by Jack Higgins
“Very useful,” Monica told him as they moved through Mayfair. “You being a nondrinker.”
“I get stopped now and then,” Billy said. “Young guy in a flash motor like this. I’ve been breathalyzed plenty. It’s great to see the look on their faces when they check the reading.” He pulled in outside the Dover Street house. “Here we are, folks. You’re staying, right?” he asked Dillon.
“What do you think?”
“You’re staying.”
When Billy was gone, they paused at the top of the steps for Monica to find her key and went in. She didn’t put the light on, simply waited for him to lock the door, then put her arms around his neck and kissed him quite hard.
“Oh my goodness, I’ve missed you.”
“You’ve only been away four days.”
“Don’t you dare,” she said. “Ten minutes, and if you take more, there’ll be trouble,” and she turned and ran up the stairs.
He changed in one of the spare bedrooms, put on a terry-cloth robe, and joined her in her suite. He’d found a tenderness with her that he’d never known he had-he’d surprised himself as their relationship blossomed-and they made slow, careful love together.
Afterward, she drifted into sleep and he lay there, a chink of light coming through the curtains from a lamp in the street. On impulse, he slipped out of the bed, put on the robe, padded downstairs to the drawing room, took a cigarette from a box on the table, lit it, then sat by the bow window, looking out and thinking about Kurbsky. After a while, Monica slipped in, wearing a robe.
“So there you are. Give me one.”
“You’re supposed to have stopped,” he said, but gave her one anyway.
“What are you thinking of?” she said. “Kurbsky?”
“That’s right.”
“I thought you might. He reminded me of you.”
“You liked him, I think?”
“An easy man to like, just as you are an easy man to love, Sean, but like you, there’s the feeling of the other self always there, like a crouching tiger just waiting to spring.”
“Thanks very much.”
“What were you thinking?”
“What on earth we are going to do with him if we get him.” He stubbed his cigarette out and got up. “Come on, back to bed with you.” He put a hand around her waist and they went out.
IT WAS TEN-THIRTY when Roper found himself in his chair back in the computer room at Holland Park. Sergeant Doyle said, “You’ve everything you need to hand, Major, so I think I’ll have a lie-down in the duty room.”
“You should be entitled to a night off, Tony. What about Sergeant Henderson?”
“He’s on ten days’ leave.”
“And the Royal Military Police can’t find a replacement?”
“But we wouldn’t want that, would we, sir? A stranger in the system? I’ll get a bit of shut-eye. If you need me, give me a bell.”
Roper lit a cigarette and set his main screen alive, bringing up Svetlana Kelly. In her early years, she’d been a member of the Chekhov Theatre in Moscow, which meant she was well grounded in classical theater. She hadn’t been much of a beauty, even when young, but he saw handsomeness and strength there. There was a selection of photos from the early years, and then London in 1981. A Month in the Country at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Fifty-five and never married, and then she’d met Patrick Kelly, the Irish widower and professor of literature at London University. Roper looked at Kelly’s photos-he was strong too, undoubtedly, and yet there was a touch of humor about his mouth.
Whatever the attraction, it was strong enough for them to marry at Westminster Registry Office within a month of meeting and for Svetlana to cut herself free of the Soviet Union. She would be seventy-one now. It was eleven o’clock, and yet on sheer impulse, Roper phoned her. He stayed on speakerphone, he always did, and there was an instant answer.
“Who is this?” It was a whisper in a way, and yet clear enough, the Russian accent undeniable.
“Mrs. Kelly, my name is Giles Roper-Major Giles Roper.” He spoke fair Russian, product of an army total-immersion course just after Sandhurst, and he’d kept it up since. “Forgive the intrusion at such a time of night. You don’t know me.”
She cut in. “But I do. I attended a charity dinner for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital last year. You spoke from your wheelchair. You are the bomb-disposal expert, aren’t you? The Queen herself pinned the George Cross to your lapel. You’re a hero.”
It was amazing the effect of that voice, so soft, like a breeze whispering through the leaves on an autumn evening. Roper’s throat turned dry, incredibly touched. It was like being a child again.
He said in English, “You’re too kind.”
“What can I do for you?”
“May I come to see you tomorrow morning?”
“For what reason?”
“I’d like to discuss a matter affecting your nephew. I’d have a woman with me, a Cambridge don who has just met Alexander in New York.”
“Major Roper, be honest with me. What is your interest in my nephew? You must know I haven’t seen him in nearly two decades.”
To this woman, one could only tell the truth. Roper knew that nothing else would do. “I’m with the British Security Services.”
There was a faint chuckle. “Ah, what they call a spook these days.”
“Only on television.”
“You intrigue me. Tell me of your companion.” Roper did. She said, “The lady sounds quite interesting. If you’re a spook, you know where I live.”
“ Chamber Court, Belsize Park.”
“Quite right. My husband died ten years ago and left me well provided for. Here, I live in Victorian splendor supported by my dear friend and fellow Russian, Katya Zorin, who takes care of the house and me and manages to find time to teach painting at the Slade as well. I’ll see you at ten-thirty. Your chair will not prove a problem. The garden is walled, but the entrance in the side mews has a path that will give you access to French windows leading into a conservatory. I’ll be waiting.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Kelly. I must say, you seem to be taking me totally on trust.”
“You fascinated me at that luncheon. Your speech was excellent, but modest, and so afterward I looked you up on the Internet. It was all there. Belfast in 1991, the Portland Hotel, the huge bomb in the foyer. It took you nine hours to render it harmless. Nine hours on your own. How can I not take such a man on trust? I’ll see you in the morning.”
It was quiet sitting there, staring up at his screens, and he put on some background music. Just like comfort food, only this was Cole Porter playing softly, just as it had been all those years ago in the Belfast safe house not far from the Royal Victoria Hospital. It was a long time ago, a hell of a long time ago, and he lit a cigarette and poured a Bushmills Irish whiskey for a change and remembered.
ROPER / BELFAST
1991
3
Roper remembered that year well, and not just because of his nine hours dismantling the Portland Hotel bomb. There had also been the mortar attack on Number 10 Downing Street. The Gulf War had been at its height, and the target had been the War Cabinet meeting at ten a.m. on February 7-an audacious attack, and the missiles had landed in the garden, just narrowly missing the house. It bore all the hallmarks of a classic IRA operation, although nobody ever claimed responsibility for the attack.
In Belfast, meanwhile, the war of the bomb continued remorselessly, and in spite of all the politicians could do, sectarian violence plowed on, people butchering each other in the name of religion, the British Army inured by twenty-two years to the Irish Troubles as a way of life.
For Giles Roper, scientific interest in the field of weaponry and explosives had drawn him in even during his training days as an officer cadet at Sandhurst, and on graduation, it had led to an immediate posting to the Ordnance Corps. In ’ninety-one, he was entering his third year as a disposal officer, a captain in rank and several hundred exp
losive devices of one kind or another behind him.
Most people didn’t realize that he was married. A summer affair with his second cousin, a schoolteacher named Elizabeth Howard, during his first year out of Sandhurst had turned into a total disaster. It was a prime example of going to bed on your wedding night with someone you thought you knew and waking up with a stranger. A Catholic, she didn’t believe in divorce and indeed visited his mother on a regular basis. He hadn’t seen her in years.
The ever-present risk of death, and the casualty rate among his fellows in the bomb-disposal business, precluded any kind of relationship elsewhere. He smoked heavily, like most of his kind, and drank heavily at the appropriate time, like most of his kind.
It was a strange, bizarre existence that produced obsessive patterns of behavior. On many occasions, he’d found himself dealing with a bomb and indulging in conversation, obviously one-sided, demanding answers that weren’t there. It was an extreme example of talking to yourself. A bomb, after all, couldn’t talk back except when it exploded, and that would probably be the last thing you heard. However, he still talked to them. There seemed some sort of comfort in that.
His father had died when he was sixteen. It was his uncle who had arranged for his schooling and Sandhurst, and maintained his mother at the extended family home in Shropshire. She was basically there as unpaid help, as far as Roper could see, but on army pay there wasn’t much he could do about it, until the unexpected happened. His mother’s brother, Uncle Arthur, a homosexual by nature and a broker in the city with a fortune to prove it, had died of AIDS and, lacking any faith in his sister’s ability to handle money, left a considerable fortune to Roper.
He could have left the army, but found that he didn’t want to, and when he tried to get his mother her own place, it turned out she was perfectly happy where she was. It had also become apparent that the perils of bomb disposal were beyond her understanding, so he settled a hundred thousand pounds on her, and the same on his wife, and left them to the joys of the countryside.
Before the Portland Hotel, he had been decorated with the Military Cross for gallantry, although the events surrounding it had only a tenuous link with his ordinary duties.
On standby, he had been based in a small market town in County Down, where there had been a spate of bomb alerts, mostly false, though one in four was the real thing. The unit had five jeeps, a driver and guard, and a disposal expert. On that particular day, a call came in over the radio and the jeeps disappeared, leaving only Roper and his driver, the unit being a man short. The first call was false, also the second. There was another, this time for Roper by name. There was something about it-the speaker had a Cockney accent that sounded wrong.
Terry, his driver, started up, and Roper said, “No, just hang on. I’m not happy. Something smells.” He had a Browning Hi-Power pistol stuffed in his camouflage shirt. He was also wearing, courtesy of his newfound wealth, a nylon-and-titanium vest capable of stopping a.44 Magnum at point-blank range.
Terry eased up an Uzi machine pistol on his knees. There was a nurses’ hostel to the side of the old folks’ home across the street, and as the voice sounded over the radio again, still calling for Roper, a milk wagon came around the corner. It braked to a halt outside the hostel. Two men were in the cab in dairy company uniform.
The one on the passenger side dropped out, turning suddenly as Roper started forward, pulled out a pistol, and fired. He was good, the bullet striking Roper in the chest and knocking him back against the jeep. The man fired again, catching Terry in the shoulder as he scrambled out with the Uzi, then fired again at Roper as he tried to get up, catching him in the left arm before turning and starting to run. Roper shot him twice in the back, shattering his spine.
The vest had performed perfectly. He picked up the Uzi Terry had dropped, got to his feet, and walked toward the milk truck. The driver had slipped from behind the wheel and was firing through the cab, where the passenger door was partially open. A bullet plucked Roper’s shoulder. He dropped down on his face and could see directly under the truck where the driver’s legs were exposed from the knees down. He held the Uzi out in front of him and fired two sustained bursts, the man screaming in agony and going back against the hotel wall.
Roper found him there, sobbing. He tapped the muzzle of the Uzi against the face. “Where is it, in the cab?”
“Yes,” the man groaned.
“What kind? Pencil timer, detonators, or what?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Have it your own way. We’ll go to hell together.”
He grimaced at the pain of his wounded arm, but managed to pull the man up and push him half into the cab. There was a large Crawford’s biscuit can. “You could get a Christmas cake in there or a hell of a lot of Semtex. Anyway, let’s try again. Pencil timer, detonator?”
He turned the man’s face and pushed the muzzle of the Uzi between his lips. The man wriggled and jerked away. “Pencils.”
“Let’s hope you’re right, for both our sakes.”
He pulled off the lid and exposed the contents. Three pencils-the extras just to make sure. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Fifteen minutes. I’d better move sharpish.” He pulled them out and tossed them away and eased the man down as he fainted.
People were emerging from the houses and the local bar, now a couple of dogs barked, and then there was a sudden roaring of engines as two of the jeeps appeared, moving fast.
“Here we go, the bloody cavalry arriving late as usual.” He slid down on the pavement, his back to the hostel wall, scrambled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, fumbled to get one out, and failed.
IT DIDN’T MAKE him notable in any way beyond military circles. The national newspapers didn’t make a fuss simply because death and destruction were so much a part of everyday life in Northern Ireland that, as the old army saying went, it was old news before it was news. But the Portland Hotel a year later, the lone man face-to-face with a terrible death for nine hours, really was news, although the decision to reward him with the George Cross had still not been taken. He continued to meet the daily demands of his calling, working out of an old state school in Byron Street that the army had taken over on the safe house principle, fortifying it against any kind of attack, the many rooms providing accommodation for officers and men, with a bar and catering facilities. There were places like it all over Belfast, safe but bleak.
Local women fought for the privilege of working there in the canteen, the laundry, or as cleaners. That many would be Republican sympathizers was clear, and a rough and ready way of sorting the problem was to try to employ only Protestant women. On the other hand, it was obviously a temptation for Catholics who needed work to pretend to be other than they were. Such women lived locally, and came and went through the heavily fortified gates with identity cards, often so false they could be bought for a couple of pounds in any local bar.
Roper had been posted to Byron Street for nine months, and in that time had caused something of a stir with his Military Cross and good looks, but his gentlemanly behavior toward the younger women, which was conspicuously absent in his fellows, had provoked a suggestion that, as the local girls put it, there had to be something wrong with him.
On the other hand, his incredible bravery was a fact, and another was that in those nine months, some of his comrades had paid the final price and others had been terribly injured.
The Portland Hotel caused many people to look at him differently, as if there was something otherworldly about him, and there were those who felt uncomfortable in his presence, hurrying past him. One who did not was a new young cleaner who replaced an older woman who’d moved away. The girl’s name was Jean Murray, and she was from a Protestant Orange background.
Roper’s room was on the list, and she was resolutely cheerful from the moment she started and knew all his business within two days. Her mother had been killed in a bombing four years earlier, for which she blamed the fugging Fenians, as she called them. Her fat
her was a member of the local Orange Lodge and had a plum job at the Port Authority. There was also a brother of twenty-one named Kenny, in his final year at Queens University.
She extracted as much personal information from Roper as she could. As long as it wasn’t military, he didn’t mind. The truth was that to a certain extent he rather fancied her, which gave him pause for thought, because it meant the defensive wall he’d built around himself was weakening.
“What’s it get yer, Captain, the hero bit? You’re a lonely man, that’s the truth of it, and you’ve stared death in the face for so long, it’s dried up any juice that’s in you.”
“Well, thank you, Dr. Freud,” he said. “I mean, you would know.”
“Why do you do it? It’s a known fact in this dump that you’re well fixed financially.”
“Okay, look at it this way. When the Troubles started in ’sixty-nine, the bomb thing was in its infancy. Very crude, no big deal. Over the years, as the Provisional IRA has grown in power, bombs have become very sophisticated indeed. The public image of the IRA as a bunch of shaven-headed yobs off a building site is well off the mark. Plenty of solid middle-class professionals are in the movement. Schoolteachers, lawyers, accountants, a whole range of ordinary people.”
“So what are you saying?”
“That the bomb makers these days have got university degrees and they’re very clever and sophisticated. Consider the Portland bomb. I’m an expert and I’ve dealt with hundreds of bombs over the years, but that one took me nine hours, and shall I tell you something? He’ll be back, that bomb maker. He’ll come with something just a little bit different, just for me. He can’t afford to have me beat him. It’s as simple as that.”
She stared at him, pretty and rumpled in her blue uniform dress, leaning on her broom, no makeup on at all, and there was something in her eyes that could have been pity.