The Chinaman (24 page)

Morrison looked around the square. He normally had a nose for plain-clothes policemen or off-duty soldiers, a sixth sense honed by years of surviving in Belfast. He tagged a man in his forties in a brown leather bomber jacket as one possibility, and he paid close attention to a balding man in a fawn overcoat, but both left the square eventually. Bromley got to within a dozen paces before Morrison realised he was the man he was there to see. Tallish with horn-rimmed spectacles and a well-trimmed black beard, Bromley looked more like a history professor than a Detective Chief Inspector with the Anti-Terrorist Branch. He was wearing a greenish jacket of some indeterminate material with baggy corduroy trousers and a brown wool tie. He was smoking a pipe. Morrison thought the pipe could be cover because it looked brand new, but the man appeared to have no problems inhaling and blew out a cloud of bluish smoke as he drew near.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Bromley, I presume,' said Morrison. He made no move to shake hands, and neither did the inspector. Each was highly suspicious of the other. Both knew that they could be under observation and whereas a clandestine meeting could possibly be explained, a handshake or any other sign of friendliness would be damning. And in Morrison's case, possibly fatal.

‘How can I help you, Mr Morrison?' said Bromley with exaggerated politeness.

Morrison began walking slowly around the perimeter of the square. ‘It's about the bombs, the bombs on the mainland,' he said. ‘We're not responsible.'

‘By we, who do you mean?'

‘The organisation.'

‘Well, Mr Morrison, there appears to be some confusion here. The forensic evidence we have suggests that the devices are standard IRA type, and each time responsibility has been claimed they've given the correct codeword. Can you explain that?' Bromley shook his head and puffed on his pipe.

‘We think there's a renegade unit behind it. We don't know who.'

‘Are you trying to tell me there's an active service unit on the loose and you don't even know who it is? Where are they getting their explosives from?'

‘They've managed to gain access to several arms dumps in and around London. They have explosives, detonators and firearms. But they haven't been sanctioned by us. We're as keen as you are to see them stopped.'

‘And the codewords?'

Morrison nodded. ‘We think they're being helped by someone high up in Belfast or Dublin. But again, we don't know who.'

Bromley thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his corduroy trousers and studied the ground as he walked. ‘You know they've taken explosives, but you don't know who they are?'

‘We've checked out all our caches. Some ordnance was missing.' Morrison chose his words carefully because he couldn't afford to give away any more information than was absolutely necessary. The IRA was still at war with the British Government, when all was said and done.

‘Can't you just identify which IRA members are unaccounted for?'

‘It's a big organisation. We're working on it.'

‘It's a big organisation but I doubt if you've that many bombmakers.'

‘You'd be surprised,' said Morrison. ‘But with the organisation structured the way it is, it's harder than it used to be to get in touch with people. You of all people should know that.'

Bromley grunted around the stem of his pipe. He knew what Morrison meant. Following several much publicised coups by the intelligence services in the late seventies and early eighties, the IRA had undergone a transformation, doing away with the old brigade command structure in favour of a more complex network of cells, each with different but often overlapping functions. Most of the units in Northern Ireland reported to the high command in Belfast, but in the countryside the chain of command was a great deal more flexible, harder to pin down. The cells were graded into four levels. The most important were active service units responsible for fund-raising robberies, assassinations, bombings and weaponry, numbering about one hundred of the organisation's most trusted members. At any one time at least half of them could be found in the H-blocks of Long Kesh.

The second level consisted of about three hundred and fifty men and women divided into small cells, all of them trained and ready to go into action but held in reserve until needed. They were generally less well-known to the security forces and it was members of the second level who were often sent into active service on the mainland or the Continent.

The third level comprised a small number of cells, mainly Dublin-based terrorists who were active during the sixties but who had effectively disappeared from the political scene and who did not appear on any current intelligence files.

The fourth level was made up of what Morrison thought of as the enthusiastic amateurs, usually Belfast teenagers who'd graduated from street fighting or youngsters from Catholic farming families helping with the organisation's smuggling operations. They were useful as couriers or lookouts, or for causing disturbances, but not sufficiently trained for anything more sophisticated. Most were expendable and would rise no higher in the organisation.

The structure had been set up so that if any one cell were exposed, its links with the rest of the organisation would be minimal. The system made the IRA much more secure, but it also made it difficult to run checks on who was doing what. Each cell had to be contacted individually, and that would take a great deal of time. And that wasn't allowing for the IRA members like Morrison who weren't even members of a cell but who worked alone.

‘So what are you saying, Mr Morrison?'

‘We have a plan,' said Morrison quietly.

‘We?'

That, realised Morrison, was the problem. ‘We' meant Hennessy and Morrison and nobody else, so he was going to have an uphill struggle to persuade Bromley to help. And it was made even more difficult by virtue of the fact that the policeman would also have to be sworn to secrecy. It was, whichever way you looked at it, an unholy alliance.

‘The Provisional IRA is not responsible for the bombings, that I can promise you. They're using our ordnance and our codewords, but they are acting without official sanction. We plan to change the codeword, but different codes will be given to each member of the high command. When they claim responsibility for the next bombing, we should know who their link is.'

Bromley bit down on the pipe, his brow furrowed. ‘You mean you want the police to tell you which codeword we get?'

Morrison nodded. ‘That's all you have to do. Give us the word, we'll do the rest.'

‘That's all I have to do!' exclaimed the policeman. ‘All I have to do is to co-operate with the IRA! Can you imagine what would happen if that ever got out?'

Morrison stopped walking and confronted Bromley, putting his face close up to the policeman's. ‘And can you imagine, Detective Chief Inspector Bromley, how long I'd have to live if anyone in the organisation knew what I was proposing? My life is on the line here, so don't give me any crap about your reputation being at risk.'

‘You're asking me to co-operate with you in a bombing campaign. You're asking me to give you confidential information on an investigation.' A pigeon fluttered noisily over Bromley's head, saw he had no seed and flapped away.

‘The bomb will go off anyway, whether or not you decide to help, Bromley. I don't know when, I don't know where, but there will be another bomb and people will probably die. There's nothing we can do to stop it, but maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to stop the one after that.'

Bromley returned Morrison's gaze with steady, hard eyes.

‘Who else, Mr Morrison? Who else is involved?'

Morrison swallowed. He had hoped to persuade the policeman without bringing Hennessy's name into it, but he could see that it would not be possible. Bromley wouldn't believe this was a serious operation unless he knew who was running it. ‘Liam Hennessy,' he said slowly. He was rewarded by the sight of Bromley's eyes widening with surprise.

Bromley turned away and Morrison walked with him. They passed a line of tourists queuing up to buy seed to feed the pigeons and neither of the men spoke. Two uniformed policewomen walked by, a blonde and a brunette, and Morrison wondered how they'd react if they knew that a member of the IRA and a Detective Chief Inspector from the Anti-Terrorist Branch were considering working together. Bromley waited until they were some distance from the policewomen before speaking again.

‘When do you plan to change the codeword?' he asked.

‘It's already done,' replied Morrison. ‘Hennessy did it yesterday. Himself. Only he knows who was given which word. Even I don't know.'

Bromley knew of Hennessy, and of his role as Sinn Fein adviser to the Belfast IRA council. He was one of the most powerful men in the organisation, just one step away from the seven-man Dublin-based army council. He was listened to by the council in Belfast but held equal sway over the headquarters staff in Ireland, the men who ran the active service units across Europe.

What Bromley really wanted was the list of men in the high command and the codewords they'd been given, but he knew Morrison would not hand out information like that. He would have to play by the rules Morrison was laying down or not play at all. Could he risk it? Could he afford not to? Morrison hadn't asked him how close the authorities were to catching the bombers. He hadn't needed to. They were no nearer identifying the active service unit behind the bombs now than they were when the campaign started. And it wasn't as if enough resources weren't being put into the investigation. Joining in the hunt for what was in all probability a small, self-contained unit, were the combined resources of Bromley's own Anti-Terrorist Branch, MI5, the Metropolitan Police, Special Branch, the Secret Intelligence Service, the SAS and the Defence Intelligence Service, not to mention the RUC in Northern Ireland. Actually, mused Bromley, combined resources wasn't the correct phrase because all the various anti-terrorist operations tended to work alone and to jealously guard whatever intelligence they collected.

‘When I give you the codeword, what happens then?' asked Bromley.

Morrison noticed how the Detective Chief Inspector had said ‘when' and not ‘if'. The decision had been made. ‘We'll track down the leak and interrogate him,' he answered.

‘Which will lead you to the bombers?'

‘If Hennessy is right, yes.'

‘And then?'

‘Then?' Morrison was confused.

‘I don't think you've thought this through. How are you going to eliminate the unit that is setting these bombs? You can't send another IRA active service unit into London to knock out the first, can you? Or maybe you think you can.' Bromley thought for a while. ‘How do I know that this is Hennessy's idea?' he said.

Morrison shrugged. ‘You're going to have to trust me on that,' he said. ‘There's no way on God's earth that he can be seen with you. He'd never be trusted again. And that's assuming they didn't just kill him.'

Bromley went quiet again and puffed on his pipe. ‘Very well. I agree. I'll tell you which codeword is given after the next explosion. But on two conditions. And they're not negotiable.'

Morrison raised his eyebrows quizzically.

‘When you find out where the bombers are, you tell me. You let the authorities handle it.'

‘The authorities?'

‘Whoever it takes. Police. SAS. Whoever. It has to be that way. You can't handle it, not in London.'

Morrison nodded. Hennessy had intended from the start that the Brits would clear up the mess, because if it was ever discovered that the IRA had betrayed its own, the organisation would be fragmented beyond belief. It had taken years of diplomacy and compromise to weld the various factions together and Hennessy did not want to undo it all because of a handful of lunatics. ‘And the second condition?' he asked.

‘You give me a telephone number where I can call Hennessy. I'll only give the codeword to him. We'll share the risk.'

They walked in silence again until Morrison reached his decision. ‘OK,' he said. He gave him the number of Hennessy's farm and Bromley wrote it down in a small leather-bound notebook.

‘I hope I never have to make the call,' said Bromley.

‘So do I,' said Morrison. ‘But you will.'

They parted without a handshake.

Woody didn't usually go into the office on Monday, most of the freelance shifts were towards the end of the week, the paper's busy period, but Quigley's phone call had intrigued him. The security guard on duty nodded good morning over the top of his copy of the
Sun
, he was used to journalists coming and going at all hours.

Woody helped himself to a plastic cup of machine coffee and then began rummaging through the drawer of the filing cabinet where he stored his old notebooks. He found the one he'd used the week The Chinaman had called and flicked through the pages. Among his spidery shorthand he saw ‘Chinaman' and a telephone number. He couldn't find an address, nor any note of the man's name. There was one name there among the hieroglyphics: S.J. Brown. Or Browning. Woody couldn't make it out.

He racked his memory while he dialled the telephone number. After ten or so rings a sleepy voice answered. ‘Double Happiness Take-Away,' a man said. Woody scribbled down the name.

‘My name is Ian Wood,' he said. ‘Are you the gentleman who came to the
Sunday World
about the reward?'

‘No,' the voice said, and hung up.

‘Terrific,' said Woody to himself. He picked up a telephone directory and went through it. There was only one Double Happiness Take-Away, it was in Clapham and the number matched. What he needed now was The Chinaman's name. He rang down to the cuttings library but there was no one there so he went himself and pulled the file on the Knightsbridge bombing. There were two foreign names among the dead: Nguyen Xuan Phoung and Nguyen Kieu Trinh. Woody wrote them down in his notebook and underlined Nguyen.