"Lucky shot, boyo, blowing that tyre."
The accent took Alex straight back to Belfast.
"I've no doubt of it," he said and quickly began to search the fallen man. There was a sheathed Mauser knife and several spare magazines, and a pocketful of loose 9mm rounds, but no other firearm.
Meehan pursed his lips.
"Did I hit you back there?"
Alex felt around his back. The hand came back bloody.
"Yeah. Another lucky shot, I'd say."
Meehan looked away.
"So are you going to waste me or what?"
Alex didn't answer. Reaching for his mobile he dialled Dawn's number.
She answered on the first ring.
"Alex. Thank God. Where are you?"
He told her.
"And Meehan?"
Something made Alex hesitate. He looked down at Meehan.
"Dealt with."
A faint smile touched the former agent's lips.
"Stay there," Dawn ordered.
"Don't move. I'll pick up a flight to Brecon be with you in an hour."
"We're not going anywhere," said Alex wearily, and rang off.
"So," Meehan repeated, almost bored.
"You goin' to follow orders, soldier, and waste me?"
"You didn't waste me when you had the chance. Why?"
"Wasn't part of the plan."
"Can we talk about that plan?"
Meehan was silent for a moment, then the corner of his mouth twitched.
"Good place for us to meet, don't you think?"
Alex smiled and nodded.
Curiosity touched the pale features.
"How did you find out about Black Down?"
"A conversation you had," said Alex.
"Connolly?"
"Yup."
Meehan nodded.
"I never told Den Connolly where the house was. Something stopped me, even then."
Briefly, Alex explained how forensic analysis had discovered the solvent in his system.
"Poisoned, was I?" said Meehan thoughtfully, looking across the valley towards Fan Fawr.
"I hadn't allowed for that, I'll admit."
"Connolly said you never turned tout."
"Nor I did. Not ever."
Alex stared at him.
"So what Meehan looked wearily away.
"Just do your job, man, and give us the double tap. Get the fuck on with it."
"I want to know."
"Just do it."
"None of it makes sense. Don't you at least want it to make sense?"
"You wouldn't believe me."
"I might."
The two men stared at each other. Around them the wind scoured the rocks and flattened the grass. The place was theirs alone.
"How much do you know?" asked Meehan eventually.
"I know about Watchman. I know what you were sent over the water to do. I know that the whole thing went bad, agents were killed, all hell broke loose."
Meehan nodded.
"Whatever you've been told by Five, who I'm assuming you're working for right now, remember that it had a single purpose: to persuade you to kill me. Would it be fair to say that?"
"I guess so," said Alex.
"Right. Well, remember that. And remember too that I'm a dead man. I've no need to lie."
"I'll remember," said Alex and moved down the slope to collect Meehan's weapon.
TWENTY-EIGHT.
"The first thing you have to understand," said Joseph Meehan, 'is just how much I've always hated the IRA. My father was a good man, religious and patriotic, and they crippled him, humiliated him and expelled him from the country he loved.
Drove him to an early grave. And there have been thousands like him -innocent people whose lives have been destroyed by those maniac bastards. Whatever else I tell you I want you to remember that one fact. I hate the IRA, I always have hated them and I will take that hatred to my grave.
He paused and the lids narrowed over the pale, fathomless eyes.
"I'm assuming that Fenwick and the rest of them told you the background stuff- the Watchman selection process and the rest of it?"
Alex nodded.
There was a curious blankness to Meehan's words. They were passionate, but delivered without expression.
"When I got over there I started off living in a flat in Dunmurry and working at Ed's they tell you about that?"
"The electronic goods place?"
"That's right. Ed's. Ed's Electronics. And I was dating this girl called Tina.
Nice girl. Grandparents came over from Italy after the war. Had a loudmouth brother called Vince who worked in a garage and fancied himself as God's gift to the Republican movement. Tried the bullshit on me a couple of times but I told him to fuck off- said I didn't want to know.
"That pissed him off, and he made sure that the local volunteers found out that I'd served with the Crown forces -thought they might give me a good kicking or something.
Course they did no such thing, they're not that stupid, but a couple of them started watching me and asking the odd question, and they soon found out I knew my way around an electronic circuit."
Meehan touched his head and regarded his bloody fingertips.
"I'll spare you the details but there was the usual eyeing-up process and I started to hang out with these half-dozen fellers who thought of themselves as an ASU. They weren't, of course they were just a bunch of saloon bar Republicans. I did a couple of under-thecounterjobs for them radio repairs and then a much heavier bunch showed up.
Older guys. Heard I was interested in joining the movement. I'd said no such thing, but I said yeah, I was sympathetic more sympathetic than I'd been in the past, anyway.
"And?" asked Alex.
"And they didn't fuck around. Asked straight out if I wanted in. So I said yeah,
OK."
"Must have been satisfying after all that time."
"Yes and no. These guys were pretty hard-core. I knew there'd be no going back."
"So what happened next?"
"There was a whole initiation process. I was driven to a darkened room in north Belfast and interviewed by three men I never saw. What was my military history with the Crown forces, what courses had I done and where had I been posted?
Was I known as a Republican sympathiser and had I ever attended a Republican march? Had I ever been arrested? Where in Belfast did I drink.. . Hours of it. And why the fuck did I want to join the IRA?
"I told them I was fed up of living as a second-class citizen simply because I was a Catholic. I told them that I'd been in the Brit army and felt the rough edge of discrimination over there. Said since my return to Belfast I'd come to feel that the IRA spoke the only language the Crown understood. Parroted all the stuff I'd learnt from the Five instructors, basically."
"And they bought it?"
"They heard me out and it must have gone down OK,
because I was told that from that moment on I was to make no public or private statement of my Republican sympathies, not to associate with known Republicans, had to avoid Republican bars et cetera. I was put forward for what's called the Green Book lectures a two-month course of indoctrination which took place every Thursday evening in a flat in Twinbrook. History of the movement, rules of engagement, counter-surveillance, anti-interrogation techniques ..
"The old spot on the wall trick?"
"All that bollocks, yeah. And at the end of it I was sworn in.
"How did that feel?"
"Well, there was no going back, that was for certain sure. But I was finally earning the wages I was being paid."
"Go on."
"I started off as a dicker. I was told to hang on to my job so my volunteer activities were all in the evenings and at weekends. And this started to cause problems with Tina. She was a sympathiser, but not to the point where she was prepared to give her life over. She wanted to do what other girls did go out in the evening, go round the shops on a Saturday .