On Either Side Part 2: On Either Side, #2

CHAPTER 1

‘In the past I have defended the right of the IRA to engage in armed struggle. I did so because there was no alternative for those who would not bend the knee, or turn a blind eye to oppression, or for those who wanted a national republic.’ Gerry Adams.

Homemade terrorist bombs come in various shapes and sizes. Some are large, some small; some in carrier bags others in holdalls, boxes, crates and even envelopes. Some are very professional, others amateurish. All are potentially lethal.

It was a wet, cold November morning on a spitting, grey Belfast street, puddles shimmering with reflections of grey, gaunt edifices that towered over them and flashing intermittently with the cold blue dazzle spinning from emergency beacons. The year was 1971 and Captain Carl King, sapper in the Royal Engineers, crouched over a rucksack, amongst an eddy of bitter breezes, in the concave porch of a shop doorway. He had been born Carl Pratt in January 1948, was teased and bullied over his surname at school so changed it by deed poll to his mother’s maiden name before joining the British Army at the age of 18. By his thinking there was no room for a Pratt among the maroon berets of the Parachute Regiment. Carl loved being a Para, excelled at Sandhurst and a further six month period of special training at Maida Barracks in Aldershot. However he’d requested transfer to the Royal Engineers Bomb Disposal Unit once Army Intelligence sniffed that IRA violence in Northern Ireland was about to escalate with a bombing campaign. Without realising it Carl’s nature was intrinsically heroic, always to put others before himself and deal with the most dangerous threat to the innocent population. Terrorism and bombs were now that menace.

On this chilly day he was clad in the camouflaged battle-dress of his new regiment and ash-blonde hair spilt down his neck in a tufty military crop from under a netted green helmet. His assignment was to de-fuse a suspected bomb assumed to be in the bag he stared at. At this stage he didn’t know whether it was a bomb or not as only a suspicious object had been reported to the Royal Ulster Constabulary by a vigilant member of the public. The police called the Army then cleared the area within a quarter mile radius of the bag, exiling all men, women, children and their pets as quickly as possible. In light of a recent terrorist attack, 3 killed just a couple of days before by the IRA’s bombing of The Red Lion Inn on Ormeau Road, this part of the city was swamped by the silence of fear, no scream from the sly starling or coo from the pompous pigeon who’d fled from his domain and now bobbed his head and strutted elsewhere in the city.

At a secret base in County Antrim, Carl readily volunteered his expertise for the task. But there was no real proficiency or special talent for this duty as no two homemade bombs are the same, no clues given by the colour of wires, no hint to the power of the explosive. Then as now, the only ability required for bomb disposal is one of a cool head and tense-teethed valour, a sense of duty and an unparalleled and unselfish concern for the welfare of one’s fellow human being; the complete opposite of the terrorists who planted them; men and women who are cold hearted assassins, cowards with a sick and twisted mind devoid of any sensibility to their fellow beings, brutally ignoring the right to life and the naïve, unpolluted innocence of children and infants. 

Carl’s sapphire blue eyes, flecked beautifully with tender hints of hazel, iced resentfully as he looked at the rucksack and planned a method of approach and examination. If it were a bomb, professional or otherwise, the pliability of the canvas bag enclosing it made his work highly treacherous as many devices were fitted with anti-tamper switches, easy to de-activate on a solid object but almost impossible if fitted to a bag. But the likelihood was there’d be no such mechanism if this were a bomb as fitting such a booby-trap to canvas was as dangerous as trying to de-activate it and terrorists such as the IRA are cowards and unlikely to run the risk of blowing themselves up. He tentatively reached out to the bag, his fingers exploring the fabric with the delicate touch of a surgeon.  Carl then carefully undid the buckle and listened for the tick-tock of a time-bomb. There was none, silence all around even from the three policemen who watched anxiously at a safe distance from behind the roof of their patrol car. Despite the cold, the salty sweat of tension stung his eyes as he then lifted the flap and peered inside. It was a bomb alright, a web of red wires screwed into an untidy bunch. At least there was no colour coding to confuse the process, red was both negative and positive assuming there was a battery buried somewhere deep inside. Drawing a deep, tentative breath, Carl carefully eased the bag gently open, hands steady as a statue. He could now see the switch, a motion device crudely made from a wooden clothes peg, the component coil spring tensed as the jaws were held apart by a short length of matchstick. Pushed firmly into the inside edge of the open lips of the peg were two small metal drawing pins facing each other, each with a red wire wrapped around the pin then secured firmly by the brassy cap; a movement sensing switch designed to dislodge the match and snap the peg closed thus create the explosive circuit as soon as the bag was moved. Below the switch was a detonator pushed into a tin of plastic explosive, enough, he guessed, to demolish a small house and certainly enough to rip, limb from limb, anyone within the close vicinity. Before he could proceed he needed to scan the immediate proximity. A cat skulked past a few feet away, looked at him with devilish green eyes, then shot away like a guilty thief-in-the-night. He checked the policemen then scanned the whole area. A double check for safety, but it was clear and now he’d seen the device close-up he realised that the slightest movement or tremor might jerk that short length of matchstick out of the peg and trigger the bomb. He daren’t reach inside and squeeze open the peg, that was too risky as this job demanded more precision. So speed and tremble-free care was of the essence as he reached inside his pocket and withdrew some wire cutters. Very carefully he reached the cutters towards the peg and cut one wire, then the other. The device was not safe yet. He carefully withdrew the cutters, placed them on the ground then reached inside and slowly removed and withdrew the peg. There were now two flimsy bare wires just a clothes peg width (a couple of inches) apart. If they or any part of the bomb somehow moved and the wires touched each other it would trigger the bomb. He reached inside again and carefully pinched one wire between his forefinger and thumb and slowly lifted one live end out of the bag then tied it securely to the buckle and out of harm’s way. To make the bomb safe he had to disconnect the battery, but he still couldn’t see it, somewhere in the dark depths of the bag beneath the coils of red wire and the tin of plastic explosive. To cut a wire leading to the detonator might still prove fatal. So he picked up the cutters again in his right hand and gently lifted the tin of plastic explosives. Now he could see the battery in the depth shadows of the bottom of the rucksack. Ideally he needed an extra hand to hold a torch but could just see enough of the wire’s connection to the battery to make the final cut which he wasted no time in doing. The bomb was now safe and Carl had time to take a deep, well-earned breath, a sigh of absolute relief. He then cut free the battery and carefully lifted it out of the rucksack, laid it safely on the ground beside him then gestured at the police to approach. Now he could enjoy a month’s leave at home in England and was due to catch a plane to Heathrow the following morning.

*

The Triumph Bonneville burbled to a stop outside The Green Man inn near Ballyclare that evening. Carl switched off the engine, kicked out the side-stand, got off the machine and rested his helmet over the handlebar mirror. He was now officially on leave so entered the village bar dressed casually in jeans and a furry suede coat to combat the winter chill. It was a normal weekday pub, a few locals muttering gossip fogged within an eddy of cigarette smoke, the foul-mouthed drunk slumped on a stool at the end of the bar, all soused in sepia light and the rank smell of stale beer and tobacco. A fire roared in its’ grate, flames dancing boisterously inside a stone breast, agape and belching heat like a baker’s oven. He slipped off his coat and hung it over his arm, out of uniform and anonymous as a soldier to the deceitful and traitorous gaze of any IRA informants that may be lurking in the shadows. And it was inevitable that eyes would land upon him as they always did, was something he was used to as women ogled and men envied his astonishing good-looks, a golden-haired Adonis among them. Not something he was proud of or flaunted, just the way he’d somehow turned out, a freak of genetics and skipped generations as he only resembled hints of his mother but nothing whatsoever of the swarthy, plumped complexion of his father or  younger sister. He took his beer from the jovial, grey-whiskered portly Landlord, crossed the room to a quiet corner where he hung his coat over a chair then sat behind a well-used, tarnished table scattered with beer mats; just keeping himself to himself and uninterested by his surrounds. He sipped the beer and relaxed, felt tension loosen in his limbs as he sighed in the sticky air; it’d been quite a day, one he’d been lucky to get through intact. Tomorrow he would see his parents and little sister, something to look forward to although he had never quite grasped the introvert character of his father, kind and easily pleased in an innocuous way, an un-dynamic man of miniscule ambitions whose unexcitable persona never really ventured beyond his office in the Planning Department of the local council other than his love of the golf course and in growing prize dahlias to enter in shows and competitions all over England. Councillor Cecil Pratt had not fought in the last war, had been a clerk and administrator to the War Office, essential work of course, essential in an unessential way where an older man could have done this job and left him free to fight for his country. Still that was his father, a quiet man and a thinker, an unanimated man both emotionally and physically who lived outside the real world, closeted by the cushy political benevolence of civil service, comforted by a fat wage and pension for simply sitting behind a desk, his hands willingly tethered by the red tape of bureaucracy. Cecil was a political conformist of neutral status (in other words a prig). Carl smiled despairingly to himself and took another sip of sweet beer as his thoughts slipped from his father and wandered affectionately to his mother. She was as different as chalk from cheese or granite from water to his father, exciting, soberly gregarious, complicated and very beautiful for a woman who was pushing fifty, the dependable rock who wore the trousers in the household. But sometimes her mind drifted and a strange sadness darkened her eyes and haggard her face, something very deep within her make-up and memory that she would never share or talk about. His mother had been a Queen Alexandra nurse during the war and had served at the front-line all over Europe as the allied forces pushed the Germans back to defeat. Carl knew she must have witnessed some dreadful things, wounded men with torn, smashed and bloodied bodies, the wounds she must’ve dressed, the minds she’d healed; and those poor men and boys who didn’t make it, who had died while in the arms of her benevolent care. It had to be these awful memories, the shattering of her altruistic nature that blackened her mood periodically. His father was seldom there when she entered these uncharacteristic doldrums. If he were he’d sneak away to his colourful greenhouse haven and hide like a coward.  His father’s reaction to her infrequent dull moods resulted from one occasion carved deep into Carl’s memory at a time when he was enduring the two-faced agony of pimply adolescence. It was a rage so uncharacteristic of his mother, one not aimed at him but at her husband, and seemingly provoked by a severe bout of sadness, a cocktail of regret and resentment verging on remorse, brought about by a bunch of dahlias her husband had proudly presented her with; a well-meaning token of affection from him to her, handpicked from his most prized blooms. In an unjustified and out-of-nowhere explosion of petulance never witnessed before, she glared at her husband like a predator to prey, then threw the flowers back at him with such venom yet aberrant rage it appeared she wanted to kill him. His father scurried away as if the flowers were grenades and Carl cradled his distraught mother in an affectionate, trying-to-understand embrace of empathy as she wept bitterly, his head nestled to her breast, tears falling on his blonde hair, a bitter/sweet memory jolt for Brenda Pratt, nee King. Through grief-stricken, watery eyes she sobbed to Carl these words that he’d never forgotten nor understood, I adore you my darling boy, you’re so like him.... She then broke from the embrace and ran upstairs to her bedroom, hurried steps rumbling the treads of the staircase like a roll of thunder. Nothing else was ever said on the subject and Carl just assumed that she had referred to her father, his grandfather, who had died unexpectedly a few days before he was born.

He was jolted from this muse by a sudden silence that struck the pub’s bouncy ambience. Carl looked up and saw that a hunched old man had entered the building, a Fagin-like alien to the Irish brogue that gagged the room, an orthodox hook-nosed Jew who hobbled with a stick, dressed oddly in a black ensemble topped with a bowler hat from under which grey ringlet tresses, flecked with black, cascaded down like Medusa’s serpents. But Carl was uninterested, looked away and didn’t notice the man’s approach.

‘May I join you?’ asked the old man in a German accent and that comical Yiddish lilt, his kind face somehow urgent.

‘Suit yourself,’ replied Carl, shrugging nonchalantly. ‘It’s supposed to be a free country.’

The withered old Jew rattled out a chair from under the table and sat opposite Carl, bones cracking agedly as he did so. He beamed a welcoming smile across the table. ‘You must be young Carl King,’ he suggested.

Carl looked up, surprised. ‘That’s correct,’ he replied, his interest in the old man suddenly sparked. He saw his wrinkled face was badly scarred, had seen its’ share of action. ‘Do I know you?’

The old man maintained a warm smile. ‘No son, we’ve never met. My name is Wolfgang Isaacs and I know your father.’

Carl smiled back at the Jew. ‘Really? How’s that?’ Wolfgang was obviously from a different era to that of his father’s so would’ve retired some years back.  ‘Did you used to work for Eastbourne Town Council or do you know him from the Golf Club?’ (With scars like that on his face he didn’t look the type to be interested in prize dahlias).

The smile slipped from Wolfgang’s face, he suddenly looked earnest and serious. ‘No son...I mean your real father.’ The old man looked puzzled. ‘Hasn’t your mother told you?’

The question and previous statement was like a bullet from a gun to Carl. His heart felt hollow, seemed to miss a beat before he realised the nonsense in the old Jew’s words. ‘I think you must have mistaken me for someone else, another Carl King perhaps.’

Wolfgang slowly shook his head negatively. ‘There’s no doubt that I’ve found the right Carl King, you’re the splitting image of your father when he was about your age.’ Carl’s manner erupted with a visible sense of acute exasperation. He stood abruptly, grabbed his suede coat from the back of the chair, ready to leave, Irish eyes from the bar lasered intriguingly at him. ‘Please don’t go,’ begged the old man from his seat. ‘Please sit back down and let me explain.’

Carl somehow felt magnetised by the pleading sincerity of this request so sunk back into his chair, an avid and angry interest alight in his eyes. ‘Then kindly explain yourself, Mr Isaacs. Why are you here?’

‘I don’t know where to start,’ answered the old Jew. ‘I mean it could be a coincidence and I might be barking up the wrong tree. But your Commanding Officer told me where I’d probably find you and you look so like him.’ He paused for thought. ‘Just a quick double check then. Your mother is, or was, Brenda King who served in France as a British Queen Alexandra nurse during the last war?’

‘That’s correct,’ replied Carl, anger abated and now intrigued. ‘She doesn’t talk about the war to me but I’ve overheard her nattering to friends and I think she served in Belgium, Holland and Germany too.’

‘You’re totally correct.  Your father...’ He stopped short to correct himself. ‘I apologise young man, I mean my friend back in Germany has told me all about what a wonderful woman she