Free The Journeyman Tailor by Gerald Seymour

watcher. The second time he came closer, within 100 yards of the cache. Each time was a risk. The cache on the Welsh coast had been watched for seven weeks by more than eighty policemen, .and two good men had been taken, gone down for thirty years. A cache had been found at Pangbourne and more men doing time,
    They might shout, they might just shoot, probably they'd shout On the ground, a revolver in his ear, handcuffs on his wrists, they probably wouldn't shoot.
    Thirty year s he was looking at, each time he came to a cache.
    Jon Jo scuffed the earth and the leaf mould clear. Between the lid and the dustbin there was a minute piece of black insulating tape He knew exactly where it should be. That way he would he would know if the cache had been interfered with. Sometimes if a cache was found they would burrow a homing device into a weapon, or they would disarm it, or they would replace the explosive with a harmless look alike compound, or they would screw up the detonators. Mostly they would lift, or kill, whoever came to collect the weapons.
    In the dustbin, in separate plastic bags sealed at the neck, were two car bombs, a larger bomb for a building, and a Kalashnikov A.K.47
    assault rifle. At the bottom of the dustbin were six loaded magazines for the rifle. Heh, and the dustbin had been filled when he had started out ten weeks before ... It was like a larder at the end of the week.
    He took out the rifle and two magazines.
    He replaced the lid, sealed it again with black insulating tape. He pushed back the soil and the dead leaves.

    Jon Jo kept watch and listened for a quarter of an hour before he crawled out from under the spread of the holly tree.
    The rifle, the stock folded back against the mechanism, was in the pouch pocket of his coat.
    Bren came out of the front door. It had been Ronnie's idea. Ronnie had said that it would be no problem for him to get away for five hours.
    Two hours driving each way, and an hour in the small house in the Filton district of Bristol. Ronnie had said that the backing of a strong family helped a man enduring stress.
    So little that he, their son, could say to Art and Sadie Brennard. His father had cancelled his evening out at the horticulture group, and his mother had missed Friday evening Bingo.
    He wished to God that he hadn't come
    They had eaten a high tea, scones and cakes, and when it was nearly time for him to take off again, head away out of their lives, he had said that he would be gone some time. That was a sick joke, because it was more than four months since he had last been home. He'd the impression, when they had all sat down, that his mother had expected some momentous announcement, like he'd met a girl. He told them that he was posted to Belfast. His mother, Sadie, had looked as though she might cry. His father, Art, he'd just munched at his food and lowered his head nearer his plate.
    The way Bren told it, what he would be doing would be just pretty boring, pushing paper round desks. Of course, nothing about ".source units or surveillance hides, firearms or playing with men's lives or being looked after and having his hand held by Parker, of course not. He left when he could see that neither of them believed a word he said. HIS
    mother kissed him on the doorstep, and his father held his hand and shook it, and the voices of both of them were lost in their throats.
    He tried to smile back at them. He waved from his car. Should have told them, shouldn't he, that across in Bellast there was a man called Parker who was reckoned the superstar So patronising they all were, Wilkins and Ronnie and P.T.I Terry and Jocelyn. All playing the bloody Parker tune. By the time that he had reached the motorway, joined the great horde of his fellow countrymen who gave not a toss about Northern Ireland and its war, Bren had made himself a very binding promise. He would not be bloody Parker's passenger. He was not going to be any man's bag carrier.
    One more night and he would be