Page 84 of Hang on St. Christopher

“You can say I told you so to me at my wake.”

She shook her head. “You have one week, Duffy, and then I’m calling you on this.”

I nodded. “Okay. A week. A man can do a lot in a week. Now, do me a favor and tell me what you know about Brendan O’Roarke.”

“Like what?”

“Like everything. I’ll wait while you get the files.”

“I don’t need the files. O’Roarke is a major player. Real hardliner. The realest of the hardliners. His father and mother were both old Republicans. His father fought the British and then Michael Collins and then DeValera. He was interned during World War Two, so he was probably hot and heavy with the Nazis too. Brendan and his older brother, Jim, were the only two boys out of a family of seven. The girls all married and had normal lives, but Jim and Brendan were IRA lifers. Jim is in France somewhere, we think. On the run for a bank robbery in Wexford that resulted in the death of a Garda officer and a civilian. Raising money for the cause, mind you, not for himself.”

“And what does Brendan do?”

“Brendan is in the building trade by day, and he’s the IRA’s north Leinster commandant by night.”

“Brendan wasn’t in the Army Council a year ago,” I said, stating this plain fact that I knew from my agent-handling days with John Strong. John had had to brief the Army Council once a month on what he knew about the latest RUC operational intelligence. But since we—I—turned him, John had been giving them the chickenshit and trying to get actionable intelligence in return. Jill clearly knew all about that, because she didn’t bring it up but again subconsciously touched my file.

“Things have been moving very quickly in the last six months,” she said. “Big shake-up in the movement. No one really knows why. Or if they do, they’re not telling us in Special Branch. Old guard out, new guard in. New guard primarily from the north. Belfast, Derry, and Dundalk men pushing out the old Dublin players.”

“A more hardline approach to the war?”

Jill was warming to her theme and becoming a little less tight-lipped. Get anyone on one of their hobbyhorses and they couldn’t help but ride that subject...

“You’d think that, Sean,” she said. “But actually, it looks like the opposite is happening. Again, I’m not privy to all the facts, but it looks like northern moderates have taken over the IRA Army Council. Brendan O’Roarke has been given the job of chief of staff to assure the old guard that the new boys haven’t gone completely soft. Brendan’s solid. Brendan, everyone knows, is the man who will never compromise.”

“Is he a killer?”

“Not him personally. Not since the early seventies. Not his style. He’s not a button man, he’s an organizer. It was Brendan who cemented the IRA’s valuable links to Libya, traveling to Tripoli many times in the early 1980s and securing at least five big weapons shipments from Gaddafi. I don’t have to remind you that it was Gaddafi’s Semtex that was used in the Brighton bomb, at Enniskillen, and so on.”

“Would Brendan have a personal hit man that he was keeping off the books?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“To what end?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Brendan O’Roarke is known to be ruthless. Clinical. And now that he’s at the top of the food chain, he can pretty much have anyone in Ireland killed at any time.”

“As long as the IRA Army Council gives the go-ahead.”

“I imagine they would. Brendan is a very persuasive and scary man.”

“But they’d still have to vote on it.”

“Yes... What are you thinking, Sean?”

“I’m thinking what if Brendan wasn’t happy with these new peace feelers? What if Brendan wanted to cement his control of the IRA Army Council and take it over completely? He’d have to eliminate a lot of troublesome people in the north, wouldn’t he?”

“It would be very difficult. People like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are very cautious and?—”

“He’d have to kill them all at once. Night of the Long Knives–style. He would need hit men in situ ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

“Hit men like your murder victim?”

“Exactly.”

Jill shook her head. “No, I don’t see it. And why bug you? Why not just kill you?”

“They want to know how much I know first.”