We can see him through the window, across the road. He’s with Mack. Fuck is he doing with Mack? Barney says. No one says he was coming this morning. Tommy and Mack are killing themselves laughing about something or other as they cross the road. When did they get so friendly?

Alright, Oddjob? Mack says. Barney was still wearing that fucking bowler. Excuse me but what in the fuck is this music about? Tommy says to him. It’s Dark Side of the Moon, Barney says. It’s a concept LP about life. Fuck you know about concepts? Tommy says to him but Mack’s big into it. Fucking Floyd, man, sweet, he says. Tommy takes this leather briefcase that he’s carrying and slaps it down on the desk. Fuck me, go easy with that, Mack says to him. You’re telling him not to bang it off a desk but you’re telling me to drop it down four fucking floors to the ground without it going off? I says to him. We open it up, the briefcase. It’s like a fucking homemade abortion in there. I thought you said these guys were boffins what could float a nuclear bomb through your granny’s letterbox? I says to Mack. Look at the state of this. There’s a lump of Semtex with blue packing tape wrapped around it and there’s a couple of wires attached to a gold wind-up clock that your old dear might have had on her mantelpiece. This is it? I says to them. I cannot believe my lamps. Does the trick, my friend, Mack says to me. Who put this together? Barney says to him. Jimmy McFlint, Mack says. What?! Barney says. McFlint with the squint? Not bad for an uneducated Irishman. Look, Mack says. This is guerrilla warfare we’re engaged in. It’s all about improvised explosives. You mean making it up as you go along, I says to him. That’s what I says, he says. Naw, you never, I says to him, you says improvised. You’re trying to make it sound smart when really you’re fucking busking it. Alright, Mack says to me, fucking busking-it explosives, you shower of cocks, does that make you feel more confident? We’re running a fucking rebel insurgence here, he says to us. Excuse me if it’s just not professional enough for you.

I could have taken Mack right out the game then and there, only the repercussions weren’t worth thinking about. Alright, I says to him, alright, I’m just fucking concerned for the fucking reality of this fucking assignment, I says. Look, he says. All you have to do is you set the fucking alarm on this clock, which is easy, like, just turn this knob and it moves the wee hand here, see, then pull this wee knob out and that’s it ready to go off. Sure, that sounds just like my average Saturday night, Barney says to him, but by this time Mack is in no mood for jokes. Stop acting like fucking clowns, he says to us. I’m telling you, he says, see if the IRA could dispense with Irishmen altogether, we’d be one fuck of a formidable fighting unit.