Dancing With Mortality

  Dancing with Mortality

  Mark McKay

  Text Copyright © 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  For more information on the author, and forthcoming books, visit

  http://www.junglekiwi.com

  Dancing with Mortality

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  PART ONE

  The Politics of Violence

  1981

  Chapter 1

  County Cork, Ireland

  Once, when he was about eighteen, he’d been on a caving expedition in the South Island. They’d been underground for about half an hour, and in his enthusiasm to find the stalactite-studded cavern he was looking for he forged ahead, leaving his sluggish mates a minute or so behind him. As he worked his way through a narrow gap in the rock he brushed his helmet against something and the headlamp went out. The total blackness, devoid of even a promise of light, was so dense and cloying he thought it might smother him.

  For a moment, when he’d turned off the engine and cut the Land Rover’s lights on arrival here a few hours ago, he’d had the same sensation. The blank overcast sky and the absence of anything, human or otherwise, that might cast a light had blotted out the world. After a while, when his eyes had adjusted, he could make out the shifting shapes of trees and a small stretch of road, but not much else. Now he waited.

  The sound of automatic gunfire shattered the stillness. Harry looked towards the distant beach and saw intermittent flashes of white light rip open the blackness. He stared out the window with a grim fascination, one hand tight on the steering wheel, his heart pounding. A minute later the firing stopped, and the echoes, then the sighing of the wind reclaimed the darkness.

  He was sure the noise must have been heard by the local residents, but then remembered there weren’t any for at least two miles. He turned to look behind him, but there were no approaching headlights, nor indeed any sign of life in the blackness. He sat very still in the Land Rover, his other hand holding the two-way radio. He was in a layby in a lane off the main road to the beach, and now he waited for the call telling him he could safely drive down there.

  What the hell had happened? O’Riordan had warned him that these men wouldn’t come quietly. They’d made a fight of it. Should he drive to the beach? Better wait for the signal first. He realised how tense he was, and he relaxed his grip on the steering wheel and took a few slow deep breaths. Then he checked his watch – 5am and still pitch black outside.

  He’d been parked since 1am, and although he knew there was a team of SAS men nearby, he’d heard and seen nothing. The only things discernible were the salty tang of the sea and the soft breeze rising and falling.

  Then, around 2.30am, just as he’d started to doze fitfully, he was jerked into wakefulness by the sound of an engine on the main road. Nothing to be seen; whoever it was had dispensed with the headlights. The engine had faded as the vehicle – a truck he guessed – wound its way down the incline to the beach.

  Then everything was quiet again, until the gunfire just now. But now he thought he could hear a new sound through the darkness, like a distant staccato drumbeat. It was getting louder all the time. Suddenly the sound changed its timbre, and he recognised the sound of a galloping horse coming off the sand and onto the road. He sat mesmerised as the sound came ever closer. He saw the shadow of the horse as it raced past his parking place. He had just enough time to make out the shape of a man on its back, then all he could do was listen as the hoofbeats faded into the distance. He doubted very much that it was an SAS man riding. Now what?

  The radio spluttered into life and he nearly dropped it in alarm. Hanson’s voice:

  ‘Operation successful. It was definitely an arms shipment. Tell Litchfield that we’ve secured both the boat and the arms. I haven’t counted, but there are hundreds of Armalites and Kalashnikovs. And several thousand rounds of ammunition. Tell Litchfield I’ll be in touch tomorrow. And we don’t need you down here now. There were fatal casualties, on their side that is.’

  ‘You shot all of them dead? How many?’

  ‘Eight men in all. One got away though. They had two bloody horses in the back of their truck. One man managed to ride out before we could stop him. He was lucky. If we hadn’t been surprised you’d have nine casualties. Did you see him?’

  ‘Heard him. Do you know who it was?’

  ‘Not yet. Once we’ve identified this lot it might give us a clue, but don’t count on it.’

  ‘Ok.’ Harry felt numb. ‘You shot them all, Jesus Christ.’

  ‘That’s right. Sorry about that. Stay there for half an hour then go home lad.’

  Harry sat quietly collecting his thoughts. He’d come all this way as a supposed observer in the arrest of the men who’d been shot dead on the beach. He hadn’t expected the fatalities, and he knew it shouldn’t have happened. He’d been told the SAS were trigger happy when it came to the IRA though. That hardly excused their tactics in his opinion.

  It was his birthday tomorrow – well today actually. A great place to start your 26th year of existence: a Land Rover in the middle of nowhere. Natalie wouldn’t be pleased at his sudden absence either. His wife had something planned for later in the day. He didn’t know exactly what, but he knew he wanted to be back in Dublin for it just as soon as he could. He checked his watch – 20 minutes had passed. Still no sign of life from the beach. What the hell, he thought, I’m getting out of here.

  He took his time driving back. He couldn’t quite believe he’d been involved in the events of this morning, however peripheral that involvement might have been. Working part time for the Secret Intelligence Service had never been on the agenda when he and Natalie left their quiet little house in the Western Suburbs of Auckland to come to Ireland. He knew Natalie wouldn’t be happy about what had happened tonight, so of course he couldn’t tell her. He’d already lied by saying there was an urgent parcel of documents he had to collect personally in Cork. His lips pursed as he contemplated the ramifications – once you start lying, where does it stop?

  There had been very little time to prepare for this operation. He thought back to the phone call that had set this whole train of events in motion. He’d returned from Trinity College, where he was studying Irish, to the one bedroom flat that he and Natalie rented in Harcourt Street. It was about 5pm and she was already there, making dinner. She walked through to the hall to greet him.

  She smiled that vivacious smile that had got his attention and kept it the first time he saw her.

  ‘Good day at Uni?’

  ‘As ever. What about you?’

  ‘Fine. I’ll tell you later, dinner will burn.’ She kissed him and he just had time to stroke her long black hair before she turned away and ran back to the kitchen. ‘It’s fish tonight, as it’s Friday and we’re both good Catholics.’

  ‘Only by birth,’ he replied. ‘I’m agnostic, I like to keep my options open. Let’s go with tradition though.’

  Ten minutes later, they were sat down and eating when the phone rang.

  ‘Great timing. I’d better get it, Nat. Won’t be long’. He moved into the hall and picked up the phone.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Harry.’ O’Riordan’s deep Belfast brogue
filled the earpiece. Harry could feel the urgency in the man’s voice. O’Riordan was their SIS intelligence source inside the IRA. His information on their movements and upcoming activities in the North had been valuable on several occasions.

  ‘What is it, Sean? I didn’t know you had my number.’

  ‘No one is answering your office phone, Harry. Mr Litchfield gave me your number as a last resort. Is this line secure?’

  ‘Yes, we can talk. There should be someone in the office, perhaps he popped out for a minute.’

  ‘Never mind that now. You need to get information to Litchfield right away. Tonight, or should I say tomorrow morning around 3am, there’ll be a large arms shipment coming in on a fishing boat to Ballyrisode Beach near Goleen in Cork. It’s too late to get the Navy out to intercept them. If you want them you’ll need to get some military lads down there in the next few hours. Understood?’

  Harry took a deep breath. Goleen was at least four hours away by car.

  ‘You sure about this, Sean?’

  ‘Christ, man, do you think I’d be calling if I wasn’t? I’d like it if we got off the phone and you found your Mr Litchfield right away.’

  ‘How many people are we dealing with?’

  ‘On the boat, I don’t know, but I expect no more than four or five. On the beach I only have one name: Michael O’Reilly. He’ll probably have three or four men with him to unload the boat. O’Reilly’s a dedicated Republican, Harry. He’ll shoot in preference to surrendering, so tell your men to watch themselves.’

  ‘Thanks, Sean, leave it with me, I’ll find Litchfield straight away.’

  ‘Good luck, Harry.’ The line went dead.

  Harry returned to the dining room. Natalie was looking at him anxiously.

  ‘Who was that?’ she asked.

  ‘You know I can’t say, Nat. He shouldn’t even be calling me here. Listen, I need to go out for a while, sorry. Just to pass on this message. I’ll be back in an hour.’

  ‘I wish you’d never agreed to work for these people. I thought they just needed you to do some Irish language translations. That didn’t sound like translation work to me.’

  ‘That is all they need me for. Unfortunately my caller couldn’t get through to anyone else. But I need to pass this on. Put my dinner in the oven will you? I’ll be back in plenty of time to eat it. Just need to phone Litchfield first and set up a quick meeting.’

  He met Kevin Litchfield at the offices of Downey’s Accountancy Services, only five minutes walk from the flat. Mr Downey was a myth, as was his accountancy business. Any potential customer walking in off the street would be met with a notice on the door proclaiming Mr Downey’s unfortunate indisposition due to illness, which precluded his acceptance of any new business. An unmarked door further down the corridor was a second entrance to the same office, which was in fact SIS headquarters, Dublin branch.

  Litchfield sat behind the absent Mr Downey’s desk. It was a large wooden desk with a green leather inlaid top, populated by two black telephones and a green shaded desk lamp. Papers of any sort were conspicuous by their absence, until you glanced at the heavy Chubb safe on the floor behind Litchfield. Nothing written stayed in plain sight after office hours.

  The office had two smaller and less impressive examples of the Downey desk, with three more telephones, two typewriters, and a telex machine. Jack Hudson, who had been the absent man at the time of O’Riordan’s first phone call, sat next to the telex looking slightly sheepish.

  ‘Sorry, Harry, I literally popped out for a packet of fags,’ said Jack. ‘Can’t have been more than five minutes.’

  Harry said nothing. Judging by the smell of alcohol that accompanied the words, he thought that five minutes might have been stretched a little further by a visit to the Bleeding Horse around the corner. No time to dwell on that now.

  ‘Spit it out then, Harry, what did Sean O’Riordan want?’ Kevin Litchfield was the SIS chief of station in Dublin. A public school educated Englishman of about 45, he exuded confidence and charm in his public persona of successful businessman about town. In his SIS incarnation, however, he showed a calculated cold-bloodedness that Harry found a little disconcerting. He had become progressively larger during his Dublin stint, as evidenced by the tightness of his suit jacket around the shoulders and the paunch overriding his belt buckle. His face had developed a florid complexion, and his razor thin lips, slightly flattened nose and squinting gaze put Harry in mind of a heavyweight boxer who’d taken one punch too many. But the man’s mind was sharp, and there was a noticeable absence of charm in his manner this evening.

  Harry repeated Sean’s message, watching Litchfield’s eyes as they opened fully and focused intently on him. Just as he was about to ask why O’Riordan had his home number, Litchfield sat up ramrod straight and swore profusely.

  ‘No bloody way of verifying this, and no bloody time either. O’Riordan’s not been wrong yet though.’ Litchfield picked up the phone and dialled quickly. Harry walked to the window on the far side of the office and gazed over the lit street below. He felt a dim annoyance at being dragged into operational matters. He’d been employed more in an academic capacity, in his opinion. He was supposed to stay away from the rough end of the business.

  He turned to the sound of the receiver being slammed back onto the phone.

  ‘Alright, Harry, this is how it is,’ said Litchfield. ‘There’s a small team of SAS men who can be in place undetected by 2am. They will wait until the cargo is unloaded, then they’ll arrest everyone involved. There will be an interrogation on the spot, then the team will quietly transport these men to Belfast, where the law will deal with them. The guns will be taken somewhere safe.’

  ‘Good,’ replied Harry. ‘I’m going back to my dinner now, glad to know it’s all in hand.’

  ‘Not so fast, Harry. I’ve given a Captain Hanson your name as a contact. You’ll drive to Cork and meet him at this hotel,’ he said, passing Harry a folded sheet of paper, ‘where you will identify yourself and act as an impartial observer until these men are arrested. I want you present at their interrogation. It’s more than likely that they’ll speak Irish amongst each other, knowing full well that we won’t have a clue what they’re on about. But you will. You may pick up something of interest. Take the Land Rover outside, and you’d better leave now.’

  ‘Hang on sir, I’m only here to translate any suspicious Irish language communications that we intercept. I’ve no training in the field. Send Jack for God’s sake.’

  ‘Jack doesn’t speak the language. It’s perfectly safe, Harry, they know full well you’re only there to confirm the success of the op and to be present at the interrogation. There’s no time to waste, so get going.’

  ‘How will this Hanson know who I am?’

  ‘He’s looking for the Land Rover, and if it isn’t you driving it they’ll be shot. So use the code word ”Sterling” when you meet him if you want to avoid that. That’s it, go now. I’ll call Natalie and say you’re doing some overtime.’

  ‘No, sir, I’ll call her.’ He returned Litchfield’s challenging gaze with a quiet fury, and picked up the phone.

  Harry had driven as fast as he could to Cork, arriving at the hotel just after midnight. Hanson had been in the car park waiting for him. Dressed in civvies, he was a tall powerfully built man in his mid-thirties, with a solid well-sculpted face sporting an equally well-sculpted Roman nose and steady brown eyes. After verifying Harry’s identity, he’d briefed him in short clipped tones. Hanson had ten men, they were on their way (from where God only knew), and they would be quite invisible to anyone near the beach by 1am.

  ‘Where’s that accent from?’ said Hanson, abruptly changing the subject.

  ‘New Zealand, why?’

  ‘What’s a Kiwi doing in this line of work then?’

  ‘My parents are English. I got into this more by accident than anything else. The locals hear the accent and assume I’m a harmless student, which is what I tell them. Studying Irish
at Trinity, which is true enough most of the time. They assume I have no sympathies on either side, Unionist or Republican. I don’t contradict them.’

  ‘But you speak Irish fluently I’m told.’

  ‘Fluently enough.’

  ‘I hope so. Enough chit chat then.’

  He handed the radio to Harry and told him to park in the layby and await confirmation of success, which Harry had gratefully done. It was unlikely that anyone would approach from this direction. If they did spot him and get curious, he intended to say he’d had a few too many and was sleeping it off. He took the flask of whiskey from his coat pocket and had a small sip. Would need some alcohol on the breath to back that story up. But it was a flimsy story and he felt a surge of anger towards Litchfield for dropping him in the deep end. And he was scared. He wasn’t armed and he had no military training. He felt exposed and defenceless.

  Now, after the lethal conclusion of the SAS ambush, he wondered how the hell he’d allowed himself to be put in this situation. And where was the man on the horse?

  Harry had been in Ireland for almost two years. Auckland was a long way from ‘the troubles’, and although the IRA got some media coverage, the struggle in Northern Ireland seemed remote and slightly surreal. He couldn’t see it impacting on his decision to take some time to travel and study abroad. He’d done exceptionally well in his modern languages studies, with a BA and MA under his belt, and was recognised as a talented German and French linguist. Irish presented a quite different challenge, as it was so grammatically and conceptually different. Seeing it written, and looking nothing like the languages he already knew, made him wonder just how ancient in origin it must be. When his tutor had mentioned a scholarship at Trinity College his interest had been aroused, and he’d been pleasantly surprised to find out his application had been accepted.