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“That, too.”
Qaddafi sighed, in the manner of one on whose shoulders too many of the world’s burdens are placed. “Not enough,” he said dreamily. “There must be more. On mainland America.”
“The search goes on, Excellency. The problem remains the same. In Britain, the Provisional IRA will exact your just revenge for you. The infidels will destroy the infidels at your behest. It was a brilliant idea.”
The idea of using the Provisional IRA as the conduit and tool of Qaddafi’s revenge on Britain had actually come from the brain of al-Mansour, but Qaddafi now believed the notion had been his, inspired by Allah.
Al-Mansour went on: “In America there is, alas, no in-place partisan network that can be used in the same way. The search goes on. The tools of your vengeance will be found.”
Qaddafi nodded several times, then gestured that the interview was over. “See to it,” he murmured softly.
The gathering of intelligence is a strange business. Rarely does one single coup provide all the answers, let alone solve all the problems. The search for the single, wonderful solution is a particularly American trait. Mostly, the picture appears as if a jigsaw puzzle is being carefully assembled, piece by piece. Usually, the last dozen pieces never appear at all; a good intelligence analyst will discern the picture from a collection of fragmen
ts.
Sometimes the pieces themselves do not come from the jigsaw picture under study at all, but from another one. Sometimes the pieces are themselves untrue. And they never lock together quite as neatly as in a real jigsaw puzzle, with the fretted edges of each and every piece matched.
There are men at Century House, home of the British Secret Intelligence Service, who are experts at jigsaw puzzles. They seldom leave their desks; the gatherers—the field agents—are the ones who bring in the pieces. The analysts try to assemble them. Before the end of April, two pieces of a new puzzle had arrived at Century House.
One came from the Libyan doctor who had given Qaddafi his medicine in the tent. The man had once had a son whom he dearly loved. The student had been in England trying to become an engineer when the Mukhabarat had approached him and suggested that if he loved his father, he should carry out a task for the Great Leader. The bomb they had given him to plant had gone off prematurely. The father had hidden his grief well and had accepted the condolences, but his heart had turned to hatred, and he passed what information he could glean from his position at the court of Muammar Qaddafi to the British.
His report of half a conversation, which he had heard in the tent before he was dismissed, was not sent via the British Embassy in Tripoli, for this was watched night and day. Instead, it went to Cairo, arriving a week later. From Cairo it was flashed to London, where it was considered important enough to go straight to the top.
“He’s going to do what?” asked the Chief, when he was told.
“It seems he has offered a gift of explosives and weaponry to the IRA,” said Timothy Edwards, who had that month been promoted from Assistant Chief to Deputy Chief. “That, at least, seems to be the only interpretation of the overheard conversation.”
“How was the offer made?”
“Apparently via an Irish priest flown in to Libya.”
“Do we know which one?”
“No, sir. Might not be a real priest at all. Could be a cover for an Army Council man. But the offer seems to have originated with Qaddafi.”
“Right. Well, we must find out who this mysterious cleric is. I’ll tell the Box and see if they have anything. If he’s in the North, he’s theirs. If he’s in the South or elsewhere, we take him.”
“Box Five Hundred” is the in-house slang term for MI-5, the British Security Service, the internal counterintelligence arm that has the task of counterterrorism in Northern Ireland, as British territory. The SIS had the mandate for intelligence and offensive counterintelligence operations outside Britain, including the Republic of Ireland, the “South.”
The Chief lunched with his colleague, the Director General of MI-5 that same day. The third man at the table was the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee; it would be his job to alert the Cabinet Office.
Two days later, an MI-5 operation came up with the second piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
There was nothing foreseen about it; it was just one of those flukes that occasionally make life easier. A young IRA man, driving a car with an Armalite in the trunk, came up against an unexpected roadblock manned by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The teenager hesitated, thought of the rifle in his car—which would guarantee him several years imprisonment in the Maze jail—and tried to crash the roadblock.
He almost made it. Had he been more experienced, he might have. The sergeant and two constables at the roadblock had to throw themselves to one side as the stolen car suddenly surged ahead. But a third officer, standing well back, brought up his rifle and fired four shots into the accelerating car. One of them took off the top of the teenager’s head.
He was only a messenger boy, but the IRA decided he merited a full funeral with military honors. It took place in Bollycrane, the dead youth’s native village, a small place in South Armagh. The grieving family was comforted by Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and asked for a favor. Would they allow a visiting priest, presented as a longtime friend of the family, to conduct the funeral service in place of the parish priest? The family, hardline Republicans all, with another son serving life for murder, agreed without hesitation. The service was duly conducted by Father Dermot O’Brien.
A little-known fact about the funerals of IRA men buried in Northern Ireland is that they provide a constant and useful venue for IRA leaders to get together and confer. The ceremonies are extremely tightly controlled by IRA “hard men.”
* * *
Usually, every single person among the mourners—men, women, and children—is a staunch supporter of the IRA. In some of the small villages of South Armagh and Fermanagh and South Tyrone, entire villages down to the last inhabitant are fanatic supporters.
The TV cameras are often fixed upon the ceremony, and the IRA chiefs, shielded by the crowd even from lip-reading, can hold muttered conferences, plan, decide, relay information, or set up future operations—not always an easy task for men under constant surveillance. For a British soldier or a Royal Ulster Constabulary man even to approach a funeral party would be a signal for a riot or even the murder of the soldier, as has been proved.
So a watch is kept with Long Tom cameras, but these usually cannot detect a muttered conversation from the side of the mouth. Thus, the IRA uses the supposed sanctity of death to plan further slaughter.