A Devil is Waiting

4

It was an hour before midnight, New York time, when Ferguson’s Gulfstream rose up through heavy rain to 40,000 feet and headed out into the Atlantic. Lacey and Parry, his usual RAF pilots, were at the controls – Sara had met them in the departure lounge and they’d indicated their approval. She was lying back in a red seat, and Parry passed her and spoke to Ferguson.

‘Definitely heavy winds in mid-Atlantic, General. Could take us seven hours at least. Will that be all right?’

‘It will have to be, Flight Lieutenant,’ Ferguson told him. ‘Carry on.’

Parry paused as he passed Sara and grinned. ‘He can be grumpy on occasion. Sorry we didn’t have a steward, but you’ll find anything you could want in the kitchen area. We’re very free and easy.’

He returned to the cockpit and she stretched out comfortably and listened to what was going on, for they had the screen on and were having a face-to-face with Roper.

‘I can see you in the back there, Sara,’ Roper called. ‘I warned you about Daniel.’

‘Enough of this erotic by-play,’ Ferguson growled, ‘and let’s get down to business. These different kinds of IRA dissidents, Giles, is it really possible for them to work together?’

‘I don’t see why not, but Dillon and Holley are the ones to ask. They’ve been there and done that, Dillon since he was 19. What’s your opinion, Sara? After all, the peace process was supposed to solve things, giving Sinn Fein seats at Stormont.’

‘But the ideal to strive for has always been a united Ireland,’ Dillon said. ‘So as long as Ulster remains with the Crown, dissident factions will have a reason to continue the struggle.’

‘A bleak prospect,’ Ferguson said. ‘Which simply means they – whoever they are – have an excuse for continuing general mayhem.’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Dillon shrugged. ‘There are supposed to be sleepers all over London, just awaiting the call to action.’

‘Which brings us to Jack Kelly,’ Roper said. ‘A well-known Provo who’s served time in the Maze Prison he may be, but he was automatically pardoned as part of the peace process. So what’s to be done?’

‘A bullet in the head as he walks home some wet night?’ Holley suggested.

Sara said, ‘I wonder how many times he did that himself during his years with the IRA.’

‘So what do we do?’ Holley asked. ‘Lift him?’

‘Impossible,’ Roper said. ‘His lawyers would run rings around the prosecution.’

‘You’re all right,’ Ferguson told them. ‘Even you, Sara, though I would point out that assassination is the business we’re in. No, we’ll apparently do nothing, leaving you, Roper, genius that you are, to come up with some way of monitoring his comings and goings.’

‘That’s asking a lot,’ Miller said. ‘He’ll be using only encrypted mobiles.’

Roper shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Something might turn up.’

‘I’d sleep on it if I were you,’ Miller told him.

‘You clown, Harry, it’s breakfast time here.’

The screen went dark and Ferguson promptly fell asleep. Sara was in the rear of the cabin and Holley took the next seat.

‘Are you tired?’

‘I certainly should be.’

‘Because it’s all so exciting.’ He said it as a statement.

‘Disturbing, Daniel, that’s what I’d say, and rather frightening.’

Holley smiled through the half-light. ‘We’ll have to do something about that.’

In front of them, Dillon muttered, ‘For God’s sake, kiss the girl goodnight, and let’s get some sleep.’

Sara smiled and murmured to Holley, ‘See you in the morning.’

She pulled a blanket over her knees, closed her eyes, and lay back. Holley watched her for a while, wondering what was happening to him, then he also closed his eyes.

The drone of the engines in flight was the only sound now. Parry peered in from the cockpit and dimmed the lights even further.

Dillon wasn’t sleeping, just lying back considering what the day had brought. A lovely young woman, Sara Gideon, and she’d obviously had a profound effect on Holley, but they were in entirely the wrong profession for that kind of thing. A pity, but there it was.

He moved on to analysing the new situation in Ulster. Always the same. Reactionary dissidents who would never be satisfied till the sound of gunfire echoed in the streets and the killing began once more. What the hell was Jack Kelly playing at? He’d lost his only son to the conflict, spent years in jail.

‘Christ,’ Dillon murmured, ‘you’d think he’d have learned some sense by now.’

But there was no forgiveness in this world, and he remembered Jean Talbot in the Zion Gallery. She’d appreciated why he’d had to shoot her son, but couldn’t possibly forgive, and had put out a contract on him – one of the advantages of being rich, she’d said.

Nothing to be done about that. People had been trying to kill him for years. He remembered the old days, going to the horns in the bullring in Ibiza, waiting for the bull to rush out of the gate of fear. It comes as God wills, the toreros used to say, which just about summed it up.

One-thirty over the Atlantic, but 7.30 in London, where Jean Talbot was already enjoying the first cup of coffee of the day. She’d lived in the Regency House in Marley Court in Mayfair for years. It was just off Curzon Street, convenient for Hyde Park, and only ten minutes’ walk away from Owen Rashid’s flat, a decided plus in view of the way their relationship was developing.

Her mobile sounded and there he was. ‘Are you up for lunch today? There’s something I wanted to run by you.’

‘Sorry, Owen, I’ve got a meeting with the vice-chancellor.’ Though she was head of Talbot International, she mostly let her nephew, Gregory, handle things as CEO while she pursued an academic career. ‘Are you going for a run in the park?’

‘Just about to leave.’

‘I’ll join you if you like. I’ll be at the Hilton end of the subway.’

Which she was, and they walked through, entered Hyde Park, and had a brisk 30-minute jog which ended with coffee by the café at the Serpentine. As always, she thoroughly enjoyed his company. No silly ideas of romance at her age. In a sense, he was filling her son’s place, and he was well aware of the fact.

‘How did your flight to Rubat go the other day?’ she asked, for another link between them was that Rashid Oil kept its private aircraft at Frensham Aero Club, as did Talbot International. Owen had been a private pilot for three years, Jean for considerably longer.

‘Now that I’ve got my rating for jets, it was great fun. I was able to fly the Lear.’

‘What was it you wanted to run by me?’

‘I wondered if you’d thought any more about my suggestion that Talbot International might consider extending the Bacu Railway line into Rubat.’

She said, ‘I’ve raised the matter with Gregory, and he seems to think that the instability with Yemen next door might raise difficulties.’

Owen said, ‘All we’re asking for is an extension of the track and the pipelines. It would give us access to Southport and its tankers, and that would be more efficient for us. Remember that one-third of the world’s oil from southern Arabia passes through the system. To interfere with that, Yemen would have to invade Rubat, a sovereign state. Any interference with oil supplies would cause chaos on an international scale. If the UN didn’t put a stop to it, the Americans would, backed by powerful Arab interests. Yemen would be ground into the dust.’

‘I like it when you’re this way, Owen, full of enthusiasm.’ She smiled. ‘You certainly make a good case. I’ll speak to Gregory again.’

As they started the return run, he realized with some surprise that she was absolutely right. The idea as put forward by his Al Qaeda masters was totally misconceived.

They crossed Park Lane and he said, ‘Tell Gregory there will be a Saudi delegation arriving on Thursday to be here for the President’s visit on Friday. Powerful sheikhs involved in the oil business, but also a general or two, possibly looking for interesting arms deals. I’d be happy to help with introductions.’ He frowned. ‘But what am I thinking of? There’s the reception on the terrace at Parliament.’

‘I heard,’ she said. ‘It’s the social event of the year.’

‘Well, I’ve been invited and partners are allowed. Why not come with me?’

She was actually quite thrilled at the idea, but said, ‘Good heavens, Owen, are you sure?’

‘Talbot International supplies military hardware to half the countries on earth and has an excellent reputation for integrity in the Arab world. Who better to represent it at such an affair than the chairman?’

‘I admit I’m tempted.’

‘Dinner tonight at San Lorenzo. We’ll discuss it then. I’ll pick you up at 7.30.’

He half-ran along the pavement. She watched him enter his apartment block, then turned and walked away, suddenly absurdly happy.

As Owen crossed the sitting room, making for the bedroom suite, pulling his sweater over his head, a phone sounded. He hurried into his office and took a mobile from the top drawer. It was his sole link with Al Qaeda through an individual he’d come to know only as Abu. The man spoke the perfect dry and precise English of an academic, with no clue as to age or nationality.

‘Good morning, Owen,’ Abu said. ‘Did you enjoy your run in Hyde Park with Jean?’

Owen had got past being surprised at how up-to-date Abu’s information was, particularly about Rubat. He had got used to the idea that he was under some sort of surveillance.

‘She’s excellent company!’

‘What’s the feedback regarding the extension to the Bacu?’

Owen gave him chapter and verse. ‘Frankly, it’s exactly what I expected the company to say. Yemen makes everyone nervous these days, including my own people in Rubat.’

‘Our orders demand that we persist.’

‘I’m doing the best I can. As you know, I’m a guest at the terrace reception for the President. I’ve invited her to join me, with a promise to introduce her to various Saudi dignitaries.’

‘I like that,’ Abu said. ‘It’s good for business from a Talbot International point of view. It could possibly have an effect on their attitude to the Bacu extension. You’ve done well.’

‘We aim to please.’

‘Kelly has filled me in on the Murphy business in New York.’

‘Yes, I suggested he speak to you personally,’ Owen said.

‘You were quite right. We need to do something about Ferguson and his Holland Park set-up. The wretched people he employs have been a thorn in our sides for years. Now we have Ferguson’s latest recruit, this Sara Gideon. Jewish, I understand. She probably has ties to Mossad.’

‘I wouldn’t blame her. That bus bombing that killed her parents in Jerusalem saw off fourteen Palestinians as well. It was rather careless of Hamas.’

‘Take care,’ Abu said. ‘Or we may start to wonder whose side you’re on.’

‘That’s easy. I’m on Owen Rashid’s side. What’s our next move?’

‘I’ll order Kelly to activate some of his sleepers here in London. He’s boasted of them enough, so let’s see if we can give Ferguson and his people a few problems.’

Owen said, ‘Let’s be practical. Ferguson and Miller spent years fighting a war in Ireland. Dillon and Holley were on the other side and have now crossed over. Their friend Harry Salter may be a wealthy developer now, but he was a notorious gangster in his day, and his nephew has taken after him. And the Gideon girl’s record speaks for itself. What do you think you’ll be able to accomplish?’

‘I’ve been doing some research. Are you familiar with the Irish National Liberation Army? Their members were recruited from the professional classes. Years ago, they killed an MP with a car bomb as he drove out of Parliament. No one was ever caught.’

‘All right, but that was a long time ago,’ Owen said. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying some things never go out of style. I’m going to speak to Kelly. I want this Charles Ferguson business taken care of once and for all.’

Owen Rashid, with plenty to think about, went into the bathroom and stood under a hot shower, cursing the day he’d got involved with Al Qaeda, but he was, and would have to make the best of it.

As he finished dressing and moved into his office area, the phone sounded. It was Kelly, and he wasn’t pleased.

‘I don’t like being ordered around by that creep Abu. He sounds like an undertaker.’

‘I suppose that’s what he is in a way,’ Owen told him. ‘You could always resurrect one of your sleeper cells and give instructions to bump him off.’

‘If only it were that simple,’ Kelly said. ‘Just like I have visions of getting Charles Ferguson and his entire outfit all together in a van, so it would only take one bomb planted underneath to get rid of them all.’

‘And pigs might fly,’ Owen said. ‘Anyway, Abu thinks we need something special. He’s discovered that INLA once killed a Member of Parliament with a car bomb.’

‘But that was years ago.’

‘Well, he’s impressed – not only that they got away with it but that the cell consisted of middle-class professionals.’

‘Yeah, that was a newspaper story that got out of hand.’ Kelly laughed harshly. ‘Each time it reprinted, a bit more was added, until in the end, it was better than the midnight movie.’

Owen Rashid found himself genuinely interested. ‘How do you know?’

‘Because I’ve always suspected a friend of mine was involved. He wasn’t Irish, and his only connection with the IRA was a girl named Mary Barry, whom he loved beyond rubies.’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘In 1976, like a lot of IRA volunteers, I was sent to a training camp in the middle of the Algerian desert, courtesy of Colonel Gaddafi. We were trained in all kinds of weaponry and shown how to make what they now call improvised explosive devices, car bombs and such.’

‘So what’s this got to do with anything?’ Owen Rashid demanded.

‘Our instructor was named Henri Legrande. He spent three years in the Foreign Legion in the Algerian War. Joined at eighteen, got wounded and decorated, and discharged on his twenty-first birthday. Then he was recruited by Algerians and got well paid to give people like me the benefit of his experience for six months.’

‘What happened to him when you left the camp?’

‘We were his last group. He had an English aunt in London who’d left him well provided for, and her estate included an antiques shop with a flat above it in Shepherd Market.’

‘That’s not far from here,’ Owen said. ‘Lots of shops like that there.’

‘He decided to go to London University to study literature and fine arts, of all things. It was still a popular destination with Irish students like Mary Barry, the daughter of a friend of mine. I told her to look him up.’

‘And they fell in love.’

‘She moved in with him, and had two years of bliss before she went home to Belfast one day, got involved in a street protest, was manhandled by soldiers, handed over to the police, and was found dead in a cell the following morning. Choked on her own vomit. There was a suggestion of abuse, but nothing was ever proved.’

‘Well, there wouldn’t be, would there?’ Owen said.

‘We all know that, but there was nothing to be done. I was on the run at the time, took a chance and went to the funeral. St Mary’s, Bombay Street in Belfast, the church packed. Just before the service, the door banged and there was Henri over from London. The look on his face would have frightened the devil. He had a single red rose in his hand, walked straight up the aisle, ignoring the priest, placed the rose between her folded hands, leaned over, kissed her, and walked out.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Went after him, took him for a drink. I asked him if he intended to return to France. He told me he would never leave London, because as long as he stayed, her presence would always be with him.’

‘True love.’ Owen reached for a cigarette and lit it. ‘So you suppose that he was responsible for the death of that MP all those years ago as an act of revenge?’

‘It was more complicated than that. I told you that Henri had given us a thorough training on the construction of explosive devices.’

‘What about it?’

‘One of the car bombs he demonstrated was of Russian origin and was unusual in that it used mercury as part of the trigger mechanism. Three months after Mary’s death, the army colonel whose men had been involved in that riot was killed with the same sort of car bomb right here in London.’

‘Which could hardly be a coincidence,’ Owen said.

‘Not when you consider that two months later, the Royal Ulster Constabulary chief superintendent who’d been commanding the police station where Mary had died met a similar fate.’

‘I’d say that’s pretty convincing proof, but why would Legrande target the Member of Parliament? He didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Mary Barry, did he?’

‘No, but there was an election going on at the time, the government was taking a very anti-IRA line, and the MP was a spokesman. Who knows what was going on in Henri’s head? The important thing was that there were no more mercury tilt bombs after that.’

‘What happened when you put all this to Legrande?’ Owen asked.

‘But I never did,’ Kelly told him. ‘I was serving five life sentences for murder in the Maze Prison until the peace process pardoned me.’

‘So what is Legrande doing now?’

‘I haven’t a clue. I wasn’t certain whether people like me were still under police surveillance, so I decided to leave well enough alone where certain old friends were concerned.’

Owen, who’d been examining the phone book on his desk, said, ‘Here we are. Henri Legrande. Rare books, fine art, antiques. It’s called Mary’s Bower.’

Kelly said, ‘Well, we know where the shop’s name comes from. Where are you going with this?’

‘Abu is just a messenger boy passing on orders, but orders they are. You’ve boasted of your sleepers in London. Now you’re supposed to activate them to sort out Ferguson and his people.’

Kelly said, ‘It isn’t as easy as that. When the Troubles were in full swing, we had a network of them, but …’

‘Are you telling me it would be impossible?’

Kelly had an edge of desperation in his voice. ‘It would be difficult.’

‘Then you’re a dead man walking, because you’ve been lying to Abu and Al Qaeda. I don’t intend for you to pull me down with you. Stay on the phone for five minutes. I’ll be back.’

He went out to the kitchen and dialled a number on the wall phone. A man’s voice answered. Owen listened, then said, ‘Sorry, wrong number.’ He spoke into his mobile: ‘Are you still there, Jack?’

‘Yes, what the hell are we going to do?’

‘Revisit your glory days. You used to be the pride of the IRA – now you’re going to take on Ferguson yourself. I’ll provide you with money if you need to hire three or four foot soldiers. All you need is a plan.’

‘And where would that come from?’

‘Henri Legrande, of course. He survived the Legion, the Casbah, the Battle of Algiers. If he can’t sort your problem, nobody can.’

‘But I don’t know if he’s still around,’ Kelly said. ‘We haven’t spoken in years.’

‘I just phoned him three minutes ago. When he answered, I said sorry, wrong number. What I suggest is you phone him, tell him you’ll be in London later today and thought you’d look him up.’

‘But what do I say to him?’

‘Stick with the truth. After all, your IRA past is no surprise to him. Stress that all you’re seeking is his expertise on the best way to handle Ferguson, and that you’re not expecting him to carry a gun for you or anything like that. Don’t offer him money – the kind of man he is would be offended, and I suspect he’s got more than he knows what to do with.’

Kelly said, ‘Owen, you’re a genius.’

‘I’m not going to argue with that. Now, get moving.’

‘Right,’ Kelly said. ‘I’ll phone Henri, then I’ll get the Beech Baron to pick me up from Drumgoole. I’ll cover my back by phoning the finance director at Talbot International and telling him I need to discuss the estate’s books. What are you up to?’