Provo. Gordon Stevens

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ had two hundred yards left to live, Tommy Reardon knew. Slow down and delay it. Accelerate and get it over with. Dear Mary, Mother of God, may it be quick and painless and may Marie and the kids be all right. He was wet with fear and shaking with nerves, his throat dry and tight and his bowels churning. They were almost at the end of the Antrim Road. The convoy turned right into Annesley Street and snaked through the alleyway behind the houses. Thirty yards up the back street turned a right angle to the left. To his right Reardon saw the glass and metal side of the Mater Infirmorum Hospital, the junction with the Crumlin Road twenty yards in front of him, and the prison itself a hundred yards away on the other side of the hospital. The command Sierra accelerated away from him, up the Crumlin Road, and the Cavalier fell back slightly. He came to the junction and turned right.

      VCP, the Sierra driver suddenly saw, just where they didn’t want it. Everyone in the car was armed, the front passenger carrying a Kalashnikov across his lap under a coat, and the rear with the remote firing device beside him. He was beginning to slow, still trying to decide what to do. Everything normal, he told himself, everything routine. Land-Rovers in standard position for a vehicle check, soldiers in position. Something wrong, it was a flicker in his mind, something about the soldiers. Not moving like ordinary squaddies, not the same age as ordinary squaddies, all slightly older, late twenties or early thirties. He swung the car left and swore a warning, the front passenger whipping the coat off the AK.

      The night exploded. Gunfire in front of him, concentrated on the Sierra which had just passed him. Tommy Reardon jerked, foot stabbing the accelerator momentarily and the digger speeding up, then slowing slightly. The gunfire was deafening, unending. Sheets of sound pouring from the machine gun on the right of the road. The Criminal Court was on his left and the prison was on his right. He turned and glanced back. The Cavalier was still moving, the unseen men on either side of the road firing into it. He was confused, still terrified. Did not know what to do. Realized he was still moving and jammed his foot on the brake. The Cavalier bumped into the rear of the digger. A car he hadn’t seen before pulled in front of him, the men getting out even as it slowed, as he himself stopped. His foot was still locked on the brake, his body frozen with fear and the gunfire still crashing into the Sierra in front of him. A second car slammed to a halt, more men racing out, all armed, faces blackened. One of them pulled the cab door open and jerked him out, others surrounding and protecting them. A third car screamed to a stop, and the bomb disposal expert ran for the barrel of explosive, more men covering him.

      ‘It’s all right, Tommy.’ He heard the voice as he was bundled out of the digger and towards the first car. ‘Marie and the kids are fine.’ He was pushed into the back seat, men clambering in around him and on top of him. ‘What did you say?’ He was still confused, still frightened. ‘Marie and the kids are okay. It’s over.’ The car accelerated away, men outside slamming the doors shut and the heavy duty rounds of the GPMG still battering the car with the remote firing device.

      * * *

      The water was piping hot. Doherty lathered the foam round his chin and jowls, and wet the razor under the tap. It was beginning to show, he told himself: the sinking of the eyes and the hollowing of the cheeks. He remembered the afternoon after the doctor had warned him of the possibility, the way it had passed, the last sun setting on the water at Kilmore, and the mountains fading into purple. Eighteen months, then he would face his Maker. He wiped the steam from the mirror and drew a swathe across the foam on the left side of his face.

      So what will you say to him? He dipped the razor under the hot water tap and drew it round his chin, then down his throat. What will he say to you? Will the Holy Mary still smile her smile at you? And what will those you’ve left behind say? What sort of footnote will you have in the history of the struggle? It would be a small one, he was aware; perhaps even anonymous. Even in death it would not be possible to afford him the recognition he had so diligently avoided in life. For the past eight years Eamon Doherty, professor and family man, pillar of the community and the church, had been Chief of Staff of the Army Council of the Provisional IRA. For almost ten years before that he had served as a planner and tactician, and for the years before that in whatever role the movement required.

      Bloody fiasco in Belfast, the anger broke his thoughts. Two dead at the house in Beechwood Street. McKendrick and Rorke butchered in the street. Eight shot to pieces on the Crumlin Road and seventy still trussed up inside the prison there. And all on Orange Day. The Prods chuckling all the way to the bank and the Brits laughing all the way back to London.

      He wiped his face and dressed.

      So who would begin the moves this morning? he wondered. Who would press for a major investigation into the identity of the member who had leaked the operation to spring the men from the Crum? Who would pick up on the McKendrick farce and turn it to his advantage?

      Conlan or Quin, he knew; in the end it would come down to one of these. Both were respected in the Movement, both were playing for their places closer to the top of the pecking order. Both politicos, sharp tongues and sharper brains. Conlan tall, slender build. Quin bigger, using his bulk to disguise the speed at which his mind moved.

      In a way the Movement was at yet another crossroads. There had always been discussion—often dissent – between the Republicans and the Socialists, even after the Movement had appeared to wither in the fifties and sixties. And in the seventies the Official IRA, the Stickies, had lost ground to the new heads and fiery demands of the Provisionals. Yet within the Provos there had also been disagreement – about the role of violence and the desirability of combining the gun with the vote. Now the new crossroads, Conlan and Quin already laying out their qualifications for the leadership, for the job of Chief of Staff. He finished dressing and left the house.

      The Army Council met at eleven, seven men made up from representatives of the Southern Command, the Northern Command – the so-called war zone – and GHQ. The room in which the meeting took place had been electronically swept beforehand. For two hours they discussed the implications of the changes in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and how they would affect the financing of the Movement and the flow of arms, ammunition and explosives to it.

      Conlan and Quin know, Doherty thought once; both have looked in my eyes and seen the shadow of the Maker lurking there.

      For the next hour they discussed the quartermaster’s reports on the arms and explosives situation, the fact that although Libya had now said it would stop supplying the IRA, the statement made little difference given the volume already shipped to Ireland and stored there.

      So how would he like to be remembered? The Bringer of Peace – if there could ever be such a person in that small corner of the world they called Ireland – or the Harbinger of War? What single action would mark the end of his stewardship of the Movement? And who would give it to him, who would give him what he now craved for more than peace or war?

      They moved to the next item: the aborted attempt to free the men from Crumlin Road jail, the deaths which had accompanied it, and the political capital made by both the Protestants and the English. Who’s going to move first, Doherty wondered, Conlan or Quin? The senior officer from the Northern Command briefed them on the background to the operation, the planning which had prefaced it, then the events of the day and evening.

      ‘So what went wrong?’ It was Quin.

      The officer commanding the North Belfast Brigade shrugged.

      ‘There was a leak?’

      The man shrugged again. ‘Possibly.’

      ‘And what action has been taken to trace it?’

      ‘A board of enquiry has been set up. The security section has already begun its investigations.’

      The СКАЧАТЬ