Chapter 18

(MOLLY'S STORY – LONDON 2001)

Now that she was a married woman with a husband that tended to her needs like a proper man is required to do with constant regularity, Molly was fearful of accepting the position in London not certain about her husband Danny's reaction to being uprooted from Belfast. She wondered how he would adjust to living in the midst of the English in the center of the UK and so close to the Whitehall. It was a subject that he never commented on verbally and she was loath to bring politics into their relationship. She could see his distaste cleverly hidden from view but strong enough to leak through his veneer of disregard for such matters.

London in 2001 was a city slowly phasing out the "troubles" as being too passé and with a whole of budding interest in the heating conflict with the Islamic Terrorist world descending on them like a freight train out of control with no engineer in the locomotive. In fact, everything that crossed her desk in those days was related to happenings in the Middle East and seldom did anyone ever refer to the situation in Northern Ireland.

Danny seemed a bit preoccupied with the changing scenario of the highlights in the world but he appeared to accept the fact that the "troubles" were finally removed from the front page of every newspaper and that the television was more focused on the Mosque attending radicals than on sectarian violence with "kneecapping" in Belfast.

The arrangements for the negotiations for a lasting peace were marred to some extent by small factions of the IRA seeking justice for the internments. In some cases their actions developed as sweet revenge against the informers that were a constant annoyance to the resistance still hiding safe inside the flock of ordinary civilians just trying to live their lives as best they could under the circumstances. It was not a situation that could just go on ad infinitum like some thousand year struggle with no sure result. Eventually, the signs of loss of support for the IRA position started to cause rumbles in the south and the Catholics in the north saw the handwriting on the wall as the "walls of silence" slowly crumbled and it was every man or woman for themselves.

Danny knew he was well out of everything and had no intention of sacrificing himself in some misguided sense of duty or pig-headed refusal to accept the inevitable.

Molly saw the visible change in his attitude and knew he was adapting to the new circumstances of the conflict. The negotiation became his focus and he often gave her little clues on the best approach to solve a particular issue in the drive for peace. It was becoming less and less of a crisis mode in Northern Ireland with each passing day as the threat of Islamic terrorism grew stronger not only in the UK but in most of the Western Industrialized countries around the world.

Her boss had already practically shut down the "Irish" desk at the office and now they were all centered on monitoring the Mosques and the communications from the Islamic countries to their former citizens now living in the UK. It was a game of "Hide and Seek" very similar to the times of the "Troubles" and the need to root out the IRA from the civilian infrastructure without too much collateral damage.

Just like everything else in government, the system ran on the focus of the budget allowances and as the money to fight the downsides of the "Troubles" began to dry up and started to shift to the war against the Jihadists, those interested in a career in the agency quickly turned their eye to the hotbeds of anti-government activities. These bombers were more often than not in a suicidal frame of mind unlike the IRA that prided itself on getting in and out without being discovered. No longer came the warnings to help keep down the casualties. In fact, the devices were designed to cause the utmost casualties to innocent civilians to create the sense of rising chaos in the minds of ordinary citizens.

It was the Americans that attempted to re-activate Danny to help them in their fight against the Jihadist enemy. He had many contacts with them and did his best to act covertly without actually seeming to be involved in any way. Molly had given up keeping tabs on him because she felt reasonably certain he was not going back to his old ways with the movement for total Irish independence. Strangely, he had a "handler" in a similar department to Molly's in the same building that she worked in but since she had no "need to know" no mention was made of it in an official manner.

The summer of the following year of 2002 was a watershed year for anti-Islamic activity in covert circles in the UK but it was not gist for the media mills to circulate to the general public. The law in the U.S. was changing rapidly against individual freedoms in favor of stringent vetting of all foreign threats already inside their borders and visiting on a continuous basis only under more observation than ever before. Danny made several trips to his briefing sessions in New York City and eventually established both a covert operation inside the seamy side of London and a public business related to security that allowed him to hire and train agents for his needs.

He made a trip to Belfast later that year to check out some of the benign security business and met up with some of his former comrades from the time of the "Troubles". He was thinking that they all seemed to have aged quite a bit until he made a visit to the men's room and took a good look in the mirror realizing that the brush of age had left its mark on him as well.