Chapter 4

BRIGHTON - 1984

In a way the incident at Brighton should never have gotten off the drawing board because it came at the wrong time and in the wrong place for long range benefit of the future generations of the residents of the Free Irish State.

Just because the sheer arrogance of the much maligned female PM had so affronted the lads in Dublin to the point that they were drinking unusually long and with reduced satisfaction was no excuse for the ill-timed bombing project.

Danny was called in at the last moment to see if he could set things straight as an "interested party" from the outside. He was steadfastly reluctant to get involved because it was not good for business from his point of view and he was able to foretell the consequences of the approved action regardless of success or failure. It was not all that unlike the way the warlords of Southeast Asia schemed to bring their plots to fruition often with undesired and decidedly counter-productive results.

The Irish patriot who organized the Hotel Bombing in Brighton was not a stranger to the UK authorities. Patrick was an odd chap and his fatal flaw was his utter fixation on the task at hand. That is why it was so difficult to reverse the course of the action once it had actually started.

In fact, Patrick was on their charts of "persons of interest" long before the bombing took place. Looking back on it in retrospect, it was accorded that the planning must have been going on for more than a year and half and the Irish Republicans were fortunate to have everything fall into place more by chance than by brilliant planning.

By the time Danny got involved in the operation it was already too late to stop it from unfolding without eliminating the patriots involved.

In a way, the fact that the stated purpose of removing the "Iron Maiden" from the playing field was ultimately a failure was the only good thing that resulted from the entire affair. Danny had worked hard behind the scenes to insure that result even though he was unable to call a halt to the entire operation.

The logistics of the hotel were such that Danny was at a loss to understand why the main conspirator did not use a better located charge and why he didn't use the more sophisticated Eastern European explosives readily available instead of the standard tightly packed materials that required a concerted effort to position and to direct correctly to increase the chances of a successful result. The outcome was impressive but the result was lacking due more to the subtle changes that Danny influenced with nobody the wiser. The supplies of the explosives from the crumbling Soviet Empire as well as numerous firearms now gone surplus in Moscow was a boon to the "boys" in the Republic.

The two high ranking Republican planners who were aware of Danny's involvement were already gone onto their reward by 1995 at the time of his return to Belfast. The main one was eliminated in a suspicious accident and the other just disappeared without a trace of him ever being found. Danny left the country a second time in 1984 for his long sojourn away from the dangerous game that grew bloodier with every twist and turn. He most regretted the unavoidable casualties that resulted in the explosion but it was a situation in which the element of luck or the lack of luck played an important role and it was so fickle in its nature that even he could not change that influence to alter the result.

Danny's father was sent to prison on some conjured-up pretext because his son was merely rumored to have played some shadowy role in the debacle and his mother passed away from the stressful insecurity of her position as an enemy of the State before he came to his end in prison.

When Danny first got off the train at Brighton he was stuck with the constant sprinkles of rain that seemed to come up off the water with random regularity that made most pedestrians totally ignore it knowing it wouldn't last very long. It was a bit cooler than he had anticipated and he was glad he had packed the old military sweater jacket inside his valise and was tempted to stop right there in the street and pull it out. He restrained the impulse because he certainly did not want to draw any attention considered the fact there were numerous police and military forces scattered in every direction.

It was generally common knowledge that the PM would be in the city that day for the Party Conference and that she would be staying at the famous seaside hotel for the duration of the meeting.

Danny was not staying at the Hotel.

He had selected an out of the way Bed and Breakfast that had a good view of the Sea and was surprisingly inexpensive at that time of year. Danny had carefully packed his detonators in the thermos that he constantly held cradled in his arm like it was a baby being protected from the elements. He hoped there would be no need for them but on such assignments he generally traveled with plenty of spares in case of difficulties.

The message waiting for him at the Bed and Breakfast was a pretty postcard with an encrypted order to "stand down" immediately. He knew the stand down was not for him to stop his actions but to stop the others from completing their mission the very next day.

The landlady was a bit of a mess all lathered up from her housekeeping duties and starting to look at the bottle on the cabinet and the clock on the wall in that unmistakable way that all lovers of daily liquid refreshment exuded like uncontainable clockwork.

Still, she had a glow of health on her cheeks and he had been told several times by her directly that she was a "widow" and that her dear departed Mickey was dearly missed. He already knew that her beloved spouse was a "weak link" Republican from Derry who had the unfortunate bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fortunately, they had not had any offspring because that would certainly have added to her misfortune but she kept reasonably fit from the laborious work of maintaining the establishment and tending the transient clients that floated in and out of her doors.

The poor lady whose name was Coleen gave Danny more than one hint that he would be welcome to give her a good "back-rub" to get out the kinks. He was amused more than anything else by her because she seemed a good-hearted person and not the type to get involved in any devious dirty work. Of course, she had no idea who he really was and why he was really in Brighton but that was for her own good and not his.

His main operative was a supposed illegal immigrant working at the Hotel as a maid. She actually was the wife of an imprisoned politician from Dublin who had come to Ireland from Poland as his mail order bride. She was stunning in appearance with a jutting chin and soft blond hair that fell to her shoulders. Her English was heavily accented with her Polish dialect but Danny knew she was even a pretender in that regard as well because she was hiding her Jewish roots like so many others from that region. He had considered taking her physically because she was ripe and ready and her eyes gave him the green signal that he had come to recognize at an early age. It was his strict code of conduct that precluded any such unwise actions whilst on an ongoing operation.