The Glory Boys

'What do you think we're going to do, you pig-thick ape? Parade him up Whitehall? Stick him in a coconut shy? You had your chance, and you buggered it.'

'You can't keep him close all the time. He'll have to put his feet on the ground…'

'There's only one place.'

'Right,' hissed McCoy. Jimmy could see him quivering, chest shaking, breath panted in the emotion of the dispute.

'The airport. Up the steps the little man goes and your hero makes his last stand,' Jimmy gabbled the words out, maintaining the momentum. McCoy was with him.

'Right, right first bloody time.'

Jimmy said nothing. Sudden, total silence. The noise stillborn, the voices aborted. McCoy's eyes closed tight shut. The enormity of what he'd said, slow in dawning then overwhelming. Betrayed him. Ciaran McCoy, volunteer and officer in the Irish Republican Army, had betrayed him.

'Holy Mother of Jesus, forgive me.' His lips barely moved with the formation of the words that Jimmy did not hear.

Jimmy stretched off the bed and walked towards the door, Jones a pace behind. He said, distant, matter of fact.

'The surgeon only gave us fifteen minutes. We reckoned that would be enough. And we were right, Ciaran, we've four and a half to spare. So it's over to his tender hands now. Hope the bloody knife's blunt.'

McCoy did not see him go. In his life he had never known such abject misery.

The diversion along the park wall and then the search for the bridge crossing of the Thames had cost Famy a considerable detour, switching his journey from six miles to nearly nine. The pale shiver of light was spreading as he came to the cohorts of warehouses and offices that marked the outer perimeter of Heathrow. He felt new confidence now that he was alone and on his back the new clothes, blue jeans and a pale-green shirt. It had been a clear night and the housewife who worked a long day's shift had seen the opportunity to leave her husband's washing out on the garden line. A bonus for Famy as he had gone on his way.

New clothes that would render obsolete the description given to the police in Richmond.

Famy recognized the danger of moving too far a distance inside the airport before he had solidified the cover that he regarded as essential to protect himself later in the day.

The detail he had studied and accepted as he had run.

Now all he needed, he told himself, was time. Time to move to the position that he must have. Time to be ready for when the El Al landed. Must be there for the first one.

They'd take him out, send him home, rid themselves of Sokarev. And so easy to know, once he was there. Can always tell when a big man is flying, or one they think highly of. The security, that's what gives it away, what makes it so obvious. But had to get there, and then stay and wait and watch; watch for signs that meant Sokarev was coming. Had to get there, to where the first El A1 flight would take on its passengers, and then be patient and observe, and look for the security men; the hard-faced men who would tell him the quarry was close.

In Fatahland they would be waking now. In the tents set among the scrub and the rocks his colleagues in arms had passed a night spent dreaming of an opportunity such as he had been given, awaiting it as their own one-time destiny. The new day would be coming over the camp.

The same sun rising across the mountain to the east of Nablus where the road ran on down to the Jordan valley, where his father would be out of his bed, and his mother already in the kitchen outhouse behind the bungalow, and his brothers dressing for school. And in Haifa and Netanya and Ashkelon and Beersheba the Jews would be waking too. All would say his name when the next evening came.

Some with adulation, some with resignation, some with detestation. The blow he prepared to strike would be mighty, to many millions it would shatter the foetid complacency, and to those who lived on the far side of the wire and the minefields and who longed to cross over he would bring hope and aspiration. There was a pounding of excitement, close to purest happiness.

Inside the perimeter he skirted the road that ran adjacent to the runways and across the acres of dividing clipped grass, keeping back from the vague traffic flow, seeking the shadows. He appeared to any who might notice him as one more from the ranks of the thousands of immigrant workers, the lifeblood of the airport, on his way to another day at work, washing dishes, sweeping concourses, cleaning lavatories. His bag seemed not to weigh so heavily, the roar of the big engines lightening the load. He was very near to the estuary of his mission.