by Jack Higgins
Ivan gave him a shove so violent that Holley went staggering, and his Burberry rain hat fell to the floor, disclosing the Colt, which the Russian picked up at once, throwing the hat across to the desk.
“Now can I shoot him?”
Murphy pulled the Colt from the clip in the rain hat and examined it. “Very nice. I like it.” He left the cap on the desk and slipped the Colt into his pocket.
Ivan said, “Only a pro would use a shooter like that.”
“I know that, I’m not a fool. Show him where he’s going to end up if he doesn’t answer a few questions.”
Ivan leaned down, grasped a ring in the floor, and heaved back a trapdoor. There was the sound of running water, the smell of sewage.
Where the hell are you, Dillon? That was the only thought running through Holley’s mind. He glanced about him wildly, trying to act like a man in panic.
He said to Murphy, “What is this? What are you doing? I told you my name is Daniel Grimshaw.”
“Well, I think you’re a damn liar, so you’d better tell me the truth quickly, mister, or Ivan here will be breaking your right arm. You won’t be able to swim very far in the sewer after that, I’m afraid.”
“You’re making a big mistake.”
“It’s not my mistake, my friend.” Murphy shook his head and said to Ivan in Russian, “Break his arm.”
Dillon called in the same language, “I don’t think so,” and shot Ivan in his gun hand. Ivan cried out, dropped the Makarov, and slumped to one knee beside the open sewer.
Murphy took the whole thing surprisingly calmly. Remembering that he’d slipped the Colt .25 into his pocket, he watched Holley pick up the Makarov and realized there was still a chance things might go his way.
“I assume I’d be right in supposing that your fortunate arrival isn’t coincidental, Officer. I congratulate you on your performance—the NYPD would be proud of you.”
“I used to be an actor,” Dillon said. “But then I discovered the theater of the street had more appeal. Audience guaranteed, you see, especially in Belfast.”
Murphy was immediately wary. “Ah, that theater of the street? So which side did you play for? You couldn’t be IRA, not the both of you.”
“Why not?” Dillon asked.
“Well, admittedly you’ve got an Ulster accent, but your friend here is English.”
“Well, I’d say you’re a Dublin man myself,” Dillon told him. “And admittedly there’s some strange people calling themselves IRA these days, and a world of difference between them. We, for example, are the Provo variety, and Mr. Holley’s sainted mother being from Crossmaglen, the heart of what the British Army described as bandit country, his Yorkshire half doesn’t count.”
Murphy was beginning to look distinctly worried. “What do you want?”
Dillon smiled amiably. “For a start, let’s get that piece of shit on his feet. He’s a disgrace to the Russian Federation. Putin wouldn’t approve of him at all.”
Holley pulled Ivan up to stand on the edge of the sewage pit. Following Dillon’s lead, he said, “Is this where you want him, Dillon? He might fall in, you know.”
Dillon ignored him and said to Murphy, “I’m going to put a question to you. If you tell me the truth, I’ll let you live. Of course, if you turn out to have lied, I’ll have all the fuss of coming back and killing you, and that will annoy me very much, because I’m a busy man.”
Murphy laughed uneasily. “That’s a problem, I can see that, but how will you know?”
“By proving to you I mean business.” He turned to where Ivan stood swaying on the edge of the pit, pulled Holley out of the way, and kicked the Russian’s feet out from under him, sending him down with a cry into the fast-flowing sewage, to be swept away.
“There he goes,” Dillon said. “With any luck, he could end up in the river, but I doubt it.”
Murphy looked horrified. “What kind of a man are you?”
“The stuff of nightmares, so don’t fug with me, Patrick,” Dillon told him. “Last week a trawler named Amity was surprised by the Royal Navy as it attempted to land arms on the County Down coast. Our sources tell us the cargo originated with you. I’m not interested in Irish clubs or whoever raised funds over here. I want to know who ordered the cargo in Northern Ireland. Tell me that and you’re home free.”
For a moment, Murphy seemed unable to speak, and Holley said, “Are you trying to tell us you don’t know?”
Murphy seemed to swallow hard. “No. I know who it is. We do a lot of this kind of work, putting deals together for small African countries, people from the Eastern European bloc. None of the players are big fish. Lots of small agencies put things our way, stuff the big arms dealers won’t touch.”
“So cut to the chase,” Dillon told him.
“I got a call from one of them. He said an Irish party was in town looking for assistance.”
“And he turned up here?”
“That’s right. Ulster accent, just like you. A quiet sort of man, around sixty-five, strong-looking, good face, graying hair. Used to being in charge, I’d say.”
Dillon said, “What was his name?”
“I can only tell you what he called himself. Michael Flynn. Had a handling agent in Marseilles. The money was all paid into a holding company who provided the Amity with false papers, paid half a dozen thugs off the waterfront to crew it. Nothing you could trace, I promise you. My end came from Marseilles by bank draft. It all came to nothing. I never heard from Flynn again, but from what I saw in the newspaper accounts, the Royal Navy only came on the Amity by chance. A bit unfortunate, that.”
Holley turned to Dillon. “Okay?”
“It’ll have to be, won’t it?”
“You mean I’m in the clear?” Murphy asked.
“So it would appear,” Dillon told him. “Just try to cultivate a different class of friend in the future. That bastard Ivan was doing you no good at all.”
“That’s bloody marvelous.” Murphy hammered a fist on the desk and came round it. “You kept your word, Mr. Dillon, and I’m not used to that, so I’ll tell you something else.”
Dillon smiled beautifully and turned to Holley. “See, Daniel, Patrick wants to unburden himself. Isn’t that nice?”
But even he couldn’t have expected what came next.
“I was holding out on you on one thing. I actually did find out who Flynn really was. He wasn’t particularly nice to me, so I’ll tell you.”
Dillon wasn’t smiling now. “And how did you find that out?”
“He called round to see me one evening and discovered his mobile hadn’t charged up properly. He was upset about it, because he had a fixed time to call somebody in Northern Ireland. He was agitated, so it was obviously important. He asked if he could use my landline.”
Dillon shook his head. “And you listened in on an extension.”
Murphy nodded. “He said it was Jack Kelly from New York, confirming that Operation Amity is a go. Arriving on the night of the eighth, landfall north beach at Dundrum Bay, close to St. John’s Point.”
“That’s County Down,” Dillon said. “Anything else?”
“I put the phone down. I didn’t want to get caught. I had the number checked on my phone bill and found it was to a call box in Belfast on the Falls Road.”
Holley said, “Whoever they are, they’re being very careful. That would have been untraceable.” He paused. “Could Jack Kelly be who I think it is? It’s a common enough name in Ireland, God knows.”
“You mean the Jack Kelly we ran up against, working for our old friend Jean Talbot?”
“I know it doesn’t seem likely,” Holley began, and Dillon cut in.
“The same Jack Kelly who became an IRA volunteer at eighteen, was involved for over thirty years in the Troubles, and served on the Army Council?”
“And never too happy about the peace process,” Holley said. “So if it is him . . . I wonder what he’s up to.”
“That’s for Ferguson and Ro
per to decide.”
“Strange, us having a foot in both camps,” Holley said. “How do you think that happened?”
“Daniel, me boy, if I was of a religious turn of mind, I’d say God must have a purpose in mind for us, but for the life of me, I can’t imagine what it would be.”
“Well, I’m damned if I can,” Holley said. “Although I should imagine that the general will pay Kelly a call sooner rather than later.”
Dillon turned to Murphy. “Happy, are you, Patrick, now that you’ve come clean? I mean, as you did turn out to have lied, you must have thought I might take it the wrong way?”
“Of course not, Mr. Dillon,” Murphy said, but there was a gathering alarm on his face.
“Don’t worry,” Dillon carried on. “You’ve done us a good turn. Although it would help the situation, restore mutual trust, you might say, if you produced my friend’s Colt .25. It doesn’t seem to be on the spring clip, which I can see quite clearly inside the rain hat on the desk there.”
Murphy managed to look astonished. “But that’s nonsense,” he said, and then moved with lightning speed behind Holley, grabbed him by the collar, and produced the Colt.
“I don’t want trouble, I just want out, but if I have to, I’ll kill your friend. So just drop that Walther into the sewage, and then we’ll walk to the door and I’ll get into my car and vanish. Otherwise, your friend’s a dead man.”
“Now, we can’t have that, can we? Here we go, a perfectly good Walther down the toilet, in a manner of speaking.” Dillon dropped it in.
Murphy pushed Holley toward the entrance, the Colt against his skull, and as Dillon trailed them, cried, “Stay back or I’ll drop him.”
Holley said to Murphy, “Hey, take it easy. Just be careful, all right? I hope you’re familiar with the Colt .25. If you don’t have the plus button on, those hollow-point cartridges’ll blow up in your face.”
They were just reaching the door. Murphy loosened his grip, a look of panic on his face, and fumbled at the weapon. Holley kicked out at him, caught him off guard, then ran away and ducked behind one of the old vans. Murphy fired after him reflexively and then, seeing that the Colt worked perfectly well, he realized he’d been had. He turned and ran out through the heavy rain into the courtyard.
Dillon had a replica of Holley’s Colt in a holder on his right ankle. He drew it now, ran to the entrance and fired at Murphy, who was trying to open the door of a green Lincoln. Murphy fired back wildly, then turned, ran across the road and up the stone steps leading to the walkway, the East River lapping below it. At the top, he hesitated, unsure of which way to go, turned, and found Dillon closing in, Holley behind.
“No way out, Patrick. So have you told me the truth or not?”
“Damn you,” Murphy called, half blinded by the heavy rain, and tried to take aim.
Dillon shot him twice in the heart, twisting him around, his third shot driving him over the low rail into the river. He reached the rail in time to see Murphy surface once, then roll over and disappear in the fast-running current.
Holley moved up to join him. “What was all that about? Sometimes you play games too much, Sean.”
“Sure, and all I wanted was to make sure he was telling the truth. He’d lied at first—isn’t that a fact?”
“So is the name really Jack Kelly?”
“We’ll see, but for now, it’s time for the joys of the Plaza and our first meeting with the intriguing Captain Sara Gideon.”
“Definitely something to look forward to,” Holley said, and followed him down the steps.
At the same time they were driving away in their delivery truck, Patrick Murphy, choking and gasping, was swept under a pier two hundred yards away downstream. He drifted through the pilings, banged into stone steps with a railing, hauled himself out, and paused at the top, where there was a roofed shelter with a bench.
He sat down, shivering with cold, pulled off his soaking jacket, then his shirt. The bulletproof vest he’d been wearing was the best on the market, even against hollow points. He ripped open the Velcro tabs, tossed the rest down into the river with his shirt, struggled back into his jacket, and walked through the rain to the warehouse.
He expected Dillon and Holley to be long gone and went straight inside and up to his office. He peeled off his jacket, pulled on an old sweater that was hanging behind the door, then lifted the carpet in the corner, revealing a floor safe, opened it, and removed a linen bag containing his mad money, twenty grand in large bills. He got a valise from the cupboard, put the money into it, and sat there thinking about the situation.
He had to get away for a while, the kind of place where he’d be swallowed up by the crowds. Vegas would be good, but he needed to cover his back, just in case he wanted to return to New York. He rang a number and, when a man replied, said, “I’m afraid I’ve got a problem, Mr. Cagney.”
“And what would that be?”
“You sent me a nice piece of business. The man from Ulster, Michael Flynn.”
“What’s happened?”
“I had a client calling himself Grimshaw. He said he was seeking a consignment of weaponry, but the truth was he wanted information about the Amity and who’d been behind it.”
“And did you tell him about Michael Flynn?”
“Of course I did. He and another man with him killed Ivan and threatened to do the same to me if I didn’t tell them. Anyway, your client’s name isn’t Flynn, it’s Jack Kelly. He got careless using my phone one night.”
“How unfortunate. Have you any idea who these people are?”
“One posed as an NYPD officer, had an Ulster accent, and was called Dillon. The other was English, named Holley.”
“They seem to have been rather careless with their names.”
“That’s because I was supposed to end up dead, which I nearly was. Look, they claimed to be members of the Provisional IRA. I thought your client, Flynn or Kelly or whatever his name is, should know about that.”
Cagney said, “I appreciate your warning, Patrick. What do you intend to do now?”
“Get the hell out of New York.”
“Where can I contact you?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Murphy replaced the phone, grabbed the valise, and went out. Within minutes, he was driving the undamaged car, a Ford sedan, out of the courtyard.
Shortly afterward, Liam Cagney, a prosperous sixty-year-old stockbroker by profession and Irish American to the core, was phoning Jack Kelly in Kilmartin, County Down, in Northern Ireland.
“It’s Liam, Jack,” he said when the receiver was picked up. “You’ve got a problem.”
“And what would that be?”
“Somebody’s asked Murphy about the Amity. Do the names Dillon and Holley mean anything to you?”
“By God, they do. They’re both Provisional IRA renegades now working for Charles Ferguson and British Intelligence. What did Murphy tell them?”
“He told me they killed his man Ivan and almost got him. He also heard you using your real name in a phone call.”
Kelly swore. “I knew that was dangerous, but I had no choice. So he’s on the run? I don’t like that. You never know what he might do.”
“Don’t worry, it’s taken care of. He won’t be going anywhere.”
“That’s good to know. You’ve served our cause well, Liam, and thanks for the information about Dillon and Holley. If they turn up here, we’ll be ready for them. It’s time someone sorted those two out. Take care, old friend.”
He was seated behind his desk in his office at Talbot Place, the great country house in County Down, where he was estate manager. He sat there thinking about it, then opened a drawer, took out an encrypted mobile phone, and punched in a number.
There was a delay, and he was about to ring off when a voice said, “Owen Rashid.”
“This is Kelly, Owen. Sorry to bother you.”
In London, Rashid’s apartment was huge and luxurious, and as he got rid of his tie, he
walked to the windows overlooking Park Lane. “Is there a problem? Tell me.”
Which Kelly did. When he was finished, he said, “Sorry about this.”
“Not your fault.” Rashid poured himself a brandy. “Dillon and Holley. They’re bad news, but nothing I can’t deal with. My sources will tell me if they try anything.”
“I’m always amazed by what you know, Owen.”
“Not me, Jack, Al Qaeda. In spite of bin Laden’s death, it’s still a worldwide organization. We have people at every level, from a waiter serving lunch to a talkative senator in New York, to a disgruntled police chief in Pakistan, to a disenchanted government minister in some Arab state who hates corruption—or a humble gardener right here in London’s Hyde Park, watching me take my early-morning run and seeing who I’m with. In this wonderful age of the mobile phone, all they have to do is call in.”
