Stephen Leather - The Long shot

He followed Mary down the beach and soon caught up with her. She knelt down to pick up a stone. Her breasts pushed against the material of her shirt and Carlos admired her cleavage. She looked up, her eyes twinkling with amusement, and Carlos knew that he’d been trapped. He shook his head and walked on as she straightened up and skipped the stone over the waves.

“My husband was always the political one,” she said behind him. “He was a lawyer and an adviser to the IRA. He said that politics was the only way to succeed, that violence would provoke only intransigence. He was all talk, Ilich, and it got him killed.”

Carlos continued to walk down the beach and Mary followed him. “I was just a wife and mother then, but that changed when the UDA killed my brother. They gunned him down in front of his wife and children, at Christmas. I was there, I was covered in his blood.”

“Your brother was in the IRA?” asked Carlos.

“All the men in our family were,” she said. “It wasn’t something you thought about. You know how the Palestinians feel about Jewish settlements on the West Bank? Well that’s how the Catholics feel about the Protestants in Northern Ireland. They’ve no right to be there, it’s our country. The Protestants control everything in the north of Ireland: jobs, police, education, social services. Catholics are second-class citizens.”

“And you and your husband tried to change that?”

Mary drew level with Carlos. “He tried to persuade the IRA High Council to negotiate with the British Government. He believed that Thatcher and then Major would be prepared to make concessions and that they wanted to pull their troops out of Northern Ireland.”

“You sound as if you didn’t agree.”

She looked at him sharply. “I didn’t,” she said. “And I wasn’t alone. When Liam tried to stop the campaign of violence, we sent our own people to the mainland.”

Carlos said nothing. There was an intensity burning in her eyes that he had seen in zealots around the world. A conviction that they, and only they, knew what was best for the world. The sort of conviction that would lead her to betray her husband.

“It went wrong, badly wrong,” said Mary quietly. “A civilian airliner was bombed. In retaliation the British Government ordered the killing of the top two dozen or so of the movement’s leaders. Including my husband.”

Carlos stopped, stunned. “What are you saying?”

“They sent the SAS against us, with orders to make hard arrests.”

“Hard arrests?”

“Another name for assassination. Some were straightforward ambushes, others were made to look like suicides or accidents. They’re good at killing, the SAS. They’re the real professionals. My husband was gunned down as he sat in his car. The RUC said it was Protestant extremists, the same group that had killed my brother.” She reached up and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “They killed the men I loved, Ilich. This is my way of getting back at them.”

Revenge, thought Carlos. The strongest motivation of all, stronger even than money. She had said men, not man, Carlos noticed. Plural. He doubted that it was a slip, and he doubted too that she had meant her brother, but he knew better than to pry, despite the silent tears.

“We will succeed, Ilich, we have to.”

Carlos nodded. “I know. Though I’ll be honest, Mary, I do worry about this. There’s so much that could go wrong.”

“It’s been planned to perfection,” she said quickly. “But even if something goes wrong, we can wait and try again. The basic idea is sound, it’s just the opportunity we need. Everything is set to go, but it’s not written in stone. We have the team, we have the equipment.”

“Another time will mean another rehearsal.”

“So?” she said quickly. “So we rehearse again. Remember when the IRA almost killed Thatcher at the Conservative Party convention in Brighton. My husband then said that they have to always be lucky, but we only have to be lucky once.”

“He was right, of course. But after so much planning, I wouldn’t want to go through it all again.”

Mary looked at him slyly. “You miss your wife and children?” she said.

Carlos knew she was right. “It has been a long time,” he said. “That’s why I’m so keen that we succeed the first time. Then my family can have a home together.”

Mary sniffed. “That’s the difference between us,” she said. “If we do succeed, you get a safe haven for your family. But I will never be able to see mine again. I have been on the run for a long time, but it will be nothing compared with what lies ahead.”

“I know, I know,” said Carlos.

They walked together in silence for a while. The small plane which had been practising landing and taking off at the Bay Bridge airstrip climbed into the sky and headed back west, its single engine buzzing like an angry wasp.

“Has something happened between Lovell and Rashid?” Mary asked eventually.

“Happened? In what way?” replied Carlos.

Mary smiled and gave the man a knowing look like a mother silently admonishing a child she knew was being less than honest. Her eyes were dry but there was a redness about them. “You know exactly what I mean,” she said.

Carlos chuckled softly. “The American was making unwanted advances, and Dina took care of it.”

“Took care of it? What did she do? He’s like a scalded cat whenever she’s around.”

“She had sex with him.”

Mary looked at him, astonished. “She had sex with him, and now he’s scared witless?”

Carlos kept his face straight. “The way she tells it, her encounter wasn’t exactly what you’d call safe sex, not for him anyway.” Carlos could contain himself no longer and he laughed loud and hard, throwing his head back and showing uneven, yellowing teeth. His laughter echoed across the bay until it was lost among the screaming of the seagulls.

Patrick Farrell Senior arrived in his blue Lincoln Continental shortly before eight o’clock, scratching his pendulous beer gut as he scanned the skies around the airfield. Not long afterwards his mechanics began arriving and Joker heard the rumble of the hangar doors being rolled back. Small insects buzzed around Joker’s head, and he waved them away halfheartedly. They made a sound like miniature chainsaws as they zipped by his ear and for each one he swatted away, there were two more waiting to torment him.

He put the binoculars to his eyes and surveyed the Farrell Aviation building. In one of the ground-floor offices he could see Farrell talking on the telephone as he stood at his desk. A buzzing sound, louder than the annoying insects, filled the air above his head. He looked up and through the tree canopy overhead he saw a single-engine plane coming into land. It flashed overhead and then turned to the left, aligning itself up with the grass strip, and then passed from Joker’s field of vision. He heard the engine note change as the pilot throttled back prior to landing. Joker put the binoculars back to his eyes. Through them he saw Farrell, still on the phone, peer through his window at the arriving plane.

The plane came into view as it reached the end of the grass strip and taxied back towards the hangars. Joker saw that it was in Farrell Aviation’s colours and bore its green propeller and hawk logo. The pilot and co-pilot were wearing headsets and sunglasses and it was impossible to tell if they were men or women. The plane came to a halt and the occupants took off their headsets and climbed out. They were men, one tall and thin with dark hair, the other short with a mop of unruly red hair. As they walked towards the Farrell Aviation offices, Joker trained his glasses on the shorter of the two men. He caught his breath as he recognised the face of Matthew Bailey, grinning and twirling his headset as if he didn’t have a care in the world.