by Jack Higgins
He poured me another whisky and sat back, holding his glass up to the light. 'On the whole, I'd say things are going very well. You've got Frank Barry and one of the most wanted terrorist squads in Ireland sniffing at your heels, and as long as you stick with the girl you've a direct line to the Small Man himself. Do you think she knows where the bullion is?'
'My hunch is no, but I couldn't be definite at this stage. You could always try pulling out her fingernails.'
'Your sense of humour will be the death of you one of these fine days, Simon, just like your father. Did I ever tell you that I knew him back in the old days in India?'
'Several times.'
'Is that so?'
He dropped into that brown study of his again. I said patiently, 'All right, sir, what happens now?'
He drained his glass, rolled the last of the whisky around his tongue. 'That's easy enough.' He glanced at his watch. 'It's just after seven-thirty. At nine o'clock precisely, I'm taking the three of you back to Belfast with me, escorted by Captain Stacey and Sergeant Grey.'
'Do we get there?'
'Of course not. About ten miles out on the road to Ballymena we'll have engine trouble.'
'Which means that Stacey and Sergeant Grey will know what they're about?'
'Exactly. I'll come round to the rear of the vehicle to check your handcuffs, giving you an excellent chance to grab my Browning. Only make damn sure it's you and not that lad. From the way he's been carrying on he'd leave the three of us lying in the nearest ditch.'
'Then what?'
'You play the game as the cards fall. If you want me, you get in touch with the following Belfast telephone number. It'll be manned day and night.'
He gave it to me and I memorized it quickly. 'And the bullion is still number one on the agenda?'
'Followed by the apprehension of Michael Cork himself, with Frank Barry and his men number three.'
I stood up. 'That's about it, then.'
He chuckled suddenly as if to himself. 'Sons of Erin. Why on earth do they choose such ridiculous, bloody names?'
'You know how it is,' I said. 'The Celtic Twilight and all that sort of rubbish.'
'You know you really have got me wrong, my boy,' he said. 'I like the Irish. No, I do. Finest soldiers in the world.'
'Next to the English, of course.'
'Well, as a matter of fact, I was going to give pride of place to the Germans. Terribly unpatriotic, I know, but truth must out.'
I retired, defeated, and Sergeant Grey took me back to my cell.
Norah Murphy was standing at the window peering out into the night when I went in. There was no sign of Binnie.
She said, 'What happened?'
'I had a chat with the Brigadier. Ferguson his name is. Very pleasant. What about you?'
'Captain Stacey. Cigarettes, coffee and lots of public school charm. I just kept asking for the American consul. He gave up in the end. He's talking to Binnie now.'
'He won't get very far there.'
She sat down on the bed, crossed one knee over the other and looked up at me. 'What did you tell the Brigadier, then?'
'That I'd hired the Kathleen in Oban and that as far as I was concerned, any bullet holes must date from some previous occasion. I also told him in confidence, one gentleman to another, that you and I were very much in love and that the passage to Stramore had been designed as a kind of prewedding honeymoon trip, just to make certain we were physically suited.'
There was that look on her face again of helpless rage and yet there was something else in her eyes - something indefinable.
'You what?'
I crouched down in front of her and laid my manacled hands on her knees. 'Actually, I'd say the idea had a great deal to commend it.'
And once again, the humour welled up from deep inside her, breaking the mask into a hundred pieces. She laughed harshly and cupped my face in her two hands. 'You bastard, Vaughan, what am I going to do with you?'
'You could try kissing me.'
Which she did, but before I could appreciate the full subtlety of the performance, the key rattled in the lock. I got to my feet as the door opened and Binnie and Captain Stacey entered, followed by the Brigadier.
Binnie moved to join us and Norah stood up so that we confronted them in a tight little group. The Brigadier brushed his moustache with the back of a finger.
'I'm afraid I'm not satisfied with the answers any of you have given. Not satisfied at all. Under the circumstances, I intend to transfer you to Military Intelligence HQ outside Belfast where you may be properly interrogated. We leave at nine o'clock. You'll be given something to eat before then.'
He turned and went out, followed by Stacey. The door clanged shut with a kind of grim finality and when Norah Murphy turned to me, there was real despair on her face for the first time since I'd known her. We left exactly on time in an army Land-Rover, Captain Stacey driving, the Brigadier beside him and the three of us behind them, all hand-cuffed now, including Norah. Sergeant Grey crouched in the rear with a Sterling sub-machine-gun.
The rain was really bad now, the road a ribbon of black wet tarmac in the powerful headlights. There was a moment of excitement about two miles out of Stramore when Grey announced suddenly that we were being followed. I glanced over my shoulder. There were headlights there certainly, but a moment later as he cocked his sub-machine-gun, they turned off into a side road.
'Never mind, Sergeant,' Captain Stacey said. 'Keep your eyes skinned just the same. One never knows.'
I sat there in the darkness waiting for the big moment, Norah's knees rubbing against mine. I tried a little pressure. After a moment's hesitation, she responded. I dropped my manacled hands on hers. It was all very romantic.
From somewhere up ahead there was one hell of a bang and orange flames blossomed in the night. We came round a corner to find a Ford van slumped against a tree, petrol spilling out to where a man lay sprawled in the middle of the road, a tongue of flame sweeping towards him with the rapidity of a burning fuse.
I didn't fall for it, not for a minute, but Stacey and the sergeant were already out of the vehicle and running towards the injured man.
There were several bursts of sub-machine-gun fire from the wooded hillside to our right, knocking the sergeant sideways into the ditch. Stacey managed to get his Browning out, fired twice desperately, then turned and ran back towards the Land-Rover, head down.
They all seemed to be firing at him then, pieces jumping out of his flak jacket as the bullets hammered into him. His beret flew off, his face was suddenly a mask of blood. He fell against the bonnet and slid to the ground.
The Brigadier went out head first, Browning in one hand, crouched beside the Land-Rover, waiting in the sudden silence. There was laughter up there in the trees and then sub-machine-gun fire sprayed across the road again.
There seemed no point in letting the old boy do a Little Big Horn, so I did the most sensible thing I could think of in the circumstances, opened the rear door and hit him in the back of the neck with my two clenched fists.
He went flat on his face and lay there groaning. I picked up the Browning in both hands and stood up. 'You can come out now, whoever you are.'
'Put the Browning down and stand back,' a voice called.
I did as I was told. There was a rustle in the bushes to our right and Frank Barry stepped into the light.
The Ford truck was going well by now, the kind of blaze that seemed likely, on a conservative estimate, to attract every soldier and policeman in a mile radius, but Barry and his men didn't seem disposed to hurry.
There were six of them, and at one point he took a small walkie-talkie from his pocket and murmured something into it which seemed to indicate that he had other forces not too far away.
He noticed me watching and grinned as he put it away. 'Grand things, these, Major. A great comfort on occasion. The minute you left the police post in Stramore I knew.' He lit a cigarette and said, 'What about my firing pins? Now there's a
dirty trick.'
'You're wasting your time,' I said. 'They're in Oban.'
'Is that a fact?' He turned to Binnie who stood beside me. 'You've been a bad boy, Binnie. Tim Pat, Donal McGuire and Terry Donaghue, all at one blow just like the tailor in the fairy tale. I can see I'm going to have to do something about you.'
'I'm frightened to death,' Binnie told him.
'You will be,' Barry told him genially and turned suddenly as the Brigadier groaned and tried to get up.
'What's this then, one of them still kicking?'
He took a revolver from inside his coat and I said quickly, 'Seems like a hell of a waste to me, Barry. I mean, Brigadier Generals aren't all that thick on the ground.'
He lowered the revolver instantly and crouched down. 'Is that what he is? By God, you're right.' He straightened and nodded to a couple of his men. 'Get the old bugger on his feet. We'll take him with us. I might find a use for him.'
Someone brought the handcuff keys found on Stacey's body and Barry slipped them in his pocket. Then he turned and peered inside the Land-Rover where Norah Murphy still sat.
'Are you there, Norah, me love? It's your favourite man.'
A large van came round the corner, reversed across the road and braked to a halt beside us.
Barry pulled her out of the Land-Rover and put an arm about her. 'Nothing mean about me, Norah. See, I even provide transport to take you home - my home, of course.'
She struggled in his grasp, furiously angry, and he tightened his grip and kissed her full on the mouth.
'We've such a lot to talk over, Norah. Old times, you, me, the Small Man, cabbages and kings, ships and sealing wax - gold bullion?'
She went very still, staring up at him fixedly, shadows dancing across her face in the firelight as he laughed softly.
'Oh, yes, Norah, that too.' Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her across to the van.
9
Spanish Head
Our destination, as I discovered later, was only a dozen miles along the coast from Stramore, yet such was the circuitous back country route we followed that it took us almost an hour to get there.
There were a couple of small plastic windows in the side of the van. For most of the time there wasn't much to see, but then the rain stopped and by the time we turned on to the coast road it had become a fine, clear night with a half moon lighting the sky.
The road seemed to follow the contours of the cliff edge exactly, and, as far as I could judge, there was a drop on our left beyond the fence of a good two hundred feet.
We finally took a narrow road to the left and braked to a halt so that one of the men could get out to open a gate. There was a notice to one side. I craned my neck and managed to make out the words Spanish Head and National Trust before the gate opened and we drove through.
'Spanish Head,' I murmured in Norah's ear. 'Does that mean anything to you?'
'His uncle's place.'
One of the guards leaned forward and prodded me on the shoulder. 'Shut your face.'
An inelegant phrase, but he made his point eloquently enough. I contented myself with the view from the window after that which was interesting enough. We went over a small rise, the road dropped away to a wooded promontory. There was a castle at the very end above steep cliffs, battlements and towers black against the night sky, like something out of a children's fairy tale.
It was only as we drew closer that I saw that I was mistaken. That it was no more than a large country house, built, from the look of it, during that period of Victoria's reign when Gothic embellishments were considered fashionable.
The van came to a halt, the door was opened, and when I scrambled out I found myself in a courtyard at the rear of the main building. Barry himself came round to hand Norah Murphy down and he also unlocked her handcuffs.
'Now be a good girl and you'll come to no harm, as my old grannie used to say.' He took her by the arm firmly and led her towards the door. 'Stick the others in the cellar,' he said carelessly over his shoulder. 'I'll have them up when I need them.'
After he'd gone, a couple of his men took us in through the same door. There was a long, dark, flagged passage inside, presumably to the kitchen quarters. At the far end a flight of stairs obviously gave access to the rest of the house. There was a stout oaken door beside it, which one of the men opened to disclose steps leading into darkness. He switched on a light and we went down. There was a series of cellars below, one leading into another, and there were wine racks everywhere although most of them were empty.
We finally arrived at what looked suspiciously like a cell door straight out of some Victorian prison, for it was sheathed in iron plate and secured by steel bolts so large that the guard who opened them needed two hands.
A cell indeed it was as we found when we went in. Bare, lime-washed walls oozing damp, no window of any description, an iron cot with no mattress, a wooden table and two stools.
The door shut, the bolts rammed home solidly, the steps of the two guards faded away along the passage outside. There was a zinc bucket in one corner, presumably for the purposes of nature, and I gave it a kick.
'Every modern convenience.'
Binnie sat on the edge of the bed, the Brigadier limped to one of the stools and sat down, massaging the back of his neck.
'Are you all right, sir?' I asked politely.
'No thanks to you.'
He glared up at me and I said, 'If I hadn't done what I did, you'd be dead meat by now. Be reasonable.'
I managed to fish out my cigarettes with some difficulty as I was still handcuffed and offered him one.
'Go to the devil,' he said.
I turned to Binnie and grinned. 'No pleasing some people.'
But he simply lay down on the bare springs of the cot without a word, staring up at the ceiling, unable, I suspect, to get Norah Murphy out of his mind.
I managed to light a cigarette then sat down against the wall, suddenly rather tired. When I looked across at the Brigadier his right eyelid moved fractionally.
It must have been about an hour later that the door was unbolted and a couple of men entered, both of them armed with Sterling sub-machine-guns. One of them jerked his thumb at me without a word, a squat, powerful-looking individual whose outstanding feature was the absence of hair on his skull. I went out, the door was closed and bolted again, and we set off in echelon through the cellars, the gentleman with the bald head leading the way.
When we reached the kitchen area again we kept right on going, taking the next flight of stairs, coming out through a green baize door at the top into an enormous entrance hall, all pillars and Greek statues, a great marble staircase drifting up into the half darkness above our heads.
We mounted that, too, turned along a wide corridor at the top and climbed into two more flights of stairs, the last being narrow enough for only one man at a time.
When the final door opened I found myself on the battlements at the front of the house. Frank Barry sat at a small ironwork table at the far end. I caught the fragrance of cigar smoke as I approached and there was a glass in his hand.
I could see him clearly enough in the moonlight and he smiled. 'Well, what do you think of it, Major? The finest view in Ireland, I always say. You can see the whole of the North Antrim coast from here.'
It was certainly spectacular enough and in the silvery moonlight it was possible to see far, far out to sea, the lights of some ship or other moving through the passage between the mainland and Rathlin.
He took a bottle dripping with water from a bucket on the floor beside him. 'A glass of wine, Major? Sancerre. One of my favourites. There's still two or three dozen left in the cellar.'
I held up my wrists and he smiled with that immense charm of his. 'There I go again, completely forgetting my manners.'
He produced the keys from his pocket, I held out my hands and he unlocked the cuffs. The second of the two guards had faded away, but my friend with the bald head still stood watchfully by, the
Sterling ready.
A boat came round the headland a hundred yards or so to our right, the noise of its engine no more than a murmur in the night. It started to move into an inlet in the cliffs below and disappeared from sight, presumably into some harbour or anchorage belonging to the house.
'That should be your Kathleen,' Barry said. 'I sent a couple of my boys round to Stramore to lift her from the harbour as soon as it was dark.'
'Do you usually think of everything?'
'Only way to live.' He filled a glass for me. 'By the way, old lad, let's keep it civilized. Dooley, here, served with me in Korea. He's been deaf, dumb and minus his hair since a Chinese trench mortar blew him forty feet through the air. That means he only has his eyes to think with and he's apt to be a bit quick off the mark.'
'I'll remember. What were you in?'
'Ulster Rifles. Worst National Service second lieutenant in the army.'
I tried some of the wine. It was dry, ice-cold, and I sampled a little more with mounting appreciation. 'This is really quite excellent.'
'Glad you like it.' He refilled my glass. 'What would you say if I offered to let you go?'
'In return for what?'
'The firing pins and the rest of the arms you have stored away over there in Oban somewhere.' He sampled some of his wine. 'I'd see you were suitably recompensed. On delivery, naturally.'
I laughed out loud. 'I just bet you would. I can imagine what your version of payment would be. A nine millimetre round in the back of the head.'
'No, really, old lad. As one gentleman to another.'
He was quite incredible. I laughed again. 'You've got to be joking.'
