‘See what that is, Harry.’
Fox lifted the receiver. ‘Fox here.’ He listened for a moment then turned, face grave and held out the phone. ‘Ulster, sir. Army headquarters Lisburn and it isn’t good!’
It had started that morning just before seven o’clock outside the village of Kilgannon some ten miles from Londonderry. Patrick Leary had delivered the post in the area for fifteen years now and his Royal Mail van was a familiar sight.
His routine was always the same. He reported for work at headquarters in Londonderry at five-thirty promptly, picked up the mail for the first delivery of the day, already sorted by the night staff, filled up his petrol tank at the transport pumps then set off for Kilgannon. And always at half past six he would pull intcdfittrack in the trees beside Kilgannon Bridge to read the moSHgipaper, eat his breakfast sandwiches and have a cup”Si dprfee from his thermos flask. It was a routine which, unfortunately for Leary, had not gone unnoticed.
Cuchulain watched him for ten minutes, waiting patiently for Leary to finish his sandwiches. Then the man got out, as he always did, and walked a little way into the wood. There was a slight sound behind him of a twig cracking under a foot. As he turned in alarm, Cuchulain slipped out of the trees.
He presented a formidable figure and Leary was immediately terrified. Cuchulain wore a dark anorak and a blackbalaclava helmet which left only his eyes, nose and mouth exposed. He carried a PPK semi-automatic pistol in his left hand with a Carswell silencer screwed to the end of the barrel.
‘Do as you’re told and you’ll live,’ Cuchulain said. His voice was soft with a Southern Irish accent.
‘Anything,’ Leary croaked. ‘I’ve got a family – please.’
‘Take off your cap and the raincoat and lay them down.’
Leary did as he was told and Cuchulain held out his right hand so that Leary saw the large white capsule nestling in the centre of the glove. ‘Now, swallow that like a good boy.’
‘Would you poison me?’ Leary was sweating now.
‘You’ll be out for approximately four hours, that’s all,’ Cuchulain reassured him. ‘Better that way.’ He raised the gun. ‘Better than this.’
Leary took the capsule, hand shaking, and swallowed it down. His legs seemed to turn to rubber, there was an air of unreality to everything, then a hand was on his shoulder pushing him down. The grass was cool against his face, then there was only the darkness.
Dr Hans Wolfgang Baum was a remarkable man. Born in Berlin in 1950, the son of a prominent industrialist, on his father’s death in 1970 he had inherited a fortune equivalent to ten million dollars and wide business interests. Many people in his position would have been content to live a life of pleasure, which Baum did, with the important distinction that he derived his pleasure from work. jflL
He had a doctorate in engineering sciengRrom the University of Berlin, a law degree from the London School of Economics, and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard. And he had put them all to good use, expanding and developing his various factories in West Germany, France and the United States, so that his personal fortune was now estimated to be in excess of one hundred million dollars.
And yet the project closest to his heart was the development of the plant to manufacture tractors and general agricultural machinery outside Londonderry near Kilgannon. Baum Industries could have gone elsewhere, indeed the members of the board of management had wanted to. Unfortunately for them and the demands of sound business sense, Baum was a truly good man, a rare commodity in this world, and a committed Christian. A member of the German Lutheran Church, he had done everything possible to make the factory a genuine partnership between Catholic and Protestant. He
and his wife were totally committed to the local community, his three children attended local schools.
It was an open secret that he had met the Provisional IRA, some said the legendary Martin McGuiness himself. Whether true or not, the PIRA had left the Kilgannon factory alone to prosper, as it had done, and to provide work for more than a thousand Protestants and Catholics previously unemployed.