by Jack Higgins
Dillon looked at Ferguson, who shrugged. “He was most insistent. I thought why not? He can go to hell in his own way.”
Harry said, “Just bring him back in one piece, Dillon, because if you don’t…”
“I get the picture, Harry.” Dillon turned to Billy, shaking his head. “Old guy, huh? All right. Up you go then.”
He let Ferguson follow, then went up himself.
10.
AT THE RAF air sea rescue base at Oban, the commanding officer himself met them in view of Ferguson’s rank. They were delivered in an unmarked car by two RAF sergeants named Smith and Brian.
“I think we met once before,” Dillon said.
Brian said, “Not according to any office record, sir.” He grinned as they pulled in at the quay. “You may recognize the Highlander. Two hundred yards out.”
“I can’t say I’m impressed,” Ferguson said.
“You’re not supposed to be,” Dillon told him, “but it’s got twin screws, a depth sounder, radar, automatic steering – and it does twenty-five knots.”
Sergeant Brian said, “We’ve got a whaleboat to take your gear out.”
It took forty minutes, and when it was all stowed, Brian said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but good luck. You’ve got a first-class inflatable with an outboard motor. It should serve you well. We’ll be getting back now.”
“Thanks,” Ferguson said.
The whaleboat departed and Dillon turned to Ferguson. “Billy’s been on board before. Let him show you around. I’ll contact Roper. See what his input is.”
Roper sat at his computer bank, examining the results of his latest hacking job into the Rashid computers.
Dillon said, “What’s the story on the Mona Lisa?”
“Operates from a small fishing port in northern Spain called San Miguel. The port’s a hotbed for illegal transactions, but it’s a bona fide Spanish deep-sea trawler, with a European license to fish off Cornwall, Wales and the Irish Sea.”
“What’s its course?”
“According to its logged passage with the coast guard, she’ll be close to the western coast of the Isle of Man tomorrow, then drift and fish toward the Down coast.”
“Very convenient. Anything else?”
“Not really. I’m sure, for instance, that you haven’t the slightest interest in a Berger International flight into the Isle of Man, carrying one Marco Rossi.”
Dillon laughed. “Well, imagine that.”
“If it’s a sea voyage he’s planning, he’s in for a rough ride. Tomorrow and tomorrow night, there’ll be rain squalls and high seas. You’ll know you’re out there!”
“Should be interesting.”
“Do you have a game plan, Sean?”
“Yeah, the game plan is to blow the hell out of the Mona Lisa and deposit two million quid’s worth of arms on the floor of the Irish Sea.”
“What about the crew? I’ve got a Captain Martino listed here and five others: Gomez, Fabio, Arturo somebody, an Enrico, a Sancho. You’re going to kill them all, Sean?”
“Why not? They’re a reasonable facsimile of scum. They’ve run everything from heroin to human beings, I’m told, and now arms. They shouldn’t have joined if they didn’t want the risk.”
“Fine by me. I’ll stay in touch. Speak to you tomorrow.”
“Good, but stay on the Berger case. I’m convinced Rossi was responsible for Sara Hesser’s death.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Oban was enveloped in mist and rain. Beyond Kerrara, the waters looked disturbed in the Firth of Lorne, and clouds draped across the mountaintops.
“I’ve said it before,” Billy moaned. “What a bloody awful place. I mean, it rains all the bleeding time.”
“No, Billy, it rains six days a week.” Dillon turned to Ferguson. “Am I right, General?”
“You usually are, Dillon.”
“Good. Please join me in the wheelhouse.”
There was a flap to one side of the instrument panel and he pressed a button. Inside was a fuse box and some clips screwed into place. He opened one of the weapons bags, took out a Browning with a twenty-one-round magazine protruding from its butt. He clipped it into place and added a Walther in the other clips.
“Ace in the hole.” He closed the flap.
“My goodness, you do mean business,” Ferguson said.
“I always did, Charles. Now let’s go ashore and eat.”
The early darkness of the far north was against them and he turned on the deck lights, then they coasted to the front at Oban in the inflatable and tied up. A pub close by offered food, and they went in. There was a meat and potato pie on the menu, which they all ordered.
“I’ll have a large Scotch, Dillon. Billy, what about you?”
“Billy doesn’t drink,” Dillon told Ferguson.
“I hate the taste of booze,” Billy said.
“It’s all in the Bible: Wine is a mocker, strong drink raging,” Dillon said.
“Well, you still do it.”
“True.” Dillon swallowed his Bushmills. “What’s more, I’ll have another.”
“I despair of you, Dillon,” Ferguson said, and then the pies arrived and killed conversation for a while.
Later, back on the Highlander, they sat on the stern deck under the canvas awning, rain bouncing off. Ferguson said, “So, what’s the plan?”
“Roper tells me the Mona Lisa’s due off the west coast of the Isle of Man tomorrow. And guess who’s flying up there in a Berger International plane? Marco Rossi.”
“You didn’t tell me,” Ferguson said.
“I’ve been saving it up for you. I think it means he fancies a passage by night to Drumgoole.”
“That could very well be. When we get there, what do you intend?”
“I told Roper, I’ll blow the damn boat up, and don’t ask me what about the crew. They’re all what the Italians would call animali. With any luck, Rossi could even be on board.”
“You really are yourself alone, Dillon. I wonder about Derry Gibson.”
“Wonder what?”
“He could give us a lot of trouble. This Red Hand of Ulster – where do they get their absurd names from?”
“It’s their simple Irish minds, Charles. I’d have thought you’d have recognized that, your sainted mother being a Cork woman.”
“All right, I take your point. But this Derry Gibson thing. It could lead to greater civil war than ever, Catholics and Protestants.”
“What would you like me to do? Shoot Gibson?”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“That’s good,” Billy said. “He’s Wyatt Earp, I’m Doc Holliday, and you’d like Derry Gibson and Rossi standing up in coffins in the undertaker’s window, like in Dodge City, hands folded, eyes closed.”
“You know something, Billy? I couldn’t have put it better myself.” Ferguson got up. “It’s me for an early night. I’ll see you in the morning. I just have one question. Getting in close to the Drumgoole area – won’t the locals wonder who we are?”
“Not if we take out the nets that are in the hold and drape them around the deck. There are lots of fishing boats off the Down coast.”
“Good enough,” Ferguson said, and went below.
Billy said, “He’s such a gent, but you know what? I reckon he’s harder than Harry, and that’s saying something.”
“He’s the kind of man who got us the Empire in the first place,” Dillon said. “Mind you, he’s right about Derry Gibson. I’ll give it some thought.”
“You mean you’d consider knocking him off?”
“Why not? I’ve killed for worse reasons. I once saved his life, you know. We were in a sewer in Londonderry, being hunted by Brit paratroopers, even though we were on different sides. I told him then to keep running and not come back or I’d kill him.”
“And now?”
“Looks like he’s come back. Come on, let’s go to bed,” and Dillon led the way below.
T
he following morning, rain drifting in, Ferguson went up on deck and discovered Dillon swimming in the sea, sporting with two seals, Billy leaning on the rail, watching.
“He’s mad,” Billy said.
“Yes, I’ve been aware of that for some years.”
“I mean, talk about freeze your balls off.”
Dillon swam to the ladder and hauled himself up. “The grand appetite it gives you, Charles.” The ship-to-shore radio crackled in the wheelhouse. “Take that, Charles, it could be Roper. I’ll get dressed.”
It was Roper. “Ah, it’s you, General. Just updating you. Rossi’s plane lands at Ronaldsway on the Isle of Man at eleven this morning. The Mona Lisa is five miles out and scheduled to move to the Down coastal area later this afternoon. The weather isn’t good, so I’d say it wouldn’t be in the Drumgoole area until tonight. I don’t know. The weather makes it uncertain.”
“Right. Thanks, Roper.”
He turned as Dillon entered the wheelhouse and filled him in. Dillon had a look at the chart. “I’ve done this kind of run before, so I know what I’m doing, but the weather stinks. Look at it, Charles.”
The whole of Oban was draped in mist. “Bleeding awful,” Billy said.
“All right.” Dillon nodded. “Let’s allow for him landing at eleven, being driven across the island, and then some sort of boat running him five miles out to the Mona Lisa. It’s two o’clock at the earliest before he boards and she turns for Ulster, but with that weather…” He shook his head. “What do you think, Charles?”
“Three o’clock at the earliest.”
“All right. We’ll leave at two, then. For the moment, let’s get back ashore for a full Scots breakfast… and by the look of it, seasick pills for Billy.”
The flights from London to Ronaldsway had been bad enough. Rossi, the ex-Tornado pilot, always liked to take over the controls for a while, but it was rough and the crosswinds at the airport had been treacherous, although he’d managed the landing himself. A local Rashid employee met him with a car and took him across the island to a small village, where a motor cruiser waited.
It had a crew of two and set out to sea immediately, pushing out from the shelter of a small pier into the rough waves, obscured by fog. It took them an hour to find the Mona Lisa. They pulled alongside the Spanish trawler, its nets draped high over the stern. The two ships collided twice, and men leaned over with grappling lines. Rossi took his chance and jumped over to the other boat. He turned and waved to the motor cruiser, the captain waved back, and then he motored away.
Three or four men at the rail eyed Rossi up and down. He ignored them and went toward the wheelhouse. The door opened and a man emerged in a reefer coat and seaman’s cap, heavily unshaven, an unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth.
By any estimate, he would have been termed a nasty piece of work. He looked Rossi over with a kind of contempt. “I’m Martino, the captain.”
“And I’m Marco Rossi, your boss.”
A couple of the men laughed and Martino lit his cigarette. “Should I be impressed?”
Rossi reached, grabbed his left ear, his thumb well inside, and produced his Walther and rammed it hard under the chin.
“Now, you have the option of continuing to be employed by Rashid and make a lot of money, or I blow your brains out now, up through the mouth and into the brain. Explodes the back of the skull. Very messy.”
Martino tried to smile. “Eh, señor, there’s a mistake here.”
“Not mine, yours. Screw with me and you’re finished. Do we understand each other?”
“Perfectly, señor.”
“Good. Then let’s get on with it.”
He walked into the wheelhouse and the crew looked at Martino, who nodded, so they went about their tasks.
Around the middle of the afternoon the Highlander was ploughing through a turbulent sea, down from Oban, a couple of miles off the Isle of Man into the Irish Sea. Dillon was at the wheel, Billy at the chart table and Ferguson below.
The mist was so heavy, the driving rain so intense, that it was more like evening, a kind of early darkness, and Dillon could see one of the Irish ferries, red-and-green navigational lights already visible.
Ferguson came into the wheelhouse with three mugs of tea on a tray. He put the tray down on the table and looked at the chart, then switched the ship-to-shore radio to weather and listened.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Better let me have the wheel, Dillon.”
Dillon didn’t even argue. Ferguson altered course a couple of points, then increased his speed, racing the heavy weather that threatened from the east. The waves grew rougher.
“Jesus,” Billy said. “I’m scared to death.”
“No need, Billy, he knows what he’s doing. I’ll go down to the galley and make some bacon sandwiches.”
“Not for me. I could throw up now.”
“Take another couple of pills,” Dillon said, and went below.
He came back half an hour later with sandwiches on a plate and found Ferguson alone.
“What happened to the boy wonder?”
“Took a couple of pills and retired to lie down. I say, those smell good.”
“Help yourself.”
Ferguson put the steering on automatic and took a bacon sandwich. Dillon splashed whiskey into two plastic cups and they ate together in a kind of companionable silence. It was getting really dark now, far earlier than normal, only a slight phosphorescence shining from the sea.
“You seem at home,” Dillon said.
“I always liked the sea, from boyhood. The West Sussex coast, down to the Isle of Wight, the Solent. Loved it.” He drank the whiskey. “I’ll have the other half.”
He helped himself to another sandwich. “That Browning with the twenty-shot magazine you’ve put in the flap there. It took me back.”
“Really?”
“Yes. In 1973, I took extended leave; I was an acting major then. Done rather well for my age. I did the Atlantic run single-handed, Portsmouth to Long Island. It had to be Long Island, because I had an old uncle living there. He was a general, too. The American connection in my family.”
“A remarkable achievement,” Dillon said.
“Therapy, Dillon, therapy.” He finished the last sandwich and took the wheel again.
“What for?”
“Well, I’d been shot in the shoulder, but it was more than that. It was psychological. Coming to terms with what I was capable of.”
Dillon poured two more whiskeys. “And what was that?”
“I was never SAS, Dillon. What you’ve never known was that I served with Code Nine Intelligence.”
He had just named one of the most infamous army units involved in the underground fight with the IRA.
“Jesus,” Dillon said.
“It was a hell of a way to earn a living in Londonderry in 1973, but there I was. Thirty years old, Oxford, Sandhurst, Malaya, Communist rebels in the Yemen, Eoka in Cyprus, and then along came Ireland. I couldn’t wait to switch from the Grenadier Guards to counterinsurgency work.”
“You wanted the smell of powder again?”
“Of war, Dillon. I’d been engaged for three years, a lovely girl called Mary. From an army family, only she could never see the point. Mind you, she hung in there until Cork Street.”
He was talking as if he was alone, taking some kind of solitary journey into the past.
“Cork Street?” Dillon said. “What was that?”
“That was where I earned the Military Cross, Dillon, one of those they handed out in Northern Ireland for unspecified reasons.”
Dillon said softly, “And what would that be, Charles?”
“Well, I was link man between two safehouses run by the SAS. One night, I was doing a run quite late. As we discovered later, my cover had been blown. Going through Cork Street down by the docks, I’d a car on my tail, then another car came out of a side and turned to block me.”
“Just a minute,” Dillon
said. “July ’seventy-three, Derry – the Cork Street massacre, that’s what they called it. The SAS took out five Provos. A hell of a thing.”
“No, they didn’t. I took out five Provos.”
It was only then that Dillon was aware of a slight noise, turned and found Billy, the door half open, standing there, revealed.
Ferguson glanced over his shoulder. “Come in, Billy. Yes, Dillon, the second car blocked me, and the one in the rear was right up my backside. There were three Provos in front, two at my back. They just shouted, ‘Out, out, you Brit bastard.’ It always seemed ironic, being half-Irish. It’s the posh voice, you see.”
“So what did you do?”
“I had what you’ve got in there, a Browning with a twenty-round magazine, on the left-hand seat. One man wrenched open the driver’s door, so I shot him between the eyes, then shot his two friends through the door. I was using hollowpoint cartridges. Devastating.”
“And?”
“The two men in the rear car scrambled to get out. One of them fired wildly and was lucky. Hit me in the left shoulder. I riddled the car, a kind of reflex, killed him and the driver. Then I drove away, and made it to one of the safehouses, where the SAS patched me up and got me out the following morning.”
“Jesus,” Billy said. “You killed five.”
“All gone to that great IRA heaven in the sky, Billy, and the doctors put me together again and my masters gave me the Military Cross – had to, really. The loss of five members of the Londonderry Brigade was so mortifying that the Provos put it about as another SAS atrocity, and in the mythology of Irish Republicanism, that’s where it remains.”
It was Dillon who sensed more. “So what happened afterward?”
“Oh, I got a call to pick up the medal from Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace, and I asked Mary to go with me. She’d visited me in the hospital and naturally wanted to know how I’d come to be there, so I told her.”
“And what happened?”
“She sent the engagement ring back, and a letter explaining that she couldn’t possibly marry a man who’d killed five people.”
