Oct 14

Oct 14 Clandestine

Clandestine - book excerpt

CHIS

They say that when you tell a story, any story, you should not start with what the weather was like. I agree completely, and in other circumstances I would not start a story like that.

But if I’m being honest with myself, the weather from that night was the thing that I keep coming back to, that I remember the most. It was that relentless rain; heavy and the kind that saturates you right through. It seeps into your bones like guilt.

I was in Liverpool on that wet, cold and rainy night, a Saturday, waiting at Central Station, one of the main train stations in the city centre. The flotsam and jetsam were passing me by; it was dark and the Saturday shoppers were on their way home, while the early bird clubbers and drinkers hadn’t descended yet. Another hour or so and the place would be filled with students, workmen, party-goers, all looking for a good time and cheap booze, but for now it was relatively quiet; a sort of social no man’s land.

I had been standing in place for nearly half an hour, pretending to check my phone and my watch to keep my cover in place. I looked like anyone else in the vicinity; jeans, heavy boots, and an anorak with a hood that held my long, greasy hair in place. Welcome to the glamour of the undercover operative, ladies and gentleman. There wasn’t a Vodka Martini in sight.

As a source handler for the British Security Service, mostly inaccurately known as MI5 these days by the press and ill-informed thriller writers, I was doing what I was paid to do and what I was good at. I was here to meet, covertly, one of my stable of CHIS’s.

And what is a CHIS, I hear you ask?

Well, CHIS is an acronym for Covert Human Intelligence Source; which translates as a spy, a tout, an informer. I am the handler, the CHIS is the spy. He passes me information, I pay him (or her) either in cash or, as is normally the case, I keep them out of prison.

Source OSMAN was Seamus McKiver, a lorry driver from Belfast who had been caught eighteen months ago smuggling in weed. A quick trip to the prison cell had left him ripe for recruitment by some unscrupulous intelligence officer, namely me. All he had to do was ingratiate himself with some of the people that he had grown up with on the Shankhill Estate. Despite the peace process, the extremists still hadn’t completely disappeared even all these years later and there was still a retinue of Loyalist killers, just like there was still a retinue of Provo killers, that were happy to take up arms and keep the conflict inflamed.

It was my job as part of the Security Service to get a peek inside their camp and find out what they were doing. Seamus was a perfect agent for this. He had grown up on the estate with most of the big men and was accommodating, under my direction, to a bit of smuggling of weapons, money and people for the Loyalists; except he was also passing all the information to me. So far in his year-long career as a spy, he had helped to avert more than half a dozen potential terrorist attacks.

The train station concourse was bland to the point of being unnoticeable; shoe repairers, a cake shop, cheap jewellery store, leather jacket clothes store and a newsagent’s. And beyond the barriers and little ticket collector were the escalators that took you down to the underground train station.

I checked my watch. Seamus was late – which, to be fair, was not like him at all. Compared to some of my informants, Seamus was a veritable Swiss Watch; always on time and never running slow. So this was… odd. I decided to do a slow amble and had completed one more tour of the concourse when I saw him sitting at a table outside a café. Except something wasn’t quite… right.

It was like not seeing a car coming at you until the last moment. You know it could be there in theory, but your mind tells you it isn’t… until it comes crashing through your front bumper. It was the same with the café. How could I not have noticed the café? But I was sure I hadn’t seen it before. The place was dark-looking, in contrast to the brightly lit train concourse. The windows had those small panes that wouldn’t let in a lot of light even on the brightest of days; it looked Dickensian in tone.

A waitress, probably no more than twenty, wearing a long, black dress made of heavy material, came out carrying a tray with a mug of something hot on it. Her face was pinched and white, her dark hair pulled back in a severe manner. Both she and the café looked out of place. A theme café, I guessed. There to give a bit of olde worlde charm to an otherwise antiseptic train station.

Seamus was sat outside at a table on his own, looking thoroughly miserable and dejected; the hood of his jacket was up over his head and the folds were wrapped around his body. Even from here I could see that he was shivering. The waitress put the hot cup in front of him and began to leave to head back into the brooding darkness of the café. But as I started to walk towards where Seamus was sat, she became aware of me, like looking through fog… distant, her lip curled into a sneer and her eyes blazed at me with hostility. It stopped me in my tracks.

What’s your fucking problem, love? I thought. She held me in place for a few heartbeats more and then turned tail and disappeared inside. Arsey bitch.

I approached him and stood over him, but he just continued staring down at the table in front of him. Oh great, I thought. He’s been on the beer and now he’s pissed.

“Seamus,” I said, attracting his attention. He slowly looked up, vaguely aware of me.

“Oh, hello, Mr Crowe. It’s been a long time,” said Seamus, his words coming out slow like molasses.

‘Crowe’ was my cover name for when I met this particular source. Not my real name, of course. Standard operating procedure for meeting agents is to have a cover name; after all, no one wants the terrorists searching through the electoral register for your real name.

“A very… very… long time,” mumbled Seamus.

Yep, definitely pissed, I thought.

But he wasn’t pissed. It was like he was exhausted or had a bout of the ‘flu. Regardless of what he was, I didn’t have time for that now. I was the source handler and I was expected to dominate and control the meeting. So I went over the usual tradecraft of covert meetings. Were you followed? Did you notice signs of anyone following you? If we are approached by people that you know, I’m Robert, Bob, an old lorry driver buddy from years ago, do you understand? If we get approached by local police, you leave it to me and I’ll take care of it. Understand?

But instead of the smart, snappy Irish brogue, all I received from my agent was vague nods and barely audible grunts. “I just feel so, so tired, like I’ve been on the Jameson’s, but I swear I haven’t touched a drop,” he mumbled.

He looked like death warmed up. “Have you been to see your sister?” I asked.

Seamus had a sister who lived in Childwall and she was married to a builder. Seamus would often drive over and stay with them every other month. It was also a perfect cover to have a contact meeting with me to pass over any intelligence that he had come across. It was less risky than operating on the streets of Belfast for both of us.

“No, no… I haven’t. Not yet. I want… I think… I’m going to visit her next,” he said.

I nodded. “Okay. I think that’s a good option. How’s the job going?”

He half smiled. “I love my truck. I had many happy times driving that rig.”

Which was a strange thing to say, but I let it slide.

“Any news on the boyos?” I asked, trying to keep things on track.

He frowned. “I remember hearing, just before they… just before…”

“Yes?”

Then he seemed to do a re-set, as if his memory had come back. “I heard about a stash of pistols and ammo. In Portadown, yes, I remember that. Look for the butcher’s shop on the high street, he’s the guy that is storing them,” he said proudly

I looked down and saw that despite his clothes being relatively dry, there was a puddle of water forming beneath his chair. He must have been saturated! I tried to ignore it, instead focusing back on the information he had. “How do we know about this, Seamus?”

He thought for a while and then perked up. “The Donnelly brothers, I went to school with them… yachh… yachhhh.”

His coughing fit jarred me. The last thing I wanted was him to throw up everywhere, but no, this was something else. Seamus was not well at all.

“Yachhh… they showed me… showed me the guns… he was showing off, so he was… trying to act the big man… yacchhh… said that he had taken a consignment from the boyos… wanted to know if I wanted to… yachhh… make a few quid smuggling them over to the UK… yachhhh… to sell to the drug gangs… yacchhh.”

I nodded. “Okay, Seamus, that’s good work. Good information. I’ll see that you get a bit extra in your payment next month.”

But Seamus appeared not to have heard, he was too busy wiping mucus from his nose. He looked deflated, like he could barely stay awake. I decided to cut the meeting short, reasoning that if he didn’t get to his bed soon and some cold flu capsules inside him, he’d be a dead man walking.

I looked down at my watch and noted that almost an hour had passed, which threw me as it seemed we’d only been talking for no more than fifteen minutes.

“Let’s get out of here. Look, I’ll walk part of the way with you,” I said.

He stood up straight, like he was hypnotised and we left the café in Central Station and headed up the ramp that brought us out onto Bold Street; a pedestrian thoroughfare that was a mixture of shops, bars and restaurants. The street was relatively deserted, perhaps due to the incessant rain, and the darkness gave the place a washed out and isolated vibe.

“Where are you staying?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll find somewhere… maybe sleep in my cab. I love my rig.”

There were few people out on the street that rainy night, but of the ones that were, they were grey, dark-clothed people; hats, coats, long dresses, stuff that my granddad would have worn when he was younger. They walked slowly, almost as if the wet and cold didn’t bother them. It was a strange look for people to wear in a modern city; especially on a Saturday night in club-land.

I ignored it and placed my hand on Seamus’s arm to steer him onto the pavement as we headed up the incline of Bold Street. Christ, his clothing was bone-numbing cold and wet through again. His body felt like ice and he squelched when he walked.

A few more steps and Seamus stopped. “You can leave me here, Mr Crowe. I don’t want you to come any further… I’ll be fine from here on out.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t mind getting you to somewhere safe and dry; a hotel nearby, maybe?”

He shook his head. “No, thanks, you’ve been grand… just grand… just…”