Harry's Game Part 1

Harry's Game.

By Gerald Seymour.

BOOK CLUB a.s.sOCIATES: LONDON.

ONE.

The man was panting slightly, not from the exertion of pushing his way through the shapeless, ungiving ma.s.s of the crowd but from the frustration of the delay.

He drove himself at the knot of people that had formed a defensive wall round the Underground ticket machine, reaching out through their bodies with his money for the slot, only to be swept back as the crowd formed its own queue out of the rabble. It took him fifteen seconds more than two minutes to insert his ten-pence piece and draw out a ticket, but that was still quick set against the endless, shuffling line approaching the ticket kiosk.

He moved on to the next piece of gadgetry, the automatic barrier. He inserted his ticket into the machine, which reacted and bent upwards to admit him. There was s.p.a.ce around him now. His stride lengthened. Bottled up amongst the ma.s.s on the far side of the barrier, with the clock moving, he'd felt the constriction, his inability to get away.

Now, in the open at last, he cannoned off an elderly man, deep in his paper, making him stumble. As he tried to sidestep his way out of the collision he knocked into a girl loaded for the laundrette, hitting her hard with his left elbow. She looked startled, half focusing on him, half concentrating on holding her balance, her arms out of action clinging to the plastic bag pressed into her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He saw the look of surprise fill her face, watched her as she waited for the explanation, the mumbled apology and helping hand--the usual etiquette of Oxford Circus Station, top hall, at 8.45 in the morning.

He froze the words in his mouth, the discipline of his briefing winning through. They'd told him not to speak on route to the target. Act dumb, rude, anything, but don't open your big mouth, they'd said. It had been drilled into him--not to let anyone hear the hard, nasal accent of West Belfast.

As the man sped from the fracas, leaving the elderly man to grope amongst a ma.s.s of shoes for his paper, the girl to regain her feet with the help of a clutch of hands, he could sense the eyes of the witnesses boring into him; it was enough of an incident to be remembered. The briefing had said "Don't speak'... but while the crowd acknowledged people's need to hurry it demanded at the least some slight apology for breaking the etiquette of the rush hour. The failure to conform was noted by the half-dozen or so close enough to examine the man, who now ran away towards the tunnel and the escalator leading to the Victoria Line. They'd had at least three seconds to see his face, to take in his clothes and, above all, to note the fear and tension in his face as their stares built up round him.

When he reached the escalator he swerved left to the walking side of the moving stairs and ducked down behind the moving line, past the stationary paper-readers and the bikini-advertis.e.m.e.nt watchers. Here the eyes were away from him, on the financial pages, the sports pics, or the h.o.a.rdings floating tantalizingly by.

He was aware of his stupidity in the hall area, conscious that he'd antagonized people who would recognize him, and he felt the slight trembling again in his hands and feet that he'd noticed several times since he'd come across the water. With his right hand, awkwardly and across his body, he gripped the rubber escalator rail to steady himself. His fingers tightened on the hard rubber, holding until he reached the bottom and skipped clear of the sieve where the stair drove its way under the floor. The movement and the push of a young man behind him made the man stumble a little, and with his right hand he reached out for the shoulder of a woman in front of him. She smiled warmly and openly at him as he found his feet again, and a little hesitantly he smiled back, and was away. Better that time, he thought, no tension, no incident, no recognition. Cool it, sunshine. Take it easy. He walked through, carried forward by the crowd on to the platform. They'd timed the frequency of the trains; at worst he'd wait less than a minute.

His left arm, pressed against his chest, disappeared into the gap between the b.u.t.tons of his raincoat. His left hand held tightly on to the barrel of the Klashnikov automatic rifle he'd strapped to his body before leaving the North London boarding house two hours and twenty minutes earlier. In that time the hand had never left the cold metal and the skin under his thumb was numb from the indentation of the master sight. The barrel and weapon mechanism were little more than twenty inches long, with the shoulder stock of tubular steel folded back alongside it. The magazine was in his hip pocket. The train blurted its way out of the darkened tunnel, braked, and the doors slid back. As he wormed his way into a seat and the doors closed, he edged his weight off the magazine, and the thirty live rounds inside it.

It was 8.51 by the cheap watch on his wrist, just visible if he moved the gun towards the coat b.u.t.tonholes. Five minutes maximum to Victoria, three minutes from the Underground platform to the street, and, taking it gently, seven minutes from there to his target. 9.06 on location. The train pulled abruptly into Green Park Station, waited little more than forty-five seconds as a trickle of pa.s.sengers got off, a few moments more to let others on, and the doors, to the shout of the big West Indian guard, were closing.

9.06 on location meant that he had two minutes in hand, perhaps three at the most, primarily to a.s.semble the gun and pick his firing position. It was a close schedule now, and he began again to feel the trembling that had dogged him since Rosslare and the ferry, and that he had first felt acutely at Fishguard as he walked with the Klashnikov past the cold eyes of the Special Branch section watching the ferry pa.s.sengers coming over from Ireland. He'd gone right by them then, waving furiously to a non-existent relative in the middle distance beyond the check-point and suddenly realizing that he was through and on his way. At his briefing they'd told him the worst part before the shooting would be at Fishguard. He'd seen when he was at the back of the queue how they watched the men coming through, watched hard and expressionless, taking them apart. But no one from his ferry, that he'd seen at any rate, had been stopped. At the briefing they had explained that in his favour was his lack of form, never fingerprinted, never photographed, that he was an unknown face, that if he kept his nerve he'd get away with it and make it out as well. No sympathizers" homes in London were being used, no contact with anyone, keep it tight as an Orangeman's drum, one said. They'd all laughed. The train jolted to a halt, the carriage emptied. Victoria. He pulled himself up with his right hand on the pole support by the door, and stepped out on to the platform. Instinctively he began to hurry, then checked himself, slowed and headed for the neon "Way Out" sign.

By the start of the nine o'clock news something approaching order was returning to the Minister's home. Three children already on their way to school, two more still wrestling with overcoats, scarves, hockey sticks and satchels. The au pair in the hall with them. The Minister's Afghan tangled round their legs.

The Minister was alone at the long refectory table in the breakfast room, newspapers spread out where the children's cereal bowls had been. First he gutted the editorial columns, then on through the parliamentary reports, and finally to the front page news. He read quickly, with little outward sign of annoyance or pleasure. It was said that only his closest parliamentary colleagues, and that meant about four in the Cabinet, could spot his moods at a time like this. But the selection of papers offered him little more than the trivial interest in the fortunes of his colleagues. Since his eighteen months as second man in Belfast, and the attendant publicity, his promotion to Social Services Overlord and a place in the Cabinet had taken him back out of the public eye and reduced his exposure. His major speeches in the House were fully reported, but his monolithic department ticked along, barely feeling his touch at the helm. This morning he wasn't mentioned, and his department figured only in the continuing story of a grandmother in the North-East who had been taken to hospital penniless and suffering from malnutrition and then told local officials that she'd never drawn her pension, and believed people should look after themselves anyway. Lunatic, stupid woman, he muttered.

The news was mostly foreign, South Africa and the mine strike, Middle East cease-fire violations, Kremlin reshuffle. "In Belfast'-- suddenly he was concentrating--'a city centre pub was destroyed by a car bomb. Two masked men had warned the customers to leave, but the bomb went off before the area could be fully evacuated. Three men were taken to hospital suffering from shock, but a spokesman said no one was seriously hurt." Belfast was pretty far down these days, he reflected. Just time left to see what football manager was leaving where, and then the weather, and it would be five-past. He shuffled his papers together and reached for his briefcase under the table; the car would be at the door in three minutes. 'Moving off, sweetheart," he called, and made for the hall.

The Afghan was now sitting quietly on the doormat, the children ready, as the Minister put on his heavy, dark-blue overcoat, paused and contemplated the scarf on the hook, decided against it, gave his wife's offered cheek a kiss and opened the door into Belgrave Square. The Afghan and au pair led the way down the steps to the pavement, then the children and after a moment the Minister and his wife. To his right he saw the black Austin Princess turning out of Halldn Street, seventy-five yards away, to pick him up. The children, dog and au pair walked left towards Chapel Street, and across 10.the road a short, dark-haired man who had been leaning against the square's fence stiffened and moved forward.

The Minister's huge voice bellowed after his children: "Have a nice day, darlings, and don't do any damage with those sticks." He was still smiling at the over-the-shoulder grimace from the elder girl down the street, when he saw the rifle come from under the coat of the man across the street and move to his shoulder. He was out on the pavement now and some yards away from the house as he turned and looked for the sanctuary of the door in front of which his wife was standing, intent on her children.

He had started to shout a warning to her when the man fired his first shot. For the Minister the street exploded in noise, as he felt the sledge-hammer blow of the 7.62 mm. sh.e.l.l crashing into his chest, searing into the soft flesh on its way through a splintered rib cage, puncturing the tissue of his lungs, gouging muscle and bone from his backbone, and bursting out through his clothes, before, a shapeless ma.s.s of lead, it buried itself in the white facade of the house. The force of that first shot spun and felled the Minister, causing the second shot to miss and stray into the hallway, fracturing a mirror beside the lounge door. As the man aimed for his third shot--'Keep steady, aim," they'd told him, "don't blaze, and for Christ's sake be quick'--he heard the screaming. The Minister's wife was crawling down the steps to where her husband writhed in his attempt to get away from the pain. The man fired two more shots. This time there were no misses, and he watched with detached fascination as the back of the sleek, groomed head disintegrated. It was the last chance he had to see the target before the woman who had been screaming flung herself over it, swamping it from his view. He looked to his left and saw the big car stranded, its engine racing in the middle of the road. To the right on the pavement he saw the children, immobile like statues, with the dog straining at its leash to escape the noise.

Automatically the man flicked the safety catch to "on', deflated the catch at the top of the stock, bent the shoulder rest back alongside the barrel and dropped the weapon into the sheath they'd built to be strapped under his coat. Then he ran, jumping out of the way of a woman as he went. He turned into Chapel Street, sprinting now. Right next into Grosvenor Place. Must get across the road, get a line of traffic between you and them, he told himself. Alongside him was the high, spiked wall of Buckingham Palace. People saw him coming and moved out of his path. He clutched his unb.u.t.toned coat tight to 11.his body. The rifle was awkward now, with the curved magazine digging into his ribs. As he was running he was vulnerable, he knew that. His mind didn't tell him that no one had cause to stop him, but focused almost exclusively on the road, the traffic, and at what moment he would see a hole in the river of buses and cabs and lorries. Get across Buckingham Palace Road and then into the safety and anonymity of the tube station at Victoria. Hard out of breath he stumbled into the station. He took a ten-pence piece from his pocket. Relaxed now, he could take his place in the queue. He pushed the coins into the automatic machine. Remember, they'd said, the law will expect a car; you're better on the tube. They'd given him a route, Victoria to Oxford Circus on the Victoria Line, the Circus to Netting Hill Gate on the Central Line, then the District Line to Edgware Road, then Bakerloo to Watford. He was on a train and moving and his watch showed 9.12.

The sirens of the patrol cars blotted out the screaming of the Minister's wife as she lay over the body. They'd been diverted there just ninety seconds before with the brief message, "Man shot in Belgrave Square." The two constables were still mentally tuned to the traffic blockages at the Knightsbridge underpa.s.s as they spilled out into the street. George Davies, twenty-two years old and only three years in the Metropolitan police, was first out. He saw the woman, the body of the man under her, and the brain tissue on the steps. The sight stopped him in mid-stride as he felt nausea rising into his mouth. Frank Smith, twice his age, screamed, "Don't stop, move," ran past him to the huddle on the steps, and pulled the Minister's wife from her husband's body. "Give him air," he yelled, before he took in the wrecked skull, the human debris on the flagstones and the woman's housecoat. Smith sucked in the air, mumbled inaudibly, and turned on his knees to the pale-faced Davies ten paces behind him. "Ambulance, reinforcements, tell "em it's big, and move it fast." When Smith looked again at the Minister's wife he recognized her. "It's Mrs Danby?" he whispered. It was a statement, but he put the question into it. She nodded. "Your husband?" She nodded again. She was silent now and the children had edged close to her.

Smith took the scene in. "Get them inside, Ma'am," It was an instruction, and they obeyed, slowly and numbly going through the door and off the street.

Smith got up off his knees and lumbered back to the squad car.

'Davies, don't let anyone near him. Get a description.'

On the radio he put out a staccato message: "Tango George, in Belgrave Square. Henry Danby has been shot. He's dead, from all I can see. Ambulance and reinforcements already requested.'

The street was beginning to fill. The Ministry driver of the Austin Princess had recovered from the initial shock and was able to move the car into a parking meter bay. Two more police cars pulled up, lights flashing, uniformed and CID men jumping clear before they'd stopped. The ambulance was sounding the warning of its approach on the half-mile journey from the St George's Hospital at Hyde Park Corner. The Special Patrol Group Land-Rover, on stand-by at Scotland Yard, blocked the south side of the square. One of its constables stood beside it, his black, short-barrelled Smith and Wesson -38 calibre in his hand.

'You can put that away," said his colleague, "we're light years too b.l.o.o.d.y late.'

At Oxford Circus the man debated quickly whether to break his journey, head for the Gents and take the magazine off his Klashnikov. He decided against it, and ran for the escalator to bring him up from the Victoria Line to the level of the Central Line. He thought there would be time to worry about the gun later. Now distance concerned him. His mind was still racing, unable to take in the violence of the scene behind him. His only reaction was that there had been something terribly simple about it all, that for all the work and preparation that had gone into it the killing should have been harder. He remembered the woman over the body, the children and the dog on the pavement, the old woman he had avoided on the pavement outside the house. But none of them registered: his only compulsion now was to get clear of the city.

The first reports of the shooting reached the Commissioner's desk a mile away at Scotland Yard at 9.25. He was slipping out of his coat after the chauffeur drive from Epsom when his aide came in with the first flashes. The Commissioner looked up sharply, noting there had been no knock on his door, before the young officer was in front of him, thrusting a piece of paper at him. As he read the message he saw it was torn at the bottom, ripped off a teleprinter. He said, "Get me Cl, Special Branch and SPG, here in five minutes." He went over to his desk, pressed the intercom b.u.t.ton, announced sharply, 'Prime Minister, please', and flicked the switch back. When the orange light flashed in the centre of the console the Commissioner straightened a little in his seat, subconsciously adjusted his tie, and picked up his phone. A voice remote, Etonian and clipped said on the line, "h.e.l.lo, Commissioner, we're just raking him up, won't be a second." Then another click. "Yes, right, you've found me, good morning Commissioner, what can I do for you?'

The Commissioner took it slowly. First reports, much regret, your colleague Henry Danby, dead on arrival in hospital. Seems on first impression the work of an a.s.sa.s.sin, very major police activity, but few other details available. He spoke quietly into the phone and was heard out in silence. When he finished the voice at the end of the line, in the first floor office overlooking Downing Street and the Foreign Office arch, said "Nothing else?" "No, sir. It's early, though.' 'You'll shout if you want help--army, air force, intelligence, anything you need?'

There was no reply from the Commissioner. The Prime Minister went on: "I'll get out of your hair--call me in half an hour. I'll get one of our people to put it out to the Press a.s.sociation.'

The Commissioner smiled to himself bleakly. A press release straight away--the political mind taking stock. He grimaced, putting his phone down as the door opened and the three men he'd summoned came in. They headed critical departments: Cl--the elite crime investigation unit; the Special Branch--Scotland Yard's counter-terrorist and surveillance force; and the Special Patrol Group--the specialist unit trained to deal with major incidents. All were Commanders, but only the head of the SPG was in uniform.

The Commissioner kept his office Spartan and without frills, and the Commanders collected the armless chairs from the sides of the room and brought them towards the desk.

He spoke first to the Special Patrol Group Commander and asked him abruptly what was known.

'Not much, sir. Happened at 9.07. Danby comes down his front steps regular time, regular everything--he's waiting for the Minstry car. A man steps out into the street on the other side, and lets fly, fires several shots, multiple wounds, and runs for it in the direction of Victoria. Not much good for eye witnesses at this stage, not much about. There's a woman on the pavement had a good look at him, but she's a bit shocked at the moment. We've got he's about five eight, younger than middle-aged, say thirtyish, and what she calls so far a pinched sort of face, dark hair. Clothes aren't much good-- dark trousers under a biscuit-coloured mac. That's it.'

'And the gun?'

'Can't be definite." It was the Special Branch man. "Seems from what the woman said it's an AK 47, usually called a Klashnikov. Russians use it. VC in Vietnam, the Aden people, the Black September crowd. It's Czech-designed, quite old now, but it's never showed up here before. The IRA have tried to get them into Ulster, but always failed. The Claudia--that fishing boat up to the gills in arms--was running them when intercepted. It's a cla.s.sic weapon, semi-automatic or virtually automatic--400 rounds a minute, if you could get that many up the spout. Muzzle velocity around 2000 feet a second. Effective killing range comfortable at half a mile. The latest version has a folding stock--you could get it into a big briefcase. It's accurate and doesn't jam. It's a h.e.l.l of a weapon for this sort of thing. Its calibre is fractionally bigger than ours so it fires Iron Curtain ammo, or ours at a pinch. We've found four sh.e.l.l cases, but no detail on them yet. It's got a noise all of its own, a crack that people who've heard it say is distinctive. From what the woman said to the people down there it fits with the Klashnikov.'

'And the conclusion?'

'It's not an amateur's weapon. We haven't traced them coming in here yet. If it is a Klashnikov we're not up against second division. If they can get one of these things then they're big and know what they're about.'

That struck the chord. All four stayed quiet for a moment; it was a depressing thought. The professional political a.s.sa.s.sin on their hands. It went through the Commissioner's mind before he spoke that a man who troubled to get the ideal gun for the killing, the favourite terrorist weapon in the world, would spend time on the other detail of the operation.

He lit his first cigarette of the day, two hours ahead of the schedule he'd disciplined himself to after his last medical check, and broke the silence.

'He'll have thought out his escape route. It'll be good. Where are we, how do we block him?'

The murder squad chief took it up. "Usual, sir, at this stage. Ports, ferries, airports, private strips as soon as we can get men to them. Phone calls ahead to the control towers. I've got as many men as possible concentrated on the tube stations, and particularly exit points on the outskirts. He went towards Victoria, could be the lube, could be the train. We're trying to seal it, but that takes a bit...'

He tailed away. He'd said enough. The Commissioner drummed his desk top with the filter of his cigarette. The others waited, anxious now to get the meeting over and get back to their desks, their teams and the reports that were beginning to build.

The Commissioner reacted, sensing the mood.

'Right, I take it we all accept Danby was the target because of his work in Northern Ireland, though G.o.d knows a less controversial Minister I never met. Like a b.l.o.o.d.y willow tree. It's not a nut, because nutters don't get modern Commie a.s.sault rifles to run round Belgrave Square. So look for a top man, in the IRA. Right? I'm putting Charlie in over-all control. He'll co-ordinate. By this afternoon I want the whole thing flooded, get the manpower out. Bank on Belfast., we'll get something out of there. Good luck.'

The last was a touch subdued. You couldn't give a pep talk to the three men he had in the room, yet for the first tune since he'd eased himself into the Commissioner's chair he'd felt something was required of him. Stupid, he thought, as the door closed on the Special Patrol Group Commander.

His yellow light was flashing again on the telephone console. When he picked up his phone his secretary told him the Prime Minister had called an emergency Cabinet meeting for 2.30, and would require him to deliver a situation report to Ministers at the start of their meeting.

'Get me a.s.sistant Commissioner Crime, Charlie Henderson," he said, after he'd scribbled down the message from Downing Street on his memory pad.

At a quarter to eleven the BBC broke into its television transmissions to schools, and after two seconds of blank screen went to a 'Newsflash" caption. It then dissolved to a continuity announcer, who paused, hesitated for a moment, and then, head down on his script, read: Here is a newsflash. Just after nine this morning a gunman shot and killed the Secretary of State for the Social Services, Mr Henry Danby. Mr Danby was about to leave his Belgrave Square home when he was fired on by a man apparently on the other side of the street. He was dead on arrival in hospital. Our outside broadcast unit is now outside Mr Danby's home and we go over there now to our reporter, James Lyons.

It's difficult from Belgrave Square to piece together exactly what happened this morning, as Mr Henry Danby, the Social Services Minister, left his home and was ambushed on his front door step. The police are at the moment keeping us a hundred yards back from the doorway as they comb the street for clues, particularly the cartridge cases of the murder weapon. But with me here is a lady who was walking her dog just round the corner of the Square when the first shot was fired. Q. What did you see?

A. Well, I was walking the dog, and I heard the bang, the first bang, and I thought that doesn't sound like a car. And I came round the corner and I saw this man holding this little rifle or gun up to his---- Q. Could you see the Minister--Mr Danby? A. I saw him, he was sort of crouched, this man in his doorway, he was trying to crawl, then came the second shot. I just stood there, and he fired again and again, and the woman---- Q. Mrs Danby?

A. The woman in the doorway was screaming. I've never heard such a noise, it was dreadful, dreadful... I can't say any more ... he just ran. The poor man was lying there, bleeding. And the woman just went on screaming ... it was awful. Q. Did you see the man, the gunman?

A. Well, yes and no, he came past me, but he came fast, he was running.

Q. What did he look like?

A. Nothing special, he wasn't very tall, he was dark. Q. How old, would you guess? A. Not old, late twenties, but it was very fast. Q. And what was he wearing? Could you see? A. He had a brown mac on, a sort of fawn colour. I saw it had a tartan lining. I could see that he put the gun inside, in a sort of pouch. He just ran straight past me. I couldn't move. There's nothing more.

They'd told the man that simplicity would see him through. That if they kept it easy, with no frills, they'd get him back. He got off the train at Watford Junction, and began to walk towards the barrier, eyes going 180 in front of him. The detectives he spotted were close to the ticket barrier, not looking down the platform, but intent on the pa.s.sengers. He walked away from the barrier towards the Gents, went into the graffiti-scrawled cubicle, and took off the coat. He hung it carefully behind a door. He unfastened the shoulder strap, undipped the magazine from the gun, took off his jacket and put the improvised holster back on. With his jacket over the top, the rifle fitted unseen close to his armpit. It gave him a stockiness that wasn't his, and showed his jacket as a poor fit; but that was all. Trembling again in his fingers he walked towards the barrier. The CID men, both local, had been told the Minister had been shot at home in Belgrave Square, they'd been told the man might have got away by underground, they'd been told he was in a fawn-brown macintosh and was carrying an automatic rifle. They hadn't been told that, if the killer was on the tube, his ticket might not have been issued at Victoria--could have been bought at another station during the journey. Nor had they been told the Klashnikov could be folded. They ruled him out in the five yards before he handed over his ticket.

He walked away from them, panting quietly to himself, his forehead cold with sweat, waiting for the shout behind him, or the heavy hand falling on his shoulder, and felt nothing. He walked out of the station to the car park, where the Avis Cortina waited. He stowed the gun under his driving seat and set off for Heathrow. There's no way they'll get you if you stay cool. That was the advice.

In the late morning traffic the journey took him an hour. He'd antic.i.p.ated it would, and he found he'd left himself ninety minutes for his flight when he'd left the car in the No 1 terminal car park. He locked the car, leaving the rifle under his seat with its magazine along with it.

The police were staked out at all corners of the terminal. The man saw the different groups, reflected in their shoulder markings. Airport Police--AP, T. Division of the Metropolitan--T, and the Special Patrol Group men--CO. He knew the last were armed, which gave him a chilled feeling in his belly. If they shouted and he ran, would they shoot him? ... He clenched his fist and walked up to the BEA ticket desk.

'The name is Jones ... you've a ticket waiting for me. The one o'clock to Amsterdam, BE 467.'

The girl behind the counter smiled, nodded, and began to beat out the instructions of the flight into her personal reservations computer. The flight was confirmed, and as she made the ticket out the terminal loudspeakers warned pa.s.sengers of delays in all flights to Dublin, Cork and Shannon and Belfast. No reason was given. But that's where all the effort will be, they'd told him. They haven't the manpower for the lot.

The man brought out the new British pa.s.sport supplied for him by his unit quartermaster and walked through immigration control.

TWO.

Normally the Commissioner travelled alone, with only the elderly driver for company. That afternoon sitting in the front with the driver was an armed detective. The car turned into Downing Street through the crash barriers that had been put into position half an hour after the shooting was reported. The dark, shaded street was empty of Ministerial cars, and sightseers were banned for the day. By the door two constables had established their will on the group of photographs gathered to record all comings and goings, and shepherded them into a line stretching from the railings, over the pavement and out into the parking area. The Commissioner was met in the hall, warm with its red carpets and chandeliers, and escorted to the lift. As he pa.s.sed the small room to the right of the door, he noted the four plain-clothes men sitting there. His order that the Prime Minister's guard should be doubled had been carried out. Two floors later he was led into the Prime Minister's study.

'I just wanted to see if there was anything you wanted to say before we get involved in the main scene downstairs.'

'All I can do now, sir, is say what we know, what we're doing. Not much of the first, a lot of the second.'

'There'll be a fair amount of questioning about the security round the Minister...'

The Commissioner said nothing. It was an atmosphere he was not happy in; he reflected that in his three years as Commissioner and the country's top policeman he'd never got into this marble tower before, never got beyond the first floor reception salons. On the way to Whitehall he had primed himself not to allow the police to become the scapegoat, and after thirty-six years in the Force his inclination was to be back at Scotland Yard hovering on the fifth floor by the control room, irregular as it was, but at least doing something.

There was little contact, and both acknowledged it. The Prime Minister rose and motioned with his hand to the door. "Come on," he murmured, "let's go and meet them. Frank Scott of the RUC and General Fairbairn are coming in from Belfast in an hour or so. We'll hear them after you.'

The man was striding his way along the vast pier of Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, towards the central transit area. If his connections were working he had fifty-eight minutes till the Aer Lingus 727 took off for Dublin airport. He saw the special airport police with their short barrelled, lightweight carbines patrolling the entrance to the pier where the El Al jumbo was loading, and had noticed the armoured personnel carriers on the ap.r.o.ns. All the precautions of the anti hijack programme ... but nothing to concern him. He went to the Aer Lingus desk, collected the ticket waiting for him, and drifted away to the duty-free lounge. They'd told him not to miss the duty free lounge; the best in Europe, they'd said. Belgrave Square and the noise and the screaming were far away; for the first time in the day he felt a degree of calm.

In the first-floor Cabinet Room the Commissioner stood to deliver his briefing. He spoke slowly, picking his words with care, and aware that the Ministers were shocked, suspicious and even hostile to what he had to say. There was little comfort for them. On top of what they had seen on the television lunch time news they were told that a new and better description was being circulated ... for the first time the policeman had the full attention of his audience.

There was a slight jostling incident at Oxford Circus this morning. A man barged his way through, nearly knocking people over, md noticeably didn't stop to apologize. Not the sort of thing that you'd expect people to remember, but two women independently >saw the television interview from Belgrave Square this morning, and phoned the Yard--put the two together. It's the same sort of man i they're talking about as we'd already heard of, but a better des Cription. We'll have a photokit by four o'clock----'

He was interrupted by the slight knock on the door, and the arrival of the Royal Ulster Constabulary Chief Constable, Frank Scott, and General Sir Jocelyn Fairbairn, GOC Northern Ireland. When they'd sat down, crowded in at the far end of the table, the Prime Minister began.

'We all take it this is an IRA a.s.sa.s.sination. We don't know for what motive, whether it is the first of several attempts or a one-off. I want the maximum effort to get die killer--and fast. I don't want an investigation that runs a month, two months, six months. Every day that these thugs get away with it is a ma.s.sive plus to them. How it was that Danby's detective was withdrawn from him so soon after he'd left the Ulster job is a mystery to me. The Home Secretary will report to us tomorrow on that, and also on what else is being done to prevent a recurrence of such attacks.'

He stopped. The room was silent, disliking the schoolroom lecture. The Commissioner wondered for a moment whether to explain that Danby himself had decided to do without the armed guard, ridiculing the detective-sergeant's efforts to watch him. He thought better of it and decided to let the Prime Minister hear it from his Home Secretary.

The Prime Minister gestured to the RUG man.

'Well, sir ... gentlemen," he started in the soft Scots burr of so many of the Ulstermen. He tugged at the jacket of his bottle-green uniform and moved his blackthorn cane fractionally across the table. 'If he's in Belfast we'll get him. It may not be fast, but it's a village there. We'll hear, and we'll get him. It would be very difficult for them to organize an operation of this scale and not involve so many people that we'll grab one and he'll bend. It's a lot easier to get them to talk these days. The hard men are locked up, the new generation talks. If he's in Belfast we'll get him.'

It was past five and dark outside when the Ministers, and the General and the Prime Minister again, had had their say. The Prime Minister had called a full meeting of all present for the day after tomorrow, and reiterated his demand for action and speed, when a private secretary slipped into the room, whispered in the Commissioner's ear, and ushered him out. Those next to him had heard the word "urgent" used.

When the Commissioner came back into the room two minutes later the Prime Minister saw his face and stopped in mid-sentence. The eyes of the eighteen politicians and the Ulster policeman and the General were on the Commissioner as he said: 'We have some rather bad news. Police officers at Heathrow have discovered a hired car in the terminal car park near No 1 building. Under the driver's seat was a Klashnikov rifle. The car-park ticket would have given a pa.s.senger time to take flights to Vienna, Stockholm, Madrid, Rome and Amsterdam. The crew of the BEA flight to Amsterdam are already back at Heathrow, and we are sending a photokit down to the airport, it's on its way, but one of the stewardesses thinks a man who fits our primary description, the rough one we had at first, was in the fifteenth row in a window seat. We are also in touch with Schipol police, and are wiring the picture, but from the BEA flight there was ample time to make a Dublin connection. The Aer Lingus, Amsterdam/Dublin flight landed in Dublin twenty-five minutes ago, and they are holding all pa.s.sengers in the baggage reclaim hall.'

There was a common gasp of relief round the Cabinet Room, as the Commissioner went on.

'But the Dublin airport police report that those pa.s.sengers with >ut baggage went through immigration control before we notified them.'

'Would he have had baggage?" It was the Prime Minister, speaking very quietly.

'I doubt it, sir, but we're trying to establish that with the ticket desk and check-in counter.'

'What a c.o.c.k-up." The Prime Minister was virtually inaudible. 'We'll need some results, and soon.'

From Heathrow, the Klashnikov, swaddled in a cellophane wrapping, was rushed by squad car to Woolwich on the far side of the city, to the police test firing range. It was still white from the chalk like fingerprint powder brushed on at the airport police station, but the airport's resident fingerprint man had declared it clean. "Doesn't look like a gloves job," he said, "he must have wiped it--a cloth, or something. But it's thorough; he's missed nothing.'

In the suburbs of Dublin, in the big open-plan newsroom of RTE, the Republic of Ireland's television service, the central phone in the bank used by the news editor rang at exactly six o'clock.

'Listen carefully, I'm only going to say this once. This is a spokesman for the military wing of the Provisional IRA. An active service unit of the Provisional IRA today carried out a court-martial execution order on Henry DeLacey Danby, an enemy of the people of Ireland, and servant of the British occupation forces in Ireland. During the eighteen months Danby spent in Ireland one of his duties was responsibility for the concentration camp at Long Kesh. He was repeatedly warned that if the regime of the camp did not change action would be taken against him. That's it.'

The phone clicked off, and the news editor began to read back his .shorthand.

Ten hours later the Saracens and pigs, on dimmed headlights, were moving off from the Belfast police stations, heading out of the sandbagged tin- and chicken-wire fortresses of Andersontown, Hasting Street, Flax Street, Glenravel Street and Mountpottinger. Sentries in steel helmets and shrapnel-proof jerkins, their automatic rifles strapped to their wrists, pulled aside the heavy wood and barbed wire barricades at the entrances of the battalion and company headquarters and the convoys inched their way into the darkness. Inside the armoured cars the troops huddled together, their faces blackened with boot polish, their bodies laden with gas masks, emergency wound dressings, rubber-bullet guns, truncheons and the medieval Macron see-through shields. In addition they carried with them their high-velocity NATO rifles. Few of the men had slept more than a few hours, and that cat-napping in their uniform, their only luxury that of being able to take off their boots. Their officers and senior NCOs, who had attended the operational briefings for the raids, had slept even less. There was no talk, no conversation, only the knowledge that the day would be long, tiring, cold and probably wet. There was nothing for the men to look at.

Each car was battened down against possible sniper attacks; only the driver, the rifleman beside him and the rifleman at the back, with his barrel poked through the fine visibility slit, had any sight of the darkened, rain-swept streets. No house lights were on, no shop windows were illuminated, and only occasionally was there a high street lamp, one that had survived the attempts of both sides over the last four years to destroy its brightness.

Within a few minutes the convoys had swung off the main roads and were splitting up in the housing estates, all but one on the west side of the city. Two thousand troops, drawn from six battalions, were sealing off the streets that have the Falls Road as their spinal cord--the Catholic artery out of the west side of the city, and the route to Dublin. As the armoured cars pulled across the streets, paratroopers, marines and men from the old county infantry units flung open the reinforced doors and ran for the security of their fire positions. In the extreme west, on the Andersontown and Suffolk border, where the houses are newer and the sight therefore more incongruous, the troops were from a heavy artillery unit--men more used to maneuvering with the long-range Abbot gun than looking for cover in front gardens and behind dustbins. Away across the city from the Falls more troops were spreading into the Ardoyne, and across on the east side of the Lagan the Short Strand area was sealed.