Then he would retire. The years of running strange cargoes of men and crates into West Africa, the bizarre orders now coming to him from his new Luxembourg-based owners—all would be a thing of the past. He would retire at fifty with his savings enough for him and his Greek wife, Maria, to open their little restaurant in the Greek islands and live out their days in peace.
Johnson looked dubious. “We can’t stop,” he said.
“We have to.”
The light was getting better. They saw a figure, scorched and blackened, emerge from the wheelhouse of the fishing vessel, stagger to the forward deck, make a pain-wracked attempt to wave, then fall forward onto his face.
Another IRA officer came up behind Holst. He felt the muzzle of a gun in his ribs.
“Sail on by,” said a flat voice.
Holst did not ignore the gun, but he looked at Johnson. “If we do, and they are rescued by another ship, as they will be sooner or later, they will report us. We will be stopped and asked why we did that.”
Johnson nodded.
“Then ram them,” said the one with the gun. “We don’t stop.”
“We can give first aid and call up the Dutch coast guard,” said Holst. “No one comes aboard. When the Dutch cutter appears, we continue. They will wave their thanks and think no more of it. It will cost us thirty minutes.”
Johnson was persuaded. He nodded. “Put up your gun,” he said.
Holst moved his speed control to “full astern,” and the Regina slowed rapidly. Giving an order in Greek to his helmsman, he left the bridge and went down to the waist before moving up to the foredeck. He looked down at the approaching fishing vessel, then waved a hand to the helmsman. The engines went to “midships,” and the momentum of the Regina carried her slowly up to the stricken fisherman.
“Ahoy, Fair Maid!” called Holst, peering down as the fishing boat came under the bow. They saw the fallen man on the foredeck try to stir, then faint again. The Fair Maid bobbed along the side of the larger Regina until she came to the Regina’s waist, where the deck rail was lower. Holst walked down his ship and shouted an order in Greek for one of his crew to throw a line aboard the Fair Maid.
There was no need. As the fisherman slid past the waist of the Regina, the man on the foredeck came to, jumped up with remarkable agility for one so badly burned, seized a grappling hook beside him, and hurled it over the rail of the Regina, securing it fast to a cleat on the Fair Maid’s bow. A second man ran out of the fishing boat’s cabin and did the same at the stern. The Fair Maid stopped drifting.
Four more men ran from the cabin, vaulted to the roof, and jumped straight over the rail of the Regina. It happened so fast and with such coordination that Captain Holst had only time to shout, “Was zum Teufel ist denn das?”
The men were all dressed alike: black one-piece overalls, cleated rubber boots, and black woolen caps. Their faces were blackened, too, but not by soot. A very hard hand took Captain Holst in the solar plexus, and he went down on his knees. He would later say that he had never seen the men of the SBS, the Special Boat Squadron, the seaborne equivalent of the Special Air Service, in action before, and he never wished to again.
By now, there were four Cypriot crewmen on the main deck. One of the men in black shouted a single order to them, in Greek, and they obeyed. They went flat onto the deck, face down, and stayed there. Not so the four IRA members, who came pouring out of the side door of the superstructure. They all had handguns.
Two had the sense to see quickly that a handgun is a poor bargain when faced with a Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine carbine. They threw their hands up and tossed their pistols to the deck. Two tried to use their guns. One was lucky: He took the brief burst in the legs and survived to spend his life in a wheelchair. The fourth was not so lucky and collected four bullets in the chest.
There were now six black-clad men swarming over the deck area of the Regina. The third to come aboard had been Tom Rowse. He ran for the companionway that led upward to the bridge. As he reached the wing, Stephen Johnson emerged from the interior. Seeing Rowse, he threw his hands in the air.
“Don’t shoot, Sass-man. It’s over!” he shouted.
Rowse stood aside and jerked the barrel of his machine pistol toward the staircase.
“Down,” he said.
The old IRA man began to descend to the main deck. There was a movement behind Rowse, someone in the door of the wheelhouse. He sensed the movement, half turned, and caught the crash of the handgun. The bullet plucked at the shoulder of his cloth overall. There was no time to pause or shout. He fired as they had taught him, the quick double-burst, then another, loosing two pairs of nine-millimeter slugs in less than half a second.
He had an image of the figure in the doorway that had taken four bullets in the chest, being thrown back into the doorjamb, cannoning forward again—the wild swing of the corn-blond hair. Then she had been on the steel deck, quite dead, a thin trickle of blood seeping from the mouth he had kissed.
“Well, well,” said a voice at his elbow. “Monica Browne. With an ‘e.’ ”
Rowse turned. “You bastard,” he said slowly. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“Not knew. Suspected,” McCready said gently. In civilian clothes, he had come at a more sedate pace out of the fishing vessel when the shooting was over.
“We had to check her out, you see, Tom, after she made contact with you. She is—was—indeed Monica Browne, but Dublin-born and bred. Her first marriage, at twenty, took her to Kentucky for eight years. After the divorce, she married Major Eric Browne, much older but rich. Through his alcoholic haze, he no doubt had not a whit of suspicion of his young wife’s fanatical devotion to the IRA. And yes, she did run a stud farm, but not at Ashford, Kent, England. It was at Ashford, County Wicklow, Ireland.”
The team spent two hours tidying up. Captain Holst proved keen to cooperate. He admitted there had been an open-sea transfer of crates, to a fishing boat off Finisterre. He gave the name, and McCready passed it to London for the Spanish authorities. With speed, they would intercept the arms for the ETA
while still on board the trawler—a way for the SIS to say thank you for the Spanish help over the Gibraltar affair.