Provo. Gordon Stevens

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      At seven McGuire left the house and walked the three hundred yards to the bar. If he was under observation – from undercover motor vehicles, informants, OPs concealed in the roof spaces of surrounding houses, or high-altitude surveillance helicopters – there was nothing to suggest that he was doing anything other than going for a drink.

      The Sportsman’s was busy. After thirty minutes he muttered his excuses and went to the toilets at the rear, collected his bag and stepped into the alleyway behind. The car was waiting.

      The shooting took place shortly after five the following day, outside a betting shop at the top of the Crumlin Road, on the edge of the Catholic Ardoyne area and close to the Protestant Shankill. The victim was a 32-year-old Sinn Fein politician whom the UFF alleged was a member of the Provisional IRA. The planning for the shooting which followed it took place the following evening and was led by the officer commanding the North Belfast Brigade of the Provisional IRA. The first part of the discussion was strategic – whether or not a shooting of a UFF activist was not only necessary but politically and militarily sound at that point in time; whether the UFF reaction to the execution of a member of its ranks would be counterproductive. The second part, which followed once the decision had been made, was tactical. The target would be a man known to be a planning officer for the UFF. The location and timing would be confirmed by the intelligence officer, the details to be supplied to the team assigned to the killing, and the weapon would be an AK47 supplied from one of the Provisionals’ arms dumps in Myrtle Field Park, a middle-class street in a non-sectarian area of the city. The execution, as the Provisionals would describe it in the communiqué they would release later, would take place from a car stolen from the city centre. The driver would pick up the man carrying the gun fifteen minutes before the hit and the gunman himself ten minutes before. The gunman would leave the car as soon as they were clear of the area and in a neighbourhood considered safe; the man carrying the weapon immediately after, and the driver would abandon and torch the vehicle as soon as he could after that.

      They came to those who would carry out the shooting, the gunman first.

      ‘Clarke or Milligan.’ The intelligence officer’s suggestion was straightforward and logical.

      ‘Out of circulation.’ The OC – officer commanding – had not been told why.

      ‘Black.’

      The Bossman shook his head. Something happening, he had assumed when he had been informed by the Northern Command; something big if it required his three most experienced gunmen.

      ‘Lynch.’

      ‘Out of town.’

      ‘Hoolihan?’

      ‘Out as well.’

      Five of the most experienced IRA gunmen in North Belfast suddenly out of circulation.

      ‘Lynan?’ The intelligence officer knew the answer before he suggested the name.

      The OC shook his head.

      Six out of six. ‘Who then?’ Douglas, he knew, except that Douglas was young and still slightly brash, and the officer commanding would only use him if the rest of the team were older and more experienced.

      ‘Frank.’ Frank Hanrahan had been one of the best, but was now in his late thirties. He had begun his Provo career as a teenager, done his time in Long Kesh without complaint; he had been on the Blanket then the Dirty Protest and – though he had denied it at the time, though he had volunteered for active service immediately he had been released – the years of confinement and hardship had taken their toll. He had married young, his boy and girl were now in their mid-teens, the boy coming up seventeen, but still Frank did the occasional job. Only when no one else was available, however, and only when they wanted an older hand to rein in the recklessness of the youngsters.

      ‘Freddie’s picking up the gun, Mickey’s driving.’ Both were young and both would be good. If they survived that long. But send them out with the gunman called Douglas and they would either wipe out half the Shankill or crash the car on the way.

      Frank Hanrahan, they agreed.

      Lisburn was quiet. Nolan sat back in the chair and looked again at the reports from the various agents which it was part of her job to analyse. She had returned to Northern Ireland four weeks before. When former colleagues recognized her she said simply that she was on a secure task, and no further questions were asked.

      Perhaps something was running, perhaps not.

      Clarke on the move. On the gallop, as the Provos called it. The information from E4A, the RUC undercover surveillance division.

      Milligan on the move. From an informant in the FRU, the Forward Reconnaissance Unit, the wing of Military Intelligence dealing with agents and informants in the Catholic and Protestant paramilitary organizations.

      She punched the names into the computer, checked on the background of each, and read through the reports for the third time. Nothing concrete yet, but something to keep her eye on. She left Lisburn and took one of the five alternative routes she had established to the flat she had rented in Malone Park in the south of the city.

      Relatively speaking – everything in Northern Ireland was relative – the area was secure, not plagued by the violence suffered by the communities in and around the city centre. Most of her neighbours were young and professional class. Despite this she maintained a strict personal security. Each time she drove into the street she checked for the obvious signs of surveillance; each morning, when she went to the garage at the rear of the house where she had a first-floor flat, she checked the car for bombs before she started it, even though she had fitted the garage with special locks and an electronic door. Even when she went out to dinner in what was considered a secure area, with friends or colleagues, she timed the interval between ordering a meal and its being served in case someone on the staff was a Provo or UFF informant and had recognized her, had delayed the meal while a hitman was summoned.

      Her cover story matched what appeared to be her life-style. She had lived in England for eight years, married, but was now divorced and living off the settlement paid by her former husband while she looked for a job. In case either side – PIRA, the UDA or the various organizations springing from them – had sources in the estate agent’s office from which she had rented the flat, every month a cheque was paid into a bank account she had established. And in case the same organizations had a source in the bank, the money was paid from another account set up in England by a man alleged to be her former husband. In the flat itself, in case she was burgled, she kept solicitors’ letters referring to the case, as well as the divorce papers themselves.

      She hung up her coat, placed the Browning in the bedroom, and went to the kitchen. It was a strange life, she would have admitted; most people would not understand it. But in the end you were who you were. Even at the beginning . . .

      . . . she was nine, almost ten; long legs and awkward body. It was spring, going on summer, the children playing at the foot of the hill above the town. The game was hide and seek, the children divided into teams. She was on the catcher team, hunting through the trees and undergrowth for those hiding from them. The wood was quiet. She paused, not moving, not even shifting balance, totally alert, listening for the slightest rustle which would tell her where her quarry was hiding.

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