by Jack Higgins
A DEVIL IS WAITING
ALSO BY JACK HIGGINS
The Judas Gate
The Wolf at the Door
A Darker Place
Rough Justice
The Killing Ground
Without Mercy
Dark Justice
Bad Company
Midnight Runner
Keys of Hell
Edge of Danger
Day of Reckoning
Pay the Devil
The White House Connection
Flight of Eagles
The President’s Daughter
Year of the Tiger
Drink with the Devil
Angel of Death
Sheba
On Dangerous Ground
Thunder Point
Eye of the Storm
The Eagle Has Flown
Cold Harbor
Memories of a Dance-Hall Romeo
A Season in Hell
Night of the Fox
Confessional
Exocet
Touch the Devil
Luciano’s Luck
Solo
Day of Judgment
Storm Warning
The Last Place God Made
A Prayer for the Dying
The Eagle Has Landed
The Run to Morning
Dillinger
To Catch a King
The Valhalla Exchange
JACK HIGGINS
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
New York
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Higgins, Jack, date.
A devil is waiting / Jack Higgins.
p. cm.
EISBN: 9781101554050
1. United States. President—Fiction. 2. Americans—England—Fiction.
3. Terrorism—Fiction. 4. London (England)—Fiction. 1. Title.
PR6058.I343D48 2012 2011039496
823.914—dc23
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
BOOK DESIGN BY AMANDA DEWEY
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and
Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author
assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication.
Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any
responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Where there is a sin
A devil is waiting
—IRISH PROVERB
For Tessa-Gaye Coleman
Night & Day,
You Are the One
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Epilogue
ONE
It was late afternoon on Garrison Street, Brooklyn, as Daniel Holley sat at the wheel of an old Ford delivery truck, waiting for Dillon. There were parked vehicles, but little evidence of people.
Rain drove in across the East River, clouding his view of the coastal ships tied up to the pier that stretched ahead. A policeman emerged from an alley a few yards away, his uniform coat running with water, cap pulled down over his eyes. He banged on the truck with his nightstick.
Holley wound down the window. “Can I help you, Officer?”
“I should imagine you could, you daft bastard,” Sean Dillon told him. “Me being wet to the skin already.”
He scrambled in and Holley said, “Why the fancy dress? Are we going to a party?”
“Of a sort. You see that decaying warehouse down there with the sign saying ‘Murphy & Son—Import-Export’?”
“How could I miss it? What about it?” Holley took out an old silver case, extracted two cigarettes, lit them with a Zippo, and passed one over. “Get your lips round that, you’re shaking like a leaf. What’s the gig?”
Dillon took a quick drag. “God help me, but that’s good. Ferguson called me from Washington and told me to check the place out, but not to do anything till I got a call from him.” He glanced at his watch. “Which I’m expecting just about now.”
“How kind of him to think of us. Brooklyn in weather like this is such a joy,” Holley told him, and at that moment, Dillon’s Codex sounded.
He switched to speaker and General Charles Ferguson’s voice boomed out. “You’ve looked the place over, Dillon?”
“As much as I could. Two cars outside it, that’s all. No sign of life.”
“Well, life there undoubtedly is. I made an appointment by telephone for you, Daniel, with Patrick Murphy. Your name is Daniel Grimshaw, and you’re representing a Kosovo Muslim religious group seeking arms for defense purposes.”
“And who exactly is Murphy and what’s it all about?” Holley asked.
“As you two well know, several dissident groups, all IRA in one way or another, have raised their ugly heads once again. The security services have managed to foil a number of potentially nasty incidents, but luck won’t always be on their side. You’ll remember the incident in Belfast not long ago when a bomb badly injured three policemen, one of whom lost his left arm. Since then another policeman has been killed by a car bomb.”
“I heard about that,” Dillon said.
“Police officers are having to check under their cars again, just like in the bad old days, and some of them are finding explosive devices. We can’t have that. And there’s more. Attempts have started again to smuggle arms into Ulster. Last week, a trawler called the Amity tried to land a cargo on the County Down coast and was sighted by a Royal Navy gunboat. The crew did a runner and haven’t been caught, but I’ve firm evidence that the cargo of assorted weaponry originated with Murphy & Son.”
“Was your sour
ce MI5?”
“Good Lord, no. You know how much the security services hate us. The Prime Minister’s private army, getting to do whatever we want, as long as we have the Prime Minister’s warrant. At least that’s what they think. They just don’t appreciate how necessary our services are in today’s world—”
Holley cut in. “Especially when we shoot people for them.”
“You know my attitude on that,” Ferguson said.
“Getting back to Murphy & Son, why not get the FBI to handle them? We are in New York, after all.”
“I’d rather not bother our American cousins. This comes from Northern Ireland, and that’s our patch. Part of the UK.”
“I’ve always thought that was part of the problem,” Dillon said with a certain irony. “But never mind. What do you want us to do?”
“Find out who ordered the bloody weapons in the first place, and I don’t want to hear any crap about some Irish American with a romantic notion about the gallant struggle for Irish freedom.”
“Lean on them hard?” Holley asked.
“Daniel, they’re out to make a buck selling weapons that kill people.” He was impatient now. “I couldn’t care less what happens to them.”
“Wonderful,” Dillon told him. “You’ve appointed us to be public executioners.”
“It’s a bit late in the day to complain about that,” Ferguson told him. “For both of you. What do they say in the IRA? Once in, never out?”
“Funny,” Holley said. “We thought that was your motto. But never mind. We’ll probably do your dirty work for you again. We usually do. How do you want them? Alive or dead?”
“We’re at war, Daniel. Remember the four bastards who raped your young cousin to death in Belfast? They were all members of a terrorist organization. You shot them dead yourself. Are you telling me you regret what you did?”
“Not for a moment. That’s the trouble.”
Dillon said, “Leave him alone, Charles, he’ll do what has to be done. Have you seen the President yet?”
“No, I’m sitting here in the Hay-Adams with Harry Miller, looking out over the terrace at the White House, waiting for the limousine to deliver us to the Oval Office. We’ve prepared to brief him on the security for his visit to London on Friday, all twenty-four hours of it. As far as I can tell, we’ve got everything locked down, including his visit to Parliament and the luncheon reception on the terrace.”
“Westminster Bridge to the left, the Embankment on the far side,” Dillon said.
“Yes, you’ve got experience with the terrace, haven’t you?” Ferguson said. “Anyway, the Gulfstream is standing by, ready and waiting, so the moment I’m free, it’s off to New York for this UN reception at the Pierre. I want you two there, too.”
“Any particular reason?”
“I’ve got someone new joining the team from the Intelligence Corps.”
“Really?” Holley asked. “What have we got?”
“Captain Sara Gideon, a brilliant linguist. Speaks fluent Pashtu, Arabic, and Iranian. Just what we’ve been needing.”
“Is that all?” Holley joked.
“Ah, I was forgetting Hebrew.”
Dillon said, “You haven’t gone and recruited an Israeli, have you?”
“That would be illegal, Dillon. No, she’s a Londoner. There have been Gideons around since the seventeenth century. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Gideon Bank. She inherited it. While she pursues her military agenda, her grandfather sits in for her as chairman of the board.”
“You mean she’s one of those Gideons?” Dillon said. “So why isn’t she married to some obliging millionaire, and what the hell is she doing in the army?”
“Because at nineteen, she was at college in Jerusalem brushing up on her Hebrew before going up to Oxford when her parents visited her and were killed in a Hamas bus bombing.”
“Ah-ha,” Holley said. “So she chose Sandhurst instead of Oxford.”
“Correct.”
“And in the last nine years has served with the Intelligence Corps in Belfast, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and two tours in Afghanistan.”
“Jesus, what in the hell is she after?” Dillon said. “Is she seeking revenge, is she a war junkie, what?”
“Roper’s just posted her full history, so you can read it for yourself.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Dillon said.
“Yes, I’m sure you’ll find it instructive, particularly the account of the nasty ambush near Abusan, where she took a bullet in the right thigh which left her with a permanent limp.”
“All right, General, I surrender,” Dillon said. “I’ll keep my big gob shut. I can’t wait to meet her in person.”
“What do we do with her until you get to the Pierre?” Holley asked.
“Keep her happy. She was booking in at the Plaza after a flight from Arizona. There’s some secret base out there that the RAF are involved in, something to do with pilotless aircraft. She’ll be returning to London with us. She’s been on the staff of Colonel Hector Grant, our military attaché at the UN, and this will be her final appearance for him, so she’ll be in uniform.”
“Does she know what she’s getting into with us?”
“I’ve told Roper to brief her on everything—including you two and your rather murky pasts.”
“You’re so kind,” Holley said. “It’s a real privilege to know you.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ferguson told him. “Miller is very impressed with her, and I’m happy about the whole thing.”
“Well, we’re happy if you’re happy,” Dillon told him.
“We’ve got to go now. Why don’t you two clear off and do something useful. I’ll see you tonight.”
Dillon walked away through the downpour, the nightstick in his right hand. He turned left into an alley and Holley waited for a few moments, then took from his pocket a crumpled Burberry rain hat in which a spring clip held a Colt .25. He eased it onto his head, got out of the truck, and walked quickly through the rain.
Dressed as he was as a beat cop, Dillon didn’t need to show any particular caution, tried a door, which opened to his touch, and passed into a decaying kitchen, a broken sink in one corner, cupboards on the peeling walls, and a half-open door that indicated a toilet.
“Holy Mother of God,” he said softly. “Whatever’s going on here, there can’t be money in it.”
He opened the far door, discovered a corridor dimly lit by a single lightbulb, and heard voices somewhere ahead. He started forward, still grasping the nightstick in his right hand, his left clutching a Walther PPK with a Carswell silencer in the capacious pocket of his storm coat.
The voices were raised now as if in argument and someone said, “Well, I think you’re a damn liar, so you’d better tell me the truth quickly, mister, or Ivan here will be breaking your right arm. You won’t be able to swim very far in the sewer after that, I’m afraid.”
There was no door, just an archway leading to a platform with iron stairs dropping down, and Dillon, peering out, saw a desk and two men confronting Holley, who was glancing wildly about him, or so it seemed. Dillon eased the Walther out of his pocket, stepped out, and started down the stairs.
When Holley had entered the warehouse he had found it dark and gloomy, a sad sort of place and crammed with a lot of rusting machinery. The roof seemed to be leaking, there were chain hoists here and there, and two old vans that had obviously seen better days were parked to one side. There was a light on farther ahead, suspended from the ceiling over a desk with a couple of chairs, no sign of people, iron stairs descending from the platform above.
He called out, “Hello, is anyone there? I’ve got an appointment with Patrick Murphy.”
“Would that be Mr. Grimshaw?” a voice called—Irish, not American.
The man who stepped into the light was middle-aged, with silver hair, and wore a dark suit over a turtleneck sweater. He produced a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and lit it with an old lighter.
�
�Yes, I’m Daniel Grimshaw,” Holley said.
“Then come away in.”
“Thank you.” Holley took a step forward, the rear door of the van on his right opened, and a man stepped out, a Makarov in his hand. He was badly in need of a shave, his dark unruly hair was at almost shoulder length, and he wore a bomber jacket. He moved in behind Holley and rammed the Makarov into his back.
“Do you want me to kill him now?” he asked in Russian, a language Holley understood.
“Let’s hear what his game is first,” Murphy told him in the same language.
“Now, that’s what I like to hear,” Holley said in Russian. “A sensible man.”
“So you speak the lingo?” Murphy was suddenly wary. “Arms for the Kosovans? Are the Serbs turning nasty again this year? Ivan here’s on their side, being Russian, but I’ll hear what you’ve got to say.” This was said in English, but now he added in Russian, “Make sure he’s clean.”
Ivan’s hands explored Holley thoroughly, particularly between the legs, and Holley said, “It must be a big one you’re looking for.”