Touch The Devil

by Jack Higgins

  The granite from Belle Isle was famous throughout France, was still so much in demand that the authorities had constructed a new deep-water jetty so that larger container ships could be used. The quarry itself was hewn out of the northern cliffs, and they were blasting as Lebel approached, the red flag fluttering in the wind.

  The explosion, when it came, echoed from the cliffs like thunder as a great shoulder of rock cracked in a thousand pieces and cascaded down. A whistle blew, and convicts and their armed guards emerged from the shelter and went back to work.

  Brosnan and Savary toiled together, Savary loading into a skip standing on the crude rail track beside them, Brosnan splitting larger pieces with a sledgehammer and wedge. He was stripped to the waist, his hair held back by a sweatband. The muscles in his back rippled as the hammer came down, and his prison number was clear to see, tattooed on his right forearm.

  As Lebel approached, Savary paused, leaning on the skip, wiping his face with a rag. “Hey, Pierre, I’m getting old. What about a job in the kitchen or even the library. I’m not fussy.”

  “Nonsense,” Lebel said. “Look what magnificent shape you’re in for a man of your age, all thanks to regular exercise and hard work.” He turned to Brosnan and took a paper and pen from his pocket. “You’ve got a visitor due on the morning boat, my friend. Are you willing to receive him?”

  Brosnan paused, leaning on the sledgehammer. “Who is it?”

  Lebel looked at the paper. “Monsieur Charles Gorman. Solicitor, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.” He looked puzzled. “Solicitor?”

  “What the English call their lawyers, Pierre,” Savary advised him.

  “Reason for visit, legal business.” Lebel repeated the question. “Will you receive him?”

  “Why not?” Brosnan said.

  Lebel held out the paper and pen. “Then sign in the appropriate section.” Brosnan complied and handed them back. “Okay,” Lebel said. “Back to work,” and he folded the document and stuck it in his pocket. “I may have a treat for you tonight. Another body. They’re expecting some old guy up in the infirmary to die any minute.”

  “So kind of you to think of us.” Savary picked up another rock as Lebel walked away. “Interesting, Martin. You didn’t tell me your lawyer was coming to see you.”

  “What’s even more interesting is that he isn’t my lawyer,” Brosnan said. “I’ve never heard of Charles Gorman in my life.”

  He brought the hammer down with all his strength and split the rock that was his target in half.

  It was dark when Barry turned the Land Rover into the farmyard and braked to a halt. As he switched off the engine, a woman screamed. Barry jumped to the ground. The front door was flung open, light flooding into the yard. Jenny Crowther almost made it, and then Varley had her.

  Her dress was torn, one shoulder bare, and Varley laughed drunkenly and tried to kiss her. She tried to pull away, disgust and loathing on her face as her hands clawed at him. Barry moved in fast and punched Varley in the kidneys, then grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back.

  Varley cried out in pain and went down on one knee. He stayed there for a moment, shaking his head, then looked up at Barry. He got up slowly, shook his head again as if to clear it, then charged, hands reaching out to destroy.

  Barry moved to one side, grabbing for the right wrist, twisting it around and up in an armlock, and, using Varley’s own momentum, ran him into the wall. Varley, on his knees for the second time that night, tried to stand, and Barry kicked him in the stomach.

  Varley lay on his back, groaning, and Hedley Preston standing in the doorway laughed drunkenly. “I told you he could take you apart any time he wanted, Sam. You should have listened. I’m always right, never wrong.” He raised his glass. “To you, Mr. Sinclair, and all who sail with you.”

  Barry said, “You could have stopped this, you bastard. I told you to keep him in line.” His right hand swung up, the Ceska coughed once, and Preston dropped his glass and cried out, clutching his neck.

  He leaned against the doorpost, blood oozing between his fingers. Barry tapped him gently between the eyes with the muzzle.

  “Don’t worry, Preston. Just a scratch, that’s how good I am with one of these things. Next time, old son, you’re dead.”

  He turned, took the girl by the arm, and pushed her toward the Land Rover. “I’ll take you down to Salter’s place. In fact, I’ll stay there again tonight myself.” She was trembling and clutched his arm, and once again, he was aware of that strange surging excitement. “It’s all right,” he said as they drove out of the farmyard, and he reached across and took her hand. “It’s all right.”

  Later that night, standing at the window of his bedroom, smoking and looking down into the yard, he saw her come out of the kitchen with the light and cross to the barn. Barry opened the door and went downstairs quickly.

  When he went into the barn, she was filling a basket with wood. “Here, let me do that,” he said.

  “That’s all right, I can manage,” she replied in a low voice without turning around.

  He lit a cigarette, aware of a sudden unbearable tightness in his chest that threatened to choke him. She had changed out of the torn cotton dress, and the black one she now wore, like the other, was too small and stretched tightly across her buttocks and thighs.

  She stood up and Barry dropped his cigarette and moved close, his arms sliding about her, pulling her against him. He held her for a moment, his lips against her neck, and then pushed her gently forward and down into the hay.

  And then she truly did come to life, her hands tightening in his hair, her mouth fastening on his with great, bruising kisses that were almost frightening in their intensity.

  SEVEN

  It was Lebel’s duty, as the officer on Brosnan’s tier, to take him down to the visitors’ room on Tuesday morning. When he opened the door and ushered Brosnan in, Devlin was standing with his back to them, peering out of the window. Brosnan had received no greater shock in his life than he did when the small man turned to face him.

  “Ah, Mr. Brosnan. My name is Charles Gorman. My firm has been retained by the Brosnan Corporation in Boston to discuss certain legal matters affecting your future. There is also the matter of an appeal for clemency on your behalf to the President of France. Your mother feels…”

  “My mother,” Brosnan said, “is wasting her time, Mr. Gorman. The only way she’ll ever get me off this rock is in a box.”

  “Monsieur Gorman, please,” Lebel said, “you and your client must sit on either side of the table, but you will be alone. As his legal adviser, you are entitled to this. I will lock the door. When you are ready to leave, please ring the bell.”

  “Can we smoke?” Devlin asked.

  “But of course, Monsieur.”

  Lebel went out, the key turned in the lock. Brosnan reached across the table, and Devlin took his hand and held it for a long moment.

  “Cead mile failte,” he said in Irish. “A hundred thousand welcomes.”

  Devlin smiled. “Go raibh maith agat,” he replied. “My thanks. Let’s stick to the Irish, just to confuse the buggers if they happen to be listening in.” He sat down, lit a cigarette, and pushed the pack across. “Good to see you, Marteen.”

  It was the affectionate diminutive of the name that normally would be used with a child. In the old days, Brosnan had not cared to be called Little Martin by a man considerably smaller than himself. And then, of course, he had come to know Devlin rather better.

  “You look well, Martin, considering.”

  “Never fitter. I work in the quarry most days. You look good yourself. Still at Trinity?”

  “They keep me out of kindness. I was invited as visiting professor at Yale this year.”

  “God help them.”

  “Came to nothing. The State Department refused me a visa.”

  Devlin glanced about him, his face somber. “Was this what it was all about—truly?”

  Brosnan said, “They closed down D
evil’s Island, but they still had this in reserve. Tell me, Liam, how you’ve been? Did you ever find those Plains of Mayo you were always looking for? Remember Blind Raftery’s poem?”

  Devlin said, “Once, a thousand years ago. November, nineteen forty-three to be precise, at what you might call the hour of maximum danger.”

  “The Churchill affair?”

  “A lovely ugly little peasant,” Devlin quoted, “who turned my heart not once, but twice. She was seventeen and I was thirty-five.”

  “And too old?”

  “Not for that one. But there was a problem. I was the enemy.”

  “So, what you’re trying to say is that you found your Plains of Mayo thirty-six years ago?”

  Devlin smiled with infinite sadness. “And lost them again in the finding. Now wouldn’t that make you laugh all the way to hell and back?”

  “Not really. What’s all this about?”

  “It’s simple enough. How would you like to get out of here?”

  Brosnan didn’t take it seriously for a moment. “Well, a little divine intervention would be divine because that’s what it would take. Even my mother, formidable lady as she is, discovered a long time ago that neither lighting a candle, saying her prayers, nor offering large sums of money would do any good.”

  “Has she been to see you?”

  “Once, four years ago. I saw her then only to make it clear I wouldn’t see her again.”

  “And Anne-Marie?”

  Brosnan paused and went very still. “What about Anne-Marie?”

  “I left her in St. Denis this morning. She begs you to see her.”

  “No,” Brosnan said in a low voice. “I will not do it.”

  He jumped to his feet and went to the window, reaching for the bars, his cheek to the stone. After a while, he turned.

  The rusting barred window had no glass in it, and wind whistled through. Devlin shivered. “God save us, avic, but I hate to see you in this place.”

  Brosnan came back to the table, helped himself to another cigarette and sat down. “All right, Liam, what are you after?”

  Devlin grinned crookedly. “Just consider me that divine intervention you were looking for, shut your mouth, and listen.”

  When he was finished, Brosnan sat back in his chair, brooding, the gray eyes giving nothing away.

  “Well?” Devlin said.

  “I don’t know,” Brosnan told him. “I used to be big on slogans like Ireland must be free. It came naturally from a love of literature, a joy in words, but then you discover that the reality is that you must be prepared to walk over corpses to achieve your end.”

  “And it isn’t worth it?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder whether any cause is worth the loss of a single human life.”

  “I know, Marteen, your revolutionary ardor has cooled a little. So has mine, and I was at it longer than you.”

  Brosnan got up and went to the window and held the bars again, looking out, “Suddenly, I feel old, Liam. Really old, you know what I mean? I can’t get worked up about things anymore. Not even Frank Barry and the KGB and Ferguson and D15 and the stupid senseless bloody games they’re all involved in.”

  “Not even to get out of here?”

  “There’s no way Ferguson can get me out of this place,” Brosnan said flatly.

  “Ferguson thinks he can.”

  Brosnan didn’t reply, so Devlin came to the one issue he had been avoiding, no help for it now. “Martin, you heard what happened to Norah?”

  Brosnan nodded without turning around. “I heard. She died about eighteen months ago.”

  Devlin cleared his throat. “But the way that she died, that’s the thing.”

  Brosnan turned, his face blank, the eyes very dark. “You’ve something to tell me?”

  Devlin said, “It’s difficult to know where to begin, Marteen.”

  Brosnan was across the room in three quick strides, had him back across the table, his hands on his throat. “Tell me!” he said in a low hoarse voice. “Tell me!”

  * * *

  Afterward, he sat at the table, his head in his hands for a long time without saying anything. Then suddenly he stood up, went and rang the bell.

  He turned to Devlin. “I need to think. I’ll speak to you again later.” Before Devlin could reply, the key turned in the lock, and Lebel appeared. “Mr. Gorman has papers for me to sign. I’d like some time to think about it. Can I go back to my cell for an hour?”

  Lebel turned to Devlin. “You have no objection, Monsieur?”

  “None at all.”

  “Then please wait here. I shall return and take you to the officers’ canteen. A little refreshment might be in order while you wait.”

  Savary had just been returned to the cell for the noon break. He was lying on his bed smoking a cigarette, when the door was unlocked and Lebel ushered Brosnan in.

  “An hour, then,” the prison officer said and departed.

  “How did you get on?” Savary started to say, and Brosnan waved him to silence, listening at the door.

  “So, a mystery?” the old man said as Brosnan came and sat on the other bed facing him. “Oh, I get it,” he added shrewdly. “This Gorman—someone you knew after all?”

  “Just shut up and listen,” Brosnan said. “I haven’t got much time.”

  When he was finished, Savary sat there, clenching and unclenching his hands in excitement. “For God’s sake, seize this chance with both hands, Martin. Go!”

  Brosnan reached across and put a hand on his shoulder to still him. “No, Jacques, listen to me—just a little while longer. In the first place, I don’t believe Ferguson can swing this thing with the French authorities. I’m not some little thief—some cat burglar or confidence man. I killed a policeman, and you know how they look at that sort of thing at the Palais de Justice. In the second place, even if Ferguson could arrange it, it would take time—too much time to suit me.”

  “So what’s your alternative?”

  “I’m crashing out,” Brosnan said simply.

  “But Martin, this is impossible. No one has ever escaped from this damn rock.”

  “I’ve always known I could get outside the walls via the sewer. I told you that,” Brosnan explained. “But that gets you nowhere because you’re still on the island. And then, while we were on the burial detail with Lebel the other night, I saw it. We break into the storage hut, steal a couple of life jackets each, and enter the water from the burial rock.”

  Savary gazed at him in awe. “We? You said we?”

  “Sure, the both of us, Jacques. Stay on this rock, you’ll end up in the sea in a canvas bag sooner or later, so why not take a chance on the sea while you can still fight?”

  “But the Mill Race,” Savary said. “It would be the death of us.”

  “Or the saving of us, don’t you see?” Brosnan said. “That current runs up to ten knots, curving toward St. Denis. Now, if a boat was waiting in the appropriate area…”

  Savary broke in, shaking his head. “No fishing boat is allowed within a four-mile radius of the island. You know that.”

  “The current would take us that far in half an hour.”

  “But such a boat would never find us. Be reasonable, Martin. That sea out there and at night.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Brosnan said. “All we need is one of those electronic homing beacons. They’re standard issue in all air forces now. Pilots have them stitched to their life jackets so when they ditch at sea the rescue craft can home in on them.”

  “And if they missed us?” Savary whispered.

  “Or if your heart gave out, or you couldn’t stand the cold?”

  “All right, all right.” Savary waved a hand. “You’ve infected me with your own madness. When do we go?”

  “I don’t see any reason to hang about. We can get everything we need right here except that homing device. They’re only the size of a cigarette pack. Devlin will have to get hold of one and smuggle it in to me. I don’t see a
ny problem there.”

  “And the boat?”

  “I was thinking that was where that son of yours could come in.”

  “Jean-Paul?”

  “If the Union Corse can’t organize a fast run by night in a trawler out of St. Denis, they must be slipping.”

  “But of course.” Savary was laughing now, excitement boiling over. “Jesus, Martin, but I feel alive again like I haven’t done in years.”

  He embraced Brosnan enthusiastically, kissing him on both cheeks. Brosnan turned and hammered on the cell door. “Come on, Pierre!” he called. “Let’s be having you.”

  Anne-Marie, sitting on the balcony of the hotel in St. Denis, had seen the prison supply boat enter the harbor so she was not surprised when Devlin appeared on the adjoining balcony twenty minutes later. He clambered over and sank into the wicker chair opposite her. “You saw him?” she asked eagerly. “Oh, yes, I saw him.”

  “And he was well?”

  “Never fitter. In fact, fighting fit.”

  Her face clouded. “What happened?”

  “It’s simple, really. At first, when I outlined the deal, he wasn’t particularly interested, and in any case he didn’t believe that Ferguson could get him out. And to be frank with you there, I’m inclined to agree with him.”

  “So?”

  “I told him about Norah.” He shook his head. “He took it hard. If Frank Barry had been within touching distance, Martin would have broken him in his two hands.”

  Anne-Marie got up and poured him a whisky. She came back to the table. “And that changed his point of view?”

  “You could say that.” Devlin swallowed a little whisky. “God, I needed that. Now, he intends to break out within the next two or three days in company with his cell mate, a man called Savary.”

  “But how can this be done?” she asked.

  So Devlin told her. When he was finished, he poured himself another whisky. “As harebrained a scheme as I’d ever heard of.”