Read In the Morning I'll Be Gone for Free Online Page A

from the top.”
    “The Chief Constable?”
    “From Thatcher.”
    “From Mrs. Thatcher?” Tom asked, amazed at my chutzpah.
    “Well, not from fucking Denis.”
    “You must be out of your mind, chum!” Tom exclaimed, his eyes bulging in his head.
    “That’s what I want. Take it or fucking leave it.”
    “You know we could make things very unpleasant for you,” Tom said.
    I got to my feet and got close to him. Practically nose to nose. “No, mate, you don’t want to be starting in with the threats, that’s the wrong tack completely,” I said.
    Kate cleared her throat, stood, and brushed imaginary crumbs from her blouse.
    “I assume a letter of regret signed by the prime minister would be sufficient?” she asked in a business-like voice.
    “Maybe,” I said.
    “Well, we’ll have to see what we can do, then, won’t we?” she said.
    She waved Tom to his feet.
    I saw them to the front door. “We’ll be in touch,” Kate said.
    “You better make it soon, love, I hear Valencia is lovely this time of year.”
    “Actually, it’s surprisingly inclement,” she said, and walked briskly down the garden path.

Ireland in shades of black and green under the gibbous moon. Ireland under the canopy of grey cloud, under the crow’s wing, under the crow’s wing and the helicopter blade. A night ride over the Lagan valley and the bandit country of South Armagh. The music in my head was Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which opens with a hesitant syncopated motif evocative of Mahler’s irregular heartbeat . . .
    I’d never liked helicopters: hills looming out of the fog/engine failures/surface-to-air missiles—especially the latter. RAF choppers in Ulster flew with magnesium-flare countermeasures streaming constantly from the back of the aircraft, but for bureaucratic reasons the army had not yet adopted this sensible precaution. Fortunately the flight from Belfast was short and I could soon see our destination.
    Bessbrook Army Barracks had grown up around a converted mill built by Quakers in the nineteenth century. It was now the regional headquarters of the British Army in Armagh and the busiest heliport in Europe. Hundreds of soldiers were ferried from here all over the border region and it was here that many of the intelligence agencies and the military police had their command centers.
    Within the coils of razor wire and blast-proof perimeter walls there were squaddies of every stripe: infantrymen, chopper pilots, SAS, engineers, signals, Royal Marines, you name it. Bessbrook was a bundling of all the British Army’s best assets in one basket. It was surrounded on all sides by unfriendlies, and if the IRA ever got its shit together for a big push Bessbrook would make a nice little Dien Bien Phu.
    We dropped to five hundred feet. Everywhere arc lights, spotlights, red flares. The town of Newry just two klicks to the left; the border to the Irish Republic only a stone’s throw to the right in a patch of forbidding darkness.
    “Brace yourself! We do a hard landing. You get out, we take off,” the gunner explained.
    “What do you mean by hard landing?” I asked, but by this stage we were in a rapid descent. The Wessex touched down on a huge white H.
    “This is you! Get out!” the gunner yelled.
    I nodded, undid my harness, and took off my headphones. I ran out of the chopper and as soon I was safely out of the way the Wessex took off again.
    A young military policeman with a clipboard walked toward me.
    “Inspector Duffy?”
    Inspector?
    “I’m Duffy.”
    “This way.”
    We went through a metal blast door and I followed him deep into the concrete labyrinth. We had gone two levels down and through several different security zones when we reached the lowest level of all: a dank, grim sub-basement.
    “It’s like Hitler’s last days down here.”
    The MP had clearly heard that one before but he smiled anyway.
    I was taken to an interview room and left with a jug of water, a chair, an ashtray, and the Daily