by Jack Higgins
The house had originally been built in Tudor times, but was mainly Georgian with a few later additions. The large kitchen was a post-war project, lovingly created in country style. The dining room, hall, library, and the huge drawing room, were panelled in oak. There were only six bedrooms now, for others had been developed into bathrooms or dressing rooms at various stages.
With the estate leased to various farmers, she had retained only six acres around the house, mainly woodland, leaving two large lawns and another for croquet. A retired farmer came up from the village from time to time to keep things in order, and when they were in residence, Hedley would get the tractor out and mow the grass himself.
There was a daily housekeeper named Mrs Smedley, and another woman from the village helped her with the cleaning when necessary. All this sufficed. It was a calm and orderly existence that helped her return to life. And the villagers helped, too.
The laws of the British aristocracy are strange. As Roger Lang's wife, she was officially Lady Lang. Only the daughters of the higher levels of the nobility were allowed to use their Christian names, but the villagers in that part of Norfolk were a strange, stubborn race. To them she was Lady Helen, and that was that. It was an interesting fact that the same attitude pertained in London society.
Any help anyone needed, she gave. She attended church every Sunday morning and Hedley sat in the rear pew, always correctly attired in his chauffeur's uniform. She was not above visiting the village pub of an evening for a drink or two, and there, too, Hedley always accompanied her and, though you might not think it, was totally accepted by those taciturn people ever since an extraordinary event some years past.
An incredibly high tide combined with torrential rain had caused the water to rise in the narrow canal that passed through the village from the old disused mill. Soon, it was overflowing into the street and threatening to engulf the village. All attempts to force open the lock gate which was blocking the water proved futile, and it was Hedley who plunged chest deep into the water with a crowbar, diving under the surface again and again until he managed to dislodge the ancient locking pins and the gate burst open. At the pub, he had never been allowed to pay for a drink again.
So, although it had lost its savour, life could have been worse – and then Lady Helen received an unexpected phone call, one that in its consequences would prove just as catastrophic as that other call two years earlier, the call that had announced the death of her son.
'Helen, is that you?' The voice was weak, yet strangely familiar.
'Yes, who is this?'
'Tony Emsworth.'
She remembered the name well: a junior officer under her husband many years ago, later an Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office. She hadn't seen him for some time. He had to be seventy now. Come to think of it, he hadn't been at either Peter's funeral or her husband's. She'd thought that strange at the time.
'Why, Tony,' she said. 'Where are you?'
'My cottage. I'm living in a little village called Stukeley now, in Kent. Only forty miles from London.'
'How's Martha?' Helen asked.
'Died two years ago. The thing is, Helen, I must see you. It's a matter of life and death, you could say.' He was racked by coughing. 'My death, actually. Lung cancer. I haven't got long to go.'
'Tony. I'm so sorry.'
He tried to joke. 'So am I. ' There was an urgency in his voice now. 'Helen, my love, you must come and see me. I need to unburden myself of something, something you must hear.'
He was coughing again. She waited until He'd stopped. 'Fine, Tony, fine. Try not to upset yourself. I'll drive down to London this afternoon, stay overnight in town, and be with you as soon as I can in the morning. Is that all right?'
'Wonderful. I'll see you then.' He put down the phone.
She had taken the call in the library. She stood there frowning, slightly agitated, then opened a silver box, took out a cigarette and lit it with a lighter Roger had once given her made from a German shell.
Tony Emsworth. The weak voice, the coughing, had given her a bad shake. She remembered him as a dashing Guards captain, a ladies' man, a bruising rider to hounds. To be reduced to what she had just heard was not pleasant. Intimations of mortality, she thought. Death just round the corner, and there had been enough of that in her life.
But there was another, secret reason, something even Hedley knew nothing about. The odd pain in the chest and arm had given her pause for thought. She'd had a private visit to London recently, a consultation with one of the best doctors in Harley Street, tests and scans at the London Clinic.
It reminded her of a remark Scott Fitzgerald had made about his health: 'I visited a great man's office and emerged with a grave sentence.' Something like that. Her sentence had not been too grave. Heart trouble, of course. Angina. No need to worry, my dear, the professor had said. You'll live for years. Just take the pills and take it easy. No more riding to hounds or anything like that.
'And no more of these,' she said softly, and stubbed out the cigarette with a wry smile, remembering that she'd been saying that for months, and went in search of Hedley.
Stukeley was pleasant enough: cottages on either side of a narrow street, a pub, a general store and Emsworth's place, Rose Cottage, on the other side of the church. Lady Helen had phoned before leaving London to give him the time and he was expecting them, opening the door to greet them, tall and frail, the flesh washed away, the face skull-like.
She kissed his cheek. 'Tony, you look terrible.'
'Don't I just?' He managed a grin.
'Should I wait in the Merc?' Hedley asked.
'Nice to see you again, Hedley,' Emsworth said. 'Would it be possible for you to handle the kitchen? I let my daily go an hour ago. She's left sandwiches, cakes and so on. If you could make the tea.
'My pleasure,' Hedley told him, and followed them in.
A log fire was burning in the large open fireplace in the sitting room. Beams supported the low ceiling and there was comfortable furniture everywhere and Indian carpets scattered over the stone-flagged floor.
Emsworth sat in a wing-backed chair and put his walking stick on the floor. A cardboard file was on the coffee table beside him.
'There's a photo over there of your old man and me when I was a subaltern,' he said.
Helen Lang went to the sideboard and examined the photo in its silver frame. 'You look very handsome, both of you.'
She returned and sat opposite him. He said, 'I didn't attend Peter's funeral. Missed out on Roger's, too.'
'I had noticed.'
'Too ashamed to show my face, ye see.'
There was something here, something unmentionable that already touched her deep inside, and her skin crawled.
Hedley came in with tea things on a tray and put them down beside her on a low table. 'Leave the food,' she told him. 'Later, I think.'
'Be a good chap,' Emsworth said. 'There's a whiskey decanter on the sideboard. Pour me a large one and one for Lady Helen.'
'Will I need it?'
'I think so.'
She nodded. Hedley poured the drinks and'served them. 'I'll be in the kitchen if you need me.'
'Thank you. I think I might.'
Hedley looked grim, but retired to the kitchen. He stood there thinking about it, then noticed the two doors to the serving hatch and eased them ajar. It was underhanded, yes, but all that concerned him was her welfare. He sat down on a stool and listened.
'For years I lived a lie as far as my friends were concerned,' Emsworth said. 'Even Martha didn't know the truth. You all thought I was Foreign Office. Well, it wasn't true. I worked for the Secret Intelligence Service for years. Oh, not in the field. I was the kind of office man who sent brave men out to do the dirty work and who frequently died doing it. One of them was Major Peter Lang.'
There was that crawling feeling again. 'I see,' she said carefully.
'Let me explain. My office was responsible for black operations in Ireland. The people we wer
e after were not only IRA, but Loyalist paramilitaries who, because of threats and intimidation of witnesses, escaped legal justice.'
'And what was your solution?'
'We had undercover groups, SAS in the main, who disposed of them.'
'Murdered, you mean?'
'No, I can't accept that word. We've been at war with these people for too many years.'
She didn't pour the tea, but reached for the whiskey and sipped some. 'Am I to understand that my son did such work?'
'Yes, he was one of our best operatives. Peter's ability to turn on a range of Irish accents was invaluable. He could sound like a building site worker from Derry if he wanted to. He was part of a group of five. Four men, plus a woman officer.'
'And?'
'They all came to an untimely end within the same week. Three men and the woman shot…'
'And Peter blown up?'
There was a pause as Emsworth swallowed the whiskey, then he got up and lurched to the sideboard and poured another with a shaking hand.
'Actually, no. That's just what you were told.' He swallowed the whiskey, spilling some down his chin.
She drank the rest of her whiskey, took out her silver case, selected a cigarette and lit it. 'Tell me.'
Emsworth reached the chair again and sank down. He nodded to the file. 'It's all in there. Everything you need to know. I'm breaking the Official Secrets Act, but why should I care? I could be dead tomorrow.'
'Tell me!' she said, her voice hard. 'I want to hear it from You.'
He took a deep breath. 'If you must. As you know, there are many splinter groups in Irish politics, both Catholic and Protestant. One of the worst is a nationalist outfit called the Sons of Erin. Years ago, it was run by a man called Frank Barry, a very bad article indeed, and almost unique – he was a Protestant Republican. He was eventually killed, but he had a nephew, named Jack Barry, who had an American mother. He'd been born in New York, then gone to Vietnam in 1970, when he was eighteen, on a short-term commission. There was some kind of scandal – apparently he shot a lot of Vietcong prisoners, so they turfed him out quietly.'
'And then he joined the IRA?'
'That's about it. He took over where his uncle left off. He's a murdering psychopath who's been doing his own thing for years now. Oh, and another bizarre thing. Jack's great-uncle was Lord Barry. He had a place on the Down coast in Ulster called Spanish Head. It's part of the National Trust now. His father died when he was a child and Frank Barry was killed just before his old uncle died.'
'Which leaves Jack with the title?'
Emsworth nodded. 'But he's never attempted to claim it. He could be proscribed as a traitor to the Crown.'
'I wonder. I think executions on Tower Hill went out some years ago. But Tony, please, get to the point.'
He closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed and continued. 'There was a man called Doolin who used to drive for Barry. He ended up in the Maze Prison and we put an informer in his cell. Our man had an ample supply of cocaine and eventually had Doolin telling his life story from birth.' 'My God.' She was horrified.
'It's the name of the game, my dear. Doolin had not been with Barry during the time in question, but his story was that Barry was on a high as he drove him north to Stramore, on pills and whiskey. He told Doolin he'd just taken out an entire undercover British group thanks to the New York branch of the Sons of Erin, and with a little help from someone he called the Connection. Doolin asked who this Connection was, and Barry said no one knew, but that he was an American, and then he started acting all coy, and talking about the detectives who'd operated out of Dublin Castle for Mick Collins in the old days.'
'So the implication was that this Connection was someone very high up and on the inside? But where? How?'
'For years, British Intelligence has had a link with the White House, especially because of the developing peace process. Information has been passed to what were supposed to be friends on a need-to-know basis.'
'Including information on my son's group?'
'Yes. I thought that was going too far, but those more important than I, people such as Simon Carter, Deputy Director of the Security Services, ruled against me. And then Doolin was found hanged in his cell.'
She went and poured another whiskey and turned. 'It gets more like the Borgias every minute. And as you've avoided explaining your remark about Peter not being blown up, I think I'm going to need this.' She swallowed half the whiskey. 'Get on with it, Tony.'
'Yes, well, the Sons of Erin. They passed on information obtained from the Connection. They all had contacts in Dublin and London.' He was in agony and showed it. 'It's in the files. Everything's in there, all the players, photos, the lot. I copied the Top Secret file and
…"
'Tell me about Peter.'
'They snatched him coming out of a pub in South Armagh, Barry and his men. They tortured him, and when he wouldn't talk, beat him to death. They were building a new bypass road nearby, down to the Irish Republic. It had one of those massive concrete mixers that works all night. They put his body through it.'
She sat there, staring, silent, then suddenly swallowed the rest of the whiskey.
He carried on. 'They blew up his car with the heavy charge to make it look as if he'd gone that way. I mean, they needed us to know he'd gone, but couldn't send us a postcard saying how.'
He was a little drunk now. She cried out and put a hand to her mouth as she stood and ran for the door. She made it to the toilet in the hall and vomited into the basin again and again. When she finally wiped her face and came out, Hedley was there.
'You heard?'
'I'm afraid so. Are you okay?'
'I've been better. Tea, Hedley, hot and strong.'
She went back into the sitting room and sat down. 'What happened? Why was nothing done?'
'They decided to keep it black, which was why you weren't told the truth. We had operatives check Republican circles in New York and Washington. We discovered there was indeed a New York dining club called the Sons of Erin. The names of the members are all in the file, along with their photos. They're prominent businessmen, one's even a US Senator. It all fits. There had already been examples of privileged information from London to Washington ending up in IRA hands.'
'But why was nothing done?'
Emsworth shrugged. 'Politics. The President, the Prime Minister – no one wanted to rock the boat. Let me tell you something about intelligence work. You think the CIA and the FBI keep the President informed about everything? Hell, no.'
'So?'
'It's just the same in the UK. MI5 and MI6 have their own dark secrets and they not only hate each other, but also Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Unit and Military Intelligence. For proof of that, you'll find two interesting entries in the file, one American, the other Brit.'
'And what do they refer to?'
'There's a man called Blake Johnson at the White House, around fifty, a Vietnam veteran, lawyer, ex-FBI. He's Director of the General Affairs Department at the White House. Because it's downstairs, it's known as the Basement. It's one of the most closely guarded secrets of the administration, passed from one President to another. It's totally separate from the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service. Answers only to the President. The whispers are so faint people don't believe it exists.'
'But it does?'
'Oh, yes, and the British Prime Minister has his own version. It's there in the file. Brigadier Charles Ferguson runs it.'
'Charles Ferguson? But I've known him for yean.'
'Well, I don't know what you thought he was, but his outfit is known in the trade as the Prime Minister's private army. It's given the IRA a bad time for years. Ferguson has a sizeable setup at the Ministry of Defence and is responsible only to the PM, which is why the other intelligence outfits loathe him. His nght hand is an ex-IRA enforcer named Sean Dillon; his left, a Detective Chief Inspector named Hannah Bernstein, granddaughter of a rabbi, if you can believe it. Quite a bunch, huh?'
&n
bsp; 'But what has this to do with anything?'
'Simply, that the Secret Intelligence Service didn't want Ferguson and company involved, because Ferguson might have told the Prime Minister, and Ferguson has a private contact with Blake Johnson, which meant the President would have been informed and SIS couldn't have that.'
'So what happened?'
'SIS started to send the White House mild and useless information and disinformation. There was no way of implicating the members of the Sons of Erin. And then the file was lost.' He reached for the folder and held it up. 'Except for my copy. I don't know why I took it at the time. Self-disgust, I suppose. Now, I think you should have it.'
He started to cough; she passed him a napkin. He spat into it and she saw blood. 'Should I get the doctor?'
'He's calling in later. Not that it'll make any difference.' He gave her a ghastly smile. 'That's it then, now you know. I'd better lie down.'
He rose, picked up the stick and walked slowly into the hall. 'I'm sorry, Helen, desperately sorry.'
'It's not your fault, Tony.'
He heaved himself up the stairs and she watched him go. Hedley appeared behind her, holding the file. 'I figured you'd want this.'
'I surely do.' She took it from him. 'Let's move on, Hedley. There's only death here.'
Back in the Mercedes, as they drove through the narrow lanes, she read through the file, every detail, every photo. Strangely enough, she dwelt on Sean Dillon longer than anyone: the fair hair, the self-containment, the look of a man who had found life a bad joke. She closed the file and leaned back.
'You okay, Lady Helen?' Hedley asked.
'Oh, fine. You can read the file yourself when we're back at South Audley Street.'
She felt a flutter in her chest, opened her purse, shook two pills into her hand, and swallowed them. 'Whiskey, please, Hedley,' she said.
He passed back the silver flask. 'What's going on? Are you okay?'
'Just some pills the doctor gave me.' She leaned back and closed her eyes. 'No big deal. Just get me to South Audley Street.'
But Hedley didn't believe her for a moment and drove on, his face troubled.