Confessor (12 page)

He went on, carefully enumerating the weak points—“the weaknesses of our case, and how they will be dealt with,” as he put it.

First, there was the time frame. Officialdom, to save their scented backsides, had openly divorced themselves from the whole business. This called, Gus maintained, for a defense that showed everything happened so quickly and in such a potentially dangerous order that there was no time for the niceties of establishing a political chain of command. He brought on Tony Worboys, who carried with him a series of tape recordings: conversations filched from telephones and snatched from the air.

Herbie listened to these with a growing interest, for all four members of the Active-Service Unit were heard planning the monstrous act, their voices captured, clear and unmistakable, by every kind of microphone that existed in the business. There was even a last-minute telephone conversation between Mary Frances Duggan and her Battalion Commander, who was giving her the “go.”

“It’s too fast,” she had remonstrated.

“It’s the only chance you’ll have to get
Lancer
in your sights before the summer. I need this thing doing now, so do it and get the bloody thing over with.”

Suddenly, as he listened, Herbie recalled from the trivia stored in his mind that
their
crypto—
Lancer
—for the target—
Rich and Famous
, as they had nominated—was the crypto in use by the United States Secret Service for John F. Kennedy on the day of
his
assassination.

It was also clear that the argument was going to be that Tony had discovered the operation a bare twenty-four hours before the attempted arrests. With amazement he realized that Tony’s original telephone call, plus his own trip to Dublin, was being cut from the history, which had been skillfully rewritten.

Gus next called in the watchers, alerted by himself, who had latched on to the four identified members of the Provos’ unit. Gus was not just sorting things out, but making himself the major actor. The watchers, one by one, stood up to be counted, giving evidence on the way they had identified and followed the Gang of Four. The exception was the team—a man and woman—who had lost Mary Frances Duggan for several hours.

“This can now happily be accounted for. Cyril?” Gus said, speaking to Apted, who climbed onto the platform like a phantom and asked if the projectionist was ready.

That very afternoon, he told them, he had gone to see some of his friends in their sister service. He had remembered that he had knowledge of a surveillance operation they were running on a house in Camberwell. The house was a suspected Provo safe house, and there was a tiny piece of evidence that could mean explosives and other bomb-making items were being stored there.

His friends in the surveillance operation had been most cooperative and had provided him with some photographs, and there, suddenly, like a surprise witness at a murder trial, was a series of grainy black and whites that showed Mary Frances Duggan arriving at the Camberwell house. Then a tape captured by a stand-off mike that caught a conversation from vibrations from one of the windows.

The tape told them little, but that little could easily be worked up into damning evidence. Then there were more pictures, time-and date-stamped like the previous ones, of Mary Frances Duggan leaving the house.

“I am pleased to tell you,” Gus continued, almost pushing Apted out of the way, “that the Camberwell house was raided earlier this evening by Special Branch
with an SAS backup team
.”

This was considered prudent when you bore in mind the events of the morning. Five people had been arrested and a considerable amount of explosives, together with all the other paraphernalia of bomb makers, had been removed. The most interesting discovery had been a bomb in actual preparation, with an electronic remote control made from a converted walkie-talkie.

This, Gus claimed, was the bomb that would have been used on this very day to murder. He purposely did not use the true identity of the royal target, but gave the two cryptos: the Provos’—
Lancer
—and theirs—
Rich and Famous
.

Finally, he switched to the events of the previous morning, for it was now almost one-thirty in the morning of day two. He described how he, as duty officer, had received the news of the imminent threat, together with the evidence that the assassination team was holed up in what they truly thought was a bomb factory in the middle of the West End of London.

“I shall simply tell the truth,” he lied. “How a decision was made between myself, people on a committee within my organization, and a senior police officer at Scotland Yard.” He then played some further evidence tapes that were very real and included conversations among the Gang of Four in their hideout in the warren of streets running between Regent and Oxford streets.

Herbie had already heard those tapes, and the evidence was damning if only because the four Provos had said, clearly and unequivocally, that their operation was on for that day. No Coroner or—come to that—judicial inquiry could possibly have a problem with those particular conversations.

The Commander from Scotland Yard went up at Gus’s bidding and did his thing, saying that he had asked for, and got, a small SAS detachment from Hereford. It was his belief that the situation was, as he put it, “exceptionally dangerous and could possibly become a siege, which, in turn, could become a suicide bombing which might devastate a whole section of the West End. At that point, we all believed that considerable amounts of explosive were in
that
house. Therefore, I felt a fast-action professional team was essential.”

Gus did some cross-examination, which Kruger remembered as being tremendously professional.

“Are you aware of the rules of engagement regarding members of Her Majesty’s Armed Services and terrorist groups?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you seek out someone with the necessary authority? It appears that you, together with certain other officers, just went out of your way to exacerbate an already dangerous situation.” The “certain other officers” were, of course, members of the intelligence community, but in those days nobody ever said “Secret Intelligence Service” aloud. There
was
an unspoken arrangement with the Security Service to the effect that, should an SIS officer have to appear incognito as a trial witness, the SIS brother or sister would be referred to as a member of the Security
Forces
—doublespeak-spookspeak.

“It was my opinion, and my judgment”—the Commander was very smooth—“that a token force of SAS soldiers would be helpful in making certain the arrests took place with minimum danger to the general public.”

“In the final analysis, the danger was to the four poor young men and women within the house,” Gus drawled like a barrister making a big point.

“Because of what happened I am now doubly sure that I did the right thing.” Confident and relaxed. Absolutely convinced of being in the right.

The SAS Colonel was on next, and he was magnificent. Rules of engagement tripped off his tongue like deadly poetry. He was even able to justify their presence as “a perfectly normal operational requirement.” Adding, “We did not expect to be forced to resort to violence.”

Gus played it this way and that, then brought in two P4 lawyers—P4 then being the branch of secret affairs that provided necessary professionals like doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs and compliant senior fire officers (when arson became a dangerous subject).

This pair laid into the policeman and the soldier, pulling tricks that they would never have got away with in court.

Then, just about everyone had a go at the four SAS men who had done the shooting, and it became obvious that they had not been chosen for their warlike skills alone. Each of them was bland, intelligent and, seemingly, very honest.

Last, about four in the morning, they played the video. Again and again the Gang of Four walked from their front door as the hooded pair of soldiers appeared from the end of the cul-de-sac and the words “Police! Stop! Stand still!” echoed from noises off. Then the moves, and the word
Bailiff
.

Gus froze the frame to ask who had said “Bailiff” and what it had meant. The Commander and the Colonel both owned to what was basically an order to use force.

“Why?”

“You have eyes, sir, haven’t you?” For the first time the Colonel sounded sharp and piqued.

So, again and again they watched the grisly ballet. Then, to Herbie’s immense surprise, after the SAS had disappeared as if by a warlock’s spell, the cameras moved in close on each of the bodies. Two police officers, with an ambulance man in tow, turned over the corpse of Mary Frances Duggan and there, for everyone to see, was a 9mm Browning in her hand, slipping from the fingers onto the pavement. So with Patrick Sean Glass, only he had a small frag grenade.

The entire disclosure worried Big Herbie at the time, but everyone appeared to think this was exactly what had happened, and you could not see the join on the tape.

Now, going through the papers in Gus’s study by the glow from a green-shaded student lamp, it worried him even more because
these
papers contained a lot more detail. Payments made to certain specialists; logs that told of videotape being reprocessed and copied over a period of four and a half hours. Audio laboratory logs. Small ex gratia payments to a pair of actors. All unexplained, leaving the odor of sulfur in his mind.

Twice, as he sat in the locked study, Bitsy Williams knocked on the door. “There’s food, Herbie. Come and have something to eat.” To which he replied, “Later. Not now. Busy now.”

He remembered how things had gone in the Coroner’s Court the next afternoon. How Gus, with his law degree (which he had never used), held forth. How the SAS boys, Tony Worboys and a couple of others gave evidence from behind screens with electronic voice-altering throat mikes. The faces of the four solicitors hurriedly engaged by the families of the four victims, as they took in the magnitude of the planned crime, and the honest, straightforward and legal methods used to entrap the team.

He heard again one of the SAS men responding to the Coroner himself. “Sir, it is not an easy thing to do, kill another person close up. But we were cleared to take action and, as you’ve seen, we were in grave danger.”

While the Provos pledged revenge, and a small demonstration took place outside the court, the Coroner brought in the inescapable verdict: “Lawful Killing,” for all four victims.

The incident remained big for some time, and security was noticeably tighter around
Rich and Famous
, or
Lancer
, depending where you were standing. Two books sold well: one from the Provos’ angle by a Jesuit priest no less; the other by an in-depth news team from one of the Sunday heavies. Within the Office, the entire thing was noted as Gus Keene’s triumph. Some said he was given a medal, and now Herbie saw from the documents that this was indeed the case. Why, though, he wondered? Why did Gus have what was virtually incriminating evidence in
his
files when the stuff should have been shredded long ago? He also recalled that it was only a year later that he resigned, for the second time, intent upon giving the marriage to Martha one last try. In the end, the Office helped put paid to that as well.

It was impossible to sleep, so eventually Herb went off to the kitchen and took a plate of Bitsy’s sandwiches from the fridge, made coffee and carried the plate and mug back to Gus’s study.

Gus himself seemed to be sitting across the desk from him, nodding and quietly telling him to get on with it. Herbie shuddered, for he could hear, in his mind, Gus’s voice: “You’re on the right track, old Herb.”

In his time, Gus had been almost paranoid about security, and
Cataract
was something nobody talked about once it was over. Yet here was the entire file, open and unashamed on Gus’s desk.

At the time, he recalled being very worried that Gus—a Confessor by trade—had been called in for damage control, which he did wonderfully. Why Gus? He asked for the umpteenth time. Who called him in?

He flicked through the pages and, finally, there it was, the transcript of a telephone call—kept, no doubt, by Gus himself—stapled to a memo, signed and sealed, giving the job to Willis Maitland-Wood, First Deputy Chief. The old Chief’s signature was scrawled at the bottom, with an instruction, direct from COBRA, saying use the very best man. Gus was obviously thought to be the best man, for the transcript of the telephone call showed Maitland-Wood calling Gus at Warminster and saying, “Gus, I want you at Head Office faster than light. There’s something we need to take care of.”

“Can’t it wait till tomorrow, Willis?”

“Now, Gus. They need you now. Christ, man, I’ve got COBRA waiting on the other line.”

“Give me a clue.” Herbie could just hear Gus lazily asking for the clue.

Then, the bit that really shook Herbie. No crypto, no telephone spookspeak. Maitland-Wood just came right out with it. “SAS blew away four bad guys on Herbie’s watch—Herbie and young Worboys. Got to be put right, because nobody on the inside is going to take a fall. I have to fly out within the hour.”

Herbie leaned back, one huge hand clamped to his temples. He gave an enormous sigh, wondering if the Provos, or even the splinter group FFIRA, would come back and snuff Gus after all this time? The car bomb was very professional, though he had a solid intuition that this was not the work of the Irish extremists.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the silent phone was blinking its little red light.

He picked it up. “Yes?”

“Thought you might be working, old Herb,” Worboys said from the distant end. “You always were a night bird. Just wanted to tell you that I’ve got a watcher’s van for Monday—Gus’s funeral. The lot—son et lumière and a beautiful parking place. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Herb sighed again, gathered up the
Cataract
file and dumped it into the small safe. Of one thing he was certain: he had one hell of a lot of digging to do in his travels backwards and forwards through Gus Keene’s life.