Death on Gibraltar. Shaun Clarke

various reasons, including the reports of informants, we believe that the ASU teams involved in the attack at Loughgall were the same ones responsible for the deaths of the Lord Chief Justice and his wife. However, I’ll admit that as yet we have no conclusive evidence to support that belief.’

      ‘Yet you authorized the SAS ambush at the police station, killing eight IRA suspects.’

      ‘Not suspects, Mr Secretary. All of them were proven IRA activists, most with blood on their hands – so we had no doubts on that score. That being said, I should reiterate that we certainly knew that the two ASU team leaders – Jim Lynagh and Patrick Kelly – were responsible for the death of the UDR man. So the SAS ambush was not only retaliation for that, but also our way of humiliating the IRA and cancelling out the propaganda victory they had achieved with the assassination of the Lord Chief Justice and his wife. Which is why, even knowing that they were planning to attack the Loughgall RUC station, we decided to let it run and use the attack as our excuse for neutralizing them with the aid of the SAS and the RUC. Thus Operation Judy was put into motion.’

      ‘The RUC was involved as well?’

      ‘Of course, Mr Secretary. It was one of their police stations, after all, that was the target. Also, they knew that this was a plum opportunity to take out some particularly valuable IRA men, including the two ASU team leaders.’

      ‘So the IRA gunmen were under surveillance long before the attack took place?’

      ‘Correct, Mr Secretary. We learnt through Intelligence sources at the TCG…’

      ‘The what?’

      ‘The Tasking and Co-ordination Group. We learnt through the TCG’s Intelligence that Lynagh and Kelly would be leading two of the ASU teams against the police station and that they would be heavily armed. It’s true that we were aware that their intention was not to kill but to destroy the police station – they knew that it was normally closed and empty by that time – but given their general value to the IRA, as well as their direct involvement in the murder of the UDR man and suspected involvement in the assassination of the Lord Chief Justice and his wife, we couldn’t let that consideration prevent us from grabbing this golden opportunity to get rid of them once and for all. Therefore, long before the attack, we had them shadowed by Army surveillance experts and the Special Branch’s E4A. It was members of the latter who actually witnessed the ASU teams placing the 200lb bomb in the bucket of that mechanical digger and then driving it to the Loughgall RUC station. We believe that what happened next was completely justified on our part.’

      The man known to them all only as the ‘Controller’ was one of the most senior officers in the SAS, rarely present at Stirling Lines, though often to be seen commuting between the SAS HQ at the Duke of York’s Barracks, in Chelsea, and this basement office in Whitehall. Up to this point the Secretary had ignored him, but now, with a slight, sly smile, he brought him into the conversation.

      ‘As I recall,’ the Secretary said, ‘there were certain contentious aspects to the Loughgall operation.’

      ‘Oh, really?’ the Controller replied with a steady, bland, blue-eyed gaze, looking like an ageing matinée idol in his immaculate pinstripe suit and old school tie. ‘What are those?’

      ‘For a start, there are a lot of conflicting stories as to what actually happened during that ambush. Why, for instance, would seasoned IRA terrorists open fire, at 7.20 p.m., on an RUC station widely known to keep limited hours and to close completetly at 7 p.m.? Why didn’t they just bomb it and run?’

      ‘I know what you’re suggesting, Mr Secretary, but you’re wrong. Rumours that the SAS opened fire first are false. At least two of the IRA men – we believe Kelly and his driver, Donnelly – stepped down from the cabin of the Toyota and opened fire on the police station with their assault rifles.’

      ‘Even believing it to be closed and empty?’

      ‘Yes. It seems odd, but that’s what happened. The only explanation we can come up with is that Kelly and the other ASU team leader, Jim Lynagh, had an argument as to what tactics to use. That argument probably continued in the van as the terrorists travelled from their hide in the farmyard near the border to Loughgall. Kelly became impatient or lost his temper completely and decided to terminate the argument by getting out and opening fire on the police station, using it as the signal for the other men to start the attack. We can think of no other explanation for that rather pointless action. Either that or it was an impulsive act of bravado, though the general belief is that Kelly was too experienced a man to succumb to that.’

      ‘And it’s for that very reason that there are those who refuse to believe that the IRA opened fire first. They say that Kelly was simply too experienced to have fired his assault rifle at an empty police station he intended to destroy with a bomb.’

      ‘My men swear that the IRA opened fire first and that’s in their official report.’

      ‘But your men were there to set up an ambush.’

      ‘Well, Mr Secretary, we’d been briefed by British Intelligence that the mission was to be an OP/React. In other words, an observation post able to react.’

      ‘In other words,’ the Secretary said drily, ‘an ambush. Isn’t that more accurate?’

      ‘Yes, Mr Secretary, it is. An OP/React is a coded term for an ambush.’

      ‘And we can take it from the wide variety of weapons and the extraordinary amount of ammunition used by the SAS – about a thousand bullets fired, I believe, in a couple of minutes – that the purpose of the exercise was to annihilate those men.’

      ‘I believe the proper word is “neutralize”,’ the SMIU leader put in, feeling obliged to defend the operation he had helped to set up.

      ‘My apologies,’ the Secretary responded testily. ‘To neutralize those men. Does that explain why there were ambush teams outside as well as inside the building and why some of the local townsfolk were shot up – with one actually killed – by the SAS?’

      ‘Those were unfortunate accidents,’ the Controller replied firmly, ‘but they weren’t caused by an unnecessary display of fire-power on our part. The GPMG assault groups positioned in the copse were placed there because it was believed at the time – erroneously, as it turned out – that the IRA bomb team would approach the police station by way of the football pitch across the road from Armagh. The reason for having other troopers hidden elsewhere, including behind the wall of the church and in the town itself, is that we had also been informed that the IRA bomb would be set off by a timer or a remote-control device. We therefore had to be prepared to shoot at any point where a terrorist, irrespective of where he was located, looked as if he was about to do a button-job.’

      The Secretary looked perplexed.

      ‘Detonating the bomb by a small, radio-control device hidden on the person and usually activated by a simple button,’ the SMIU leader explained. ‘Which means it can be done by a demolitions man some distance from the target. In the event, a simple fuse was used, which meant that those placing the bomb at Loughgall had to stay with it until the last moment and then personally light the fuse.’

      ‘That explanation doesn’t help us,’ the Secretary said, sounding aggrieved. ‘The widow of that dead man, now left with three fatherless children, is claiming compensation from our government and will doubtless get it, albeit in an out-of-court settlement.’

      ‘That man wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last, civilian casualty in the war in Northern Ireland.’ Again, the shadowy SAS Controller was being firm and not about to take the blame for an action he still deemed to have been justified. ‘Sometimes these unfortunate accidents can’t be avoided.’

      ‘True enough,’ the Secretary admitted with a soulful sigh. ‘So, let’s forget about Loughgall and concentrate on what we believe it will lead to: a bloody act of retaliation by the IRA.’

      ‘Do you know what they’re planning?’ the Controller asked him.