Jack Higgins: A Devil is Waiting

‘Well, I’d say you’re a Dublin man myself,’ Dillon told him. ‘And admittedly there’s some strange people calling themselves IRA these days, and a world of difference between them. We, for example, are the Provo variety, and Mr Holley’s sainted mother being from Crossmaglen, the heart of what the British Army described as bandit country, his Yorkshire half doesn’t count.’

Murphy was beginning to look distinctly worried. ‘What do you want?’

Dillon smiled amiably. ‘For a start, let’s get that piece of shit on his feet. He’s a disgrace to the Russian Federation. Putin wouldn’t approve of him at all.’

Holley pulled Ivan up to stand on the edge of the sewage pit. Following Dillon’s lead, he said, ‘Is this where you want him, Dillon? He might fall in, you know.’

Dillon ignored him and said to Murphy, ‘I’m going to put a question to you. If you tell me the truth, I’ll let you live. Of course, if you turn out to have lied, I’ll have all the fuss of coming back and killing you, and that will annoy me very much, because I’m a busy man.’

Murphy laughed uneasily. ‘That’s a problem, I can see that, but how will you know?’

‘By proving to you I mean business.’ He turned to where Ivan stood swaying on the edge of the pit, pulled Holley out of the way, and kicked the Russian’s feet out from under him, sending him down with a cry into the fast-flowing sewage, to be swept away.

‘There he goes,’ Dillon said. ‘With any luck, he could end up in the river, but I doubt it.’

Murphy looked horrified. ‘What kind of a man are you?’

‘The stuff of nightmares, so don’t fug with me, Patrick,’ Dillon told him. ‘Last week a trawler named Amity was surprised by the Royal Navy as it attempted to land arms on the County Down coast. Our sources tell us the cargo originated with you. I’m not interested in Irish clubs or whoever raised funds over here. I want to know who ordered the cargo in Northern Ireland. Tell me that and you’re home free.’

For a moment, Murphy seemed unable to speak, and Holley said, ‘Are you trying to tell us you don’t know?’

Murphy seemed to swallow hard. ‘No. I know who it is. We do a lot of this kind of work, putting deals together for small African countries, people from the Eastern European bloc. None of the players are big fish. Lots of small agencies put things our way, stuff the big arms dealers won’t touch.’

‘So cut to the chase,’ Dillon told him.

‘I got a call from one of them. He said an Irish party was in town looking for assistance.’

‘And he turned up here?’

‘That’s right. Ulster accent, just like you. A quiet sort of man, around sixty-five, strong-looking, good face, greying hair. Used to being in charge, I’d say.’

Dillon said, ‘What was his name?’

‘I can only tell you what he called himself. Michael Flynn. Had a handling agent in Marseilles. The money was all paid into a holding company who provided the Amity with false papers, paid half a dozen thugs off the waterfront to crew it. Nothing you could trace, I promise you. My end came from Marseille by bank draft. It all came to nothing. I never heard from Flynn again, but from what I saw in the newspaper accounts, the Royal Navy only came on the Amity by chance. A bit unfortunate, that.’

Holley turned to Dillon. ‘Okay?’

‘It’ll have to be, won’t it?’

‘You mean I’m in the clear?’ Murphy asked.

‘So it would appear,’ Dillon told him. ‘Just try to cultivate a different class of friend in the future. That bastard Ivan was doing you no good at all.’

‘That’s bloody marvellous.’ Murphy hammered a fist on the desk and came round it. ‘You kept your word, Mr Dillon, and I’m not used to that, so I’ll tell you something else.’

Dillon smiled beautifully and turned to Holley. ‘See, Daniel, Patrick wants to unburden himself. Isn’t that nice?’

But even he couldn’t have expected what came next.

‘I was holding out on you on one thing. I actually did find out who Flynn really was. He wasn’t particularly nice to me, so I’ll tell you.’

Dillon wasn’t smiling now. ‘And how did you find that out?’

‘He called round to see me one evening and discovered his mobile hadn’t charged up properly. He was upset about it, because he had a fixed time to call somebody in Northern Ireland. He was agitated, so it was obviously important. He asked if he could use my landline.’

Dillon shook his head. ‘And you listened in on an extension.’

Murphy nodded. ‘He said it was Jack Kelly from New York, confirming that Operation Amity is a go. Arriving on the night of the eighth, landfall north beach at Dundrum Bay, close to St John’s Point.’

‘That’s County Down,’ Dillon said. ‘Anything else?’

‘I put the phone down. I didn’t want to get caught. I had the number checked on my phone bill and found it was to a phonebox in Belfast on the Falls Road.’

Holley said, ‘Whoever they are, they’re being very careful. That would have been untraceable.’ He paused. ‘Could Jack Kelly be who I think it is? It’s a common enough name in Ireland, God knows.’

‘You mean the Jack Kelly we ran up against, working for our old friend Jean Talbot?’

‘I know it doesn’t seem likely,’ Holley began, and Dillon cut in.

‘The same Jack Kelly who became an IRA volunteer at eighteen, was involved for over thirty years in the Troubles, and served on the Army Council?’

‘And never too happy about the peace process,’ Holley said. ‘So if it is him … I wonder what he’s up to.’

‘That’s for Ferguson and Roper to decide.’

‘Strange, us having a foot in both camps,’ Holley said. ‘How do you think that happened?’

‘Daniel, me boy, if I was of a religious turn of mind, I’d say God must have a purpose in mind for us, but for the life of me, I can’t imagine what it would be.’

‘Well, I’m damned if I can,’ Holley said. ‘Although I should imagine that the general will pay Kelly a call sooner rather than later.’

Dillon turned to Murphy. ‘Happy, are you, Patrick, now that you’ve come clean? I mean, as you did turn out to have lied, you must have thought I might take it the wrong way?’

‘Of course not, Mr Dillon,’ Murphy said, but there was a gathering alarm on his face.

‘Don’t worry,’ Dillon carried on. ‘You’ve done us a good turn. Although it would help the situation, restore mutual trust, you might say, if you produced my friend’s Colt .25. It doesn’t seem to be on the spring clip, which I can see quite clearly inside the rain hat on the desk there.’

Murphy managed to look astonished. ‘But that’s nonsense,’ he said, and then moved with lightning speed behind Holley, grabbed him by the collar, and produced the Colt.

‘I don’t want trouble, I just want out, but if I have to, I’ll kill your friend. So just drop that Walther into the sewage, and then we’ll walk to the door and I’ll get into my car and vanish. Otherwise, your friend’s a dead man.’

‘Now, we can’t have that, can we? Here we go, a perfectly good Walther down the toilet, in a manner of speaking.’ Dillon dropped it in.

Murphy pushed Holley towards the entrance, the Colt against his skull, and as Dillon trailed them, cried, ‘Stay back or I’ll drop him.’

Holley said to Murphy, ‘Hey, take it easy. Just be careful, all right? I hope you’re familiar with the Colt .25. If you don’t have the plus button on, those hollow-point cartridges’ll blow up in your face.’

They were just reaching the door. Murphy loosened his grip, a look of panic on his face, and fumbled at the weapon. Holley kicked out at him, caught him off guard, then ran away and ducked behind one of the old vans. Murphy fired after him reflexively and then, seeing that the Colt worked perfectly well, he realized he’d been had. He turned and ran out through the heavy rain into the courtyard.