Touch the Devil (7 page)

Brosnan and Savary carried the body between them to the edge of the cliff. They stood there for a moment, and Savary said, "I still say he should have a priest. This isn't right."

Lebel, his essential decency coming to the surface, removed his cap and said, "All right. Lord, into thy hands we commend the spirit of 67824-Jean Bouvier. He didn't get much out of this life. Maybe you can do more for him in the next." He replaced his cap. "Okay, over with him."

Brosnan and Savary swung a couple of times then let go. The body turned over once, plunged into white foam below, and disappeared. They stood staring down at the water.

Savary whispered, "The only way I'm ever going to get off this rock. I'm going to die here, Martin."

There was total desolation in his voice, total despair, and Brosnan put a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe--on the other hand, maybe not."

Savary stared at him, frowning, while Lebel closed and locked the door and switched off the light. "Okay, let's go."

They followed him back down the track, heads bowed against the rain.

At six A
. M
. Ferguson and Harry Fox were having breakfast in a truck drivers cafe on the A40 just outside Cheltenham. The bacon and eggs were the best Fox could remember enjoying since the officers' mess at Combermere barracks in Windsor. Ferguson was obviously just as impressed.

"What about Devlin, sir?"

"Remarkable man. He must be well into his sixties by now. An Ulsterman, County Down, I believe. His father was executed during the Anglo-Irish war in nineteen twenty-one for serving in a flying column. He was educated by Jesuits and took a first class honors degree in English Literature at Trinity College. He is a scholar, writer, poet, and was a highly dangerous gunman for the
IRA during the thirties. He went to Spain in nineteen thirty-six and fought against Franco. He was captured by Italian troops and imprisoned in Spain until nineteen forty when the Abwehr had him freed and brought to Berlin to see if he could be of any use to German intelligence."

"And was he, sir?"

"The trouble was, from their point of view, he was a bad risk. Very antifascist, you see. The Abwehr's Irish section did use him once. They'd sent an agent to Ireland, a Captain Goertz. When he got stuck, they parachuted Devlin in to get him out for them. Unfortunately Goertz was caught, and Devlin spent several months on the run before he managed to make it back to Berlin via Portugal. From then on, Ireland was a dead end as far as the Abwehr was concerned, and Devlin took a job lecturing at the University of Berlin. Until the autumn of nineteen forty-three." Ferguson reached for the marmalade. "This really is very good. I think I'll ask him for a jar."

"The autumn of nineteen forty-three," Fox said patiently. "How much do you know about the German attempt on Churchill's life in November of that year, Harry?"

Fox laughed out loud. "Come on, sir, an old wives' tale, that one." And then, continuing to watch Ferguson's face, he stopped laughing. "Isn't it, sir?"

"Well, let's assume it's just a good story, Harry. The scenario would run something like this. Devlin, bored to tears at the University of Berlin, is offered a job by the Abwehr. He's to parachute into Ireland, then make his way to Norfolk to act as middleman between the most successful woman agent the Abwehr had in the entire war and a crack force of German paratroopers, led by a Colonel Kurt Steiner, the object of the exercise being to apprehend Churchill, who was staying at a country house outside the village of Studley Constable."

"Go on, sir."

"All for nothing, of course. It wasn't even Churchill, just a stand-in while the great man was going to Tehran. They die
d a
nyway, Steiner and his men. Well, all except one, and Devlin, with his usual Irish deviousness, got away."

Harry Fox said in amazement, "You mean it's all true, sir?" "It's a few years yet before those classified files are opened, Harry. You'll have to wait and see."

"And Devlin worked for the Nazis? I don't get it. I thought you said he was antifascist?"

"Rather more complicated than that. I think if someone on our side had suggested that he should attempt to kidnap Adolf Hitler, he'd have thrown himself into the task with even greater enthusiasm. Very frequently in life we're not playing the game, Harry. It's playing us. You'll learn that as you get older."

"And wiser, sir?"

"That's it, Harry, learn to laugh at yourself. It's a priceless asset. During the postwar period, Devlin was a professor at a midwestern college in America. He returned to Ulster briefly during the border war of the late fifties and went back again during the civil rights disturbances of nineteen sixty-nine. He was one of the original architects of the provisional IRA. As I said earlier, he never approved of the bombing campaign.

"In nineteen seventy-five, increasingly disillusioned, he officially retired from the movement. He's a living legend, whatever that trite phrase means. Since nineteen seventy-six, against considerable opposition from some quarters, he's held a post as visiting professor on the English faculty at his old university, Trinity College."

Ferguson pushed back his chair and they got up to go. "And he and Brosnan were friends?" Fox asked.

"I think you could say that. I also think what happened to Brosnan in France was a sort of final straw for Devlin. Still." He stood in the entrance looking across the dingy carpark and waved to his driver. "All right, Harry, let's press on to Hereford."

Barry was working at the maps in his apartment soon after breakfast, when there was a discreet knock at the door. He opened it to admit Belov.

"How about the passports?" Barry asked.

"No problem. If you would go to the usual place at ten o'clock for the photos, they'll be ready this afternoon. Is there anything else you need?"

"Yes, documentation for the Jersey route--that's the way I'll go. French tourist on holiday."

"No problem," Belov said.

Once in Jersey, he would be on British soil and able to take an internal flight to a selection of airports on the British mainland where customs and immigration procedures were considerably less strict than they would have been landing at London Heathrow.

"If I collect the package Wednesday afternoon, you must be prepared to take delivery that night," Barry said. "Preferably a trawler, say fifteen miles off the coast."

"And how will you rendezvous?"

"We'll get whoever your people in London find to work for me to arrange a boat. A good forty-foot deep-sea launch will do to operate somewhere out of this area." He tapped the map. "Somewhere on the coast opposite the Isle of Man. South of Ravenglass."

"Good."

"I'll leave for St. Malo tonight and cross to Jersey tomorrow, using the French passport. There's a British Airways flight to Manchester from Jersey at midday. I'll meet your London contact man the following day on the pier at Morecambe at noon. That's a seaside resort on the coast below the Lake District. He'll recognize me from the photograph you keep on file at the KGB office at your London embassy, I'm sure."

Belov looked down at the map. "Frank, if this comes off, it will be the biggest coup of my career. Are you sure? Are you really sure?"

"That you'll be a Hero of the Soviet Union decorated by old Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev himself?" Barry clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Nikolai, old son. A piece of cake."

Chapter
Four.

The 22nd Regiment Special Air Service is what the military refer to as an elite unit. Someone once remarked that they were the nearest thing the British army has to the SS. This is a sour tribute to the unit's astonishing success in counterinsurgency operations and urban guerrilla warfare, areas in which the SAS are undoubtedly world experts, with thirty years experience behind them gained in the jungles of Malaya and Borneo, the deserts of southern Arabia and the Oman, the green countryside of south Armagh, the back streets of Belfast. The SAS accepts only volunteers, soldiers already serving with other units. Its selection procedure is so demanding, both physically and mentally, that only five percent of those applying are accepted.

The office of the commanding officer of 22nd SAS at Bradbury
Lines barracks in Hereford was neat and functional, if rather Spartan. Most surprising was the CO himself. Young for a half-colonel, he had a keen intelligent face, bronzed from much exposure to desert sun. The medal ribbons above his pocket included the Military Cross. He sat there, leaning back in his seat, listening intently.

When Ferguson had finished speaking the colonel said, "Very interesting."

"But can it be done?" Ferguson asked.

The colonel smiled slightly. "Oh, yes, Brigadier, no trouble at all as far as I can see. The sort of thing my chaps are doing in south Armagh all the time. Tony Villiers is the man for this one, I think." He flicked his intercom. "Captain Villiers, quick as you like, and we'll have tea for three while we're waiting."

The tea was excellent, the conversation mainly army gossip. It was perhaps fifteen minutes before there was a knock at the door, and a young man of twenty-six or seven entered. At some time or other his nose had been broken, probably in the boxing ring from the look of him. He wore a black track suit. His most surprising feature was his hair, which was black and tangled and almost shoulder length.

"Sorry about the delay, sir. I was on the track."

"That's okay, Tony. I'd like you to meet Brigadier Ferguson and Captain Fox."

"Gentlemen," Villiers nodded.

"Brigadier Ferguson is from DI5, Tony. He has a job of the kind to which we are particularly suited. Absolute top priority. Seemed to me it could be your department."

"Ireland, sir?"

Ferguson said, "That's right. I want you to kidnap someone for me. My information is that he'll be spending the weekend at his cottage in County Mayo on the coast near Killala Bay. I need him within thirty-six hours, delivered to me Sunday morning in London. Do you think you can manage that?"

"I don't see why not, sir." Villiers strolled to the map of Irelan
d o
n the wall. "Only sixty or seventy miles from the Ulster border." "Excellent," Ferguson said.

"Presumably IRA, sir? Anyone important?"

"A university professor called Devlin. You'll be thoroughly briefed."

Villiers showed surprise. "Liam Devlin, sir? I thought he'd retired?"

"That's what he thinks, too," Ferguson said. He hesitated. "Are you certain you can mount this thing right off the cuff, just like that?"

Villiers grinned and ran a hand over his hair. "That's why I never have a haircut, sir. Special dispensation. I mean, in Crossmaglen you've got to look the part." His shoulders hunched and his voice changed, the hard, distinctive Ulster accent taking over. "Personal camouflage is very important, sir. Other people use language labs to learn how to speak French or whatever. In the SAS, we can teach you how to speak with the accent of any Irish county you care to name within a fortnight."

"Soldiering," Ferguson said, "has certainly changed since my day."

The colonel stood up. "Right, gentlemen, I think we'll go over to operations now. Get this thing thoroughly sorted out. You lead the way, Tony."

Villiers flicked Fox's Guards brigade tie as they went through the door. "Which regiment?"

Fox, who knew a guardsman when he saw one, long hair or not, said, "Blues and Royals. And you?"

"Grenadiers," Villiers said. "You lost the hand over there?" "That's right," Fox said. "Picked up the wrong briefcase." "That's the way it goes."

It was a misty morning as they crossed the parade ground, and the clock tower loomed above them. Villiers paused. "If you're interested, the name of every member of the regiment killed since nineteen fifty is recorded up there."

Fox paused and peered at the names of men who had died i
n e
very possible theater of war. He frowned, "Good God, there's a chap listed as having died in Ethiopia in nineteen sixty-eight. What on earth was he doing there?'

"Search me," Villiers said. "Ours not to reason why, and all that sort of good old British rubbish. You might as well ask ten years from now what I was doing in Mayo tomorrow night."

Later, as the Bentley turned out through the main gates and they started back to London, Fox said, "You really think they'll pull it off, sir?"

"By the beginning of nineteen seventy-six, Harry, forty-nine British soldiers had been killed in south Armagh and not a single member of the IRA, so the SAS were moved in to operate undercover. In the year following, only two part-time members of the Ulster Defense Regiment were killed in the entire area. That result speaks for itself."

"All right, sir, but one thing worries me. So Tony Villiers and his boys are good. The two men he's taking with him were very impressive, I admit that. But Devlin's good, too. I know he's a bit long in the tooth, but what if he decides to shoot first himself . . . ?"

"Just what the bastard would do," Ferguson said. "But you heard my orders to Villiers. I want him untouched by human hand. -He's no use to me if he's dragging his left leg or something." He yawned. "I'm going to get a little shut-eye, Harry. Wake me at Cheltenham, and we'll have something to eat at that superb cafe."