Each of them appreciated that they were starting late, catching up in a few hours on the homework it had taken the enemy weeks, perhaps months to prepare. There was never enough time in this business for indulgence. Always running from behind, handicapped, catching up against the passing of the calendar.
The major from Intelligence Corps was able to tell Duggan little of McCoy that was not already apparent. He enjoyed his retirement, and the gratuity the army had given him.
He devoted his attention, once directed towards interrogation, wholly to his rose garden. He had been there in semi-darkness when Duggan had called the cottage in Wiltshire, and the former officer's mind was more attuned to the problems of green and black aphis-fly and its risk to his blooms than to the young Irishman he had met so many months earlier.
'He was a hard little bugger,' he remembered. 'Very cool, difficult to shake. Cut above the usual cement- between-the-ears boyos. We had more than one session.
Didn't budge him at all. Things had got pretty easy for them by then; clamps were well down on what we could do by the stage we got our hands on him. He didn't tell us anything.'
Duggan read him over the first section of the report from Northern Ireland intelligence.
'I didn't see any great political leanings. So few of them have,' said the major. 'He reacts to orders, like most of them. But he's tougher, harder. Has a lot of hate. Patient.
One of those that would lie up on the hedgerows for days at a time ready to set off a bomb under an armoured truck.
Plans well — we know that from some of his operations.
They're a hard breed down there in South Armagh, harder than anywhere else in the bloody place.'
He paused, seeking for anything else that could be of use.
'One thing. If you're looking for him in London. He had a sister, a bit older, perhaps a couple of years. Worked in a hospital, somewhere in London… '
Duggan prompted him.
'… Well, the girl went a bit haywire. McCoy thought she'd been in the wrong just by coming over. We were told that from other sources. He didn't think she should be working across in the mainland. Seemed quite a normal girl, apparently, then got mixed up with a load of hippies.
Packed her nursing in and went to live with them. He didn't approve of that. They're a very Puritan crowd, the hard-core Provos. I tried to talk about it to him, tried to shake him up a bit, get him angry. Didn't work. Water off a duck's back.'
'That could be very helpful,' said Duggan.
A courier came by car with the report, decoded, from the meeting at RAF Akrotiri. Fairclough had to come down to the lobby of the building to sign personally for the plain buff envelope that carried only his name on the outside.
He waited until he was back in his office before looking at the contents, and then read the typed sheets with attention for detail. It was very thorough, but then SIS in Nicosia were well known for their exactness.
He buzzed through to Jones's extension, received no answer, and tried the outer office. Helen had not gone home.
'He's down below. Eavesdropping. Said he won't be up for some time. He asked me to stay behind. Said there might be some typing to do, some reports to make up.'
Annoyance surged through him. His own girl had disappeared hours ago. Jones's girl was always there, never went home, watching them the whole time when they worked late, amusing herself at their expense.
'Get a message to him,' Fairclough said. 'As soon as he's taken the business down below, we need to see him — Mr Duggan and myself. Say whatever time he's through we'll be waiting.'
When he'd rung off he too phoned his home to warn of a late departure from the office. Duggan had already done the same.
'Here it goes, sir,' said the man hunched intently in the cubicle, stretching his bulk closer over the machinery.
Jones could hear the amplified beeps through his earphones. He winced at the noise.
The man reacted to it, without turning round. 'Have to have 'em up full blast. They can whisper and you've lost the lot while you're fiddling the volume.' He had switched on the tape recorder, the two wheels revolving steadily and without impatience. A third man was behind them, holding to his mouth the receiver of an open telephone to the GPO exchange nearest the embassy.
'It's McCoy,' muttered Jones as the Irish voice came through. The man behind was speaking into the phone, urgently. Jones heard the switch made to the extension inside the embassy, heard the code-word given, and the single sentence in reply before the connection was broken.
It had been shorter than the earlier call, by two to three seconds.
'Not a bloody hope,' said the man who was standing at the back, it gives them next to nothing to work on.'
'Didn't say much anyway,' Jones spat the words out.
'Two hours waiting for that. Used the code-word, though
— that's all.'
His note-pad carried a few hastily scrawled words.
'Mushroom — same as yesterday, but confirmed.'
Helen was standing by the outer door of the basement when he emerged. She said, 'Mr Duggan and Mr Fairclough want to see you. They said they'd wait till you were through with whatever… '
'Get them to my office, and quick.' And he was past her, hurrying along the corridor, not waiting for the lift, attacking the broad central staircase, three steps at a time.
From among the crowd by the mobile tea trolley Famy watched McCoy. The Irishman stood in front of the high wooden board that gave out the destinations and the times of the trains from Waterloo Station. He was wearing the right clothes — shirt correct, draped coat correct, sign correct. Nervous, that was as it should be. Not furtive, but anxious. Passengers swayed round the fair head of the Irishman as he swept the concourse, searching for recognition, and his contact. While he waited Famy reflected that this was a completely new departure for him. He had had no contact with foreign groups in the camp: older, more influential men in the movement had, but not Famy.
If it had happened as planned, Bouchi would have been the one to go forward. But Bouchi was in a morgue.
Famy drank his tea, his hands scalded through the fragile side of the plastic cup. His eyes were never far from the Irishman, but intermittently they strayed to take in the rest of the concourse, watching for any other man who might linger overlong. He took many minutes to be satisfied, then began to make his way forward.
He moved deftly, picking his way through the running commuters, avoiding confrontation. McCoy saw him some fifteen feet away, and stiffened. This time it was the Irishman whose breathing came a little faster. His contact was just a few seconds away — a slightly-built figure, with dark chocolate skin, short, well-groomed hair and brightly dressed. A stranger, something separate. McCoy watched him roll his hips and sway past the mass, saw the head turn once for reassurance and look behind, and then he was close, and pausing, and then speaking.
'The mushrooms are — ' Famy broke off. 'I think you are here to meet me?' There was a questioning in his voice.
The word they had told him to say, how stupid and idiotic it sounded, spoken by a grown man in the chaos of a railway station.
McCoy just said, 'Come on. No need to hang about.
Let's move.' Then, as an afterthought, 'You speak English, understand English?'
Famy nodded. Like all these British, they never believed anyone knew anything but themselves. McCoy was on the move, the Arab half a step behind him. The Irishman pushed a path for himself toward the steps that led down to the bus station in the street below. Almost out into the open again, he shortened his stride and said over his shoulder, 'Where are the others?' it is just me,' said Famy.
There was a tint of suspicion in the way McCoy tilted his head towards the other man. 'That's not what they told me,' he rapped out staccato. 'They said there'd be three of you. They told me I'd meet three men.' it is just me,' repeated Famy.
