‘Jesus, Sean, they’d never know what hit them.’
‘Straight back to Bayswater to Angel waiting in the garage with the Morris, BSA in the back and away we go. We’ll be in Cadge End while they’re still trying to put the fires out.’
‘It’s brilliant, Mr Dillon,’ Angel told him.
‘Except for one thing,’ Fahy said. ‘Without the bloody explosives, we don’t have any bloody bombs.’
‘You leave that to me,’ Dillon said. ‘I’ll get your explosives for you.’ He stood up. ‘But I’ve got things to do. You two go back to Cadge End and wait. I’ll be in touch.’
‘And when would that be, Sean?’
‘Soon – very soon,’ and Dillon smiled as they went out.
Tania was knocking at his door precisely at noon. He opened it and said, ‘You’ve got it?’
She had a briefcase in her right hand, opened it on the table to reveal the thirty thousand dollars he’d asked for.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ll just need ten thousand to be going on with.’
‘What will you do with the rest?’
‘I’ll hand it in at the desk. They can keep your briefcase in the hotel safe.’
‘You’ve worked something out, I can tell.’ She looked excited. ‘What happened at this Cadge End place?’
So he told her and in detail, the entire plan. ‘What do you think?’ he asked when he’d finished.
‘Incredible. The coup of a lifetime. But what about the explosives? You’d need Semtex.’
‘That’s all right. When I was operating in London in eighty-one I used to deal with a man who had access to Semtex.’ He laughed. ‘In fact he had access to everything.’
‘And who is this man? How can you be sure he’s still around?’
‘A crook named Jack Harvey and he’s around all right. I looked him up.’
‘But I don’t understand?’
‘Amongst other things he has a funeral business in Whitechapel. I looked it up in Yellow Pages and it’s still there. By the way, your Mini, I can still use it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. I’ll park it somewhere in the street. I want that garage free.’
He picked up his coat. ‘Come on, we’ll go and have a bite to eat and then I’ll go and see him.’
‘You’ve read the file on Devlin, I suppose?’ Brosnan asked Mary Tanner as they drove through the centre of Dublin and crossed the River Liffey by St George’s Quay and moved on out of the other side of the city, driven by a chauffeur in a limousine from the Embassy.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but is it all true? The story about his involvement with the German attempt to get Churchill in the war?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘The same man who helped you break out of that French prison in nineteen seventy-nine?’
‘That’s Devlin.’
‘But Martin, you said he claimed to be seventy. He must be older than that.’
‘A few years is a minor detail where Liam Devlin is concerned. Let’s put it this way, you’re about to meet the most extraordinary man you’ve ever met in your life. Scholar, poet and gunman for the IRA.’
‘The last part is no recommendation to me,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he told her. ‘But never make the mistake of lumping Devlin in with the kind of rubbish the IRA employs these days.’
He retreated into himself, suddenly sombre, and the car continued out into the Irish countryside, leaving the city behind.
Kilrea Cottage, the place was called, on the outskirts of the village next to a convent. It was a period piece, single-storeyed with Gothic-looking gables and leaded windows on either side of the porch. They sheltered in there from the light rain while Brosnan tugged an old-fashioned bell pull. There was the sound of footsteps, the door opened.
‘Cead míle fáilte,’ Liam Devlin said in Irish. ‘A hundred thousand welcomes,’ and he flung his arms around Brosnan.
The interior of the house was very Victorian. Most of the furniture was mahogany, the wallpaper was a William Morris replica, but the paintings on the walls, all Atkinson Grimshaws, were real.
Liam Devlin came in from the kitchen with tea things on a tray. ‘My housekeeper comes mornings only. One of the good sisters from the convent next door. They need the money.’
Mary Tanner was totally astonished. She’d expected an old man and found herself faced with this ageless creature in black silk Italian shirt, black pullover, grey slacks in the latest fashionable cut. There was still considerable colour in hair that had once been black and the face was pale, but she sensed that had always been so. The blue eyes were extraordinary as was that perpetual ironic smile with which he seemed to laugh at himself as much as the world.
‘So, you work for Ferguson, girl?’ he said to Mary as he poured the tea.
‘That’s right.’
‘That business in Derry the other year when you moved that car with the bomb. That was quite something.’
She felt herself flushing. ‘No big deal, Mr Devlin, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.’
‘Oh, we can all see that on occasions, it’s the doing that counts.’ He turned to Brosnan. ‘Anne-Marie. A bad business, son.’
‘I want him, Liam,’ Brosnan said.
‘For yourself or for the general cause?’ Devlin shook his head. ‘Push the personal thing to one side, Martin, or you’ll make mistakes and that’s something you can’t afford to do with Sean Dillon.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Brosnan said. ‘I know.’
‘So, he intends to take a crack at this John Major fella, the new Prime Minister?’ Devlin said.
‘And how do you think he’s likely to do that, Mr Devlin?’ Mary asked.
‘Well, from what I hear about security at Ten Downing Street these days, I wouldn’t rate his changes of getting in very high.’ He looked at Brosnan and grinned. ‘Mind you, Mary, my love, I remember a young fella of my acquaintance called Martin Brosnan who got into Number Ten posing as a waiter at a party not ten years ago. Left a rose on the Prime Minister’s desk. Of course, the office was held by a woman then.’
Brosnan said, ‘All in the past, Liam, what about now?’
‘Oh, he’ll work as he always has using contacts in the underworld.’
‘Not the IRA?’
‘I doubt whether the IRA has any connection with this whatsoever.’
‘But they did last time he worked in London ten years ago.’
‘So?’
‘I was wondering. If we knew who recruited him that time, it could help.’
‘I see what you mean, give you some sort of lead as to who he worked with in London?’
‘All right, not much of a chance, but the only one we’ve got, Brosnan.’
‘There’s still your friend Flood, in London.’
‘I know and he’ll pull out all the stops, but that takes time and we don’t have much to spare.’