Touch the Devil (4 page)

"In the cafe, Monsieur, but it's not open for business. I'm the only one here today."

"I must use it. It's very urgent." He pushed a hundred-franc note at her. "Just give me a handful of coins. You keep the rest."

She shrugged, went into her office, and opened the register. She came back with the coins. "I'll show you," she said.

The cafe wasn't much. A few tables and chairs, a counter with bottles of beer and mineral water and rows of glasses ranged behind, and a door that obviously led to the kitchen. The telephone was on the wall, a directory hanging beside it.

The girl said, "Look, seeing I'm here I'll make some coffee. Okay?"

"Fine," Corder told her.

She disappeared into the kitchen and he quickly checked in the directory to find the district number to link him with the international line. His fingers were shaking as he dialed the area code for London, followed by the D15 number.

He didn't even have time to pray. The receiver was lifted at the other end, and a woman's voice this time, the day operator, said, "Say who you are."

"Lysander," Corder said urgently. "Clear line, please. I must speak to Brigadier Ferguson at once. Total Priority."

And Ferguson's voice cut in instantly, almost as if he'd been listening in. "Jack, what is it?"

"Total cock-up, sir. Barry smelt a rat, so he and I stayed out of things. The rest of the team were knocked out by CRS police." "You've got clean away, presumably."

"Yes."

"And does he suspect you?"

"No--he thinks it's down to one of those Marseilles hoods speaking out of turn."

In the kitchen, Frank Barry, listening on the extension, smiled, faceless in dark goggles. The girl lay on the floor at his feet, blood oozing from an ugly cut in her temple where he had clubbed her with his pistol. He took a Carswell silencer from his pocket and screwed it on to the barrel of his pistol as he walked into the cafe.

Corder was still talking in a low, urgent voice. "No, I don't know how much more I can take, that's the trouble."

Barry said softly, "Jack!"

Corder swung around, and Barry shot him twice through the heart, slamming him back. He bounced off the wall and fell to the floor on his face.

The receiver dangled on the end of its cord. Barry picked it up and said, "That you, Ferguson, old son? Frank Barry here. If you want Corder back, you'd better send a box for him to Cafe Rosco, St. Julien."

"You bastard," Charles Ferguson said.

"It's been said before."

Barry replaced the receiver and went out, whistling softly as he unscrewed the silencer. He slipped the pistol back into its holster, pushed the BMW off its stand, and rode away.

Chapter
Two.

It was raining on the following morning when Ferguson's car dropped him outside Number 10 Downing Street, ten minutes early for his eleven o'clock appointment with the Prime Minister. His driver moved away instantly, and Ferguson crossed the pavement to the entrance. In spite of the rain, there was the usual small crowd of sightseers on the other side of the road, mainly tourists, kept in place by a couple of police constables. Another stood in his usual place by the door, not much protection for the best-known address in England, the seat of political power as well as the Prime Minister's private residence, but that didn't mean a thing as Ferguson well knew. There were others, more inconspicuously attired, situated at certain strategic points in the area, ready to swarm in at the first hint of trouble.

The policeman saluted. The door was opened, even before Ferguson reached it, and he passed inside.

The young man who greeted him said, "Brigadier Ferguson? This way, sir."

There was the hum of activity from the press room on the right as he crossed the entrance hall and entered the corridor leading to the rear of the house and the Cabinet room.

The main staircase to the first floor was lined with portraits of previous Prime Ministers. Peel, Wellington, Disraeli, Gladstone. Ferguson always felt an acute sense of history as he mounted those stairs, although this was the first time he had done so to meet the present Prime Minister--the first time to explain himself to a woman, and a damn clever woman if it came to that. It was very definitely a new experience. But did anything change? How many attempts had there been to assassinate Queen Victoria? And Disraeli and Gladstone had both had their hands full of Fenians, dynamiters, and anarchists with their bombs, at one time or another.

On the top corridor, the young man knocked on a door, opened it, and ushered Ferguson inside. "Brigadier Ferguson, Prime Minister," he said and left, closing the door behind him.

The study was more elegant now than Ferguson remembered it, with pale green walls and gold curtains and comfortable furniture in perfect taste. But nothing was more elegant in the entire room than the woman behind the desk with the green leather top. The blue suit with the froth of white lace at the throat perfectly offset the blonde hair. An elegant, handsome woman of the world, and yet the eyes, when she glanced up at Ferguson from the paper she was reading, were hard and intelligent.

"I've had a personal assurance from the French President this morning that this whole wretched business will be hushed up. It never happened. You understand me?"

"Perfectly, ma'am."

She looked at the paper before her. "This agent of yours, Corder.

If it hadn't been for him. . . ." She gestured to a chair. "Sit down, Brigadier. Tell me about him."

"We recruited Jack Corder some twelve years ago when he was still an undergraduate at All Souls. The route he chose was to immerse himself totally in left-wing politics. We often hear of moles within our intelligence service working for the Russians, ma'am. Jack was the other side of the coin. He endured prison sentences twice for his apparent militancy. Afterward, I transferred him to the European terrorist scene. Frank Barry was his most important assignment."

She nodded. "I've already spoken to the Director General of DI5, and he tells me that as long ago as nineteen seventy-two one of my predecessors authorized the setting up within DI5 of a section known as Group Four, which has powers held directly from the Prime Minister, to coordinate the handling of all cases of terrorism, subversion, and the like."

"That is correct, Prime Minister."

"With you in charge, Brigadier?"

"Yes, ma'am." There was a longish pause while she stared down at the paper thoughtfully. Ferguson cleared his throat. "Naturally, if you would prefer to initiate some change, I will offer my resignation without hesitation."

"If I want it, I'll ask for it, Brigadier," she said sharply. "But you can't expect me to have much faith in the activities of your section when one of the chief ministers of the Crown comes within an inch of assassination. Now tell me about this man Barry? Why is he so important and, more to the point, how does he remain so elusive?"

"A brilliant madman, ma'am. A genius in his own way. As important to the international terrorist scene as Carlos, but not so familiar to the public."

"And why is that?"

"A question of his personal psychology. Many terrorists, take some of those involved with the Baader-Meinhof gang, for example, have a craving for public display. They want people to kno
w n
ot only who they are but that they can make fools of the police and intelligence departments they confront any time they wish. Barry doesn't seem to have a need for that kind of publicity and, as it suits our purposes best to give him none, he has remained an unknown quantity as far as the public is concerned."

"What about his personal background?'

"I'm afraid it couldn't be worse from the point of view of media sensationalism. He is an Ulsterman by birth. Held a commission as a National Service second lieutenant with the Ulster Rifles. Served in Korea. Excellent record in the field, I might add. He's a Protestant. His uncle is an Irish peer, Lord Stramore. Much involved in Orange politics for most of his life, but now in ailing health. Barry is his heir."

"Good God," the Prime Minister said.

"During the early years of the Irish Troubles, Barry professed to be a Republican. As usual, he did his own thing. Organized a group called the Sons of Erin, which gave us tremendous problems in the Province. Repudiated totally by the Provisional IRA. In nineteen seventy-two, when Group Four was first set up, I managed to penetrate Barry's organization with an agent of mine, a Major Vaughan. The upshot of that little affair was that Barry was very badly wounded indeed. That he lived at all was only due to the skill of the surgeons of the military wing of the Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast."

"You had him?"

"He escaped, ma'am. Not even capable of walking, according to his doctors, but walk he did, right out of the hospital, dressed as a porter. Turned up in Dublin within twenty-four hours. We couldn't touch him there, of course. He was in and out of hospitals there and in Switzerland for more than a year."

"And afterward?'

"Since then, ma'am, he has, in some cases to our certain knowledge and in others to the best of our belief, been responsible for at least fifteen assassinations and a number of bombing incidents. Hi
s t
ouch is distinctive and unmistakable, and political commitment seems to be the least of his considerations. A resume of his activities during the past few years will explain what I mean. In nineteen seventy-three he assassinated the general in command of Spanish military intelligence in the Basque country. Responsibility was claimed by the Basque nationalist movement, the ETA."

"Go on."

"On the other hand, he was also responsible for the murder of General Hans Grosch during a visit to Munich in nineteen seventy-five. A source of considerable embarrassment to the West German government. Grosch held a post roughly equivalent to my own in the East German ministry for state security. So, as you can see, ma'am, on the one hand Barry kills a Fascist--on the other, a Communist."

"You're saying he has no politics?"

"None at all." Ferguson took a sheet from his briefcase and passed it across. "A list of the jobs we think he's been concerned with. As you can see, his victims have been from every part of the political scene you can think of."

The Prime Minister read the list slowly and frowned. "Are you saying, then, that he works for whoever will pay him?'

"No, ma'am, I think it's more subtle than that. Everything he does falls into a pattern that causes maximum damage wherever it happens. For instance, he kills a Spanish diplomat visiting Paris in nineteen seventy-seven--a Fascist. The French government had to react appropriately and within twenty-four hours, every left wing agitator in Paris was in police hands. Not only Communists, but Socialists. The Socialist party didn't like that, which meant the unions also didn't like it. Result, unrest among the workers, strikes, disruption."

She paused suddenly, lower down his list, and glanced up, her face bleak. "You mention here a possible involvement in the Mountbatten assassination?"

"We've the best of reasons for believing his advice was sought."

She shook her head. "It doesn't make sense."

"It does if one considers his known links with the KGB. I believe that most of the incidents he has been responsible for were commissioned by the KGB, even the assassination of those supposed to be their friends, with the sole purpose of causing the maximum amount of disruption possible in the West."

"But Barry is no Marxist?"

"Frank Barry, ma'am, isn't anything. Oh, he'll take their money, I'm sure of that, but he'll do what he does for the hell of it. I suppose the psychiatrists would have fancy terms to describe his mental condition. Psychopath would only be the start. I'm not really interested. I just want to see him dead."

The Prime Minister passed the list back to him. "Then get on with it, Brigadier."

Ferguson took the list from her automatically as she pressed a buzzer on her desk. "Ma'amT'

"Department Four has the power--total authority from this office, so it would seem. Use it, man. I'm not going to tell you how to do your own job, you're too good at it. I've read your record. The only thing I will say is that it seems obvious to me you must put everything aside and concentrate all your activities on Barry."

Ferguson got to his feet and slipped the paper back in his briefcase. "Very well, Prime Minister."

The door opened behind him, and the young secretary appeared. The Prime Minister picked up her pen. Ferguson walked to the door and was ushered out.

Ferguson usually preferred to work when possible from his Cavendish Square flat. He was sitting by the fire, drinking tea and toasting crumpets on a long brass fork, when Kim opened the door and ushered Harry Fox in.

"Ah, there you are, Harry. Got what I wanted?"

"Yes, sir, every last piece of paper in the file on Frank Barry." Fox was thirty, a slim, elegant young man who wore a Guard
s t
ie, not surprising in someone who until two years previously had been an acting captain in the Blues. The neat leather glove that he wore permanently on his left hand concealed the fact that he had lost the original in a bomb explosion during his third tour of duty in Belfast. He had been Ferguson's assistant for just over a year.