straight out of Dublin and into Heathrow with the confetti in their hair and a first night of unbridled pleasure at the Post House Hotel, Heathrow.
Only the most dangerous, Mary Duggan, bomb maker and zealot, almost had them snookered, for she disappeared altogether on the third day of watching. There one minute and gone the next. Tony was screaming and blaspheming at his private army, but that did no good and it was not until Mary Frances Duggan turned up at the house in the little cul-de-sac that everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
The team was there, gathered together in this tributary among the maze of streets running between Oxford and Regent streets, in this house which, Herbie’s people maintained, was obviously the bomb factory. They had listened, they said; they had used their sophisticated equipment, they said. Lethal stuff was inside the building and it was too close for comfort, in the center of London’s West End. The clock was ticking and Coordination A sat down in its bug-proof, soundproof shelter to decide when and how they should strike.
The sooner the better, the Whizz said, as they had the thumbs up and the complete cooperation of the Met. Apted advised killing the buggers there and then, within the next ten minutes, and was backed up by the Church Militants with hard faces and chopping motions.
Herb wanted everything aboveboard and insisted that the Whizz go to the Minister, and the Minister to COBRA, just to get the final nod.
The Whizz adjusted the cuffs on his Turnbull & Asser white-and-blue-striped shirt, straightened his plain silk tie and went off into the night to get the final go-ahead by word of mouth. “Nothing in writing, Whizz,” the Minister was supposed to have said. “Just do it, and let’s all pray the press applaud saving the target.” He did not use the code words Rich and Famous , or the true name, which—even after the event—did not appear in any official document.
It took three hours for the Whizz to talk with the Minister, and the Minister to alert COBRA, then give the Whizz the okay, so that when he returned to the little committee it was almost one in the morning. At one-thirty Cataract came into being. By one thirty-five it was up and running. Four members of the SAS were flying down from their base at Stirling Lines, just outside Hereford. The final briefing took place at 4:30 A.M.
Herbie remembered the tension, and recalled being surprised that one of the young soldiers, the Captain in charge, smoked throughout. A Colonel came with them, and he became, together with a Commander of the Metropolitan Police, the eventual villain. It was stressed that the four SAS men should resort to “termination,” as they called it, only if their lives were in danger, and, only then, if they had been given the code word Bailiff by either the Colonel or the Commander.
The area close by the West End cul-de-sac was owned by the police at around six in the morning, and Herbie sat, with Apted and the Whizz, in a communications and control van parked with police protection close to Liberty’s in Regent Street, a quarter of a mile from the actual site of the bomb factory, yet with full color and sound on monitors fed by three cameras brought in by what the Office euphemistically called Technical Support.
At just after nine the door to the narrow little three-story house opened and the Gang of Four came out into the raw, cold morning air without a care in the world. The door was hardly closed behind them when the first two SAS men came into the picture, seeming to materialize from the far end of the cul-de-sac. At the time, Apted whispered, “Christ, they can walk through walls.”
There was a moment of indecision. Of all the dramatis personae, Herb remembered young Anne Bolan’s face running through a series of emotions ranging from surprise to puzzlement and, finally, to terror as a voice, off camera, shouted, “Police! Stop! Stand still!”
The owner of the voice, in fact the
Only the most dangerous, Mary Duggan, bomb maker and zealot, almost had them snookered, for she disappeared altogether on the third day of watching. There one minute and gone the next. Tony was screaming and blaspheming at his private army, but that did no good and it was not until Mary Frances Duggan turned up at the house in the little cul-de-sac that everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
The team was there, gathered together in this tributary among the maze of streets running between Oxford and Regent streets, in this house which, Herbie’s people maintained, was obviously the bomb factory. They had listened, they said; they had used their sophisticated equipment, they said. Lethal stuff was inside the building and it was too close for comfort, in the center of London’s West End. The clock was ticking and Coordination A sat down in its bug-proof, soundproof shelter to decide when and how they should strike.
The sooner the better, the Whizz said, as they had the thumbs up and the complete cooperation of the Met. Apted advised killing the buggers there and then, within the next ten minutes, and was backed up by the Church Militants with hard faces and chopping motions.
Herb wanted everything aboveboard and insisted that the Whizz go to the Minister, and the Minister to COBRA, just to get the final nod.
The Whizz adjusted the cuffs on his Turnbull & Asser white-and-blue-striped shirt, straightened his plain silk tie and went off into the night to get the final go-ahead by word of mouth. “Nothing in writing, Whizz,” the Minister was supposed to have said. “Just do it, and let’s all pray the press applaud saving the target.” He did not use the code words Rich and Famous , or the true name, which—even after the event—did not appear in any official document.
It took three hours for the Whizz to talk with the Minister, and the Minister to alert COBRA, then give the Whizz the okay, so that when he returned to the little committee it was almost one in the morning. At one-thirty Cataract came into being. By one thirty-five it was up and running. Four members of the SAS were flying down from their base at Stirling Lines, just outside Hereford. The final briefing took place at 4:30 A.M.
Herbie remembered the tension, and recalled being surprised that one of the young soldiers, the Captain in charge, smoked throughout. A Colonel came with them, and he became, together with a Commander of the Metropolitan Police, the eventual villain. It was stressed that the four SAS men should resort to “termination,” as they called it, only if their lives were in danger, and, only then, if they had been given the code word Bailiff by either the Colonel or the Commander.
The area close by the West End cul-de-sac was owned by the police at around six in the morning, and Herbie sat, with Apted and the Whizz, in a communications and control van parked with police protection close to Liberty’s in Regent Street, a quarter of a mile from the actual site of the bomb factory, yet with full color and sound on monitors fed by three cameras brought in by what the Office euphemistically called Technical Support.
At just after nine the door to the narrow little three-story house opened and the Gang of Four came out into the raw, cold morning air without a care in the world. The door was hardly closed behind them when the first two SAS men came into the picture, seeming to materialize from the far end of the cul-de-sac. At the time, Apted whispered, “Christ, they can walk through walls.”
There was a moment of indecision. Of all the dramatis personae, Herb remembered young Anne Bolan’s face running through a series of emotions ranging from surprise to puzzlement and, finally, to terror as a voice, off camera, shouted, “Police! Stop! Stand still!”
The owner of the voice, in fact the
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