Patriot games - Tom Clancy [40]
"And so's Ashley."
"He's a little on the snotty side, but he's damned smart. He's 'Five.' "
"What?" Ryan didn't know that one.
"He's in MI-5, the Security Service. We just call it Five. Has a nice insider feel that way." Murray chuckled.
"I figured him for something like that. The other two started as street cops. It shows."
"It struck a few people as slightly curious- the guy who wrote Agents and Agencies gets stuck in the middle of a terrorist op. That's why Ashley showed up." Murray shook his head. "You wouldn't believe all the coincidences you run into in my business. Like you and me."
"I know you come from New England -oh, don't tell me. Boston College?"
"Hey, I always wanted to be an FBI agent. It was either BC or Holy Cross, right?" Murray grinned. That in-house FBI joke went back two generations, and was not without a few grains of truth. Ryan leaned back and sucked the shake up the straw. It tasted wonderful.
"How much do we know about these ULA guys?" Jack asked. "I never saw very much at Langley."
"Not a hell of a lot. The boss-man's a chap named Kevin O'Donnell. He used to be in the PIRA. He started throwing rocks in the streets and supposedly worked his way up to head counterintelligence man. The Provos are pretty good at that. Have to be. The Brits are always working to infiltrate the Organization. The word is that he got a little carried away cleansing the ranks, and barely managed to skip out before they gave him Excedrin Headache number three-five-seven. Just plain disappeared and hasn't been spotted since. A few sketchy reports, like maybe he spent some time in Libya, like maybe he's back in Ulster with a new face, like maybe he has a lot of money-want to guess where from?-to throw around. All we know for sure is that he's one malignant son of a bitch.
"His organization?" Murray set the milkshake down. "It's gotta be small, probably less than thirty. We think he had part of the breakout from Long Kesh last summer. Eleven hard-core Provos got out. The RUC bagged one of 'em two days later and he said that six of the eleven went south, probably to Kevin's outfit. He was a little pissed by that. They were supposed to come back to the PIRA fold, but somebody convinced them to try something different. Some very bad boys-they had a total of fifteen murders among them. The one you killed is the only one to show up since."
"Are they that good?" Ryan asked.
"Hey, the PIRA are the best terrorists in the world, unless you count those bastards in Lebanon, and those are mostly family groups. Hell of a way to describe them, isn't it? But they are the best. Well organized, well trained, and they believe, if you know what I mean. They really care about what they're doing. The level of commitment these characters have to the Cause is something you have to see to believe."
"You've been in on it?"
"Some. I've been able to sit in on interrogations-the other side of the two-way mirror, I mean. One of these guys wouldn't talk-wouldn't even give 'em his name!-for a week. Just sat there like a sphinx. Hey, I've chased after bank robbers, kidnappers, mob guys, spies, you name it. These fellows are real pros-and that's the PIRA, maybe five hundred real members, not even as big as a New York Mafia family, and the RUC-that's the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the local cops-is lucky to convict a handful in a year. They have a law of omerta up there that would impress the old-time Sicilians. But at least the cops have a handle on who the bastards are. The ULA-we got a couple of names, a few pictures, and that's it. It's almost like the Islamic Jihad bums. You only know them from what they do."
"What do they do?" Ryan asked.
"They seem to specialize in high-risk, high-profile operations. It took over a year to confirm that they exist at all; we thought they were a special-action group of the PIRA. They're an anomaly within the terrorist community. They don't make press releases, they don't take public credit for what they do. They go for the big-time stuff and they cover their tracks like you wouldn't believe.