Melanie Adams was obviously not easily intimidated. “Do you recognize me?” she asked the policeman, moving close enough to elicit a positive nod of the head. “I’m telling you that these two men attacked us. They shot my bodyguard and my assistant.” She pointed out the guilty. “And this man saved my life. Now please let him get off the ground.” Her tone suggested it wasn’t a request she expected to be denied.
“OK Sir, you can get up,” the policeman agreed somewhat grudgingly.
Tom gratefully got to his feet. Further sirens could be heard approaching. He turned to Melanie and said simply, “Thanks.” He could see the last of her strength was draining from her and tears were forming at the corners of her eyes.
“Carol wasn’t just my assistant, she was a good friend,” she explained. Then as if realising the enormity of what had transpired, she started to shake and uncontrollably sob.
CHAPTER TWO
In the smoke filled back room of an old terraced house near the centre of Belfast, four men were sat round the table. A threadbare carpet covered the floor and there were no material signs of the power the four men could wield throughout Belfast and the North. They constituted the Brigade Staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army or IRA as they are more often simply called. It was early Sunday morning and no one had had the time or inclination for breakfast. Their appetites had been ruined by the previous night’s news.
“Who the fuck’s responsible for this?” the Chief demanded, bringing his fist down hard on the large wooden kitchen table, causing coffee cups to jump from their saucers and spill their contents over the side.
It was his house where they were meeting. He wasn’t a big man physically, of only average height and with a wiry frame but he was known to be a tough bastard. It was a reputation he had been happy to cultivate over the last twenty five years. It had been a long time since anyone challenged his authority.
In the eighties and nineties there had been rivals but through a mixture of good luck and some good judgment, he had survived when many others ended up dead or in jail and almost by default he had been left in unchallenged command. Some said he had the luck of the Leprechaun and lived a charmed life. Others less politely just referred to him as a lucky bastard but not within earshot.
For sure there had been some near misses, such as in 1987 when he was due to sail from Libya on the MV Eksund carrying a huge supply of arms from Colonel Gaddafi back to Ireland. At the last minute he had stayed behind for further negotiations and he had indeed been lucky, as the Eksund was intercepted by the French Navy while in the Bay of Biscay. There had been four shipments before the Eksund, which weren’t intercepted, so he would have considered himself bloody unlucky if he had been on the ship. Once he had the power, he had no intention of letting it go and had always been ruthless in protecting his position. Now fifty five years of age, he gave no hint of relaxing his iron fist rule.
He hadn’t yet shaved this morning and a dark stubble covered his face. His equally dark hair was uncombed and scruffy. His clothes were thrown on in haphazard fashion, the green shirt not sitting comfortably on top of the blue jeans. He had large ears that would be the first feature picked up by a caricature artist and his face was lined with deep crevices. He had dark piercing eyes that conveyed menace as he stared in turn at each man, challenging them until they averted his gaze.
“This wasn’t fucking sanctioned,” the Chief continued angrily. He took a long drag on his cigarette to calm himself. He knew he smoked too much. Too often, like this morning, he relied on nicotine for sustenance.
“You know Maguire’s always been a head case,” one of the others volunteered. He was the tallest man sat at the table. “He always had too much of a taste for blood. And the lad with him was Pat Murphy’s son.”
“You’re responsible for operations,” the Chief snarled. “Did you know what they were fucking planning?”
“Course not,” he responded quickly, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut in the first place. “After Maguire’s last bank job went wrong we told him to get over there and lie low for a bit.”
“Well he made a grand job of that,” the Chief replied sarcastically. “Killed two people and tried to kidnap Melanie fucking Adams no less. Might as well have been the Queen. Now he’s frigging dead and the Brits will think we fucking planned this! We need damage limitation and we need it fucking quick or else.”
One of the men who had so far remained silent spoke. He was the only one dressed smartly, wearing a dark suit as he would be going straight to Mass once the meeting was finished. “What do we do about the Murphy boy? He had a nasty concussion but he knows enough to drop us right in the shit. If he starts talking the bloody Unionists will have a field day. It would give them the perfect excuse to break the agreement.”
“He wouldn’t talk,” the Head of Operations said with conviction.
“We don’t fucking know that,” the Chief interjected. “He knows he’s a dead man if he ever came back here so he’ll trade.”
There was silence around the table for a few seconds while each contemplated what the Chief had said. It was broken only by the sound of a baby crying in the next room.
“We need to take young Murphy out and quick,” the Chief instructed.
“They’ll have him stashed away safe. We’ll never get near him,” the final man in the room remarked. He wore horn rimmed glasses with large lenses and thick, heavy
