Jack Higgins: The Judas gate

'Absolutely, Mr President.'

The President smiled. 'You are a remarkable man, my friend. Don't let me down.'

'My oath on it, sir.' He held the President's hand a moment longer, then turned and followed the others as Blake ushered them out.

Late the next morning, Ferguson's Gulfstream, his regular RAF pilots, Lacey and Parry, at the controls, rose to thirty thousand feet, climbing high over the Atlantic. After a while, Parry looked into the cabin.

'There's some problematic weather in the mid-Atlantic. A question of how heavy the winds are.'

'I'd have said perfectly acceptable if they're flying up your backside,' Dillon told him.

'Right as usual, Dillon, which means our flight time will be cut to about six hours if we're lucky. Anyone like anything to eat or drink?'

'Thank you, no, Flight Lieutenant,' Ferguson told him, and Parry withdrew.

Miller said, 'You certainly impressed the President, Sean.'

'I only told the man what I thought he'd want to hear.'

'Rash promises as usual,' Ferguson put in. 'Shamrock could be anybody.'

'There's no such thing,' Dillon told him. 'Everyone is a somebody, and I intend to find him, one way or another. In fact, I'm so certain, I'll have a drink on it.'

'Not me,' Ferguson told him, and unfolded the quilt beside his seat. 'I'm going to take a nap. I'll have to see the Prime Minister tomorrow. If you want to make yourself useful, Harry, call in to Roper and tell him what happened.'

He switched off his light and pulled up the quilt.

At the Holland Park safe house in London, Major Giles Roper sat in a track suit in his wheelchair, his shoulder-length hair tied with a ribbon, pulling it back from his bomb-ravaged face, as he listened to Harry Miller describe the visit to the White House. Roper lit a cigarette and poured a whisky as he listened.

'Good old Sean. No one could ever accuse him of lacking confidence.'

'Have you come up with anything else?' Miller asked. 'I can't say that I have, and I've gone over the audio tapes again and again. What you all listened to is still what I've got.' 'So what happens now?'

'I'm not sure. The rumours of British-born Muslims fighting for the Taliban are now confirmed. What the government can do about it is another matter.'

'Not very much, I imagine. The government is wary about stirring things up with the Muslim population.'

'So we'll all go to hell in a handcart together,' Harry Miller told him. 'But first, what do we do about Shamrock?'

'That's a different matter,' Dillon put in from the plane, 'and quite simple. We find him quickly, shoot him, and pass him over to the disposal men.'

'Ah, if only life were that easy,' Roper said.

'We know a lot about him already. The clues are there,' Dillon said. 'He obviously has military experience.'

'So what are you going to do? Go to the army list and pore over thousands of names going back ten, twenty or even thirty years? What would you be looking for?'

'You're right, but I won't be doing that. I've a strong feeling that going back to the scene of the crime might be the way.'

'To Mirbat?' Roper was aghast. 'Don't be a bloody fool, Sean. If the Taliban got you, they'd feed you to the dogs.'

'I'm sure they would, but I was thinking of Warrenpoint. I have a feeling that there might be some answer for me there. I was born in County Down myself, you know, at Collyban, no more than a dozen miles from the area.'

Ferguson's voice was muffled by the quilt as he said, 'You are not going anywhere near County Down, and that's an order, so shut up and stop disturbing me.'

'I hear and obey, oh great one.' Dillon switched off the telephone. 'Sorry, Harry.'

Ferguson said, 'Call Roper back and tell him to contact Daniel Holley in Algiers or wherever he is. Get him to share all our information with Holley. I'd value his opinion on the matter.'

Dillon was astounded. 'You mean the Daniel Holley who tried to put us all out of business permanently? Who nearly succeeded in blowing you up in your limousine and arranged for hit men to have a try at Harry and Blake Johnson, whose shoulder still aches on a rainy day from the bullet he took?'

'Yes, well, he didn't succeed…'

'He came bloody close.'

'He also saved your good friend Monica Starling from certain death. Don't forget that, Sean. And as far as both the Americans and ourselves are concerned, he's clean now. He's too useful not to be. Especially since he's become full partner with Hamid Malik in that shipping company. They're respected throughout the Mediterranean, you know.'

'They're also arms dealers,' Dillon said.

'Not any more,' Ferguson told him. 'Well, only occasionally. In any case, Holley's been given Algerian nationality and a diplomatic passport by their Foreign Minister. He can come and go anywhere these days. It's the way the world turns, Dillon.'

'Next thing you know, he'll be staying at the Dorchester, having tea and scones.'

'I had a drink with him there two months ago,' Ferguson said wearily. 'In his suite. With Roper. I don't tell you everything, Dillon.'

He retreated under the quilt and Dillon, feeling strangely helpless, turned to Miller. 'Did you know anything about this?'

'Not a thing,' the Major said. 'But, really, Sean, I don't care. As you know, Protestant terrorists raped and murdered his young cousin, so he executed all four of them and took refuge from the law by joining the IRA. I don't hold it against him-any more than I hold your past against you.'

'Okay,' Dillon said. 'You don't have to make a production out of it. I was just getting adjusted to the idea. Go to sleep.'

He picked up the telephone and made the call to Roper, who had just brought up the County Down border on one of his screens. When Dillon called, Roper took it on speaker.

'Sean, me boy, I expected to hear from you. Your "hear and obey" to Ferguson didn't fool me for a minute, so I was just about to look at things again to see if I'd missed anything.'

'Forget about me. The situation has changed dramatically.'

'Okay, tell me the worst.' Dillon did, and when he was finished, Roper laughed. 'My God, Sean, you almost sound indignant.'

'You've got to admit that Holley could have finished us all off.'

'Well, he didn't, and he saved Monica from a certain and unpleasant death. The love of your life, Sean-at least that's the impression we all get.'

Dillon said, 'Damn you for being right. I guess I just felt left out of things.'

'That's understandable. Where Holley is concerned, though, Ferguson wanted to handle everything with care. With that diplomatic passport from the Algerian Foreign Minister, the whole wide world's opened up for him again. Ferguson wants to take advantage of that.'

'It makes sense,' Dillon said, grudgingly.

'And you'll never feel lonely again, as far as we are concerned. After all, he's IRA, just like you.'

'You have a way with the words, Roper.'

'It's a hell of a world we live in these days,' Roper said. 'Not so easy to see the difference between the good guys and bad any more.'

'Oh, I think I can manage to do that well enough,' Dillon said. 'But I'll leave you to hunt Daniel Holley down.'

It was quiet then, as Roper sat there in the computer room on his own, just the glow of the screens around him. He sat in his state-of-the-art wheelchair, suddenly feeling tired and weary and badly damaged-which he was, past everything there ever was. But that would never do. He poured himself another whisky, reached for his Codex mobile and went in search of Daniel Holley.

Daniel Holley was running alongside the Seine, darkness beginning to take over, the heat of the day lingering ominously as if a storm was brewing. He'd purchased a furnished barge a few months earlier, convenient for business trips for both him and his partner, Hamid Malik. He wore a black track suit, looked younger than forty-nine, his hair still brown. Of medium height, fit and well, he had the permanent slight smile of a man who found life a little absurd most of the time. The Irish in him, as his mother used to say. The other half was from the city of his birth, Leeds, which meant pure Yorkshire. His mobile sounded and he took it out. It was a Codex of advanced design, only available to Ferguson's people, which his previous masters at Russian Military Intelligence, the GRU, had stolen.