the most dangerous republican ghettos of Belfast and collecting invaluable intelligence. A few weeks earlier he had handed over ten first-class sources of information to MI5 and within a week they had all been assassinated, one after the other, by the IRA.
Apart from the shocking loss of so many watchers, including Phillips, the assassinations had shown that MI5 had a leak in its system. That leak, as Cranfield easily discovered, was their own source, Shaun O’Halloran, who had always been viewed by 14 Intelligence Company as a hardline republican, therefore unreliable. Having ignored the advice of 14 Intelligence Company and used O’Halloran without its knowledge, MI5, instead of punishing him, had tried to save embarrassment by simply dropping him and trying to cover his tracks.
Cranfield, still shocked and outraged by the death of ten men, as well as the subsequent suicide of the conscience-stricken Phillips, was determined that their betrayer, O’Halloran, would not walk away scot-free.
‘A mistake is one thing,’ he said, placing his foot back on the floor and grabbing a grey civilian’s jacket from his locker, ‘but to believe that you can trust someone with O’Halloran’s track record is pure bloody stupidity.’
‘They weren’t to know that he was an active IRA member,’ Dubois said, studying himself in the mirror and seeing a drab civilian rather than the SAS officer he actually was. ‘They thought he was just another tout out to make a few bob.’
‘Right,’ Cranfield said contemptuously. ‘They thought. They should have bloody well checked.’
Though nervous about his famously short-fused SAS officer, Captain Dubois understood his frustration.
For the past year sharp divisions had been appearing between the two main non-military Intelligence agencies: MI6 (the secret intelligence service run by the Commonwealth and Foreign Office, never publicly acknowledged) and MI5, the Security Service openly charged with counter-espionage. The close-knit, almost tribal nature of the RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, meant that its Special Branch was also running its own agents with little regard for Army needs or requirements. RUC Special Branch, meanwhile, was running its own, secret cross-border contacts with the Irish Republic’s Gardai Special Branch. Because of this complex web of mutually suspicious and secretive organizations, the few SAS men in the province, occupying key intelligence positions at the military HQ in Lisburn and elsewhere, were often exposed to internecine rivalries when trying to co-ordinate operations against the terrorists.
Even more frustrating was the pecking order. While SAS officers attempted to be the cement between mutually mistrustful allies, soldiers from other areas acted as Military Intelligence Officers (MIOs) or Field Intelligence NCOs (Fincos) in liaison with the RUC. Such men and women came from the Intelligence Corps, Royal Military Police, and many other sources. The link with each RUC police division was a Special Military Intelligence Unit containing MIOs, Fincos and Milos (Military Intelligence Liaison Officers). An MIO working as part of such a unit could find himself torn by conflicting responsibilities to the RUC, Army Intelligence and MI6.
That is what had happened to Phillips. Though formally a British Army ‘Finco’ answerable to Military Intelligence, he had been intimidated by members of the Security Service into routeing his information to his own superiors via MI5. In doing so he had innocently sealed his own fate, as well as the fate of his ten unfortunate informants.
No wonder Cranfield was livid.
Still, Dubois felt a little foolish. As an officer of the British Army serving with 14 Intelligence Company, he was Cranfield’s superior by both rank and position, yet Lieutenant Cranfield, one of a small number of SAS officers attached to the unit, ignored these fine distinctions and more or less did what he wanted. A flamboyant character, even by SAS standards, he had been in Northern Ireland only two months, yet already had garnered himself a reputation as a ‘big timer’, someone working out on the edge and possessed of extreme braggadocio, albeit with brilliant flair and matchless courage. While admiring him, for the latter qualities, Dubois was nervous about Cranfield’s cocksure attitude, which he felt would land him in trouble sooner or later.
‘We’ll be in and out in no time,’ Cranfield told him, clipping a holstered 9mm Browning High Power handgun to his belt, positioned halfway around his waist, well hidden by the jacket. ‘So stop worrying about it. Are you ready?’
‘Yes,’ Dubois said, checking that his own High Power was in the cross-draw position.
‘Right,’ Cranfield said, ‘let’s go.’
As they left the barracks, Dubois again felt a faint flush of humiliation, realizing just how much he liked and admired Cranfield and had let himself be won over by his flamboyance. Though a former Oxford boxing blue and Catholic Guards officer, Dubois was helplessly awed by the fact that his second-in-command, Lieutenant Randolph ‘Randy’ Cranfield, formerly of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and the Parachute Regiment, had gone to Ampleforth where the founder of the SAS, David Stirling, had also been educated, and was widely admired for his daring – some would say reckless – exploits.
Dubois had his own brand of courage, which he had often displayed in the mean streets of Belfast or the ‘bandit country’ of Armagh, but he was basically conservative in outlook and helplessly admiring of those less inhibited. He had therefore gradually become Cranfield’s shadow, rather than his leader, and recognition of this fact made him uncomfortable.
They entered what looked like a normal army compound, surrounded by high walls of corrugated iron, with watch-towers and electronically controlled gates guarded on both sides with reinforced sangars. These stone walls were high because the IRA’s flavour of the month was the Russian-made RPG 7 short-range anti-tank weapon, which could hurl a rocket-propelled grenade in an arc with an effective range of 500 metres. With walls so high, however, the IRA would have to come dangerously close to the base before they could gain the required elevation for such an attack. The walls kept them at bay.
‘Another bleak day in Armagh,’ Cranfield said. ‘God, what I’d give for some sunshine and the taste of sangria!’
‘In January in Northern Ireland,’ Dubois replied, ‘I can’t even imagine that. But I know that I’d prefer the heat of Oman to this bloody place.’
‘Some of the others arriving next week have just come from there,’ Cranfield said, ‘which means they’ll be well blooded, experienced in desert survival, filled with the humane values of the hearts-and-minds campaign…’ – he paused for dramatic effect – ‘and completely out of sorts here.’
‘Yes,’ Dubois agreed glumly. ‘We’ll have to firm them up quickly. And being attached to us won’t make them too happy either. They’ll think they’ve been RTU’d back to the regular Army.’
‘They should be so lucky!’ Cranfield exclaimed, shaking his head and chuckling ruefully. ‘We should all be so lucky! Instead, we’re with 14 Intelligence Company, in the quicksand of too many conflicting groups. We’re neither here nor there, Jeremy.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
Though 14 Intelligence Company was a reconnaissance unit, it had been given the cover title, 4 Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers, but was also known as the Northern Ireland Training and Tactics team. Located in the army compound Dubois and Cranfield were visiting, it was equipped with unmarked, civilian ‘Q’ cars and various non-standard weapons, including the Ingram silenced sub-machine-gun. The camp was shared with a British Army Sapper unit.
‘Look,’ Cranfield said impatiently as they crossed the parade ground, from the barracks to the motor pool, in the pearly-grey light of
