Harry's Game (37 page)

The first movement. Harry reached into his anorak pocket, thrust deep with both hands to pull out the pistol. He dragged at the sharp white towelling, and ripped it from the blackness of the gun, tearing a ladder of bright cotton on the foresight. Thirty feet away Duffryn flung himself face down behind the car, his mind clouded by the sight of the gun in his enemy's hand. Frank jack‐knifed his body over the front passenger seat to open the glove compartment where the Luger lay, stretching himself over the obstacle of the head rest. Downs bent low, ducking forward towards the back of the car. Out of sight and to the rear right door beyond which his beloved Arma lite was resting.

Aimed shots, Harry boy. Don't blaze. Aim and you'll hit the buggers. He shrugged the duffel bag from his shoulder on to the paving stones, and, legs squat and apart, brought the revolver up to the aim position. Knees slightly bent, body weight forward, both arms extended and coming together with the gun at eye level. The classic killing position. Hands and gun as one complete sighting apparatus. Squeeze, don't jerk the trigger. Take it gently. The thumb of the right hand fumbled forward, rested on the safety catch in the "on' position, and eased it forward.

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In the big "V of the arms, reaching to the barrel of the revolver, was the contorted shape of Frank, still stretching for the Luger. Harry steadied as the man lurched back into the rear seat with the gun in his hand, and fired his first shot. The left side of the rear window disintegrated, and Frank jolted as the bullet hit him in the throat. The effort of getting at the Luger had denied him a clear look at Harry. Bewilderment was spread over his face as he subsided on to the back seat with a rivulet of crimson flooding down on to the collar of his shirt. Not in itself a fatal shot, but it would become one if Frank did not get immediate hospital treatment. He was out of Harry's sight now. The Englishman stood stockstill, looking for the next target. Come out, you bastards. Show yourselves. Where's the bloody man we want? Which of you has the next gun? Who shoots next? Steady, Harry boy. You're like a big lamp post up there, you berk, right in the open. Get some cover.

Harry knelt on the pavement.

'Come out with your hands above your heads. Any attempt to escape and I'll shoot.'

Good control Harry, dominate the buggers.

Downs whispered to Duffryn as they huddled on the reverse side of the car.

'Make a run down the hill. He'll not hit you with a hand gun. But for God's sake run‐‐and now!'

He pulled Duffryn past him and shoved him out into the open and away from the sanctuary of the car. Downs shouted after him, "Run, you little bastard, and weave...'

Duffryn, in deep terror, bolted from the cover. Out of control and conscious only of the empty space around him he sprinted down the street in the direction of Delrosa. His intention was to shift direction from right to left and to change his speed at the same time. The effect was to slow him down and make him the easier target. Harry fired four times. By the time he pulled the trigger for the second time he had sensed that he was after a man who had never faced this type of situation before. He heard Duffryn sob out as he ran, pleading, merging with his shout as the third shot caught him between the shoulder blades. Duffryn cannoned forward into the lamp post, leant

spread‐eagled against it for a few seconds, and then slid down to become a shapeless mass at its base. The fourth bullet, unnecessary, jolted into his sluggish body. Duffryn would live; neither of the hitting bullets had found a critical resting place.

Now that he was down and stationary the confusion ebbed, and clarity came to the young intelligence officer. The enemy would kill him. No doubt‐‐certainty. It seemed not to matter.

There was hurt but not so much as Duffryn had expected. He was puzzled he could barely picture the face of the Englishman who had shot him. The clothes he could see, and the gun 197

resting between the hands and the kick as it rocked back when Frank was shot. But there had been no face. The gun obscured it. He had not even seen his enemy. He never would now.

The moment that Duffryn had run Downs eased open the front door of the Escort, forced himself upwards into the driving seat and started the engine. The four shots that Harry had fired at the decoy‐‐the hare with the job of distracting him‐‐had given Downs sufficient time to get the car rolling in the direction of the Falls.

Harry swung the revolver round tracking his attention away from the fallen boy to the moving car. He saw Downs's head low over the wheel before it swung lower still, below the dashboard.

That was the moment he fired, knowing instinctively as he did so that he was going too high.

The bullet struck the angle of the roof of the car, exited and thudded into the wall of the house opposite. Count your shots, they always drilled that. He had done, and he was out, chamber empty, finished, exhausted. Three more cartridges in the picnic bag, down at the bottom below the plastic food box and the coffee flask. Frantically he broke the gun and pushed the used cases out so that they clattered and shone on the pavement. He slid in the three replacements, copper‐plated ends and grey snub‐nosed tips.

Downs was out in the traffic of the Falls, desperate to avoid the cars round him, but unable to escape from the conformity of the Catholic route into town. As a reflex Harry ran after him, revolver still in hand. He saw cars shy away from him as he came out into the traffic lanes, heard the grind of acceleration and scraping of brakes as men tried to put space between him and themselves". It was as though he had some plague or disease and could kill by contact. His man was edging away when Harry worked out the equation. Nine cars back was a Cortina Estate, crawling with the others and unwilling to come past the man waving his revolver. Harry ran to the

passenger door. It was unlocked. As he looked into the driver's eyes he shouted at him.

'This is loaded. You're to follow that car. The white Escort in front and follow it close. For your own safety don't bugger about. I'm army, but that won't help you if you mess me.'

Donal McKeogh, aged twenty‐seven, a plastics salesman living outside Dungannon, forty miles down the motorway, gave a mechanical, numbed response. The car trickled forward, its driver's mind still blank. Harry saw the Escort drawing away.

'Don't mess me, you clever bugger," he screamed at the face a few inches away, and to reinforce the effect of his intentions fired a single shot through the roof of the car. McKeogh surged forward towards the Springfield Road lights. The message was understood now, and would not need repeating. He might have seen me coming out into the traffic, reckoned Harry, but he's unlikely to have seen which car is following him. Little chance of that. McKeogh swerving through on the inside, crossing the double lines in the centre and drawing angry shouts from other drivers had closed the gap to five cars by the time they reached the lights.

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Two bullets remained in the Smith and Wesson.

It had taken Billy Downs little time to work out where he was going. The failure to kill the Englishman dictated the decision. He was going home. Blown, finished, out.

He was tired. Needing a corner to sleep away the stabbing pains and biting disappointments of the last few hours, he needed quiet, and silence. Away from the guns, and the firing, and the blood. Above all he wanted to get away from the noise of the weapons that blasted out close to his ears, screwing up his guts with tension, then releasing them like an unplugged bladder, flat and winded.

Away from it all, and the only place he could go was home. To his wife. To his children. To his house. To Ypres Avenue. The logic and will power and control that had caused him to be chosen for London were drained from him. No emotion, no sensitivity left. Even the slight bubbling coughs of Frank in the back seat could not disturb him.

Failure. Failure from the man considered so valuable that only the most important work was ear‐marked for him. Failure from the elitist. More important, failure against the enemy who was working to kill, eliminate, exterminate, execute him. The words kept tempo with the throbbing of the arm wound. Christ, how it hurt. A bad,

dangerous pain that dug at him, then went, but came again with renewed force, chewing at his strength and resolve.

The Armalite was still in the car, untouched under his seat, but useless now. It had no further part to play. The Armalite days were over, they didn't settle things. It was over. Concluded, done with, half a lifetime ago.

Driving was hard. He had to stretch his left arm to the gear handle every few seconds, and even the movement from the second to third aggravated the injury. He mapped out a route for himself. Down to Divis, then across the top fringe of town to Unity flats, and then on to Carlyle Circus. Could park there, on the roundabout. It was a walk to Ardoyne then, and the car and Frank would be close to the Mater, their own people's hospital. Frank would be found quickly there, and would get the treatment he needed. There were no road blocks and he moved with the traffic, Frank too low down to be seen and the bullet holes failing to draw people into involvement.

It was nine minutes to the Circus where the Crumlin and the Antrim Road come together, and where cars could be left unattended. He drove on to the space and stopped the car. To get out he had to lever himself up with his right hand, then he looked behind and into the back. Frank 199

was very white, with much of his blood pooled beside his face on the plastic seating. In his eyes was just enough light to signal recognition.

'Don't worry, Frank boy. You're close to the Mater. You'll be there in five minutes. I'm going to call them. I'm going now, and don't worry. God bless. It's all okay, you'll be safe. A few minutes, that's all.'

Frank could say nothing.

Downs left the engine running and the driver's door open as he ran away from the car. It was enough to ensure that someone would look inside. The broken window would clinch it. The Armah'te was still under the driver's seat, and the Luger lay beneath Frank's body. He ran up the Crumlin, Mater hospital on his right, huge and red and cleansed, giving way to the prison.

High walls, coils of barbed wire, reinforced stone sentry towers and, dominating it all, the great gatehouse. Downs went on by them, and past the soldiers on guard duty, and the policemen guarding the court house opposite with their flak jackets and Stirlings. None spared him a glance as he ran.

The sprint gave way to a jog, then to little more than a stumble as he neared the safety of Ardoyne at the top of the long hill. The weight of his legs seemed to pin him back as he forced his feet

forward, separating himself from the chaos and disaster behind him. His breath came in great sobs and gulps as he struggled to keep up momentum. The only demand he made of himself

now was to get to his home, to his wife, and bury himself in her warmth. The Circus and the hospital and the prison were far behind down the road when he reached the iron sheeting that divided Shankhill from Ardoyne, where he had stood the previous afternoon waiting for the lift that took him to Rennie's home. God‐rot that bastard copper and his bloody children. That was where it had all collapsed. The child in the way, smack in the way, never a clear sight at the copper, only the kid's head. Panting and wrenching for air he slowed up to walk the last few yards.

They were right. He'd lost his nerve. Billy Downs, the one selected by the Chief of Staff, had slipped it because of a child's head.

And then, this morning ... Frank with his voice shot out, and the young bugger they'd sent him, down on the pavement shredded. And you, you clever sod, you told him to run to make room for yourself, and he did, and he bloody bought it.

In the race across the city Me Keogh had several times fallen back in the traffic stream, losing completely the sight of the white Escort before spotting it again far to the front maneuvering among the lorries and vans and cars. Then Harry screamed and threatened McKeogh, and the 200

salesman would speed up. He doubted his hijacker was a member of the British army but was undecided whether he was IRA or UVF. That he would be killed if he didn't follow the bellowed instructions, he was certain. As they came out of the town and reached the circus the Escort was gone. Four major routes come together there, including the Crumlin leading up to Ardoyne and the Antrim Road running up to the nearer equally hard‐line New Lodge. New Lodge offered the quicker refuge, and Harry aimed his arm that way, as McKeogh swung round the Circus and then up the wide road. They drove a mile and fast up beyond the scorched entrance to the ghetto before Harry indicated they should turn back.

'Try the Crumlin, it has to be that way.'

'He could have got away from us and still be in this road. If he went up the Crumlin he'll be out of the city by now, up in Ligoniel, half‐way to the airport," said McKeogh.

'I know where he can be. Just drive and close your attention on that," Harry snapped back. He would be lucky now to find him again. He knew that, but didn't need any bloody driver to tell him. Neither

saw the Escort still parked among the other cars on the Circus, and they turned up the long haul of the Crumlin. Harry was forward in his seat now, peering right and left as McKeogh swept up the road. At the top he shouted. The exultation of a master of hounds throwing off the frustration of a lost quarry.

'There he is, at the tin wall.'

McKeogh slowed the car in against the near pavement.