In the Morning I'll Be Gone (34 page)

The van was parked on a layby half a mile from the house under an ancient copper beech tree. It was a beautiful location for an observation post because although it wasn’t that far away, we were on a completely different B road from the house itself. We were parked opposite a scrapyard that got intermittent use, and we were on a slight hill, which meant that you could look down on the house across the rapeseed fields. You could see any vehicles approaching on the London Road and you could see whether anyone was entering the house either from the front or the back. There was even a phone box at the scrapyard, which we could use if the battery on our wireless ever died.

Dermot was a circumspect character, but if he did scout his safe house first to check for watchers it was unlikely he’d notice the dirty old Ford Transit half a dozen fields away next to the town dump.

We had repaired the farmhouse’s front door, got rid of our footprints, and even put down that additional layer of dust I’d asked for so it would look as if no one had been inside in months.

MI5 watchers came in teams of three. Shifts were twelve hours on and twelve hours off, which meant that you needed, at minimum, six personnel. Since this whole thing was my gaff I insisted on taking the place of at least one team member on the hated night shift.

Our base was MI5’s own rather seedy safe house in nearby Brighton, and to save money and time we all stayed there rather than London.

I shared my room with a young Scottish intelligence officer who called himself Ricky. He said he was from Glasgow. He played in a ska band and he had a beard. I liked him and I always let him beat me at Scrabble because I could see how important it was to him. He said that he’d been recruited at St. Andrews because of his proficiency in foreign languages. He’d been studying Russian literature but could also read Czech, Polish, and Serbo-Croat—no doubt these skills were why they had put him on the Northern Ireland desk.

Ricky was Tom’s deputy and the two of them ran the show.

After the first three days Ricky and Tom stayed but all the other personnel changed because, as Tom explained, observation post duty was a notorious way to burn out intelligence officers.

There were a few other developments: we tracked down the owner of the property, an octogenarian English accountant called Donoghue who had moved to Spain five years previously. He had a dozen properties along the south coast and he’d rented this cottage out to various people over the years, none of whom, it materialized, were in any way connected to the IRA. Because of the damp no one had apparently rented the place for nearly a year, and if it was a safe house it was one that was almost never used. After the op was over he’d have to be brought in and questioned, but at this stage it seemed that if the IRA was in fact staying in one of his houses he didn’t know anything about it.

They were patient lads on the whole, and it wasn’t until Day 5 that I began to hear the mutterings about a “false lead” and “bad intel.” I sympathized with the agents who thought it was shite. If it hadn’t been for Mary’s word, and if I’d been outside this investigation looking in, I’d have me pegged as the sap too. And as time wore on I began to suspect, not that Mary had deliberately lied, but more that
she
had been given bad information. Perhaps she
had
played me, but, more likely, she’d just been given junk.

Day 6 and Day 7 crawled by. Dreary hours in the van watching an unoccupied house, or dreary hours in Brighton playing poker with a rotating team of intelligence officers who lost money with depressing ease.

At the end of the first week, Tom, Ricky, and myself drove up to London and met with Kate in Gower Street.

Tom and Ricky were convinced that the operation was a waste of time but I insisted that my source was unimpeachable.

Kate had the final say and after a slight hesitation agreed to sanction another full week’s surveillance. As she explained to us, and subsequently her superiors, the Tory Party conference was upon us and the IRA “safe house” was suspiciously close to Brighton . . .

The crew changed but the routine seldom varied.

I would usually spend the night shift with two other intelligence officers in the Ford Transit watching the house in Tongham through night-vision binoculars or on the infrared scanners. It was smelly and a bit uncomfortable but one of us could usually get some kip while the other two kept their eyes on the house.

At eight in the morning Tom or Ricky would meet us with the day shift and then we’d drive the short run back to Brighton.

I’d usually go immediately to bed and sleep until two in the afternoon. The safe house was on Hove Street near a kebab shop and a video rental place.

Sometimes I’d walk down to the beach, but most of the time I’d lounge around with the others, playing cards and watching movies on the VCR.

By the beginning of Day 9 even I was now convinced that Mary had somehow fucked up or betrayed me, getting from me what she wanted and giving me nothing in return.

And now the environs of Brighton seemed a very unlikely place indeed for any kind of IRA activity. The Conservative Party conference had begun and the place was chock-full of law enforcement. Because of the IRA’s bombing campaign and several death threats from disgruntled mineworkers, Special Branch and the Sussex constabulary had flooded the town with beat cops, special constables, riot police, and plainclothes detectives. You couldn’t swing a stick without hitting a bunch of peelers looking for something to do or someone to stop and search.

As a man with an Irish accent and a week’s facial hair I was stopped three times in two days and asked to provide proof of ID. My warrant card usually did the trick but not always. But that wasn’t the point. An attack in Brighton this week seemed well outside even Dermot’s capabilities. Mrs. Thatcher’s hotel and the conference center had been thoroughly searched and MI5, Special Branch, and even the SAS were providing the security for all cabinet officers going in and out of the various conference venues.

On the third day of the Tory conference, after another fruitless night in the watchers’ van, I went out for a lunchtime drink with Tom and told him that I felt we should probably pack it in at the weekend.

“So you’re giving up on your informant?”

I took a sip of lager. “It looks like the tip she got was old information.”

“Who was this mysterious Mata Hari, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I’d rather not say. But she’s not someone who is operationally involved with the current Provisional IRA command. She’s someone from the previous generation.”

Tom nodded and took a gulp from his bottle of Budweiser. We were sitting in a beer garden that overlooked the beach and the English Channel. It was pleasant. The wind off the water was mild and there was plenty of autumn sunshine.

“Or it could be that she just straight conned you,” Tom said.

“Aye.”

“It’s a shame, though. We have absolutely no other leads on Dermot’s whereabouts, apart from that Germany tip, and I haven’t seen any follow-up on that in the green sheets.”

I finished my pint. “I did what I could.”

“I know,” Tom said. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I’ll be transferred out of Northern Ireland.”

“You’ll be glad about that. It’s got to be a shite posting.”

“Not really. They’ll probably put me on the fucking miners’ strike.”

“MI5 are bugging the miners?”

“Of course we are. Fucking Trots.”

For an intelligence officer Tom was very lippy, but I liked him.

“Do you want another one? We’re getting a nice tan here,” Tom suggested.

I nodded and thanked him when he brought back two Stellas.

“Cheers, mate.”

“Cheers yourself.”

“Why don’t we give it until Sunday morning? What do you think about that?” I suggested.

“I’ll tell Kate. She’ll be pleased. The forms she’s had to fill in over this. Believe me, you don’t want to know.”

Kate called me later that afternoon.

“You’re packing it in?” she said with neither approval nor disappointment in her voice.

“It’s been nearly two weeks. He’s not coming here. Brighton’s too hot now anyway.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“We’ll give it until Sunday morning and then I’ll fly back to Northern Ireland. I’ll talk to Mary again. Maybe she’s got more up-to-date information.”

She said nothing.

There was nothing to be said.

It was over.

We had tried but Dermot was an escape artist.

An escape artist with lots of money and passports and identities.

He was a mover. A gypsy. A ghost.

“Have you tried looking in the Libyan embassy?” I asked.

She laughed and then added in an undertone: “Yes. We have.”

“I’ll see you on Sunday,” I said.

“I’ll see you on Sunday,” she agreed.

Tom, Ricky, and I walked to the Grand Hotel to gawk at the BBC camera crews and the Tory Party faithful. The only place that wasn’t packed was the Kentucky Fried Chicken where we got dinner.

After that we walked back to the house and Tom, Ricky, myself, and an officer called Kevin (a Brummie who had only arrived that afternoon) drove up to Tongham to relieve the day crew.

We got there shortly after seven. It was dark now and of course the house across the fields was its usual black and empty self.

“Anything new, lads?” I asked.

They rolled their eyes and said nothing.

“He asked if there was anything new,” Tom repeated angrily.

“You can read the log. There’s nothing new.”

Kevin, Ricky, and myself climbed into the Ford Transit.

Tom drove the others back to Brighton.

Kevin took the first shift sitting in a camp chair and looking through the window of the Transit with the night-vision glasses. Ricky sat up front and read the newspaper and I lay on the camp bed on the van’s floor listening to my Walkman. Every fifteen minutes Kevin had to log what he had seen on a clipboard.

Every fifteen minutes he muttered “sweet Fanny Adams” to himself in an amusing Wolverhampton accent.

A couple of hours had gone by and we were well settled in when there was a polite knocking on the rear door of the van.

I was listening to Leonard Cohen on the Walkman and I didn’t hear it but Kevin must have because he put down his clipboard and opened one of the back doors in a very relaxed manner.

Maybe he thought it was a local bobby wondering why we were parked outside the scrapyard or maybe it was somebody who had got lost. We were so lulled by tedium that none of us could really contemplate anything but an innocent explanation.

Even so I don’t think I would have opened that door as blithely as he did.

There was a flash of light and Kevin tumbled backwards into the van with a hole in his head. At the same moment there was a flash of light up front in the cab. Another flash of light and an animal shriek and I knew that Ricky was dead.

Kevin had a gun in a shoulder holster but before I could even think about making a try for it a man in a balaclava tore open both doors of the Ford Transit and pointed a suppressed 9mm Glock at me.

Leonard Cohen was still playing loudly in my head.

At least it was a decent soundtrack to die to.

I couldn’t think what else to do so I put my hands up.

“What are you listening to?” the man with the gun asked in a Derry accent.

I swallowed.

“What are you listening to?” he repeated.

“Leonard Cohen.”

“Leonard Cohen, did you say?”

“Yes.”

“Which album?”

“
New Skin for the Old Ceremony
.”

“Which track?”

“‘Chelsea Hotel #2,’” I said.

The man in the balaclava was joined now by another man in a balaclava.

“I topped him,” the second man said.

“Aye, I saw.”

“What’s going on here?” the second man asked.

“He’s listening to Leonard Cohen, so he is,” the first man explained.

“What?”

“He says he’s listening to Leonard Cohen.
New Skin for the Old Ceremony
.”

“Never heard of it,” the second man said.

“You wouldn’t. Ignoramus.”

The first man took off his balaclava.

Of course it was Dermot. His hair was a long blond mane. He was tanned and fit. His eyes were clear blue pools in the desert. His face was lined and his jaw like a fucking anvil. He looked young and strong and merciless. A stone-cold killer. An usher for
Mag Mell
.

“Do me a favor there, pal. Pass
me
the Walkman. Do it slowly now, though,” Dermot said.

I sat up and gave Dermot the Walkman. He put it on and listened to the track. He watched me while the song played. He watched me without so much as blinking. When it wasn’t quite over he gave it to his mate.

His mate wasn’t impressed. “What was that all about?” he asked when the song was done.

Dermot took the Walkman back and pressed the stop button.

“It was about Janis Joplin,” Dermot said.

“Janis Joplin?” the second man said dubiously.

“Isn’t that right, Sean?” Dermot asked me.

“Aye, that’s right, Dermot,” I said.

Dermot looked at me for a moment and grinned.

So this is it, then
, I thought bitterly.
Bested by Dermot yet again. Just like every day in fucking St. Malachy’s. This is how it fucking ends . . .
And it was in St. Malachy’s too that Father Pugh had told us that the dead would sleep for a million years and be resurrected on the Day of Judgment when they would join the Mother of God in Heaven, whereas the bad, the bad would burn forever in a lake of fire.

Where would I go?

Could you work for Mrs. Thatcher’s government and still be a good man?

Could you shoot a man in cold blood and expect to avoid the fires of hell?

And Dermot, what about him? Could you blow up innocent people and still make it to Paradise? What would Father Pugh think of the pair of us now?

“Well?” the second man asked Dermot.

Dermot nodded. “Aye, you best get out of the van, Sean. Anyone could be along in a minute. We can’t stand here gabbing all night.”