Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

'Nice day,' said a man in a dark blue pin-stripe suit as he sat down on the bench a few feet from her. He placed a black briefcase on the ground midway between them. It was Egan. He was holding a Marks and Spencer carrier bag and he handed it to her. 'Sandwich?'

McCracken peered inside the bag. It contained two baguettes.

'Thank you.'

'How's everything going?'

'On schedule. Quinn's being a pain in the arse, though. Keeps pestering Andrea. Got a hard-on for her like a baseball bat, he has.'

'Can you handle it?'

'Sure. But he's not reliable. I know what you said about him being useful in a crisis, but he makes her nervous, and at this stage in the operation that's the last thing we need.'

Egan nodded thoughtfully. 'I'll sort it,' he said. He nodded down at the briefcase. 'Take good care of that, huh?'

McCracken smiled tightly. 'I know what I'm doing.'

'I know you do.' Egan stood up and adjusted his tie. 'That's why I hired you for this. Trial run tomorrow, okay?'

'That's the plan.'

'Bring Quinn, will you?'

McCracken picked up the briefcase and put it carefully on her lap. 'I think that's best. I wouldn't want to leave him alone with Andrea.'

Egan walked away. McCracken watched him go. He moved out of the garden square, quickly blending with the other suits and disappearing around the corner. McCracken stood up and walked in the opposite direction. She moved the briefcase as little as possible, all too conscious of the fact that it contained enough Semtex explosive to blow a crater fifty feet wide. She'd transported high explosive before, but that didn't mean she wasn't scared. She'd known too many IRA volunteers who'd been killed in premature explosions.

She thought about the man she knew as Egan as she walked back to Cathay Tower. It was almost certainly not his real name – he was far too professional to reveal his identity to her, because the bottom line was that she was a hired hand. The planning, the details, the money, they all came from Egan. So had the rest of the team. They had all been recruited by him: Quinn and O'Keefe in London, McEvoy and Canning in Dublin, and probably others that she didn't know about. She knew nothing about his background, but he seemed to know everything about her. She hadn't known the others, either, and Egan had said that was an advantage because it would be that much harder for them to betray each other if anything went wrong. It was the philosophy followed by the IRA, dividing its members into small cells which were kept isolated from each other. When Egan had told McCracken that one of the men she was working with was a Protestant, and a member of the UDA, she had protested, but Egan had explained that she'd have to put her tribal loyalties behind her, that what they were doing was far more important than religion or politics. He'd convinced her, and with hindsight she knew that he was right. O'Keefe was in it for the money, as was Quinn. McCracken despised them for that, though she'd never show them her true feelings. All that mattered was that the bomb went off and that people died.

– «»-«»-«»The Wrestler looked over Andy's shoulder at the electronic equipment spread out on the table. 'Where did you learn about electronics?' he asked.

Andy shrugged but didn't say anything. She using a magnifying glass to examine the inside of a small digital alarm clock.

'Cat got your tongue?' asked the Wrestler.

Andy looked up from the magnifying glass. 'You wouldn't want me to make a mistake with this, would you?' she said. 'If I connect the wrong wires, we could all find ourselves splattered over the building opposite.'

The Runner was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, drinking a can of Coke. 'Stuck-up bitch,' he muttered.

The Wrestler reached over and picked up a soldering iron and held it close to his face, sniffing the end.

'That's hot,' said Andy.

'I know it's hot.' He put it back on the table. As he reached across her the sleeve of his overalls rode up and Andy caught a quick glimpse of a tattoo. It was the English flag. The cross of St George, a red cross on a white background. She pretended not to notice and concentrated on the chip at the back of the clock. Green-eyes had gone out a couple of hours earlier. She'd told Andy to check the timers and wiring, though there'd still been no mention of detonators.

Andy checked the alarm. She'd set it to go off in two minutes' time. A blue wire ran from the chip to the negative terminal of a nine-volt battery. A red wire linked the chip to one terminal of a white plastic bulb-holder into which was screwed a small flashlight bulb. A third wire, also red, connected the second terminal of the bulb-holder to the positive terminal of the battery. She could feel the Wrestler watching her over her shoulder, but she forced herself to ignore him. She pressed the switch to activate the alarm. The bulb glowed brightly. Andy cursed and sat back in her chair.

'What's wrong?' asked the Wrestler.

'Oh, nothing,' said Andy. 'It's just that if that had been connected to the device, we'd all be in a million pieces right now.'

The Wrestler peered at the circuit that Andy had put together.

'The light's in place of the detonator,' said Andy. 'It shows if the circuit's live.'

'And it is,' said the Wrestler. 'So what's the problem?' He scratched his stomach and moved his head closer to the bulb, frowning beneath his ski mask.

Andy pointed at the digital read-out on the clock face. 'The problem is it's set to go off in two minutes. I must have connected the wrong chip output.' She pulled the wires out of the clock and picked up the magnifying glass again. Everything looked okay. She put the clock face down on the table and began running the prods of a circuit tester across the chip, trying to find out where she'd gone wrong.

– «»-«»-«»The Hercules landed at an airport outside Wick, in the far north-west corner of Scotland. There was only one man waiting for Denham this time, standing by a battered old Volvo. He was in his fifties with a high forehead and windblown black hair, and he was wearing a sheepskin jacket with the collar turned up against a bitter wind that was blowing in from the North Sea. 'Welcome to Wick!' he shouted above the noise of the Hercules, and he shook Denham's hand firmly. 'Harry McKechnie. Sorry about the transport. The office car's in for a service so I've got to use my own wheels.'

Denham climbed into the front passenger seat. He took out his cigarettes as McKechnie drove away from the airfield. 'You don't mind if I smoke, do you?' he asked.

'Not if you'll light one for me too,' said McKechnie. Denham lit two cigarettes and gave one to McKechnie. McKechnie inhaled gratefully, then turned up the heater. 'Nights are getting bloody cold up here,' he said. There was no trace of a Scottish accent, despite his name.

It was a twenty-five-mile drive to Thurso, and McKechnie spent much of his time complaining about his posting north of the border. He was from Southampton originally, and had joined the Security Service straight from Oxford. He told Denham that he thought his bosses were hoping he'd take early retirement. 'Face doesn't fit,' he said. 'New regime. Bloody kids these days. Half of them don't even drink.' He held up his lit cigarette. 'And they'd rather you farted than lit up one of these.'

Denham grinned and settled back in his seat.

'Okay, to the matter in hand,' said McKechnie. 'Michael Geraghty, Micky to his friends, lives about four miles west of Thurso. Place called Garryowen Farm. He runs executive training courses, Outward Bound for the middle-aged. Takes them rock climbing, canoeing, gives them team-building exercises, that sort of thing.'

'Keeping his nose clean?'

'By all accounts, yes.'

'And he never did time, is that right?'