Touch the Devil

2

It was raining on the following morning when Ferguson’s car dropped him outside Number Ten Downing Street, ten minutes early for his eleven o’clock appointment with the Prime Minister. His driver moved away instantly and Ferguson crossed the pavement to the entrance. In spite of the rain, there was the usual small crowd of sightseers on the other side of the road, mainly tourists, kept in place by a couple of police constables. Another stood in his usual place by the door, not much protection for the best-known address in England, the seat of political power as well as the Prime Minister’s private residence, but that didn’t mean a thing, as Ferguson well knew. There were others, more inconspicuously attired, situated at certain strategic points in the area, ready to swarm in at the first hint of trouble.

The policeman saluted and the door was opened, even before Ferguson reached it. He passed inside.

The young man who greeted him said, ‘Brigadier Ferguson? This way, sir.’

There was the hum of activity from the Press Room on the right as he crossed the entrance hall and entered the corridor leading to the rear of the house and the Cabinet Room.

The main staircase to the first floor was lined with portraits of previous Prime Ministers: Peel, Wellington, Disraeli, Gladstone. Ferguson always felt an acute sense of history as he mounted those stairs, although this was the first time he had done so to meet the present Prime Minister. The first time he had had to explain himself to a woman, and a damn clever woman, if it came to that. Definitely a new experience. But did anything change? How many attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria? And Disraeli and Gladstone had both had their hands full of Fenians, dynamiters and anarchists with their bombs, at one time or another.

On the top corridor the young man knocked on a door, opened it and ushered Ferguson inside. ‘Brigadier Ferguson, Prime Minister,’ he said and left, closing the door behind him.

The study was more elegant now than Ferguson remembered it, with pale green walls, gold curtains and comfortable furniture in perfect taste. But nothing was more elegant in the entire room than the woman behind the desk. The blue suit with the froth of white lace at the throat perfectly offset the blonde hair. An elegant, handsome woman of the world, and yet the eyes, when she glanced up at Ferguson from the paper she was reading, were hard and intelligent.

‘I’ve had a personal assurance from the French President this morning that this whole wretched business will be hushed up. It never happened. You understand me?’

‘Perfectly, ma’am.’

She looked at the paper before her. ‘This agent of yours, Corder. If it hadn’t been for him …’ She gestured to a chair. ‘Sit down, Brigadier. Tell me about him.’

‘We recruited Jack Corder some twelve years ago when he was still an undergraduate at Balliol. The route he chose was to immerse himself totally in left wing politics. We often hear of moles within our intelligence service working for the Russians, ma’am. Jack was the other side of the coin. He endured prison sentences twice for his apparent militancy. Afterwards, I transferred him to the European terrorist scene. Frank Barry was his most important assignment.’

She nodded. ‘I’ve already spoken to the Director General of DI5. He tells me that as long ago as nineteen seventy-two, one of my predecessors authorised the setting up within DI5 of a section known as Group Four which has powers, held directly from the Prime Minister, to co-ordinate the handling of all cases of terrorism, subversion and the like.’

‘That is correct, Prime Minister.’

‘With you in charge, Brigadier?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

There was a longish pause while she stared down at the paper thoughtfully. Ferguson cleared his throat. ‘Naturally, if you would prefer to initiate some change, I will offer my resignation without hesitation.’

‘If I want it, I’ll ask for it. Brigadier,’ she said sharply. ‘But you can’t expect me to have much faith in the activities of your section when one of the chief ministers of the Crown comes within an inch of assassination. Now tell me about this man, Barry? Why is he so important, and more to the point, how does he remain so elusive?’

‘A brilliant madman, ma’am. A genius in his own way. As important to the international terrorist scene as Carlos, but not so familiar to the public.’

‘And why is that?’

‘A question of his personal psychology. Many terrorists, take some of those involved with the Baader-Meinhoff gang, for example, have a craving for public display. They want people to know not only who they are, but that they can make fools of the police and intelligence departments they confront, any time they wish. Barry doesn’t seem to have a need for that kind of publicity, and as it suits our purposes best to give him none, he has remained an unknown quantity as far as the public is concerned.’

‘What about his personal background?’

‘I’m afraid it couldn’t be worse from the point of view of media sensationalism. He is an Ulsterman by birth. Held a commission as a National Service second-lieutenant with the Ulster Rifles. Served in Korea. Excellent record in the field, I might add. He’s a Protestant. His uncle is an Irish Peer, Lord Stramore. Much involved in Orange politics for most of his life, but now in ailing health. Barry is his heir.’

‘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. Organised 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 organisation with an agent of mine, a Major Vaughan. The upshot of that little affair was that Barry was badly wounded. 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.’

‘What happened then?’

‘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 hospital there and in Switzerland for more than a year.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘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 résumé 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, 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.’

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, in that it causes maximum damage wherever it happens. For instance, he kills a Spanish diplomat visiting Paris in nineteen seventy-seven – a Fascist. The French government have to react appropriately and within twenty-four hours, every left-wing agitator in Paris is 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 amongst 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 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 on one side 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 and returned to work as Ferguson moved to the door and was ushered out.

* * *

Ferguson usually preferred to work 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 in Harry Fox.

‘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 which 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 two out of the three have 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 and coffee. 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 taken 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 were 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 wide range of human beings. Still, you cut along now. I want to give this some think time.’

Fox left. Ferguson poured himself a brandy and went 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. In his case, 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, Romanov 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 Colonel Guyon of Service Five are old friends.’

‘Well, that makes a change. I didn’t think DI5 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,’ Romanov told him.

Barry was surprised and showed it. ‘You’re kidding. I thought British Intelligence had cleaned out all its moles by now. Your man certainly didn’t do me any good. What about Corder? I had to find out about him for myself.’

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

‘I don’t get it,’ Barry said. ‘You’d expect DI5 to check its employees’ credentials right back to the womb.’

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

‘One good thing. At least there’s no one left who can finger me at the moment, except you, of course, old son.’

Romanov’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.’

‘They say it’s lovely at this time of the year.’ Barry poured himself another cognac. ‘All right, Nikolai, let’s be having 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 favour, mainly because we would be able to 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. Any one of these rockets is capable of knocking out our largest tank.’

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

‘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?’

Romanov 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 Wast Water in the Lake District, next Thursday. There’s a team of Germans taking one over on Wednesday. An officer and six men. There’s a disused RAF base at Brisingham which is 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 thorough-going 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 round 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 to your experts.’

‘All right,’ Romanov said.

‘And keep the SDECE off my back. Tell them I’ve been 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 Romanov to be able to agree to Barry’s request.

‘And one more thing,’ Barry added as Romanov 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.’

Romanov shrugged. ‘Frank, just get it for us and you can name your own price, I promise you.’

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.

Back in London, Harry Fox was just about to step into the shower when his ’phone rang. He cursed, pulled a towel around him 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 and bring me Martin Brosnan’s file. 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.

3

‘Martin Aodh Brosnan,’ Ferguson said. ‘The Aodh is Gaelic for Hugh, if you’re interested, after his maternal grandfather, a well-known Dublin Union leader 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. And very social register.’ 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. 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 Stewart 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, Andover. 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.’

Fox shrugged and returned to the file. ‘Then in nineteen sixty-six he volunteered for Vietnam. Airborne Rangers and Special Services. And in the ranks, sir, that’s the puzzling thing.’