an extract
from
K.M.O.
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Fifty
years from now, when the people involved have died and
the government of the day will no longer be embarrassed
by "difficult" questions in the house, the
details of this sordid affair may be released to the
public records office. But maybe not.
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Fuck it
was hot in there, squeezed into that small space between
the false floor built into the top of the van and the
metal roof. Sweltering. Stinking. I was soaked in sweat.
A sweat brought on by the intense, stifling heat, and the
tension. It was always like that on an op like this.
Five, six, seven hours a day, suffocating, on edge.
Bloodshot eyes strained from spying through the tiny
grill that was my only window between the dark interior
of the false compartment in the van, and the bright
sunlight outside.
The grill was just about big enough to allow me to focus
the motor wind 35mil single lens reflex camera, and snap
off a couple of shots through the 50mm lens. A pain in my
neck and shoulders from having to lie on my stomach and
hold my head in the same position to peep through the
grill hour after hour. A pain in my head from the lack of
oxygen and having to concentrate on what each God fearing
law abiding decent honest citizen was up to. While Mary,
our female operative, collected the bags of dirty laundry
and chatted with the housewives on the Ballymurphy or
Divis or whichever run down housing estate we were in at
the time, I was scanning the streets for the small tell-tale
signs that something was out of place.
The only chance to close my eyes for a moment, or to
shift around in the restricted space and relieve the
cramping in my otherwise immobile muscles was when Ken,
our driver, drove us from one estate to another. A
journey of perhaps three to five minutes at most. This
was also the only time I could piss, which was done into
the plastic bottle that would be emptied back at base.
Pissing into a plastic bottle while lying on my side in a
concealed coffin sized space in a moving vehicle was just
one of the useful skills I`d taught myself during the
first month of this operation. Shitting would just have
to wait seeing as how it was pretty much impossible to do
that in the same position. We usually did that into
plastic bags when we were in an OP (concealed observation
post). In the countryside, an OP might be in a bramble
patch or a hedge. In an urban area we might use a
derelict building. In any event, an OP was always well
hidden, and everything that might give a clue that we'd
even been there, would have to be collected, bagged up,
and taken back to base when we left the site. And I mean
everything, including bottles of piss, excrement and used
bog roll in plastic bags, food wrappers and even ciggie
butts (when we were allowed to smoke, which wasn't always)
But at least in those OPs you could crap in relative
comfort. Here it was impossible. So no matter how much I
was suffering from the after effects of what they
laughingly called food back at the cookhouse in
Bessbrook, I just had to wait. Besides which, you
couldn't disguise the smell. OK the smell wouldn't be out
of place in a van filled with other peoples dirty
laundry, and therefore wouldn't arouse suspicion, but I
had no desire to add to my discomfort in that already
stinking claustrophobic sweat box.
Hello hello, what's that doing there? Light blue 1970
Cortina with a scratch down the drivers side.
Focus. Click, click. Always two shots. Just to be on the
safe side. The famous “double tap” applied to
photographing suspect vehicles as well as shooting their
owners.
Back at base the dirty laundry would be tested by our
forensic teams. They were mainly looking for traces of
explosives, cordite or gun oil. All of which might link
those who had been wearing the clothes to terrorist
activity, or to the recent batch armed robberies which,
according to RUC intelligence, were a lucrative source of
IRA finances. They also tested for blood and sperm
residues which were used for identification purposes,
and, as rumour had it, the occasional fit up. After
washing and ironing, the items would be returned, neatly
folded and wrapped, to the housewives who had no idea
that their intimate family secrets had been betrayed by
their dirty washing.
It was a clever plan, the Three Circles Laundry scam.
None of the housewives suspected for a moment that Mary,
the friendly and chatty girl who collected and returned
their laundry once a week, was in reality, a member of a
covert British intelligence team. Her real job was to
engage them in conversation on the off chance that they
might make some incriminating slip. And no one even
remotely guessed that hidden away in a secret compartment
inside the van, was a man whose job it was to photograph
their houses and cars, their husbands and kids, and even
their dogs. Their dogs?
Of course their dogs. Where it might be unsafe for its
owner to make a connection, a dog carrying a secret
message hidden in its collar could be trained to walk
down a certain street at a certain time. No one takes any
notice of a dog trotting around a housing estate on its
own, especially at night. It`s just a dog, doing what
dogs do. And what's so unusual if someone bends down and
gives it a tickle behind the ears? Nothing usually, but
you had to watch carefully to catch the slight of hand
movement that unclipped the tiny container from its
collar, the one that under normal circumstances held the
dogs name and address. But these weren't normal
circumstances. It was war. And all’s fair.
We used dogs too. Our sniffer dogs would give the laundry
a good going over before it went to forensics, sometimes
they would pin point a very suss bag full and the lab
boys would zero in on it. It saved time. And when you
have to process tons of dirty laundry looking for damning
evidence before it gets to be processed as actual
laundry, time is imperative. The Three Circles Laundry
was a bona fide business and it had to operate as such.
If we took too long to get customers stuff back to them
they might go elsewhere. Mind you we were competitive,
offering special deals to regular customers. Especially
those whose laundry showed up positive. We definitely
couldn't afford to loose those customers.
And the kids. Why photograph their kids? Well, their
particular function was to act as early warning lookouts
in case of a raid, or more generally to spread the news
of a routine four man army patrol (or “Brick”)
coming into their particular Republican patch. This
activity was known as Dickering, the youths who carried
it out therefore being called Dickers. They also
routinely hung around near police and army compounds
taking down the registration numbers of cars going in and
out, thus providing the enemy with a comprehensive list
of cars used by security service personnel - which could
then be ambushed. And invariably it was those little
Dicker bastards who were the ones throwing rocks at our
Green army lads on the streets, and during demonstrations
even Molotovs. We always took snaps of people on demos,
even if the snatch squads couldn't catch and arrest them,
especially the kids. They were mostly kids anyway. So by
comparing snaps taken on demos and the ones I took we
could work out were the little sods lived. It gave us a
clue about which families were active Republicans as
opposed to just sympathisers.
The photos I took of car registrations were matched
against information held in the central computer vehicle
data base known as “VENGEFUL” to check whether
they were bona fide, or if the cars were stolen or had
false plates. If we didn't already know who the owners
were and where they lived, the registered details would
be checked to see if the cars were parked outside their
owners houses or if not, who the owner was visiting. It
all helped to build up a picture of who was going where,
at what time, and which route they took. This was useful
if the RUC needed to set up a VCP (Vehicle Check Point)
on a suspects normal route, so they could search the
vehicle and occupants, or merely detain them for a bit.
Which was handy if, for instance, intelligence operatives
needed a bit more time to complete a Technical Attack on
the suspects house. Or in English - plant a bug. Sneaky I
know, but as I said, this was war.
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