Confessional

by Jack Higgins

  'I'm sure Brigadier Ferguson will agree.'

  'He'll bloody well have to, just as he'll have to accept that there's no way we're going to pass across general information about IRA members, past or present. The kind of stuff you could use in other ways.'

  'All right,' Fox said, 'I can see that, but it could be a tricky one. How do we co-operate if we don't pool resources?'

  'There is a way.' McGuiness poured himself another cup of tea. 'I've discussed it with the Chief of Staff and he's agreeable if you are. We use a middle-man.'

  'A middle-man?' Fox frowned. 'I don't understand?'

  'Someone acceptable to both sides. Equally trusted, if you know what I mean.'

  Fox laughed. 'There's no such animal.'

  'Oh, yes there is,' McGuiness said. 'Liam Devlin, and don't tell me you don't know who he is.'

  Harry Fox said slowly, 'I know Liam Devlin very well.'

  'And why wouldn't you. Didn't you and Faulkner have him kidnapped by the SAS back in seventy-nine to help you break Martin Brosnan out of that French prison to hunt down that mad dog, Frank Barry.'

  'You're extremely well informed.'

  'Yes, well Liam's here in Dublin now, a professor at Trinity College. He has a cottage in a village called Kilrea, about an hour's drive out of town. You go and see him. If he agrees to help, then we'll discuss it further.'

  'When?'

  'I'll let you know, or maybe I'll just turn up unexpected, like. The one way I kept ahead of the British Army all those years up north.' He stood up. 'There's a lad at the bar downstairs. Maybe you noticed?'

  'The cab driver.'

  'Billy White. Left or right hand, he can still shoot a fly off the wall. He's yours while you're here.'

  'Not necessary.'

  'Oh, but it is.' McGuiness got up and pulled on his coat. 'Number one, I wouldn't like anything to happen to you, and number two, it's a convenience to know where you are.' He opened the door, and beyond him, Fox saw Murphy waiting. 'I'll be in touch, Captain.' McGuiness saluted mockingly, the door closed behind him.

  Ferguson said, 'It makes sense, I suppose, but I'm not sure Devlin will work for us again, not after that Frank Barry affair. He felt we'd used him and Brosnan rather badly.'

  'As I recall, we did, sir,' Fox said. 'Very badly indeed.'

  'All right, Harry, no need to make a meal of it. Phone and see if he's at home. If he is, go and see him.'

  'Now, sir?'

  'Why not? It's only nine-thirty. If he is in, let me know and I'll speak to him myself. Here's his phone number, by the way. Take it down.'

  Fox went along to the bar and changed a five pound note for 50p coins. Billy White was still sitting there, reading the evening paper. The glass of lager looked untouched.

  'Can I buy you a drink, Mr White?' Fox asked.

  'Never touch the stuff, Captain.' White smiled cheerfully and emptied the glass in one long swallow. 'A Bushmills would chase that down fine.'

  Fox ordered him one. 'I may want to go out to a village called Kilrea. Do you know it?'

  'No problem,' White told him. 'I know it well.'

  Fox went back to the phone booth and closed the door. He sat there for a while thinking about it, then dialled the number Ferguson had given him. The voice, when it answered, was instantly recognizable. The voice of perhaps the most remarkable man he had ever met.

  'Devlin here.'

  'Liam? This is Harry Fox.'

  'Mother of God!' Liam Devlin said. 'Where are you?'

  'Dublin — the Westbourne Hotel. I'd like to come and see you.'

  'You mean right now?'

  'Sorry if it's inconvenient.'

  Devlin laughed. 'As a matter of fact, at this precise moment in time I'm losing at chess, son, which is something I don't like to do. Your intervention could be looked upon as timely. Is this what you might term a business call?'

  'Yes, I'm to ring Ferguson and tell him you're in. He wants to talk to you himself.'

  'So the old bastard is still going strong? Ah, well, you know where to come?'

  'Yes.'

  'I'll see you in an hour then. Kilrea Cottage, Kilrea. You can't miss it. Next to the convent.'

  When Fox came out of the booth after phoning Ferguson, White was waiting for him. 'Are we going out then, Captain?'

  'Yes,' Fox said. 'Kilrea Cottage, Kilrea. Next to a convent apparently. I'll just get my coat.'

  White waited until he'd entered the lift, then ducked into the booth and dialled a number. The receiver at the other end was lifted instantly. He said, 'We're leaving for Kilrea now. Looks like he's seeing Devlin tonight.'

  As they drove through the rain-swept streets, White said casually, 'Just so we know where we stand, Captain, I was a lieutenant in the North Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional IRA the year you lost that hand.'

  'You must have been young.'

  'Born old, that's me, thanks to the B Specials when I was a wee boy and the sodding RUC.' He lit a cigarette with one hand. 'You know Liam Devlin well, do you?'

  'Why do you ask?' Fox demanded warily.

  'That's who we're going to see, isn't it? Jesus, Captain, and who wouldn't be knowing Liam Devlin's address?'

  'Something of a legend to you, I suppose?'

  'A legend, is it? That man wrote the book. Mind you, he won't have any truck with the movement these days. He's what you might call a moralist. Can't stand the bombing and that kind of stuff.'

  'And can you?'

  'We're at war, aren't we? You bombed the hell out of the Third Reich. We'll bomb the hell out of you if that's what it takes.'

  Logical but depressing, Fox thought, for where did it end? A charnelhouse with only corpses to walk on. He shivered, face bleak.

  'About Devlin,' White said as they started to leave the city. 'There's a tale I heard about him once. Would you know if it's true, I wonder?'

  'Ask me.'

  'The word is, he went to Spain in the thirties, served against Franco and was taken prisoner. Then the Germans got hold of him and used him as an agent here during the big war.'

  'That's right.'

  'The way I heard it, after that, they sent him to England. Something to do with an attempt by German paratroopers to kidnap Churchill in nineteen forty-three. Is there any truth in that?'

  'Sounds straight out of a paperback novel to me,' Fox said.

  White sighed and there was regret in his voice. 'That's what I thought. Still, one hell of a man for all that,' and he sat back and concentrated on his driving.

  An understatement as a description of Liam Devlin, Fox thought, sitting there in the darkness: a brilliant student who had entered Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of sixteen and had taken a first class honours degree at nineteen, scholar, writer, poet and highly dangerous gunman for the IRA in the thirties, even when still a student.

  Most of what White had said was true. He had gone to Spain to fight for the anti-fascists, he had worked for the Abwehr in Ireland. As to the Churchill affair? A story whispered around often enough, but as to the truth of it? Well, it would be years before those classified files were opened.

  During the post-war period, Devlin had been a Professor at a Catholic seminary called All Souls just outside Boston. He'd been involved with the abortive IRA campaign of the late fifties and had returned to Ulster in 1969 as the present troubles had begun. One of the original architects of the Provisional IRA, he had become increasingly disillusioned by the bombing campaign and had withdrawn active support to the movement. Since 1976, he had held a position in the English Faculty at Trinity.

  Fox had not seen him since 1979 when he had been coerced, indeed, blackmailed, by Ferguson into giving his active assistance in the hunting down of Frank Barry, ex-IRA activist turned international terrorist for hire. There had been various reasons why Devlin had gone along with that business, mostly because he had believed Ferguson's lies. So, how would he react now?

  They had entered a long village street. Fox pulled himself together with a start
as White said, 'Here we are - Kilrea, and there's the convent and that's Devlin's cottage, set back from the road behind the wall.'

  He turned the car into a gravel driveway and cut the engine. 'I'll wait for you, Captain, shall I?'

  Fox got out and walked up a stone flagged path between rose bushes to the green painted porch. The cottage was pleasantly Victorian with most of the original woodwork and gable ends. A light glowed behind drawn curtains at a bow window. He pressed the bellpush. There were voices inside, footsteps and then the door opened and Liam Devlin stood looking out at him.

  Chapter Four

  DEVLIN WORE a dark blue flannel shirt open at the neck, grey slacks and a pair of highly expensive-looking Italian brogues in brown leather. He was a small man, no more than five foot five or six, and at sixty-four his dark, wavy hair showed only a light silvering. There was a faded scar on the right side of his forehead, an old bullet wound, the face pale, the eyes extraordinarily vivid blue. A slight ironic smile seemed permanently to lift the corner of his mouth - the look of a man who had found life a bad joke and had decided that the only thing to do was laugh about it.

  The smile was charming and totally sincere. 'Good to see you, Harry.' His arms went around Fox in a light embrace.

  'And you, Liam.'

  Devlin looked beyond him at the car and Billy White behind the wheel. 'You've got someone with you?'

  'Just my driver.'

  Devlin moved past him, went along the path and leaned down to the window.

  'Mr Devlin,' Billy said.

  Devlin turned without a word and came back to Fox. 'Driver, is it, Harry? The only place that one will drive you to is straight to Hell.'

  'Have you heard from Ferguson?'

  'Yes, but leave it for the moment. Come along in.'

  The interior of the house was a time capsule of Victonana: mahogany panelling and William Morris wallpaper in the hall with several night scenes by the Victorian painter, Atkinson Grimshaw, on the walls. Fox examined them with admiration as he took off his coat and gave it to Devlin. 'Strange to see these here, Liam. Grimshaw was a very Yorkshire Englishman.'

  'Not his fault, Harry, and he painted like an angel.'

  'Worth a bob or two,' Fox said, well aware that ten thousand pounds at auction was not at all out of the way for even quite a small Grimshaw.

  'Do you tell me?' Devlin said lightly. He opened one half of a double mahogany door and led the way into the sitting room. Like the hall, it was period Victorian: green flock wallpaper stamped with gold, more Grimshaws on the walls, mahogany furniture and a fire burning brightly in a fireplace that looked as if it was a William Langley original.

  The man who stood before it was a priest in dark cassock and he turned from the fire to greet them. He was about Devlin's height with iron-grey hair swept back over his ears. A handsome man, particularly at this moment as he smiled a welcome; there was an eagerness to him, an energy that touched something in Fox. It was not often that one liked another human being so completely and instinctively.

  'With apologies to Shakespeare, two little touches of Harry in the night,' Devlin said. 'Captain Harry Fox, meet Father Harry Cussane.'

  Cussane shook hands warmly. 'A great pleasure, Captain Fox. Liam was telling me something about you after you rang earlier.'

  Devlin indicated the chess table beside the sofa. 'Any excuse to get away from that. He was beating the pants off me.'

  'A gross exaggeration as usual,' Cussane said. 'But I must get going. Leave you two to your business.' His voice was pleasant and rather deep. Irish, yet more than a hint of American there.

  'Would you listen to the man?' Devlin had brought three glasses and a bottle of Bushmills from the cabinet in the corner. 'Sit down, Harry. Another little snifter before bed won't kill you.' He said to Fox, 'I've never known anyone so much on the go as this one.'

  'All right, Liam, I surrender,' Cussane said. 'Fifteen minutes, that's all, then I must go. I like to make a late round at the hospice as you know and then there's Danny Malone. Living is a day-to-day business with him right now.'

  Devlin said, 'I'll drink to him. It comes to us all.'

  'You said hospice?' Fox enquired.

  'There's a convent next door, the Sacred Heart, run by the Little Sisters of Pity. They started a hospice for terminal patients some years ago.'

  'Do you work there?'

  'Yes, as a sort of administrator cum priest. Nuns aren't supposed to be worldly enough to do the accounts. Absolute rubbish. Sister Anne Marie, who's in charge over there, knows to every last penny. And this is a small parish so the local priest doesn't have a curate. I give him a hand.'

  'In between spending three days a week in charge of the press office at the Catholic Secretariat in Dublin,' Devlin said. 'Not to mention flogging the local youth club through a very average five performances of South Pacific, complete with a star cast of ninety-three local school kids.'

  Cussane smiled. 'Guess who was stage manager? We're trying West Side Story next. Liam thinks it too ambitious, but I believe it better to rise to a challenge than go for the easy choice.'

  He swallowed a little of his Bushmills. Fox said, 'Forgive me for asking, Father, but are you American or Irish? I can't quite tell.'

  'Most days, neither can he,' Devlin laughed.

  'My mother was an Irish-American who came back to Connacht in 1938 after her parents died, to seek her roots. All she found was me.'

  'And your father?'

  'I never knew him. Cussane was her name. She was a Protestant, by the way. There are still a few in Connacht, descendants of Cromwell's butchers. Cussane is often called Patterson in that part of the country by pseudo-translation from Casan, which in Irish means path.'

  'Which means he's not quite certain who he is,' Devlin put in.

  'Only some of the time.' Cussane smiled. 'My mother returned to America in 1946 after the war. She died of influenza a year later and I was taken in by her only relative, an old great-uncle who ran a farm in the Ontario wheat belt. He was a fine man and a good Catholic. It was under his influence that I decided to enter the Church.'

  'Enter the Devil, stage left.' Devlin raised his glass.

  Fox looked puzzled and Cussane explained. 'The seminary that accepted me was All Souls at Vine Landing outside Boston. Liam was English professor there.'

  'He was a great trial to me,' Devlin said. 'Mind like a steel trap. Constantly catching me out misquoting Eliot in class.'

  'I served in a couple of Boston parishes and another in New York,' Cussane said, 'but I always hoped to get back to Ireland. Finally, I got a move to Belfast in 1968. A church on the Falls Road.'

  'Where he promptly got burned out by an Orange mob the following year.'

  'I tried to keep the parish together using a school hall,' Cussane said.

  Fox glanced at Devlin, 'While you ran around Belfast adding fuel to the flames?'

  'God might forgive you for that,' Devlin said piously, 'for I cannot.'

  Cussane emptied his glass. 'I'll be off then. Nice to meet you, Harry Fox.'

  He held out his hand. Fox shook it and Cussane moved to the French windows and opened them. Fox saw the convent looming up into the night on the other side of the garden wall. Cussane walked across the lawn, opened a gate and passed through.

  'Quite a man,' he said, as Devlin closed the windows.

  'And then some.' Devlin turned, no longer smiling. 'All right, Harry. Ferguson being his usual mysterious self, it looks as if it's up to you to tell me what this is about.'

  In the hospice, all was quiet. It was as unlike the conventional idea of a hospital as it was possible to be and the architect had designed the ward area in a way that gave each occupant of a bed a choice of privacy or intimacy with other patients. The night sister sat at her desk, the only light a shaded lamp. She didn't hear Cussane approach, yet suddenly he was there, looming out of the darkness.

  'How's Malone>'

  'The same, Father. Very little pain. We have the
drug in-put just about in balance.'

  'Is he lucid?'

  'Some of the time.'

  'I'll go and see him.'

  Danny Malone's bed, divided from the others by bookshelves and cupboards, was angled towards a glass window that gave a view of grounds and the night sky. The night light beside the bed brought his face into relief. He was not old, no more than forty, his hair prematurely white, the face like a skull under taut skin, etched in pain caused by the cancer that was slowly and relentlessly taking him from this life to the next.

  As Cussane sat down, Malone opened his eyes. He gazed blankly at Cussane, then recognition dawned. 'Father, I thought you weren't coming.'

  'I promised, didn't I? I was having a nightcap with Liam Devlin, is all.'

  'Jesus, Father, you're lucky you got away with just the one with him, but big for the cause, Liam, I'll give him that. There's no man living done more for Ireland.'

  '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.'