by Bill Granger
He looked at Elizabeth, still searching the crowd. He liked her.
Denisov wanted to sleep. He yearned for it as a child yearns for an unobtainable toy. But there were too many matters to think about and too much to keep sleep at bay. Now there was the matter with Elizabeth, whom he did not hate or even know very well.
He suddenly thought of Devereaux. Why had he lied to Denisov about her? Why had he said he’d killed her? Why did Devereaux care for her? It complicated the matter.
The speeches were finished at last.
The bottle of champagne—Moet Brut 1948—swung on the rope away from Brianna’s hand and traveled a lazy arc in the wind to the prow of the immense hovercraft.
“I name thee Brianna,” she said in a thin, emotional voice.
The bottle struck the prow and bounced back, unbroken, dangling at the end of the rope. There was laughter from the crowd of spectators and first-class passengers. Even the Taoiseach, a man of great gravity, managed a smile.
P. C. Parnell broke ranks, went to the bottle dangling over the edge of the platform, and brought it back and handed it to Brianna Devon. She smiled at him pleasantly.
The arrest of the gunman in the warehouse had frightened her at first and then calmed her; maybe the threat against her father was past. Now, exposed on the platform, in the shivering wind, she felt afraid again.
Brianna launched the bottle again and it flew on the arc dictated by the length of rope and this time it crashed solidly against the short prow of the ungainly craft, smashing with a pop and clatter of broken glass on the concrete apron where the ship rested. Again there was applause, but even as it died, the dignitaries began to descend the platform slowly. At the same moment, the first of the passengers were led to the narrow hatch at the side of the hull. In ten minutes, the Brianna would be underway.
Brianna Devon took her father’s arm as he led her down the rickety steps of the platform. Soon they would be safe at sea, on their way home back to Ireland.
Denisov was in panic. He did not understand.
For a moment, he stood stupidly staring at the first passengers moving towards the craft.
The ceremony was over and nothing had happened; there had been no shots. What must he do now?
He reached for the pistol in his pocket.
There had been no instructions but he understood the alternative.
He must kill Elizabeth and get away. It was botched by someone but he had to separate himself from her.
Why kill her?
He looked again at her face.
Think clearly, you have the gun. Kill her or let her go?
The crowd of passengers around him began to surge forward. Now. He must move now.
“What should we do?” asked Elizabeth.
At that moment, two men neatly separated them. Denisov’s arm fell from hers. He looked up, bewildered.
“Pardon, sir,” the pleasant man said. He was dressed in a dark coat and hat. “Would you come this way, sir?”
“I?” It was stupid. He felt he was stuttering. “I am a passenger—”
“Won’t take a minute, sir, come this way—”
“I—” It was absurd.
“Those gentlemen would like to speak to you for a moment, please,” the pleasant man said. They had pinned Denisov neatly between them.
Denisov and Elizabeth glanced away to the edge of the apron. They both saw Devereaux in the same instant.
Elizabeth quietly broke away. The two men ignored her. “You’re to come with us, sir,” the pleasant one said. His grip tightened and Denisov felt pain. Elizabeth moved away in the sea of people. Of course, he thought. She fears Devereaux; she thinks Devereaux wants to kill her.
Denisov suddenly smiled and allowed the two men to lead him across the apron. At least it was resolved; they couldn’t blame him. The stupid business was over and he did not have to kill the woman.
He saw Elizabeth disappear through the hatch into the hovercraft. Now she was safe, he thought. It’s just as well.
Five feet from Devereaux and the waiting men from British Intelligence, Denisov smiled. “Hello, Devereaux.”
Devereaux did not return the smile. “This is Denisov. The Soviet agent in this. He’s attached to their embassy in London but he’s with the KGB.”
“Really, Devereaux, this is not like a sport,” said Denisov. He raised his arms while they patted him down. They removed the pistol. He felt relieved.
“Unsportsmanlike,” said Devereaux.
“Yes. Sorry. Unsportsmanlike.”
“Where’s Elizabeth Campbell?” Devereaux asked.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Denisov. “I am a member of the Soviet Embassy and my government shall protest my treatment.”
“Shut it off, Denisov,” said the man next to Devereaux. He might have been Devereaux’s brother—his face shared the same cold, pale quality—but his accent was staunchly London.
“I refuse to speak further,” Denisov said.
“Where’s Elizabeth?” Devereaux said.
“Is she another agent?” the Russian asked.
“There was a woman near him sir,” said the pleasant man. “We didn’t know about her—we didn’t—”
“Where did she go?”
“She was with the other passengers, sir—”
Devereaux started across the apron for the hovercraft hatchway.
Journalists now crowded the entrance to the hovercraft, snapping photos of the Taoiseach and Prime Minister shaking hands. There were also photos of Brianna Devon at the door, and the man from the Daily Mirror asked her to show more leg. She politely refused and the man from the Sunday People got his leg shot by lying flat on the ground at her feet.
Cashel stood by the platform and watched it all. It had not happened, all he feared.
Spray damped his pipe.
Damned wind. He reached in his pocket absently for a box of matches and then realized he had been matchless all morning. Nothing seemed to work out right. Had to ask three people to get a light.
The immense propellers began to run, slowly. The draft of wind behind them created little waves on the rain of the pavement. The turbines whined hideously. The Brianna began to shake.
Cashel knocked his pipe out against the platform. It was hopeless now to think of lighting it. No one had a match and in all this wind—
“My God,” he cried.
He opened his mouth and he dropped his pipe at the same time and the pipe clattered on the apron, shattering into a dozen pieces.
Cashel saw the young constable with dark eyes under the helmet and he saw again the narrow chin and lantern jaw and—
Faolin.
He was vaguely aware another man was rushing across the empty apron.
The Prime Minister had disappeared through the hatch door and the ground crew was closing it.
“No, no,” he cried against the wind but he could not be heard. He began to run.
Suddenly, he pulled his silver pistol from the pocket of his coat and fired into the air. The shot sounded like a light bulb exploding, short and sharp. One of the crew members turned and shouted at him. Another fell to the pavement and put his hands over his head.
“No, no—”
He saw police run towards him. Some had drawn guns.
“They’re aboard, the killers—”
From high in the cockpit, the pilot of the Brianna saw the wild man below brandishing a pistol and ordered the mate to lock the cockpit door.
Faolin reached the cockpit as the door closed. Cursing, he pulled the M11 from beneath the police tunic and fitted a forty-round slice of bullets into the magazine. He fired a short burst at the door and destroyed the lock.
Everything happened at once.
In the passenger compartment—down the stairs and on the other side of the hatchway—a woman screamed as Tatty rose and displayed his machine gun.
Elizabeth whirled at the scream and saw Tatty raise the rifle. She was at the front of the
compartment and was knocked to the floor by a large man rushing in panic to the passageway.
Tatty turned to face the hatch just as Cashel pushed through.
He fired a short burst.
Bullets struck Cashel in the chest and flung him back, through the hatch, into the surging wedge of police behind him. Several fell. There was blood on blue uniforms. The panicked passengers screamed and pushed towards the passage. More shots sounded from the pilot’s cockpit.
Faolin slammed into the cockpit. He started to speak but the pilot—a large, beefy-faced man—jumped up and leaped at him, pushing aside the machine gun as though it were a walking stick.
Faolin’s finger was glued to the trigger. The blow from the pilot set off an involuntary burst of fire that blew up part of the instrument panel.
“I got him! I got him!” the pilot cried.
Faolin brought the gun down in a sudden move; he gouged at the pilot’s eyes with the barrel.
The first mate backed away in horror: “He’s pointed at me, he’s pointed at me! Get the gun, get the gun!”
Faolin fired a short burst. The blinded pilot was flung back against the control board. More popping noises issued from the exploding instruments.
Faolin panicked and turned: It wasn’t working, it wasn’t working. And then he remembered the radio transmitter in his tunic.
At that moment, Devereaux pushed aside the body of Cashel blocking the hatch and entered the chaotic, screaming interior of the ship.
He saw Elizabeth stare at him, soundless, her mouth open as though to scream. And then he saw Tatty and fired at him without a thought.
The bullet struck a fat man behind Tatty who went down in blood.
Tatty fired a burst at the door and Devereaux fell back, out of the way.
Everything happened in the same second.
Lord Slough, who had led the party of dignitaries to the deck situated above the cockpit, appeared on the stairs near the shattered cockpit door.
Faolin turned to him and pointed the machine gun at him.
A policeman burst into the ship from the apron, firing blindly at the passenger compartment. He struck two women and wounded Tatty. Tatty cried out and squeezed the trigger. The clip was empty. The policeman fired once more and tore Tatty’s face off.
Faolin squeezed the trigger even as he turned to the new sound of firing coming from the hatch twenty feet away. One bullet struck Brianna Devon in the neck, behind her father. She fell without screaming.
The second, third, and fourth bullets sprayed the passageway as the gun turned. The fifth struck the policeman in the left shoulder. The force of the bullet flung him into the passenger compartment. He fell at Elizabeth’s feet.
She reached across his body for the gun. Her face was white, her eyes wide with madness and fear.
Faolin fired once more.
At that moment, Devereaux appeared again in the hatch. The force of Faolin’s blast split wood on the paneling in the passenger compartment. The smell of blood, smoke, and powder choked the ship. Screaming filled their ears.
Devereaux fired twice. The second bullet shattered Faolin’s jaw, splintering bone and sending fragments of tendon into his mouth. He choked on his blood and vomited suddenly in the incredible pain, and he squeezed off the last of the forty rounds.
Devereaux fired his last shot, sending the surging bullet into Faolin’s fallen body.
Lord Slough was crying aloud: “Brianna! Brianna!”
Blood bathed Brianna’s dress.
Elizabeth pointed the pistol at Devereaux. He turned and looked at her and raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. There was a click. She stared at him for a second then threw the gun at him.
As he ducked aside, he saw that Faolin was not dead.
The terrorist moaned, reached into his tunic. His hands were bloody.
Devereaux looked around him for a weapon. He could not see the gun Elizabeth had thrown.
Faolin drew out a box.
Devereaux saw what it was. He had seen such things. He had used such things. He suddenly smashed his hand against the glass box holding the fire ax. The glass shattered and cut him. Blood flowed from a dozen wounds.
He took down the ax and started up the stairs.
Faolin, his face twisted with pain and made grotesque by the red mask of blood, stared at him. He dropped the box and then reached for it again. They would still remember this moment, this—
Devereaux swung the ax down hard and severed Faolin’s outstretched hand at the wrist. Blood now spurted onto the carpeting from opened arteries and veins, and the bloody stump foamed with redness.
The severed hand lay half open, the box cradled in the nest of fingers.
Faolin died as he felt the shock of the blow.
26
WASHINGTON
Hanley made the report twice; first to the Old Man, and then repeated it to the National Security Council, at the insistence of the President of the United States.
Of course, not one word of the report was taken down; it was an oral exercise, for information and not for history. Hanley did not have to refer to notes. As usual, he remembered everything, from the moment Devereaux had met with him at the prizefight in Madison Square Garden to the moments of death aboard the Brianna.
It was an extraordinary story and no one interrupted at the Security Council meeting. And it was mostly true.
Of course, the Old Man had convinced Hanley that the decision to eliminate Devereaux would be… well… eliminated from the report. There was no point in bringing up such business; it only served to cloud the matter. And the fact that Devereaux appeared to be something of a hero to the British changed things. Hanley understood.
So Hanley made his report with only a few deletions. He even reported honestly about Green. Green had been a double agent for the CIA and he had taken part in at least two murders on British soil. He was currently being held for trial and would doubtless be sentenced to life in prison. Green had been a bad apple, a mole, and a murderer.
Of course, the chief of the CIA squirmed during the long recitation, delivered in a precise, dry tone by Hanley in the National Security Council meeting room. None of the story was very pleasant to the CIA.
During Hanley’s recitation about Operation Mirror, the President glared at the CIA man at the table; it was apparent that the CIA needed R Section just as much today as it had in Kennedy’s time, the President said at one point.
The CIA said nothing. They had considered protesting that a deal had been made with R Section, but that seemed absurd in light of what the CIA saw as the Section’s double-cross.
Because Operation Mirror involved illegal activities and crimes committed on British soil—the murder of Hastings, the murders of Blatchford and Johannsen and Ruckles, and the attempt to murder both Devereaux and Elizabeth Campbell—Devereaux had cooperated fully with British police, Hanley reported.
In addition, Devereaux’s activities—approved fully by Chief of Section and Hanley—had resulted in the arrest of one Dmitri Denisov, a Soviet agent. He had been expelled to Moscow.
And there was the matter of Michael Pendurst, recruited by the CIA, who had been arrested at the launch of the hovercraft Brianna. He was currently awaiting trial in London on charges of attempted murder.
At that point, the CIA man denied Pendurst worked for them.
Hanley quietly passed a report from the Ministry for Interior Affairs (Extraordinary) across the table. The President did not glance at it but kept his gray eyes fixed coldly on the flustered CIA man. He had seen the report based on the interrogation of Pendurst.
Finally, there was the matter of the attempts to kill the heads of two great allied powers, Eire and Great Britain.
The CIA had known all along about the IRA plot (another protest from the CIA man at the table, but the President told him to shut up) and had helped finance it in hopes of blaming the IRA when they made their move to murder the leftist Prime Minister of Great Britain.
; “Leftist” was Hanley’s touch; it turned the dagger. The President himself was considered a “leftist” by some.
Hanley recited the proof of CIA funding for the IRA—or for some elements of it. Again, British Intelligence had gained the proof from certain tapes, equipment, and notes of agents of other countries which had come into their possession.
“Goddam,” said one of the men at the table in a deep Southern accent. “Gawwwwwwwwdam!” He was one of the President’s internal security advisors. “Them English boys really got something on the ball, ain’t they?”
And Hanley wanted to say, Yes. His name is Devereaux.
Hanley did not speak of that, however; he continued to recite the events of the morning of December first in Liverpool: How Chief Inspector Cashel of Special Branch, Dublin, was shot to death by the terrorists as he entered the hovercraft; how the terrorist named James Faolin was killed by Devereaux at the last moment and of the later discovery of five hundred pounds of gelignite aboard the craft; of the wounds inflicted on passengers and crew—six dead and nineteen wounded, among the wounded Brianna Devon, daughter of Lord Slough, who suffered partial vocal paralysis from a bullet in the throat.
The President listened to it all thoughtfully, and his eyes never left the CIA man. Hanley was aware of that but he did not look up; he spoke confidently and slowly, precisely and without emotion. He knew how to make a report.
The British and Irish governments had protested, formally and quietly, to the President concerning the illegal activities of the Central Intelligence Agency in their countries. The President of the United States had been forced to apologize.
“Apologize,” he repeated now, as he stared at the CIA man.
Hanley waited but the President had no more to say.
When it was over, Hanley and the Old Man walked back to the Agriculture building from the Executive Office Building. It was a pleasant walk, because, again, winter had been stayed by the gentle winds from Virginia. Only the trees of Washington seemed a little more bare, a little sadder.
They did not speak at first; it was late afternoon.
