Touch the Devil (23 page)

The Montesa did everything she said it would, taking the slopes with a satisfying growl as she opened the throttle. When they ran out of track, she took to the hillside, climbing higher and higher until they went over a ridge and found sheep before them, scattered across the parched grass, grazing peacefully.

Finally, she braked to a halt beside a small whitewashed cottage, with a roof of red pantiles, in a slight depression surrounded by olive trees. To one side a wild and beautiful ravine dropped steeply.

"Old Louis uses this as a base when he's up here. Sometimes stays for weeks. He doesn't like it down there." She nodded to the valley, far below, St. Martin drowning in the late afternoon heat.

"I know what he means," Brosnan said.

She tried the door, and they went in. There was a living room and kitchen combined and a bedroom. The floors were stone flagged
,
the walls crudely plastered, but inside it was cool and dark as it was intended to be.

"He must be farther up," she said.

She lifted the wooden lid of a water cooler, took out a bottle of white wine, and found two glasses. They went back outside and sat on the bench against the wall. From somewhere lower down, there was the hollow jangle of a bell, remote, far away.

"That's the oldest ram, Hercules," she said. "Leader of the pack, or should I say the flock?"

She filled his glass and her own and stood there, looking down at the valley. "My favorite time of day. Everything seems to hang fire."

She turned briefly to him and smiled, and he realized, with a sense of discovery and as if it were the first time, that she was beautiful.

"People lived here once," he said. "In another world. Now they don't. Some of that lingers on. I suppose that's what your Old Louis is trying to recapture."

She sat down on the grass in front of him, ankles crossed. "What happens now, Martin?"

"To us, you mean?"

She shook her head with a kind of impatience. "No, to you." "Well, first there's Frank Barry to take care of. The object of the exercise, after all."

"Let him go, Martin. There's no profit in it. He's a walking dead man. Next week or next year," she shrugged, "somewhere, someone's waiting for him. He must know that himself."

"Very probably, but I'd prefer to be that someone myself." Brosnan was quite calm, no evidence of emotion at all on his face. "This is personal, but then you know that?"

"Norah?" She shook her head. "You used to talk about her a lot, remember? From the sound of her, the last person to want you to pursue this thing."

"Perhaps," Brosnan said, "but then Norah was always too good for this life. She never made that most important discovery of all."

"And what would that be?"

"That it's not just a matter of the bastards like Frank Barry. Most people let you down, one way or the other in the end. A fact of life." There was an edge of bitterness in his voice when he said that.

She said, "Like me, you mean, or Liam, or Jean-Paul?" She put her glass down carefully, trying to control her anger. "And what about Martin Brosnan, who hauled an old man out of Belle Isle with him when it would have been a damn sight easier to do it on his own?"

"I owed him," Brosnan said. "We shared a cell for four years. He sustained me with his wit and his humor and his wisdom." He laughed harshly. "That's ironic, isn't it? A gangster who's spent most of his life on the wrong side of the law and still he has real virtues."

She got up and walked to the edge of the ravine and looked down into the valley again. When she turned, she was calmer. "All right, let's move on from Frank Barry. After that, what happens?"

"I don't know," he said. "Ireland, I suppose. The only place left where I'm safe."

"Back to that struggle of yours that was so important? My life for Ireland. Thompson guns by night and never wanting it to stop?"

"The only game we've got, you mean? When I picked up a rifle that night in Belfast, that first night, I was trying to stop people killing other people. Afterward, I found myself on a course there was no turning back from. Remember what Yeats said? Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart." He shook his head. "Too much blood, my love, too many dead. Nothing's worth that. No more causes for me."

"So what will you do?"

"The Brosnans came from Kerry, remember? I bought a farm there a few years ago. Sheep mostly, just like this place." He laughed. "I like sheep. They don't take life too seriously."

"So you'd like to go back there?"

"It's quite a place. Sea and mountains, green grass, soft rain
,
fuschia growing in the hedges, glowing in the evening. Deorini Dei--the Tears of God, they call it." He laughed softly. "And the prettiest girls in all Ireland."

He had stood to stretch himself and found her watching him, the shadow of pain in her eyes. He moved close and reached for her hand. "You'd fit into the scene admirably."

He pulled her to him and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were soft and dry, and he was trembling slightly, his stomach hollow with excitement. For a moment she responded, and then she took a deep, shuddering breath and pushed him away.

"No, Martin, I'm not starting that again. You see, in spite of what you've said, I don't think you've changed. I think you'll always be the movement's official undertaker. Now let's go."

She turned and walked back to the motorcycle.

Frank Barry alighted from the Paris plane at Nice airport at four-thirty. He picked up a Peugeot from one of the rental firms, checked on the location of St. Martin, and drove straight there. It only took him an hour. A drink at one of the village's two cafes and a talkative waiter gave him the location of Anne-Marie Audin's farm. By six o'clock he was crouched behind a wall in an olive grove on the other side of the valley, examining the farm through binoculars.

The only sign of life was the smoke from one of the chimneys rising in a straight line in the still air. He lit a cigarette and waited. About fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Liam Devlin strolled into the yard.

"Well now," Barry said softly. "Would you look at that?"

He became aware of a humming sound somewhere in the distance, realized that it was an engine moving closer, swept the hillside above the farmhouse with his binoculars, and found the motorcycle.

It looked like two men at first glance, Anne-Marie had the peak of her cap low over her eyes. He couldn't make out the face of the man behind. The motorcycle entered the yard and came to a halt.

As Devlin moved toward them, Anne-Marie took off her cap, shaking her hair down, and Brosnan paused to light a cigarette, giving Barry a clear look at his face.

Barry laughed, a feeling of intense pleasure coursing through him that he couldn't explain, even to himself. "God save us, Martin," he said softly, "but you've done it again, you bastard."

The three of them went into the house. Barry waited for a while, then walked back down the track to where he had left the Peugeot.

"What's our next move?" Brosnan asked Devlin.

It was after dinner, and they sat in the lamplight by the fire smoking. Through the half-open door Anne-Marie could be heard working in the kitchen.

"There is only one possible move," Devlin said. "Barry's KGB contact in Paris, this fella Belov."

"We can't exactly go knocking at the door of the Soviet embassy."

"No need. Ferguson supplied me with his address. He has an apartment on the Boulevard St. Germain."

"That's it, then," Brosnan said. "We start for Paris tomorrow."

Anne-Marie walked in with tea and coffee on a tray in time to hear his words, and Devlin's reply, "Jesus, Martin, would you give us time to catch our breath?"

"I don't see any point in hanging about," Brosnan told him. "He can't wait to get to the funeral, you see," Anne-Marie said and went back into the kitchen.

Devlin said, "Since there's no help for it, I'd better get you tooled up."

He went out. Brosnan poured the tea and drank it with conscious pleasure. A luxury denied him on Belle Isle. He was pouring a second cup when Devlin returned with a small suitcase which he placed on the table and opened.

"A parting gift from Jean-Paul Savary. I didn't bring any hardware through from London with me. Couldn't take a chance on the customs."

There were two Brownings, a short-barreled Smith and Wesson revolver, and a sinister-looking Mauser with the bulbous silencer.

"Very interesting," Brosnan said and picked up the Mauser.

"That takes me back," Devlin told him. "Model 1932. Specially developed for German counterintelligence operatives. Ten-round magazine."

Brosnan reached in the case and took out a sleeveless vest whose nylon surface gleamed in the lamp light. "Flak jacket?"

"What we call the up-market model for the man who has everything," Devlin told him. "Manufactured by the Wilkinson Sword Company. Nylon and titanium. Jean-Paul tells me they can stop a .44-magnum bullet at point-blank range."

"Very impressive," Anne-Marie said from the doorway. "You're going to war again then?"

Brosnan said evenly, "I think I'll get some sleep now. Let's get an early start in the morning."

"All right," Devlin said.

Brosnan brushed past Anne-Marie without speaking to her. After he had gone, she came to the table, shut the lid of the case angrily, and sat down.

"I told you not to try and make him into something he isn't," Devlin said.

She shook her head. "He's changed, Liam. Different from what I expected."

"Girl, dear, he was never what you thought he was in the first place. The dark hero who came headfirst out of the reeds in Vietnam to save you was a man, just as ill-formed and fallible as the rest of us. Those photos you took over the years showed only the surface of things. The danger in your profession."

"I never truly understood him," she said. "I see that now."

"A good feature for the center page," Devlin said. "And the camera likes him. You always made him look good."

"Him and his damn roses," she said bitterly. "Something else I never understood. Getting into the GOC's office at Army headquarters in Lisburn that time and leaving a rose instead of a bomb, as if to say Brosnan was here. Games for children."

"Oh, I don't know," Devlin said. "That's partly the poet in him, I suppose. The lover of what you French call the beau geste. But there's more to it than that. The Plains Indians in America, the Sioux and the Cheyenne, had an interesting variation on the war theme. The bravest thing a warrior could do was get close enough in battle to touch the enemy with a stick. That was the real measure of a man's bravery, not whether he'd killed his enemy or not."

"And you think that's what he was doing with his roses? Saying look how brave I am?"

"No," Devlin said gravely. "I think what he was really saying was, I could have killed you but I didn't, so perhaps we should think again. Find another way."

"I don't know, Liam." She stood up wearily. "Too complex for me, and so is he. I'm going to bed."

She kissed him on the forehead and went out.

Behind the golden facade of the Cote d'Azure, the underworld of Nice was as tough and as ruthless as that of Paris or Marseilles, Barry knew that. The address Belov had given him turned out to be a small back street nightclub not far from the harbor, run by a man named Charles Chabert.

He was a small man, a surprisingly civilized-looking individual with a mustache and gold-rimmed glasses. His dark suit was of excellent cut and as sober as his general image. His cognac was excellent, too, and Barry sipped a little and smiled his appreciation.

"Muscle," he said. "That's all I need. My contact in Paris assured me you were just the man to provide it."

Chabert nodded. "I have a certain reputation, Monsieur, that is true. How many men would you need?"

"Three."

"To go up against?"

"Two."

Chabert looked surprised. "With you, that makes four. Is that necessary?"

"To take care of the two I have in mind it is."

"I see. Formidable?"

"You could say that. I need them first thing tomorrow. A morning's work only. I'll pay you twenty thousand francs."

"Would there be the possibility of a little shooting?" "Definitely."

Chabert nodded. "I see. Then in that case, the price will be thirty thousand. Forty," he added, "to include my fee."

"Done." Barry smiled cheerfully and held out his hand. "One thing, I'm in sole charge. You make that clear. No cowboys."

"But naturally, Monsieur. These are my own people. They do as I say." He picked up the internal telephone and said, "Send Jacaud, Leboeuf, and Deville to my office."

"They sound like a cabaret act," Barry said.

"In a way, that's what they are. Excellent professional performers. Let me give you another cognac."

A moment later, there was a knock at the door. It opened and three men filed in. They stood against the wall, waiting. In spite of the good suits, Barry had only to look at the faces to know they were exactly what he was looking for.