by Bill Granger
“Who?”
“None of your goddam business,” said Devereaux. “When they come, they’ll introduce themselves. You’re to tell them everything. About the recruitment, about the CIA, about Operation Mirror. When they’re satisfied, they’re going to take you—”
“Who are they? What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Except save your miserable life. Do exactly as I tell you.”
“Is there anything not to tell them?”
“No,” said Devereaux steadily. “Tell them about Elizabeth, about the safe house, about the four o’clock train to Dover. If you lie to them, they will kill you. If you tell them the truth, you’ll live.”
“Who are they?”
“Agents.”
“From where?”
“British Intelligence. We have a deal with them.”
“What kind of a deal?”
“A deal that gives you your life.”
“You didn’t do this for me—”
“I did it for myself, you little shit,” said Devereaux. “But to save my skin, I have to save yours. Now do what I told you.”
“But what will they do to me?”
“Take you someplace. Debrief you. And let you go. The difference being that you’ll be safe.”
“How?”
“Because I’m taking care of it. I told you there was a deal. Now go. And wait. The Adelphi is at the end of Lime Street, about a long block up the road.”
“What was the name?”
Devereaux looked at him as though he were looking at an insect; his contempt was no longer concealed. Two days on the run had convinced Green that he was not cut out for the spy’s game, that only Devereaux would save him.
“Andrew Cummings,” said Devereaux. “Now get out of here.”
Obediently, Green disappeared into the street beyond the concourse entrance.
Brianna Devon awoke at midnight and cried out. Of course no one heard her; her room was dark and soundproof and she was alone. Her father slept in a suite down the hallway; the hallway itself was patrolled by six Liverpool policemen and three men from Special Branch, CID, Scotland Yard. But no one heard her.
In the dream, her father’s face had been covered with blood. His eyes were open and he was not yet dead. He had tried to speak to her but she could not hear his voice.
In the other part of the dream, she saw Deirdre Monahan as she had been. Deirdre had smiled to her from across the great lawn at Clare House, and beckoned to her.
When Brianna began to run across the lawn, Deirdre had run away from her. Everything was silent in the dream. There was no wind and the time of day was in the brilliant twilight of summer that covered the Clare hills.
“I love you,” she had cried in the dream to Deirdre.
Then she had seen her father’s face, covered in blood; she had screamed in the dream, actually screamed aloud; it had awakened her.
Her hands were wet; her face felt flushed. The room, however, was cool and dark and without sound, except for the white noise of all the thousand parts of the hotel.
She had had the same dream since they had tried to kill her father.
Elizabeth dozed in the comfortable seat in the first-class compartment. When she awoke—for no reason—she saw Denisov across from her, staring at her. He looked sad and a little tired.
“Why don’t you sleep, Mr. Dennis?” she asked. She felt the tiredness of the wine come over her again.
“Because I do not sleep,” he said.
There was an intense clarity to the air on the last night of November that was rare for early winter in England. The moon was fine and full and voluptuous; the light of the moon was clear and shivery on the city.
In the intense silence, the Mersey meekly lapped at the concrete apron.
In the white, ghostly light of the moon, the immense form of the hovercraft sat still; the light cast a giant shadow in the half-darkness. Six propellers were poised on their shafts on the upper deck; three fore and three aft. They looked like Dutch windmills lined up for parade.
Cashel paced from the front of the dignitaries’ stand with its separate British and Irish flags to the ship and back. Even in the darkness, he could see how it would be in the morning.
Lord Slough would stand alone, speaking; beside him, Brianna Devon; next to them, the Taoiseach peering through his gold-rimmed spectacles; and next to him the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
All behind the bulletproof plastic shields that now circled the platform.
Everything that could be done had been done. There could not be an assassination; yet, assassination was so easy in a disordered society.
Cashel puffed his pipe and stepped again across the apron as he had paced so many times around the perimeter of old St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin. He paced to consider the possibilities, to find a flaw in the scheme in his thoughts.
He had been foolishly wrong about Glasgow.
Pray God he was wrong about tomorrow.
He heard a footstep on the apron behind him; suddenly, he turned. A man came towards him; a sailor by his walk.
Cashel waited and watched him.
“What are ye doin’ round this place?” the man asked. His voice snarled; he sounded a little drunk.
“What are ye doing?” Cashel returned. “I’m the police.”
“Ah. I’m with the engineering section, comin’ t’see me Brianna.”
“Yer are?” Cashel removed the pipe from his mouth and knocked out the ashes on the side of his palm. Sparks flew from the bowl like sparks from a dying rocket.
“I been here since the first. Since she was launched for trials. She’s a grand ship, isn’t she?”
The drunken man weaved and spread his arms in the moonlight. The extent of his arms encompassed the Brianna sitting moodily in the gray light.
“She is,” said Cashel.
“Me ship,” said Donovan, not looking at him.
Cashel did not speak.
“Ah, well. I’m t’bed now. I’ve had me bit of fun. T’morrow is the day, eh?”
“It is that.”
Donovan weaved near him. “Yer Irish.”
“I am.”
“Ah,” said Donovan. “Yer didn’t speak like a bloody Sassenach.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Cashel smiled, watching as Donovan weaved away, across the apron and into the street leading down the road back to the center of Liverpool.
Cashel turned to look back at the bulk of the ship.
In eleven hours, she would be at sea, beyond the breakwater; then it would be safe and he could go back home to Dublin and his old bed.
Pray God.
25
LIVERPOOL
“God save ourrrr gracious Queen—”
The old woman’s thin voice croaked the words as the first notes of the British anthem—ponderous and slow—boomed across the concrete apron to the waiting throng. Though the police band was not precise in instrumentation, it contained a full complement of strong young lungs and every note sounded loudly enough to be heard above the whine of the high wind.
The calm of the night before had changed at dawn. Now, a force-six wind, wet and cold, swept down the Mersey from the Irish Sea and sent stinging droplets of spray onto the launch site. The river Mersey’s waters were black and troubled and they roiled and slapped against the concrete pier.
“Send herrrr victorious—”
The old woman’s voice was lost in the wind; she sang with her hand over her heart and her eyes glistened. She was a little drunk. The others in the small crowd of less than a hundred persons did not join her but stood silently while the anthem boomed on, the sounds of the band waxing and waning as the wind shifted.
It was fit weather for the first of December, which is to say it was not fit at all.
Predictably, the ceremony started fifteen minutes late. There were all the usual problems—the police band lost the music for the Irish anthem and then found it; the Taoiseach’s flight from Dublin was delayed b
y bad weather on that side of the sea; the Prime Minister’s driver got lost in the spider’s web of streets in central Liverpool; and there was a minor arrest at the edge of the crowd twenty minutes before the ceremonies were due to begin.
It was a footnote, really, to what would happen in the next sixty minutes. Though none of them knew it at the time.
Two men from British Intelligence—now called the Ministry for Internal Affairs (Extraordinary)—seized a young man with light red hair as he entered a two-story warehouse building six hundred yards from the dock site. The man protested his arrest until the agents discovered the broken-down parts of an M16-A rifle strapped to the inside of his thighs. Whereupon he refused to speak further.
(In fact, it was nearly twelve hours before he was identified as Michael Pendurst, twenty-six, from Hamburg, West Germany, a wanted terrorist last seen in Copenhagen. Two days later—after further examination and extreme questioning—he admitted he had been a contract employee of the Central Intelligence Agency for eighteen months, specializing in waste disposal, the CIA term for hit jobs.)
The British anthem ended and the last notes were blown away in the wind. For a moment, the trumpets hesitated and then—band music cards secured—the Liverpool police band began the strains of the anthem of Eire.
They all stood on the platform and waited politely for the music to end—Lord Slough and his daughter, Brianna Devon; the Taoiseach of Eire; the Prime Minister of Britain; the Duke of Kensington (and second cousin to the Queen); and the Secretary of the powerful Trades Union Council.
The people in the throng could not see them clearly because of the flecks of spray on the bulletproof plastic shield around the platform. The press contingent—especially the cameramen from BBC—had complained about the plastic shield around the dignitaries from the first but, even with the arrest of a gunman entering the warehouse a quarter-mile away, the police refused to remove it.
In fact, the arrest of the CIA assassin in no way lessened the anxiety felt at that moment by Chief Inspector Cashel.
For fifteen minutes, he had stood—his back to the platform—restlessly surveying the crowd of spectators and the roped-off section reserved for first-class passengers waiting to board the hovercraft. But the face he sought was not there in the crowd; the black, glittering eyes he dreamed about disappeared in daylight.
The roofs of the low buildings around the apron were filled with policemen walking back and forth. Cashel saw policemen in every doorway. More than a thousand police from Liverpool, from surrounding cities, and from as far away as Manchester and Birmingham had been called in during the previous twelve hours as protection for the distinguished panel on the platform. Everything that could be done had been done. An attempt to persuade the Prime Minister to cancel his appearance failed when that gentleman made a ringing speech about not living in fear of death and not letting terrorists dictate the terms of his life.
Fortunately, they had caught the assassin. Everything had worked out precisely—as Devereaux had informed them it would.
Why this anxiety then on Cashel’s part?
Because there was no Faolin in the plot, no Faolin anywhere. Had they miscalculated, then? Did Faolin and his crowd intend to kill Lord Slough in Ireland, back at Clare House? Was Faolin merely scouting the territory on the Saturday Cashel saw him at Deirdre Monahan’s funeral?
So it appeared now. So everyone in the British security branch believed. Devereaux—the American agent—had contacted British Intelligence and convinced them that Slough’s life was not in danger and that the assassination attempt was not aimed at him but at the Prime Minister of Britain.
Devereaux was proved right by the arrest of the assassin earlier. Cashel was wrong—doubly wrong if one counted the fiasco in Glasgow. It was an embarrassment to all—six of the undercover policemen in the crowd at the Glasgow football match had been injured in random fights that broke out from time to time during the game. Two others were missing, and since they were both native Glaswegians, it was presumed they had decided to abandon police work for the perils of becoming professional Scottish football fans.
Cashel was aware that the music had ceased, and he could hear now the clipped tones of Lord Slough vainly trying to be heard over the faulty public-address system.
First-class passengers—again, Cashel surveyed them as he had done a dozen times before. Ordinary people, every one. No face stared back at him as it had at the funeral in Clare; no glittering eye caught his.
Cashel shivered. He would not feel safe until they were all in the ship, until it was launched. Then it would be over until they reached Eire.
Faolin had spotted Cashel immediately. There was a moment of panic and Faolin had considered dashing towards the platform and killing as many of them as he could before he was himself killed. Then he remembered the transmitter in his shirt pocket and he relaxed. Even if they took him, he would have time to destroy the ship and all aboard it.
He had walked past Cashel, back to the crowd and his police post. The police uniform he wore fit perfectly as Parnell had said it would. Beneath his tunic coat, he felt the comfortable coldness of the M11 tied to his belt.
Then Cashel had stopped him. He froze, looked down.
“Pardon, Constable. Would ye be havin’ a match?”
“I’m sorry,” Faolin muttered. “Don’t smoke.” Though frightened, he had the presence of mind to change his accent to a rough approximation of Liverpudlian sing-song.
“Ah, thank ye, anyway,” said Cashel, who had turned away without really looking at him. They had only glanced at each other for a moment, but Faolin realized Cashel had not seen him but, rather, had seen the uniform. Because he did not expect Faolin to wear police dress, he had not seen the man he was looking for.
He is a fool, Faolin thought.
He waited through the ceremony impatiently, glancing now and then at the platform. Lord Slough was speaking, with Brianna standing beside him, watching him.
Easy now, Faolin boyo. He knew Tatty would soothe him that way and calm his nerves. It wasn’t fear; Faolin wasn’t afraid. It was anxiety of the kind he once felt as a child on the night before Christmas, filled with expectation that something great was about to happen.
When the time came, the ship would explode into a million pieces. It was merciful, really. The dead would not even be aware of the moment of death. Eternity would be as unexpected as sunlight in the rain.
Faolin smiled to himself. Mercy. He wondered what would come after? War? Would the Irish finally be forced to throw off the last vestiges of British dominion? Chaos? Yes, chaos, the enemy of Britain. Would they be aware of what had happened?
“Hey now, copper, how about movin’ aside so’s we can see what the bleedin’ hell is goin’ on?”
It was a moment before he realized the voice in the crowd was directed at him.
“I got me orders, mate.”
“Ah,” said the man with the cloth cap. “Give us a break.”
So Faolin, merciful and smiling, moved aside so they could see better. Faolin glanced at the platform: Lord Slough was introducing the Prime Minister of Britain.
It was his last speech. Faolin had terrible knowledge of all that was to come. It must be the way God feels, he decided.
The Prime Minister of Great Britain spoke for six minutes and then sat down to a smattering of applause. He had spoken not so much for the ragtag crowd on the apron but for The Nine O’Clock News and The World Tonight. The secretary to the Taoiseach had carefully timed the Prime Minister’s speech, to be sure that the leader of the Republic of Eire would speak just as long.
Lord Slough gestured to the Taoiseach, and he arose to a smattering of applause as well—after all, Liverpool had plenty of Irish living in it.
The Taoiseach began.
Denisov, standing in the rear of the section cordoned off for first-class passengers, felt nervously in his pocket for the small gun. It was cold in his grasp. He told himself again he would not permit such a situati
on in the future; he was getting too old for the tension. In the future, his masters would have to speak more openly with him about the mission.
He still held Elizabeth’s arm with his other hand.
Elizabeth had seen no one in the crowd, and Denisov—whom she still thought was Mr. Dennis of British Intelligence—seemed disappointed and on edge. But he had whispered, “It’s all right. It will be all right.” He soothed her as though she were a child.
In a curious way, she trusted Mr. Dennis.
Denisov rehearsed what must be done. It must be done, he knew; but it sickened him. He would take the pistol from the pocket and press it closely to Elizabeth’s breast just as the shots began from the assassins. Her left breast. It would only take a moment and the little sound of the pistol—muffled by her coat and his bulk pressed against her—would be lost in the general panic of the moment. She would die instantly; he promised her that. There might be a moment of surprise but not of pain. And then Denisov would cry out, create more panic, and press the pistol in her dead hand.
That morning, he had removed the pistol from his pocket while still in the hotel room and doubled a pillow on the bed and fired twice into it. When the police found the pistol in her hand, there would be three shots fired from it, one into her own body. She would be seen as part of the assassination team, though they would not find the other two bullets.
He had already put the card into the pocket of her coat—the one from Free The Prisoners. Even the English would be able to guess that she was a CIA agent.
Last night, Elizabeth had finished all her wine; that made Denisov feel better about the task that lay ahead. She had seemed even relaxed and had smiled at him once, on the train to Liverpool, when she had awakened from her nap and saw him watching her.
It was true. Denisov never slept. Two hours last night, one hour the night before. They had diagnosed it at the Lenin Institute as chronic insomnia and explained it was not curable; but they had reassured him that their research on sleep patterns indicated a great number of people were like Denisov, and those people—once freed from feelings of guilt about their insomnia—managed to function normally and keep their health.
