The Tick Tock Man

19

‘Sure ‘tis a grand drop of malt, so it is.’ Abe Powers sat on the edge of his armchair, elbows i resting on his knees and his big hands clasped together, and glanced sideways at the Secretary for Northern Ireland. Sir Ralph Maynard, a man almost as large as the American in physical stature, met the senator’s eyes momentarily. A tic of a smile flickered across the Englishman’s otherwise impassive face. Clearly they were both bemused, unsure what to make of the elderly and bewhiskered clergyman.

‘Another glass?’ Powers offered.

Bishop Joseph McLaverty was like a shrivelled little gnome, dwarfed by the huge armchair in which he sat. Clerical collar, tweed jacket with leather patches and pince-nez balanced on the tip of his nose. Hardly the strident-voiced ogre that both men had been expecting.

‘Some temptations are more difficult than others for a man to resist,’ he chortled. ‘But at my age, there can be little harm in it.’

Powers reached for the bottle and topped up McLaverty’s glass; Maynard declined a refill. ‘Tell me, Bishop,’ the senator asked. ‘You’ve been here at Trafalgar House for three days and so far you’ve declined my offer to address the delegates. I’m curious to know why?’

The clergyman nursed the glass of malt lovingly between his rheumatic fingers. When he spoke his voice was quiet and slightly squeaky, the words selected with deliberation and delivered in a rambling, humorous tone. ‘If I were to open my mouth and say just one sentence, all the Unionist politicians would stand up and walk out. And I really don’t want to be seen as the man who destroyed the chance of peace.’

‘I’m sure the Unionists would hear you out,’ Powers said. ‘We’ve developed a very cooperative atmosphere here.’

But even as he spoke the words, he knew they weren’t strictly true. Divisions were becoming more apparent between the parties as they got down to the fine details of the proposals. He was beginning to get an uneasy feeling of impending doom. He wondered if the bishop’s presence had had anything to do with it, had somehow changed the atmosphere?

McLaverty’s watery eyes twinkled. ‘Sure there’s a lot of give and take and I’m most impressed. In fact I’ve spent my time just listening and inwardly digesting. Sitting in on all the little subcommittees and working parties, finding out what it’s all about.’

‘And what do you think?’ Sir Ralph Maynard asked directly. He was finding the old man’s shilly-shallying more than a little tiresome.

‘Your proposal for an independent Northern Ireland?’ He contemplated his glass. ‘Novel, so it is. Novel, but not new.’

Powers picked up on the patronising tone. ‘Not new, Bishop, but maybe the mood of the people is right for it now. Not back in the seventies or eighties, but today, when everything else has been tried, perhaps the time is right.’

‘Perhaps, but will it stop the violence?’

Maynard’s smile was as stiff as his starched white collar. ‘I think you’re more the one to answer that,’ he said pointedly.

The bishop’s eyes crinkled benignly. ‘Ah, well, I’ve heard a lot of reference to this Secret Protocol. I’ve seen nothing in writing, but then if I had I suppose it wouldn’t be secret. Anyway, everyone knows about it. A promise by Dublin to cooperate with the implementing of selective internment for suspected IRA members for three years?’

‘It’s been rumoured,’ Sir Ralph confirmed.

‘And Dublin removing Articles Two and Three from its constitution, which lay claim to the Six Counties?’

Abe Powers nodded.

‘Then, if you will indulge an old man, allow me to remind you of something you may have overlooked. In 1921 the Irish

Government accepted the North’s right to self-determination in return for dominion status. Self-determination for the North was again accepted by Dublin in 1925 in exchange for British economic aid. In 1985 they did the same thing in order to get the Anglo-Irish Conference. Then last year they recognised Northern Ireland’s right to self-determination in exchange for negotiating rights for Republican paramilitaries and for an All Ireland Forum.’

Abe Powers frowned.

Bishop McLaverty took a sip of his whisky. ‘Only an Irishman would sell the same horse to the same man four times. And only an Englishman would buy it!’

The American senator stared and swallowed hard.

‘Oh, Dublin will accept British support in the EC for all the aid it can get. And it will go through the motions of trying to change its constitution. But that means a referendum and we all know the results of those depend on how you put the question. Not to mention where Dublin puts its propaganda effort. My humble prediction, gentlemen, is that it will never happen. Even if it does, the intent and will of all true Irishmen to be united as one will remain.’

‘And joint internment?’ Sir Ralph asked, guessing the reply he was going to get.

‘Dublin might feel obliged to appear to go along with that, but they won’t have their heart in it. And the Irish legal system can be fickle at the best of times. You’ve never yet had proper security cooperation with Eire and you never will. I’m afraid the men of violence may suffer a setback or two, but they’ll still be there. Stronger than ever. And your embryo nation, like the offspring of the Devil himself, will be strangled at birth with its own umbilical cord!’

Small specks of spittle had gathered around the old man’s mouth, and Abe Powers found himself staring at it with a kind of morbid fascination.

‘You see,’ McLaverty continued with a benign smile, ‘what you have created here at Trafalgar House is a type of monstrous hybrid that denies its natural parentage. It is a denial of everything Irishmen have fought for through the ages. To free itself from the shackles of British occupation. Is this really what the martyrs of Ireland — from the Easter Rising to Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers — all died for? A little offshore nonentity like the Isle of Man or the Caymans. Or those who have spent the best part of their adult life in the cages of the Kesh — ask them. You’ll have your answer. No, dear friends, you will not get peace.’

‘Does this mean a return to the bombing?’ Sir Ralph asked, scarcely bothering to keep the contempt from his voice.

‘Sure as a man of God, I’d know nothing about that. I have no influence in such matters.’

Abe Powers said: ‘You appear set solidly against everything that has so far been agreed here at Trafalgar House, Bishop, yet you have made no alternative proposals of your own.’

A gentle smile. ‘I have not been asked.’

‘I’m asking you.’

‘Well, the answer has been staring successive British governments in the face for years, certainly since the latest troubles started. But it will take a British Prime Minister who is a man of immense vision and exceptional courage.’

‘Courage to do what?’ Powers asked.

‘To tear up his bogus alliance of convenience with the Orangemen of Ulster. To stand before the world stage at the United Nations and admit the historical wrongdoing that has been done to the freemen of Ireland by Britain. Not just to Catholics, but Protestants too. They have been shamelessly used to fuel your industrial revolution and to fight your wars. The courage to tear down the border and to invite UN troops to replace British soldiers on the streets while the new constitution and arrangements for All-Ireland elections are being made.’

‘That’s a non-starter and you know it,’ Sir Ralph snapped, his patience finally breaking.

Tray why?’ McLaverty asked. ‘It is the simplest, most honourable answer of all. Why is it, as that clergyman and writer Sydney Smith once said, that “the moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence and common sense, and act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots”. ‘

‘A lot has changed since the days of the Black and Tans,’ Sir Ralph growled.

‘Or the B-Specials?’ the old man countered quickly.

Abe Powers waved his hand in an attempt to referee. ‘But surely there’d be civil war — the Ulster Protestants would never stand for it.’

‘That view has been grossly exaggerated,’ the bishop replied reasonably. ‘Ask any Orangeman why he doesn’t want to be a part of Free Ireland and I guarantee he will cite contraception and the price of beer. He does not really know why, it’s just what his father’s told him and his father before him.’ He paused for another sip of his whisky. ‘Did you know that the first Irishman to lead the fight for freedom from Britain — the famous Wolfe Tone — was a Protestant? We have nothing against Protestants, there are thousands of them in Eire, living peacefully and prosperously with their neighbours. We, the Irish Irish, welcome the Protestant Irish with open arms. All this silly talk about Independent Ulster — well, it’s much ado about nothing.’ He looked directly at Powers. Sir Ralph had fallen into a hostile and truculent silence. ‘Persuade the British, Senator — and you can, because they’ve tried everything else — and you’ll go down as the greatest true Irishman in history. It could even mean the Nobel Prize, I wouldn’t be surprised. And I think you’ll find neither America nor the EC will stint in its generosity to a new United Ireland

The old man’s words faded towards the end and his eyelids flickered momentarily.

‘Are you all right?’ Powers asked.

The eyes opened again. ‘I’m not as young as I was and this is an excellent malt. It really is past my bedtime.’

Powers helped McLaverty to his feet, handed him his stick and showed him to the door.

‘We warned you it was a bad idea,’ Sir Ralph Maynard told the American as he left a few minutes later. ‘We’ve heard it all before.’

Then perhaps you should have listened, the senator thought I to himself.

He turned down the main light and stared out of the tall window. Under the full moon, the finger streams of the Avon were gleaming like quicksilver.

| It had been uncanny, listening to the voice of the old clergy man. As though his own grandmother had been talking to him through a medium.

He felt tears in his eyes. Sadness? No, he knew what it was. Shame. Shame that he had betrayed his own people. His own grandmother. Shame that he had bowed to British pressure and taken the line of least resistance.

But now cracks were starting to appear in the plans for an Independent Ulster and he wasn’t sure the consensus would hold together for much longer. And if it didn’t, as McLaverty had pointed out, there was only one thing left to try.

Could the British be persuaded to do it? God knows they’d Ś tried everything else in the past two years and it had all come to nothing. Perhaps they were just weary enough to go that extra mile. To think the unthinkable.

If he applied American pressure now? The President had little love for the Brits and his wife, Powers knew, was sympathetic to Irish aspirations for unity.

He closed the curtains and made his way to the bedroom, his decision almost made.

That night he dreamed of his grandmother.

Three days later Donny Fitzpatrick’s alarm went off at three in % the morning.

He slipped out of bed, leaving his wife still asleep, then dressed in the dark, not bothering about a wash or shave. She barely stirred when he kissed her goodbye and went downstairs, feeling his way in the darkness.

Closing the back door behind him, he crossed the garden and scaled the rear fence. He walked the two blocks of the residential estate with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched against the chill, the hood of his windcheater covering his head.

The car was waiting where expected with its lights off. He climbed into the back seat; without a word, the driver started the engine, switched on his headlamps and began the journey south.

There were to be two vehicle switches on the way to the pub on the outskirts of Dublin. Unlike the Garda in general, there were some elements of Irish Special Branch who were dedicated to eradicating the movement. Driven by frustration at the lack of political will by their masters, some had attempted to take the law into their own hands on occasion. Although Fitzpatrick knew the identity of most of them, he was nonetheless obliged to take elaborate precautions for his own safety. Then, of course, there was also the danger that the Brits would mount a deniable operation of their own against him…

The upstairs room had been booked the day before in the name of the All Ireland Philately Society. Fitzpatrick was the last to arrive, the door being opened by one of the Dubliners.

The man reholstered his pistol. ‘It’s promising news, Chief.’

‘Good, I could do with some.’

He nodded to the motley gathering around the trestle table, which included the Quartermaster General, Maedoc Mallally and a retired priest known as Father McCabe.

The old man was anxious to tell the Provisional’ Chief of Staff what he had heard. ‘The bishop sent a letter to me yesterday by safe hand. He reports that the talks are in increasing disarray. He has been talking to the representatives from the Dublin government and the SDLP people from the north, persuading them to strengthen their position and their demands in these Independent Ulster proposals. Now he believes that the Democratic Unionists are on the verge of walking out.’

Fitzpatrick smiled gently. ‘So much for the demolition. What about the constructive side?’

‘He’s had several private sessions now with Abe Powers. He believes he’s winning the senator round. In fact Bishop McLaverty says the American has made several calls to the White House to try and win support for the idea.’

Mallally, known as Q, was dismissive. ‘We know the Brits will never wear it. Don’t get your hopes up.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘We know the government is still smarting after the failure of their last initiative and they’ve been getting an increasingly negative press over it.’

‘I don’t know why they ever thought it would work,’ commented one of the Dubliners.

‘The point is they did — and it didn’t,’ Fitzpatrick replied irritably. ‘They’ve now tried everything else, so maybe they’d be tempted. They’ll have seen the latest opinion polls — that the majority of the British public want their troops out of Ireland.’

‘Maybe they’ll wait until Labour wins the next election,’ Q suggested, ‘and let them do the dirty work.’

‘If they win,’ Fitzpatrick replied. ‘On the other hand, maybe the — current government will see some mileage in solving the problem once and for all. Backtracking on ideals doesn’t seem to worry politicians nowadays, and most of the English regard the Proddie bigots as no better than ourselves.’

‘You could have phrased that better,’ Q pointed out.

‘We must keep up the pressure,’ one Dubliner said.

‘True,’ agreed another. ‘Let AID AN off the leash again. Concentrate their minds.’

‘We can’t do that,’ Q said. ‘We can’t be seen to be using violence now we’re at the talks. That would be counterproductive. We need something a mite more subtle.’

It was then that Fitzpatrick remembered the signal from McGirl. The flying column had found a way of reaching Major Harrison and he wanted permission to follow it up. Clearly he had in mind assassination, but. there was another way…

He could visualise the news arriving at Number Ten: Prime Minister, I regret to tell you that the IRA is holding a senior British Army officer hostage. In fact this officer has become something of a national hero in the press and on television… The Provisional say they will keep his abduction under wraps and eventually release him if you accede to current American and growing UN demands for a United Ireland…

If not, they will reveal to the international media how a British hero was sacrificed to political intransigence in defiance of popular world opinion.

McGirl couldn’t sleep.

He’d woken in the early hours after a nightmare, his body slick with cold sweat. A crazy dream. He was walking down a long dark forest track; ahead was a tunnel of light where he could see the distant shadow of a gallows. Behind him he could hear the muted thunder of horses’ hooves and knew the riders were gaining on him. Yet he could not run…

For an hour he’d twisted and turned, but his mind just kept spinning. He knew what the problem was. Everything had been put on hold. There had been no activity now for several days, since the announcement that Bishop McLaverty was joining the talks.

And with nothing to do, his mind began to dwell on those nagging inner fears. What were the police doing, how close were they? He had no illusions that the full might of the British security apparatus was ranged against them. The police, Special Branch and MI5. Out there somewhere in the darkness, never sleeping, never resting. Insidious, creeping, edging ever closer to him.

The bombings had been a humiliation for the British Government, the newspapers and television headlines screaming capitulation to terrorism, and the politicians, he knew, would be baying for blood at any price. His blood, his and Clodagh Dougan’s.

He left the bed, pulled on his jeans and stood by the window of the cottage. Outside, the road was deserted, dimly lit by a nearby street light. Beyond, the outline of the trees was growing more distinct against a lightening sky.

Dawn would not be long.

He lit a cigarette and looked back at the bed. Subconsciously Clodagh Dougan seemed to sense him watching, her naked body suddenly restless beneath the sheet, twitching and moving as she slept. It was like that between them now, and he would never have believed it.

The Blackwall Tunnel bomb had changed everything. Was it the excitement, the adrenalin? The sense of power and achievement, the sharing of danger?

He didn’t know, and it didn’t matter.

What mattered was that when the team split up after the attack, each member returning to a separate safe house, Clodagh had asked him to go back with her. At first he had assumed it was the loneliness she felt now without her father there. The need for protection, a guardian who knew his place. But he soon realised it was more than that. Suddenly there was some unspoken bond between them.

Without a word she had led him into the front room and poured two drinks. Then, as he stood beside the cold stone fireplace, she had knelt at his feet. It took him by surprise, feeling her hands on his thighs, moving over his crotch. Then her fingers plucking at his zipper, the abrupt indraught of cool air and the delicate moisture of her mouth as she took his penis between her teeth. Not once did she speak; not once did she allow her eyes to meet his. She was alone down there, mistress in her own world, oblivious of him.

He had been too shocked to speak, not wanting to break the moment as he felt himself swelling to touch the back of her throat resting on the warm bed of her tongue. Then she was on her feet, gripping him there with her right hand, leading him to the sofa like a dog on a lead. Her face was close now and he could see that, for the first time since he had known her, she was smiling as though she meant it. The light of mischief and provocation dancing in her eyes.

Then he had ravished her. Hard and powerful, heedless of her needs, aware only of his own. Driven by the overwhelming ‘desire to release the tension.of the days and weeks of fear and undercover living, to drown it all out in one glorious moment of ecstasy. And to his surprise it was she who had climaxed first, clawing her nails across his back so deeply that he felt the wetness of the blood trickling from his skin. That had stoked the final fire, and he drove into her, merciless until his final rush.

As he fell beside her on the sofa, he anticipated her scorn and sharp tongue. But he was wrong. Instead she just smiled, her mouth swollen and bruised, her eyes misty and unfocused.

Her voice was low when she spoke. ‘If you’re interested, that’s my first time in ten years.’

He wanted to ask her why, but somehow didn’t dare.

And she seemed grateful for that, clutching his arm and drawing close. Her head on his shoulder, the softness of her hair against his neck. As he glanced at her, he thought how like an adolescent she looked, a teenage girl who had just discovered her first love.

From that moment on it had been the same between them. The antagonism had evaporated, equals, as though both recognised that their fate was shared. For good or ill.

Still he wondered what had brought about the change in her. The next day, after they had made love again, she had whispered something that he thought might be a clue.

‘I feel I’ve completed my father’s life’s work, Pat. Achieved what he always wanted to achieve. He gave eighteen years of his life in the fight for peace and freedom. Peace had to be achieved through violence, he knew that. Sometimes it’s the only way.’ She had kissed him then. ‘There’s only one thing left I have to do now.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Not for my da, for me. To kill the man who lured him to his death. You said you knew a way.’

‘I do.’

Remembering the conversation now, McGirl looked back out of the bedroom window and allowed himself to speculate. Peace. Down south of the ancient cathedral city of Salisbury. Trafalgar House. Was that really where it was all going to end? The struggle over after all these years? Perhaps even the tricolour flying over Stormont. It was hard to believe.

It occurred to him abruptly that his life would alter beyond recognition within months, maybe even weeks. There would be no place for him amongst the politicians. Street killers like Pat McGirl would just be an embarrassment, he was aware of that. After the accolades and platitudes for the foot soldiers of the Provisional IRA, he’d be cast aside. Forgotten, a social leper.

But he’d known no other life since his late teens, and he’d been unemployed then. Peace might yet prove a bitter victory for many. Suddenly he could see that there was no future, not for him.

Clodagh stirred again, this time propping herself on one elbow and shielding her eyes from the strengthening dawn light. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Couldn’t sleep.’

‘Why?’

‘That signal to Donny Fitzpatrick, asking permission to go after Major Harrison.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve had the reply. We’re cleared to go.’

The-military attache at the British High Commission in Vancouver received the coded signal from Vauxhall Cross, MI6’s new headquarters in London, at eleven local time.

He telephoned his regular contact in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and arranged to meet him at noon. The two of them took a taxi to the address the attache had been given on Marine Drive in the south of the city. Stanley Tower was a twenty-storey office block and a fast elevator lifted them to Suite 200 on the nineteenth floor.

The legend stencilled on the glass swing doors read COMPLETE OFFICE SERVICES: EXECUTIVE SUITES, DOCUMENTATION FACILITIES, FAX, TELEPHONE RECEPTION, MAIL BOXES.

That’s the answer, the attache thought as they spoke to the primly dressed receptionist who interrupted her director’s meeting.

‘We have no client called Clodagh Dougan,’ he said.

But his receptionist recognised the name. ‘She’s not a client, but we do receive mail for someone of that name.’

‘Can you explain?’

‘The arrangement was set up by an American lady.’ The receptionist consulted her client book. ‘Mrs Deborah Mayo from Connecticut. She called in personally and paid for one year’s service up front. Cash, as I recall.’

‘Can you remember what she looked like?’

‘I do as it happens. Quite striking, in her late twenties or early thirties. Dark hair, black I think. Her accent was a little odd.’

Could be, the attache thought. ‘What arrangements does she have?’

‘Well, it’s on behalf of a friend of hers, this Clodagh Dougan. That’s why it rang a bell, because it was rather unusual. Anything I receive addressed to Miss Dougan, I’m supposed to place in an envelope, readdress it to Mrs Mayo and post it on.’

‘Where to?’

‘Post office in England. To be collected.’

The attache’s mouth dropped open. Bullseye!

‘But it’s two-way,’ the receptionist added. ‘Sometimes Mrs Mayo sends me an envelope containing a sealed letter or postcard, whatever. I’m then expected to post those on from here to whatever address is written on them.’

‘Thank you so much for your help.’

Don Trenchard accepted the signal from the cipher clerk and sat down slowly in his seat, spreading the paper out across the blotter on his desk and picking up his first coffee of the day.

So that’s how she’d done it.

Clodagh Dougan was Mrs Deborah Mayo. Note the Irish name. American passport. Probably a genuine application but a substituted photograph. The wife of an Irish American supporter of the cause, cash for a favour one drunken night. It was likely the woman had never been abroad and didn’t even know the application had been made.

This way Clodagh’s sister Caitlin, relatives, friends and others who might expect to write to her in Canada could do so. And she could reply, each letter or postcard with a Vancouver postmark. Perfect cover.

But now Trenchard had little time. Once he had passed the information on to Nash, events would take on a momentum all their own which would be impossible to stop.

The hands of the office clock showed eight o’clock. Just time to catch the City Prices edition. He made his excuses and left Thames House, taking a taxi to Kensington High Street where he made the call from a public box.

‘Mullins — features.’ The familiar Californian twang.

‘Hallo, Casey, it’s Don here. Don Trenchard.’

‘Oh.‘Uncertain.

‘Look, Casey, I feel I owe you an apology. That business over in Ulster.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’d like to make it up to you. Can we meet?’

‘I’m tied up this lunch time,’ she lied, not keen to see the man again.

‘No, now. I’ve something important for you. I’m just across the street. There’s a cafe.’ He gave the name. ‘Can you meet me there in five minutes?’

‘I suppose so.’ Hesitant.

‘Great. And don’t tell anyone you’re coming to see me, there’s a good girl.’

It was with considerable misgiving that she grabbed her bag and coat, left the office and took the lift and escalator to reception. Outside, the breeze along Kensington High Street had a cool autumnal edge to it, unwarmed by the sunshine. She found Trenchard seated at one of the pavement tables, his fedora and two coffees placed in front of him.

‘What is this, Don?’

‘I owe you. Nothing was published in the Standard about that King Billy fiasco. I appreciate that. Or the bombers that Tierney named.’

‘Tom advised me not to. Besides, my paper could hardly accuse people on the uncorroborated word of a dead man.’

He gave one of his charmer’s smiles, but it seemed to lack its usual confidence. ‘Grateful anyway. I was rude, angry, at the time.’

‘You had a right to be. I’d got in out of my depth.’

Trenchard waved a dismissive hand. ‘Anyway, I’ve a little scoop for you. But it’ll have to make the first edition or else all the other papers will be running with it.’ He saw her glance at her watch. ‘Is there time?’

‘Just — if I’m quick.’

He slipped the photograph from beneath his fedora and pushed it across the table to her.

‘Who’s this?’

A plumpish smiling face stared up at her, a pretty teenager with a black fringe and beautiful sad eyes. The sweatshirt she wore was emblazoned University of Ulster.

‘This is strictly unattributable, right?’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Come hell or high water? And that must include Tom.’

‘Don!’ Both exasperated and intrigued. ‘I promise you my lips are sealed.’

‘Everything Killy Tierney said was true.’

‘And the photograph? Who is she?’

‘That’s the only picture in existence. She’s with the AIDAN bombers. Here, now. Seven Dials, the flyovers, the Blackwall Tunnel…’

Casey’s eyes widened.

‘That is Clodagh Dougan.’

As Trenchard had anticipated, by the time he returned to Thames House representatives from the AntiTerrorist Branch, the Home Office, Special Branch and the Director of Special Forces were already gathering for the emergency meeting that John Nash had called.

The Director General was in the chair, indicating the significance of the meeting, but Clarissa Royston-Jones left Nash to outline the latest developments.

‘So there we have it,’ he concluded, ‘all this leads us to believe that the active service unit calling itself AID AN is, in fact, headed up by Hughie Dougan. Patrick McGirl, PIRA’s northern commander is involved, either in overall control or in a liaison capacity, I should think. Four other names have been mentioned: Moira Lock, Leo Muldoon, Liam Doran and a Londoner called Joe Houlihan. All with no previous and all except Houlihan coming from Ulster, but living in Ireland. Lock was almost certainly the female killed in the Deptford “own goal”, along with one of the men, all of whom could be classed as ordinary IRA foot soldiers.

‘The most interesting development of all is the involvement of Dougan’s eldest daughter, Clodagh. She had no real form except a mild flirtation with the Cumainn na n Ban in her early teens. Went on to study microelectronics and until recently held a good technical post at a Belfast components firm. I hardly need

| to spell out the relevance of that. Just before the latest campaign began she took up a job in Canada. We have since learned that this was completely bogus and that she was using the name Deborah Mayo, backed up with an apparently legitimate passport. My supposition is that she’s working with her father on the manufacturing side, probably updating him on technology, some of which he may only know in theory. The others, under

I McGirl, would do the planning and carry out the assignments.’

The Special Branch officer raised his hand. ‘In the hour I had before this meeting I have been able to check with Immigration. I can confirm that an American subject by the name of Mrs Deborah Mayo entered this country by ferry from Norway on May 30. If she has left since, it wasn’t on that passport.’

Clarissa Royston-Jones took over. ‘I cannot overemphasise the importance of catching this team. The lull in their activities shouldn’t make us complacent. As soon as the Trafalgar House talks don’t go the way PIRA wants, we can expect AID AN to be back with a vengeance.’

At that moment Jim Maitland of the AntiTerrorist Branch entered the room. He waited patiently at the door, listening as the Director General continued: ‘But now we have a strong lead. Not only the team’s identity, but also a possible indication of the general area they may be working from. The poste restante post office that Clodagh Dougan has been using regularly is in the town of Marlow on the Thames. This district would make logistical sense as it is relatively close to the M4 and M40 motorways to London and just a little farther for the M3, all of which link in with the M25 orbital city motorway, giving them access to London from any direction they choose. Now perhaps, gentlemen, you’d care to update me on your anticipated response to this new information.’ She wagged a warning finger. ‘But whatever is planned, discretion is paramount. Nothing must alert these people that we are onto them.’

‘I’m afraid it may be too late for that.’

It was Jim Maitland who spoke. All heads turned as he held up a copy of the Evening Standard. The headline leapt at them: BOMBER RETURNS FROM DEAD TO BLITZ LONDON. Beneath it was a picture of Clodagh Dougan.

‘Christ!’ Trenchard said.

Clarissa Royston-Jones shut her eyes. She really didn’t want to believe this.

‘Not much substance,’ Maitland said, indicating the small column of copy set in largish type to fill the available space. ‘But there’s enough. Quotes reliable intelligence sources and names the suspected AID AN team. All spot on.’

‘Where on earth did they get that picture? I haven’t even seen that one.’

‘I think I can guess,’ Trenchard interrupted. ‘One of their reporters — the Mullins woman — has been over in the Province digging around. Our people were alerted and she was put under low-level surveillance. Visited King Billy’s headquarters, then visited the village in Sligo where Dougan was supposedly buried. She also called on Clodagh’s kid sister. My guess is that is where the photograph came from.’

‘It’s a bit academic now,’ Nash said quickly before the conversation turned to how Casey Mullins had heard the names from Tom Harrison after Trenchard’s indiscretion. The brown stuff was hitting the fan and it was all likely to end up in his lap.

‘I agree,’ the Director General said. ‘It just means we’ll all have to act that much faster.’

Trenchard relaxed back in his chair. ‘Oh, for the freedom of the press,’ he muttered beneath his breath.

By the time the meeting broke up an hour later, the hunt to find the AID AN bombers was already in full cry.

AntiTerrorist Branch detectives had earlier paid a discreet visit to Marlow post office where one letter awaited collection by Deborah Mayo. A plain-clothes officer was stationed behind the counter and a surveillance car placed nearby with a technical expert from SO7 on hand who would attempt to place a magnetic signal beacon on any vehicle used by Clodagh Dougan.

Inquiries were now concentrated between the M40 in the north and the M3 in the south, the area’s eastern boundary formed by the M25 and, in the west, by a line drawn north and south of Reading. In time those boundaries would expand as necessary.

Although the process of examining all possible bomb factories had begun some weeks before, the effort increased a hundredfold with detectives from the AT Branch reserves drafted in from other areas. As large bombs had been used, then similarly large premises would have been required to conceal the carrying vehicles, in particular the Blackwall Tunnel dumper truck. However, the task remained enormous. There were literally thousands of possible warehouses and storage depots and hundreds of industrial estates in the region as well as out-of-the-way open sites like car breakers, farmyards and quarries.

Only photographs of three of the bombers were immediately available from security files: Hughie Dougan, Pat McGirl and a teenage Clodagh Dougan, taken when she’d been involved with the Cumainn na n Ban. In Ulster the RUC Special Branch was visiting the parents of Lock, Muldoon and Doran to try and obtain recent photographs from the family albums.

Police vehicle checks were set up on the approaches to all motorway junctions in the target area, each with firearms-trained officers in attendance. Every available unmarked car was deployed on the motorway system itself, on the lookout for recently s(tolen vehicles, unmarked vans and lorries and anything that might raise suspicions. Speeding motorists, the most unlikely suspects, would never know how lucky they had been that day.

Meanwhile the HOLMES computer was being reprogrammed to concentrate on the target area. Over the weeks, hundreds of wholesale and retail suppliers of ammonium nitrate based fertilisers had been contacted nationwide and asked to draw up lists of customers, particularly new ones, who had ordered large quantities. These lists were gradually becoming available, but the results were patchy, depending on the quality and detail of the records kept.

Many customers could be deleted from the lists: local council parks and other government departments. Thousands of others comprised mostly garden centres, nurseries and farms, all of which would have to be checked.

On a parallel programme, catering suppliers had been asked to supply lists of anyone buying unusually large quantities of icing sugar which would have been mixed with the fertiliser to make the explosive mix. Unfortunately a high proportion were cash-and-carry customers.

By three in the afternoon five farms in the target area were showing up as having had large deliveries of fertiliser in recent months.

One in particular was of special interest. The farm had unusually occurred on the lists of three different suppliers and, illogically, all out of its immediate vicinity. Individually the deliveries weren’t excessive; added together the amount was considerable.

‘Get me Henley nick,’ Maitland ordered.

The call to the chief inspector at Henley was patched through minutes later. ‘Just caught me before I went home. What can I do for you?’

‘High Farm, south of Henley. Anyone there know it? I need an idea of its acreage.’

‘When do you want the information?’

‘Yesterday.’

The chief inspector telephoned back in twenty minutes. ‘High Farm is a smallholding. Hard to be exact, but between ten and eleven acres, I’d say.’

‘Know anything about farming?’

‘Some. Try me.’

‘Might it use nine thousand pounds of fertiliser in a year?’

The voice chuckled. ‘Only if they’re growing exhibition specimens. No, I really don’t think so.’

Maitland replaced the receiver, just as one of the HOLMES operators approached. ‘Something of interest here, sir.

Remember the guy who ran the Southampton scam on electronic parts? Used the name of Roke. Well, here’s a Henry Roke who ordered a big supply of icing sugar. He paid cash, but the wholesaler’s kept a note of the delivery address.’

‘What is it?’

‘Top Flight Bakery, High Farm, Henley.’

Maitland snatched up. his phone. ‘Let’s go. Ops room in five minutes!’