Solo (Aka the Cretan Lover) (v5) (7 page)

'Yes, sir, leave it to us.'

'I'll say good night then.'

The door swung behind him. Stewart said, 'Colonel Asa Morgan, Parachute Regiment. You know something, sir, I shouldn't think he'll be too pleased when he hears about this, a man like that.'

'And that's the understatement of the bloody age,' Baker said violently.

'You know him, sir?'

'Yes, Inspector. You could say that.'

Baker made straight for the porter's office, phoned Scotland Yard and asked to be put through to Assistant Commissioner Joe Harvey, Head of the Special Branch, whom, he knew, had already installed himself there for the night with a camp bed in his office.

'Harry Baker here, sir,' he said when Harvey answered. 'I'm at the mortuary. The girl whom our friend ran down in the Paddington tunnel while making his escape - her mother's just left after making a formal identification. A Mrs Helen Wood.'

'I thought the kid's name was Morgan?'

'Her mother's divorced, sir. Remarried to a vicar, of all things.' Baker hesitated. 'Look, sir, you're not going to like this one little bit. Her father...'

He hesitated again. Harvey said, 'Spit it out, Harry, for Christ's sake.'

'Is Asa Morgan.'

'There was a moment of silence then Harvey said, Dear God in heaven, that's all we needed.'

'Last I heard he was in Trucial Oman with the Special Air Service. Know what they are, George?'

Baker was standing at the window of his office. It was a little after midnight and rain drummed against the glass.

Stewart passed him a cup of tea. 'Can't say I do, sir.'

'What the military refer to as an elite unit. The army likes to keep as quiet about this one as they possibly can. Any serving soldier can volunteer. A three-year tour is the rule, I believe.'

'And what exactly do they do?'

'Anything too rough for anyone else to handle. The nearest thing to the SS we've got in the British Army. At the moment, they're in Oman on loan to the Sultan, knocking merry hell out of his Marxist rebels in the mountains. They also served in Malaya during the Emergency. That's where I first came across them.'

'I didn't know you were out there, sir.'

'On secondment. They weren't doing too well with the Chinese Communist underground so they decided to see if some real coppers could help. That's where I met Morgan.'

'What about him, sir?' Stewart asked. 'What's so special?'

'The right word you've chosen, that's for sure.' Baker filled his pipe slowly. 'He must be damn near fifty now, Asa. A Welsh miner's son from the Rhondda. I don't know what happened to him earlier in the war, but I know he was one of those poor sods they dropped in at Arnhem. He was a sergeant then. Got a field commission as a second lieutenant afterwards.'

'Then what?'

'Palestine. His first taste of urban guerrillas, he used to say. Then he was seconded to the Ulster Rifles when they went to Korea. Captured by the Chinese. They had him for a year, those bastards. I know some people thought all that brainwashing stuff they used on our lads out there had really gone to his head.'

'What do you mean, sir?'

'When he came back, he wrote this treatise about what he called a new concept of revolutionary warfare. Kept quoting Mao Tse-tung as if he was the Bible. I suppose the General Staff decided he'd either turned Communist or knew what he was talking about, so they sent him to Malaya which is where I met him. We worked together for quite a time.'

'Did you do any good?'

'We won, didn't we? The only Communist insurrection since the Second World War to be successfully crushed, was Malaya.'

'I saw him again for a while in Nicosia during the Cyprus thing when I was seconded out there on the same sort of deal. Come to think of it, he'd just got married before leaving the UK, I remember that now, so the kid's age would fit. I remember hearing he was in Aden in nineteen sixty-seven because he got a DSO for saving the necks of a bunch of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who got ambushed in the Crater district.'

'He sounds quite a man.'

'Oh, yes, you could say that. The original soldier monk. The Army's everything to him. Family and home rolled into one. I'm not surprised his wife left him.'

'I wonder what he'll do, sir, when he hears about his daughter.'

'God knows, George, but I can imagine.'

The wind rattled the window and, outside, rain drifted across the rooftops from the Thames.

3

But in Belfast that day, extraordinary things had been happening also. A day that was to go down in the history of the war in Ulster as Bloody Friday.

The first bomb exploded at two-ten p.m. at Smithfield Bus Station, the last at three-fifteen at the Cavehill Road Shopping Centre.

Twenty-two bombs in all, in locations scattered all over the city, usually where people might be expected to be present in large numbers. Protestant or Catholic, it made no difference. By the end of the day nine people were dead and a hundred and thirty injured.

At midnight, the army was still out in force. No less than twelve of the bombs which had exploded that day were in the New Lodge Road area which was the responsibility of 40 Commando, Royal Marines.

In a side street littered with glass and rubble, off the New Lodge Road itself, a dozen marines crouched against a wall opposite what had once been Cohan's Select Bar, which was burning fiercely. Two officers stood casually in the middle of the street surveying the scene. One was a Marine lieutenant. The other wore a paratrooper's red beret and a camouflage uniform, open at the neck, no badges of rank in evidence and no flak jacket.

He had the dark, ravaged face of a man who had got to know the world he inhabited too well and now only had contempt for it. A small, dark man with good shoulders, full of a restless vitality which was somehow accentuated by the bamboo swagger stick he tapped against his right knee.

'Who's the para?' one marine whispered to another.

'Runs Special Section at Staff - Colonel Morgan. A right bastard, so I've heard,' the man next to him replied.

On the flat roof of a block of flats seventy-five yards away, two men crouched by the parapet. One of them was Liam O'Hagan, at that time chief intelligence officer for the Provisional IRA in Ulster. He was examining the scene outside Cohan's Bar with the aid of a pair of Zeiss night glasses.

The young man at his side carried a conventional .303 Lee Enfield rifle of the type much favoured by both British Army and IRA snipers. It had an infrared image intensifier fitted to it so that he could search out a target in the dark.

He squinted through it now as he leaned the barrel on the parapet. 'I'll take the bloody paratrooper, first.'

'No you won't,' O'Hagan told him softly.

'And why not?'

'Because I say so.'

A Land-Rover swept round the corner below, followed by another very close behind. They had been stripped to the bare essentials so that the driver, and three soldiers who crouched in the rear of each vehicle behind him, were completely exposed. They were paratroopers, efficient, tough-looking young men in red berets and flak jackets, their Sterling submachine-guns ready
for
instant action.

'Would you look at that now. Just asking to be chopped down, the dumb bastards. You'll not be telling me I can't have a crack at one of them?'

'It would be your last,' O'Hagan told him. 'They know exactly what they're doing. They perfected that open display technique in Aden. The crew of each vehicle looks after the other. Without armour plating to get in the way they can return fire instantly.'

'Bloody SS,' the boy said.

O'Hagan chuckled. 'A hell of a thing to say to a man who once held the King's commission.'

Down below, Asa Morgan climbed in beside the driver of the first Land-Rover and the two vehicles moved away.

The Marine lieutenant gave an order and the section stood up and moved out. The street was silent now, only the flames still burning fiercely in Cohan's Bar, the occasional explosion of a bottle inside as the heat got to it.

'Mother of God, what a waste of good whiskey,' Liam O'Hagan said. 'Ah, well, the day will come, or so my Socialist Democratic comrades tell me, when not only will Ireland be free and united again, but with whiskey on tap like water in every decent man's house.'

He grinned and slapped the boy on the shoulder. 'And now, Seumas, my boy, I think we should get the hell out of here.'

Morgan stood by the desk in the OC's office at the Grand Central Hotel in Royal Avenue, the base for the city centre regiment and billet for five hundred soldiers.

He stared down at the signal in his hand blankly and the young staff officer who had brought it from HQ, shuffled uncomfortably.

'The GOC has asked me to offer his sincere condolences. A terrible business. He's authorized your onward transportation to London by first available flight.'

Morgan frowned. 'That's very kind of him. But what about Operation Motorman?'

'Your duties will be assigned to someone else, Colonel. Orders from the Minister of Defence.'

'Then I'd better start packing.'

Somewhere in the distance there was the dull crump of an explosion and the rattle of machine-gun fire. The young officer started in alarm.

'Nothing to worry about,' Asa Morgan told him. 'Belfast night sounds, that's all,' and he walked out.

Steeple Durham was in Essex, not far from the Black-water river. Marsh country, creeks, long grass stirring to change colour constantly as if brushed by an invisible presence, the gurgle of water everywhere. An alien world inhabited mainly by the birds. Curlew and redshank and brent geese coming south from Siberia to winter on the fiats.

The village was a tiny, scattered community, Saxon in origin, and the crypt of the church was that early at least, although the rest was Norman.

Francis Wood was working in the cemetery, cutting the grass verges with an old handmower, when the silver sports car drew up at the gate and Asa Morgan got out. He wore slacks, a dark blue polo-neck sweater and a brown leather bomber jacket.

'Hello, Francis,' he said.

Francis Wood looked across at the Carrera Targa. 'Still got the Porsche, I see.'

'Nothing else to spend my money on. I keep on the flat in Gresham Place. There's a basement garage there. It's very convenient.'

Rooks lifted out of the beech trees above their heads calling angrily. Wood said, 'I'm sorry, Asa. More than I could ever say.'

'When's the funeral?'

'Tomorrow afternoon. Two-thirty.'

'Are you officiating?'

'Unless you have any objection.'

'Don't be stupid, Francis. How's Helen taking it?'

'She hasn't broken down yet, if that's what you mean. If you'd like to see her, you'll find her on the dyke, painting. I'd tread very softly, if I were you.'

'Why?'

'Surely they explained the peculiar circumstances of Megan's death?'

'She was killed by a hit and run driver.'

'There was rather more to it than that, Asa.'

Morgan gazed at him blankly. 'Then you'd better tell me about it, hadn't you?'

Morgan followed the path through the lych gate, round the grey stone rectory with its pantile roof, and took the track along the dyke towards the estuary. He could see her from a long way off, seated at her easel, wearing the old military trenchcoat he'd bought the year they got married.

She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of his approach, then carried on painting. He stood behind her for a while without saying anything. It was a water-colour, of course, her favourite medium. A view of the marsh and the sea and a grey sky full of rain beyond, that was very fine indeed.

'You get better.'

'Hello, Asa.'

He sat on a grass bank to one side of her, smoking, and she kept on painting, not looking at him once.

'How was Belfast?'

'Not too good.'

'I'm glad,' she said. 'You deserve each other.'

He said calmly, 'I used to think that phrase had a particular application where we were concerned.'

'No, Asa, whatever eke I may have deserved in this life I never earned you.'

'I never pretended to be anything other than I was.'

'We went to bed together on our wedding night and I woke up in the morning with a stranger. Every rotten little war they came up with, you were the first to volunteer. Cyprus, Borneo, Aden, the Oman and now that butcher's shop across the Irish Sea.'

'That's what they pay me for. You knew what you were taking on.'

She was angry now. 'Like hell I did. Certainly not Cyprus and the things you did there for Ferguson.'

'Another kind of soldiering, hunting urban guerrillas,' he said. 'The rules are different.'

'What rules? Torture, brainwashing? Lean a man against a wall on his fingertips with a bucket on his head for twenty-four hours? Isn't that what the newspapers accused you of in Nicosia? Are you still using that one in Belfast, or have you come up with some more acceptable refinement?'

He got up, his face bleak. 'This isn't getting us anywhere.'

'Do you know why I left?' she said. 'Do you know what finally decided me? When you were in Aden. When I read in the papers how after they'd ambushed one of your patrols, you went into the Crater on foot, totally unarmed except for that damned swagger stick, and walked in front of the armoured car to draw the fire, daring the rebels to come to the window and take a shot at you. When I read that, saw the photo on every front page, I packed my bags because I knew then, Asa, that I'd been married to a walking dead man for ten years.'

Morgan said, 'I didn't kill her, Helen.'

'No, but someone very much like you did.'

It was perhaps the cruellest thing she could have said. All colour drained from his face. For a moment, she wanted to reach out, hold him in her arms again. To bind him to her as if she could contain the incredible vitality of the man, that elemental core to his being that had always eluded her. But that was foolishness of the worst order, doomed to failure as it had always failed before.

She stifled any pity she might have felt and carried on coldly, 'Has Francis told you about the funeral arrangements?'

'Yes.'

'We're hoping for a very quiet affair. There's to be no public connection with the Cohen business for security reasons, which is one good thing. If you'd like to see her, she's at an undertaker's in Grantham. Pool and Son -George Street. And now, I'd like you to go, Asa.'

He stood there for a long moment, looking at her, then walked away.

Mr Henry Pool opened an inner door and led the way through into a chapel of rest. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of flowers and taped music provided a suitable devotional background. There were half a dozen cubicles on either side and Mr Pool ushered Morgan into one of them. There were flowers everywhere and an oak coffin stood on a draped trolley, the lid partially back.

The assistant who had first greeted Morgan in the shop on his arrival, a tall, thin young man called Garvey, dressed in a dark suit and black tie, stood on the other side of the coffin.

The girl's eyes were closed, lips slightly parted, touched with colour, the face heavily made up.

Garvey said, 'The best I could do, Mr Pool.' He turned to Morgan. 'Massive cranial damage, sir. Very difficult.'

But Morgan didn't hear him for as he looked down on his daughter's face for the last time, bile rose into his mouth, threatening to choke him. He turned and lurched outside.

When he was ushered into Harry Baker's office by Stewart later that afternoon, Baker was standing at the window looking out. He turned.

'Hellow, Asa. It's been a long time.'

'Harry.'

'The good Reverend's been talking, has he?'

'That's right.'

Morgan sat down and Baker said, 'George Stewart, my inspector.'

He sat himself behind the desk. Morgan said. 'All right, Harry. What can you tell me?'

'Nothing,' Baker replied. 'Security rating, priority one. Special Branch are only supplying the muscle. DI5 is in charge. Group Four which has new powers, directly from the Prime Minister himself, to coordinate the handling of all cases of terrorism, subversion and the like.'

'Who's in charge?'

'Ferguson.'

'He would be. God in heaven, it's like coming round full circle, isn't it? When can I see him?'

Baker glanced at his watch. 'In about thirty-five minutes at his flat in Cavendish Square. He prefers to see you there.' He got to his feet. 'Come on - I'll take you myself.'

Morgan stood up. 'No need for that.'

'Orders, old son.' Baker smiled. 'And you know how Ferguson feels about people who don't carry them out.'

Brigadier Charles Ferguson was a large, kindly-looking man whose crumpled suit seemed a size too big. The only military aspect to his appearance was the Guards tie. The untidy grey hair, the double chin, the half-moon spectacles with which he was reading the
Financial Times
by the fire when Morgan and Baker were ushered in, all conspired to give him the look of some minor professor.

'Asa, my dear boy, how nice to see you.'

The voice was slightly plummy, a little over-done, rather like the ageing actor in a second-rate touring company who wants to make sure they can hear him at the back of the house.