There Will Be Fire

By Rory Caroll

Ever since last month, when that right wing nut-job tried to assassinate Trump, I wanted to read a book about a historical political assassination.

If the colors on the book cover look familiar, its not just coincidental. The Irish flag has the same colors as the Indian flag. The Green represents catholics and the Gaelic tradition of Ireland. The Orange represents Protestants and William of Orange of Netherlands. The White in between, stands for peace and the desire for harmony between these two opposing communities of Ireland.

The Indian flag consciously, or unconsciously has inspirations from the Irish tricolor. The similarities don't end there. The Indian independence movement has a lot of inspirations from the Irish independence movement. From nonviolent resistance to civil disobedience to home rule movement to armed resistance, Irish movement always had something to offer.

But this book is not about Irish Republican movement. It focuses on one particular subplot of the larger movement. This book is about a 1984 assassination attempt on Prime Minister Margret Thatcher, at a Brighton hotel. The author is an investigative reporter and book is divided into three parts - the genesis of the plot, the plot and the manhunt after the plot.

The book is layered upon layer like a great piece of investigative journalism, giving you enough context and background history at every moment.

The Indian nationalist in me wanted to take the side of Irish struggles, but that didn't even last for the first couple of pages. The book starts with assassination of Lord Mountbatten, and then proceeds into other attacks like Christmas bombings on Harrods, etc.

This first part of the book spends a significant amount of time on genesis of troubles, IRA techniques, long timers, electronic components, civil disobedience by IRA activists in prisons, recruitment and profile of the bomber - Patrick Magee.

They perfected techniques of long timers, where an IRA activist could install a timed bomber in a location, and the bomb could go off after 6-8 weeks. That makes tracking a bomber enormously complex in a non-digital world.

The second part of the book gets to the actual plot. Mrs. Thatcher has been struggling politically after her initial popularity. She rode a high after the Falklands War, but off late, She has been fighting too many battles on the home front. She has a major annual party convention coming up in October. The Iron lady hasn't missed her stride yet, and she has been preparing big for the major annual event.

Patrick Magee checks into that venue hotel in August and installs a major bomb in room 629, and sets a timer to go off in October, the night when Mrs. Thatcher, and the entire British cabinet are going to stay in this hotel for the party convention.

This is when the book picks up its pace and starts reading like an awesome crime thriller. The countdown to the explosion is heart pumping even though you know Mrs. Thatcher comes out unscathed. She misses the explosion by a mere two minutes when she was still in the bathroom. The explosion destroys multiple floors of the hotel, and Mrs. Thatcher's bathroom, but spares her Napolean suite. Not everyone gets this lucky though. The wife of Mrs. Thatcher's right hand man, Mr. Tebbit, suffers a major injury amongst other fatalities.

The explosion goes off at 2:54 am and the cabinet more or less escapes the explosion, and the following pages illustrate the resolve of the Iron Lady. The emergency respondents of this seaside town are no where prepared for a major high-profile explosion like this. She is whisked off hurriedly from the hotel using a backdoor, but she insists on checking the well being of the hotel staff.

Mrs. Thatcher, her husband, and her close aide are boarded into a police car to be taken to the nearest police station. The husband and the aide are raving against the damned IRA, but Mrs. Thatcher shows her steady hand and resolve. Once she is at the police station, and changes into more respectable clothes from her night gown, she makes it clear that she has to be at the party convention by 9 am and life must go on.

When she does start the party convention the same day at 9am, she enters the venue with thundering applause. The nation and the world are stunned at the news and cheer Maggie on. The TV interviews following the incident have some remarkable phrases. She utters a phrase of Shakespearean quality. She felt that it was the day she was meant not to see.

Later that month, when Mrs. Indira Gandhi is assassinated, she gets rattled. She decides to attend the funeral of Mrs. Gandhi and when asked about her security, she replies - "one cant wonder about one's security anymore".

I will probably end up reading a Thatcher biography.

The last and final part of the book is about the manhunt that followed the explosion.

UK, unlike America, doesn't have a central crime investigative authority like FBI. Much of policing is done by provincial police. Since this explosion has happened in seaside town of Brighton, the investigation fell under Sussex county. The police here are neither equipped to deal with a high profile case, nor are they proficient enough to deal with explosions and terrorism.

The investigation is headed by Jack Reece, the head of Sussex county police, and a very skilled amateur fisherman. Reece heads one of the largest manhunts in a pre-digital world. Since this is timer bomb, they have to sieve thru a large number of suspects.

So after going thru 38,000 documents, 6,000 statements, 4,000 trash bins of explosion rubble, and 800 guests - they have one guest unaccounted for. After weeks of forensic, handwriting and fingerprint analysis - they pinpoint the accused - Patrick Magee. This is the top secret of UK police at the moment.

But the British spies in Ireland report that Magee is Ireland now, where UK doesn't have jurisdiction nor an active extradition treaty . So Reece decides to play a long game of hoping Magee comes back into UK for carrying out more attacks. The book transforms itself into a binge watchable TV series at this point.

After about 18 months of waiting, spying, chasing, the British police finally get him and is sentenced to 35 years of prison. After about two years of the explosion, the Grand hotel at Brighton reopens and Mrs. Thatcher is insistent on being at the reopening to illustrate the bomb has changed nothing.

Overall, a fantastic read. Many parts of the book read like a whodunnit although the author tells you how its going to end upfront.