by Jack Higgins
“Krug champagne, Mr. Dillon, your preferred choice, I understand.”
“Is there anything you don’t know about me?” Dillon asked.
“Not much.” Branko lifted the file, then dropped it on the desk. “The intelligence organizations of most countries have the useful habit of frequently co-operating with each other even when their countries don’t. Do sit down and have a drink. You’ll feel better.”
Dillon took the chair opposite and accepted the glass that Zekan handed him. He emptied it in one go and Branko smiled, took a cigarette from a packet of Rothmans and tossed it across.
“Help yourself.” He reached out and refilled Dillon’s glass. “I much prefer the non-vintage, don’t you?”
“It’s the grape mix,” Dillon said and lit the cigarette.
“Sorry about that little touch of violence back there,” Branko told him. “Just a show for my boys. After all, you did cost us that Mig and it takes two years to train the pilots. I should know, I’m one myself.”
“Really?” Dillon said.
“Yes, Cranwell, courtesy of your British Royal Air Force.”
“Not mine,” Dillon told him.
“But you were born in Ulster, I understand. Belfast, is that not so, and Belfast, as I understand it, is part of Great Britain and not the Republic of Ireland.”
“A debatable point,” Dillon said. “Let’s say I’m Irish and leave it at that.” He swallowed some more champagne. “Who dropped me in it? Wegner or Schmidt?” He frowned. “No, of course not. Just a couple of do-gooders. Tomic. It would be Tomic, am I right?”
“A good Serb.” Branko poured a little more champagne. “How on earth did you get into this, a man like you?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I’ll be honest, Mr. Dillon. I knew you were coming, but no more than that.”
“I was in Vienna for a few days to sample a little opera. I’m partial to Mozart. Bumped into a man I’d had dealings with over the years in the bar during the first interval. Told me he’d been approached by this organization who needed a little help, but were short on money.”
“Ah, I see now.” Branko nodded. “A good deed in a naughty world as Shakespeare put it? All those poor little children crying out for help? The cruel Serbs.”
“God help me, Major, but you have a way with the words.”
“A sea change for a man like you I would have thought.” Branko opened the file. “Sean Dillon, born Belfast, went to live in London when you were a boy, father a widower. A student of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at eighteen, even acted with the National Theatre. Your father returned to Belfast in 1971 and was killed by British paratroopers.”
“You are well informed.”
“You joined the Provisional IRA, trained in Libya courtesy of Colonel Qaddafi and never looked back.” Branko turned a page. “You finally broke with the IRA. Some disagreement as to strategy.”
“Bunch of old women.” Dillon reached across and helped himself to more Krug.
“Beirut, the PLO, even the KGB. You really do believe in spreading your services around.” Branko laughed suddenly in a kind of amazement. “The underwater attack on those two Palestinian gunboats in Beirut in 1990. You were responsible for that? But that was for the Israelis.”
“I charge very reasonable rates,” Dillon said.
“Fluent German, Spanish and French, oh, and Irish.”
“We mustn’t forget that.”
“Reasonable Arabic, Italian and Russian.” Branko closed the file. “Is it true you were responsible for the mortar attack on No. 10 Downing Street during the Gulf War when the British Prime Minister, John Major, was meeting with the War Cabinet?”
“Now do I look as if I’d do a thing like that?”
Branko leaned back and looked at him seriously. “How do you see yourself, my friend, gun for hire like one of those old Westerns, riding into town to clean things up single-handed?”
“To be honest, Major, I never think about it.”
“And yet you took on a job like this present affair for a bunch of well-meaning amateurs and for no pay?”
“We all make mistakes.”
“You certainly did, my friend. Those boxes on the plane. Morphine ampoules on top, Stinger missiles underneath.”
“Jesus.” Dillon laughed helplessly. “Now who would have thought it.”
“They say you have a genius for acting, that you can change yourself totally, become another person with a look, a gesture.”
“No, I think that was Laurence Olivier.” Dillon smiled.
“And in twenty years, you’ve never seen the inside of a cell.”
“True.”
“Not any longer, my friend.” Branko opened a drawer, took out a two-hundred pack of Rothmans cigarettes and tossed them across. “You’re going to need those.” He glanced at Zekan and said in Serbo-Croatian, “Take him to his cell.”
Dillon felt the Sergeant’s hand on his shoulder pulling him up and propelling him to the door. As Zekan opened it Branko said, “One more thing, Mr. Dillon. The firing squad operates most mornings here. Try not to let it put you off.”
“Ah, yes,” Dillon said. “Ethnic cleansing, isn’t that what you call it?”
“The reason is much simpler than that. We just get short of space. Sleep well.”
They went up a flight of stone steps, Zekan pushing Dillon ahead of him. He pulled him to a halt outside an oak door on the passageway at the top, took out a key and unlocked it. He inclined his head and stood to one side and Dillon entered. The room was quite large. There was an army cot in one corner, a table and chair, books on a shelf and, incredibly, an old toilet and in a cubicle in one corner. Dillon went to the window and peered through bars to the courtyard eighty feet below and the pine forest in the near distance.
He turned. “This must be one of your better rooms. What’s the catch?” Then realized he was wasting his time, for the Sergeant had no English.
As if perfectly understanding him Zekan smiled, showing bad teeth, took Dillon’s silver case and Zippo lighter from a pocket and laid them carefully on the table. He withdrew, closing the door, and the key rattled in the lock.
Dillon went to the window and tried the bars, but they seemed firm. Too far down anyway. He opened one of the packs of Rothmans and lit one. One thing was certain. Branko was being excessively kind and there had to be a reason for that. He went and lay on the bed, smoking his cigarette, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about it.
In 1972, aware of the growing problem of terrorism and its effect on so many aspects of life at both political and national level, the British Prime Minister of the day ordered the setting up of a small elite intelligence unit, known simply by the code name Group Four. It was to handle all matters concerning terrorism and subversion in the British Isles. Known rather bitterly in more conventional intelligence circles as the Prime Minister’s private army, it owed allegiance to that office alone.
Brigadier Charles Ferguson had headed Group Four since its inception, had served a number of Prime Ministers, both Conservative and Labour, and had no political allegiance whatsoever. He had an office on the third floor of the Ministry of Defence overlooking Horse Guards Avenue, and was still working at his desk at nine o’clock that night when there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Ferguson said, stood up and walked to the window, a large, rather untidy-looking man with a double chin and untidy gray hair who wore a baggy suit and a Guards tie.
As he peered out at the rain toward Victoria Embankment and the Thames, the door opened behind him. The man who entered was in his late thirties, wore a tweed suit and glasses. He could have been a clerk, or even a schoolmaster, but Detective Inspector Jack Lane was neither of these things. He was a cop. Not an ordinary one, but a cop all the same, and after some negotiating, Ferguson had succeeded in borrowing him from Special Branch at Scotland Yard to act as his personal assistant.
“Got something for me, Jack?” Fergus
on’s voice was ever so slightly plummy.
“Mainly routine, Brigadier. The word is that the Director General of the Security Services is still unhappy at the Prime Minister’s refusal to do away with Group Four’s special status.”
“Good God, don’t they ever give up, those people? I’ve agreed to keep them informed on a need-to-know basis and to liaise with Simon Carter, the Deputy Director, and that damned MP, the one with the fancy title. Extra Minister at the Home Office.”
“Sir Francis Pamer, sir.”
“Yes, well that’s all the cooperation they’re going to get out of me. Anything else?”
Lane smiled. “Actually, I’ve saved the best bit till last. Dillon – Sean Dillon?”
Ferguson turned. “What about him?”
“Had a signal from our contacts in Yugoslavia. Dillon crashed in a light plane this morning, supposedly flying in medical supplies only they turned out to be Stinger missiles. They’re holding him in that castle at Kivo. It’s all here.”
He passed a sheet of paper across and Ferguson put on half-moon spectacles and studied it. He nodded in satisfaction. “Twenty years and the bastard never saw the inside of a prison cell.”
“Well, he’s in one now, sir. I’ve got his record here if you want to look at it.”
“And why would I want to do that? No use to anyone now. You know what the Serbs are like, Jack. Might as well stick it in the dead-letter file. Oh, you can go home now.”
“Good night, sir.”
Lane went out and Ferguson crossed to his drinks cabinet and poured a large Scotch. “Here’s to you, Dillon,” he said softly. “And you can chew on that, you bastard.”
He swallowed the whisky down, returned to his desk and started to work again.
2
East of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean are the Virgin Islands, partly British like Tortola and Virgin Gorda. Across the water are St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John, proudly American since 1917 when the United States purchased them from the Danish government for twenty-five million dollars.
St. John is reputed to have been discovered by Columbus on his second voyage to the New World in 1493 and without a doubt is probably the most idyllic island in the entire Caribbean, but not that night as a tropical storm, the tail end of Hurricane Able, swept in across the old town of Cruz Bay, stirring the boats at anchor in the harbor, driving rain across the roof tops, the sky exploding into thunder.
To Bob Carney, fast asleep in the house at Chocolate Hole on the other side of Great Cruz Bay, it was the sound of distant guns. He stirred in his sleep, and suddenly it was the same old dream, the mortars landing everywhere, shaking the ground, the screams of the wounded and dying. He’d lost his helmet, flung himself to the ground, arms protecting his head, was not even aware of being hit, only afterwards, as the attack faded and he sat up. There was pain then in both arms and legs from shrapnel wounds, blood on his hands. And then, as the smoke cleared, he became aware of another Marine sitting against a tree, both legs gone above the knees. He was shaking, had a hand outstretched as if begging for help, and Carney cried out in horror and sat bolt upright in bed, awake now.
The same lousy old dream, Vietnam, and that was a long time ago. He switched on the bedside lamp and checked his watch. It was only two-thirty. He sighed and stood up, stretching for a moment, then padded through the dark house to the kitchen, switched on the light and got a beer from the icebox.
He was very tanned, the blond hair faded, both from regular exposure to sea and sun. Around five foot eight, he had an athlete’s body, not surprising in a man who had been a ship’s captain and was now a master diver by profession. Forty-four years of age, but most people would have taken seven or eight years off that.
He went through the living room and opened a window to the veranda. Rain dripped from the roof and out to sea lightning crackled. He drank a little more of his beer, then put the can down and closed the window. Better to try and get a little more sleep. He was taking a party of recreational scuba divers out from Caneel Bay at nine-thirty, which meant that as usual he needed his wits about him, plus all his considerable expertise.
As he went through the living room he paused to pick up a framed photo of his wife, Karye, and his two young children, the boy Walker and his daughter, little Wallis. They’d departed for Florida only the previous day for a vacation with their grandparents, which left him a bachelor for the next month. He smiled wryly, knowing just how much he’d miss them, and went back to bed.
At the same moment in his house on the edge of Cruz Bay at Gallows Point, Henry Baker sat in his study reading in the light of a single desk lamp. He had the door to the veranda open because he liked the rain and the smell of the sea. It excited him, took him back to the days of his youth and his two years’ service in the Navy during the Korean War. He’d made full Lieutenant, had even been decorated with the Bronze Star, could have made a career of it. In fact they’d wanted him to, but there was the family publishing business to consider, responsibilities and the girl he’d promised to marry.
It hadn’t been a bad life considering. No children, but he and his wife had been content until cancer took her at fifty. From then on he’d really lost interest in the business, had been happy to accept the right kind of deal for a takeover, which had left him very rich and totally rootless at fifty-eight.
It was a visit to St. John which had been the saving of him. He’d stayed at Caneel Bay, the fabulous Rock Resort on its private peninsula north of Cruz Bay. It was there that he’d been introduced to scuba diving by Bob Carney and it had become an obsession. He’d sold his house in the Hamptons, moved to St. John and bought the present place. His life at sixty-three was totally satisfactory and worthwhile, although Jenny had had something to do with that as well.
He reached for her photo. Jenny Grant, twenty-five, face very calm, wide eyes above high cheekbones, short dark hair, and there was still a wariness in those eyes as if she expected the worst, which was hardly surprising when Baker recalled their first meeting in Miami when she’d tried to proposition him in a car park, her body shaking from the lack of the drugs she’d needed.
When she’d collapsed, he’d taken her to the hospital himself, had personally guaranteed the necessary financing to put her through a drug rehabilitation unit, had held her hand all the way because there was no one else. It was the usual story. She was an orphan raised by an aunt who’d thrown her out at sixteen. A fair voice had enabled her to make some kind of living singing in saloons and cocktail lounges, and then the wrong man, bad company, and the slide had begun.
He’d brought her back to St. John to see what the sea and sun could do. The arrangement had worked perfectly and on a strictly platonic basis. He was the father she had never known, she was the daughter he had been denied. He’d invested in a cafe and bar for her on the Cruz Bay waterfront called Jenny’s Place. It had proved a great success. Life couldn’t be better and he always waited up for her. It was at that moment he heard the jeep drive up outside, there was the sound of the porch door and she came in laughing, a raincoat over her shoulder. She threw it on a chair and leaned down and kissed his cheek.
“My God, it’s like a monsoon out there.”
“It’ll clear by morning, you’ll see.” He took her hand. “Good night?”
“Very.” She nodded. “A few tourists in from Caneel and the Hyatt. Gosh, but I’m bushed.”
“I’d get to bed if I were you, it’s almost three o’clock.”
“Sure you don’t mind?”
“Of course not. I may go diving in the morning, but I should be back before noon. If I miss you, I’ll come down to the cafe for lunch.”
“I wish you wouldn’t dive on your own.”
“Jenny, I’m a recreational diver, no decompression needed because I work within the limits exactly as Bob Carney taught me, and I never dive without my Marathon diving computer, you know that.”
“I also know that whenever you dive there’s always a chance of some kind
of decompression sickness.”
“True, but very small.” He squeezed her hand. “Now stop worrying and go to bed.”
She kissed him on the top of his head and went out. He returned to his book, carrying it across to the couch by the window, stretching out comfortably. He didn’t seem to need so much sleep these days, one of the penalties of growing old, he imagined, but after a while his eyes started to close and sleep he did, the book sliding to the floor.
He came awake with a start, light beaming in through the venetian blinds. He lay there for a moment, then checked his watch. It was a little after five and he got up and went out on to the veranda. It was already dawn, light breaking on the horizon, but strangely still, and the sea was extraordinarily calm, something to do with the hurricane having passed. Perfect for diving, absolutely perfect.
He felt cheerful and excited at the same time, hurried into the kitchen, put the kettle on and made a stack of cheese sandwiches while it boiled. He filled a thermos with coffee, put it in a holdall with the sandwiches and took his old reefer coat down from behind the door.
He left the jeep for Jenny and walked down to the harbor. It was still very quiet, not too many people about, a dog barking in the distance. He dropped into his inflatable dinghy at the dock, cast off and started the outboard motor, threaded his way out through numerous boats until he came to his own, the Rhoda, named after his wife, a thirty-five-foot Sport Fisherman with a flying bridge.
He scrambled aboard, tying the inflatable on a long line, and checked the deck. He had four air tanks standing upright in their holders; he’d put them in the day before himself. He opened the lid of the deck locker and checked his equipment. There was a rubber and nylon diving suit which he seldom used, preferring the lighter, three-quarter-length one in orange and blue. Fins, mask, plus a spare because the lenses were correctional according to his eye prescription, two buoyancy jackets, gloves, air regulators and his Marathon computer.
