by Jack Higgins
“Give me your opinion.”
“His physical description is interesting because according to the Jobert boys, there isn’t one. He’s small, no more than one sixty-five. No discernible color to the eyes, fair hair. Gaston says the first time they met him he thought he was a nothing, and then he apparently half-killed some guy twice his size in the bar in about five seconds flat.”
“Go on.” Hernu lit a cigarette.
“Pierre says his French is too perfect.”
“What does he mean by that?”
“He doesn’t know. It’s just that he always felt that there was something wrong.”
“That he wasn’t French?”
“Exactly. Two facts of interest there. He’s always whistling a funny little tune. Gaston picked it up because he plays accordion. He says Rocard told him once that it was Irish.”
“Now that is interesting.”
“A further point. When he was assembling the machine gun in the back of the Renault at Valenton he told the boys it was a Kalashnikov. Not just bullets. Tracer, armor piercing, the lot. He said he’d seen one take out a Land-Rover full of British paratroopers. Pierre didn’t like to ask him where.”
“So, you smell IRA here, Inspector? And what have you done about it?”
“Got your people to get the picture books out, Colonel. The Joberts are looking through them right now.”
“Excellent.” Hernu got up and this time refilled his coffee cup himself. “What do you make of the hotel business. Do you think he’s been alerted?”
“Perhaps, but not necessarily,” Savary said. “I mean, what have we got here, sir? A real pro out to make the hit of a lifetime. Maybe he was just being extra careful, just to make sure he wasn’t followed to his real destination. I mean, I wouldn’t trust the Joberts an inch, so why should he?”
He shrugged and Max Hernu said shrewdly, “There’s more. Spit it out.”
“I got a bad feeling about this guy, Colonel. I think he’s special. I think he may have used the hotel thing because he suspected that Gaston might follow him, but then he’d want to know why. Was it the Joberts just being curious, or was there more to it?”
“So you think he could have been up the street watching our people arrive?”
“Very possibly. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t know Gaston was tailing him. Maybe the hotel thing was a usual precaution. An old resistance trick from the war.”
Hernu nodded. “Right, let’s see if they’ve finished. Have them in.”
Savary went out and returned with the Jobert brothers. They stood there looking worried, and Hernu said, “Well?”
“No luck, Colonel, he wasn’t in any of the books.”
“All right,” Hernu said. “Wait downstairs. You’ll be taken home. We’ll collect you again later.”
“But what for, Colonel?” Pierre asked.
“So that your brother can go to Valenton in the Renault and you can follow in the car just like Rocard told you. Now get out.” They hurriedly left, and Hernu said to Savary, “We’ll see Mrs. Thatcher is spirited to safety by another route, but a pity to disappoint our friend Rocard.”
“If he turns up, Colonel.”
“You never know, he just might. You’ve done well, Inspector. I think I’ll have to requisition you for Section Five. Would you mind?”
Would he mind? Savary almost choked with emotion, “An honor, sir…”
“Good. Go and get a shower then and some breakfast. I’ll see you later.”
“And you, Colonel?”
“Me, Inspector?” Hernu laughed and looked at his watch. “Five-fifteen. I’m going to ring British Intelligence in London. Disturb the sleep of a very old friend of mine. If anyone can help us with our mystery man it should be he.”
The Directorate General of the British Security Service occupies a large white and red brick building not far from the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, although many of its departments are housed in various locations throughout London. The special number that Max Hernu rang was of a Section known as Group Four, located on the third floor of the Ministry of Defence. It had been set up in 1972 to handle matters concerning terrorism and subversion in the British Isles. It was responsible only to the Prime Minister. It had been administered by only one man since its inception, Brigadier Charles Ferguson. He was asleep in his flat in Cavendish Square when the telephone beside his bed awakened him.
“Ferguson,” he said, immediately wide awake, knowing it had to be important.
“Paris, Brigadier,” an anonymous voice said. “Priority one. Colonel Hernu.”
“Put him through and scramble.”
Ferguson sat up, a large, untidy man of sixty-five with rumpled gray hair and a double chin.
“Charles?” Hernu said in English.
“My dear Max. What brings you on the line at such a disgusting hour? You’re lucky I’m still on the phone. The powers that be are trying to make me redundant along with Group Four.”
“What nonsense.”
“I know, but the Director General was never happy with my freebooter status all these years. What can I do for you?”
“Mrs. Thatcher is overnighting at Choisy. We’ve details of a plot to hit her on the way to the airfield at Valenton tomorrow.”
“Good God!”
“All taken care of. The lady will now take a different route home. We’re still hoping the man concerned will show up, though I doubt it. We’ll be waiting though, this afternoon.”
“Who is it? Anyone we know?”
“From what our informants say, we suspect he’s Irish, though his French is good enough to pass as a native. The thing is, the people involved have looked through all our IRA pictures with no success.”
“Have you a description?”
Hernu gave it to him. “Not much to go on, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll have a computer check done and get back to you. Tell me the story.” Which Hernu did. When he was finished, Ferguson said, “You’ve lost him, old chap. I’ll bet you dinner on it at the Savoy Grill next time you’re over.”
“I’ve a feeling about this one. I think he’s special,” Hernu said.
“And yet not on your books, and we always keep you up to date.”
“I know,” Hernu said. “And you’re the expert on the IRA, so what do we do?”
“You’re wrong there,” Ferguson said. “The greatest expert on the IRA is right there in Paris, Martin Brosnan, our Irish-American friend. After all, he carried a gun for them till nineteen seventy-five. I heard he was a professor of Political Philosophy at the Sorbonne.”
“You’re right,” Hernu said. “I’d forgotten about him.”
“Very respectable these days. Writes books and lives rather well on all that money his mother left him when she died in Boston five years ago. If you’ve a mystery on your hands, he might be the man to solve it.”
“Thanks for the suggestion,” Hernu said. “But first we’ll see what happens at Valenton. I’ll be in touch.”
Ferguson put down the phone, pressed a button on the wall and got out of bed. A moment later the door opened and his manservant, an ex-Gurkha, came in putting a dressing gown over his pyjamas.
“Emergency, Kim. I’ll ring Captain Tanner and tell her to get round here, then I’ll have a bath. Breakfast when she arrives.”
The Gurkha withdrew. Ferguson picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Mary? Ferguson here. Something big. I want you at Cavendish Square within the hour. Oh, better wear your uniform. We’ve got that thing at the Ministry of Defence at eleven. You always impress them in full war paint.”
He put the phone down and went into the bathroom feeling wide-awake and extremely cheerful.
It was six-thirty when the taxi picked up Mary Tanner on the steps of her Lowndes Square flat. The driver was impressed, but then most people were. She wore the uniform of a captain in the Women’s Royal Army Corps, the wings of an Army Air Corps pilot on her left breast. Below them were the ribbon of the George Medal, a gallantry award
of considerable distinction, and campaign ribbons for Ireland and for service with the United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus.
She was a small girl, black hair cropped short, twenty-nine years of age and a lot of service under the belt. A doctor’s daughter who’d taken an English degree at London University, tried teaching and hated it. After that came the army. A great deal of her service had been with the Military Police. Cyprus for a while, but three tours of duty in Ulster. It had been the affair in Derry that had earned her the George Medal and left her with the scar on her left cheek, which had brought her to Ferguson’s attention. She’d been his aide for two years now.
She paid off the taxi, hurried up the stairs to the flat on the first floor and let herself in with her own key. Ferguson was sitting on the sofa beside the fireplace in the elegant drawing room, a napkin under his chin, while Kim served his poached eggs.
“Just in time,” he said. “What would you like?”
“Tea, please. Earl Grey, Kim, and toast and honey.”
“Got to watch our figure.”
“Rather early in the day for sexist cracks, even for you, Brigadier. Now what have we got?”
He told her while he ate and Kim brought her tea and toast and she sat opposite, listening.
When he finished she said, “This Brosnan, I’ve never heard of him.”
“Before your time, my love. He must be about forty-five now. You’ll find a file on him in my study. He was born in Boston. One of those filthy rich American families. Very high society. His mother was a Dubliner. He did all the right things, went to Princeton, took his degree, then went and spoiled it all by volunteering for Vietnam and as an enlisted man. I believe that was nineteen sixty-six. Airborne Rangers. He was discharged a sergeant and heavily decorated.”
“So what makes him so special?”
“He could have avoided Vietnam by staying at university, but he didn’t. He also enlisted in the ranks. Quite something for someone with his social standing.”
“You’re just an old snob. What happened to him after that?”
“He went to Trinity College, Dublin, to work on a doctorate. He’s a Protestant, by the way, but his mother was a devout Catholic. In August sixty-nine, he was visiting an uncle on his mother’s side, a priest in Belfast. Remember what happened? How it all started?”
“Orange mobs burning Catholics out?” she said.
“And the police not doing too much about it. The mob burned down Brosnan’s uncle’s church and started on the Falls Road. A handful of old IRA hands with a few rifles and handguns held them off, and when one of them was shot, Brosnan picked up his rifle. Instinctive, I suppose. I mean Vietnam and all that.”
“And from then on he was committed?”
“Very much so. You’ve got to remember that in those early days, there were plenty of men like him in the movement. Believers in Irish freedom and all that sort of thing.”
“Sorry, sir, I’ve seen too much blood on the streets of Derry to go for that one.”
“Yes, well I’m not trying to whitewash him. He’s killed a few in his time, but always up front, I’ll say that for him. He became quite famous. There was a French War photographer called Anne-Marie Audin. He saved her life in Vietnam after a helicopter crash. Quite a romantic story. She turned up in Belfast and Brosnan took her underground for a week. She got a series out of it for Life magazine. The gallant Irish struggle. You know the sort of thing.”
“What happened after that?”
“In nineteen seventy-five he went to France to negotiate an arms deal. As it turned out, it was a setup and the police were waiting. Unfortunately he shot one of them dead. They gave him life. He escaped from prison in seventy-nine, at my instigation, I might add.”
“But why?”
“Someone else before your time, a terrorist called Frank Barry. Started off in Ulster with a splinter group called the Sons of Erin, then joined the European terrorist circuit, an evil genius if ever there was one. Tried to get Lord Carrington on a trip to France when he was Foreign Secretary. The French hushed it up, but the Prime Minister was furious. Gave me direct orders to hunt Barry down whatever the cost.”
“Oh, I see now. You needed Brosnan to do that?”
“Set a thief to catch a thief and so forth, and he got him for us.”
“And afterwards?”
“He went back to Ireland and took that doctorate.”
“And this Anne-Marie Audin, did they marry?”
“Not to my knowledge, but she did him a bigger favor than that. Her family is one of the oldest in France and enormously powerful politically and he had been awarded the Legion of Honour for saving her in Vietnam. Anyway, her pressure behind the scenes bore fruit five years ago. President Mitterrand granted him a pardon. Wiped the slate clean.”
“Which is how he’s at the Sorbonne now? He must be the only professor they’ve had who shot a policeman dead.”
“Actually one or two after the war had done just that when serving with the Resistance.”
“Does the leopard ever change its spots?” she asked.
“O, ye of little faith. As I say, you’ll find his file in the study if you want to know more.” He passed her a piece of paper. “That’s the description of the mystery man. Not much to go on, but run it through the computer anyway.”
She went out.
Kim entered with a copy of the Times. Ferguson read the headlines briefly, then turned to page two where his attention was immediately caught by the same item concerning Mrs. Thatcher’s visit to France that had appeared in Paris Soir.
“Well, Max,” he said softly, “I wish you luck,” and he poured himself another cup of coffee.
THREE
IT WAS MUCH warmer in Paris later that morning, most of the snow clearing by lunchtime. It was clear in the countryside too, only a bit here and there on the hedgerows as Dillon moved toward Valenton, keeping to the back roads. He was riding the BMW motorcycle from the garage and was dressed as a CRS policeman: helmet, goggles, a MAT49 machine gun slung across the front of the dark uniform raincoat.
Madness to have come, of course, but he couldn’t resist the free show. He pulled off a narrow country lane by a farm gate after consulting his map, followed a track through a small wood on foot and came to a low stonewall on a hill. Way below some two hundred yards on was the railway crossing, the black Renault still parked where he had left it. There wasn’t a soul about. Perhaps fifteen minutes later, a train passed through.
He checked his watch. Two-fifteen. He focused his Zeiss glasses on the scene below again and then the white Renault came down the road, half-turning to block the crossing. There was a Peugeot behind it, Pierre at the wheel, and he was already reversing, turning the car as Gaston ran toward him. It was an old model, painted scarlet and cream.
“Very pretty,” Dillon said softly, as the Peugeot disappeared up the road.
“Now for the cavalry,” he said and lit a cigarette.
It was perhaps ten minutes later that a large truck came down the road and braked to a halt, unable to progress farther. It had high canvas sides on which was emblazoned Steiner Electronics.
“Electronics my arse,” Dillon said.
A heavy machine gun opened up from inside the truck, firing through the side, raking the Renault. As the firing stopped, Dillon took a black plastic electronic detonator from his pocket, switched it on and pulled out the aerial.
A dozen men in black overalls and riot helmets, all clutching machine carbines, jumped out. As they approached the Renault, Dillon pressed the detonator. The self-destruct charge in the second black box, the one he had told Pierre contained extra ammunition, exploded instantly, the vehicle disintegrating, parts of the paneling lifting into the air in slow motion. There were several men on the ground, others running for cover.
“There you are, chew on that, gentlemen,” Dillon said.
He walked back through the wood, pushed the BMW off its stand, swung a leg over and drove away.
Dillon took off his helmet. “I’m afraid so. The Jobert brothers turned me in.”
As he went up the stairs Makeev said. “The disguise, I like that. A policeman is just a policeman to people. Nothing to describe.”
“Exactly. I worked for a great Irishman called Frank Barry for a while years ago. Ever heard of him?”
“Certainly. A veritable Carlos.”
“He was better than Carlos. Got knocked off in seventy-nine. I don’t know who by. He used the CRS copper on a motorcycle a lot. Postmen are good too. No one ever notices a postman.”
He followed the Russian into the sitting room. “Tell me,” Makeev said.
Dillon brought him up to date. “It was a chance using those two and it went wrong, that’s all there is to it.”
“Now what?”
“As I said last night, I’ll provide an alternative target. I mean, all that lovely money. I’ve got to think of my old age.”
“Nonsense, Sean, you don’t give a damn about your old age. It’s the game that excites you.”
“You could be right.” Dillon lit a cigarette. “I know one thing. I don’t like to be beaten. I’ll think of something for you and I’ll pay my debts.”
“The Joberts? Are they worth it?”
“Oh, yes,” Dillon said. “A matter of honor, Josef.”
Makeev sighed. “I’ll go and see Aroun, give him the bad news. I’ll be in touch.”
“Here or at the barge.” Dillon smiled. “Don’t worry, Josef. I’ve never failed yet, not when I set my mind to a thing.”
Makeev went down the stairs. His footsteps echoed across the warehouse, the Judas gate banged behind him. Dillon turned and went back into the long room, whistling softly.
“But I don’t understand,” Aroun said. “There hasn’t been a word on television.”
“And there won’t be.” Makeev turned from the French windows overlooking the Avenue Victor Hugo. “The affair never happened, that is the way the French will handle it. The idea that Mrs. Thatcher could have in any way been at risk on French soil would be considered a national affront.”
