Touch The Devil

by Jack Higgins

  “No,” Belov said. “Chaos is still our business, Frank, and the need to create as much as possible in the western world. Chaos, disorder, fear and uncertainty—that’s why we employ people like you.”

  “You haven’t left much out, have you?” Barry said cheerfully.

  Belov looked down at the map. “Is this going to work?”

  “Come on, now, Nikolai,” Barry said. “You don’t really want Carrington shot dead on a French country road do you? Very counterproductive, just like the IRA shooting the Queen. Too much to lose, so it isn’t worth it.”

  Belov looked bewildered. “What game are you playing now?”

  “You’ll find out,” Barry said, and added briskly, “I’ll still take the cash, by the way. Chaos, disorder, fear, and uncertainty. You’ll get your money’s worth, I promise you.”

  Belov hesitated, then took a large manila envelope from his pocket and pushed it across. Barry dropped it into the briefcase along with the map. “Shall we?”

  He led the way to the entrance and unlocked the judas gate. A flurry of wind tossed rain into their faces. Belov shivered and turned up his collar.

  “When I was fourteen years of age in nineteen forty-three, I joined a partisan group in the Ukraine. I was with them two years. It was simpler then. We were fighting Nazis. We knew where we were. But now.”

  “A different world,” Barry said.

  “And one in which you, my friend, don’t even believe in your own country.”

  “Ulster?” Barry laughed harshly. “I gave up on that mess a long time ago. As someone once said, there’s nothing worse than a collection of ignorant people with legitimate grievances. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  * * *

  The apples in the orchard on the hill above Rigny should have been picked weeks before. The air was heavy with their overripe smell, warm in the unexpected noon-day sun.

  Jack Corder lay in the long grass, a pair of Zeiss binoculars beside him, and watched the villa below. It was a pleasant house, built in the eighteenth century from the look of it, with a broad flight of steps leading up to the portico over the main entrance.

  There were four cars in the courtyard, at least a dozen CRS police waiting beside their motorcycles, and uniformed gendarmes at the gate. Nothing too ostentatious. The President was known to imitate General de Gaulle in that respect. He hated fuss.

  For a while, Corder was a boy again lying in long grass by the River Wharfe, the bridge below him, good Yorkshire sheep scattered across the meadow on the other side. Sixteen years of age with a girl beside him whose name he couldn’t even remember, and life had seemed to have an infinite possibility to it. There was an aching longing to be back, for everything in between to be just a dream, and then the President of France, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, stepped out of the house below, followed by the British Foreign Secretary.

  The two men stood in the portico, flanked by their aides, as Corder focused his binoculars.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. “One man with a decent rifle is all it would take to knock out both of them.”

  The President shook the Foreign Secretary’s hand. No formal embrace. That was not his style. Lord Carrington went down the steps and was ushered into the black Citroën.

  Corder’s throat was dry. He took the transceiver from his pocket, pressed the channel button and said urgently, “This is Red calling. This is Red calling. The package is about to be delivered.”

  A second later he heard Barry’s reply, cool, detached. “Green here. The package will be collected.”

  Carrington’s car was moving toward the entrance followed by four CRS motorcyclists, just as Barry had promised, and Corder jumped to his feet and ran through the orchard to where he had left the Peugeot.

  * * *

  He had plenty of time to reach the main road before the convoy, and the moment he turned on to it he put his foot down, pushing the Peugeot up to seventy-five.

  His palms were sweating again, his throat dry, and he lit a cigarette one-handed. He didn’t know what was going to happen at St. Etienne, that was the trouble. Probably CRS riot cops descending in droves, shooting everything that moved, which could include him. On the other hand, he had to turn up; he had no other choice, for if he didn’t, Barry, being Barry, would smell an instant rat, call the thing off, and disappear into the blue as he had done so many times before.

  He was close to St. Etienne now, no more than two or three miles to go, when it happened. As he passed a side turning, a CRS motorcyclist emerged and came after him, a sinister figure in crash helmet and goggles and dark caped coat. He pulled alongside and waved him down, and Corder pulled in to the edge of the road. Was this Ferguson’s way of keeping him out of it?

  The CRS man pulled in front, got off his heavy BMW machine, and pushed it on its stand. He walked toward the Peugeot, a gloved finger hooked into the trigger guard of the MAT49 machine carbine slung across his chest. He stood looking down at Corder, anonymous in the dark goggles, then pushed them up.

  “A slight change of plan, old son.” Frank Barry grinned. “I lead, you follow.”

  “You’ve called it off?” Corder demanded in astonishment.

  Barry looked mildly surprised. “Jesus, no, why should I do a thing like that?”

  He got back on the BMW and drove away. Corder followed him, totally lost now, not knowing what to do for the best. For a moment Corder fingered the butt of the Walther PPK he carried, not that there was much joy there. He’d never shot anyone in his life. It was unlikely that he could start now.

  About a mile outside St. Etienne, Barry turned into a narrow country lane, and Corder followed, climbing up between high hedgerows past a small farm. There was a grove of trees on the brow of a green hill. Barry waved him down and turned into them. He pushed the BMW up on its stand, and Corder joined him.

  “Look, what’s going on, Frank?”

  “Did I ever tell you about my grandmother on my mother’s side, Jack? Whenever she got a terrible headache there’d be a thunder storm within the hour. Now with me, it’s different. I only get a headache when I smell stinking fish, and I’ve got a real blinder at the moment.”

  Corder went cold. “I don’t understand.”

  “Nice view from up here.” Barry walked through the trees and indicated St. Etienne spread neatly below like a child’s model. The garage and pumps on one side of the road, the cafe and parking lot on the other.

  He took some binoculars from the pocket of his raincoat and passed them across. “Have a look. I have a feeling it may be a bit more interesting to sit this one out.”

  Corder focused the binoculars on the garage. Two men, wearing yellow coveralls, worked on the engine of a car. A third waited in the glass booth beside the pumps, talking to the girl, who stood by the door with the pram, wearing a scarlet head scarf, woolen pullover, and neat skirt.

  “Any sign of the car?” Barry demanded.

  Corder swung the binoculars to examine the road. “No, but there’s a truck coming.”

  “Is there, now? That’s interesting.” The truck was of the trailer type, an eight-wheeler with high green canvas sides. As it entered the village, it slowed and turned into the parking lot. The driver, a tall man in khaki overalls, jumped down from the cab and strolled to the cafe door.

  Barry took the binoculars from Corder and focused them on the truck. “Bouvier Brothers, Long Distance Transport, Paris and Marseilles.”

  “He’ll move on when he finds the cafe is closed,” Corder said.

  “Pigs might fly, old son,” Frank Barry said, “but I doubt it.”

  There was a sudden firestorm from inside the truck at that moment, machine-gun fire raking the entire pavement, shattering the glass of the booth, driving the girl back over the pram, cutting down the two gunmen working on the car, riddling its fuel tank, gasoline spilling on to the concrete. It was the work of an instant, no more. There was a flicker of flame as the gasoline ignited, and then the tank exploded in a ball of fire,
pieces of the wreckage cascading high in the air. The devastation was complete, and at least twenty CRS riot police in uniform leapt from the rear of the truck and ran across the road.

  “Efficient,” Barry said calmly. “You’ve got to give the buggers that.”

  Corder licked dry lips nervously, and his left hand went into the pocket of his leather jacket, groping for the butt of the Walther.

  “What could have gone wrong?”

  “One of those bastards from Marseilles must have had a big mouth,” Barry said. “And if word got back to the Union Corse.…” He shrugged. “Thieving’s one thing, politics is another. They’d inform without a second’s hesitation.” He clapped Corder on the shoulder. “But we’d better get out of this. Just follow my tail, like you did before. Nobody is likely to stop us when they see me escorting you.”

  He pushed the BMW off its stand and rode away. Corder followed. The whole thing was like a bad dream and he could still see, vivid as any image on the movie screen, the body of the girl bouncing back across the pram in a hail of machine-gun fire. And Barry had expected it. Expected it, and yet he had still let those poor sods go through with it.

  He followed the BMW closely, through narrow country lanes, twisting and turning. They met no one, and then, a good ten miles on the other side of St. Etienne, came to a small garage and cafe at the side of the road. Barry turned in beside the cafe and braked to a halt. As Corder joined him, he was taking a canvas grip from one of the side panniers.

  “I know this place,” he said. “There’s a washroom at the back. I’m going to change. We’ll leave the BMW here and carry on in the Peugeot.”

  He went around to the rear before Corder could reply, and the young woman in the booth beside the gas pumps emerged and approached him. She was perhaps twenty-five, with a flat, peasant face, and wore a man’s tweed jacket that was too large for her.

  “Gas, Monsieur?”

  “Is there a telephone?” Corder asked.

  “In the cafe, Monsieur, but it’s not open for business. I’m the only one here today.”

  “I must use it. It’s very urgent.” He pushed a hundred-franc note at her. “Just give me a handful of coins. You keep the rest.”

  She shrugged, went into her office, and opened the register. She came back with the coins. “I’ll show you,” she said.

  The cafe wasn’t much. A few tables and chairs, a counter with bottles of beer and mineral water and rows of glasses ranged behind, and a door that obviously led to the kitchen. The telephone was on the wall, a directory hanging beside it.

  The girl said, “Look, seeing I’m here I’ll make some coffee. Okay?”

  “Fine,” Corder told her.

  She disappeared into the kitchen and he quickly checked in the directory to find the district number to link him with the international line. His fingers were shaking as he dialed the area code for London, followed by the D15 number.

  He didn’t even have time to pray. The receiver was lifted at the other end, and a woman’s voice this time, the day operator, said, “Say who you are.”

  “Lysander,” Corder said urgently. “Clear line, please. I must speak to Brigadier Ferguson at once. Total Priority.”

  And Ferguson’s voice cut in instantly, almost as if he’d been listening in. “Jack, what is it?”

  “Total cock-up, sir. Barry smelt a rat, so he and I stayed out of things. The rest of the team were knocked out by CRS police.”

  “You’ve got clean away, presumably.”

  “Yes.”

  “And does he suspect you?”

  “No—he thinks it’s down to one of those Marseilles hoods speaking out of turn.”

  In the kitchen, Frank Barry, listening on the extension, smiled, faceless in dark goggles. The girl lay on the floor at his feet, blood oozing from an ugly cut in her temple where he had clubbed her with his pistol. He took a Carswell silencer from his pocket and screwed it on to the barrel of his pistol as he walked into the cafe.

  Corder was still talking in a low, urgent voice. “No, I don’t know how much more I can take, that’s the trouble.”

  Barry said softly, “Jack!”

  Corder swung around, and Barry shot him twice through the heart, slamming him back. He bounced off the wall and fell to the floor on his face.

  The receiver dangled on the end of its cord. Barry picked it up and said, “That you, Ferguson, old son? Frank Barry here. If you want Corder back, you’d better send a box for him to Cafe Rosco, St. Julien.”

  “You bastard,” Charles Ferguson said.

  “It’s been said before.”

  Barry replaced the receiver and went out, whistling softly as he unscrewed the silencer. He slipped the pistol back into its holster, pushed the BMW off its stand, and rode away.

  TWO

  It was raining on the following morning when Ferguson’s car dropped him outside Number 10 Downing Street, ten minutes early for his eleven o’clock appointment with the Prime Minister. His driver moved away instantly, and Ferguson crossed the pavement to the entrance. In spite of the rain, there was the usual small crowd of sightseers on the other side of the road, mainly tourists, kept in place by a couple of police constables. Another stood in his usual place by the door, not much protection for the best-known address in England, the seat of political power as well as the Prime Minister’s private residence, but that didn’t mean a thing as Ferguson well knew. There were others, more inconspicuously attired, situated at certain strategic points in the area, ready to swarm in at the first hint of trouble.

  The policeman saluted. The door was opened, even before Ferguson reached it, and he passed inside.

  The young man who greeted him said, “Brigadier Ferguson? This way, sir.”

  There was the hum of activity from the press room on the right as he crossed the entrance hall and entered the corridor leading to the rear of the house and the Cabinet room.

  The main staircase to the first floor was lined with portraits of previous Prime Ministers. Peel, Wellington, Disraeli, Gladstone. Ferguson always felt an acute sense of history as he mounted those stairs, although this was the first time he had done so to meet the present Prime Minister—the first time to explain himself to a woman, and a damn clever woman if it came to that. It was very definitely a new experience. But did anything change? How many attempts had there been to assassinate Queen Victoria? And Disraeli and Gladstone had both had their hands full of Fenians, dynamiters, and anarchists with their bombs, at one time or another.

  On the top corridor, the young man knocked on a door, opened it, and ushered Ferguson inside. “Brigadier Ferguson, Prime Minister,” he said and left, closing the door behind him. The study was more elegant now than Ferguson remembered it, with pale green walls and gold curtains and comfortable furniture in perfect taste. But nothing was more elegant in the entire room than the woman behind the desk with the green leather top. The blue suit with the froth of white lace at the throat perfectly offset the blonde hair. An elegant, handsome woman of the world, and yet the eyes, when she glanced up at Ferguson from the paper she was reading, were hard and intelligent.

  “I’ve had a personal assurance from the French President this morning that this whole wretched business will be hushed up. It never happened. You understand me?”

  “Perfectly, ma’am.”

  She looked at the paper before her. “This agent of yours, Corder. If it hadn’t been for him…” She gestured to a chair. “Sit down, Brigadier. Tell me about him.”

  “We recruited Jack Corder some twelve years ago when he was still an undergraduate at All Souls. The route he chose was to immerse himself totally in left-wing politics. We often hear of moles within our intelligence service working for the Russians, ma’am. Jack was the other side of the coin. He endured prison sentences twice for his apparent militancy. Afterward, I transferred him to the European terrorist scene. Frank Barry was his most important assignment.”

  She nodded. “I’ve already spoken to the Director Gene
ral of D15, and he tells me that as long ago as nineteen seventy-two one of my predecessors authorized the setting up within D15 of a section known as Group Four, which has powers held directly from the Prime Minister, to coordinate the handling of all cases of terrorism, subversion, and the like.”

  “That is correct, Prime Minister.”

  “With you in charge, Brigadier?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” There was a longish pause while she stared down at the paper thoughtfully. Ferguson cleared his throat. “Naturally, if you would prefer to initiate some change, I will offer my resignation without hesitation.”

  “If I want it, I’ll ask for it, Brigadier,” she said sharply. “But you can’t expect me to have much faith in the activities of your section when one of the chief ministers of the Crown comes within an inch of assassination. Now tell me about this man Barry. Why is he so important and, more to the point, how does he remain so elusive?”

  “A brilliant madman, ma’am. A genius in his own way. As important to the international terrorist scene as Carlos, but not so familiar to the public.”

  “And why is that?”

  “A question of his personal psychology. Many terrorists, take some of those involved with the Baader-Meinhof gang, for example, have a craving for public display. They want people to know not only who they are but that they can make fools of the police and intelligence departments they confront any time they wish. Barry doesn’t seem to have a need for that kind of publicity and, as it suits our purposes best to give him none, he has remained an unknown quantity as far as the public is concerned.”

  “What about his personal background?”

  “I’m afraid it couldn’t be worse from the point of view of media sensationalism. He is an Ulsterman by birth. Held a commission as a National Service second lieutenant with the Ulster Rifles. Served in Korea. Excellent record in the field, I might add. He’s a Protestant. His uncle is an Irish peer, Lord Stramore. Much involved in Orange politics for most of his life, but now in ailing health. Barry is his heir.”