“Would you?”
“Bloody right. Have you any idea how arresting him would bugger up army-RUC—”
“He’s in my custody.”
The major saw Harry take a step back, as a healthy man will avoid a leper. “Oh, Christ.”
John Smith’s head drooped. He could see little sympathy on Harry’s face but still had to ask.
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Smith hesitated, then said stiffly, “Thank you, Harry. You’ve been a great help.” He reached for the phone. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to leave. I’ve some phone calls to make.”
SIXTY-TWO
SUNDAY, APRIL 21
“I didn’t bring you here to London, Swanson, to have you make excuses for Smith. Your loyalty to him is commendable, but I have to clean up the god-awful mess he’s created. My minister is livid.”
“Yes, sir.” Harry Swanson could not meet Sir Charles’s glare.
“It’s a bloody shambles. The RUC are barely on speaking terms with the army. One of their best men arrested by some unheard-of, self-appointed James Bond. Christ Almighty.” At least, Sir Charles thought, news of Gillespie’s arrest had not been made public—yet. “We have to restore some semblance of working relations.”
“It’ll be tricky, sir.”
“I’m well aware of that. Come on, man. You’re supposed to be an expert on Ulster. Think.”
Harry Swanson took a deep breath. “Have you seen today’s papers, sir?”
“No.”
“According to the Sunday Telegraph, Eric Gillespie should get a pension and a gold clock. The ’ero who save our ’arold.”
The Yorkshire man’s accent was grating, and that was no way to refer to the PM.
“Mr. Harold Wilson, I think you mean.”
“Sorry, sir. But The Mail on Sunday wants Gillespie knighted.”
“You mean we should fete the man?”
“Yes, sir. Maybe the RUC would see that as a kind of atonement for our sins.”
“Smith’s sins.”
“Sir.”
Sir Charles nodded once, sharply. But I think a CBE should be enough. I’ll see to it. I’ll let Sir Graham Shillington know—if he’ll talk to me—have him pass the word to their chief constable.” Sir Charles liked the idea. “You know, Swanson, we might just go one better. If we really get the PR people working—gallant RUC officer, brilliant detective work, typical of the calibre of the Ulster police—it could smooth quite a few ruffled feathers. They might even consider promoting Gillespie.”
“I think I’d leave promotion up to them, sir. The coppers don’t take kindly to being told what to do.”
Sir Charles raised one eyebrow. “Nobody’s going to tell them—but a hint or two in the right places…”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.” Sir Charles fiddled with the knot in his tie. “Now that only leaves one more problem. I asked Sir Graham for quite a bit of help—names of RUC personnel who knew about army operations. It wouldn’t be too difficult for him to wonder why and to whom I was passing the information.”
“Do you think he could connect you to—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he could.”
Swanson took a very deep breath, lowered his head, then looked directly at his superior and said, “You could try coming clean, sir.”
Sir Charles glared at Harry Swanson as a bull might a matador. “Tell Sir Graham that Smith was my man? Rubbish.”
“Smith was once very sick with malaria.”
Sir Charles’s eyes widened. There might be something here. “Malaria, eh? Can it spoil a man’s ability to think straight?”
“Apparently the high fever affects the brain, sir.”
“I could use that. Suggest that he’d broken down on the job. Temporary loss of his faculties. In Ulster on a simple fact-gathering task. Exceeded his remit. I like that Swanson. I like that.” Sir Charles clapped Harry on the shoulder.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Pity about Smith. It’ll be the end of him—but you know the old saw about omelettes and eggs.” He removed his hand. “Right. Off you go, back to Belfast. I’ll sort things out at this end.”
As Sir Charles watched Swanson leave, his thoughts turned to his next interview. And he was not looking forward to it.
* * *
In keeping with civil service regulations, the heat had been turned off in Sir Charles’s office since the first of April, and the chill in the room reflected the iciness of the worlds spoken by a tall, hazel-eyed man sitting, arms folded, at the opposite side of the desk.
“The whole thing’s appalling. Simply appalling. First, we’re told our son has been killed in a bomb blast—months ago. Then, out of the blue, you phone to say he was shot dead last Thursday and my wife and I should come to London for a full explanation—and his funeral.”
Sir Charles cleared his throat. “It’s not the sort of thing one can explain over the telephone.”
“I don’t see that it can be explained at all. How do you think his mother’s taking this?”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you do. She wasn’t coming here today. I had to leave her in our hotel. I could hardly bring myself to see you.” Professor Richardson’s voice cracked. “He was our only child. We were proud of him.”
“So are we, Professor Richardson. Very proud. His sacrifice saved the life of the prime minister.”
“Yes. Well—”
Sir Charles sensed a softening in Marcus’s father. “The army is putting him in for the George Cross.”
“It won’t bring him back.”
Sir Charles let the silence hang, then said, “I really think it might help if I told you what happened.”
Professor Richardson unfolded his arms and laid his hands palm down on the desktop. “Go on.” His gaze held Sir Charles’s.
Sir Charles lowered his eyes and said softly, “When Lieutenant Richardson survived the explosion, it was decided that your son might be able to serve his country better as an intelligence operative. It was for his protection that the story about his death was fabricated.”
“Surely you could have told his mother and me the truth?”
“Not my call, I’m afraid. The intelligence chaps are a very secretive bunch,” said Sir Charles. At the same time, he thought, I will not accept blame for Mr. John Smith’s incompetence. “Marcus made his own decision,” he said, “although I can tell you he was very worried about your being kept in the dark.”
Sir Charles wondered why the suggestion of a smile touched Professor Richardson’s lips. “It wouldn’t have been the first time.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. Please go on.”
“Yes. Well. Marcus volunteered to try to penetrate the Provos—you’ve no idea how vital such intelligence can be to our forces in Ulster—and he succeeded. I can’t tell you how, but it took enormous resourcefulness and courage of a very special kind.”
“I know about his courage,” Professor Richardson said softly. He looked down at his hands as he rubbed one palm across the other. “You wondered what I meant when I said it wasn’t the first time he’d kept me in the dark.”
Sir Charles waited.
“When he was very little—five or six—I asked him to walk on a wall. He wouldn’t. He was frightened.” The professor looked straight at Sir Charles. “Marcus went back by himself, walked on the damn thing, and never said a word to anyone.”
“How—”
“How did I find out? Bangor was a small town then. Someone who saw him told me.” The professor’s voice cracked. “I never told him I knew. Now I never will.”
“A truly remarkable young man.”
“I know.”
“I did not have the privilege of knowing your boy, sir, but without him, there’s absolutely no doubt—none whatsoever—that Mr. Wilson would have been killed. Your son has earned the gratitude of the entire country
.” Sir Charles leaned forward, his right hand almost touching the professor’s. “And you and Mrs. Richardson have my deepest condolences.” He steeled himself to deliver his next words. “And my most sincere apologies for the way you have been misled.”
The professor said nothing.
Sir Charles withdrew his outstretched hand, dropped it into his thigh, and rubbed aimlessly as he searched for his next words.
“Sir Charles, I’m not entirely satisfied—I never will be, but I think I can help my wife see that our boy’s death did have a purpose.”
“Thank you.”
“I accept your apology—with reservations.” Professor Richardson rose.
Sir Charles stood. “Under the circumstances, sir, you have been more than gracious.” He moved round the desk and offered his hand. Professor Richardson’s grip was firm. As the professor turned to leave, Sir Charles said, “There is just one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“The funeral. It’s tomorrow. In Bangor. The army will fly you and your wife over, of course.”
The professor’s lips tightened before he said in a low voice, “I hate funerals.”
“We’ll send a car to take you to the heliport. Ten thirty.”
“My wife can’t possibly go on her own.”
Sir Charles could see the effort the man was making before Professor Richardson said, “We’ll be ready.”
SIXTY-THREE
MONDAY, APRIL 22
The coffin was draped in a Union Jack. The rain lashed down in stair rods blackening the reds and blues of the flag and drenching the guard of honour and the huddled mourners. The army chaplain’s words were barely audible over the soughing of the wind in a nearby stand of elms.
Siobhan stood, head bowed, apart from the others. They would not know who she was—probably thought she had no right to be there. None of them could know how much she had loved him. In her hand she held a rose—its petals, scarlet on the night he’d given it to her, now withered.
She watched as the flag was removed and folded. It was the standard of the people her dad and her uncle Davy called the enemy. How could a lovely man like Mike have been her enemy? How? She would have forgiven his deceit in his life, and as she had told her father when he had asked her not to go to the funeral, she would forgive Mike in his death.
She stared at the sky, black clouds layered like ragged slates on a decrepit roof, the rain pouring through, cold on her upturned face.
The movements of the soldiers caught her eye as they tailed onto the ropes to lower the coffin. She shuddered and hugged herself, arms across her chest, hands on her shoulders, fighting the day’s rawness and the iciness within her very soul. She let her cheek fall onto the back of her gloved left hand, feeling it against her skin, the kid leather damp yet soft as his touch. Oh, Mike. Oh, Mike.
She glanced at the guard of honour and at a tall, bareheaded man wearing a dark raincoat. He stood rigidly, one hand holding a woman’s hand as his other tried to keep an umbrella over her head. He had Mike’s hazel eyes. Was he Mike’s—no, she corrected herself, Marcus’s—father, the weeping woman his mother?
Siobhan would not cry. She thought she had no tears left.
She flinched as the soldiers fired the feu de joie. The ragged volley scared a murder of crows from the elms. The black birds wheeled across the sky, their cawing and complaining a lament for the dead.
A bugler sounded “The Last Post,” its liquid notes rising, falling, dying—their melancholy hers, their finality, Mike’s. She could no longer hold back her tears, and her body shook to her sobbing. In her grief she barely noticed the shouted orders, the soldiers marching away, the departure of Marcus’s father and mother.
When she was able to calm herself, able to see that, apart from a sexton, she was alone, she moved to the lip of the grave. The man withdrew, leaving his spade in the mound of earth. She could smell its damp mustiness. She looked down at a strip of polished wood, half hidden by brown soil.
“Good-bye, Mike,” she whispered. “I love you.”
She knelt, bowing her head and crossing herself, murmured, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art Thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus.” She let his rose fall. “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. It is set in Belfast in 1974. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy in the descriptions of the city, the political events of the time, and the organizational structure of both the Provisional IRA and the British Security Forces.
It is a matter of record that the Security Forces were in some disarray in 1974 and that interservice rivalries existed. Harold Wilson did visit Ulster on April 18. The Provisional IRA did use a flat in Myrtlefield Park and did have a direct telephone tap into the Thiepval switchboard. No senior member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary has been suspected of, or convicted of, treason.
The technical details of the explosive devices used in the story are authentic. I am deeply indebted to Special Constable Yves Pelletier, Police Explosives Technician, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Yves has given generously of his expertise and, more importantly, has confirmed that there is nothing in these pages that is not already well known by the bomb makers of terrorist organizations.
It is not possible to create a work like this without referring to real people. Historical figures are named and the positions they held are identified. The fictional characters are mine, and any resemblance of theirs to anyone, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ALSO BY PATRICK TAYLOR
Only Wounded
Pray for Us Sinners
Now and in the Hour of Our Death
An Irish Country Doctor
An Irish Country Village
An Irish Country Christmas
An Irish Country Girl
An Irish Country Courtship
A Dublin Student Doctor
An Irish Country Wedding
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Taylor, M.D., was born and raised in Bangor, County Down, in Northern Ireland. He is the New York Times bestselling author of the Irish Country series that began with An Irish Country Doctor. Dr. Taylor is a distinguished medical researcher, offshore sailor, model-boat builder, and father of two grown children. He now lives on Saltspring Island, British Columbia.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
PRAY FOR US SINNERS
Copyright © 2000 by Ballybucklebo Stories Corp.
Previously published by Insomniac Press in 2000.
All rights reserved.
Cover photography © Getty Images
Cover design by www.nick-venables.co.uk
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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ISBN 978-0-7653-3518-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 9781466821422 (e-book)
First Edition: June 2013
Patrick Taylor, Pray for Us Sinners
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