“Interesting little ‘aviary’ you have up here, Mister Thorne: that, I’ll grant you,” he observed with a light tone as he peered intently out through the front windscreen over the driver’s shoulder, but there was deep interest and thought behind the words that didn’t pass unnoticed as the two men sat in the foldable rear seats of the Morris 8-cwt.
“We have some interesting toys to play with,” Thorne agreed, smiling faintly. “We’ll be able to have a nice chat about that over the next few days… and a few other things.”
“You going to keep me locked up until then, I gather?” Kelly was finding it hard to not like the Australian, but the man was the ‘enemy’ nevertheless — a servant of the hated British. He also wasn’t altogether happy with being dragged to the wilds of Scotland and beyond against his will — or at least without being asked first — despite how much the experience was arousing his ever-active curiosity.
“Well, we’re starting to understand each other all right here at the moment,” Thorne explained as the car trundled on slowly around the two transport aircraft, across the concrete runway, and on toward the main barracks and officers’ billets over open, grassed land. “I could ask you for your word that you won’t try to sabotage anything here or cause any mischief, but let’s be straight — you are a member of the Irish Republican Army, and as such you’ve sworn an oath or something similar is to fight for an Irish Republic. As such, whether I think so or not, any British target — to you — is probably a legitimate one, and I’d prefer not to test you at your word just yet… were you to waver in some way, we might just ‘spoil’ the nice rapport we’re building here. I could be wrong, but once we’ve had more of a chance to talk, I think I’ll be able to trust you not to do anything to upset me. That’s not a reflection on my opinion of you as much as it is a need to take a few precautions. That sound fair enough?”
Kelly fixed Thorne with a searching gaze and stared long and hard at the man, trying to find anything other than honesty in the man’s face. He gave the Australian’s remarks a good deal of consideration and could find no real fault in the logic or good intention at face value.
“Fair enough,” he agreed finally with a shrug. “I’ll thank y’ for not asking me to fight against temptation then, and we’ll wait and see.”
“You may not believe this, but the way things stand at the moment, your goals aren’t much different to what mine are almost certain to become — something that I’ll be talking about very soon. Rest assured, I’m as interested in seeing a free and liberated Ireland as you are… although I think perhaps we see enemies from different directions.”
“You have an easy way of getting a fella to listen to you there, Mister Thorne, although I’m interested to see you convince me of what you’ve just said. Don’t leave me too long waiting for that ‘chat’, will you?”
“No — I won’t,” Thorne promised with a grin.
As the vehicle pulled up at the main admin buildings, the brig and adjacent security offices behind, the driver climbed out and held the door open as his passengers dismounted by clambering around the forward-folding front seats. Eileen Donelson and Nick Alpert had been expecting their arrival and stood close by, accompanied a pair of armed SAS troopers. The men carried automatic rifles that seemed utterly alien and deadly to a very interested Eoin Kelly.
“I see we rated a welcoming party,” Thorne called from a few paces as they began to walk over. “Nice of you all to stop by.”
“We thought we’d bring some ‘friends’ along to keep an eye on our guest, seeing as you insisted on coming back with him alone,” Eileen explained, her voice cold as she eyed the Republican volunteer with quite obvious distaste. Kelly returned her gaze with one that was equal parts self-confidence and lasciviousness as he overtly studied her up and down, probably the worst thing he could have done under the circumstances.
With the sun above shining through light, patchy cloud that afternoon, the temperature was climbing to close to 14-15 degrees centigrade and was warm enough walk about without the need for bulky jackets. As a result, Eileen was wearing just combat fatigue pants and a snug-fitting ‘Howard Green’ army jumper that carried her commander’s rank on its shoulder boards, none of which did much to hide her fine figure. Kelly took instant note of her Scottish accent, but spent no more than a second or two noting her rank and the rest of the time staring at her body, something that didn’t go unnoticed by the female officer and did nothing to reduce her instant dislike of the man.
“Rest assured y’ can calm yourself, missus!” Kelly began in what he intended to be a conciliatory and quite roguish Irish lilt. “A fine, young Celtic lass such as yerself has nothin’ to worry about from the likes o’ me!” Thorne winced visibly as he envisaged the reaction those remarks were likely to elicit, a sneer already forming on Donelson’s lips.
“Nothing to worry about, ‘Jimmy’…?” She snarled back at him, patting the large revolver she wore at her own hip. “Well seein’ as I’m not an unarmed civilian ye can blow up from a safe distance, I do feel fairly safe… to be sure!” Her voice was laced with a level of venom that surprised Kelly completely and forced him to take a few mental steps backward. She’d done a fair impression of his accent in the last three words of her sentence, and it was fairly obvious the intent hadn’t been complimentary.
“Max, if you’ve finished with this creature, they can take him somewhere and keep him safe and sound.” Her next words, directed at Thorne, were only slightly less angry, and although he was ostensibly the unit’s Commanding Officer, Max was also smart enough to know when discretion was the clearly the better part of valour.
“Yes, we could probably all do with the rest.” He turned his gaze on Kelly and there was a friendly warning in the man’s eyes that the volunteer didn’t miss. “Toddle along with these gentlemen here and they’ll settle you in nice and comfy… I’ve some things to get on with this afternoon, but we can have a chat tomorrow some time.”
“I’ll be lookin’ forward to it, Mister Thorne,” Kelly nodded, putting as bright and cheery a face on as he could manage after the embarrassing rebuttal from Donelson, unaccustomed as he was to having his usually-successful charm fall so flat when used upon the fairer sex. The pair of SAS troopers took position on either side of him at that point and lead him away toward the security office and its small group of cells.
“I don’t like those bastards, Max… I’m sorry, but I don’t like them!” Eileen growled darkly, her angry eyes never leaving the Irishman’s back as he was taken away and the remaining three officers gathered together.
“I think he got the message, Eileen,” Thorne grinned faintly. “He’s not a bad bloke for all that, and history bears that out. He was one of the IRA’s more vocal opponents to the unrestricted bombings and violence after the war, and he and his mates ended up doing a lot to lay the groundwork for the peace processes that Adams and Sinn Fein put in place with Britain and Ulster in 2001…”