Jack Higgins - Confessional

‘Last of the dark heroes.’

Murphy said, ‘Christ, but you like your melodrama, you boys. Like a bad play on television on a Saturday night. You were told not to carry a weapon.’

‘So?’ Kelly said.

‘There’s been a lot of police activity. Body searches. They’d lift you for sure.’

‘I’m not carrying.’

‘Good.’ Murphy took a large brown carrier bag from under the bar. ‘Straight across the square is the police barracks. Local provision firm’s truck is allowed through the gates at exactly twelve o’clock each day. Sling that in the back. Enough there to take out half the barracks.’ He reached inside the bag. There was an audible click. ‘There, you’ve got five minutes.’

Kelly picked up the bag and started for the door. As he reached it, Murphy called, ‘Hey, Cuchulain, dark hero?’ Kelly turned and the fat man raised a glass toasting him. ‘You know what they say. May you die in Ireland.’

There was something in the eyes, a mockery that sharpened Kelly like a razor’s edge as he went outside and started across the square. The band were on another hymn, the crowd sang, showing no disposition to move in spite of the rain. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Murphy was standing at the top of the steps outside the pub. Strange, that, and then he waved several times, as if signalling someone and with a sudden roar, the stripped Land Rover came out of a side street into the square and skidded broadside on.

Kelly started to run, slipped on the damp cobbles and went down on one knee. The butt of a Sterling drove painfully into his kidneys. As he cried out, the driver, who he now saw was a sergeant, put a foot hard on Kelly’s outstretched hand and picked up the carrier bag. He turned it upside down and a cheap wooden kitchen clock fell out. He kicked it, like a football, across the square into the crowd which scattered.

‘No need for that!’ he shouted. ‘It’s a dud!’ He leaned down, grabbing Kelly by the long hair at the back of the neck. ‘You never learn, do you, your bloody lot? You can’t trust anybody, my son. They should have taught you that.’

Kelly gazed beyond him, at Murphy, standing on the steps outside the bar. So – an informer. Still Ireland’s curse, not that he was angry. Only cold now – ice cold and the breath slow, in and out of his lungs.

The sergeant had him by the scruff of the neck, up on his knees, crouched like an animal. He leaned, running his hands under the armpits and over the body, searching for a weapon, then rammed Kelly against the Land Rover, still on his knees.

‘All right, hands behind you. You should have stayed back home in the bogs.’

Kelly started to get up, his two hands on the butt of the Browning handgun he had taped so carefully to the inside of the leg above the left ankle. He tore it free and shot the sergeant through the heart. The force of the shot lifted the sergeant off his feet and he slammed into the constable standing nearest to him. The man spun round, trying to keep his balance and Kelly shot him in the back, the Browning already arcing towards the third policeman, turning in alarm on the other side of the Land Rover, raising his submachine gun, too late as Kelly’s third bullet caught him in the throat, driving him back against the wall.

The crowd were scattering, women screaming, some of the band dropping their instruments. Kelly stood perfectly still, very calm amidst the carnage and looked across the square at Murphy, who still stood at the top of the steps outside the bar as if frozen.

The Browning swept up as Kelly took aim and a voice shouted over a loudspeaker in Russian, booming in the rain, ‘No more, Kelly! Enough!’

Kelly turned, lowering his gun. The man with the loudhailer advancing down the street wore the uniform of a colonel in the KGB, a military greatcoat slung from his shoulders against the rain. The man at his side was in his early thirties, tall and thin with stooped shoulders and fair hair. He wore a leather trenchcoat and steel-rimmed spectacles. Behind them, several squads of Russian soldiers, rifles at the ready, emerged from the side streets and doubled down towards the square. They were in combat fatigues and wore the flashes of the Iron Hammer Brigade of the elite special forces command.

‘That’s a good boy! Just put the gun down!’ the colonel called. Kelly turned, his arm swung up and he fired once, an amazing shot considering the distance. Most of Murphy’s left ear disintegrated. The fat man screamed, his hand going to the side of his head, blood pumping through his fingers.

‘No, Mikhail! Enough!’ the man in the leather overcoat cried. Kelly turned towards him and smiled. He said, in Russian, ‘Sure, Professor, anything you say,’ and placed the Browning carefully down on the bonnet of the Land Rover.

‘I thought you said he was trained to do as he was told,’ the colonel demanded.

An army lieutenant moved forward and saluted. ‘One of them is still alive, two dead, Colonel Maslovsky. What are your orders?’

Maslovsky ignored him and said to Kelly, ‘You weren’t supposed to carry a gun.’

‘I know,’ Kelly said. ‘On the other hand, according to the rules of the game, Murphy was not supposed to be an informer. I was told he was IRA.’

‘So, you always believe what you’re told?’

‘The Party tells me I should, Comrade Colonel. Maybe you’ve got a new rule book for me?’ Maslovsky was angry and it showed for he was not used to such attitudes – not from anyone. He opened his mouth to retort angrily and there was a sudden scream. The little girl who had sold Kelly the poppies pushed her way through the crowd and dropped on her knees beside the body of the police sergeant.

‘Papa,’ she wailed in Russian. ‘Papa.’ She looked up at Kelly, her face pale. ‘You’ve killed him! You’ve murdered my father!’

She was on him like a young tiger, nails reaching for his face, crying hysterically. He held her wrists tight and suddenly, all strength went out of her and she slumped against him. His arms went around her, he held her, stroking her hair, whispering in her ear.

The old priest moved out of the crowd. ‘I’ll take her,’ he said, his hands gentle on her shoulders.

They moved away, the crowd opening to let them through. Maslovsky called to the lieutenant, ‘Right, let’s have the square cleared.’ He turned to the man in the leather coat. ‘I’m tired of this eternal Ukrainian rain. Let’s get back inside and bring your protégé with you. We need to talk.’

The KGB is the largest and most complex intelligence service in the world, totally controlling the lives of millions in the Soviet Union itself, its tentacles reaching out to every country. The heart of it, its most secret area of all, concerns the work of Department 13, that section responsible for murder, assassination and sabotage in foreign countries.

Colonel Ivan Maslovsky had commanded Department 13 for five years. He was a thickset, rather brutal-looking man, whose appearance was at odds with his background. Born in 1919 in Leningrad, the son of a doctor, he had gone to law school in that city, completing his studies only a few months before the German invasion of Russia. He had spent the early part of the war fighting with partisan groups behind the lines. His education and flair for languages had earned him a transfer to the wartime counter-intelligence unit known as SMERSH. Such was his success that he had remained in intelligence work after the war and had never returned to the practice of law.

He had been mainly responsible for the setting up of highly original schools for spies at such places as Gaczyna, where agents were trained to work in English-speaking countries in a replica of an English or American town, living exactly as they would in the West. The extraordinarily successful penetration by the KGB of the French intelligence service at every level had been, in the main, the product of the school he had set up at Grosnia, where the emphasis was on everything French, environment, culture, cooking and dress being faithfully replicated.