Dancing With Mortality Read Online Free PDF Page B

Hanson’s mob
was trigger happy then our escapee will no doubt relay that to his superiors. I
would expect some retaliatory action as a result. Of course we don’t know who
your horseman was, but we’ll put the Garda on high alert for known IRA men in
Dublin. Not that it will help much, there are plenty of them around. However
you cut it, we’ve inflicted a serious blow. And we’ve pissed off certain people
more than we needed to. It was one thing to arrest them, another to cold-bloodedly
massacre them. Yes, we’ll need to keep our wits about us for a bit.’ He closed
the file, and gently thumped the desk.
    Harry felt a tinge of unease. ‘I thought nobody knew about
SIS in Dublin.’
    Litchfield smiled, his glum mood seeming to dissipate. The
charmer returns, thought Harry. He looked Harry full in the face.
    ‘Nobody does, Harry. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?’
     
    Harry spent the next two hours
translating a statement of IRA political aims and methods, supposedly for new
recruits. Some of whom would no doubt need to improve their Irish before
reading it, he thought. The language had been in decline since English rule in
the 17th century, but it was enjoying a revival in Republican circles.
    ‘Surely there must be an English version of this in
circulation,’ he muttered to no one in particular.
    ‘Yes, there is,’ replied Hudson. ‘When you’ve finished your
translation we’ll compare them and see if there was anything deliberately left
out of the English version. Sometimes you glean some small difference in
expression, and that can lead to an insight you might otherwise miss.’
    Harry grunted and continued writing. He hadn’t expressed his
displeasure to Litchfield on the subject of early morning phone calls. He was
disturbed that the man hadn’t stopped to think what conclusions Natalie might draw,
given the fact Litchfield knew that she thought Harry was running a harmless
errand. It didn’t give him a lot of confidence in the security of the
operation, and that added to his worry. He checked his watch, almost 7pm. He
needed to speak to his wife, though just right now he had no idea what he was
going to tell her.
    ‘I’ll finish this tomorrow Jack.’ He placed the papers
carefully into a manilla folder and carried it over to Hudson’s desk. Bidding
both men a good evening, he donned his overcoat and set off for home.
     
    She was in the kitchen when he
arrived, slicing onions.
    ‘Still mad at me?’
    She looked at him calmly but coolly. ‘Yes, I am.’ She
followed his gaze to the knife she was holding, and smiled. ‘Not that mad.’ She
put the knife on the worktop and proceeded to rinse her hands. ‘Tell me what’s
going on, Harry.’ She put one of her wet hands to his cheek. ‘I’m sorry about
that.’
    He took her hand and they moved to the living room sofa.
    ‘I wasn’t collecting documents, I got drawn into operational
stuff. The shooting you heard about on the radio – I was nearby.’
    ‘So much for translation work then.’
    Natalie placed her hands in her lap and gazed steadily at
them, saying nothing more. After a long minute of silence, Harry decided to
come clean. He gave her the edited version of his evening at the beach,
sticking to his role as translator and observer. He left out his sighting of
the escaping horseman, and his initial meeting with Hanson.
    ‘I wasn’t needed in the end, so I left. Simple really.’
    ‘You weren’t needed because there was no one left to
interview. That’s not simple, that just scares me. You can’t get involved in
that kind of thing. I want you to stop working for them.’ Her face wore a
determined look.
    ‘We need the money, Nat. My scholarship grant is minimal,
savings are running low, and if you didn’t work we certainly wouldn’t last
long.’
    ‘We could if we had to.’
    She wasn’t going to change her mind. He sighed. ‘Ok. If I
can’t agree that my duties are limited to just translating documents, then