Jack Higgins: Eye of the Storm

Harper

An imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Chapmans 1992

Copyright © Jack Higgins 1992

Jack Higgins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007456024

Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007456031

Version: 2015-01-12

In memory of my grandfatherRobert Bell, M MGallant Soldier

The winds of heaven are blowing.

Implement all that is on the table.

May God be with you.

Coded message, Iraq Radio, Baghdad

January 1991

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page Eye of the Storm

Copyright Copyright Harper An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Chapmans 1992 Copyright © Jack Higgins 1992 Jack Higgins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher. All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN: 9780007456024 Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007456031 Version: 2015-01-12

Dedication Dedication In memory of my grandfather Robert Bell, M M Gallant Soldier

Epigraph Epigraph The winds of heaven are blowing. Implement all that is on the table. May God be with you. Coded message, Iraq Radio, Baghdad January 1991

Prologue Prologue The mortar attack on Number Ten Downing Street when the War Cabinet was meeting at 10.00 a.m. on Thursday, 7 February 1991, is now a matter of history. It has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps it went something like this …

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

The mortar attack on Number Ten Downing Street when the War Cabinet was meeting at 10.00 a.m. on Thursday, 7 February 1991, is now a matter of history. It has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps it went something like this …

It was just before dark as Dillon emerged from the alley and paused on the corner. Rain drifted across the Seine in a flurry of snow, sleet mixed with it, and it was cold, even for January in Paris. He wore a reefer coat, peaked cap, jeans and boots, just another sailor off one of the barges working the river, which he very definitely was not.

He lit a cigarette in cupped hands and stayed there for a moment in the shadows, looking across the cobbled square at the lights of the small café on the other side. After a while he dropped the cigarette, thrust his hands deep in his pockets and started across.

In the darkness of the entrance two men waited, watching his progress. One of them whispered, ‘That must be him.’

He made a move. The other held him back. ‘No, wait till he’s inside.’

Dillon, his senses sharpened by years of entirely the wrong kind of living, was aware of them, but gave no sign. He paused at the entrance, slipped his left hand under the reefer coat to check that the Walther PPK was securely tucked into the waistband of his jeans against the small of his back, then he opened the door and went in.

It was typical of the sort of place to be found on that part of the river: half a dozen tables with chairs, a zinc-topped bar, bottles lined against a cracked mirror behind it. The entrance to the rear was masked by a bead curtain.

The barman, a very old man with a grey moustache, wore an alpaca coat, the sleeves frayed at the cuffs, and there was no collar to his shirt. He put down the magazine he was reading and got up from the stool.

‘Monsieur?’

Dillon unbuttoned his reefer coat and put his cap on the bar, a small man, no more than five feet five, with fair hair and eyes that seemed to the barman to be of no particular colour at all except for the fact that they were the coldest the old man had ever looked into. He shivered, unaccountably afraid, and then Dillon smiled. The change was astonishing, suddenly nothing but warmth there and immense charm. His French, when he spoke, was perfect.

‘Would there be such a thing as half a bottle of champagne in the house?’

The old man stared at him in astonishment. ‘Champagne? You must be joking, monsieur. I have two kinds of wine only. One is red and the other white.’

He placed a bottle of each on the bar. It was stuff of such poor quality that the bottles had screw tops instead of corks.

‘All right,’ Dillon said. ‘The white it is. Give me a glass.’

He put his cap back on, went and sat at a table against the wall from where he could see both the entrance and the curtained doorway. He got the bottle open, poured some of the wine into the glass and tried it.