much more difficult to put into effect. Their men on English soil would be operating in hostile territory. They could not go near the enclaves of their fellow countrymen, because that was where the enemy would be watching. However successful they might be — and in the recent past they had been spectacularly successful — there was a sacrifice to be made. Namely the men themselves. Inevitably they would end up dead or behind the wire. No one around the table doubted the effort and resources the British Government would throw into the fray if its capital was under serious and prolonged threat.