Jack Higgins - Confessional

‘If we play the game long enough, Comrade Colonel, it can sometimes end up playing us,’ Kelly told him calmly.

‘Dear God!’ Maslovsky said and it had been many years since he had expressed such a sentiment. ‘All right, let’s get on with it.’ He sat down at the desk, facing Kelly. ‘Professor Cherny feels you are ready to go to work. You agree?’

‘Yes, Comrade Colonel.’

‘Your task is easily stated. Our chief antagonists are America and Britain. Britain is the weaker of the two and its capitalist edifice is being eroded. The biggest thorn in Britain’s side is the IRA. You are about to become an additional thorn.’

The colonel leaned forward and stared into Kelly’s eyes. ‘You are from now on a maker of disorder.’

‘In Ireland?’

‘Eventually, but you must undergo more training in the outside world first. Let me explain your task further.’ He stood up and walked to the fire. ‘In nineteen fifty-six, the IRA Army Council voted to start another campaign in Ulster. Three years later, and it has been singularly unsuccessful. There is little doubt that this campaign will be called off and sooner rather than later. It has achieved nothing.’

‘So?’ Kelly said.

Maslovsky returned to the desk. ‘However, our own intelligence sources indicate that eventually a conflict will break out in Ireland of a far more serious nature than anything that has gone before. When that day comes, you must be ready for it, in deep and waiting.’

‘I understand, Comrade.’

‘I hope you do. However, enough for now. Professor Cherny will fill you in on your more immediate plans when I’ve gone. For the moment, you’re dismissed.’

Kelly went out without a word. Cherny said, ‘He can do it. I’m certain of it.’

‘I hope so. He could be as good as any of the native sleepers and he drinks less.’

Maslovsky walked to the window and peered out at the driving rain, suddenly tired, not thinking of Kelly at all, conscious, for no particular reason, of the look on the child’s face when she had attacked the Irishman back there in the square.

‘That child,’ he said. ‘What was her name?’

‘Tanya – Tanya Voroninova.’

‘She’s an orphan now? No one to take care of her?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘She was really quite appealing and intelligent, wouldn’t you say?’

‘She certainly seemed so. I haven’t had any dealings with her personally. Has the Comrade Colonel a special interest?’

‘Possibly. We lost our only daughter last year at the age of six in the influenza epidemic. My wife can’t have any more. She’s taken a job in some welfare department or other, but she frets, Cherny. She just isn’t the same woman. Looking at that child back there in the square made me wonder. She might just fit the bill.’

‘An excellent idea, Comrade, for everyone concerned, if I may say so.’

‘Good,’ Maslovsky said, suddenly brightening. ‘I’ll take her back to Moscow with me and give my Susha a surprise.’

He moved to the desk, pulled the cork from the vodka bottle with his teeth and filled two glasses. ‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To the Irish enterprise and to …’ He paused, frowning, ‘What was his code name again?’

‘Cuchulain,’ Cherny told him.

‘Right,’ Maslovsky said. ‘To Cuchulain.’ He swallowed the vodka and hurled his glass into the fire.

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