Peace on Earth. Gordon Stevens

he had spent in the emergency ward of the hospital learning how to save life instead of taking it away. On his belt Enderson carried not only his spare ammunition, but also a sophisticated medical pack.

      His son’s birthday, he thought again, and wished he was not missing it.

      In the grey at the top of the path into the field he saw the three men, knew immediately they did not suspect, did not know they had been betrayed. He slid his hand across the hole, not taking his eyes from them, and shook the shoulder of the man in the sleeping bag. The man woke noiselessly and rolled over. There was a new silence in the air. As soon as they uncovered the cache and picked up the first gun. The men were careful, Enderson thought, had checked the area, for cars, for traces of people like himself. They were edging forward, out of the trees, three of them, as the informer had said. He recognised the second man, the one who had escaped from the H-Blocks, remembered his reputation, the charges on which the man had been convicted, the other things he had done. No challenge, he thought, no formal procedure. As soon as the first man picked up the first gun. He was looking down the sights, knowing the system, watching the three men skirting the barn, heading towards the corner of the field, closing on the cache.

      He and his men could still be caught in a trap, Enderson was still thinking. He had always distrusted people like the informer, had never trusted anyone except his own. The men had come to the cache, were looking around for the last time, bending down. So many tricks, so many traps to walk into; he had not even inspected the cache in case it was boobytrapped, in case there was a sniper in the hills above waiting for him to show himself. The men in front were bending down, uncovering the cache.

      The first man picked up the first gun.

      The Special Branch briefing was brief, Special Branch briefings were always brief. Graham Enderson was not sure whether it was because the need to protect sources was as strict as the men concerned insisted, or because it was a game they played, not only with their contacts but also with him.

      The informant who had passed them the details of the arms cache had approached them again, said the sergeant. He would not say who the man was or where the meeting had taken place, would not even confirm that such a meeting had taken place. There was to be a high-level conference in Belfast, the man had said, some of the big boys were coming for it, from Dublin, from Derry, he had given them the time and the location.

      ‘Who’s involved?’ asked Enderson. The meeting was taking place in the army centre in Lisburn.

      The Special Branch sergeant gave him the names. Enderson knew all of them. ‘Where?’ he asked. He remembered the night at the arms cache, how he had managed to phone home that evening after all, managed to wish his son happy birthday.

      The Special Branch man gave him the address.

      ‘The Sportsman’s,’ said Enderson, ‘just along from McDonald’s place.’ He knew the addresses, knew the IRA man who lived along the road.

      ‘That’s right,’ confirmed the sergeant, giving nothing away.

      ‘Will McDonald be going to the meeting?’ No problems, he was thinking; he already knew where they could keep watch on the house, where they had already kept watch on the house, the secret place from where they had logged McDonald’s movements, his wife’s movements, his son’s movements, till they knew them all as if they were family: McDonald himself, the hard man, the planner behind the deaths and mutilations, the wife Eileen, even the son Liam.

      ‘Yes, McDonald will be going to the meeting.’

      Typical Special Branch briefing, Enderson thought again, the sergeant had omitted McDonald from the original list; he knew, nevertheless, that McDonald was not the informant, knew that McDonald would never be an informant.

      One problem, he was already thinking. He did not know the interior of the bar in which the meeting would take place, which rooms were above it, which doors led to it, away from it.

      ‘When?’ he asked.

      The Special Branch man told him.

      Not much time, he thought, only a matter of days, almost the end of term for the kids, he thought, knew he would not be home for Christmas, almost the beginning of their Christmas holidays.

      ‘OK,’ he said.

      The Special Branch briefing lasted a mere fifteen minutes, the briefing which Enderson gave to his teams lasted almost three hours; at the end of it they had worked out the covers as well as the approach routes, plus what they would do inside. The only things they did not know, the only things they still needed to know, were the movements of McDonald and the interior lay-out of the bar where the meeting would take place.

      By five thirty the IRA planner called McDonald had been given the code-name Michael, by five forty-five Enderson had solved the problem of the lay-out of the bar. At seven thirty that evening a house in the Falls Road opposite the home of the IRA planner called McDonald was broken into whilst the family who lived there were out. Nothing was stolen and the entry was not even noticed. When they returned at nine that evening there was no way the family could have known that concealed in the roofspace of their house was a man, lying in a hammock strung between the beams of the roof, looking through a hole where he had removed a tile, his radio on whisper.

      * * *

      By twelve fifteen the next day Enderson confirmed the arrangements he had set in motion to examine the internal lay-out of the Sportsman’s. Eighty-five minutes later Jimmy Roberts flew into Aldergrove Airport.

      If he had asked them, he knew, they would have said no; instead he left the flat he shared in Earls Court, took the tube to Heathrow and caught the twelve thirty shuttle to Belfast. There was no trouble with security or Special Branch at either airport. Jimmy Roberts was, after all, an American citizen.

      It was almost six weeks since the first message from California that his grandmother was ill, three days since she had died, two days since he had known of it.

      He arrived at Milltown Cemetery fifteen minutes before they arrived to lay her to rest, the rain sheeting across the headstones and the mud churned round the hole they had dug for her. He had met her only twice in his life, on the two occasions she had visited the branch of her family on the West Coast of America, yet even there, he remembered, she had been fêted, even there they had known of her republicanism.

      Roberts stayed at the gate till he saw the procession wind its way up from the city, the outline of Belfast almost lost in the clouds, and turn into the cemetery. Not many for such a fine woman, he thought, knowing again he should not have come, was glad he had. They passed by him, staring ahead; he watched the faces through the car windows, white, colourless, the men and women not looking at him, seeing him nevertheless, wondering who he was, what he was doing. Only when they had slid the wooden coffin from the hearse and the Holy Father was praying over his grandmother for the last time, did Roberts leave the gate and join the handful of mourners. They nodded at him and looked back at the priest.

      He looked on as the box was lowered into the ground, remembering how he had listened to her, remembering the stories she had told him, the heady days of the Easter Rising, the mystery of the death of Michael Collins, the dread of the despised Black and Tans. Only when the coffin was still, and the earth had been sprinkled on it, did they turn to him.

      ‘I’m Sean.’ He had already worked out what he would say, knew there was no way they could check, no way any of them would know. They recognised his accent, knew he was who he said he was.

      ‘You’re Sean,’ one of them was saying, ‘all the way from America, you’re her Seamus’s boy.’

      It was amazing, he thought, how the family ties still spread across the world, how they were still remembered. ‘Yes,’ he thought of his cousin, ‘I’m Seamus’s boy.’

      The rain was harder: not a fitting day, they all agreed, asked him how he was getting back to the city, offering him a lift, someone suggesting he might like a drink. He thanked them, meaning it, was only sorry that he could not tell them the truth, that he never had the chance to tell his grandmother the truth.

      Jimmy