Confessional - Devlin 03 (v5)

by Jack Higgins

  When the Mass was over, the final absolution given, he paused on the steps to address the congregation. 'And in your prayers during the coming days, I would ask each one of you to pray for the Holy Father, soon to visit England at a most difficult time.' He moved forward a little, the candlelight falling on his face. 'Pray for him that your prayers, added to his own, grant him the strength to accomplish his mission.'

  His gaze passed over the entire congregation and for a moment it was as if he was looking at her directly, then he moved on. Tanya froze in horror, the shock, the most terrible she had ever known in her life. When he spoke the words of the benediction, it was as if his lips moved with no sound. The face - the face which had haunted her dreams for years. Older, of course, kinder even, and yet unmistakably the face of Mikhail Kelly, the man they had named Cuchulain.

  What happened then was strange, yet perhaps not so strange if one considered the circumstances. The shock was so profound that it seemed to drain all strength from her and she remained in the half-darkness at the back of the church while people moved out and Cussane and the acolytes disappeared into the sacristy. It was very quiet in the church and she sat there, trying to make sense of things. Cuchulain was Father Harry Cussane, Devlin's friend, and it explained so many things. Oh, my God, she thought, what am I going to do? And then the sacristy door opened and Cussane stepped out.

  Things were almost ready in the kitchen. Devlin checked the oven, whistling softly to himself and called, 'Have you laid the table in there?'

  There was no reply. He went into the living room. Not only was the table not laid but there was no sign of Tanya. Then he noticed the French window ajar, took off his apron and moved forward.

  'Tanya?' he called into the garden, and in the same moment saw that the door in the garden wall stood open.

  Cussane wore a black suit and clerical collar. He paused for a moment, aware of her presence although he made no sign. He'd noticed her almost at once during the Mass. The fact that she was a stranger would have made her stand out, but in the circumstances it had been obvious who she must be. Knowing that, there was the ghost of the child there in the face, the child who had struggled as he held her that day in Drumore, all those years ago. Eyes never changed, and the eyes he had always remembered.

  He turned at the altar rail, dropping to one knee to genuflect, and Tanya, in a panic now and terribly afraid, forced herself to her feet and moved along the aisle. The door to one of the confessional boxes stood partially open and she slipped inside. When she pulled it close, there was a slight creaking. She heard him walk down the aisle, the steps slow, distinct on the stone flags. They came closer. Stopped.

  He said softly in Russian, 'I know you are there, Tanya Voroninova. You can come out now.'

  She stood there, shivering, very cold. He was quite calm, his face grave. Still in Russian, he said, 'It's been a long time.'

  She said, 'So, do you kill me like you killed my father? As you have killed so many others?'

  'I hoped that wouldn't be necessary.' He stood there looking at her, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and then he smiled gently and there was a kind of sadness there. 'I've heard you on records. You have a remarkable talent.'

  'So have you.' She felt stronger now. 'For death and destruction. They chose you well. My foster-father knew what he was doing.'

  'Not really,' he said. 'Nothing is ever that simple. I happened to be available. The right tool at the right time.'

  She took a deep breath. 'What happens now?'

  'I thought we were supposed to be having dinner together, you, I and Liam,' he said.

  The porch door banged open and Devlin walked in. 'Tanya?' he called and then paused. 'Oh, there you are. So you two have met?'

  'Yes, Liam, a long, long time ago,' Harry Cussane told him, and his hand came out of the right pocket of his jacket holding the Stechkin he had taken from Lubov.

  At the cottage, he found cord in the kitchen drawer. 'The steaks smell good, Liam. Better turn the oven off.'

  'Would you look at that?' Devlin said to the girl. 'He thinks of everything.'

  'The only reason I've got this far,' Cussane said calmly.

  They went into the living room. He didn't tie them up, but motioned them to sit on the sofa by the fire. He stepped on to the hearth, reached up inside the chimney and found the Walther hanging on its nail that Devlin always kept there for emergencies.

  'Keeping you out of temptation, Liam.'

  'He knows all my little secrets,' Devlin said to Tanya. 'But then he would. I mean, we've been friends for twenty years now.' The bitterness was there in the voice, the shake of raw anger, and he helped himself to a cigarette from the box on the side table without asking permission and lit it.

  Cussane sat some distance away at the dining table and held up the Stechkin. 'These things make very little sound, old friend. No one knows that better than you. No tricks. No foolish Devlin gallantry. I'd hate to have to kill you.'

  He laid the Stechkin on the table and lit a cigarette himself.

  'Friend, is it?' Devlin said. 'About as true a friend as you are priest.'

  'Friend,' Cussane insisted, 'and I've been a good priest. Ask anyone who knew me on the Falls Road in Belfast in sixty-nine.'

  'Fine,' Devlin said. 'Only even an idiot like me can make two and two make four occasionally. Your masters put you in deep. To become a priest was your cover. Would I be right in thinking that you chose that seminary outside Boston for your training because I was English Professor there?'

  'Of course. You were an important man in the IRA in those days, Liam. The advantages that the relationship offered for the future were obvious, but friends we became and friends we stayed. You cannot avoid that fact.'

  'Sweet Jesus!' Devlin shook his head. 'Who are you, Harry? Who are you really?'

  'My father was Sean Kelly.'

  Devlin stared at him in astonishment. 'But I knew him well. We served in the Lincoln Washington Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Just a minute. He married a Russian girl he met in Madrid.'

  'My mother. My parents returned to Ireland where I was born. My father was hanged in England in nineteen-forty for his part in the IRA bombing campaign of that time. My mother and I lived in Dublin till nineteen-fifty-three, then she took me to Russia.'

  Devlin said, 'The KGB must have fastened on you like leeches.'

  'Something like that.'

  'They discovered his special talents,' Tanya put in. 'Murder, for example.'

  'No,' Cussane answered mildly. 'When I was first processed by the psychologists, Paul Cherny indicated that my special talent was for the stage.'

  'An actor, is it?' Devlin said. 'Well, you're in the right job for it.'

  'Not really. No audience, you see.' Cussane concentrated on Tanya. 'I doubt whether I've killed more than Liam. In what way are we different?'

  'He fought for a cause,' she told him passionately.

  'Exactly. I am a soldier, Tanya. I fight for my country - our country. As a matter of interest, I'm not an officer of the KGB. I am a lieutenant-colonel in Military Intelligence.' He smiled deprecatingly at Devlin. 'They kept promoting me.'

  'But the things you've done. The killing,' she said. 'Innocent people.'

  'There cannot be innocence in this world, not with Man in it. The Church teaches us that. There is always iniquity in this life - life is unfair. We must deal with the world as it is, not as it might have been.'

  'Jesus!' Devlin said. 'One minute you're Cuchulain, the next you're a priest again. Have you any idea who you really are?'

  'When I am priest, then priest I am,' Cussane told him. 'There is no avoiding that. The Church would be the first to say it in spite of what I have been. But the other me fights for his country. I have nothing to apologize for. I'm at war.'

  'Very convenient,' Devlin said. 'So, the Church gives you your answer or is it the KGB - or is there a difference?'

  'Does it matter?'

  'Damn you, Harry, tell me one thin
g? How did you know we were on to you? How did you know about Tanya? Was it me?' he exploded. 'But how could it have been me?'

  'You mean you checked your telephone as usual?' Cussane was at the drinks cabinet now, the Stechkin in his hand. He poured Bushmills into three glasses, carried them on a tray to the table in front of the sofa, took one and stepped back. 'I was using special equipment up there in the attic of my place. Directional microphone and other stuff. There wasn't much that went on here that I missed.'

  Devlin took a deep breath, but when he lifted his glass, his hand was steady. 'So much for friendship.' He swallowed the whiskey. 'So, what happens now?'

  'To you?'

  'No, to you, you fool. Where do you go, Harry? Back home to dear old Mother Russia?' He shook his head and turned to Tanya. 'Come to think of it, Russia isn't his home.'

  Cussane didn't feel anger then. There was no despair in his heart. All his life, he had played each part that was required of him, cultivated the kind of professional coolness necessary for a well-judged performance. There had been little room for real emotion in his life. Any action, even the good ones, had been simply a reaction to the given situation, an essential part of the performance. Or so he told himself. And yet he truly liked Devlin, always had. And the girl? He looked at Tanya now. He did not want to harm the girl.

  Devlin, as if sensing a great deal of this, said softly, 'Where do you run, Harry? Is there anywhere?'

  'No,' Harry Cussane said calmly. 'Nowhere to go. No place to hide. For what I have done, your IRA friends would dispose of me without hesitation. Ferguson certainly would not want me alive. Nothing to be gained from that. I would only be a liability.'

  'And your own people? Once back in Moscow, it would be the Gulag for sure. At the end of the day, you're a failure and they don't like that.'

  'True,' Cussane nodded. 'Except in one respect. They don't even want me back, Liam. They just want me dead. They've already tried. To them also I would only be an embarrassment.'

  There was silence at his words, then Tanya said, 'But what happens? What do you do?'

  'God knows,' he said. 'I am a dead man walking, my dear. Liam understands that. He's right. There is no place for me to run. Today, tomorrow, next week. If I stay in Ireland McGuiness and his men will have my head, wouldn't you agree, Liam?'

  'True enough.'

  Cussane stood up and paced up and down, holding the Stechkin against his knee. He turned to Tanya. 'You think life was cruel to a little girl back there in Drumore in the rain? You know how old I was? Twenty years of age. Life was cruel when they hanged my father. When my mother agreed to take me back to Russia. When Paul Cherny picked me out at the age of fifteen as a specimen with interesting possibilities for the KGB.' He sat down again. 'If my mother and I had been left alone in Dublin, who knows what might have happened to that one great talent I possessed. The Abbey Theatre, London, the Old Vic, Stratford?' He shrugged. 'Instead ...'

  Devlin was conscious of a great sadness, forgot for the moment everything else except that, for years, he had liked this man more than most.

  'That's life,' he said. 'Always some bugger telling you what to do.'

  'Living our lives for us, you mean?' Cussane said. 'Schoolteachers, the police, union leaders, politicians, parents?'

  'Even priests,' Devlin said gently.

  'Yes, I think I see now what the anarchists mean when they say "Shoot an authority figure today." ' The evening paper was on a chair with a headline referring to the Pope's visit to England. Cussane picked it up. 'The Pope, for instance.'

  Devlin said, 'A bad joke, that.'

  'But why should I be joking?' Cussane asked him. 'You know what my brief was all those years ago, Liam? You know what Maslovsky told me my task was? To create chaos, disorder, fear and uncertainty in the West. I've helped keep the Irish conflict going, by hitting counter-productive targets, causing great harm on occasion to both Catholic and Protestant causes; IRA, UVF, I've pulled everyone in. But here.' He held up the newspaper with the photo of Pope John Paul on the front page. 'How about this for the most counter-productive target of all time? Would they like that in Moscow?' He nodded to Tanya. 'You must know Maslovsky well enough by now. Would it please him, do you think?'

  'You're mad,' she whispered.

  'Perhaps.' He tossed a length of cord across to her. 'Tie his wrists behind his back. No tricks, Liam.'

  He stood well back, covering them with the Stechkin. There was little for Devlin to do except submit. The girl tied his hands awkwardly. Cussane pushed him down on his face beside the fire.

  'Lie down beside him,' he told Tanya.

  He pulled her arms behind her and tied her hands securely, then her ankles. Then he checked Devlin's wrists and tied his ankles also.

  'So, you're not going to kill us?' Devlin said.

  'Why should I?'

  Cussane stood up, walked across the room, and with one swift jerk, pulled the telephone wire out of the wall.

  'Where are you going?'

  'Canterbury,' Cussane said. 'Eventually, that is.'

  'Canterbury?'

  'That's where the Pope will be on Saturday. They'll all be there. The cardinals, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Prince Charles. I know these things, Liam. I run the press office at the Secretariat, remember.'

  'All right, let's be sensible,' Devlin said. 'You'll never get near him. The last thing the Brits want is the Pope dead on their hands. They'll have security at Canterbury that would make even the Kremlin sit up and take notice.'

  'A real challenge,' Cussane said calmly.

  'For God's sake, Harry, shoot the Pope. To what end?'

  'Why not?' Cussane shrugged. 'Because he's there. Because I've nowhere else to go. If I've got to die, I might as well go down doing something spectacular.' He smiled down. 'And you can always try and stop me, Liam, you and McGuiness and Ferguson and his people in London. Even the KGB would move heaven and earth to stop me if they could. It would certainly leave them with a lot of explaining to do.'

  Devlin exploded. 'Is that all it is to you, Harry? A game?'

  'The only one in town,' Cussane said. 'For years, I've been manipulated by other people. A regular puppet on a string. This time, I'm in charge. It should be an interesting change.'

  He moved away and Devlin heard the French window open and close. There was silence. Tanya said, 'He's gone.'

  Devlin nodded and struggled into a sitting position. He forced his wrists against the cord, but was wasting his time and knew it.

  Tanya said, 'Liam, do you think he means it? About the Pope?'

  'Yes,' Devlin said grimly. 'I believe he does.'

  Once at his cottage, Cussane worked quickly and methodically. From a small safe hidden behind books in his study he took his Irish passport in his usual identity. There were also two British ones in different names. In one he was still a priest, in another a journalist. There was also two thousand pounds in notes of varying sizes, English not Irish.

  He got a canvas holdall from his wardrobe of a type favoured by army officers and opened it. There was a board panel in the bottom which he pressed open. Inside he placed most of the money, the false passports, a Walther PPK with a Carswell silencer and several additional clips of ammunition, a block of plastic explosive, and two timing pencils. As an afterthought, he got a couple of Army field dressing packs from the bathroom cupboard and some morphine ampoules and put them in also. Like the soldier he thought himself to be, he had to be ready for anything. He replaced the panel, rolled up one of his black cassocks and placed it in the bottom of the bag. A couple of shirts and what he thought of as civilian ties, socks, toilet articles. His prayer book went in as a reflex habit as did the other things. The Host in the silver pyx, the holy oils. As a priest it had been second nature to travel with them for years now.

  He went downstairs to the hall and pulled on his black raincoat, then took one of the two black felt hats from the hall cupboard and went into the study. Inside the crown of the hat he had sewn two
plastic clips. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver with a two inch barrel. It fitted snugly into the clips and he put the hat into his holdall. The Stechkin he put in the pocket of his raincoat.

  So, he was ready. He glanced once around the study of the cottage which had been his home for so long, then turned and went out. He crossed the yard to the garage, opened the door and switched on the light. His motorcycle stood beside the car, an old 350CC BSA in superb condition. He strapped his holdall on the rear, took the crash helmet from the peg on the wall and put it on.

  When he kicked the starter, the engine roared into life at once. He sat there for a moment adjusting things, then he crossed himself and rode away. The sound of the engine faded into the distance and after a while there was only silence.

  At that moment in Dublin, Martin McGuiness was watching one of his men put the receiver back on the phone rest.

  'The line's dead, that's certain.'

  'That seems more than a little strange to me, son,' McGuiness said. 'Let's pay Liam a visit, and let's drive fast.'

  It took McGuiness and a couple of his men forty minutes to get there. He stood watching while his men released Devlin and the girl and shook his head.

  'Christ, Liam, it would be funny seeing the great Liam Devlin trussed up like a chicken if it wasn't so bloody tragic. Tell me again? Tell me what it's about, then.'

  He and Devlin went into the kitchen and Devlin filled him in on what had happened. When he was finished, McGuiness exploded. 'The cunning bastard. On the Falls Road in Belfast City they remember him as a saint, and him a sodding Russian agent pretending to be a priest.'

  'I shouldn't think the Vatican will be exactly overjoyed,' Devlin told him.

  'And you know what's worse? What really sticks in my throat? He's no fucking Russian at all. Jesus, Liam, his father died on an English gallows for the cause.' McGuiness was shaking with rage now. 'I'm going to have his balls.'