Shooter in a Plague Year: A Kavanagh Story III

Shooter in a Plague Year

A Kavanagh Story III

Jim Wills

Published by Carswell House Books

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Copyright James T. Wills, 2011

All Rights Reserved

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Dedication

To Wendy,

Lucky in Love

Envoy

In Ireland there is no religious dissension, but there is religious insincerity. English politicians, to serve the end of dividing Ireland, have worked on the religious feelings of the North, suggesting the danger of Catholic ascendancy. There is not now, and there never was, any such danger, but our enemies, by raising the cry, sowed discord in the North, with the aim of destroying Irish unity. It should be borne in mind that when the Republican Standard was first raised in the field in Ireland, in the Rising of 1798, Catholics and Protestants in the North were united in the cause. Belfast was the first home of Republicanism in Ireland. This is the truth of the matter. The present-day cleavage is an unnatural thing created by Ireland's enemies to hold her in subjection and will disappear entirely with political freedom.

Terence J. MacSwiney, Principles of Freedom, 1921, Preface.

For the great Gaels of Ireland

Are the men that God made mad,

For all their wars are merry,

And all their songs are sad.

G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, 1911.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jeff Fell for providing invaluable help with weaponry and the coldly devious minds of snipers, survivalists, and biological warfare specialists. Before his untimely death, George Potter kindly contributed his predictably astute assistance with the twists and turns of history, politics and economics. Margaret Carlson contributed her deep understanding of things Irish. As always, Bobbi Speck was a sensitive, perceptive and encouraging editor. Wendy Carlson gave me the clarity to continue. Without the dappled shade of Dutch Boys Landing, this book could not have been written. It’s odd to acknowledge the ether, but the strange and burgeoning resources of the Internet made Shooter in a Plague Year much easier—and much more disturbing—to complete.

JTW

February 2010

Chapter 1: Trigger

Just a few short years ago, David Whitlock thought he was riding the crest of a wave in the Irish Sea. When he became First Minister of the Ulster Assembly, the fifth to hold that important post, it looked like he was a winner, with complete and permanent disbandment of the IRA on the table at least, with the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association destroying some of their arms in 2009, then the Republican INLA in 2010.

He believed strongly that he could cement the bonds between England and the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, devise a pluralistic Ulster still under British rule. He couldn’t stomach the idea of sitting in the same room with Robert Duffy, that Republican champion of IRA assassins, but that was a price he was willing to pay. Concessions, of course, would be necessary; unpleasant but necessary. He was much less certain about his position among the Loyalist paramilitaries and their splinter groups, but that would resolve itself over time, he hoped.

It hadn’t been easy, in the acrimonious, drawn out, never ending aftermath of the disastrous 1998 split with Ian Paisley’s dinosaurs over the 12th of July Drumcree crisis; then the continuing bans on Orange parades down centuries-old routes through Catholic enclaves, Loyalist thugs firing on the insipidly renamed Police Services of Northern Ireland—their former most trusted allies under the Royal Ulster Constabulary banner. It was a mess that had been going on for far too many years. Each marching season, every Glorious Twelfth, the power of the Orange Order lessened as the wrath of the new generation of fundamentalist Protestant clerics increased. Ironic, that.

In 1798, the Irish Rebellion led by both Protestants and Catholics was crushed by the might of the British Empire and the bumbling of the French. In 1998, the end of power started—for them, at least. Then, the indiscriminate barbarity in Omagh, followed by the failure of Tony Blair’s Way Forward, the comedy of the Brown Labour government years and the furious infighting among Loyalist paramilitaries over drug turf and extortion territory. Renaming the RUC as the innocuous PSNI had made no difference whatsoever. Judicial and policing powers might have devolved from Westminster to Belfast, but real reform in the hearts of the people seems a very long way off.

From the steps of Belfast’s Stormont Castle, Whitlock looks out over the sea of faces, the glare of camera lights. A transitory moment of power, glory. He’s a vain man, and his long mane of chalk white hair is carefully tended to give him a look less leonine than statesmanlike; very photogenic pose of the extremely proud. He clears his throat confidently, an old timing trick, and launches into his finale:

Ladies and gentlemen, to sum up, if I may. It has been a long process, a difficult period of adjustment. Concessions have been made on both sides: a few from the Republicans, too many from the Loyalists. This must stop. Assurances that the IRA and all its splinter groups will completely disarm and disband within a year are meaningless—we’ve all heard them again and again. No, I say, they must disappear completely, permanently—all of them—with iron clad assurances. The deaths are a sad reality, but those murdered are those martyred in the name of peace.

It must come to a halt, starting first with reasonable options from the minority. We cannot, will not, be held hostage, treated as second class citizens, by our own people. We want nothing to do with convicted terrorists—they represent no one—but put forward legitimate representatives. I say again that the British Government must recognize our right to use the King’s roads as we see fit. The Glorious Twelfth cannot be forgotten. Our time-honored routes must be opened once more. The Portadown protests will continue until the minority and Sinn Fein recognize our rights. Only then will the way be cleared for a peaceful, historic march from the Orange Hall, down the Garvaghy Road, to our symbol of loyalty—the Drumcree Church of Ireland.

I’m sure you’ll all join me in rededicating those stirring last lines from the Siege of Drumcree: No more calls for compromise/Or of trying to appease, /The Protestants of Ulster/Have got up off their knees.

It’s a perfect, very Irish ending, playing on the heartstrings of pride by quoting that popular, anonymous song. It’s a fitting ending, too, for not far away on East Belfast’s Freedom Corner, the endlessly repainted Loyalist mural reads: Irish Out—The Ulster Conflict Is About Nationality. The open Bibles that flank this heartening message chill the heart with Cromwellian frigidity.

Behind him, on the podium out of the glare, Larry McCulloch, Whitlock’s aide de camp and protege, glowers through his glasses at the stone steps. In different forms, he’s heard the same speech over and over since the parade ban in ‘98, almost twenty bloody years. Useless; Whitlock is the perfect politico, a survivor, through and through. Thin, tall, thirty-five, McCulloch grinds his teeth so his small black moustache bristles. He had seen the real, undisguised figures just minutes ago. The Protestant majority in the Six Counties has slipped once more to a mere 52 percent. Bloody Taigs, he fumes, they breed like rabbits. They’re fucking us into a united Ireland. Never, goddamn it, never. The Single Solution has to start immediately. The Brits can’t be trusted. Core Command must know today.

Whitlock’s smoke and mirrors speech settles it. Now, the Single Solution will begin, so long in planning, so devious and cunning. It would have been better if Core Command could have provoked the IRA or one of the splinter groups, like the hotheads in the Real IRA, but they seem ready to ignore anything: burned churches, gutted cathedrals, firebombed houses, kneecappings, beatings, the nightly inferno of the Ardoyne. Even the rocket attack the all those years back on the MI6 building in London didn’t work. McCulloch hates and admires the Republicans at the same time: If we had so many trained people, we could win this, hands down.

Core Command needs more trained rank and file soldiers than they can muster just yet. The weapons destroyed under the watchful eye of Gen. John de Chastelain made for a good public relations show, no doubt, but among Loyalists it was referred to as cleaning house, because most of them were severely outmoded, relics from the days when their major source of arms was the apartheid South African government. More modern, effective ordnance will not be a problem now, what with such powerful friends in London more than willing to upgrade the forces.

********************

The trains are running late—again. As Christmas nears, it always seems to get worse. On the platforms, hundreds of stressed-out office workers just want to get to the pub, the date, the shops, home to the kids, the telly. Minor jostling, in a polite, English kind of way, but the queues hold. Young men in bad suits, young women in trendy skirts, paired off, chatting. The older, heavy briefcase brigade, conservatively pinstriped males and females, in their own knot, silent. The class system debased to herding instinct. At least they’re all out of the rain, because the platforms are protected by molded, translucent Lucite, high overhead, between the two banks of glass-walled office buildings.

A collective ripple of relieved movement when the crowd on one side sees the automated train approaching from the city. Then a simultaneous grunt of disgust when the Out of Service sign becomes readable. Besides, there is only one car. What were London Transport thinking, anyway? Friday, as well.

The car slows and comes to a stop in the middle of the platform. It sits, empty, a few seconds, then the doors open and the bomb goes off. Beautiful, really, a plumed flower opening: bright orange on the periphery, piercing white in the center, black, roiling smoke around both. Semtex might be outmoded, but it is a powerful explosive, even in very small amounts; three hundred pounds devastating overkill. The newest version of this plastic explosive, C6, would have been much more efficient. No matter, the car vanishes from sheer concussion, so do most of the people in the front ranks; those in the back torn apart, heads, legs, flesh, intestines, flying, splintered bones as projectiles. The shock wave brings down the roof, killing many on the opposite platform.

Flying glass and shrapnel are the worst. Those that don’t die instantly are horribly slashed, blood from severed arteries pumping astonishing heights. There will be a lot of trouble, later, sorting out DNA to find what part belongs to which person. A fine rain of shredded paper, hats, cloth floats to the ground in the smoky, deaf aftermath. The steel shaft of an umbrella quivers in the wall, ten feet above the platform, driven in halfway. Below it, a middle aged woman in a tailored black suit sits propped against the wall. She looks down at herself in wonder: as if by a large, incredibly sharp razor, she has been opened from crotch to neck. Her breathing is ragged and coming in short, convulsive gulps. The abattoir smell descends like a revolting pall: blood, urine, feces, stomach contents, curdling into a thickened, vomitous fog palpable enough to chew. Worse, even, than pig manure spread on a field in high summer. The moans of the survivors won’t begin for a few long, still moments. The hollow silence is ungodly.

********************

Nelson’ s Column, the refurbished Prince Albert Monument, even Cleopatra’s Needle would have been better targets, more symbolic. For their own ill-considered reasons, they decided on Canary Wharf—again. More chaos, more news, easier to plant. It seemed to be their first mistake, a minor one, followed by a major one, then the clincher.

When it was rebuilt, Canary Wharf became an even more impersonal, ugly demonstration of English contemporary architecture. They’ve never gotten it right, from Coventry to London’s BBC Tower to council flats all over the country, the prison look of the new British Library, and, of course, Tony Blair’s millennium monstrosity on the Thames: the Greenwich Dome. Bankrupt boredom as oppressive building. Tourists, the bypassed Prince Charles and the National Trust continue to revere the Adams brothers for their 18th century elegance, but Mies van der Rohe might never have existed. In London, the sonata and the soap commercial jingle fight it out. The outcome is fixed.

Canary Wharf houses insurance companies, banks, service industries, brokers, software developers, at least the ones left after the global meltdown. .That’s why the IRA chose it the first time, a blow at English business. They had, at least, called in a warning. Damage was high, but casualties low. This time there wasn’t one, verified by the prearranged code word: Kerrygold. That was their second mistake; apparently a big one.

********************

Michael Caxton, Prime Minister of England and leader of the minority Conservative Government, sits alone in the Briefing Room of 10 Downing Street. Mid-January, very late. Looking out the tall, multi-paned windows—blast-proof, naturally—he can see the cold, hard rain slanting on what they call Maggie’s pains. Before him, the Cabinet report, spread out. He ignores it; his eye returning to the reluctant Times headline: Tories Can’t Hold It Together, Caxton Down and Possibly Out.

Correct. He needs something, anything—quickly—to stay in power. Diligently, he has continued the never ending Northern Ireland Peace Process inherited from his predecessor. Peace, real peace, real power sharing, seems near at last. That should count for something, but it doesn’t. Support is waning—the support he desperately needs for his minority government—from those renegade, fundamentalist Ulster Unionist MPs, let alone those righteous Liberal Democrats. The English people are far more interested in the fate of their pensions and retirement funds, their leases and mortgages, their livelihoods and health care.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, historically, at least. He has an MA in history from Oriel College, Oxford, and he values the lessons of the past. In the days of Disraeli, Gladstone, Lloyd George, even Thatcher, Ulster Unionist support shored up both Conservative and Liberal governments—for a price. That’s how this Irish mess got started in the first place: Land League, Home Rule, 1916, Black and Tans, partition, Belfast, and all the rest. Endless and profoundly depressing. He has to solidify those crucial Ulster votes in the Commons or the government will fall without some incredibly fancy footwork. If it would only just go away.

It isn’t fair, really, but, then again, what could one expect from public opinion? His government, the country, actually, cannot counter the surging European Union, once it got out of debt and put Greece and Ireland back together. Currency traders are having a field day gutting the pound, buying the Euro, the Yuan, exchange rates are brutal. Bond traders worldwide are demanding more and more to service the debt. Unemployment up to 12 per cent, no luck at all attracting fresh investment, developing new industry. The legacy of Commonwealth is hitting home harder than ever: skinheads and lager louts running amok in the Pakistani and Indian centers of Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, Luton. There has been no progress whatsoever in reforming the banking sector after the 2008 debacle. The debt load as a percentage of GNP is among the worst in Europe.

Even the Americans are cool. They want real peace in Northern Ireland, no doubt, to satisfy all those meddling Irish-Americans, but they haven’t forgotten the grudging pittance of support England provided during the offensive in Iran. They remain permanently thick about political reality in Northern Ireland; their career diplomats seem to see it as a morality play with an easy, inevitable outcome—democracy always triumphs over anarchy—not an impossible, amoral snarl of conflicting loyalties, histories, tenuous peace balancing on a razor blade. Even the bright years of the Obama presidency did little to change the situation much, despite the early hope.

We just can’t afford it anymore, Caxton says to himself, chewing, as usual, on the end of a Bic ballpoint. Where’s the money to come from? The tax base is so eroded after devolution in Scotland and Wales, we just don’t have it, and then, of course, there’s the bloody debt. Dammit, it was supposed to be Labour in power in Hollyrood, not the bloody Scottish National Party; at least we could have worked with them, but not those daft Highlanders. History will pillory me for being the one to preside over Scottish independence. Looks as if Wales will go the same way. If I raise taxes and cut even more services at home, I’ll be out even faster. What we do have has to go to the schools, the National Health, the police, transportation. What a fine, stinking, goddamned mess we’re in.

The Chippendale tall-case clock in the hallway strikes a dignified 2 AM. The door to the Cabinet Room opens quietly. Caxton’s wife, Gwen, puts a snifter of Remi Martin by his right hand. She takes the pen from his mouth, touches him gently on the shoulder, kisses his hair, whispering, Come soon, Michael, tomorrow begins early.

He glances at the Cabinet Report as he stands up. On one page, the yearly cost for the troops, police and surveillance infrastructure in Northern Ireland, underlined in red. On the other, even more—billions of pounds in subsidies—underlined twice. He winces and turns wearily away.

********************

Right, I’m telling you, George, I have a very funny feeling about this. It’s just not their thing.

In front of them, on the table, is a small, twisted piece of scorched metal. Embedded in it, a tiny fragment of the detonator from the Canary Wharf bomb. MI5, in charge of internal domestic security, has decades of experience with IRA detonators: sophisticated, electronic, remotely armed, quite safe—for the bomber. It had been difficult to find in the wreckage, but not to identify: electrical and very amateurish.

Couldn’t agree more, Tom old son, a queasy feeling in the pit of the old tum-tum, what? George has a way of putting on the Bertie Wooster manner when under stress. Some people find it amusing, others irritating. No matter, the pair makes up the best bomb team in England. What say we give yon Johnny a tinkle in Washington? Think we might persuade the old dear to run it through the FBI’s bomb analysis thingee? Then we can pop over for a spot of lunch. Right ho, I’ll have a huddle with the chief lion about this.

********************

Oh, my God, no. This can’t possibly be true. Are you certain? Michael Caxton has just read MI5’s top secret report on Canary Wharf. Across from him sits Leo Crummin, Chief of Intelligence, George’s chief lion. His people finally identified the third mistake, the detonator, the clincher, so they believe.

Certain as we can be, sir. Our people suspected it, and Washington confirmed it. At first, we thought the IRA's denial was the usual stuff: ‘Not us, you see, must have been those Real IRA hotheads.’ Then again, if they’re bent on destroying the Ulster Assembly, they should have crowed about it. Our sources in Sinn Fein say they’re telling the truth, as surprised as we were. The word I have is that if they did plant it, they would have called in a warning. Makes sense, that’s their historical pattern. Besides, Christmas isn’t their season. They prefer Easter.

A discreet knock at the door is followed immediately by an obsequious junior