The Glory Boys (25 page)

She had chosen well, he could see that.

McCoy reached up to the top of the wall and levered himself a foot or so off the ground. It was perfect. The wrong end of a cemetery where the trees grew close together, where the leaf-mould and grass-cuttings had been piled against the bricks. He slipped over, landing easily on the piled vegetation. He put his right arm back over the wall, grabbed Norah's wrist and heaved her over the barrier. They crouched behind one of the big yews, the necessary precaution till he was certain they had not been observed.

'I want somewhere that I can lie up, somewhere safe,'

he whispered to her.

'Just out of the cemetery there's a building site they've cleared. There's nothing there now. Just scrub and that.

What are you going to do then?'

'Get me there, I'll tell you then.'

They walked along the narrow tarmac path between the disordered rows of stones, past the jam jars that held single wilting tulip-stems, skirted the fresh rectangular shapes of earth, and came to the gate.

'Where to from here?' McCoy said.

'Across the road, and about a hundred yards down, that's where the site is.'

'But there's a bloody great fence round it. I can't climb that on the main road.'

'Down at the side, the second turning, no one'll see you there.' She was involved now, part of his team. The moment of crisis had gone. She would do as he told her, he had no doubt of that. Usually did, the little bitches. He sensed he now had in his possession something quite priceless. He had a courier. Someone who could run for him, who could be his eyes and ears. God knows why they want to dip their fingers in, he thought, but they do. Don't think it out, too stupid to do the addition and multiplication.

There was traffic on the road, but no policemen. He had his arm round her shoulder as they waited for an opening and then crossed. They fitted a conventional image, boy and girl, out for a walk, fond of each other, and very distant from the picture any motorist who saw them might have had of a hunted killer of the Provisional IRA. They walked down the side road, not fast, taking their time.

McCoy spoke to her closely, and anyone who saw them would have imagined it was endearments he was whispering against her hair.

'Listen carefully,' he said. 'Do exactly as I say. Near the station there's a tea bar, on the far side of the road, toward the river. You'll find a man in there, a darkie. Taller than me, no moustache or anything, short hair. He'll have a grip-bag with him. Just say the word "Mushroom" to him, and tell him to follow you. Take him through to here, not on the big roads, down the side streets and get him here.

And tell him to go carefully.'

is he the other one they're looking for?' Norah said it with excitement pitched in her voice.

'I've told you. You don't need to know. Just go and do it, girl. The way I've told you. If he's not there, wait for him. At least an hour. But get him here.'

He scanned each end of the road. Empty, deserted. Then he was on the buckling, bending wire, monkey-like, before he tumbled down on the far side and was gone. She heard his running feet crashing in the undergrowth, and after that nothing.

From his seat in the cinema Famy heard the sirens in the street outside. He remembered the urgency of the instructions over the telephone to set distance between himself and the station, and he huddled in the darkened seat as the raucous noise blotted out the sound track of the film whenever the police cars passed outside the cinema. He bit at his fingernails as he watched the Technicolor heroics that filled the screen. The images meant nothing, failed even to divert his attention from the problem that now preyed upon him. It was the immediate problem of survival. The bag was there against his legs, reassuring in its bulk, and he quietly slid open the zip and felt with his hands for the cotton surface under which were the awkward, angled shapes of the grenades. He lifted one out, small, the size of a shrunken apple, and put it in the pocket of his coat. The rifles were too large, too cumbersome, but one grenade would be sufficient to stave off immediate pursuit. It could be concealed, not like the guns, and it gave him the confidence that he would need to walk out into the unknown of the middle-light of the evening.

Sometimes his thoughts wandered back to his friends, the men he had hardly known, but whose companionship in the short-term he had valued, to Dani and Bouchi. Their laughter on the plane out of Beirut, the banter about Nablus and the olive groves as they had driven across France, and the fear that had bound them on the route to Boulogne. He recaptured again, so that it overwhelmed him and blotted out the meaningless antics of the celluloid pictures, the blood of his friends that had spattered and soaked the seats of the car. He could still hear Dani's words. Their exhortation before the colour in his soft brown cheeks had faded to the greyness that preceded death. The words knifed through his subconscious, controlling him, providing the momentum he needed to go on.

He left the cinema before the completion of the second film. He'd already seen well into the second reel, and the story had still not attracted him. But his motives were clear. He wanted to be away before the big rush to the doors, and the exit he chose was at the side. It was simple reasoning that if a hunt for him were in progress that the entrance hall of a cinema would be an obvious place for them to look. With the bag in his hand and the grenade in his pocket, he slid back the iron bar that kept the fire door shut. He went unnoticed and without impediment.

It took him many minutes to make his way to the rendezvous. He walked with a shuffling, almost sideways gait along the front of the shop windows, ready to spin his head toward the loaded shelves of merchandise on the occasions that the squad cars cruised past. There were men on foot too, and to avoid them he twice entered shops, mingling in front of the counters till he had seen through the plate-glass windows that the danger had passed. With each step he took there was greater confidence. They're stumbling about, he told himself, uncertain what and whom they seek, thrashing in the dark.

In the cafe he took a seat at the back, again sideways on to the door, so he could observe the comings and goings and at the same time swing his head away should he wish to obscure his face.

He saw the girl come in, noticed the nervous, switching eyes that took in the customers sitting at the tables and on the stools at the counter. The look of grateful recognition she gave him stiffened Famy and his hand moved instinctively to the pocket that held the grenade, his fingers seeking out the circular pin that was the safety device of the V40. He stared at her, hand clasped round the metal-work as she came close, eyes riveted to her pale, pretty face.

She bent down toward him as she reached the table. She was trembling, and when her lips moved, at first there was no sound.

'Mushroom.' She blurted it. 'He said you were to follow me. I'll take you to him.'

And Famy understood. Why had he been so anxious to split up that afternoon? Needed a girl. Not a woman who would reason things out, but a girl who would follow blindly where he led. Dangerous, he thought, but probably better than someone older. As she turned back toward the door he saw the hard-etched creases in her blouse. Not bad, McCoy, he thought. A roll in the grass and you have the loyalty of the whore.

She took him through the back streets of the old town, climbing the hill over which sprawled the fashionable residential homes of the previous century. Past almshouses and churches, past homes that had been neatly outlined in white gloss, past blocks of flats where those for sale were advertised as 'luxury' on the estate agents' boards. Sometimes the streets were narrow, in other places they widened out, but none of them was busy with cars. There were children playing their games with balls, men walking in company to the pubs, women hurrying home with their baskets of late shopping, and no policemen. Famy held the girl's hand, and she let it rest there, inanimate and without feeling. But it was better that way, more secure. They went mostly in silence, Famy occasionally speaking, but meeting only non-committal response.

In front of them was a wall and daubed on it the words

'Park Hill was Home to Me' - a relic of the time there had been a great house set in its own grounds on the site, and when there had been protests before the demolition men came. Now there was only a tangle of bushes, cut-down trees and neglected shrubs.

'That's where he is,' she said. Her voice was detached -

as if she realized, thought Famy, that her usefulness was expended, and was resigned to it.

it's time I was getting home, my Mam'll be spare. Going out of her mind.'

'Where do you live?' asked Famy.

'Chisholm Road. Just round the corner. At twenty-five.'

'I hope we see you again. You have been very kind to m e . . . '

She was away running into the night. He was different to the other one. More gentle, wouldn't have hurt her like that Irishman. But probably wouldn't have done anything, sat there all afternoon pulling grass up. It still ached where McCoy had been, and there was a bruised, raw feeling at the top of her thighs. And he hadn't used anything, the bastard.

THIRTEEN

Even as security-conscious a building as Scotland Yard is susceptible to leakage of classified information. In the drably-painted ground-floor press room the crime correspondent of the
Express
heard the first whispers of the mounting of a major security operation to protect an unnamed Israeli VIP.

The anonymity of the man being guarded was broken by the paper's science correspondent, who had received an invitation seventeen days earlier to attend a lecture by Professor David Sokarev of the Dimona Nuclear Research Establishment. His casual call to the Israeli embassy's press spokesman, and the flat refusal to his request for information on the professor's itinerary, served to confirm that Sokarev was the man being subjected to intensive security.

The Brenards' report of armed Special Branch men at the airport to guard an El Al passenger added further colour to the story. But it was the chief sub-editor's intuition that turned the story into the front-page splash. At his desk where he collected the various typewritten sheets and the agency copy, he began to shuffle together what had up to then figured as quite separate material. He had in his hand the stories now catchlined 'Sokarev' along with those on which he had scrawled 'Manhunt'. And it made good sense. Heavy protection of an Israeli nuclear scientist married with a vast police dragnet for a known Provisional IRA killer, travelling in the company of an unidentified Arab.

By the time the third edition was on its way by van to various rail terminals the headline 'Arab Death Threat to Israeli H-Bomb Scientist' blasted its way across the top of the front page.

The Prime Minister's anger when he read the story before retiring to his Downing Street flat for the night was stonily rejected by the Director General.

'No leaks from this department,' was his riposte. It was his policy to strike an independent posture for the Security Services, and one thing with which he was traditionally quick to show intolerance was ill-informed criticism of its work.

'From what you've told me, sir' - the deference was purely formal - 'I think you'll find it straightforward reporting of a series of facts visible to any trained eye.'

That went some way to calming the Head of Government. 'But it doesn't help the position,' the Prime Minister said.

'There's not very much that does help the situation in times like this.'

'What I mean,' said the Prime Minister, 'is that if anything happens to this man Sokarev after this, we are all going to look almighty stupid.'

'That's a fair point, sir,' the Director General replied.

Not a great deal to say after that. Only the obvious, that they had problems, that they were coming from behind, that there was huge ground to be made up. The silences grew longer, till the conversation reached its natural end.

He wished the Prime Minister a good night's sleep.

So they'd the wind up in Whitehall. It always amused him. Meant the telephone would be going every five minutes in the morning. Politicians crawling in on the act, and nothing they could do about it. For that matter, he thought, not much any of us can do. He checked with Jones, still in his office too, but with no "new developments to report from Richmond. It would be a long day tomorrow, long and trying.

Before they had set out into the darkened park there had been fierce words between Famy and McCoy. Ostensibly it was over the question of whether or not they should leave the seeming security of the undergrowth at Park Hill, but in effect it concerned the leadership of the two-man team. Famy had wanted to stay put, and was impressed by the semi-concealed basement of an old, long-gone building that McCoy had been hiding in while waiting for the Arab's arrival. The Irishman was for getting on the move immediately.

'We have to sleep somewhere tonight. We have to have some rest, and this is as good a place as any,' Famy had said.

'With the police about we have to quit, get out and fast,'

had come the answer from McCoy, who was accustomed to command, was used to men reacting to his orders without hesitation and arguments. He had assessed his colleague sufficiently, felt the time of deference had died its death.

'We are completely hidden here. We would not be found.'

'All we are doing is staying inside whatever cordon they've round us. Giving them time to get organized, bring in reinforcements. It helps them, louses us. And in the morning, at first light, there'll be dogs, helicopters, the whole bloody works. They know we're here. Christ knows how, but they know it, and we have to shift our arses, and on foot, and in the dark.' McCoy was suppressing his wish to shout, turning his voice to a subdued snarl.

'But they will concentrate their efforts while they believe in their information. When they have been unsuccessful they will relax. Tomorrow it will be easier to move; we should stay till tomorrow.' The top of his cheeks were flushed red. Famy stabbed with his finger at McCoy's chest to reinforce his point.