Confessional - Devlin 03 (v5)

by Jack Higgins

  'What about yourself?' Cussane sat down beside the bed. 'No stronger fighter for the movement than you, Danny.'

  'But how many did I kill, Father, there's the rub, and for what?' Malone asked him. 'Daniel O'Connel once said in a speech that, although the ideal of Irish freedom was just, it was not worth a single human life. When I was young, I disputed that. Now I'm dying, I think I know what he meant.' He winced in pain and turned to look at Cussane. 'Can we talk some more, Father? It helps get it straight in my own mind.'

  'Just for a while, then you must get some sleep,' Cussane smiled. 'One thing a priest is good at is listening, Danny.'

  Malone smiled contentedly. 'Right, where were we? I was telling you about the preparation for the bombing campaign on the English Midlands and London in seventy-two.'

  'You were saying the papers nicknamed you the Fox,' Cussane said, 'because you seemed to go backwards and forwards between England and Ireland at will. All your friends were caught, Danny, but not you. How was that?'

  'Simple, Father. The greatest curse on this country of ours is the informer and the second greatest curse is the inefficiency of the IRA. People full of ideology and revolution blow a lot of wind and are often singularly lacking in good sense. That's why I preferred to go to the professionals.'

  'Professionals?'

  'What you would call the criminal element. For example, there wasn't an IRA safe house in England during the seventies that wasn't on the Special Branch's list at Scotland Yard sooner or later. That's how so many got caught.'

  'And you?'

  'Criminals on the run or needing a rest when things get too hot have places they can go, Father. Expensive places, I admit, but safe and that's what I used. There was one in Scotland south from Glasgow in Galloway run by a couple of brothers called Mungo. What you might call a country retreat. Absolute bastards, mind you.'

  The pain was suddenly so bad that he had to fight for breath. 'I'll get sister,' Cussane told him in alarm.

  Malone grabbed him by the front of his cassock. 'No, you damn well won't. No more painkillers, Father. They mean well, the sisters, but enough is enough. Let's just keep talking.'

  Devlin paced up and down the room restlessly. 'Do you believe it?' Fox asked.

  'All right,' Harry Cussane said. Malone lay back, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. 'Anyway, as I was saying, these Mungo brothers, Hector and Angus, were the great original bastards.'

  'It makes sense and it would explain a great deal,' Devlin said. 'So let's just say I accept it in principle.'

  'So, what do we do about it?'

  'What do we do about it?' Devlin glared at him. 'The effrontery of the man. Let me remind you, Harry, that the last time I did a job for Ferguson, the bastard conned me. Lied in his teeth. Used me.'

  'That was then, this is now, Liam.'

  'And what is that pearl of wisdom supposed to mean?'

  There was a soft tapping at the French window. Devlin opened the desk drawer, took out an old-fashioned Mauser pistol, with an SS bulbous silencer on the end and cocked it. He nodded to Fox, then Devlin pulled the curtain. Martin McGuiness peered in at them, Murphy at his shoulder.

  'Dear God!' Devlin groaned.

  He opened the French window and McGuiness smiled as he stepped in. 'God bless all here!' he said mockingly and added to Murphy, 'Watch the window, Michael.' He closed it and walked over to the fire, holding his hands to the warmth. 'Colder as the nights draw in.'

  'What do you want?' Devlin demanded.

  'Has the Captain here explained the situation to you yet?'

  'He has.'

  'And what do you think?'

  'I don't think at all,' Devlin told him. 'Especially where you lot are concerned.'

  'The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, that's what Mick Collins used to say,' McGuiness told him. 'I fight for my country, Liam, with anything that comes to hand. We're at war.' He was angry now. 'I've got nothing to apologize for.'

  'If I could say something,' Fox put in. 'Let's accept that Cuchulain exists, then it isn't a question of taking sides. It's accepting that what he's doing has needlessly protracted the tragic events of the past thirteen years.'

  McGuiness helped himself to a whiskey. 'He has a point. When I was O.C. Derry in nineteen seventy-two, I was flown to London with Daithi O'Connell, Seamus Twomey, Ivor Bell and others to meet Willie Whitelaw to discuss peace.'

  'And the Lenadoon shooting broke the cease-fire,' Fox said and turned to Devlin. 'It doesn't seem to me to be a question of taking sides any more. Cuchulain has worked deliberately to keep the whole rotten mess going. I would have thought anything that might have helped stop that would be worth it.'

  'Morality is it?' Devlin raised a hand and smiled wickedly.

  'Good then, let's get down to brass tacks. This fella, Levin, who actually saw Kelly or Cuchulain or whatever his name is, all those years ago. I presume Ferguson is showing him pictures of every known KGB operative.'

  'And all known adherents of the IRA, UDA, UVF. Anything and everything,' Fox said. 'That will include looking at what Special Branch in Dublin have because we swop information.'

  'The bastards would,' McGuiness said bitterly. 'Still, I think we've got a few that neither the police in Dublin nor your people in London have ever seen.'

  'And how do we handle that?' Fox demanded.

  'You get Levin over here and he and Devlin look at what we've got - no one else. Is it agreed?'

  Fox glanced at Devlin who nodded. 'Okay,' Fox said. 'I'll ring the Brigadier tonight.'

  'Fine.' McGuiness turned to Devlin. 'You're sure your phone's not tapped or anything like that. I'm thinking of those Special Branch bastards.'

  Devlin opened a drawer in the desk and produced a black metal box which he switched on so that a red light appeared. He approached the telephone and held the box over it. There was no reaction.

  'Oh, the wonders of the electronic age,' he said and put the box away.

  'Fine,' McGuiness said. 'The only people who know about this are Ferguson, you, Captain, Liam, the Chief of Staff and myself.'

  'And Professor Paul Cherny,' Fox said.

  McGuiness nodded. 'That's right. We've got to do something about him.' He turned to Devlin. 'Do you know him?'

  'I've seen him at drinks parties at the university. Exchanged a civil word, no more than that. He's well liked. A widower. His wife died before he defected. There's a chance he isn't involved in this, of course.'

  'And pigs might fly,' McGuiness said crisply. 'The fact that it was Ireland he defected to is too much of a coincidence for me. A pound to a penny he knows our man, so why don't we pull him in and squeeze it out of him?'

  'Simple,' Fox told him. 'Some men don't squeeze.'

  'He's right,' Devlin said. 'Better to try the softly-softly approach first.'

  'All right,' McGuiness said. 'I'll have him watched twenty-four hours a day. Put Michael Murphy in charge. He won't be able to go to the bathroom without we know it.'

  Devlin glanced at Fox. 'Okay by you?'

  'Fine,' Fox told him.

  'Good.' McGuiness buttoned his raincoat. 'I'll get off then. I'll leave Billy to look after you, Captain.' He opened the French window. 'Mind your back, Liam.' And then he was gone.

  Ferguson was in bed when Fox phoned, sitting up against the pillows, working his way through a mass of papers, preparing himself for a Defence committee meeting the following day. He listened patiently to everything Fox had to say. 'So far, so good, Harry, as far as I can see. Levin spent the entire day working through everything we had at the Directorate. Didn't come up with a thing.'

  'It's been a long time, sir. Cuchulain could have changed a lot and not just because he's older. I mean, he could have a beard, for example.'

  'Negative thinking, Harry. I'll put Levin on the morning flight to Dublin, but Devlin will have to handle him. I need you back here.'

  'Any particular reason, sir?'

  'Lots to do with the Vatican. It reall
y is beginning to look as if the Pope won't come. However, he's invited the cardinals of Argentina and Britain to confer with him.'

  'So the visit could still be on?'

  'Perhaps, but more important from our point of view, the war is still on and there's talk of the Argentinians trying to get hold of this damned Exocet missile on the European black market. I need you, Harry. Catch the first flight out. By the way, an interesting development. Tanya Voroninova, remember her?'

  'Of course, sir.'

  'She's in Paris to give a series of concerts. Fascinating that she should surface at this particular moment.'

  'What Jung would call synchronicity, sir?'

  'Young, Harry? What on earth are you babbling about?'

  'Carl Jung, sir. Famous psychologist. Synchronicity is a word he coined for events having a coincidence in time and, because of this, the feeling that some deeper motivation is involved.'

  'The fact that you're in Ireland is no excuse for acting as if you've gone soft in the head, Harry,' Ferguson said testily.

  He put down the phone, sat there thinking, then got up, pulled on his robe and went out. He knocked on the door of the guest room and went in. Levin was sitting up in bed wearing a pair of Ferguson's pyjamas and reading a book.

  Ferguson sat on the edge of the bed. 'I thought you'd be tired after going through so many photos.'

  Levin smiled. 'When you reach my age, Brigadier, sleep eludes you, memory crowds in. You wonder what it has all been about.'

  Ferguson warmed to the man. 'Don't we all, my dear chap? Anyway, how would you feel about running over to Dublin on the morning plane?'

  'To see Captain Fox?'

  'No, he'll be returning here, but a friend of mine, Professor Liam Devlin of Trinity College, will take care of you. He'll probably be showing you a few more photos, courtesy of our friends in the IRA. They'd never let me have them for obvious reasons.'

  The old Russian shook his head. 'Tell me, Brigadier, did the war to end all wars finish in nineteen forty-five or am I mistaken?'

  'You and a great many other people, my friend.' Ferguson got up and went to the door. 'I'd get some sleep if I were you. You'll need to be up at six to catch the early morning flight from Heathrow. I'll have Kim serve you breakfast in bed.'

  He closed the door. Levin sat there for a while, an expression of sadness on his face, then he sighed, closed the book, turned out the light and went to sleep.

  At Kilrea Cottage, Fox put down the phone and turned to Devlin. 'All fixed. He'll come in on the breakfast plane. Unfortunately, my flight leaves just before. He'll report to the information desk in the main concourse. You can pick him up there.'

  'No need,' Devlin said. 'This minder of yours, young White. He'll be dropping you so he can pick Levin up at the same time and bring him straight here. It's best we do it that way. McGuiness might be in touch early about where I'm supposed to take him.'

  'Fine,' Fox said. 'I'd better get moving.'

  'Good lad.'

  Devlin got his coat for him and took him out to the car where Billy White waited patiently.

  'Back to the Westbourne, Billy,' Fox said.

  Devlin leaned down at the window. 'Book yourself in there for the night, son, and in the morning, do exactly what the Captain tells you to. Let him down by a single inch and I'll have your balls and Martin McGuiness will probably walk all over the rest of you.'

  Billy White grinned affably. 'Sure and on a good day, they tell me I can almost shoot as well as you, Mr Devlin.'

  'Go on, be off with you.'

  The eavesdropping equipment which the KGB had supplied to Cuchulain was the most advanced in the world, developed originally by a Japanese company, the details, as a result of industrial espionage, having reached Moscow four years previously. The directional microphone trained on Kilrea Cottage could pick up every word uttered inside at several hundred yards. Its ultra-frequency secondary function was to catch even the faintest telephone conversation. All this was allied to a sophisticated recording apparatus.

  The whole was situated in a small attic concealed behind the loft watertanks just beneath the pantile roof of the house. Cuchulain had listened in on Liam Devlin in this way for a long time now, although it had been some time since anything so interesting had come up. He sat in the attic, smoking a cigarette, running the tape at top speed through the blank spots and the unimportant bits, paying careful attention to the phone conversation with Ferguson.

  Afterwards, he sat there thinking about it for a while, then he reset the tape, went downstairs and let himself out. He went into the phone box at the end of the village street by the pub and dialled a Dublin number. The phone was picked up almost immediately. He could hear voices, a sudden laugh, Mozart playing softly.

  'Cherny here.'

  'It's me. You're not alone?'

  Cherny laughed lightly. 'Dinner party for a few faculty friends.'

  'I must see you.'

  'All right,' Cherny said. 'Usual time and place tomorrow afternoon.'

  Cuchulain replaced the receiver, left the booth and went back up the village street, whistling softly, an old Connemara folk song that had all the despair, all the sadness of life in it.

  5

  FOX HAD a thoroughly bad night and slept little so that he was restless and ill-at-ease as Billy White took the car expertly through the early morning traffic towards the airport. The young Irishman was cheerful enough as he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music from the radio.

  'Will you be back, Captain?'

  'I don't know. Perhaps.'

  'Ah, well, I don't expect you to be over fond of the ould country.' White nodded towards Fox's gloved hand. 'Not after what it's cost you.'

  'Is that so?' Fox said.

  Billy lit a cigarette. 'The trouble with you Brits is that you never face up to the fact that Ireland's a foreign country. Just because we speak English ...'

  'As a matter of interest, my mother's name was Fitzgerald and she came from County Mayo,' Fox told him. 'She worked for the Gaelic League, was a lifelong friend of de Valera and spoke excellent Irish, a rather difficult language I found when she insisted on teaching it to me when I was a boy. Do you speak Irish, Billy?'

  'God save us, but I don't, Captain,' White said in astonishment.

  'Well, then I suggest you kindly stop prattling on about the English being unable to understand the Irish.'

  He glanced out at the traffic morosely. A police motorcyclist took up station on the left of them, a sinister figure in goggles and crash helmet with a heavy caped raincoat against the early morning downpour. He glanced sideways at Fox once, anonymous in the dark goggles, and dropped back as they turned into the slip road leading to the airport.

  Billy left the car in the short stay park. As they entered the concourse, they were already calling Fox's plane. Cuchulain, who had been with them all the way from the hotel, stood at the door by which they had entered and watched Fox book in.

  Fox and Billy walked towards the departure gate and Fox said, 'An hour till the British Airways flight lands.'

  'Time for a big breakfast,' Billy grinned. 'The fine time we had, Captain.'

  'I'll be seeing you, Billy.'

  Fox put out his good hand and Billy White took it with a certain reluctance. 'Try to make sure it isn't at the wrong end of some street in Belfast. I'd hate to have you in my sights, Captain.'

  Fox went through the gate and Billy made his way across the concourse to stairs leading up to the cafe terrace. Cuchulain watched him go, then went out, back across the road to the carpark and waited.

  An hour later, he was back inside, consulting the nearest arrival screen. The British Airways shuttle from London was just landing and he saw White approach the central information desk and speak to one of the attendants. There was a pause and then an announcement over the tannoy system.

  'Will Mr Viktor Levin, a passenger on the London shuttle, please report to the information desk.'

  A few mome
nts later, the squat figure of the Russian appeared from the crowd. He carried a small case and wore a rather large brown raincoat and black trilby hat. Cuchulain sensed that it was his quarry even before he spoke to one of the attendants who indicated White. They shook hands. Cuchulain watched them for a moment longer as White started to speak, then turned and left.

  *

  'So this is Ireland?' Levin said as they drove down towards the city.

  'Your first visit?' White asked.

  'Oh, yes. I am from Russia. I have not travelled abroad very much.'

  'Russia?' Billy said. 'Jesus, but you'll find it different here.' 'And this is Dublin?' Levin enquired as they followed the traffic down into the city.

  'Yes. Kilrea, where we're going, is on the other side.'

  'A city of significant history, I think,' Levin observed.

  'And that's the understatement of the age,' White told him. 'I'll take you through Parnell Square, it's on our way. A great patriot in spite of being a Prod. And then O'Connell Street and the General Post Office where the boys held out against the whole bloody British Army back in 1916.'

  'Good. This I would like very much.' Levin leaned back in his seat and looked out on the passing scene with interest.

  At Kilrea, Liam Devlin walked across the back lawn of his cottage, let himself through the gate in the wall and ran for the rear entrance of the hospice as the rain increased into a sudden downpour. Sister Anne-Marie was crossing the hall, accompanied by two young white-coated interns on loan from University College, Dublin.

  She was a small, sparse little woman, very fit for her seventy years, and wore a white smock over her nun's robe. She had a doctorate in medicine from the University of London and was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. A lady to be reckoned with. She and Devlin were old adversaries. She had once been French, but that was a long time ago as he was fond of reminding her.