"Yeah, I did him too. Same way. And as I did so I promised myself that the people responsible would know the pain and the terror that these brave men had known. Whatever it took whatever it fucking took -I would make them understand."
"Surely the people responsible were Padraig Byrne and his Provos," suggested Alex quietly.
"Those people were evil," said Meehan, 'but they knew they were evil. They looked evil in the eye, they embraced evil and they knew themselves for what they were. Fenwick and her people, though, were evil at a distance. They never saw the floor of that PIRA abattoir running with blood and shit, never had to look at brave men like Wheen and Bledsoe dying in indescribable terror and agony and tell themselves: yeah, I did that .
"Wise monkeys," murmured Alex.
"For every action, there's a reaction," said Meehan.
"My father taught me that. The universe demands balance. For as long as the lives that I had taken were unavenged, there would be no balance."
Alex stared at Meehan. Was this insanity? he wondered. Or was it logic? Or both?
"Within the week I had been promoted to the IRA's Army Council and Padraig Byrne to the Executive. I continued to file reports to London, but I no longer had the slightest confidence they would be acted upon. I warned them of two bombs:
one in a Shankhill pub, one in a Ballysillan supermarket. Both were made by men I had trained, both were set by Bronagh Quinn. Five dead, in total, and over twenty injured. Women and children mostly, in the supermarket. One little girl was blinded when the lenses of her glasses were blown backwards into her eyes.
"There are seven people on the Provisional IRA's Army Council. At the first meeting I attended I looked round the other six faces and I realised that I had done at least as much for the movement as any of them. I had dicked, trailed, scouted, bugged, planned, organised, designed, strategised and taught. I had brought the movement's bomb-making skills into line with the best in the world. And finally, with my bare hands, I had killed. By ignoring every warning I ever sent, Fenwick and her people had made me part of the thing I had dedicated my life to destroying. Can you imagine can you imagine what that feels like?"
Alex said nothing. Didn't move. Carried on the buffeting wind distant at first and then louder was the pulse of an approaching helicopter. If Meehan heard it he ignored it.
"At that first meeting a former OC of the Armagh and Fermanagh Brigade got up. Nasty bastard, name of Halloran."
"Dermot Halloran," said Alex.
"The same," confirmed Meehan.
"And he didn't fuck about.
He told us, "Boys .. . We have a problem. We have a mole."
There had been indications for some time, he said, that information concerning upcoming operations was reaching the Crown. Top-level information, not foot-soldier stuff. In recent days, he said, these suspicions had become cast-iron. MI-5 had an agent in place an agent whose minimum possible level of seniority was membership of the GHQ staff. That put every man in the room squarely in the frame. The Executive had men on the case, he went on. It was a process of elimination, and until that process had run its course it had been decided that all operations and meetings should be suspended."
The rhythmic beat of the helicopter's engine and the slash of its rotors was very close now, filling their ears. The sound seemed to hold its volume for a moment, then died away. Again, Meehan showed no sign of having heard it.
"Presumably," said Alex, 'they wanted to see who cut and ran."
"That was my calculation. If they'd been sure they were going to identify the mole they would have just let the wheels turn. Said nothing."
"So what did you do?"
"I drove back to the city and went home. There was a nut ting squad waiting for me and I knew then that Five had sold me out. Well, I'll spare you the details but there was a fuck of a battle. I dropped a couple of them, dived through a window and drove like fuck for Aldersgrove."
"The airport?"
"Yeah. I was on a flight to the mainland within the hour. From that point I was totally on my own. The next morning I cleared the account MI-5 had been paying money into all those years and set about establishing a new identity."
"Did you contact MI-5?"
"Are you joking .. . If I'd contacted them they'd have dropped my co-ordinates to PIRA. Within the week of my leaving Belfast every Provy stiffer in the Command was on my tail as it was. No, Five didn't want me alive and compromised -my story would bury them."
"But why do you think they ignored all those warnings and let Wheen and Bledsoe and the rest of them die?"
"I thought for a long time that they simply couldn't risk me. That if they'd started acting on my warnings they'd have had to pull me out, whereas as things stood I was their man inside the IRA, the justification for their budget, their meal ticket from the Treasury. That was what I thought at first."
"Go on."
"And then finally I figured it out. There had to be another British mole. An agent who had been in place not for years but for decades. A man I'd been set up to take the fall for."
He fell silent for a moment.
"It was something Barry Fenn had said years earlier about there being suspicion in the senior ranks of PIRA that a British agent was defusing the bombs the organisation was making. At the time, all that I heard were the words that applied to me i.e. "suspicion", "PIRA" and "British agent". I didn't stop to ask myself the vital question: how the fuck did Barry Penn know what the senior ranks of PIRA were thinking? I didn't know, so how did he?
"They had someone all along. One of the very top men, is my guess. And in case such a man ever came under the faintest suspicion of providing information to the Crown forces, it would be necessary to have a decoy set up. Another agent who could be exposed, proved to be the real source and fed to the wolves."
Alex shook his head and sank back against the granite.
"Enter the Watchman," he murmured.
"Congratulations!" said Dawn Harding.
"I do believe you've got there at last."
She was standing above and to one side of them, and her Walther PPK was levelled straight between Alex's eyes.
TWENTY-NINE.
She had brought back-up with her, a blank-faced man in a flying jacket carrying an MP5 Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun.
Had the two of them found Meehan dead, Alex knew, there would have been no problem. Anything that Meehan might have told Alex would have been cancelled out by the fact that Alex had killed him the SAS officer could hardly broadcast a story that culminated with a murder committed by himself.
But with Meehan alive and Alex in possession of the facts about Watchmen even just the basic facts the position was hopeless. A glance at Dawn and the icy flatness of those sea-grey eyes told him that she was prepared to watch him die rather than risk him telling the story. Their one-night stand, and that is all it had been, after all, counted for nothing less than nothing.
You stupid.
She and her back-up man would kill the pair of them, and place their disposal in the hands of a cleaner team. One thing was certain: neither body would ever be found.
Having said that, he was still holding the Glock. Still had Meehan's Browning in his pocket.
"Why isn't this animal dead?" Dawn asked, glancing scornfully at Meehan.
"I wouldn't worry yourself," said Alex coldly.
"I don't think he's going to grow much older."
She shook her head sorrowfully.
"You idiot," she spat.
"You arrogant fucking idiot, Alex! Why didn't you do as you were asked? Can't you see what you're forcing me to .
She continued, but Alex was no longer listening. He was holding his Glock in his right hand; with his left, which was concealed beneath his smock, he was trying to inch Meehan's Browning from his waistband. His only chance of escaping what would effectively be an execution was to trust Meehan. The man was two parts insane to one part brilliant soldier, that much was obvious, but... The Browning was clear of the waistband, now, and heavy in his hand. With infinite slowness he lowered it to the ground beneath his smock.