'You never know. When she hears the whole story, she might want to. See her anyway, Liam. It can't do any harm.'
'All right,' Devlin said. 'A little breath of French air might do me good.'
'I knew you'd see it my way,' Ferguson said. 'Report to the Air France desk at Dublin Airport. They've got a reservation. When you arrive at Charles de Gaulle, you'll be met by one of my chaps based in Paris. Fella called Hunter - Tony Hunter. He'll see to everything.'
'I'm sure he will,' Devlin said and rang off.
He packed a bag quickly, feeling unaccountably cheerful and was just pulling on his trenchcoat when the phone went again. It was Martin McGuiness. 'A bad business, Liam. What exactly happened?'
Devlin told him and when he was finished, McGuiness exploded. 'So, he exists, this bastard?'
'It would appear so, but more worrying from your point of view is, how did he know Levin was due in? The one man who might be able to identify him.'
'Why ask me?'
'Because Ferguson thinks there's been a leak at your end.'
'Well, screw Ferguson.'
'I wouldn't advise it, Martin. Listen, I've got to go. I've a flight to Paris to catch.'
'Paris? What's there, for Christ's sake?'
'A girl called Tanya Voroninova who might be able to identify Cuchulain. I'll be in touch.'
He put down the receiver. As he picked up his bag, there was a tap on the French windows. They opened and Harry Cussane entered.
Devlin said, 'Sorry, Harry, I must fly or I'll miss my plane.'
'Where on earth are you going?' Cussane demanded.
'Paris.' Devlin grinned and opened the front door. 'Champagne, loose women, incredible food. Don't you think it's just possible you joined the wrong club, Harry?'
The door banged. Cussane listened to the engine of the car start up, turned and ran out through the French windows, round to his cottage at the back of the hospice. He hurried upstairs to the secret room behind the water tanks in the roof where he had the eavesdropping equipment. Quickly, he ran back the tape and listened to the various conversations Devlin had had that day until he came, in the end, to the important one.
By then, of course, it was too late. He cursed softly, went down to use the phone and rang Paul Cherny's number.
IN THE SACRISTY of the village church as he robed for evening Mass, Cussane examined himself in the mirror. Like an actor getting ready for a performance. Next thing, he'd be reaching for the make-up. Who am I, he thought? Who am I, really? Cuchulain, mass murderer, or Harry Cussane, priest? Mikhail Kelly didn't seem to enter into it any more. Only an echo of him now like a half-forgotten dream.
For more than twenty years he had lived multiple lives and yet the separate personae had never inhabited his body. They were roles to be played out as the script dictated, then discarded.
He slipped the stole around his neck and whispered to hisalter ego in the mirror, 'In God's House I am God's priest,' and he turned and went out.
Later, standing at the altar with the candles flickering and the organ playing, there was genuine passion in his voice as he cried, 'I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault.'
And when he struck his breast, asking blessed Mary ever Virgin to pray for him to the Lord our God, there were sudden hot tears in his eyes.
At Charles de Gaulle Airport, Tony Hunter waited beside the exit from customs and immigration. He was a tall man in his mid-thirties with stooped shoulders. The soft brown hair was too long, the tan linen suit creased, and he smoked a Gitane cigarette without once taking it from his mouth as he readParis Soir and kept an eye on the exit. After a while, Devlin appeared. He wore a black Burberry trenchcoat, an old black
felt hat slanted over one ear, and carried one bag.
Hunter, who had pulled Devlin's photo and description off the wire, went to meet him. 'Professor Devlin? Tony Hunter. I've got a car waiting.' They walked towards the exit. 'Was it a good flight?'
'There's no such thing,' Devlin told him. 'About a thousand years ago, I flew from Germany to Ireland in a Dornier bomber on behalf of England's enemies and jumped by parachute from six thousand feet. I've never got over it.'
They reached Hunter's Peugeot in the car park and as they drove away, Hunter said, 'You can stay the night with me. I've got an apartment on the Avenue Foch.'
'Doing well for yourself, son, if you're living there. I didn't know Ferguson handed out bags of gold.'
'You know Paris well?'
'You could say that.'
'The apartment's my own, not the Department's. My father died last year. Left me rather well off.'
'What about the girl? Is she staying at the Soviet Embassy?'
'Good God, no. They've got her at the Ritz. She's something of a star, you see. Plays rather well. I heard her do a Mozart concerto the other night. Forgotten which one, but she was excellent.'
'They tell me she's free to come and go?'
'Oh, yes, absolutely. The fact that her foster father is General Maslovsky takes care of that. I followed her all over the place this morning. Luxembourg Gardens, then lunch on one of those boat trips down the Seine. From what I hear, her only commitment tomorrow is a rehearsal at the Conservatoire during the afternoon.'
'Which means the morning is the time to make contact?'
'I should have thought so.' They were well into Paris by now, just passing the Gare du Nord. Hunter added, 'There's a bagman due in from London on the breakfast shuttle with documentation Ferguson's having rushed through. Forged passport. Stuff like that.'
Devlin laughed out loud. 'Does he think all I have to do is ask and she'll come?' He shook his head. 'Mad, that one.'
'All in how it's put to her,' Hunter suggested.
'True,' Devlin told him. 'On the other hand, it would probably be a damned sight easier to slip something in her tea.'
It was Hunter's turn to laugh now. 'You know, I like you, Professor, and I'd started off by not wanting to.'
'And why could that be?' Devlin wondered, interested.
'I was a captain in the Rifle Brigade. Belfast, Derry, South Armagh.'
'Ah, I see what you mean.'
'Four tours between nineteen seventy-two and seventy-eight.'
'And that was four tours too many.'
'Exactly. Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, they can give Ulster back to the Indians.'
'The best idea I've heard tonight,' Liam Devlin told him cheerfully and he lit a cigarette and sprawled back in the passenger seat, felt hat tilted over his eyes.
At that moment in his office at KGB Headquarters in Dzerhin-sky Square, Lieutenant-General Ivan Maslovsky was seated at his desk, thinking about the Cuchulain affair. Cherny's message passed on by Lubov, had reached Moscow only a couple of hours earlier. For some reason it made him think back all those years to Drumore in the Ukraine and Kelly in the rain with a gun in his hand, the man who wouldn't do as he was told.
The door opened and his aide, Captain Igor Kurbsky, came in with a cup of coffee for him. Maslovsky drank it slowly. 'Well, Igor, what do you think?'
'I think Cuchulain has done a magnificent job, Comrade General, for so very many years. But now...'
'I know what you mean,' Maslovsky said. 'Now that British Intelligence knows he exists it's only a matter of time until they run him down.'
'And Cherny they could pull in at any time.'
There was a knock at the door and an orderly appeared
with a signal message. Kurbsky took it and dismissed him. 'It's for you, sir. From Lubov in Dublin.'
'Read it!' Maslovsky ordered.
The gist of the message was that Devlin was proceeding to Paris with the intention of meeting with Tanya Voroninova. At the mention of his foster-daughter's name, Maslovsky stood up and snatched the signal from Kurbsky's hands. It was no secret, the enormous affection the General felt for his foster-daughter, especially since the death of his wife. In some quarters he was known as a butcher, but Tanya Voroninova he truly loved.
'Right,' he said to Kurbsky. 'Who's our best man at the Paris Embassy? Belov, isn't it?'
'Yes, Comrade.'
'Send a message tonight. Tanya's concert tour is cancelled. No arguments. Full security as regards her person until she can be returned safely to Moscow.'
'And Cuchulain?'
'Has served his purpose. A great pity.'
'Do we pull him in?'
'No, not enough time. This one needs instant action. Signal Lubov at once in Dublin. I want Cuchulain eliminated. Cherny also, and the sooner the better.'
'If I might point out, I don't think Lubov has had much experience on the wet side of things.'
'He's had the usual training, hasn't he? In any case, they won't be expecting it which should make the whole thing rather easier.'
In Paris, the coding machine in the intelligence section of the Soviet Embassy started whirring. The operator waited until the message had passed line-by-line across the screen. She carefully unloaded the magnetic tape which had recorded the message and took it to the night supervisor.
'This is an Eyes Only signal from KGB, Moscow, for Colonel Belov.'
'He's out of town,' the supervisor said. 'Lyons, I think. Due
back tomorrow afternoon. You'll have to hold it anyway. It requires his personal key to decode it.'
The operator logged the tape, placed it in her data drawer and went back to work.
In Dublin, Dimitri Lubov had been enjoying an evening at the Abbey Theatre, an excellent performance of Brendan Behan'sThe Hostage. Supper afterwards at a well known fish restaurant on the Quays meant that it was past midnight when he returned to the Embassy and found the signal from Moscow.
Even when he'd read it for the third time, he still couldn't believe it. He was to dispose not only of Cherny, but Cussane, and within the next twenty-four hours. His hands were sweating, trembling slightly, which was hardly surprising for in spite of his years in the KGB and all that dedicated training, the plain fact was that Dimitri Lubov had never killed anyone in his life.
Tanya Voroninova came out of the bathroom of her suite at the Ritz as the room waiter brought her breakfast tray in; tea, toast and honey, which was exactly what she'd asked for. She wore a khaki-green jumpsuit and brown boots of soft leather and the combination gave her a vaguely military appearance. She was a small, dark, intense girl with untidy black hair which she constantly had to push back from her eyes. She regarded it with disfavour in the gilt mirror above the fireplace and twisted it into a bun at the nape of her neck, then she sat down and started on breakfast.
There was a knock on the door and her tour secretary, Natasha Rubenova came in. She was a pleasant, grey-haired woman in her mid-forties. 'How are you feeling this morning?'
'Fine. I slept very well.'
'Good. You're wanted at the Conservatoire at two-thirty. Complete run-through.'
'No problem,' Tanya said.
'Are you going out this morning?'
'Yes, I'd like to spend some time at the Louvre. "We've been so busy during this visit that it might be my last opportunity.'
'Do you want me to come with you?'
'No thanks. I'll be fine. I'll see you back here for lunch at one o'clock.'
It was a fine soft morning when she left the hotel and went down the steps at the front entrance. Devlin and Hunter were waiting in the Peugeot on the far side of the boulevard.
'Looks as if she's walking,' Hunter said.
Devlin nodded. 'Follow her for a while then we'll see.'
Tanya carried a canvas bag slung from her left shoulder and she walked at quite a fast pace, enjoying the exercise. She was playing Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto that night. The piece was a particular favourite so that she had none of the usual nervous tension that she sometimes experienced, like most artists, before a big concert.
But then, she was something of an old hand at the game now. Since her successes in both the Leeds and Tchaikovsky festivals she had steadily established'an international reputation. There had been little time for anything else. On the one occasion she had fallen in love, she'd been foolish enough to choose a young military doctor on attachment to an airborne brigade. He'd been killed in action in Afghanistan the year before.
The experience, though harrowing, had not broken her. She had given one of her greatest performances on the night that she had received the news, but she had withdrawn from men, there was no doubt about that. There was too much hurt involved and it would not have needed a particularly bright psychiatrist to find out why. In spite of success and fame and the privileged life her position brought her; in spite of having constantly at her shoulder the powerful presence of Maslovsky, she was still, in many ways, the little girl on
