Eye of the Storm (21 page)

Liam Devlin came in from the kitchen with tea things on a tray. “My housekeeper comes mornings only. One of the good sisters from the convent next door. They need the money.”

Mary Tanner was totally astonished. She’d expected an old man and found herself faced with this ageless creature in black silk Italian shirt, black pullover, gray slacks in the latest fashionable cut. There was still considerable color in hair that had once been black and the face was pale, but she sensed that had always been so. The blue eyes were extraordinary, as was that perpetual ironic smile with which he seemed to laugh at himself as much as at the world.

“So, you work for Ferguson, girl?” he said to Mary as he poured the tea.

“That’s right.”

“That business in Derry the other year when you moved that car with the bomb. That was quite something.”

She felt herself flushing. “No big deal, Mr. Devlin, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“Oh, we can all see that on occasions; it’s the doing that counts.” He turned to Brosnan. “Anne-Marie. A bad business, son.”

“I want him, Liam,” Brosnan said.

“For yourself or for the general cause?” Devlin shook his head. “Push the personal thing to one side, Martin, or you’ll make mistakes, and that’s something you can’t afford to do with Sean Dillon.”

“Yes, I know,” Brosnan said. “I know.”

“So, he intends to take a crack at this John Major fella, the new Prime Minister?” Devlin said.

“And how do you think he’s likely to do that, Mr. Devlin?” Mary asked.

“Well, from what I hear about security at Ten Downing Street these days, I wouldn’t rate his chances of getting in very high.” He looked at Brosnan and grinned. “Mind you, Mary, my love, I remember a young fella of my acquaintance called Martin Brosnan who got into Number Ten posing as a waiter at a party not ten years ago. Left a rose on the Prime Minister’s desk. Of course, the office was held by a woman then.”

Brosnan said, “All in the past, Liam, what about now?”

“Oh, he’ll work as he always has, using contacts in the underworld.”

“Not the IRA?”

“I doubt whether the IRA has any connection with this whatsoever.”

“But they did last time he worked in London ten years ago.”

“So?”

“I was wondering. If we knew who recruited him that time, it could help.”

“I see what you mean, give you some sort of lead as to who he worked with in London?”

“All right, not much of a chance, but the only one we’ve got, Liam.”

“There’s still your friend Flood in London.”

“I know, and he’ll pull out all the stops, but that takes time and we don’t have much to spare.”

Devlin nodded. “Right, son, you leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do.” He glanced at his watch. “One o’clock. We’ll have a sandwich and perhaps a Bushmills together, and I suggest you go to your Lear jet and hare back to London. I’ll be in touch, believe me, the minute I have something.”

 

Dillon parked round the corner from Jack Harvey’s funeral business in Whitechapel and walked, the briefcase in one hand. Everything was beautifully discreet, down to the bell push that summoned the day porter to open the door.

“Mr. Harvey,” Dillon lied cheerfully. “He’s expecting me.”

“Down the hall past the Chapels of Rest and up the stairs. His office is on the first floor. What was the name, sir?”

“Hilton.” Dillon looked around at the coffins on display, the flowers. “Not much happening.”

“Trade, you mean.” The porter shrugged. “That all comes in the back way.”

“I see.”

Dillon moved down the hall, pausing to glance into one of the Chapels of Rest, taking in the banked flowers, the candles. He stepped in and looked down at the body of a middle-aged man neatly dressed in a dark suit, hands folded, the face touched with makeup.

“Poor sod,” Dillon said and went out.

At the reception desk, the porter picked up a phone. “Miss Myra? A visitor. A Mr. Hilton, says he has an appointment.”

Dillon opened the door to Harvey’s outer office and moved in. There were no office furnishings, just a couple of potted plants and several easy chairs. The door to the inner office opened and Myra entered. She wore skin-tight black trews, black boots and a scarlet, three-quarter length caftan. She looked very striking.

“Mr. Hilton?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Myra Harvey. You said you had an appointment with my uncle.”

“Did I?”

She looked him over in a casual way and behind him the door opened and Billy Watson came in. The whole thing was obviously prearranged. He leaned against the door, suitably menacing in a black suit, arms folded.

“Now what’s your game?” she said.

“That’s for Mr. Harvey.”

“Throw him out, Billy,” she said and turned to the door.

Billy put one rough hand on Dillon’s shoulder. Dillon’s foot went all the way down the right leg, stamping on the instep; he pivoted and struck sideways with clenched fist, the knuckles on the back of the hand connecting with Billy’s temple. Billy cried out in pain and fell back into one of the chairs.

“He’s not very good, is he?” Dillon said.

He opened his briefcase and took out ten one-hundred-dollar bills with a rubber band round them and threw them at Myra. She missed the catch and had to bend to pick them up. “Would you look at that,” she said. “And brand new.”

“Yes, new money always smells so good,” Dillon said. “Now tell Jack an old friend would like to see him with more of the same.”

She stood there looking at him for a moment, eyes narrowed, then she turned and opened the door to Harvey’s office. Billy tried to get up and Dillon said, “I wouldn’t advise it.”

Billy subsided as the door opened and Myra appeared. “All right, he’ll see you.”

The room was surprisingly businesslike with walls paneled in oak, a green carpet in Georgian silk and a gas fire that almost looked real, burning in a steel basket on the hearth. Harvey sat behind a massive oak desk smoking a cigar.

He had the thousand dollars in front of him and looked Dillon over calmly. “My time’s limited, so don’t muck me about, son.” He picked up the bank notes. “More of the same?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t know you. You told Myra you were an old friend, but I’ve never seen you before.”

“A long time ago, Jack, ten years to be precise. I looked different then. I was over from Belfast on a job. We did business together, you and me. You did well out of it as I recall. All those lovely dollars raised by IRA sympathizers in America.”

Harvey said. “Coogan. Michael Coogan.”

Dillon took off his glasses. “As ever was, Jack.”

Harry nodded slowly and said to his niece. “Myra, an old friend, Mr. Coogan from Belfast.”

“I see,” she said. “One of those.”

Dillon lit a cigarette, sat down, the briefcase on the floor beside him and Harvey said, “You went through London like bloody Attila the Hun last time. I should have charged you more for all that stuff.”

“You gave me a price, I paid it,” Dillon said. “What could be fairer?”

“And what is it this time?”

“I need a little Semtex, Jack. I could manage with forty pounds, but that’s the bottom line. Fifty would be better.”

“You don’t want much, do you? That stuff’s like gold. Very strict government controls.”

“Bollocks,” Dillon said. “It passes from Czechoslovakia to Italy, Greece, onwards to Libya. It’s everywhere, Jack, you know it and I know it, so don’t waste my time. Twenty thousand dollars.” He opened the briefcase on his knee and tossed the rest of the ten thousand packet by packet across the desk. “Ten now and ten on delivery.”

The Walther with the Carswell silencer screwed on the end of the barrel lay ready in the briefcase. He waited, the lid up, and then Harvey smiled. “All right, but it’ll cost you thirty.”

Dillon closed the briefcase. “No can do, Jack. Twenty-five I can manage, but no more.”

Harvey nodded. “All right. When do you want it?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“I think I can manage that. Where can we reach you?”

“You’ve got it wrong way round, Jack. I contact you.”

Dillon stood up and Harvey said affably, “Anything else we can do for you?”

“Actually there is,” Dillon said. “Sign of goodwill, you might say. I could do with a spare handgun.”

“Be my guest, my old son.” Harvey pushed his chair back and opened the second drawer down on his right hand. “Take your pick.”

There was a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, a Czech Cesca and an Italian Beretta, which was the one Dillon selected. He checked the clip and slipped the gun in his pocket. “This will do nicely.”

“Lady’s gun,” Harvey said, “but that’s your business. We’ll be seeing you, then, tomorrow.”

Myra opened the door. Dillon said, “A pleasure, Miss Harvey,” and he brushed past Billy and walked out.

Billy said, “I’d like to break that little bastard’s legs.”

Myra patted his cheek. “Never mind, sunshine, on your two feet you’re useless. It’s in the horizontal position you come into your own. Now go and play with your motorbike or something,” and she went back in her uncle’s office.

Dillon paused at the bottom of the stairs and slipped the Beretta inside the briefcase. The only thing better than one gun was two. It always gave you an ace in the hole and he walked back to the Mini-Cooper briskly.

Myra said, “I wouldn’t trust him an inch, that one.”

“A hard little bastard,” Harvey said. “When he was here for the IRA in nineteen eighty-one, I supplied him with arms, explosives, everything. You were at college then, not in the business, so you probably don’t remember.”

“Is Coogan his real name?”

“Course not.” He nodded. “Yes, hell on wheels. I was having a lot of hassle in those days from George Montoya down in Bermondsey, the one they called Spanish George. Coogan knocked him off for me one night, him and his brother, outside a bar called the
Flamenco.
Did it for free.”

“Really?” Myra said. “So where do we get him Semtex?”

He laughed, opened the top drawer and took out a bunch of keys. “I’ll show you.” He led the way out and along the corridor and unlocked a door. “Something even you didn’t know, darling.”

The room was lined with shelves of box files. He put his hand on the middle shelf of the rear wall and it swung open. He reached for a switch and turned on a light, revealing a treasure house of weapons of every description.

“My God!” she said.

“Whatever you want, it’s here,” he said. “Hand guns, AK assault rifles, M15s.” He chuckled. “And Semtex.” There were three cardboard boxes on a table. “Fifty pounds in each of those.”

“But why did you tell him it might take time?”

“Keep him dangling.” He led the way out and closed things up. “Might screw a few more bob out of him.”

As they went back into his office she said, “What do you think he’s up to?”

“I couldn’t care less. Anyway, why should you worry? You suddenly turned into a bleeding patriot or something?”

“It isn’t that, I’m just curious.”

He clipped another cigar. “Mind you, I have had a thought. Very convenient if I got the little bugger to knock off Harry Flood for me,” and he started to laugh.

 

It was just after six and Ferguson was just about to leave his office at the Ministry of Defence when his phone rang. It was Devlin. “Now then, you old sod, I’ve news for you.”

“Get on with it then,” Ferguson said.

“Dillon’s control in eighty-one in Belfast was a man called Tommy McGuire. Remember him?”

“I do indeed. Wasn’t he shot a few years ago? Some sort of IRA feud?”

“That was the story, but he’s still around up there using another identity.”

“And what would that be?”

“I’ve still to find that out. People to see in Belfast. I’m driving up there tonight. I take it, by the way, that involving myself in this way makes me an official agent of Group Four? I mean I wouldn’t like to end up in prison, not at my age.”

“You’ll be covered fully, you have my word on it. Now what do you want us to do?”

“I was thinking that if Brosnan and your Captain Tanner wanted to be in on the action, they could fly over in the morning in that Lear jet of yours, to Belfast, that is, and wait for me at the Europa Hotel, in the bar. Tell Brosnan to identify himself to the head porter. I’ll be in touch probably around noon.”

“I’ll see to it,” Ferguson said.

“Just one more thing. Don’t you think you and I are getting just a little geriatric for this sort of game?”

“You speak for yourself,” Ferguson said and put the phone down.

He sat thinking about it, then phoned through for a secretary. He also called Mary Tanner at the Lowndes Square flat. As he was talking to her, Alice Johnson came in with her notepad and pencil. Ferguson waved her down and carried on speaking to Mary.

“So, early start in the morning. Gatwick again, I think. You’ll be there in an hour in the Lear. Are you dining out tonight?”

“Henry Flood suggested the River Room at the Savoy, he likes the dance band.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Would you like to join us, sir?”

“Actually, I would,” Ferguson said.

“We’ll see you then. Eight o’clock.”

Ferguson put down the phone and turned to Alice Johnson. “A brief note, Eyes of the Prime Minister only, the special file.” He quickly dictated a report that brought everything up to date, including his conversation with Devlin. “One copy for the P.M. and alert a messenger. Usual copy for me and the file. Hurry it up and bring them along for my signature. I want to get away.”

She went down to the office quickly. Gordon Brown was standing at the copier as she sat behind the typewriter. “I thought he’d gone?” he said.