James Long - Sixth Column

‘What did you do?’

‘Only thing I could do. Stopped the speech, had her quietly taken out. Well, it should have been quietly. She started kicking up a hell of a fuss. Then I had to go back and apologize and start all over again. By the time I left the reception she’d gone. Taken you with her. Just left me a note saying I’d humiliated her. Me , humiliated her ?’

‘So that was it?’

‘We’d always disagreed, you see? On politics. But we’d steered clear of that in private. From then on she hated me. It wasn’t like a divorce, it was more of an extermination. I didn’t seem to have the means to fight her.’

‘She wouldn’t even let your name be mentioned in the house,’ said Johnny. ‘When I was a teenager she used to tear out articles from the newspaper that mentioned your name in case I read them. I wondered why our papers looked like Swiss cheese for years.’

‘When did you see her last?’

‘About two weeks ago. She was taking a close interest in this Rage stuff.’

‘Was she now?’ He seemed to think about that for a while. ‘You know, what worried me more than anything else was that you’d turn out to be like her. It seemed… well, it seemed to me that maybe you were going that way, once I found out what you were doing with your life. I jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

Johnny remembered the night he’d gone through his father’s desk and knew exactly what he was talking about. He felt a sudden need to clear the air. ‘I think you know a bit about Wineglass, don’t you?’

‘Wineglass? What’s that?’

‘Sorry. That was what the office called it. It was the name of an Irish operation. It went wrong. I saw you had the cutting.’

He got a wry, appraising look in return. ‘I know the stories that went round your office. They made out you were some sort of Rambo executioner, that you were meant to be sitting quietly in a hole in the ground listening and instead you climbed out and shot most of the IRA High Command.’

Johnny made a face. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. Everyone jumped to the wrong conclusions.’

‘What did happen?’

‘I was in a hidey-hole in South Armagh, watching a house. I had a mike and a tape recorder. Sean Rooney was inside. He was the target. He was quite important in the area and we thought he was meeting some of the younger lads. Anyway, the first person who showed up was a man called Steel who was joint number two with Rooney. The trouble was, by a complete accident, he managed to pull the mike lead apart on his way in, didn’t even know he’d done it.’

‘So you couldn’t hear anything?’

‘That’s right. The thing is, I’d had a couple of screw-ups before on that sort of job. Not really my fault, just the kind of thing that happens. In the normal run I would have stayed put. That would have been doing it by the book, but I thought this time, I’d better take the risk.’

‘You got out of the hole?’

‘Yes.’ Johnny remembered, trying to get a sense of the overwhelming fear as he’d broken cover, crawled up out of the hole, knowing he was burning his boats and he couldn’t hope to conceal himself as well when he got back there. He’d crawled all the way to the wall of the house. He could still feel the heavy mud slicking his trousers.

‘I got right up to the house and I had to stand up to reach the wire. It was behind a log pile. I had cramp from lying in the same position for so long and my leg just gave way under me.’

‘Good God.’

‘I brought half the log pile down with me. Rooney and Steel came charging out through the door. I really thought that was it.’

‘But you had your gun.’

‘Well, I did, yes. I had a gun but it was in my pocket, the side I’d fallen on. I couldn’t seem to get my hand on it.’

Sir Michael looked perplexed, waited.

‘Just as they came out of the door, another man came running round the corner of the house from the path. I could see it all happening but I seemed to be frozen to the spot. You have to understand it was very dark. There was a hell of a bang. I think it was Steel who fired. He was in front and he must have just reacted on instinct when the other man appeared. The man grunted and went down. He rolled over and opened up with an automatic weapon. Turned out afterwards it was one of those vicious little MAC things the drug dealers use in the States. Steel and Rooney just seemed to come apart. It was horrific. Anyway the shooting stopped and I lay there, trying to get the gun out of my pocket without alerting him. He was lying quite still on the ground only ten or twelve feet away. I thought he was watching out to see if anyone else came. I stayed there for what seemed a hell of a long time and he didn’t stir a muscle so eventually I took my courage in both hands and started to crawl towards him. I had my gun out in front of me and I would have shot him if he’d so much as twitched.

He didn’t, though. He was as dead as a doornail, shot just above the heart. From the blood it must have got an artery. He must have lived just long enough to shoot.’

‘You got away?’

‘You bet. I grabbed all the gear and ran for it. The army came in the end. By that time I was well away.’

‘Why did everyone in MI5 think it was you?’

‘You probably remember, the Press assumed it was a factional squabble. I’m sure there was a bit of disinformation going on to push that idea. Anything that helped sow discord in the PIRA High Command seemed like a good plan. I got it in the neck when I was debriefed, then I was told to say nothing at all in the office. I went on leave for a fortnight and when I came back I discovered the office rumour mill had rejected the squabble theory and turned me into Rambo. Everyone thought I’d had a rush of blood to the head and decided to take the opportunity for a spot of freelance execution.’

‘Yes, that was what I heard. How did you feel about that?’

Johnny was slow in answering. ‘I didn’t discourage it. Couldn’t. I’d been told to keep quiet and it meant no one pushed in front of me in the lunch queue.’

‘I’m glad to know it wasn’t true. I thought it was until I got to know you. That made me rather worried about Heather to start with, you see.’

‘Heather? You didn’t think I’d harm Heather, did you?’

‘I know you wouldn’t now.’

To change the subject, Johnny looked at his watch. ‘Coming up to half way. I’ll just call for the Cherbourg weather.’

He had trouble getting a response. They came through in the end – crackly.

Gusting thirty knots was all they were saying. That would do. The seas below looked even larger. Jo tapped him on the shoulder and he pushed back the headset and turned to her.

‘How far?’ she shouted.

‘We’re half way. We’ll be over the coast in another twenty-five minutes.’

She nodded and Heather smiled at him. She leaned forward again, as he put the headphones back over his ears.

‘What did you say?’ he called.

‘I said, can you see Fr—’

She broke off just as he was thinking how much better he could hear her suddenly and then it dawned on him that the reason he could hear her so well, and the reason she’d stopped talking and was now sitting there with her mouth open, was that the engine had stopped.

In the starboard wing tank the corrosive aviation spirit had finished the job, dissolving the long sausage more or less evenly until the thinnest part ruptured. Three pints of water contained in it rushed out to mingle with the petrol around it. The tank was gravity fed and the water, heavier than petrol, swirled down in a fairly uniform mass to the lowest point of the tank, through the outlet pipe to the selector valve and on through the fuel strainer to the carburettor. There it filled the float chamber, was drawn through the jets and vaporized into a fine spray and was sucked into the engine’s cylinders by the vacuum of descending pistons. It was only when the pistons rose again to compress it and the spark plugs flashed that it made its presence felt. Water doesn’t burn. The engine could have coped with a few drops, spluttering for a while and kicking it out of the exhaust as extra steam, but three pints was far too much.