Brute Force

102

I'd had enough of this.

'You know what? I don't remember PIRA saying "enough" in '87. Enniskillen happened between the Eksund and the Bahiti – eleven dead; the biggest loss of civilian life in a single incident. PIRA wasn't exactly rolling over.'

Mansour's eyes sparkled. 'I was just coming to Enniskillen. What happened after the massacre? The entire world expressed its revulsion for what PIRA had done.

'Here, even our Great Guide declared his sympathy for the bereaved and his contempt for those who had perpetrated such a wanton, callous act.

'Despite their denials then and since, you can wager it was approved at the very highest level of the Provisionals' leadership. The most devastating blow to the Republican movement and it was approved from within . . .'

Mansour looked me right in the eye. 'Who in their right mind would have done this? Surely it could only have been an Irishman intent on bringing the reign of the bomb and the Armalite to an end . . .'

I said nothing. Lynn said nothing. Over the water, I'd just been a squaddie at the sharp end. But Lynn had occupied a privileged position within the intelligence community. He'd have been in a position to know.

Something clicked into place.

The car bomb. Ireland. Leptis . . .

When I turned up at Lynn's farm, convinced that the only organization with the means and the motive to kill me was the Firm, it had only been a gut-level assumption based on events stemming from the death of the Yes Man, and then fuelled by the instruction to seek out Leptis – the man with the answers. But Lynn's first and only thought was that it must have been the Firm that was going for me – that was going for us. He'd been expecting this to happen . . .

Why?

When I replayed what Mansour had just told us, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle started to tumble into place.

After Enniskillen, PIRA went into meltdown. Very soon afterwards, the leadership entered into secret talks with Downing Street.

Six years later, the culmination of those talks, PIRA announced a ceasefire and everyone gave everyone else a hug.

Four years after that the ink was drying on the Good Friday Agreement. PIRA disbanded. Apart from the odd bout of sectarian score-settling, the Troubles were over and there were even more hugs. An organization that had sworn never to give up the armed struggle until Ireland was 'free' had put its faith in negotiation with their sworn enemies. Looking back, it was little short of a miracle.

But miracles and PIRA didn't rub shoulders – not in my experience.

Mansour was watching me intently. He knew he was fucking with my head. 'You see now what I saw in my prison cell, Nick? An Irishman, a senior member of the IRA's leadership, did a deal with the devil – with the British government – because he knew that the armed struggle would never, ever amount to a solution. But he realized, too, that that simple concept – that there might be a peaceful way out of the Troubles – would never be accepted by his warmongering peers. So he set out single-handedly to show them that there was no hope in continuing what they were doing, that all their ventures were doomed to failure . . .'

Loughgall. The Eksund. The Bahiti. Each a large, compartmentalized PIRA operation, each a fuck-up and PR disaster. And that was because each phase was betrayed . . .

I glanced in the mirror. Lynn knew all this. He'd lived with this knowledge for years.

Mansour rubbed his hands. 'So, Al-Inn. I have shared a little. Now, please, it is your turn. Tell me, for old times' sake, about the Bahiti and why Lesser and his Palestinian whore are so important to you twenty years after the event.'

This time, not even Mansour's extravagant gestures could keep my eyes from the rear-view. But I never got as far as Lynn. My vision was too full of the vehicle sitting about half a K behind us.

Now I knew why the alarm had rung in my head.

It was the BMW 4x4 from the last filling station, and my subconscious had been trying to tell me that it had been on our tail ever since.

And each time I had moved to check my rear-view Mansour had done his best to distract me.

The fucker knew it was there . . . the fucker had made a phone call . . .

As I turned my eyes back to the road ahead, I saw that whatever problem we had developing behind us, it was nothing compared to the one that lay ahead.