The best hiding place is under the light

Ireland is a small place - the local sergeant could hardly insult the old grieving widow by saying he was there to search for AK47s

THE GENERAL was explaining to me recently that Osama bin Laden was merely following a rule of thumb known to all terrorists; the best place to hide something is under the light. People might expect him to be in the dark caves of Afghanistan, but not in a big compound in a swanky suburb right beside a military base.

The principle of hiding something in the most conspicuous place possible reminded me of a night long ago, during the Troubles. It was a snowy winter and I was drinking in a pub very late while, outside, the hills were crawling with gardaí and various armies, protecting us from gunmen who were always trying to move weapons across the Border.

When the last drinks had been served the late drinkers moved to the kitchen, as was the custom, and soaked up the alcohol with bacon sandwiches and mugs of strong tea. Invariably the gossip was about cattle, sheep and the guns out there in the dark.

And then an innocent question provoked a story.

“Did anyone hear that the Free State Army lost a man last night?”

No.

Nobody had heard anything special. But everyone turned to the storyteller and listened. He was a tall dark man in a long coat, with black oily hair. He had big black eyebrows and smoked Sweet Afton cigarettes. He drove a Ford Cortina, and always carried bales of hay in the back seats for his cattle up on the mountains. A man of many sheep, a dog always beneath his seat, who could cross mountain ridges as lively as a buck goat. A man who knew more about the war outside the door than he was ever prepared to say.

Apparently the lost soldier was a new recruit. A small spectacled man out on his first patrol. His company had been deployed in a windy ditch on the snowy mountain, near where the gardaí usually set their checkpoints.

There being no traffic, the guards and army drove on to where a lonely farmhouse was tucked into the elbow of the road.

Dozens of cars were parked all around the farmhouse, which raised the sergeant’s suspicions. So they stopped. The soldiers hopped into the ditch in the blinding snow and the garda sergeant went to the door of the house, half expecting to find a bomb factory.

In fact, a widow in black opened the door and said: “Sergeant, you’re very welcome.” There was a wake in full swing and when the widow saw the garda at the door, she presumed he too had come to sympathise. Ireland is a small place and he was the local sergeant and he could hardly insult her by saying he was there to search for AK47s.

So he went in and took tea, and whiskey, and agreed that the death was sudden and that at 78, her husband was not an old man.

Outside, the wind swept the sleet across the mountain, flattening the rushes. An hour passed before the sergeant emerged and hissed at his driver to get him home.

“My God,” said the widow, when she saw the army crawling out of the ditches, “it was very good of you all to come.” The soldiers heard the call to board the jeeps, and the convoy went off to their barracks in the town.

However, back in barracks, the commanding officer realised he was a man short. So the convoy retraced its steps, and in the snow they eventually found a soldier in the ditch, gun at the ready, waiting for orders. Not only had he poor eyesight, but he was half-deaf, and in the wind and snow he had neither seen nor heard his comrades leaving.

When the tall man had finished his story everyone agreed that it was a blessing that the poor soldier had been found. And they praised the sergeant for being so sensitive, and for paying his respects to the grieving widow.

“Because,” said a voice, “that widow is a fine lady.”

“Yes,” another voice agreed, “and she comes from a great Republican family.”

“Indeed she does,” added another, “and wasn’t her husband from across the Border?”

“Oh he was surely,” the tall man said.

“And where did they bury him?”

“Across the Border,” the tall man said, smiling. “There were checkpoints on both sides, but the hearse went through without any bother.”