Harry's Game Part 2

The plate and dirtied cup were on the rug by his bed. He put his feet down gingerly and moved to his case. His shaving bag was on top of his neatly folded clothes. He wondered what on earth Mary was making of all this. If they'd sent that dreadful adjutant down to tell her he was called away on urgent business it would be enough to get him a divorce--better be someone with a little experience in the world of untruths.

No one he'd seen last night had been in uniform. After shaving he put on a checked s.h.i.+rt, Transport Corps tie and his grey suit. He folded away his uniform in the wardrobe and dispersed his other clothes to the various drawers and cupboards. He sat by the window waiting for someone to come to tell him breakfast was served. From his room on the second floor he could see he was at the back of the house. Overgrown tennis courts. A vegetable garden. A great line of trees before the ridge of Surrey hills.

Harry was not naive and had realized he was to be briefed for an intelligence mission. That didn't bother him, he'd decided. It was a little flattering, and was welcome after brigade transport. Perhaps the remarks about nervous collapse had been rather over-stressed on his post-Aden reports. Anyway, little had come his way that had stretched him to the degree he thought he was capable of. If they'd brought him from Germany then the hard a.s.sumption would be that they were going to use him for something in Berlin. This pleased him, as he prided himself that he had taken the trouble to learn pa.s.sable German, have a near taxi-driver knowledge of the city and keep himself discreetly abreast of the trade techniques. His thoughts were full of the Reichstag, watchtowers, walls and clumps of flowers by the little crosses when the sharp knock came and the door opened.

It began in earnest in what must once have been the drawing-room, now furnished in the fas.h.i.+on of the Defence Ministry. Heavy tables, sofas with big pink flowers all over them and deep army chairs with cloth squares at the back to prevent greased hair marking the covers.

Davidson was there, and three others.

Harry was given the armchair to the right of the fireplace, dominated by the oil painting of the Retreat from Kabul in the snows of the Afghanistan pa.s.ses. One man sat behind him by the window; another, not ostentatiously, close to the door. The third sat at a central table, his files spread out on the drapes that covered the polished oak surface. One was of stiff blue cardboard, its top crossed with red tape. "secret" had been written across the front in large letters, and underneath were the words: "brown, harry james, capt." Four sheets of closely-typed paper were inside--Harry's life history and the a.s.sessments of his performance by each of his commanding officers. The first page carried the information they had sought when they had begun the search for the officer they wanted.

Name: Brown Harry James Current rank: Captain Age: 34 years Born: Portadown, NI, November 1940 Distinguis.h.i.+ng marks and description: 5" 11" height, medium build, brown hair, blue eyes, no distinguis.h.i.+ng marks, no operation scars Service UK: Catterick, Plymouth, Tidworth, Ministry of Defence.

Service overseas: Cyprus (2nd It), Borneo (2nd It), Aden (1st It ), Berlin (Capt) Decorations: Cyprus--Mentioned in Despatches. Aden--Military Cross.

In the last quarter of the page was the pa.s.sage that ensured that Harry came into the operation.

Aden citation: For three months this officer lived as a native in the Arab quarter of Sheik Gthman, moving inside the community there and supplying most valuable intelligence concerning terrorist operations. As a result of his work many important arrests were made. It should be stressed that this work was extremely dangerous to the officer, and there was a constant risk that if discovered he would face certain torture and death.

Too right, Harry would have thought, if anyone had let him see the file. Day after day, living with those filthy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, eating with them, talking with them, c.r.a.pping with them. Watching for new cars, watching for movement after curfew, observing the huddles in the coffee shops. And always the fear, and the horror if they came too close to him, seemed too interested, talked too much. The terrible fear of discovery, and the pain that would follow. And the know-alls in intelligence back at headquarters who only met an NLF man when he was neatly parcelled up in their bas.e.m.e.nt cells, and who pa.s.s discreet little messages--about hanging on a few more days, just a little bit longer. They'd seemed surprised when he just walked up to an army patrol one hot, stinking morning, and introduced himself, and walked out of thirteen weeks of naked terror. And no mention in the files on him of the nervous breakdown, and the days of sick leave. Just a metal cross and an inch square of purple and white cloth to dangle it from, all there was to show for it.

Davidson was moving about the room in sharp darts around the obstacles of furniture.

'I don't have to tell you from your past experience that everything that is said in this room this morning goes under the Official Secrets Act. But I'll remind you of that anyway. What we say in here, the people you've seen here, and the building and its location are all secret.

'Your name was put forward when we came into the market for a new man for an infiltration job. We've seen the files on the Aden experience, and the need has now come up for a man unconnected with any of the normal channels to go in and work in a most sensitive area. The work has been demanded by the Prime Minister. Yesterday afternoon he authorized the mission, and I must say frankly it was against, as I understand it, the advice of his closest military advisers. Perhaps that's putting it a bit strong, but there's some scepticism ... the PM had a brother in SOE thirty years ago, he has heard over Sunday lunch how the infiltration of agents into enemy country won the war, and they say he's had a bee about it ever since.

'He wants to put a man, into the heart of Provo-land, into the Falls in Belfast--a man who is quite clean and has no form in that world at all. The man should not be handled by any of the existing intelligence and undercover groups. He'd be quite new, and to all intents he'd be on his own as far as looking after himself is concerned. I think anyone who has thought even a little about what the PM is asking for knows that the job he has asked us to do is b.l.o.o.d.y dangerous. I haven't gilded it, Harry. It's a job we've been asked to do, and we all think from what we've read of you that you are the ideal man for it. Putting it formally, this is the bit, where you either si and up and say "Not effing likely," and walk out through the door and we'll have you on a flight to Berlin in three hours. Or it's the t time when you come in and then stay in.'

The man at the table with the files shuffled his papers. Harry was long way from a rational evaluation of the job, whatever it was they were offering. He was just thinking how large a file they'd got on him when he became aware of the silence in the room.

Harry said, "I'll try it.'

'You appreciate, Harry, once you say "yes", that's it. That has to be the definitive decision.'

'Yes, I said yes. I'll try it." Harry was almost impatient with Davidson's caution.

The atmosphere in the room seemed to change. The man behind Harry coughed. Davidson was on the move again, the file now open in his hand.

'We're going to put you into the Falls with the express and only job of listening for any word of the man who shot the Minister, Danby, three days ago. Why aren't they doing it from Belfast? Basic reason is they've no longer got an infiltration set-up that we're happy with. They used to do it, lost out, and have pretty much withdrawn their men to let them stooge on the outside and collect the stuff they want from informers. The activity has been down over the last few months, and with the risk that exists--I'm being straight with you, Harry--of an undercover man being picked off, and the hullabaloo when it hits the fan, those sort of operations have been scaled down. There is a thought that the intelligence division over there is not as tight as it ought to be. We've been asked to set up a new operation. Intelligence in Belfast won't handle you, we will. The Special Branch over there won't have heard of you. Whatever else your problems may be they won't be that someone is going to drop you in it over there, because no one will know of your existence. If you have a message you pa.s.s it to us. A phone call to us, on the numbers we give you, will be as fast--if you want to alert the military--as anything you could do if you were plugged into the regular Lisburn net, working under their control.

'I stress again, this is the PM's idea. He raised it at the security meeting yesterday and insisted we push it forward. The RUG don't want you, and the military regard it as something of a joke. We reckon we'll need you here for two weeks before we fly you in, and that time they may have the man, or at least have a name on him. that happens then we call the whole thing off, and you can relax a go back to Germany. It's not a bad thing that they don't want know--we won't have to tell them anything till it's ripe, and that way we keep it tight.'

He'd wondered whether to mention the Prime Minister's involvement, and thought about it at length the previous evening, this man were to be captured and talk under torture the balk would be sky high, the reverberations catastrophic. But there v another side to it. Any man asked to do as dangerous a job as the c envisaged had the right to know where the orders originated; to certain he wasn't the puppet on the end of wire manipulated for benefit of a second-rate operation. It was Davidson's own inclination to be open, and he reckoned that apart from everything else a man these circ.u.mstances needed all the morale-building he could get.

'So far the police and military have put out pictures, offered; rewards, launched raids, checked all the usual angles, and still haven't come up with anything. I don't know whether you would The PM's decided we try and that's what's going to happen.

'I'm sorry, but on this there cannot be a phone call to your wi We've told her you've been called away on urgent posting. T morning she's been told you're on your way to Muscat, because your special Aden knowledge. We have some postcards you < write="" to="" her="" later="" and="" we'll="" get="" them="" posted="" by="" the="" raf="" for="" you,="" 'i="" said="" at="" the="" beginning="" this="" would="" be="" dangerous.="" i="" don't="" want="" minimize="" that.="" the="" ira="" shoot="" intelligence="" men="" they="" get="" their="" hands="" on.="" they="" don't="" rough="" them="" up="" and="" leave="" them="" for="" a="" patrol="" to="" find:="" they="" kill="" them.="" the="" last="" man="" of="" ours="" that="" they="" took="" was="" tortured.="" catholics="" who="" work="" for="" us="" have="" been="" beaten="" up,="" burned,="" lacerated="" hooded="" and="" then="" killed.="" they're="" hard="" b.a.s.t.a.r.ds="" ...="" but="" we="" want="" t="" man="">

Davidson paused in his stride, jolting Harry's attention. Ha fidgeted and s.h.i.+fted in the chair. He hated the pep talks. This ( was d.a.m.n near a carbon copy of the one he'd had in Aden, though then the PM's name had been left out, and they were quoting secret instructions from GOC Land Forces Mid East.

Davidson suggested coffee. The work would start after the breakfast The Prime Minister had been hearing a report on the latest spei to a Bulawayo farming conference of the rebel Prime Minister-- 'illegal counterpart', as he liked to call him. He scanned the pages quickly and deftly, a.s.similating the nuances the Rhodesian's speech writers had written in for the reader on the other side of the world. It was a static situation, he decided, not one for a further initiative at this stage. When his secretary had left him he turned back to his desk from the window and dialled an unlisted number at the Ministry of Defence.

The conversation was short and obviously to the point. It lasted about twenty-five seconds. The Prime Minister put his opening question, listened, and rang off after saying, "No ... no ... I don't want to know any more ... only that it's happening. Thank you, you'll keep me informed, thank you.'

Off the Broadway, half-way up the Falls, the man and his minder locked the doors of the stolen and resprayed Cortina and moved through the protective cordon of white-painted petrol drums to the door of the pub. The minder had been there from the morning, not knowing and not asking who was the man he had been set to protect. With the job went the PPK Walther that pulled down his coat pocket. The gun was a prize symbol of the old success days of the local IRA company--taken from the body of a Special Branch constable ambushed as he cruised late at night in the Springfield Road. It was now prized, partly for its fire power, partly for its value as a trophy.

The man led the way into the pub. It was the first time he had walked the streets of the city since his return, and after two days on the move from house to house and not a straight night's sleep at any of them he showed the signs of a life on the run. The Army Council had antic.i.p.ated this and had decided that for his own safety the man should as soon as possible be reintroduced to his old haunts, as the longer he were away the more likely it was that his name could become a.s.sociated with the shooting in London.

The pub boasted a single bar, dark, shabby and with a pall of smoke hanging between shoulder height and the low ceiling, A spa.r.s.e covering of worn lino was on the floor, pocked with cigarette burns. As always most eyes were facing the door, and conversation died as the man walked in and went towards the snug, away to the left of the serving area. The minder gripped him by the arm, and mouthed quickly in his ear.

'They said in the middle of the bar. Show yourself. That's what i hey told me.'

The man nodded his head, turned to the bar and ordered his drinks. He was known only slightly here, but the man with him was local, and that was the pa.s.sport to acceptance. The man felt the tension easing out of him, as the conversation again spread through the bar.

Later he was asked by one old man how come he'd not been in. He replied loudly, and with the warm beer moving through him, that his Mam in Cork had been unwell. He'd been to see her, she was better now and he was back. His Mam was better known in these streets than he was, and it was remembered by a few that she'd married a railwayman in Cork three years after her first husband died, and moved away to the South from Belfast. Lucky I was too, she'd say. The railwayman himself had died now, but she had stayed south. The man's explanation was more than adequate. There was mutterings of sympathy, and the subject closed.

His main worry had been the photokit picture. He had seen it reproduced on the front page of the Belfast Newsletter on his second day back and read of the efforts to track him down. He'd seen pictures of the troops sealing streets off, looking for him, and looked at quarter-page advertis.e.m.e.nts taken by the Northern Ireland office urging people to tell all they knew about the killing to the police via the Confidential phone. There were reports that a huge reward was to be offered for his capture, but if any of the men in the bar linked him with the picture there was no sign of it. The man had decided himself that the picture was not that similar to his features, too pinched in the face, the word the woman had used, with the hair parting too accentuated.

He was on his third pint when the patrol came into the pub.

Eight soldiers crowding into the small area, ordered everyone to stay still and keep their hands out of their pockets. With the shouting from the troops and the general noise of their entry, no one noticed the minder leaning against the bar slide his gun down towards the was.h.i.+ng-up bowl. Nor did they see the publican, ostensibly drying his hands before displaying them to the troops, put his cloth over the dark gun-metal. With his final action he flicked cloth and gun on to the floor and kicked them hard towards the kitchen door. The design of the building prevented any of the soldiers seeing the young girl's hand that reached round the door in answer to her father's short whistle, gather up the gun, and run with it to the coal shed. The men in the bar were lined against the side wall by the empty fireplace and searched. The man's search was no more, no less thorough than that of the other men. They searched the minder very thoroughly, perhaps because he was sweating, a veil of moisture across his forehead, as he waited for their decision on him, not knowing what had happened to the gun that bore his palm prints and could earn him five years plus in the Crumlin Road.

Then, as suddenly as the soldiers had come they were out, barging their way past the tables, running into the street, and back to their regular routine of patrolling. There was noise again in the bar. The publican pushed the was.h.i.+ng-up cloth, now filthy with coal s.m.u.ts, across the wooden bar to the minder. The man felt noisy. He'd come through the first big test.

At the big house in Surrey the team round Harry had worked him hard the first day. They'd started by discussing what cover he would want, and rejected the alternatives in favour of a merchant seaman home after five years, but with his parents dead some years back.

'It's too small a place for us to give you a completely safe ident.i.ty you could rely on. It would mean we'd have to bring other people in who would swear by you. It gets too big that way. We start taking a risk, unnecessarily.'

Davidson was adamant that the only ident.i.ty Harry would have would be the one he carried round on his back. If anyone started looking into his story really deeply then there was no way in which he could survive, strong background story or not.

Harry himself supplied most of what they needed. He'd been born a Catholic in one of the little terraces off Obin Street in Portadown. The houses had been pulled down some years ago, and replaced by anonymous blocks of flats and small houses, now daubed with the slogans of revolution. With the destruction of the old buildings inevitably the people had become dispersed.

Portadown, the Orangeman's town with the ghetto round the long sloping pa.s.sage of Obin Street, still had its vivid teenage memories for Harry. He'd spent his childhood there from the age of five, after his parents had been killed in a car crash. They'd been driving back to Portadown when a local businessman late home on his way back from Armagh had cut across them and sent his father into a ditch and telegraph pole. Harry had stayed with an aunt for twelve years in the Catholic street before joining the army. But his childhood in the town gave him adequate knowledge--enough, Davidson decided, for his cover.

For four hours after lunch they quizzed him on his knowledge of the intricacies of Irish affairs, sharpened him on the names of the new political figures. The major terrorist acts since the summer of 1969 were neatly catalogued on three closely typed sheets. They briefed him particularly on the grievances of the minority.

'You'll want to know what they're beefing about. You know this, they're walking encylopedias on every shot we fired at them. There's going to be a lot more, but this is the refresher,'

Davidson was warming to it now, enjoying these initial stages of the preparation, the thoroughness of which would be the deciding factor whether their agent survived. Davidson had been through this before. Never with Ulster as the target, but in Aden before Harry's duty there, and Cyprus, and once when a Czech refugee was sent into his former homeland. That last time they heard nothing, till the man's execution was reported by the Czech news agency half an hour after a stony protest note was delivered to the British Amba.s.sador in Prague. Post-war Albania had involved him too. Now it was a new operation, breeding the same compulsion as the first cigarette of the day to an inveterate smoker.

Harry had come up to the table. The papers were spread out in front of him, ringers reaching and pointing at the different essentials for him to take in.

Later he was to take many of them to his room, ask for some sandwiches and coffee and, sprawled in front of the gas fire, read them into the small hours till they were second nature. On his own for the first time in the day he too was able to a.s.sess the importance of the preparation he was undergoing, and alone in the room he allowed himself to think of the hazards of the operation in which he was now involved.

It was past two in the morning when he undressed and climbed into bed, the papers still strewn on the rug in front of the fire.

FOUR.

Over the next fortnight the street scene in Belfast returned to its pre Danby level of violence. It was widely recognized that in the wake of the killing the level of army activity had risen sharply, initially in the use of major cordon and search operations, merging into an increase in the number of spot raids on the homes of known republicans on the run. The army activity meant more men were charged with offences, but alongside their appearances in court was an upsurge in street rioting, something that had previously been almost eradicated. The army's posture was sharply criticised by the minority politicians, who accused the troops of venting on innocent Catholic householders their frustrations at not being able to find Danby's murderer.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland agreed to appear on the local Independent TV station and the regional BBC news programme to answer the allegations of Protestant papers that not enough was being done--that a British Cabinet Minister had been shot down in cold blood in front of his wife and children yet his killers were allowed to go free for fear of offending Catholic opinion.

Before appearing on television the Secretary of State called a meeting of his security chiefs, and heard both Frank Scott and General Fairbairn urge caution and patience. The General in particular was concerned lest a show of strength spread over several weeks undo the gradual return to something like normality. The three men were soon to leave for their various destinations--the politician for the studio, the General for Lisburn and the Chief Constable for his modern police headquarters--but first they walked on the lawn outside the Stormont residence of the Secretary of State. Away from the listening ears of secretaries, aides and bodyguards the General reported that his intelligence section had heard nothing of the killer in Belfast and there was some concern about whether the man they sought was even in the city. The Chief Constable added to the politician's cross in reporting that his men too had been unable to uncover any hard information on the man. But the head of his Special Branch favoured the belief that the killer was in the city, and probably back in circulation. The Chief Superintendent in charge of picked detectives had a fair insight into the workings of his enemies' minds, and had correctly read the desire of the Provisional IRA Army Council to get their man back into the main stream. For three minutes they talked in the centre of the lawn. The conversation ended when the Secretary of State quietly, and more than a little hesitantly, asked the General, 'Jocelyn, no news I suppose on what the PM was talking about?' 'None, nor will there be.'

The General made his way back to his car, turned and shouted a brusque farewell.

As the military convoy pulled away, the politician turned to the policeman, "We have to have this b.a.s.t.a.r.d soon. The political scene won't hold up long otherwise. And there's a lot of restiveness among the Loyalists. We need him quick, Frank, if the sectarianism isn't to start up again. There's not much time ...'

He walked quickly now to his big maroon Rover with its reinforced sides and extra thick windows, with machine guns, field dressings and gas masks alongside his official cases in the boot. He nodded to his driver, and then winced as the detective sitting in front of him loaded the clip of bullets into the b.u.t.t of the 9 mm Browning.

The car swung out into the open road for the drive into the city, with his escort close behind to prevent any other car clipping between them. "What a b.l.o.o.d.y carry-on," the politician observed as they swept through the traffic towards the television studios. The interview of the Secretary of State was embargoed until 18.01 hours; its full text was issued by the Northern Ireland press office to Belfast newspapers. In essence the BBC and ITV transmissionswere the same, and the public relations men put out only the BBC interview.

Q. Secretary of State, can you report any progress in the hunt for Mr Danby's killer?

A. Well, I want to emphasize that the security forces are working flat out on this one. I myself have had a meeting just before this broadcast with the army commander and chief constable, and I am perfectly satisfied with the investigation and follow-up operations they are mounting. I'm confident we'll round up this gang of thugs quickly.

Q. But have you any leads yet to who the killers are? A. I think we know who the killers are, they're the Provisional IRA, but I'm sure you wouldn't expect me to talk on television about the details of a police investigation, Q. It's been pretty quiet for some time in Belfast, and we were led to believe that most of the IRA commanders were imprisoned ... Isn't it justifiable to expect rather quicker action, even results at this stage?

A. If you mean to imply we have claimed the IRA weren't capable of mounting this sort of operation I don't think we have ever made that sort of a.s.sumption. We think this is the work of a small group, a very small group. We'll get them soon ... there's nothing to panic about--(It was a bad word, panic, he saw it as soon as he said it. The interviewer nudged him forward.) Q. I haven't heard the word "panic" used before. Are you implying the public have over-reacted towards the killing of a Cabinet Minister in broad daylight in front of his children? A. Of course, this was a dreadful crime. This was a colleague of mine. Of course, people should feel strongly; what I'm saying is that this is a last fling of the IRA... Q. A pretty successful last fling. A. Mr Danby was unarmed---- Q. In Loyalist areas of the city the Government are accused of not going in hard to find the killer because the results could antagonize Catholic opinion.

A. That's untrue, quite untrue. When we have identified the man we intend to get him. There'll be no holding off. Q. Secretary of States thank you very much. A. Thank you.

Most of the young Protestants who gathered in the side streets of the Albert Bridge Road, pelting the armoured vehicles as they went by, hadn't seen the interview. But word had quickly spread through the loyalist heartlands in the east and west of the city that the British had in some way glossed over the killing, not shown the determination to rout out those Provie rats who could murder a man in front of his bairns. The battalion on duty in Mountpottinger police station was put on fifteen minute readiness, and those making their way to the prosperous suburbs far out to the East of Belfast took long diversions, lest their cars became part of the sprouting barricades that the army crash-charged with their Saracens. Three soldiers were hurt by flying debris and the Minister's broadcast was put down as the kindling point to the brushfire that was to smoulder for more than a week in the Protestant community.

Meanwhile Harry was being prepared for the awesome moment when he would leave the woods of Surrey and fly to Belfast, on his own, leaving the back-up team that now worked with him as a.s.siduously as any heavyweight champion's.

Early on Davidson had brought him a casette recorder, complete with four ninety-minute tapes of Belfast accents. They'd been gathered by students from Queen's University who believed they were taking part in a national phonetics study, and had taken their microphones into pubs, laundrettes, working men's clubs and supermarkets. Wherever there were groups gathered and talking in the harsh, cutting accent of Belfast, so different to the slower more gentle Southern speech, tapes had attempted to pick up the voices and record them. The tapes had been pa.s.sed to the army press officer via a lecturer at the University, whose brother was on duty on the Brigade commander's staff, and then, addressed to a fict.i.tious major, flown to the Ministry of Defence. The sergeant on Davidson's staff travelled to London to collect them from the dead letter box in the postal section of the Ministry.

Night after night Harry listened to the tapes, mouthing over the phrases and trying to lock his speech into the accents he heard. After sixteen years in the army little of it seemed real. He learned again of the abbreviations, the slang, the swearing. He heard the way that years of conflict and alertness had stunted normal conversation; talk was kept to a minimum as people hurried away from shops once their business was done, and barely waited around for the quiet gossip. In the pubs he noticed that men lectured each other, seldom listening to replies, or interested in opinions different to their own. His accent would be critical to him, the sort of thing that could awake the first inkling of suspicion that might lead to the further check he knew his cover could not sustain.

His walls, almost bare when he had arrived at the big house, were soon covered by aerial photographs of Belfast. For perhaps an hour a day he was left to memorize the photographs, learn the street patterns of the geometric divisions of the artisan cottages that had been allowed to sprawl out from the centre of the city. The developers of the nineteenth century had flung together the narrow streets and their back-to-back terraces along the main roads out of the city.

Most relevant to Harry were those on either side of the city's two great ribbons of the Falls and Shankill. Pictures of astonis.h.i.+ng clarity taken from RAF cameras showed the continuous peace line, or the "interface', as the army called it, the sheets of silvery corrugated iron that separated Protestant from Catholic in the no man's land between the roads.

The photographs gave an idea of total calm, and left no impression of the hatred, terror and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity that existed on the ground. The open s.p.a.ces of bombed devastation in any other British city would have been marked down as clearance areas for urban improvement.

From the distance of Germany--where theorists worked out war games in terms of divisions, tank skirmishes, limited nuclear warheads, and the possibility of chemical agents being thrown into a critical battle--it had become difficult for Harry to realize why the twenty or so thousand British soldiers deployed in the province were not able to wind up the Provisional campaign in a matter of months. When he took in the rabbit warren revealed by the reconnaissance photographs he began to comprehend the complexity of the problem. Displayed on his walls was the perfect guerilla fighting base. A maze of escape routes, ambush positions, back entries, cul-de-sacs and, at strategic crossroads, great towering blocks of flats commanding the approaches to terrorist strongholds.

It was the adventure playground par excellence for the urban terrorist, Davidson would say, as he fired questions at Harry till he could wheel out at will all the street names they wanted from him, so many commemorating the former greatness of British arms--Balkan, Raglan, Alma, Balaclava--their locations, and the quickest way to get there. By the second week the knowledge was there and the consolidation towards perfection was under way. Davidson and his colleagues felt now that the filing system had worked well, that this man, given the impossible brief he was working under, would do as well as any.

Also in the bedroom, and facing him as he lay in bed, was the 'tribal map" of the city. That was the army phrase, and another beloved by Davidson. It took up sixteen square feet of s.p.a.ce with Catholic streets marked in a gentle gra.s.s-green, the fierce loyalist strongholds in the hard orange that symbolized their heritage, and the rest in a mustard compromise. Forget that lot, Davidson had said. That had meant something in the early days when the maps were drawn up.

'Nowadays you're in one camp or the other. There are no uncommitted. Mixed areas are three years out of date. In some it's the Prods who's run, in others, the other crowd.'

It had been so simple in Sheik Othraan, when Harry had lived amongst the Adeni Arabs. The business of survival had occupied him so fully that the sophistications they were teaching him now were unnecessary. And there he had been so far from the help of British troops that he had become totally self-reliant. In Belfast he knew he must guard against the feeling that salvation was always a street corner away. He must reject that and burrow his way into the community if he was to achieve anything.

Outside the privacy of his room Harry seldom escaped the enthusiasm of Davidson, who personally supervised every aspect of his preparation. He followed Harry in the second week down beyond the vegetable garden to the old and battered greenhouse, yards long and with its gla.s.s roofing missing, and what was left coated in the deep moss-green compost that fell from the trees. There were no nurtured tomatoes growing here, no cosseted strawberry cuttings, only a pile of sandbags at the opposite end to the door with a circular coloured target, virgin new, propped against them. Here they retaught Harry the art of pistol shooting.

'You'll have to have a gun over there--and not to wave about, Harry," Davidson laughed. "Just to have. You'd be the only physically fit male specimen in the province without one if you didn't have a firearm of some sort. It's a must, I'm afraid.'

'I didn't have one in Aden. Ridiculous, I suppose, but no one suggested it.'

He took the gun from the instructor, grey-haired, hard-faced, lined from weather, wearing a blue, all-enveloping boiler suit and unmarked beret. He went through the precautionary drills, breaking the gun, flicking the revolving chamber that was empty, greased and black. The instructor counted out the first six sh.e.l.ls.

Five times he reloaded the gun till the target was peppered and holed and askew.

'It's not the accuracy that counts so much with the first ones, sir,' said the older man, pulling off his ear m.u.f.fs, "it's the speed you get the first one or two away. If you're shooting straight enough for your opponent to hear them going by his ear that tends to be enough to get his head back a bit. But it's getting the first one away that matters. Gets the initiative for you. There aren't many men as will stand still and aim as you're pulling the trigger for the first one. Get 'em going back and then worry about the aim for the third and fourth shot. And try not to fire more than the first four straight off. It's nice to keep a couple just so that you have a chance to do something about it if things don't turn out that well. Remember with this one it's a great little gun, but it's slow to load. That's its problem. Everything else is okay.'

They went over the firing positions. Sometimes the cla.s.sic right arm extended, sideways-on stance. "That's if you've got all night, sir, and you don't think he's armed. Take your time and make sure. Doesn't happen that often." Then they worked on the standard revolver-shooting posture. Legs apart, body hunched, arms extended, meeting in front of the eye line, b.u.t.t held in both hands, the whole torso lunging at the target. "You're small yourself then, sir, and you've got your whole body thrown in with the gun to get it away straight. You won't miss often from that, and if you do you'll give "im such a h.e.l.l of a fright that he won't do much about it.' 'What's he like, Chief?" Davidson said to the instructor. 'We've had better through here, sir, and we've had worse. He's quite straight but a bit slow as of now. I wouldn't worry about that. If he has to use it he'll be faster. Everyone is when it's real.'

Harry followed Davidson out of the greenhouse and they walked together up the brick and weed path amongst the vegetables. It was mild for November; the trees, huge above them, were already without their load of leaves and above the trees the soft meandering grey clouds.

'I think it's going quite well, Harry--no, I mean very well at the moment. But I don't want to minimize anything that you're going to have to go through. It's all very well here, swotting for an exam if you like ... but the questions themselves are very tough when you get to the actual paper. Forgive the metaphor, Harry, but it's not an easy road over there, however much we do for you here. There are some things we can iron out "at this end. Accent. It's critical for immediate and long-term survival. You can spare your blushes but I think that's coming along very well. Your background knowledge is fine, detail of events, names, folklore--that is all good. But there are other more complex factors, about which we cannot really do very much, and which are just as vital.'

They stopped now some twenty-five yards from the house on the edge of the old tennis court. Davidson was looking for the words. Harry wasn't going to help him: that wasn't his style. 'Look, Harry. Just as important as the accent, and getting the background right, and knowing what the hullabaloo is about, is how you are going to stand up to this yourself. It's my job to send you in there as perfectly equipped as possible. Right? Well, the thing I cannot accurately gauge is how you'll soak up the punishment of just existing there. You could have an isolation problem ... loneliness, basically. No one to confide in, not part of a local team, completely on your own. This could be a problem. I don't know the answer to it, I don't think you're liable to suffer too greatly from it--that's my reading of your file. Sorry, but we go through it most nights with a fine blade. Unless you're aware of it, and bolt it down, there'll come a time when you'll want to tell someone about yourself, however obliquely, however much at a tangent. You'll say now, never, never in a month of whatevers, but believe me it'll happen, and you have to watch it.'

Harry searched his face, noting for the first time since he'd come to the big house the concern of the other man. Davidson went on, 'After Aden we're pretty confident in your ability to look after yourself. There's a lot in the file on that. I've no reason to disbelieve it, you've shown me none. The simple day-to-day business won't be pleasant but will be bearable. The other thing you have to consider is if you're discovered--what happens then? There is a fair chance that if they spot you that we may be getting some sort of feedback as they build up information and we'll have time to s.h.i.+ft you out in a hurry. You may notice something, a tail, a man watching you, questions being asked. Don't hang about then, just come back. What I'm getting at is difficult enough to say, but you have to face it, and you'll be better for facing it. You have to work out how you'll react if they take you alive.'

Harry grimaced weakly. The older man was fumbling about trying to say the most obvious thing of the whole operation, stumbling in his care not to scratch the varnish of morale that was coated sometimes thickly, sometimes spa.r.s.ely on all these jobs.

'I think I can help you," Harry smiled at him. "You want to know whether I've considered the question of being taken, tortured and shot. Yes. You want to know whether I'm going to tell them all about here, you and everything else. Answer, I don't know. I think not, I hope not. But I don't know. You don't know these things, and there's no absolute statement I can make that would be of any use. But I've thought of it, and I know what you'd hope from me. Whether you'll get it I just don't know.'

They began to walk again. Davidson swung his right arm round behind Harry's back and slapped his far shoulder. Like a father, thought Harry, and he's scared stiff. It's always been nice and comfortable for him, sitting at a desk packing the nameless numbered men off to heaven-knows where, but this time the jungle's been creeping a bit close.

Thank you, Harry. That was very fairly put. Very fair. There's things that have to be discussed if one's to keep these things professional. I'm grateful to you. I think your att.i.tude is about right.' Thank G.o.d for that, Harry thought, now he's done his duty. We've had our facts of life talk, ready to go out into the big nasty world, and don't put your hands up little girls" skirts. G.o.d, he's relieved he's got that little lot over.

As they came to the paint-chipped back door, Davidson started again. "You know, Harry, you haven't told us much about home, about your wife. The family. It's an aspect we haven't really had time to go in to.'

'There's nothing to worry about there. Not that I know of. I suppose you never do till it's too late to be worrying about that sort of thing. She's very level. Not complicated. That sounds pretty patronising, but I don't mean that. She's used to me going away in a hurry, at least was used to it when we were younger. It's not been so frequent over the last few years, but I think she's okay.'

'Did she know what you were doing in Aden?'

Harry said it slowly, thoughtfully, "No. Not really. I didn't have time or the opportunity to write. There had been those little sods rolling grenades into the married quarters and smuggling bombs in with the food and things like that. The families went home before I became involved in the special stuff. I didn't tell her much about it when it was all over. There wasn't much to tell, not in my terms.'

Tm sorry you had to come over here without being able to see ner.'

'Inevitable. It's the way it is. She's not very service-minded. Doesn't live off married mess nights. Doesn't really get involved with the army scene. I think I prefer it that way. She'd like me out, but I tell her earning anyone else's s.h.i.+lling than the Queen's isn't that easy these days. I think she understands that.'

'The postcards will start arriving soon. The first lot that you did. And you'd better do some more before you move on." Davidson sounded anxious, wanting to do it right, thought Harry. As if there was anything he could say about--what was the word he used?--this 'aspect" of the job. Of course she'd want to know where he was, of course if she knew she would be stunned with worry. What else could she be, and what could be done about it? Nothing.

They hesitated outside the door of the big room where the work was done.