THE PAST REVISITED
Interrogation Amongst Friends
Adam did not pick up Ruth's text, nor did he know that his flat was being simultaneously searched; because he was on his own private mission.
The house was in darkness when he arrived, but there were still surveillance cars front and rear. Adam went round the back and waited for the officer to break his vigilance. It did not take long. It's surprising how many people lean back and close their eyes when they light up a cigarette and want to savour the first influx of nicotine into the blood stream – it was all Adam needed to vault the gate and make it round to a side window and into Harry's study. Adam moved swiftly through into the hallway and was about to mount the stairs when a sardonic , familiar voice greeted him in the darkness:
"I wondered how long it would take you to get here."
"Is the house bugged?"
"Well not unless my powers of observation are slipping. They've turned the place over and taken my computer and mobile, so they probably think that I'm incommunicado; however let's retreat to the bathroom to be on the safe side."
Harry touched Adam on the elbow and indicated that he should follow him upstairs. Adam's eyes, adjusting to the gloom, could just discern the outline of Harry's broad shoulders, still encased in the formal work shirt he had been wearing that day. Having pulled down the blind, Harry switched on the bathroom light and opened a tap. He gestured to Adam to come in and shut the door behind him. Adam stood leaning against the door whilst Harry perched on the side of the bath.
"I see that unlike poor Ruth, you didn't feel the need to crawl through the local shrubbery."
"I did tell her not to make contact, but she was worried about you."
Harry smiled at the recollection of Ruth's tangled hair and the intensity of desire ignited by the softness of her skin beneath his lips. He hadn't intended to kiss her, but the feel of her hair in his hands and the scent of her perfume on the night air, had evoked an instinctive response. The darkness had provided both a cover and an ambiguity to his action. A gesture across the void of propriety, outside of their normal work environment.
"I take it you're not also here to check up on my welfare?"
"We don't have time to play games Harry. I need to know as much as possible about what went on in Northern Ireland and who you think is behind this move against you."
"It's very kind of you Adam, to try and mount a rescue campaign; but it's too much of a risk for all of you. I can't gamble the future of the Section just to secure my own career. I'm on a limited innings anyway. They will be moving to put me out to pasture in a few years; why jeopardise all your futures for such a small return?"
"That's bollocks Harry and you know it. Never mind a few years down the line; the department needs you now, we need you. Now cut the crap and tell me the real reason why you don't want us digging into your past; otherwise you'll just make our task that much harder because we'll conduct an investigation with or without your approval."
Harry sighed heavily.
"I take it by 'we', you mean the usual suspects?"
"Of course, although Ros is sceptical about the outcome."
Harry smiled his slow, lop-sided smile,
"Well I share her view I'm afraid."
"Stop trying to talk me into the ground and evade the question Harry. Remember I can give you lessons on counter-interrogation techniques. Now how much truth is there in the allegations, who's behind them and what do you think they are going to do?"
Harry pursed his lips and shifted his weight on the lip of the bath.
"I wasn't aware I was being interrogated but leaving that to one side let's tackle those questions in reverse order. My fate is, I think, still undecided or they would have already moved me to some more secure location. They've been very thorough little foot soldiers and searched my house with a fine toothcomb but I presume they haven't found what they were looking for, or at least haven't fabricated enough evidence to either formally charge me or feel safe to remove me more permanently from circulation."
Adam raised his eyebrows at Harry's suggestion
"Do you think whoever is behind this would go that far?"
"Well as I don't know who 'they' are, then yes it has to be a possibility. Collingwood and Meyers were prepared to take such a step, so why not others. If it hadn't been for you and Zaf I would have been nicely barbecued in the detention centre. I don't flatter myself that they were the only two individuals in the country who would like to see me executed."
"And you have no idea who is behind this?"
"I've been sitting downstairs for the past two hours wracking my brains to come up with some answers Adam but quite frankly the list is getting longer rather than shorter and none stand out as obvious suspects. What is certainly odd is dredging up my involvement in Northern Ireland as a basis for an attack on my position. It's so long ago. I was only there for ten months and there are too many people in the Service who want that particular past to remain buried that I cannot think of who would wish to see it resurrected even with the goal of shafting me."
"How much evidence lies buried Harry?
Harry smiled at Adam and met his gaze unflinchingly.
"I take it you are referring to the activities of 6 in the late 70's?"
"What else?"
"It was a difficult time. A great deal of confusion as to who was responsible for what. There was the RUC, the regular Army, Special Forces, Military Intelligence, 5 and 6; all supposedly co-operating; in fact most were leading separate but often overlapping, even rival, operations. I was with Section A of 5 as you know; but I was often called on to liase with a bewildering succession of officers from different organisations; most, if not all of whom, had conflicting agendas. On one op I was seconded to work undercover with a couple of men from military intelligence – it was felt that my recent army experience would help cross-organisational communications – anyway things were going quite hunky-dory, we were information-gathering at a meeting of a Republican splinter group when blow me down, we spotted two other officers from 6 on the other side of the hall. We'd shared office space with them only weeks before at HQ and they'd obviously started their information gathering in our filing cabinets and had decided to join the party – the idiots nearly got us all garrotted."
Adam, getting impatient at being lead down memory lane interrupted:
"So you're saying?"
"So I'm saying there was no clear demarcation point between one service and another, but neither was there a history of willing or successful co-operation. When 6 came up with their new master plan it was never officially announced nor did the military command ,or even 5, know about it. In fact I only learnt the details after I was posted to Germany and met up with one of the officers who had infiltrated the security council of the Provisionals. Of course there were rumours, especially once key figures started to disappear or be found 'executed' sectarian style; it was all too damned convenient, too good to be true if your know what I mean. Not that the Loyalists couldn't be vicious bastards, it's just that they were never that effective. Still no one was sure who was involved and in fact even some in military intelligence (and there's an oxymoron if ever there was one!) either believed or chose to believe that it was actually the UDA who had got lucky."
"But you didn't believe that?"
"Well obviously not; but things being as they were, it was difficult to be sure who was responsible for what. Anyway after the death of Bill Crombie I rather lost it, shouted a few things I shouldn't have at my superiors and got booted over to Europe."
"So you're telling me that you had absolutely nothing to do with any of the executions or undercover work?"
Adam's tone of voice clearly indicated that he thought otherwise.
Harry held up his hand.
"Wait. Let me finish before you call the lynch mob. I was small fry. A junior officer with a taste for trouble who was given the relatively safe mopping up job of controlling and turning the network of agents that had been mishandled under George Blair who had done a Tessa with them. Someone who would be useful to bring back an assessment of the sources and their information but who was expendable if everything went belly up"
"And?"
Harry glanced across at Adam from under heavy eyelids with an alert and piercing expression. He paused and licked his lips as he could be seen weighing up his options. Adam waited patiently for the experienced and cautious spook to reach the conclusion that went against both his instincts and his training: the decision to share secrets. Harry cupped his chin in his right hand and tapped his forefinger against his lips whilst he continued to stare at Adam with narrowed eyes, sizing up the risks attached to each option that he was analysing methodically in his mind. After almost a minute of silence he let out a measured breath.
"Alright. I was involved with 6 in Northern Ireland but only in a very minor way and certainly I was not involved in the liquidations. Simon Cooper had been a bum chum of Jools Siviter's at Eton and he called in a favour when 6 decided to carry out their master plan. He wanted a couple of expendable junior staff to be runners for the deep infiltration golden boys of 6 and Simon decided that Bill and I would nicely fit the profile. We had been on the ground for a few months so we knew how to handle ourselves and to blend in."
Here Adam raised his eyebrows questioningly at Harry who smiled an acknowledgement back
"Yes, well, I had to dye my hair a reddish brown, which did not go down too well on the domestic front. Anyway we were eager to please and honoured to have been singled out to work with the glory boys in deep ops, although no one of course told us that they came from 6."
"Did you know what the grand plan was?"
"Good God no; no one did, not even some of the boys from 6 who infiltrated the Republican cells. It was strictly need-to-know and that definitely did not include us. We were just told that it was an information-gathering exercise to infiltrate into the heart of the Provisionals command structure. Even when dead bodies started to turn up, we along with everyone else presumed it was the UDA; it was only after the hits became suspiciously frequent that I began to put two and two together. It was obvious from the start, of course, that we were connected to a major operation and I smelt a rat fairly early on, I just didn't know what sort of rodent I was dealing with. They had up-to-the-minute information on people and places and weapon dumps that even those on the ground had no knowledge of. They seemed to be operating within a limitless budget and with an open mandate – it seemed to be enormous lengths to go to in terms of effort and manpower just to know who was saying what to who; but even in my most cynical moments I didn't at first guess the audacity, or criminality of the operation."
"Come off it Harry, these were men who blew up women and children without qualms, at most it could be seen as an eye for an eye and besides which they claimed to be soldiers fighting a war; taking out combatants, however you can, in war, is not a criminal act."
Harry nodded gravely
"Yes I know and I know that I always say that much of our work is in grey areas of morality, increasingly so it seems; but regardless of what the IRA claimed, they were not soldiers, they were civilians and they were civilians that 6 arranged to have taken out without trial and summarily executed and what's more executed in a brutal and cruel manner so that blame could be laid at the door of the loyalists. I've had this discussion many times, not least with Mace and it always comes down to the same line in the sand, we have to say that there are some things we do not do; for if there is not that limit, then we are no better than the people we are fighting against, no matter what our motives. That's not naivety, that's pragmatism. We have to maintain a moral high ground if there is going to be practicably anything left worth defending. Yes, I've ordered the elimination of individuals in extreme circumstances, but in response to a specific clear and present danger, not some carte blanche licence to kill within a general political objective."
Adam brought Harry gently back from his digression on moral turpitude to the information he needed.
"So what precisely did you do for 6?"
"In the end I was one of four junior staff seconded to one of what I later found out were 12 separate penetration units set up by 6, although at the time we were fed the line that we were working for a branch of special forces. There was Bill and myself and then two officers from military intelligence. Our job was to hang round in certain republican bars and be ready to liase with the undercover agents, retrieving information to pass on to our contact and likewise to pass messages from the control to the agents when necessary." Harry paused and smiled as he remembered back:
"Bill said that he couldn't think of a more perfect assignment, to be paid to sit in a bar all day and drink as many freebies as we wanted. I soon got pretty pissed off however. Bill was preoccupied with the whole Le Carre glamour of the situation and with putting his acting skills to good use in creating various disguises but I could see that we were being sent on some very dangerous reconnaissance operations with no backup. We were never told more than the bare essentials nor did we know for what end the information we passed on was intended. Suffice it to say that of the four of us who used to sit in those pubs on the Falls Road, I'm the only one who came out of those little jaunts alive."
"But surely 6 were taking a big risk that the whole operation could be blown by using inexperienced personnel for the carrier pigeon roles?"
"Well yes, but then even if we were sussed by the IRA we couldn't reveal much because we didn't know anything. I mean at that stage we didn't even know that the undercover agents were from 6, we had been fed the information that they were turned Provisionals – neat huh? – if we squealed on informers within the provisional cells it was the long term members who would be under suspicion. Likewise if we got hauled in by our own side, I mean the military or the police authorities, we were similarly clueless as to what chain of command we were serving."
"So", here Adam paused fractionally as he order in his mind now he would phrase the next question.
"If you were such a small minion in the operation and had no direct connection with the executions then what evidence do you think might now be given to support the charges?"
"What you mean is: did I actually kidnap and shoot IRA activists? No I didn't but it was done and on a large scale that has not been admitted or revealed to its true extent."
Adam narrowed his eyes and gazed back directly at Harry.
"So if your involvement was as low-level as you claim, why have you been targeted?"
"If I knew the answer to that Adam, I'd not be wasting time giving you a history lesson. Frankly, if it was one of my opponents in the Service, they have got far juicier incidents from my past to rake up – you only have to ask Juliet, she has access to enough skeletons in my cupboard to have me investigated ten times over – or they would trap me in some current imbroglio. They wouldn't reveal operations that would leave a great deal of egg on senior faces. Yet if not someone within the Service then whom? Some disgruntled fellow operative from that period, some relative of a dead agent? Honestly, I have no idea Adam. I only wish I did."
"Well, we will see what we can dig up. I'll try to make contact tomorrow. In the meantime, can you take the dog for a stroll, so that I can slip out the back?"
Harry smiled his slow crooked smile again, the one that captivated Ruth every time she caught it.
"Of course. Oh yes and tell Juliet not to shed too many tears for me when you find her snuggled up in my office tomorrow morning."
Adam held out his hand and grasped Harry's in a firm shake. His instinct was to reach out and embrace the older man. What was it about this reserved and eminently capable individual, that made those who knew him well, want to protect and cuddle him like a vulnerable child? Perhaps it was the fatherly guidance and protection that he offered to his staff that engendered the desire to express reciprocal affection and respect or perhaps as Jo had once laughingly suggested, it was his teddy-bear cuddliness that appealed to the inner child in all of them.
Harry gathered a protesting Scarlet out of her basket and clipping on her lead, strolled down the front steps of his house. Immediately the driver of the surveillance care started his engine, whilst the officer guarding the rear of the house was called to drive round and take his place. Adam smiled to himself as he sauntered down the garden path and through the gates. It would be amusing how predicable the patterns of manoeuvres were, if it were not that the security of the capital was in their hands.
