' If we did that every time there was a threat we would become immured, sterilized. We don't bend the knee to these bastards, and we expect the support of your agencies in the United Kingdom.'
'Anything else that could help us?' said the Englishman.
He thought, the little sod, he's enjoying it. Always do when they can wrap someone else up in their interminable problems.
'Nothing more. Just keep it tight round him, our Professor. As you would say, tight as a guinea-pig's arse.'
Always the same, thought the Englishman. They revel in it — the rest of the world jumping to their bloody orders.
He too would have a destroyed evening, writing and then encoding his report, but unlike the men in London he would be scratching out of a cocktail party. The big girl from Chancery would have… made you bloody sick.
The information Duggan had requested was brought from the basement bank of teletype machines at four o'clock.
He read the paper with care, the frown deepening on his forehead as he waded through the lines of blue- punched capitals.
Timing: 15.52. hours. Friday 28/6.
Subject: McCoy, Ciaran Patrick Aloysius.
Address: Ballynafeigh fm, nr Crossmaglen, SArmagh, NI.
Age/DOB: 22 years, 14.3.54.
Security File: For last three years McCoy has been member Crossmaglen Bn PIRA… After one year was reported I/C Active Service Unit operating Cullyhanna area. Believed expert rifle shot, natural leader. Arrested Sec Forces 8/12/74. ICO and detention order. Held HM Prison Maze where became PIRA cage commandant. Freed on Sec of State's instruction 3/7/75. Since then active in political work and would return again to violence should situation deteriorate. Last is Mil Intelligence and SB assessment. Believed responsible for shootings incidents in SArmagh area, specifically RUC patrol car 17/8/74 and sniping of paratroop killed 10/10/74. Pix and Prints following.
Background: Undermentioned is person-to-person confidential from Mil Intelligence HQ 3BDE, Lurgan, NI and not for release outside your department.
We astonished at release of McCoy and protests were via Commander Land Forces to appropriate political offices. Reply was that as McCoy only detainee from that area and response to local PIRA required in existing cease-fire situation he was being freed. Exclaimer. Regarded as of high calibre and exception to colleagues in that has good educational standards with full secondary education from Armagh City. Deceptive in manner and could pass well in all company.
Re your specific requests:
1. Last seen in area approx 10/12. days ago.
2. No known visits to London, but sister once worked St Mary's Hosp, Paddington London
NW
3. Would have considerable disguise capabilities witness long period before pick-up.
4. Last interrogated by Maj Ian Stewart, Int Corps Rtd, address obtainable Ministry of Defence (Personnel).
Upsummer: Hard boy. Bestest luck.
Duggan photocopied the paper three times. One for Jones, one for Fairclough, one for his departmental head.
The original he put into the new folder, marked with McCoy's name on the outside, and which up till then had contained only the transcripts of the phone calls to the embassy.
He read the information again, interpreting the officialese of the message. The implications were fearsome.
A top man, in a top-grade Provisional set-up, leader of an active service unit, arrested, served with an Interim Custody Order, then a detention order, and then released by some bloody politician in order to keep a cease-fire going when everyone knew the bastards were on their knees and suing for peace. Responsible for at least two deaths. Poor devils, gunned down, and not even the satisfaction of having their man spend the rest of his natural behind bars.
Not even the General able to get the decision reversed.
Made you want to pack it in.
So what was little McCoy doing running round London, calling up embassies, missing his links? Duggan hurried to the lift and the floor below where Jones had his office.
FIVE
Sokarev's wife had noted the preoccupation that gripped her husband. There was his listlessness, the unwillingness to contribute anything in conversation, the desire just to slump in his chair, the books at his desk unopened. There were often times when his work had seemed to force him down, literally bowing his shoulders with the pressures of the speed and intricacy and finesse required for the study of nuclear action.
On previous occasions the signs of extreme exhaustion and depression had been well telegraphed, and they had been able to discuss them, thereby lessening the load. But not this time. Her gentle feelers for information were shrugged off, and she was left feeling frustrated and inadequate. She hoped that the arrival later in the day of
'the children', as she still called them, would be enough to rouse him.
Sokarev himself thought continuously of what the security men had told him, wondered why they had found it necessary to take him into their confidence, regretted that they had. He was not used to fear, and could not remember a similar sensation of such intensity. Like an infant afraid to be left alone in an unfamiliar room, he had come in the last twenty-four hours to dread his London visit.
When, just before nightfall succeeded dusk, his wife suggested they should take a walk together he shook his head, heavy with the negative. He heard her sigh her disappointment as she fidgeted with a duster behind his chair.
'We've time,' she said, 'before the children come. We could go down to the new swimming pool, just a few hundred metres, a few minutes. We'll be back well before them.'
He shook his head again, and she left it.
He sat alone for a few more minutes, then got up abruptly.
'I'd like a walk,' he said quietly. 'I'd like to go on my own. I won't be long.' Her face clouded, and he watched the pain he had inflicted. Her jaw seemed to tighten, her eyes to close a little. 'There is a problem. I have to think about it. It has no place for you. Not long-term. I'll resolve it very soon. I'm sorry.'
Out on the street there was a warm, dry heat. The children were on the pavement playing football, but they made way for the professor. Hot, spiced smells came to him from the kitchens as he walked mingling with the scents from the flowering trees that had been planted when the flats were built. There was noise: high above him, a couple shouted abuse at each other, fiercely combative.
It was difficult for him to concentrate on the question that dominated his thinking — too many extraneous sights and senses forced their way over him. He walked little more than half a mile, then turned and came back slowly.
When he had reached the entrance on the ground floor that led to his apartment he saw the Mini his son drove parked outside, and he went on round to the back of the building where the garages were. He unlocked the door of his own garage, and then the door of the car, on the passenger side, and slid on to the seat.
His hand wavered a moment before he opened the glove compartment. Underneath the duster, where it
