Eye of the Storm

by Jack Higgins

“How do you know all this?”

  “The operative I put on the job managed to trace him late yesterday afternoon. By the time he’d looked the place over, then dropped into the pub in the local village to make a few enquiries, it was very late. He didn’t get back to London until after midnight. I got his report this morning.”

  “And?”

  “He says the farm is very out of the way near a river called the Arun. Marsh country. The village is called Doxley. The farm is a mile south of it. There’s a signpost.”

  “He is efficient, your man.”

  “Well, he’s young and trying to prove himself. From what he heard in the pub, Fahy runs a few sheep and dabbles in agricultural machinery.”

  Dillon nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “One thing that might come as a surprise. He has a girl staying with him, his grandniece, it seems. My man saw her.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “That she came into the pub for some bottles of beer. About twenty. Angel, they called her, Angel Fahy. He said she looked like a peasant.”

  “Wonderful.” He got up and reached for his jacket. “I must get down there right away. Do you have a car?”

  “Yes, but it’s only a Mini. Easier parking in London.”

  “No problem. As you said, thirty miles at the most. I can borrow it, then?”

  “Of course. It’s in the garage at the end of my street. I’ll show you.”

  He put on his trenchcoat, opened the briefcase, took out the Walther, rammed a clip in the bolt and put it in his left-hand pocket. The silencer he put in the right. “Just in case,” he said, and they went out.

  The car was in fact a Mini-Cooper, which meant performance, jet black with a gold trim. “Excellent,” he said. “I’ll get moving.”

  He got behind the wheel and she said, “What’s so important about Fahy?”

  “He’s an engineer who can turn his hand to anything, a bomb maker of genius, and he’s been in deep cover for years. He helped me when I last operated here in eighty-one, helped me a lot. It also helps that he was my father’s second cousin. I knew him when I was a kid over here. You haven’t mentioned the cash from Aroun, by the way.”

  “I’ve to pick it up this evening at six. All very dramatic. A Mercedes stops at the corner of Brancaster Street and Town Drive. That’s not far from here. I say, ‘It’s cold, even for this time of the year,’ and the driver hands me a briefcase.”

  “God help us, he must have been seeing too much television,” Dillon said. “I’ll be in touch,” and he drove away.

  Ferguson had stopped off at his office at the Ministry of Defence after Downing Street to bring the report on the Dillon affair file up to date and clear his desk generally. As always, he preferred to work at the flat, so he returned to Cavendish Square, had Kim prepare him a late lunch of scrambled eggs and bacon, and was browsing through his Times when the doorbell rang. A moment later Kim showed in Mary Tanner and Brosnan.

  “My dear Martin.” Ferguson got up and shook hands. “So here we are again.”

  “So it would seem,” Brosnan said.

  “Everything go off all right at the funeral?” Ferguson asked.

  “As funerals go, it went,” Brosnan said harshly and lit a cigarette. “So where are we? What’s happening?”

  “I’ve seen the Prime Minister again. There’s to be no press publicity.”

  “I agree with him there,” Brosnan said. “It would be pointless.”

  “All relevant intelligence agencies, plus Special Branch, of course, have been notified. They’ll do what they can.”

  “Which isn’t very much,” Brosnan said.

  “Another point,” Mary put in. “I know he’s threatened the Prime Minister, but we don’t have a clue what he intends or when. He could be up to something this very evening for all we know.”

  Brosnan shook his head. “No, I think there’ll be more to it than that. These things take time. I should know.”

  “So where will you start?” Ferguson asked.

  “With my old friend Harry Flood. When Dillon was here in eighty-one he probably used underworld contacts to supply his needs. Harry may be able to dig something out.”

  “And if not?”

  “Then I’ll borrow that Lear jet of yours again, fly to Dublin and have words with Liam Devlin.”

  “Ah, yes,” Ferguson said. “Who better?”

  “When Dillon went to London in nineteen eighty-one he must have been under someone’s orders. If Devlin could find out who, that could be a lead to all sorts.”

  “Sounds logical to me. So you’ll see Flood tonight?”

  “I think so.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “With me,” Mary said.

  “At Lowndes Square?” Ferguson’s eyebrows went up. “Really?”

  “Come on, Brigadier, don’t be an old fuddy-duddy. I’ve got four bedrooms remember, each with its own bathroom, and Professor Brosnan can have one with a lock on the inside of his door.”

  Brosnan laughed. “Come on, let’s get out of here. See you later, Brigadier.”

  They used Ferguson’s car. She closed the sliding window between them and the driver and said, “Don’t you think you’d better ring your friend, let him know you’d like to see him?”

  “I suppose so. I’ll need to check his number.”

  She took a notebook from her handbag. “I have it here. It’s ex-directory. There you go. Cable Wharf. That’s in Wapping.”

  “Very efficient.”

  “And here’s a phone.”

  She handed him the car phone. “You do like to be in charge,” he said and dialed the number.

  It was Mordecai Fletcher who answered. Brosnan said, “Harry Flood, please.”

  “Who wants him?”

  “Martin Brosnan.”

  “The Professor? This is Mordecai. We haven’t heard from you for what—three or four years? Christ, but he’s going to be pleased.”

  A moment later a voice said, “Martin?”

  “Harry?”

  “I don’t believe it. You’ve come back to haunt me, you bastard.”

  EIGHT

  FOR DILLON IN the Mini-Cooper, the run from London went easily enough. Although there was a light covering of snow on the fields and hedgerows, the roads were perfectly clear and not particularly busy. He was in Dorking within half an hour. He passed straight through and continued toward Horsham, finally pulling into a petrol station about five miles outside.

  As the attendant was topping up the tank Dillon got his road map out. “Place called Doxley, you know it?”

  “Half a mile up the road on your right a signpost says Grimethorpe. That’s the airfield, but before you get there you’ll see a sign to Doxley.”

  “So it’s not far from here?”

  “Three miles maybe, but it might as well be the end of the world.” The attendant chuckled as he took the notes Dillon gave him. “Not much there, mister.”

  “Thought I’d take a look. Friend told me there might be a weekend cottage going.”

  “If there is, I haven’t heard of it.”

  Dillon drove away, came to the Grimethorpe sign within a few minutes, followed the narrow road and found the Doxley sign as the garage man had indicated. The road was even narrower, high banks blocking the view until he came to the brow of a small hill and looked across a desolate landscape, powdered with snow. There was the occasional small wood, a scattering of hedged fields and then flat marsh-land drifting toward a river, which had to be the Arun. Beside it, perhaps a mile away, he saw houses, twelve or fifteen, with red pantiled roofs, and there was a small church, obviously Doxley. He started down the hill to the wooded valley below and as he came to it, saw a five-barred gate standing open and a decaying wooden sign with the legend Cadge End Farm.

  The track led through the wood and brought him almost at once to a farm complex. There were a few chickens running here and there, a house and two large barns linked to it so that the whole
enclosed a courtyard. It looked incredibly rundown, as if nothing had been done to it for years, but then, as Dillon knew, many country people preferred to live like that. He got out of the Mini and crossed to the front door, knocked and tried to open it. It was locked. He turned and went to the first barn. Its old wooden doors stood open. There was a Morris van in there and a Ford car jacked up on bricks, no wheels, agricultural implements all over the place.

  Dillon took out a cigarette. As he lit it in cupped hands, a voice behind said, “Who are you? What do you want?”

  He turned and found a girl in the doorway. She wore baggy trousers tucked into a pair of rubber boots, a heavy roll-neck sweater under an old anorak and a knitted beret like a Tam o’ Shanter, the kind of thing you found in fishing villages on the West Coast of Ireland. She was holding a double-barreled shotgun threateningly. As he took a step toward her, she thumbed back the hammer.

  “You stay there.” The Irish accent was very pronounced.

  “You’ll be the one they call Angel Fahy?” he said.

  “Angela, if it’s any of your business.”

  Tania’s man had been right. She did look like a little peasant. Broad cheekbone, upturned nose and a kind of fierceness there. “Would you really shoot with that thing?”

  “If I had to.”

  “A pity that, and me only wanting to meet my father’s cousin, once removed, Danny Fahy.”

  She frowned. “And who in the hell might you be, mister?” “Dillon’s the name. Sean Dillon.”

  She laughed harshly. “That’s a damn lie. You’re not even Irish and Sean Dillon is dead, everyone knows that.”

  Dillon dropped into the hard distinctive accent of Belfast. “To steal a great man’s line, girl dear, all I can say is, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

  The gun went slack in her hands. “Mother Mary, are you Sean Dillon?”

  “As ever was. Appearances can be deceiving.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Uncle Danny talks about you all the time, but it was always like stories, nothing real to it at all and here you are.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He did a repair on a car for the landlord of the local pub, took it down there an hour ago. Said he’d walk back, but he’ll be there a while yet drinking, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “At this time? Isn’t the pub closed until evening?”

  “That might be the law, Mr. Dillon, but not in Doxley. They never close.”

  “Let’s go and get him, then.”

  She left the shotgun on a bench and got into the Mini beside him. As they drove away, he said, “What’s your story then?”

  “I was raised on a farm in Galway. My da was Danny’s nephew, Michael. He died six years ago when I was fourteen. After a year, my mother married again.”

  “Let me guess,” Dillon said. “You didn’t like your stepfather and he didn’t like you?”

  “Something like that. Uncle Danny came over for my father’s funeral, so I’d met him and liked him. When things got too heavy, I left home and came here. He was great about it. Wrote to my mother and she agreed I could stay. Glad to get rid of me.”

  There was no self-pity at all and Dillon warmed to her. “They always say some good comes out of everything.”

  “I’ve been working it out,” she said. “If you’re Danny’s second cousin and I’m his great-niece, then you and I are blood related, isn’t that a fact?”

  Dillon laughed. “In a manner of speaking.”

  She looked ecstatic as she leaned back. “Me, Angel Fahy, related to the greatest gunman the Provisional IRA ever had.”

  “Well, now, there would be some who would argue about that,” he said as they reached the village and pulled up outside the pub.

  It was a small, desolate sort of place, no more than fifteen rather dilapidated cottages and a Norman church with a tower and an overgrown graveyard. The pub was called the Green Man and even Dillon had to duck to enter the door. The ceiling was very low and beamed. The floor was constructed of heavy stone flags worn with the years, the walls were whitewashed. The man behind the bar in his shirt sleeves was at least eighty.

  He glanced up and Angel said, “Is he here, Mr. Dalton?”

  “By the fire, having a beer,” the old man said.

  A fire burned in a wide stone hearth and there was a wooden bench and a table in front of it. Danny Fahy sat there reading the paper, a glass in front of him. He was sixty-five, with an untidy, grizzled beard, and wore a cloth cap and an old Harris Tweed suit.

  Angel said, “I’ve brought someone to see you, Uncle Danny.”

  He looked up at her and then at Dillon, puzzlement on his face. “And what can I do for you, sir?”

  Dillon removed his glasses. “God bless all here!” he said in his Belfast accent. “And particularly you, you old bastard.”

  Fahy turned very pale, the shock was so intense. “God save us, is that you, Sean, and me thinking you were in your box long ago?”

  “Well, I’m not and I’m here.” Dillon took a five-pound note from his wallet and gave it to Angel. “A couple of whiskies, Irish for preference.”

  She went back to the bar and Dillon turned. Danny Fahy actually had tears in his eyes and he flung his arms around him. “Dear God, Sean, but I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.”

  The sitting room at the farm was untidy and cluttered, the furniture very old. Dillon sat on a sofa while Fahy built up the fire. Angel was in the kitchen cooking a meal. It was open to the sitting room and Dillon could see her moving around.

  “And how’s life been treating you, Sean?” Fahy stuffed a pipe and lit it. “Ten years since you raised Cain in London town. By God, boy, you gave the Brits something to think about.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you, Danny.”

  “Great days. And what happened after?”

  “Europe, the Middle East. I kept on the move. Did a lot for the PLO. Even learned to fly.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  Angel came and put plates of bacon and eggs on the table. “Get it while it’s hot.” She returned with a tray laden with teapot and milk, three mugs and a plate piled high with bread and butter. “I’m sorry there’s nothing fancier, but we weren’t expecting company.”

  “It looks good to me,” Dillon told her and tucked in.

  “So now you’re here, Sean, and dressed like an English gentleman.” Fahy turned to Angel. “Didn’t I tell you the actor this man was? They never could put a glove on him in all these years, not once.”

  She nodded eagerly, smiling at Dillon, and her personality had changed with the excitement. “Are you on a job now, Mr. Dillon, for the IRA, I mean?”

  “It would be a cold day in hell before I put myself on the line for that bunch of old washer women,” Dillon said.

  “But you are working on something, Sean?” Fahy said. “I can tell. Come on, let’s in on it.”

  Dillon lit a cigarette. “What if I told you I was working for the Arabs, Danny, for Saddam Hussein himself?”

  “Jesus, Sean, and why not? And what is it he wants you to do?”

  “He wants something now—a coup. Something big. America’s too far away. That leaves the Brits.”

  “What could be better?” Fahy’s eyes were gleaming.

  “Thatcher was in France the other day seeing Mitterrand. I had plans for her on the way to her plane. Perfect setup, quiet country road, and then someone I trusted let me down.”

  “And isn’t that always the way?” Fahy said. “So you’re looking for another target? Who, Sean?”

  “I was thinking of John Major.”

  “The new Prime Minister?” Angel said in awe. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Sure and why wouldn’t he? Didn’t the boys nearly get the whole bloody British Government at Brighton,” Danny Fahy told her. “Go on, Sean, what’s your plan?”

  “I haven’t got one, Danny, that’s the trouble, but there would be a payday for this like you wouldn�
�t believe.”

  “And that’s as good a reason to make it work as any. So you’ve come to Uncle Danny looking for help?” Fahy went to a cupboard, came back with a bottle of Bushmills and two glasses and filled them. “Have you any ideas at all?”

  “Not yet, Danny. Do you still work for the Movement?”

  “Stay in deep cover, that was the order from Belfast so many years ago I’ve forgotten. Since then not a word, and me bored out of my socks, so I moved down here. It suits me. I like the countryside here, I like the people. They keep to themselves. I’ve built up a fair business repairing agricultural machinery and I run a few sheep. We’re happy here, Angel and me.”

  “And still bored out of your socks. Do you remember Martin Brosnan, by the way?”

  “I do so. You were bad friends with that one.”

  “I had a run-in with him in Paris recently. He’ll probably turn up in London looking for me. He’ll be working for Brit intelligence.”

  “The bastard.” Fahy frowned as he refilled his pipe. “Didn’t I hear some fanciful talk of how Brosnan got into Ten Downing Street as a waiter years ago and didn’t do anything about it?”

  “I heard that story, too. A flight of fancy and no one would get in these days as a waiter or anything else. You know they’ve blocked the street off? The place is a fortress. No way in there, Danny.”

  “Oh, there’s always a way, Sean. I was reading in a magazine the other day how a lot of French Resistance people in the Second World War were held at some Gestapo headquarters. Their cells were on the ground floor, the Gestapo on the first floor. The RAF had a fella in a Mosquito fly in at fifty feet and drop a bomb that bounced off the street and went in through the first-floor window, killing all the bloody Gestapo so the fellas downstairs got away.”

  “What in the hell are you trying to say to me?” Dillon demanded.

  “That I’m a great believer in the power of the bomb and the science of ballistics. You can make a bomb go anywhere if you know what you’re doing.”

  “What is this?” Dillon demanded.

  Angel said. “Go on, show him, Uncle Danny.”

  “Show me what?” Dillon said.

  Danny Fahy got up, putting another match to his pipe. “Come on, then,” and he turned and went to the door.