Rough Justice Read Online Free PDF

snatch squad came in within the hour and took them away.”
    “They weren’t in uniform?”
    “Unit Sixteen didn’t operate in uniform.”
    “And you don’t know what happened?”
    “Four Provos shot dead on River Street is what happened. It hit the news the following day. The IRA said it was an SAS atrocity.”
    “Well, they would.” Roper nodded. “And when did you see him again?”
    “Years later on television when he became an MP and was working for Northern Ireland Office.”
    “It gets worse.” Roper nodded. “So, a bacon-and-egg sandwich and a pot of tea, and bring me another bottle of scotch. Be prepared to hang around. I may need your expertise on this one.”
     
 
HARRY MILLER had been born in Stokely in Kent in the country house in which the family had lived since the eighteenth century. His father, George, had served in the Grenadier Guards in the Second World War, there was family money, and after the war he became a barrister and eventually Member of Parliament for Stokely and the general area. Harry was born in 1962, his sister Monica five years later, and tragically her mother had died giving birth to her.
    George Miller’s sister Mary, a widow, moved in to hold the fort, as it were. It worked well enough, particularly as the two children went to boarding school at an early age, Winchester for Harry and Sedgefield for Monica, who was only fourteen when he went to Sandhurst. She was a scholar by nature, which eventually took her to New Hall College at Cambridge to study archaeology, and when Roper checked on her, he found she was still there, a lecturer and a Fellow of the College, married to a professor, Sir John Starling, who had died of cancer the previous year.
    According to the screen, Miller’s career with the Intelligence Corps had been a non-event, and yet the Prime Minister had made him an under secretary of state at the Northern Ireland Office, which obviously meant that the PM was aware of Miller’s past and was making use of his expertise.
    Roper was starting to go to town on Unit 16 and Operation Titan, when Doyle came in with a tray.
    “Smells good,” Roper said. “Draw up a chair, Tony, pour me a nice cup of tea, and I’ll show you what genius can do to a computer.”
     
 
HIS FIRST PROBINGS produced a perfect hearts-and-minds operation out of Intelligence Headquarters in London, in which Miller was heavily involved, full of visits to committees, appeals to common sense, and an effort to provide the things that it seemed the nationalists wanted. It was a civilized discussion, providing the possibility of seeing each other’s points of view, and physical force didn’t figure into the agenda.
    Miller met and discussed with Sinn Fein and the Provos, everything sweetly reasonable. Then came a Remembrance Day, with assembled Army veterans and their families, and a bomb that killed fourteen people and injured many more. A few days later, a hit squad ambushed a local authority van carrying ten Protestant laborers who were there to do a road repair. They were lined up on the edge of a ditch and machine-gunned.
    Finally, a roadside bomb destined for two Land Rover army patrols was late, and the vehicle that came along was a bus carrying schoolgirls.
    It was that which had changed Miller’s views drastically. Summary justice was the only way to deal with such people, and his superiors accepted his plans. No more hearts and minds, only Operation Titan and disposal by Unit 16, the bullet leading to a crematorium. All very efficient, a corpse turned into six pounds of gray ash within a couple of hours. It was the ultimate answer to any terrorist problem, and Roper was fascinated to see that many hard men in the Protestant UVF had also suffered the same fate when necessary.
    He found the names of members of Unit 16 and the details of some who had fallen by the wayside. Miller had been tagged as a systems analyst and later as a personnel recruiter at Army Intelligence Headquarters in