by Jack Higgins
Barry picked up a rental car at Manchester airport, a Ford Cortina, and was driving it through Lancaster, turning on to the M6 motorway and heading north from the Lake District within twenty minutes of leaving his KGB contact on Morecambe pier. He drove for some ten or twelve miles, then turned into a convenient rest stop, cut the engine, and opened the briefcase.
There was, as the young man had said, everything he needed. His contact at a place called Marsh End, south of Ravenglass on the Cumbrian coast, all very convenient for the Wastwater proving ground. Details of the rendezvous for Thursday night—they’d provided a deep-sea trawler for that from the Russian northern fishing fleet. And, of course, the young man’s number in London. Even more interesting was the pistol with the silencer screwed on the end, a Czech Ceska 7.5mm. There were also several additional clips of ammunition and fifty thousand pounds in twenty-pound notes, neatly packeted.
“Well, would you look at that, now?” Barry said softly, hefting the Ceska in one hand.
He slipped it into his raincoat pocket. He closed the briefcase, placing it on the passenger seat beside him with the typed list on top and drove away. Occasionally, he glanced at the list memorizing the details it contained, line by line. An hour later, he left the M6 at Levens Bridge and pulled into a roadside cafe. He went into the men’s room, locked himself in a stall, lit a cigarette, and touched the lighter flame to the list. Only when it was reduced to dark ashes did he drop it into the toilet bowl to flush away. Then he went outside, got back into the car and took the road to Broughton-in-Furness and the Cumbrian coast, whistling softly through his teeth.
Kim opened the door of Ferguson’s sitting room and ushered Tony Villiers and Liam Devlin inside. Ferguson was at his desk, Harry Fox standing beside him. Ferguson glanced up, peering at the two men over his half-moon spectacles, then he removed them slowly.
Tony Villiers’ dark reefer hung from his shoulders, loosely buttoned. Underneath, he was swathed in bandages, his left arm in a sling. His face was white and drawn, lines of pain deeply etched there in spite of the injection they’d given him at the military wing of Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast.
“Professor Devlin, sir, as ordered,” he said.
“Now then, you old bastard,” Devlin said amiably. “You’ve got a good lad here and you not deserving it.”
Ferguson got to his feet. “You should be in the hospital, Captain, now, and that’s an order. See to it, Harry. Get my car.”
Villiers swayed, and Devlin moved in fast and got an arm around him. “Easy boy, you’ve done enough and more.”
Villiers managed to smile. “Damn it, professor, but I like you. I really do, and that’s a hell of a thing to say considering the situation.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” Devlin told him. “It’s only the uniform I’m not too happy about, not the man wearing it.”
Harry Fox had Villiers by the elbow. “All right, let’s go.”
As he opened the door Villiers said, “One thing, professor. You could have killed me and you didn’t. Why?”
“The terrible waste that would have been,” Devlin said, and suddenly the blue eyes were bleak. “And hasn’t there been waste enough?” Villiers stared at him, frowning, and Devlin laughed. “Go on, boy, out of it, before I totally corrupt you.”
The door closed behind them, and Devlin turned to face Ferguson, unbuckling the belt of his dark trenchcoat. “So, here we are.”
“Here we are indeed.”
“Would there be any chance of a cup of tea, would you think? It’s been a hell of a journey.”
Ferguson smiled and flicked the intercom.
“Tea, Kim. My usual and another pot, extra strong, Irish variety.” He turned back to Devlin. “Satisfactory?”
“As long as I can stand up a spoon in it.”
He helped himself to a cigarette from a box on Ferguson’s desk, lit it, and sprawled in one of the chairs by the fire. “They do you well, D15, I must say.”
The door opened, and Kim, followed by Harry Fox, came in with the tea on a silver tray. “I’ve packed him straight off in the Bentley to the special wing at Melbury House, sir,” Fox said. “I’ve rung through and notified Colonel Jackson that he’s on his way.”
“Good,” Ferguson said. “And let’s make sure he gets only the best.”
Kim withdrew, and Devlin helped himself to the tea. “And whom have we here?”
“Captain Fox is my personal aide,” Ferguson said.
Devlin’s eyes took in the gloved hand. “And not much time for people like me, I should imagine.”
“Not really,” Fox said.
“That’s fine, boy. Just so we know where we stand.”
There was silence. Ferguson got up and peered out of the window into the square. “You’re in a bad hole, Devlin, you realize that, don’t you? There are outstanding crimes listed against you which would draw you twenty years at least, if not life. How does the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey appeal to you?”
Devlin laughed out loud. “Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Brigadier. I’m not standing in the dock at the Bailey or anywhere else. You know it, I know it, and so does the boy here, if he has an ounce of sense. I was taken against my will, from one sovereign state to another, kidnapped by British troops, carried over the border from the Republic of Ireland into Ulster. Now, I know things haven’t been going too well between our two wonderful countries, but if you think the British Cabinet is going to want the stink that this would cause, all the way up to the United Nations, you’ve lost your marbles.”
He was right. He knew it, and so did they. It was Harry Fox who put it into words. “He’s got a point, sir. There’s no way we can make this work against his will. If he won’t play, we’ll have to send him back.”
“Don’t be a fool, Harry. I’ve known that all along,” Ferguson said.
“So,” Devlin said. “Let’s be having it.”
Ferguson said calmly, “When did you last see Brosnan?”
Devlin’s eyes were wary. “Martin? Four years ago.”
“That’s right, February, nineteen seventy-five, when you sent him to France. Since when he’s taken up permanent residence in a very unpleasant establishment called Belle Isle off the French Mediterranean coast, which you may have heard of.”
“A small corner in hell, so they tell me,” Devlin said.
“Aptly put, and he’s there for life. An establishment like Alcatraz, which proudly boasts that no one has ever escaped from it.”
“So?”
“What if I could get him out?”
Devlin frowned. “And how would you do that?”
“Some sort of deal with the French authorities.”
“But why would you? Why should you go to the trouble?”
“Frank Barry.”
There was total amazement on Devlin’s face. “Frank Barry?” he said. “And what in the name of Christ has he to do with it?”
“Well, if you can keep that Irish tongue of yours still for fifteen minutes, I’ll tell you.”
Devlin walked up and down the room, the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, smoke curling. “All right?” he said. “A fine mad bastard, Frank Barry is. I’ll not deny that or my personal dislike of the man, but it’s your flesh he’s the thorn in and nailing him to the cross is your affair—not Martin Brosnan’s and certainly not mine.”
“Frank Barry is at war with the world, Mr. Devlin,” Harry Fox said.
Devlin laughed. “Oh, but you have a way with the words, Captain. Is there just a touch of Irish in your blood somewhere?”
“Be reasonable, Devlin,” Ferguson said. “Barry’s activities never exactly helped your cause. You’ve got to admit that. He’s done as much as anyone to blacken your image in his time, and that was before the suggestion that his advice was used on the Mountbatten affair. One of the worst things that ever happened to the IRA as far as world opinion was concerned.”
“I’m with you there,” Devlin s
aid. “But you’re wrong in one respect. It isn’t my cause any longer.”
Fox was thunderstruck. “You mean that?”
Devlin nodded. “Oh, I’m still one hundred percent for a united Ireland, but ten years is enough as far as I’m concerned. Too many dead, Captain. A bloody charnel house, and what have we got to show for it? Frankly, I think you’ll find Martin Brosnan to be of the same opinion.”
“Put it to him,” Ferguson said. “Go and see him, that’s all I ask.”
“And how could that be arranged?”
Ferguson nodded to Harry Fox, who opened a file and took out a British passport which he pushed across the desk. Devlin picked it up. It was in the name of Charles Gorman and when he opened it his own picture stared out at him.
“And who would Charles Gorman be?”
“A highly respectable lawyer with offices in Lincoln’s Inn, visiting Brosnan to discuss legal matters in connection with the family business and also the possibility of an appeal for clemency.”
Devlin shook his head in amazement. “Are you trying to tell me I’m expected or something?”
“Certainly. Tuesday morning, day after tomorrow. You catch the prison supply boat from a place called St. Denis, along the coast from Marseilles.”
Devlin tapped the passport with a finger, frowning. “To set up a thing like this must have taken some pull over there in France, even for you.”
“Not really,” Ferguson said. “The right SDECE contact. Colonel Guyon, who heads Service Five now, has a vested interest in running Frank Barry to earth himself, particularly after the attempt to assassinate Lord Carrington on French soil. It’s through his influence that your appointment to see Brosnan was arranged so expeditiously.”
“Service Five?” Devlin grimaced. “They could have given Himmler and his bunch a run for their money. The way I hear it, they enjoy playing with electricity.”
“Yes, well, we don’t exactly have much choice, do we?”
“And Guyon can arrange Martin’s release, is that what you’re saying?”
“Not at all.” Ferguson shook his head. “That would take some delicate negotiations at a rather higher level. No, for the moment all I want you to do is see Brosnan and find out if he’ll agree in principle.”
“To what? Freedom, if he agrees to hunt down Frank Barry and act as a kind of public executioner for you!”
“Why not? A simple enough quid pro quo, or do you really think he’d rather spend the rest of his life in a cell on Belle Isle.”
Devlin shook his head. “I don’t know about this. To start with, you’re making a mistake to think Frank Barry would welcome him with open arms. They always disliked each other. Martin thought him a butcher from the beginning and told him so. On the other hand, he’s a very complex man, our Martin. The killer’s hand is the instinctual part of him that he hasn’t been able to control since Vietnam, but up here,” he tapped his forehead, “is a scholar, philosopher, and poet of no mean distinction. You could never tell which way he’d jump.”
“You mean he needs to be angry?” Ferguson said. “I think I can arrange that, too.” Fox took a photo from the file and passed it across.
The girl in it sat on a sand dune with tall grass around her, hugging her knees, face pushed forward, laughing. She was no more than seventeen, with shoulder-length black hair and a face of extraordinary beauty. Devlin’s own face was very pale as he picked the photo up.
“You recognize her?” Ferguson asked.
“Yes,” Devlin said softly. “Norah Cassidy, Martin’s cousin once removed, a nice Belfast girl.”
“And what happened to her?”
“She died a year back, so I believe. In France.” Devlin passed a hand over his face, then froze.
“France?” he whispered. “And just what are you getting at now, Ferguson?”
“She went to the Sorbonne to study French in nineteen seventy-six,” Ferguson said. “As you might expect from a girl with her political views, she soon made contact with various extremist political organizations at the university, and then Frank Barry appeared on the scene.”
“Barry?” Devlin said. “Barry and Norah? I don’t believe it.”
“She was his mistress for over a year, but Belfast had left its mark. Like many young women from that city, she’d been on tranquilizers for years. In Barry’s company, she progressed to harder drugs. Finally, she was mainlining on heroin. She became more and more dependent on the drug, which suited Barry because it made her more and more dependent on him. The police almost caught him on a farm in Normandy just over a year ago. He escaped by the skin of his teeth but dumped her.”
“The bastard,” Devlin said.
“What you’re going to see now isn’t nice, but I think it necessary.” Ferguson nodded to Fox. “Now, Harry.”
There was a television set in the corner, a video machine underneath it. Fox switched it on, and Ferguson said, “I got this through Guyon from French intelligence. As I said, not nice, but there it is.”
The video rolled for a moment then focused. Norah Cassidy’s face filled the screen, ravaged, wasted, only a hint of that smiling girl in the photo. She was crying helplessly, and the camera pulled back to show her being held by two nurses. One of them pushed up the wide sleeve of the hospital robe and the camera moved in to show the dozens of tracks on her arm from the heroin fixes, running sores most of them.
The scene changed. She was in bed now, a narrow hospital cot in a white room, straps across the bed to control her as she thrashed wildly. The scene cut sharply to be replaced by another close-up of the face, in total repose, relaxed, at peace, only she wasn’t sleeping—she was dead, and the camera pulled back to reveal her lying naked on a mortuary slab, her head cradled on a wooden block. The pathologist leaned over her with a scalpel.
Ferguson said, “That’ll do, Harry, no need to prolong the agony.”
Fox hurriedly switched off the video. Devlin turned to the window, tears in his eyes. He stayed there, shoulders hunched. He said quietly, “I’m going to be sick. Where’s the bathroom?”
“Straight through that door,” Ferguson told him, and Fox hurried to hold it open for him.
Devlin went out, and Fox removed the video from the machine, crossed slowly to Ferguson’s desk, and laid it down carefully.
“You know something, sir?” His voice was shaky. “On the whole, I think I’d really prefer to be back in Belfast.”
“I know, Harry, I know. A dirty, dirty business—you’ll find that out the longer you’re in it, but someone has to do it.”
The door opened and Devlin came back in. He went to the sideboard and helped himself to a large Scotch and stood there, savoring it.
“Martin loved that girl like a sister, you know that? In August sixty-nine in the Falls Road, she carried ammunition to us under fire. She was all of twelve years old then.”
Ferguson said, “You’ll go?”
“Oh, yes,” Devlin said in a low voice. “I think you could say that.”
“Good, You can phone whoever you have to at Trinity College from here. Tell them you’re taking extended leave or something—-anything you like. You can stay at Harry’s flat tonight and fly on to Marseilles tomorrow, Papers, money, everything you need’ll be provided with. You’ve got two days, then I want you back here.”
“Fine by me,” Devlin said.
“We think Barry’s Russian contact in Paris is a man called Nikolai Belov. Supposed to be a cultural attaché at the Soviet embassy. Actually a colonel in the KGB. There’s the address of his apartment in St. Germain in Paris and a photo.”
He passed them across, and Devlin examined the photo, frowning. “Surely French intelligence knows about this man?”
“Of course.”
“Then why don’t they do something about him?”
“Officially he’s a diplomat, so they’d have to catch him at it. And we have reason to believe that the KGB is still well entrenched within French intelligence. I think he’s got fri
ends there. One more thing that may help.” Ferguson held up the old Paris-Match photo of Devlin, Brosnan, and Frank Barry. “Remember the girl who took this?”
“Anne-Marie Audin.” Devlin took the photo from him. “Nineteen seventy-one. Belfast was crawling with journalists in those days, all of them wanting stories—secret interviews with the gallant lads of the IRA. She scooped them all, that girl.”
“But then she would, wouldn’t she?” Ferguson said. “After all, she’d known him in Vietnam. All she had to do was put the word out in Belfast that she was there. She must have known he’d contact her.”
“Exactly,” Devlin said. “She stayed with us for a week, and a hell of a time of it she had, but what a story.”
“She visited him twice in Dublin,” Ferguson said. “They met again, in Paris at least once. Rather more than journalistic interest, I’d say.”
“That’s her business,” Devlin said flatly.
“Well, she is thirty-three and still unmarried. She’s also in London this weekend on an assignment for the French edition of Vogue. Do you think it’s worth seeing her? After all, she’s hardly likely to call copper on you.”
“No, she wouldn’t do that.” Devlin remembered those heady days in 1971, hustling through the Armagh countryside by night, crashing an army roadblock, bullets shattering the windows of their car, and flinging himself on Anne-Marie, holding her safe against the floor.
“Good,” Ferguson said. “Arrange it then, Harry.” He pushed the phone across to Devlin. “Only one more thing to do then. Ring the university and make your excuses.”
Devlin picked up the receiver and held it for a moment. “You know, there’s an old Irish saying. Touch the Devil and you can’t let go.”
“Interesting,” Ferguson said. “And what exactly does it mean?”
“Oh, I think you know well enough. You and me, the boy here, Martin in his cell. Frank Barry. None of us can stop, can we? There’s no going back. Bloody undertakers the lot of us, always carrying some poor bugger out in a coffin.” He started to dial. “The trouble is, you see, that we’re not playing the game anymore. The game’s playing us.”