Touch The Devil

by Jack Higgins

  “Good God,” the Prime Minister said.

  “During the early years of the Irish Troubles, Barry professed to be a Republican. As usual, he did his own thing. Organized a group called the Sons of Erin, which gave us tremendous problems in the Province. Repudiated totally by the Provisional IRA. In nineteen seventy-two, when Group Four was first set up, I managed to penetrate Barry’s organization with an agent of mine, a Major Vaughan. The upshot of that little affair was that Barry was very badly wounded indeed. That he lived at all was only due to the skill of the surgeons of the military wing of the Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast.”

  “You had him?”

  “He escaped, ma’am. Not even capable of walking, according to his doctors, but walk he did, right out of the hospital, dressed as a porter. Turned up in Dublin within twenty-four hours. We couldn’t touch him there, of course. He was in and out of hospitals there and in Switzerland for more than a year.”

  “And afterward?”

  “Since then, ma’am, he has, in some cases to our certain knowledge and in others to the best of our belief, been responsible for at least fifteen assassinations and a number of bombing incidents. His touch is distinctive and unmistakable, and political commitment seems to be the least of his considerations. A resume of his activities during the past few years will explain what I mean. In nineteen seventy-three he assassinated the general in command of Spanish military intelligence in the Basque country. Responsibility was claimed by the Basque nationalist movement, the ETA.”

  “Go on.”

  “On the other hand, he was also responsible for the murder of General Hans Grosch during a visit to Munich in nineteen seventy-five. A source of considerable embarrassment to the West German government. Grosch held a post roughly equivalent to my own in the East German ministry for state security. So, as you can see, ma’am, on the one hand Barry kills a Fascist—on the other, a Communist.”

  “You’re saying he has no politics?”

  “None at all.” Ferguson took a sheet from his briefcase and passed it across. “A list of the jobs we think he’s been concerned with. As you can see, his victims have been from every part of the political scene you can think of.”

  The Prime Minister read the list slowly and frowned. “Are you saying, then, that he works for whoever will pay him?”

  “No, ma’am, I think it’s more subtle than that. Everything he does falls into a pattern that causes maximum damage wherever it happens. For instance, he kills a Spanish diplomat visiting Paris in nineteen seventy-seven—a Fascist. The French government had to react appropriately and within twenty-four hours, every left-wing agitator in Paris was in police hands. Not only Communists, but Socialists. The Socialist party didn’t like that, which meant the unions also didn’t like it. Result, unrest among the workers, strikes, disruption.”

  She paused suddenly, lower down his list, and glanced up, her face bleak. “You mention here a possible involvement in the Mountbatten assassination?”

  “We’ve the best of reasons for believing his advice was sought.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It does if one considers his known links with the KGB. I believe that most of the incidents he has been responsible for were commissioned by the KGB, even the assassination of those supposed to be their friends, with the sole purpose of causing the maximum amount of disruption possible in the West.”

  “But Barry is no Marxist?”

  “Frank Barry, ma’am, isn’t anything. Oh, he’ll take their money, I’m sure of that, but he’ll do what he does for the hell of it. I suppose the psychiatrists would have fancy terms to describe his mental condition. Psychopath would only be the start. I’m not really interested. I just want to see him dead.”

  The Prime Minister passed the list back to him. “Then get on with it, Brigadier.”

  Ferguson took the list from her automatically as she pressed a buzzer on her desk. “Ma’am?”

  “Department Four has the power—total authority from this office, so it would seem. Use it, man. I’m not going to tell you how to do your own job, you’re too good at it. I’ve read your record. The only thing I will say is that it seems obvious to me you must put everything aside and concentrate all your activities on Barry.”

  Ferguson got to his feet and slipped the paper back in his briefcase. “Very well, Prime Minister.”

  The door opened behind him, and the young secretary appeared. The Prime Minister picked up her pen. Ferguson walked to the door and was ushered out.

  Ferguson usually preferred to work when possible from his Cavendish Square flat. He was sitting by the fire, drinking tea and toasting crumpets on a long brass fork, when Kim opened the door and ushered Harry Fox in.

  “Ah, there you are, Harry. Got what I wanted?”

  “Yes, sir, every last piece of paper in the file on Frank Barry.”

  Fox was thirty, a slim, elegant young man who wore a Guards tie, not surprising in someone who until two years previously had been an acting captain in the Blues. The neat leather glove that he wore permanently, on his left hand concealed the fact that he had lost the original in a bomb explosion during his third tour of duty in Belfast. He had been Ferguson’s assistant for just over a year.

  “What exactly are we looking for, sir?”

  “I’m not sure, Harry. Jack Corder was the third man I’ve put up against Frank Barry, and they’ve all ended up in a box. We’ve got to come up with something different, that’s all I know for certain.”

  “You’re right, sir. Takes a thief to catch a thief, I suppose.”

  Ferguson paused in the act of spearing another crumpet on his fork. “What did you say?”

  “Jack Grand of Special Branch was telling me the other day they put one of their men into Parkhurst Prison, posing as a convict. He was attacked within two days and badly injured. I suppose the truth is most crooks can spot a copper a mile away. Frank Barry will be the same, if you think about it. He’d smell a rat in almost anyone you tried to infiltrate into his kind of action.”

  “You could be right,” Ferguson said. “Start reading through those files. Aloud, if you please.”

  They were at it for six hours, only Kim disturbing them from time to time to replenish the tea. It was dark when Ferguson got up and stretched and waved to the window.

  “I’d like to know where the bastard is now.”

  Fox said, “The photos on him are a bit sparse, sir. Nothing since nineteen seventy-two. The earliest seems to be this one from a Paris-Match article done by some woman journalist in nineteen seventy-one. Who are the other two with him? Devlin, is it? Liam Devlin and Martin Brosnan.”

  Ferguson crossed the room with surprising speed for a man of his bulk and took the news clipping from him. “My God, Liam Devlin—and Brosnan. I’d forgotten they’d had dealings with Barry, it’s so long ago.”

  “But who are they, sir?”

  “Oh, a couple of anachronisms from the early days of the Irish Troubles. Before the worst of the bombings and the butchery. The kind of men who thought it was still nineteen twenty-one with Michael Collins carrying the flag for Ireland. Gallant guerrillas up against the might of the British Empire, flying columns, action by night.”

  “I think I saw the movie once, sir,” Fox said.

  “There was a man called Sean McEoin, a flying column leader who later became a general in the Free State army. In nineteen twenty-one, he was surrounded by Black and Tans in a cottage near his own village. There were women and children inside, so McEoin ran out in the open with a gun in each hand and shot his way through the police cordon. Devlin and Brosnan are the same kind of idiots.”

  “I can’t say I came up against anyone like that during my time in Ulster,” Fox said, feelingly.

  “No. Well, it’s as well to remember that the IRA, like the British army or any other institution, consists of a very wide range of human beings. Still, you cut along now. I want to give this some think time.”

&
nbsp; Fox left. Ferguson poured himself a brandy and stood at the window, looking down into the square, thinking, with regret, of Jack Corder and the others he had sent against Barry.

  “Somewhere,” he said softly, “that bastard is still laughing at me.”

  Barry, at that precise moment, was doing roughly what Ferguson was. Standing at a window with a large cognac in his hand, only the apartment was in Paris and the view was of the Seine. There was a discreet tap at the door and when he opened it on the chain, Belov was outside.

  “Well?” Barry demanded as the Russian entered.

  “Considerable Service Five activity, Frank. They know you were behind the whole affair, so they’re leaving no stone unturned to find you—with full assistance from British intelligence on this one, I might add. Your Brigadier Ferguson and Pierre Guyon of Service Five are old friends.”

  “Well, that makes a change. I didn’t think D15 and the French intelligence service were on speaking terms. How can you be sure that Ferguson and Guyon are such good pals, or have you an informer in Guyon’s department?”

  “Anything is possible,” Belov said.

  Barry showed his surprise. “I thought British intelligence had cleaned out all its moles by now. What about Corder? I had to find out about him for myself.”

  “To be honest, Frank, at the moment we’re getting only peripheral information, but we expect that to improve.”

  “You’d think,” Barry said, “D15 would check its employees’ credentials right back to the womb.”

  “Perhaps they do, Frank. But in this case it wouldn’t do them any good.”

  “At least there’s no one left who can finger me at the moment, except you, of course, old son.”

  Belov’s smile was forced. “On the whole, I think it would be sensible if you dropped out of sight for a while.”

  “And where would you suggest?”

  “England.”

  Barry laughed. “Well, it’s a novel enough idea. The last place they’d expect. Would you have somewhere specific in mind?”

  “The Lake District.”

  “The colors can be glorious at this time of year.” Barry poured himself another cognac. “All right, Nikolai, let’s have it.”

  The Russian opened his briefcase and took out a selection of maps. “It’s painfully simple. The balance of power as regards ground forces in Europe is hugely in our favor, mainly because we can put at least four thousand more tanks in the field than the NATO forces.”

  “So?”

  “The West Germans have come up with a rather brilliant new weapon, light enough to be carried by any infantry section. When fired, its pod releases twelve rockets simultaneously. Imagine them as missiles in miniature—heat-seeking, of course, spreading out in a field of fire that could stop a whole group of massed tanks. What a machine gun is to a rifle this new weapon is to the bazooka. It enables one foot soldier to fire the heat-seeking equivalent of a dozen bazooka shells at once, each capable of knocking out the biggest Soviet tank. A tank thrust into Europe could be stopped dead by NATO infantry.”

  “Jesus,” Barry said. “You’d wonder how they lost the war. What’ll they come up with next?”

  “We must study the weapon and develop a suitable electronic defense. We’ve tried every way possible to get hold of one, but so far, we’ve failed. We must have one, Frank.”

  “So, where do I come into it?”

  Belov started to unfold the maps. “I’ve had a report today of a rather interesting development. The Germans intend to demonstrate this weapon to the British and others at the British army rocket proving ground near Wastwater in the Lake District next Thursday. There’s a team of Germans taking one over on Wednesday—an officer and six men. There’s an unused RAF base at Brisingham, only twenty miles from the proving ground. They’ll land there to be taken the rest of the way by truck.”

  “Interesting.” Barry opened the maps right across the table.

  “Frank, pull this off for me, and it would be worth half a million.”

  Barry didn’t seem to hear him. “I’d need ground support. Someone I could rely on in the general area of things. A thoroughgoing crook, preferably. Could your people in London arrange that?”

  “Anything, Frank.”

  “And more maps. English ordnance survey maps. I want to know that area like the back of my hand.”

  “I’ll have them around to you in the morning.”

  “Tonight,” Barry said. “I’ll also need fake passports. One British, one French, and one American, just to vary things. Details like who I am I’ll leave up to your experts.”

  “All right,” Belov said.

  “And keep the SDECE off my back. Tell them I’ve been seen in Turkey or gone to the Argentine.”

  Since the Sapphire scandal, the intelligence networks of most Western countries had had a rather poor opinion of the French intelligence service, believing it to be penetrated by the KGB, which it was—certainly enough for Belov to be able to agree to Barry’s request.

  “And one more thing,” Barry added, as Belov opened the door. “A banking account in my English identity for fifty thousand pounds’ working capital.” He smiled softly. “And it’ll cost you a million, Nikolai. This one will cost you a million.”

  Belov shrugged. “Frank, just get it for us and you’ll see how satisfactory your reward can be.”

  He went out, and Barry locked and chained the door, then returned to the table, sat down at the maps, and started to give the whole thing some thought.

  Harry Fox was just about to step into the shower when his phone rang. He cursed, pulled a towel around himself, and went to answer it.

  “Harry, Ferguson here. You know what you said earlier about setting a thief to catch a thief. You’ve given me a very interesting idea. Go to the office, bring me Martin Brosnan’s file, and you might as well bring Devlin’s while you’re at it.”

  Fox glanced at his watch. “You mean in the morning, sir?”

  “I mean now, damn you!”

  Ferguson slammed down his phone, and Fox replaced his receiver and checked his watch. It was just after two A.M. He sighed, returned to the bathroom, and started to dress.

  THREE

  “Martin Aodh Brosnan,” Ferguson said. “The Aodh is Gaelic for Hugh, if you’re interested, after his maternal grandfather, a well-known Dubliner in his day.”

  The fire was burning well, it was four o’clock in the morning, and Harry Fox felt unaccountably alive—except for the hand, of course, which ached a little as if it were still there. That always happened under stress.

  “According to the file, he was born in Boston in nineteen forty-five, sir, of Irish-American parentage. His great, great grandfather emigrated from Kerry during the famine. Made the family fortune out of shipping during the second half of the nineteenth century, since when they’ve never looked back. Oil, construction, chemical plants—you name it.” Fox frowned and looked up. “A Protestant. That’s astonishing.”

  “Why?” Ferguson said. “A lot of prejudice against the Catholics in America in the old days. Probably one of his ancestors changed sides, and he’s hardly the first Protestant to want a United Ireland. What about Wolfe Tone? He started it all. And the man who came closest to getting it from the British government of his day, Charles Stuart Parnell, was another.”

  “According to this, Brosnan’s mother is a Catholic.”

  “Unremittingly so. Mass four times a week. Born in Dublin. Met her husband when she was a student at Boston University. He’s been dead for some years. She rules the family empire with a rod of iron. I believe the only human being she has never been able to bend to her will is her son.”

  “He did all the right things, it seems. Very Ivy League stuff. Top prep, school. Took a degree in English Literature at Princeton.”

  “Majored,” Ferguson corrected him.

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Majored in English, that’s what our American friends say.”

  F
ox shrugged and returned to the file. “Then in nineteen sixty-six he volunteered for Vietnam—Airborne Rangers and Special Services. And an enlisted man, sir, that’s the puzzling thing.”

  “A very important point, that, Harry.”

  Ferguson poured himself more tea. “Vietnam was never exactly a popular issue in America. If you were at university it was possible to avoid the draft, which was exactly what most young men with Brosnan’s background did. He could have continued to avoid service by staying on at university and taking a doctorate. He didn’t. What’s the word that’s so popular these days, Harry? Macho? Maybe that had something to do with it. Perhaps he felt less of a man because he’d avoided it for so long. In the end, the important thing is that he went.”

  “And to some purpose, sir.” Fox whistled. “Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star with Oak Leaves, Vietnamese Cross of Valor.” He frowned. “And the Legion of Honor. How in the hell did the French get involved?”

  Ferguson stood up and walked to the window. “An interesting one, that. His last flamboyant gesture. He saved the neck of a famous French war photographer, a woman, would you believe, name of Anne-Marie Audin. Some ambush or other. She pops up in the story again. The photo from the Paris-Match article, remember, with Brosnan, Liam Devlin, and Frank Barry? The good Mademoiselle Audin took that, among others. She wrote the same story for Life magazine. A behind-the-scenes look at the Irish struggle. It went down very well in Boston.”

  Fox reached for the next file. “But how the hell did he move on from Vietnam to the IRA?”

  “Wildly illogical, but beautifully simple.” Ferguson turned and walked back to the fire. “I’ll shorthand it for you and save you some time. On leaving the army, Brosnan went to Trinity College in Dublin to work for that doctorate we mentioned. In August, nineteen sixty-nine, he was visiting an old Catholic uncle on his mother’s side, the priest in charge of a church on the Falls Road in Belfast. When did you first visit that fair city, Harry?”