Pray for Us Sinners

  SIXTEEN

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26

  A short, thick-set man sat by himself at a table in a dark corner of the public bar of the Elbow Room on Dublin Road, toying with a glass of sherry. He kept in the shadows, his coat collar turned up and the lower part of his face obscured by a woolen scarf. A bowler hat covered his closely cropped hair. A large Samsonite briefcase lay on the tabletop, hiding him further. Another businessman, dropping in for a quick one on his way home.

  He seemed not to be paying any attention to his surroundings. He was, in fact, watching a skinny youth sitting at the bar clutching a glass of stout in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The man in the bowler hat recognized the youth as Cathal Fogarty, a volunteer with C Company, 1st Battalion, PIRA.

  A packet of twenty Gallagher’s Green cigarettes lay on the counter. Cathal dragged on a fag, hacking as the smoke burnt his throat but brought him no comfort from his worries. He glanced at the fingers holding the cigarette, nicotine-yellow from the bitten nails to the second knuckle. His gaze, never still, darted about the room.

  It was practically deserted. Not many people came into this bar at six o’clock on a Tuesday night, and a pissing wet one at that. Cathal could just make out the shape of a figure at a table in the corner, head made to look ridiculously large by the outline of his bowler.

  Cathal had never been here before. He usually hung about up in Andersonstown—1st Provo Battalion territory. He was here because he had been ordered to be. When he was told to jump, he did.

  He’d come early. The man he was to meet wouldn’t be here for another ten minutes. Cathal just wished the bugger would get a move on. He wanted to get it over with, collect his money, and get back to the safety of Andersonstown. He was going to piss off tomorrow and go to his sister’s in Fivemiletown. Belfast was getting too bloody hot.

  The spring that closed the swinging front door twanged, and Cathal turned to watch a man shake himself like a wet spaniel, pull off a sodden cloth cap to reveal a shock of ginger hair, and make his way to the bar. Cathal’s hand was clammy on the glass as he stared into his drink, studiously ignoring the newcomer.

  Cathal stubbed out his cigarette. A familiar voice—too bloody familiar—ordered a Younger’s Tartan. Cathal waited, picking at a tag of skin by his thumbnail, staring at the oaken tuns mounted in the wall behind the bar, reminders of the days when Guinness came in wooden, not aluminium, barrels. He heard the barman say, “Here y’are,” the chink of glass against marble, and the metallic sounds of coins. He felt the pressure at his shoulder.

  The bloke with the ginger hair stood there. He gave no sign that he knew Cathal Fogarty as he said, “Have you a match?”

  “Aye.” Cathal rummaged in his pocket for the box of Swan Vestas. “Here.”

  “Ta.” The stranger pulled out a packet of Greens, removed a cigarette, and set the packet on the counter beside Cathal’s. He lit his smoke, returned the matches, picked up a cigarette packet, and returned to his drink.

  Cathal waited. His breathing was slower now that the transfer had been made. “Rusty Crust” would have the information he wanted in what had been Cathal’s packet of fags and—Cathal pocketed the other smokes—he would be a hundred quid better off with no one any the wiser.

  No one except a man in a bowler hat sitting in a dark corner, finishing his sherry.

  * * *

  The ginger-haired man, Detective Sergeant Samuel Dunlop, E Branch RUC, left the Elbow Room, walked up Dublin Road to Amelia Street, and got into a parked Ford Consul. The waiting driver pulled away from the curb.

  Not until he was safely back behind the high wire anti-bomb fencing of the Springfield Road police station did Sam Dunlop open the packet of Gallagher’s Greens. The note was there, stuffed between four cigarettes. Fogarty had made out well on this transaction—not only had he collected a hundred pounds, but there had been ten unsmoked fags in Sergeant Dunlop’s packet.

  Fogarty’d been brought in by the CID blokes on a breaking-and-entering charge six months earlier. He agreed to pass information in return for having the charges dropped, and he’d been a useful source so far. He was the one who’d given the tip about the van bomb that killed the poor sod of an ATO, Richardson. Dunlop had been sure, though, to make it seem that the arrest of the van’s occupants had been the result of a routine stop-and-search mission. Reliable informers were hard to come by.

  The sergeant read Fogarty’s note by the glare of the arc lights surrounding the barracks. He whistled. The words, written in a jerky hand, said, “Explosives and weapons dump at 12 Slieveban Drive.”

  He looked at his watch. Seven. Dunlop went into the building and headed straight for the inspector’s office. It would only take an hour to arrange the RUC detail and the protecting troop escort, half an hour to Slieveban Drive in Andersonstown. By 9:30 the PIRA would be short of more supplies and, with a bit of luck, some personnel.

  * * *

  Brendan McGuinness’s face was puce as he slammed the telephone receiver down. “Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck … it!”

  Sean Conlon sat watching the information officer’s rage. Turlough was in bed, and Sean saw no reason to disturb the man. It was after midnight. He and Brendan had been putting the finishing touches on the plan for the attack that was to be launched the next night.

  “I don’t fucking well believe it.” Brendan’s fist pounded on the shining tabletop.

  Sean said nothing.

  “The Brits took out Slieveban Drive about three hours ago.”

  “So you’ve lost First Battalion’s ammo dump?”

  “Five hundred pounds of explosives, detonators, Cordtex, sixteen ArmaLites, two RPG-7s, five thousand rounds of 7.62-millimeter ball cartridge”—he paused—“and three explosives men. The buggers were building the mine for tomorrow night.”

  “Pity about your men.”

  “Never mind the fucking men.” Brendan paced away from Sean, swung back, and snarled, “There’s no way now we can set up the attack for tomorrow night.”

  “So? There’ll be other chances.”

  “You think I don’t know that? For God’s sake, it was the first time we could give the surveillance equipment a decent field trial.”

  “I thought you had it working.”

  “Christ, Sean. Routine stuff. Routine stuff’s coming in loud and clear, but it’s not the same as when the buggers are after a real target. They could use some kind of code. I have to know.”

  “There’ll be a way to set up the kind of mission you need.”

  “How? Your quartermaster’s out of explosives. That was our last lot until the next shipment comes in from Dublin, and I’ve no more munitions men.”

  “We’ve stockpiled weapons here.”

  “Jesus. Guns and a few grenades? Do you fancy taking on armoured Land Rovers with nothing else?”

  Sean shook his head. “No. But it’s a start.”

  “Shit. I’ve got to get hold of my action squad and my inside man. Tell them the whole thing’s off.”

  “Can you?”

  “The lads is easy, but I can’t talk to him. I’m not due to see him for a few days, but I can get him a message.”

  “Do it.”

  Brendan strode to the phone and dialed. “Hello, Billy? Tell the boys to tuck their heads in. Aye, it’s off. And leave a note in the usual place. Say, ‘No party tonight.’ Aye. ‘No party tonight.’” He hung up. “He’ll get that when he checks the dead-letter drop.”

  “Good, because it’s still a good plan, and we don’t want your source to get a reputation for giving false alarms.”

  “True.”

  “Can we hold off for a week or two?”

  “Have we a choice?”

  “No. It’ll take a wee while to organize, but I’ve a man who could make a land mine out of his granny’s knickers and a piece of string.”

  Brendan nodded. “Go on.”

  “Let me get hold of him, get him on the job, and that’ll give you time to get in touch with
your fellow.”

  “If your bloke can do what you say, it could work.”

  “Aye. You can test your fancy gear, see if you can hear the Brits in action, and we’ll take out a few more of their troops.”

  McGuinness thought for a moment. The British General Election was in two days, on the twenty-eighth. Another week or two wasn’t so important. The British PM would be unlikely to visit Ulster for at least a month, probably longer. Sean was right. “Sounds good. We’ll talk to Turlough about it in the morning. Who is your man, by the way?”

  “Davy. Davy McCutcheon.”

  SEVENTEEN

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6

  Captain Warnock had left ten days ago. Warnock and his “Let’s just say if you blow your cover, you’ll never have to worry about passing the examinations for promotion to captain.” Today was to be a different kind of examination—the finals the major had mentioned at the start of Marcus’s training. Marcus rose early, impatient, wanting to get on with it.

  He finished shaving, running the razor over the strip of skin that stretched from his lower lip, round the centre of his chin, and down over his throat. He looked in the mirror. The split in his lip had healed, leaving a pale, thin scar. The bruises had turned from black to a yellowy greenish-purple, like the skin round the vent of a pheasant hung for too long. His new moustache was an expanded Pancho Villa—full over the upper lip, narrower at the corners of the mouth, and widening again as it ran down his chin and in underneath. He frowned when he discovered some grey hairs among the black.

  The acne was an irritant. He lifted the dark, oily fringe from his forehead and peered at the angry red pustules. A military haircut would stick out like a sore thumb, but after four weeks—and he had been ready for a trim before all of this—he was starting to look like John Lennon in his Maharishi phase.

  “Ohm mane padme ohm,” he intoned solemnly. The smile in his hazel eyes, reflected in the glass, gave the lie to his gloomy voice. He didn’t mind the length of his hair. He just wished that this Mike Roberts character was a man of more fastidious habits.

  Marcus Richardson spoke to his reflection: “Mike Roberts, you’re a right heap of shit, so y’are.” His accent was thick County Down. Norn Irn.

  It had taken time to work into his new persona—Mike Roberts, the man in the green ring binder—but it had been fun. No, he corrected himself, a wee lad from Bangor would never talk about “fun.” It was powerful craic, so it was—so far. This finals business? He wondered if it could be any worse than the “render safe procedure” he’d had to take at Longmoor before graduating. They’d given him a real sod of a parcel bomb to deal with.

  He buttoned his shirt and trotted down the stairs. He looked at the briefing materials strewn around the small living room, a far cry from the tidy heaps that John had left on the first day. So much to have learned in so short a time.

  In the kitchen an electric clock hanging crookedly on the beige-painted wall made a wheezing noise. It always did that just before the hour, and the noise irritated him. Five to eight. John wouldn’t be here for another two hours. Marcus hadn’t had anything to eat yet, and eating would help to pass the time. Until finals.

  He sat at the kitchen counter, spreading butter on the cut surface of a triangular piece of soda bread. A wee cup of tea in his hand and a bit of soda farl and butter. That’s what Mike would fancy. He’d like the soda bread fried with bacon and eggs. Mike was a grand man for the pan.

  Mike Roberts. Same initials, and Mike sounded like Marc, the diminutive used by his friends. Convenient that the real Mike Roberts from Bangor was on a rig somewhere away to hell and gone, north of a place called Fort McMurray, Alberta. Marc and Mike. Initials, birthplace, and familiarity with explosives. That was where any true similarities stopped.

  The rest of Roberts’s background was very different from Marcus’s. Roberts was a Catholic, but Marcus felt uncomfortable reciting the phrases of the Mass. Roberts’s tastes, according to the briefing notes, were coarse: fish and chips, which he probably chewed with his mouth open; beer; soccer; betting on the horses; dances at Caproni’s in Bangor on a Saturday night. He’d left school at sixteen.

  Roberts was not the sort of man a British army officer would meet socially. Which posed the question, How had the major known about him? Marcus had asked, a couple of weeks ago, but the major had deflected the question with a dismissive, “Don’t worry about it. You’ll just have to trust me.” The funny thing was, once he overcame his initial anger and a feeling of being used, Marcus had come to trust John Smith. He looked forward to their daily sessions and enjoyed the man’s company.

  Smith was straight as a die. Not one bit hesitant about giving a tongue-lashing if a task had not been completed to his satisfaction. Marcus thought of his father. He was a perfectionist, too. One thing about the major, though, he was generous with his praise for a job well done.

  John had said last night that if Mike passed this final test, he would be told the exact nature of his mission and, within a couple of days, would be in action. It was about time. He just hoped that all of this was going to be worth it.

  It certainly would be if John kept his promise, once this was over, to arrange for Marcus’s acceptance on a Special Air Service Regiment aptitude course. He knew how tough the SAS selection process was but was confident he could pass. He’d have to. If he didn’t, he’d be back in the bomb-disposal business, and he was quite sure now that he could live without that particular job.

  He knew even at the time he’d chosen bomb disposal that he’d been unsure of his reasons. Proving to himself that he could conquer his fears was all very well, but not at the price of having his head blown off. He’d been lucky he’d not been closer to the blue van with the bomb.

  * * *

  “Morning, Mike.”

  “Morning, John.” Marcus looked up from his reading as the major stood aside to let a stranger precede him into the living room. The man wore cavalry twill trousers, a striped shirt, and an old khaki battle-dress blouse. He was short, compact, and slouched. He needed a shave and his brown hair was cut in an unfashionable crew cut. His head was wet. He must not have been wearing a hat. Marcus tried to guess the man’s age. Forty? Forty-five?

  His thin lips were set at twenty past eight. The stranger folded his arms and examined Marcus, looking at him as a butcher might look at prime beef before deciding precisely where to cut.

  The major lit a cigarette. “Pity neither you nor the real Roberts smoke. It’s a handy way to meet people in pubs—cadge a fag, offer one.”

  Marcus smiled. “I tried one once. Bloody near thew up.” He could tell by his nod that the major approved of the use of Belfast vernacular: “thew” for “threw.”

  The major said, “Now, Mike, when you’re on the street trying to find out anything you think might be useful, the opposition will be finding out about you. Newcomers always get the once-over.” He paused. “We think there’s a fair chance they might try to recruit you into the Provos. An explosives expert, just back from Canada, unknown to the Security Forces, would be too good to miss. But your cover story has to fool them completely.” He raised one eyebrow. “Some of those chaps might appear a bit dense, but they’re not stupid, and if they do suspect, you’ll find yourself in very deep difficulties.”

  The other man grunted. “Aye, and you’d not like that.” His Belfast accent was so thick as to be almost incomprehensible. “We don’t like touts, so we don’t.”

  “We?” Marcus played the eye-contact-dominance game.

  The major explained. “My friend Fred here was with the Provos.”

  The man continued to stare.

  Marcus looked away.

  The major drew on his cigarette. “If they do go after you, boy, it won’t be name, rank, and serial number and cite the Geneva Convention. You’ll have to be able to persuade some very hard men that you really are who you claim to be, or—”

  “If they don’t think you’re dangerous,” Fred snarled, “you’ll
get a six-pack—bullets in the elbows, knees, and ankles.” He pointed one index finger at his own temple. The fingernails were bitten to the quick. “If they decide you’re a bad fucker,” he snapped his thumb forward, “head job.” He gave no inflection to the matter-of-fact remark.

  “So,” said the major, crushing out his cigarette, rising, and walking round the table to stand behind Marcus, “Fred here is going to interrogate you. He’s the IO of Second Battalion.”

  Marcus took a deep breath. He must now become Mike Roberts, in name and in character.

  Fred moved his chair closer. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “Aye. Your other fellow,” Mike nodded his head back to where the major stood, “said you wanted to ask me a few questions.”

  “Does that not bother you?”

  “Not at all. Fire away.” He lounged in the chair. No reason for an innocent man to be tense.

  “Name?”

  “Mike Roberts.”

  “How long have you lived in Belfast?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Where were you before that?”

  “Canada. I worked on the oil rigs. Money was terrific, so it was.”

  “Where were you from before Canada?”

  “Bangor.”

  Fred picked up a file. “Says here you grew up in Four Victoria Road. That’s up by Ward Park?”

  Mike laughed. “Not at all. It’s at the start of Seacliff Road, just across from Billy Caulfield’s rowboats. There’s a sandstone-capped seawall. Turn left, past Barry’s Amusements, the Palladium, High Street, Luchi’s, The Boulevard.”

  “Roberts. When I want a conducted tour I’ll ask. Just answer the fucking questions.” There was a sibilant tone in Fred’s voice. “Mother’s name?”

  “Jean. She was killed when I was wee.” He let his voice hold a tinge of sorrow. Not difficult when he thought of his real mother, who believed him dead.