Jack Higgins: Eye Of The Storm aka Midnight Man

“Go on.” Hernu lit a cigarette.

“Pierre says his French is too perfect.”

“What does he mean by that?”

“He doesn’t know. It’s just that he always felt that there was something wrong.”

“That he wasn’t French?”

“Exactly. Two facts of interest there. He’s always whistling a funny little tune. Gaston picked it up because he plays accordion. He says Rocard told him once that it was Irish.”

“Now that is interesting.”

“A further point. When he was assembling the machine gun in the back of the Renault at Valenton he told the boys it was a Kalashnikov. Not just bullets. Tracer, armor piercing, the lot. He said he’d seen one take out a Land-Rover full of British paratroopers. Pierre didn’t like to ask him where.”

“So, you smell IRA here, Inspector? And what have you done about it?”

“Got your people to get the picture books out, Colonel. The Joberts are looking through them right now.”

“Excellent.” Hernu got up and this time refilled his coffee cup himself. “What do you make of the hotel business. Do you think he’s been alerted?”

“Perhaps, but not necessarily,” Savary said. “I mean, what have we got here, sir? A real pro out to make the hit of a lifetime. Maybe he was just being extra careful, just to make sure he wasn’t followed to his real destination. I mean, I wouldn’t trust the Joberts an inch, so why should he?”

He shrugged and Max Hernu said shrewdly, “There’s more. Spit it out.”

“I got a bad feeling about this guy, Colonel. I think he’s special. I think he may have used the hotel thing because he suspected that Gaston might follow him, but then he’d want to know why. Was it the Joberts just being curious, or was there more to it?”

“So you think he could have been up the street watching our people arrive?”

“Very possibly. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t know Gaston was tailing him. Maybe the hotel thing was a usual precaution. An old resistance trick from the war.”

Hernu nodded. “Right, let’s see if they’ve finished. Have them in.”

Savary went out and returned with the Jobert brothers. They stood there looking worried, and Hernu said, “Well?”

“No luck, Colonel, he wasn’t in any of the books.”

“All right,” Hernu said. “Wait downstairs. You’ll be taken home. We’ll collect you again later.”

“But what for, Colonel?” Pierre asked.

“So that your brother can go to Valenton in the Renault and you can follow in the car just like Rocard told you. Now get out.” They hurriedly left, and Hernu said to Savary, “We’ll see Mrs. Thatcher is spirited to safety by another route, but a pity to disappoint our friend Rocard.”

“If he turns up, Colonel.”

“You never know, he just might. You’ve done well, Inspector. I think I’ll have to requisition you for Section Five. Would you mind?”

Would he mind? Savary almost choked with emotion, “An honor, sir…”

“Good. Go and get a shower then and some breakfast. I’ll see you later.”

“And you, Colonel?”

“Me, Inspector?” Hernu laughed and looked at his watch. “Five-fifteen. I’m going to ring British Intelligence in London. Disturb the sleep of a very old friend of mine. If anyone can help us with our mystery man it should be he.”

The Directorate General of the British Security Service occupies a large white and red brick building not far from the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, although many of its departments are housed in various locations throughout London. The special number that Max Hernu rang was of a Section known as Group Four, located on the third floor of the Ministry of Defence. It had been set up in 1972 to handle matters concerning terrorism and subversion in the British Isles. It was responsible only to the Prime Minister. It had been administered by only one man since its inception, Brigadier Charles Ferguson. He was asleep in his flat in Cavendish Square when the telephone beside his bed awakened him.

“Ferguson,” he said, immediately wide awake, knowing it had to be important.

“Paris, Brigadier,” an anonymous voice said. “Priority one. Colonel Hernu.”

“Put him through and scramble.”

Ferguson sat up, a large, untidy man of sixty-five with rumpled gray hair and a double chin.

“Charles?” Hernu said in English.

“My dear Max. What brings you on the line at such a disgusting hour? You’re lucky I’m still on the phone. The powers that be are trying to make me redundant along with Group Four.”

“What nonsense.”

“I know, but the Director General was never happy with my freebooter status all these years. What can I do for you?”

“Mrs. Thatcher is overnighting at Choisy. We’ve details of a plot to hit her on the way to the airfield at Valenton tomorrow.”

“Good God!”

“All taken care of. The lady will now take a different route home. We’re still hoping the man concerned will show up, though I doubt it. We’ll be waiting though, this afternoon.”

“Who is it? Anyone we know?”

“From what our informants say, we suspect he’s Irish, though his French is good enough to pass as a native. The thing is, the people involved have looked through all our IRA pictures with no success.”

“Have you a description?”

Hernu gave it to him. “Not much to go on, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll have a computer check done and get back to you. Tell me the story.” Which Hernu did. When he was finished, Ferguson said, “You’ve lost him, old chap. I’ll bet you dinner on it at the Savoy Grill next time you’re over.”

“I’ve a feeling about this one. I think he’s special,” Hernu said.

“And yet not on your books, and we always keep you up to date.”

“I know,” Hernu said. “And you’re the expert on the IRA, so what do we do?”

“You’re wrong there,” Ferguson said. “The greatest expert on the IRA is right there in Paris, Martin Brosnan, our Irish-American friend. After all, he carried a gun for them till nineteen seventy-five. I heard he was a professor of Political Philosophy at the Sorbonne.”

“You’re right,” Hernu said. “I’d forgotten about him.”

“Very respectable these days. Writes books and lives rather well on all that money his mother left him when she died in Boston five years ago. If you’ve a mystery on your hands, he might be the man to solve it.”

“Thanks for the suggestion,” Hernu said. “But first we’ll see what happens at Valenton. I’ll be in touch.”

Ferguson put down the phone, pressed a button on the wall and got out of bed. A moment later the door opened and his manservant, an ex-Gurkha, came in putting a dressing gown over his pyjamas.

“Emergency, Kim. I’ll ring Captain Tanner and tell her to get round here, then I’ll have a bath. Breakfast when she arrives.”

The Gurkha withdrew. Ferguson picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Mary? Ferguson here. Something big. I want you at Cavendish Square within the hour. Oh, better wear your uniform. We’ve got that thing at the Ministry of Defence at eleven. You always impress them in full war paint.”

He put the phone down and went into the bathroom feeling wide-awake and extremely cheerful.

It was six-thirty when the taxi picked up Mary Tanner on the steps of her Lowndes Square flat. The driver was impressed, but then most people were. She wore the uniform of a captain in the Women’s Royal Army Corps, the wings of an Army Air Corps pilot on her left breast. Below them were the ribbon of the George Medal, a gallantry award of considerable distinction, and campaign ribbons for Ireland and for service with the United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus.

She was a small girl, black hair cropped short, twenty-nine years of age and a lot of service under the belt. A doctor’s daughter who’d taken an English degree at London University, tried teaching and hated it. After that came the army. A great deal of her service had been with the Military Police. Cyprus for a while, but three tours of duty in Ulster. It had been the affair in Derry that had earned her the George Medal and left her with the scar on her left cheek, which had brought her to Ferguson’s attention. She’d been his aide for two years now.