be. He watched Healy with contempt. There was no way he was going to give his life for that man.
Tommy was suspicious of Healy for no other reason than he was not a member. Tommy didn’t have a friend in the world who was not a militant pro-Republican, a member of the Irish Republican Army. Although Healy was Irish Catholic, he was just a hired hand and that made him untrustworthy. If he cared about the cause he would not be taking money. Healy could have been forced to do the job, but experience had taught the organisation that it was far more effective to steal the money to pay for the professional than to steal the professional and threaten him to work for his life. They needed Healy, reputed to be the best in the whole of Ireland at what he did, to be on best form for this job.
Tommy was right to think Healy didn’t give a damn about the cause, but Healy had no love for the Brits either, not after what they had done to him. He had only one true lifelong love - solving puzzles. The more complicated they were the greater the challenge and the purer the high if he succeeded in cracking them. He should have been born fifty years earlier. He would have given anything to be a code breaker in the Second World War. He knew everything there was to know about Ultra and the breaking of the German, Japanese and Italian codes. Mathematics and psychology had been the primary skills then; now it was as much about knowing computers and electronics. But Healy had made sure he had kept up to date in that field too. If he had not screwed up all those years ago he could have ended up working for MI6 or possibly even the CIA. But now those ambitions were dead and buried for ever.The irony was that his childhood dream could now be fulfilled only by working for the other side, thugs and morons like these.Terrorists. He had worked for several organisations over the years: Libyans, Palestinians and Iranians. They were pretty much all the same as far as he was concerned. Some were just a bit more insane than others. The jobs were nothing to brag about but at least he made a living doing what he enjoyed and that, surely, was the important thing.
Tommy listened to the unidentifiable sounds coming over the speakers and watched Healy as he concentrated on every transmission and scribbled notes into a large notebook.‘Why do you listen to that if you can’t understand a word?’ he asked.
‘I may not be able to understand a single word, but there’s a lot of information to be gained,’ Healy replied as if talking to a child.
‘Like what?’ Tommy asked, lighting a new cigarette with his old one.
Healy would normally prefer not to get into a conversation with any person who had a single digit IQ, as this one obviously had, but when it came to his work he could talk about it to anyone who would listen. ‘Well, there’s tone for one,’ he said. ‘You can hear urgency, or lack of it. You can sometimes tell if it’s just casual communication or if it’s important, such as an operation. And you can tell, more or less, how many people are on the network. That’s quite a lot of useful information in the right hands.’
Tommy stared at Healy unconvinced. ‘Sounds like a load of bollocks to me.’
‘Which is why you only get to operate that nice big wheel in the front of the van and I get to play with all these little ones in the back,’ Healy said with a genuine enough smile. Healy had long since got used to spending his time with thickoes; wherever he worked he always had a driver or bodyguard and it was too much to expect anyone from that stratum to have any intelligence.
Healy first arrived on the scene in the seventies, a cocky, arrogant genius, bragging he could crack any code if he was given the time and equipment and volunteering his services to the IRA. That was in the days before secure scrambled communications. The IRA was willing to take a chance on him and gave him the money, the time and the place in which to prove himself: Belfast. He was as good as his word and within a year had successfully cracked the codes used by Britain’s most elite Northern Ireland undercover group, compiling lists of vehicles, number plates, photographs of operatives and the codes for every important location in the province. In the back of Healy’s mind he knew there was a good chance he would get caught eventually. In fact, as the prison psychologist said, from the start he really wanted to be caught because he craved the acknowledgement of his genius. After he was arrested he was all too ready to crow to the British, offering to show them how to prevent against any such future technical invasions. Didn’t the Americans employ German geniuses after the Second World War? How naive he was to think they would forgive him, let alone ask him to join them. He never got over the shock of the public trial and the ten- year jail sentence. He was released after six years, a marked man and with any hope of a career in Western intelligence in tatters. If there was any solace he might gain from his circumstances, it was that it was due to his success in breaking the British military codes that the new secure communication system he was listening to at that moment had been introduced.
Another garbled transmission came from the speakers. Healy frowned as he concentrated on it. Then he smiled, nodding in recognition and self-satisfaction as he jotted something down on a piece of paper. Tommy leaned over to read what Healy had written.
‘Mary? Who’s Mary?’
‘It’s a voice,’ Healy replied. ‘Listen to the transmissions long enough and you start to recognise different voices.That was Mary. I’m certain it was. She’s been with the detachment almost a year now.’
‘How do you know her name is Mary?’ asked Tommy, looking confused.
‘I don’t.That’s just the name I’ve given her.’ Healy adjusted some controls on his panel. ‘And by the signal strength I’d say she was getting closer.’ He then checked his watch, curious about something. ‘There’s one element missing,’ he said, more to himself.
‘What’s that?’ asked Tommy.
‘I’d have thought it would be up by now. A bit slow. Which is good, I suppose.’
‘What’s slow?’ Tommy asked, a little annoyed at being ignored.
Healy looked at him as if just remembering Tommy was in the van with him. ‘The helicopter,’ he said.
Stratton drove at speed along the airbase access road and arrived at a collection of long, narrow single- storey buildings on the edge of an airfield. He screeched to a halt, drawing the attention of the handful of mechanics and service engineers lounging outside on a smoke break. He climbed out with his bag and rifle, passed the servicemen, who watched him curiously, and headed towards a Gazelle jet helicopter parked alone on the grass fifty yards away. There was no sign of the pilot or ground crew.
He opened the passenger door of the sleek four-seater, dumped his bag on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and looked toward the Air Corps buildings. The pilot casually stepped out, wearing the standard green one- piece flying suit, a helmet and pulling on his tight leather gloves. Stratton took off his jacket, removed a shoulder holster from his bag and pulled it on, clipping the tail to his trouser belt. The pilot did not acknowledge Stratton as he walked around the other side of the cab and climbed in with the urgency of someone preparing for a Sunday drive. Stratton had a problem with him already.
‘Do you know what an op Kuttuc is?’ Stratton asked.
The pilot was a young, cocky lieutenant fly-boy with a condescending smile he reserved specifically for those he considered to be of an inferior class. He had placed Stratton in that category the moment he laid eyes on him.
‘Yes,’ he replied. It was one of those long, irritating ‘yeses’ that went up at the end, suggesting the question was childishly obvious. ‘One of your chaps has been kidnapped,’ he said as if he had been watching too many old Brit war movies. Stratton watched him climb in.The man was digging his own grave, completely ignorant of it.
Stratton checked his pistol and slid it into his holster. ‘This kite should’ve been turning over by the time I got here.’
‘I was here as soon as I got the word,’ the pilot replied tiredly.
‘You’re the standby pilot, right?’ Stratton asked.
‘Obviously,’ the pilot said as he flicked switches and pushed buttons in the order on his checklist.
‘That means you standby in your kit, helmet at your side, and when the bell goes you sprint like the Battle of Britain.’
The pilot continued checking his instruments, ignoring Stratton. Stratton reached over and took his arm in a vice grip. ‘Do you understand?’
The pilot stopped and looked at him, quite horrified by the physical contact.
‘Now get this fucking thing airborne,’ Stratton continued, releasing the pilot’s arm to pull on his heavy jacket.
The pilot continued to check off instruments, glancing at Stratton, unbalanced by his attitude. He was certain Stratton was not an officer and no matter what the urgency he had no right to talk to him in that manner, let alone
