Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (190 page)

"Can you hear me?" The accent was foreign.

"Yes, sir."

"Listen carefully. Gilly O'Shaughnessy has hen" No,
it was an imitation, the foreign accept slipped a little with the pronunciation of the name.

"Gilly O'Shaughnessy,"the police girl repeated.

"That's right. He's holding her at Laragh."

"Spell that, please."

Again the accent slipped as the man spelled the name.

"And where is that, sir?"

"County Wicklow, Ireland."

"Thank you,
sir. What is your name, please?" There was the clack of a broken connection and the hum of the dialling tone. The girl shrugged, and scribbled the message on the pad before her, glancing at her wristwatch simultaneously.

"Seven minutes to tea time," she said. "Roll on death, battle with the angels." She tore the sheet off the pad and passed it over her shoulder to the burly, curly-headed sergeant who sat behind her.

"I'll buy you a sticky bun, "he promised.

"I'm on a diet, "she sighed.

"That's daft, you look a treat-" The sergeant broke off.

Gil ly O'Shaughnessy. Why do I know that name?" The older sergeant looked up sharply.

"Gilly O'Shaughnessy?" he demanded. "Let me see that." And he snatched the sheet, scanning it swiftly, his lips moving as he read the message. Then he looked up again.

"You know the name because you've seen it on the wanted posters,
and heard it on the telly. Gilly O'Shaughnessy, strew the man, he's the one who bombed the Red Lion at Leicester, and shot the Chief Constable in Belfast." The curly-headed policeman whistled softly. "This looks like a hot one. A real hot one-" But his colleague was already barging into the inner office without the formality of knocking.

Richards had the connection to the Dublin police within seven minutes.

"Impress upon them that there must be no attempt-" Peter fretted,
while they waited, and Richards cut him short.

"All right, General. Leave this to me. I understand what has to be done-- At that moment the Dublin connection was made, and Richards was transferred quickly to a Deputy, Commissioner. He spoke quietly and earnestly for nearly ten minutes before he replaced the receiver.

"They will use the local constabulary, not to waste time in sending a man down from Dublin. I have their promise that no approach will be made if a suspect is located." Peter nodded his thanks.

"Laragh," he said. "I have never heard of it. It cannot have a population of more than a few hundred."

"I've sent for a map," Richards told him, and when it came they studied it together.

"It's on the slopes of the Wicklow hills ten miles from the coast-" And that was about all there was to learn from the large-scale map.

"We'll just have to wait for the Dublin police to call back-"

"No," Peter shook his head. "I want you to call them again, and ask them to contact the surveyor-general. He must have trig maps of the village, aerial photographs, street layouts. Ask them to get them down with a driver to Enniskerry Airfield-"

"Should we do that now? What if this turns out to be another false alarm."

"We'll have wasted a gallon of petrol and the driver's time-" Peter was no longer able to sit still, he jumped out of the chair and began to pace restlessly about the office; it was too small for him suddenly, he felt as though he were on the point of suffocation. "I don't think it is, however. I
have the smell of it. The smell of the beast."

Richards looked startled and Peter deprecated the exaggerated phrase with a dismissive gesture. "A manner of speech" he explained,
and then stopped as a thought struck him. "The helicopters will have to refuel, they haven't got the range to make it in one hop, and they are so bloody slow!" He paused and reached a decision, then leaned across Richards's desk to pick up the telephone and dialled Colin
Noble's private number at Thor.

"(2bun." He spoke curtly with the tension that gripped him like a mailed fist. "We've just had a contact. It's still unconfirmed, but it looks the best yet."

"Where?" Colin broke in eagerly.

"Ireland."

"That's to hell and gone."

"Right, what's the flight time for the whirlybirds to reach Enniskerry?"

"Stand by." Peter heard him talking to somebody else probably one of the RAF. pilots. He came back within the minute.

"They will have to refuel en route--2 eyes?" Peter demanded impatiently "Four and a half hours,"Colin told him.

"It's twenty past ten now almost three o'clock before they reach
Enniskerry. With this weather it will be dark before five." Peter thought furiously; if they sent the Thor team all the way to Ireland on a false trail and while they were there the correct contact was made in Scotland, or Holland, or'It's got the smell. It's got to be right,"
he told himself, and took a deep breath. He could not order Colin
Noble to go to Bravo. Peter was no longer commander of Thor.

"Colin," he said. "I think this is it. I have the deep-down gut feel for it. Will you trust me and go to Bravo now? If we wait even another half hour we'll not get Melissa-Jane out before nightfall if she is there."
its There was a long silence, broken only by Colin Noble's light quick breath.

"Hell, it can only cost me my job," he said easily at last.
okay, Pete baby, it's Bravo, we'll be airborne in five minutes.

We'll pick you up from the helipad in fifteen minutes; be ready." The cloud was breaking up, but the wind was still bitter and spiteful, and up on the exposed helipad it cut cruelly through Peter's trench coat,
blazer and roll-neck jersey. They looked out across the churned surface of the River Thames, eyes watering in the wind, for the first glimpse of the helicopters.

"What if we have a confirmation before you reach Enniskerry?"

"You can reach us on the RAF frequencies, through Biggin Hill," Peter told him.

"I hope I don't have bad news for you." Richards was holding his bowler hat in place with one hand, the skirts of his jacket slapping around his skinny rump and his face blotchy with the cold.

The two ungainly craft came clattering in, low over the rooftops,
hanging on the whirling silver coins of their rotors.

At a hundred feet Peter could plainly recognize the broad shape of
Colin Noble in the open doorway of the fuselage, just forward of the brilliant RAF. rounders, and the down draught of the rotors boiled the air about them. "Good hunting." Richards raised his voice to a shout. "I wish I
was coming with you." Peter ran forward lightly, and jumped before the helicopter gear touched the concrete pad. Colin caught him by the upper arm and helped to swing him aboard without removing the cheroot from his wide mouth.

"Welcome aboard, buddy. Now let's get this circus on the road. "And he hitched the big .45 pistol on his hip.

"She's not eating." The doctor came through from the inner room and scraped the plate into the rubbish bin below the sink. "I'm worried about her. Very worried." Gilly O'Shaughnessy grunted but did not look up from his own plate. He broke a crust off the slice of bread and very carefully wiped up the last of the tomato ketchup. He popped the bread into his mouth and followed it with a gulp of steaming tea, and while he chewed it all together, he leaned back on the kitchen chair and watched the other man.

The doctor was on the verge of cracking up. He would probably not last out the week before his nerve went completely; Gilly O'Shaughnessy had seen better men go to pieces under less strain.

He realized then that his own nerves were wearing away.

It was more than just the rain and the waiting that was working on him. He had been the fox for all of his life, and he had developed the instincts of the hunted animal. He could sense danger, the presence of the pursuers, even when there was no real evidence. It made him restless to stay longer in one place than was necessary, especially when he was on a job. He had been here twelve days, and it was far too long. The more he thought about it the more uneasy he became. Why had they insisted he bring the brat to this isolated, and therefore conspicuous, little dead-end? There was only one road in and out of the village, a single avenue of escape. Why had they insisted that he sit and wait it out in this one place? He would have liked to keep moving. If he had had the running of it, he would have bought a second-hand caravan, and kept rolling from one park to another his attention wandered for a few moments as he thought how he would have done it if he had been given the planning of it.

He lit a cigarette and gazed out of the rain-blurred window panes,
hardly aware of the muttered complaints and misgivings of his companion. What they should have done was crop the brat's fingers and bottle all of them to send to her father at intervals, and then they should have held a pillow over her face and buried her in the vegetable garden or weighted her and dumped her out beyond the hundred fathom line of the Irish Sea that way they would not have had to bother with a doctor, and the nursing Everything else had been done with professional skill, starting with the contact they had made with him in the favela of Rio de Janeiro, where he was hiding out in a sleazy one-room shack with the half-caste Indian woman, and down to his last fifty quid.

That had given him a real start, he thought he had covered his tracks completely, but they had him made.

They had the passport and travel papers in the name of Barry, and they did not look like forgeries. They were good papers, he was sure of it, and he knew a lot about papers.

Everything else had been as well planned, and swiftly delivered.

The money a thousand pounds in Rio, another five thousand the day after they grabbed the brat, and he was confident that the final ten would be there as it was promised. It was better than an English gaol,

the "Silver City" as the Brits called their concentration camp at the
Maze. That was what Caliph had promised, if he didn't take the job.

Caliph, now that was a daft name, Gilly O'Shaughnessy decided for the fiftieth time as he dropped the stub of his cigarette into the dregs of his teacup and it was extinguished with a sharp hiss. A real daft name, but somehow it had the ability to put a chill on the blood,
and he shivered not only from the cold.

He stood up and crossed to the kitchen window. It had all been done with such speed and purpose and planning everything so clearly thought out, that when there was a lapse it was more troubling.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy had the feeling that Caliph did nothing without good reason then why had they been ordered to back themselves into this dangerously exposed bottleneck, without the security of multiple escape routes, and to sit here and wait?

He picked up the cyclist cape and tweed cap. "Where are you going?" the doctor demanded anxiously. "I'm going to take a shufti,"Gilly O'Shaughnessy grunted as he pulled the cap down over his eyes.

"You're always prowling around," the doctor protested.

"You make me nervous." The dark Irishman pulled the pistol from under his jacket and checked the load before thrusting it back into his belt.

"You just go on playing nursemaid," he said brusquely. "And leave the man's work to me." The small black Austin crawled slowly up the village street, and the rain hammered on the cab and bonnet in tiny white explosions that blurred the outline, giving the machine a softly focused appearance, and the streaming windscreen effectively hid the occupants.

It was only when the Austin parked directly in front of Laragh's only grocery store and both front doors opened that the curiosity of watchers from behind the curtained windows all down the street was satisfied.

The two members of the Irish constabulary wore the service blue winter uniform with darker epaulettes. The soft rain speckled the patent leather peaks of their caps as they hurried into the shoP.

"Good morning, Maeve, me old love," the sergeant greeted the plump red-faced lady behind the counter.

"Owen O'Neill, I do declare-" She chuckled as she recognized the sergeant there had been a time, thirty years before, when the two of them had given the priest some fine pickings at the confessional. "And what brings you all the way up from the big city?" That was a generous description of the quaint seaside resort town of Wicklow, fifteen miles down the road.

"The sight of your blooming smile-2 They chatted like old friends for ten minutes, and her husband came through from the little storeroom when he heard the rattle of teacups.

"So what is new in Laragh, then?" the sergeant asked at last.

"Any new faces in the village?"

"No, all the same faces. Nothing changes in Laragh, bless the Lord for that." The shopkeeper wagged his head. "No, indeed only new face is the one down at the Old Manse, he and his lady friend-" he winked knowingly but seeing as how he's a stranger, we aren't after counting him." The sergeant ponderously delved for his notebook, opened it and extracted a photograph from it;

it was the usual side view and full face of police records. He held the name covered with his thumb as he showed it to them.

"No." The woman shook her head positively. "Himself down at the manse is ten years older than that, and he does not have a mustache."

"This was taken ten years ago," said the sergeant.

"Oh, well, why didn't you say so." She nodded. "Then that's him.

That's Mr. Barry for certain sure."

"The Old Manse, you say." The sergeant seemed to inflate visibly with importance, as he put the photograph back into his notebook. "I'm going to have to use your telephone now, dear."

"Where will you be after telephoning?" The shopkeeper asked suspiciously.

"Dublin," the sergeant told him. "It's police business."

"I'll have to charge you for the call," the shopkeeper warned him quickly.

"There," said the wife as they watched the sergeant making his request to the girl on the village switchboard. "I told you he had the look of trouble, didn't I? The first time I laid eyes on him I knew he was from up in the North, and carrying trouble like the black angel."