Chapter 12

LONDON – 1984

The newspapers and the television were crammed to the gills with stories about the bombing in Brighton. Danny had a sense of revulsion that the news media the world over made a fabulous profit on the trials and tribulations of the sweating masses of humanity when calamity struck all too often.

He had instructed Katya to find a hiding place in Oxford doing a menial job and pretending to be interested in becoming better educated in the use of the English language. Sometimes, he felt that the cunning female knew English better than he and was making errors in grammar just to create an atmosphere of weakness to induce pity rather than suspicion.

Danny had accidently read part of her journal which was written in perfect English without any mistakes at all.

The others were all sent back to Belfast to melt into the background as unobtrusively as possible to avoid police interest. He knew that his name and face from another time were on the "hot" sheets of the RUC and the other Prod organizations as well as the SAS and the MI5 special units assigned to the Northern Ireland issue. Brighton was too dangerous to remain there any longer so he did his best to cover up the PIRA involvement knowing it was an impossible task and transferred a carryall of notes to the company that was involved in the cleanup to mitigate their lack of foresight.

He met the stern looking older man in a working man's pub and he stuck out like a sore thumb with his coat and tie. It was so ludicrous that Danny hesitated to approach the "Christmas Tree" solitary figure sat at a table with a forlorn glass of ale that was begging to be swallowed down with gusto. The only reason he did was because it was obvious the place was so geared to drinking and having a good time that the thought of surveillance of any nature was simply out of the question. It was a good place to meet and make the transfer. He would have preferred a drop simply for the reduction of risk of capture but the company had insisted on a personal representative and he was elected to be the scapegoat.

Danny had no idea as to the amount of the cash in the bag but from the weight it was a large amount. Of course, the funds were not enough to cover the horror of the violence and the tragedy of the people killed and injured but it was intended to rectify the damage to the property "under the table" and he had been involved in such matters before. Sometimes, the fact that one wing of the party didn't know what the other wing was doing made such transactions necessary for the guise of later acceptability in a world gone mad with unnecessary violence.

This bombing was of huge media interest much to the displeasure of the hierarchy in Dublin despite the fact the casualties were minimal unlike the bomb at the Beirut airport that sent more than 240 young American Marines to Marine heaven. That one was sure to drop off the headlines a lot quicker than the one in Brighton since one Prime Minister was a more valued asset on the chessboard of international politics than "Peacekeepers" with unloaded weapons.

It had been almost a decade since his father had died in prison in Northern Ireland and Danny remembered the excitement and danger in the early days when it all seemed a lark that made his pulse race with life on the edge of disaster. Now it was time for him to find sanctuary in the midst of the crowd blending in so deeply that he would never be noticed until he decided to emerge once again.

The man on the other side of the table was enumerating the statistics of the damage and Danny found him to be a bit annoying because he was thinking in terms of brick and plaster and human lives had been snuffed out by invisible fate. He was angry at himself because he had to admit his operation was only half successful. He had managed to create a circumstance that led to the escape of the Prime Minister from the chaos but it had still taken place and the damage and despair was readily apparent. It was a setback to the peace process and Danny knew that would make certain parties in Dublin immersed in anger and frustration. He was glad that he wasn't in Belfast after Brighton because the hounds would be out in full force looking to find suitable targets for their attention.

The representative of the hotel conglomerate droned on and Danny did his best to shut him out looking around at the working class crowd but finding no signs of watchers or anything other than simple curiosity about two gents sitting and not drinking a single drop. He signaled to the waitress and rectified that error immediately hoping to sip his way to anonymity in a hurry.

The older man took the carryall and made his way out the front door with a lighter step when he came into the smoke-filled interior.

Danny went back to the bathroom in the rear and decided to leave by the back way as that was his modus operandi in similar situations. He turned away from the alley and was happy to see that the streets were already partially shrouded in the usual fog that crept in at this time almost every night.

His plan was to rest up in the city and just to keep a low profile for several months before attempting to exit across the channel to an undecided location outside the city of Paris. He knew from experience that there would be a variety of private residences fully furnished and up for rent at inflated prices for his anonymous use providing he made the proper contribution to the local gendarmerie in small bills inside a plain white envelope.