Eye Of The Storm aka Midnight Man

NINE

IT WAS A cold, crisp morning, winter on every hand, but the roads were clear as Dillon drove up to London, Angel and Danny Fahy following in the Morris van. Angel was driving, and more than competently. He could see her in his rearview mirror and she stayed right on his tail all the way into London until they came to the Bayswater Road. There was a plan already half-formed in his mind and he got out of the Mini-Cooper, parked it at the curb and opened the doors of Tania’s garage.

As Angel and Danny drew up behind him he said, “Put the Morris inside.” Angel did as she was told. When she and Danny Fahy came out, Dillon closed the doors and said, “You’ll remember the street and the garage, if you lose me, that is?”

“Don’t be silly, Mr. Dillon, of course I will,” Angel said.

“Good. It’s important. Now get in the Mini. We’re going for a little run round.”

Harry Flood was sitting at the desk in his apartment at Cable Wharf checking the casino accounts from the night before when Charlie Salter brought in coffee on a tray. The phone rang and the small man picked it up. He handed it to Flood.

“The Professor.”

“Martin, how goes it?” Flood said. “I enjoyed last night. The Tanner lady is something special.”

“Is there any news? Have you managed to come up with anything?” Brosnan asked.

“Not yet, Martin, just a minute.” Flood put a hand over the receiver and said to Salter, “Where’s Mordecai?”

“Doing the rounds, Harry, just like you asked him, putting the word out discreetly.”

Flood returned to Brosnan. “Sorry, old buddy, we’re doing everything we can, but it’s going to take time.”

“Which we don’t really have,” Brosnan said. “All right, Harry, I know you’re doing your best. I’ll stay in touch.”

He was standing at Mary Tanner’s desk in the living room of her Lowndes Square flat. He put the phone down, walked to the window and lit a cigarette.

“Anything?” she asked and crossed the room to join him.

“I’m afraid not. As Harry has just said it takes time. I was a fool to think anything else.”

“Just try and be patient, Martin.” She put a hand on his arm.

“But I can’t,” he said. “I’ve got this feeling and it’s hard to explain. It’s like being in a storm and waiting for that bloody great thunderclap you know is going to come. I know Dillon, Mary. He’s moving fast on this. I’m certain of it.”

“So what would you like to do?”

“Will Ferguson be at Cavendish Square this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go to see him.”

Dillon parked the Mini-Cooper near Covent Garden. An enquiry in a bookshop nearby led them to a shop not too far away specializing in maps and charts of every description. Dillon worked his way through the large-scale Ordnance Survey maps of Central London until he found the one covering the general area of Whitehall.

“Would you look at the detail in that thing?” Fahy whispered. “You could measure the size of the garden at Number Ten to half an inch.”

Dillon purchased the map, which the assistant rolled up tightly and inserted into a protective cardboard tube. He paid for it and they walked back to the car.

“Now what?” Danny asked.

“We’ll take a run round. Have a look at the situation.”

“That suits me.”

Angel sat in the rear, her uncle beside Dillon as they drove down toward the river and turned into Horse Guards Avenue. Dillon paused slightly on the corner before turning into Whitehall and moving toward Downing Street.

“Plenty of coppers around,” Danny said.

“That’s to make sure people don’t park.” A car had drawn in to the curb on their left and as they pulled out to pass, they saw that the driver was consulting a map.

“Tourist, I expect,” Angel said.

“And look what’s happening,” Dillon told her.

She turned and saw two policemen converging on the car. A quiet word, it started up and moved away.

Angel said, “They don’t waste time.”

“Downing Street,” Dillon announced a moment later.

“Would you look at those gates?” Danny said in wonder. “I like the Gothic touch. Sure and they’ve done a good job there.”

Dillon moved with the traffic round Parliament Square and went back up Whitehall toward Trafalgar Square. “We’re going back to Bayswater,” he said. “Notice the route I’ve chosen.”

He moved out of the traffic of Trafalgar Square through Admiralty Arch along the Mall, round the Queen Victoria Monument, past Buckingham Palace and along Constitution Hill, eventually reaching Marble Arch by way of Park Lane and turning into the Bayswater Road.

“And that’s simple enough,” Danny Fahy said.

“Good,” Dillon said. “Then let’s go and get a nice cup of tea at my truly awful hotel.”

Ferguson said, “You’re getting too restless, Martin.”

“It’s the waiting,” Brosnan told him. “Flood’s doing his best, I know that, but I don’t think time is on our side.”

Ferguson turned from the window and sipped a little of the cup of tea he was holding. “So what would you like to do?”

Brosnan hesitated, glanced at Mary and said, “I’d like to go and see Liam Devlin in Kilrea. He might have some ideas.”

“Something he was never short of.” Ferguson turned to Mary. “What do you think?”

“I think it makes sense, sir. After all, a trip to Dublin’s no big deal. An hour and a quarter from Heathrow on either Aer Lingus or B.A.”

“And Liam’s place at Kilrea is only half an hour from the city,” Brosnan said.

“All right,” Ferguson said. “You’ve made your point, both of you, but make it Gatwick and the Lear jet, just in case anything comes up and you need to get back here in a hurry.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mary said.

As they reached the door, Ferguson added, “I’ll give the old rogue a call, just to let him know you’re on your way,” and he reached for the phone.

As they went downstairs Brosnan said, “Thank God. At least I feel we’re doing something.”

“And I get to meet the great Liam Devlin at long last,” Mary said and led the way out to the limousine.

In the small café at the hotel, Dillon, Angel and Fahy sat at a corner table drinking tea. Fahy had the Ordnance Survey map partially open on his knee. “It’s extraordinary. The things they give away. Every detail.”

“Could it be done, Danny?”

“Oh, yes, no trouble. You remember that corner, Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall? That would be the place, slightly on an angle. I can see it in my mind’s eye. I can plot the distance from that corner to Number Ten exactly from this map.”

“You’re sure you’d clear the buildings in between?” Dillon said.

“Oh, yes. I’ve said before, Sean, ballistics is a matter of science.”

“But you can’t stop there,” Angel said. “We saw what happened to that man in the car. The police were on him in seconds.”

Dillon turned to Fahy. “Danny?”

“Well, that’s all you would need. Everything pre-timed, Angel. Press the right switch to activate the circuit, get out of the van and the mortars start firing within a minute. No policeman could act fast enough to stop it.”

“But what would happen to you?” she demanded.

It was Dillon who answered. “Just listen to this. We drive up from Cadge End one morning early, you, Danny, in the Ford transit, and Angel and me in the Morris van. We’ll have that BSA motorcycle in the back of that. Angel will park the Morris, like today, in the garage at the end of the road. We’ll have a duckboard in the back so I can run the BSA out.”

“And you’ll follow me, is that it?”

“I’ll be right up your tail. When we reach the corner of Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall, you set your switch, get out of the Ford and jump straight on my pillion and we’ll be away. The War Cabinet meets every morning at ten. With luck we could get the lot.”

“Jesus, Sean, they’d never know what hit them.”

“Straight back to Bayswater to Angel waiting in the garage with the Morris, put the BSA in the back and away we go. We’ll be in Cadge End while they’re still trying to put the fires out.”

“It’s brilliant, Mr. Dillon,” Angel told him.

“Except for one thing,” Fahy said. “Without the bloody explosives, we don’t have any bloody bombs.”

“You leave that to me,” Dillon said. “I’ll get your explosives for you.” He stood up. “But I’ve got things to do. You two go back to Cadge End and wait. I’ll be in touch.”

“And when would that be, Sean?”

“Soon-very soon,” and Dillon smiled as they went out.

Tania was knocking at his door precisely at noon. He opened it and said, “You’ve got it?”

She had a briefcase in her right hand, opened it on the table to reveal the thirty thousand dollars he’d asked for.

“Good,” he said. “I’ll just need ten thousand to be going on with.”

“What will you do with the rest?”

“I’ll hand it in at the desk. They can keep your briefcase in the hotel safe.”

“You’ve worked something out, I can tell.” She looked excited. “What happened at this Cadge End place?”

So he told her and in detail, the entire plan. “What do you think?” he asked when he’d finished.

“Incredible. The coup of a lifetime. But what about the explosives? You’d need Semtex.”

“That’s all right. When I was operating in London in eighty-one I used to deal with a man who had access to Semtex.” He laughed. “In fact he had access to everything.”

“And who is this man? How can you be sure he’s still around?”

“A crook named Jack Harvey and he’s around all right. I looked him up.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“Amongst other things he has a funeral business in Whitechapel. I looked it up in the Yellow Pages and it’s still there. By the way, your Mini, I can still use it?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I’ll park it somewhere in the street. I want that garage free.”

He picked up his coat. “Come on, we’ll go and have a bite to eat and then I’ll go and see him.”

“You’ve read the file on Devlin, I suppose?” Brosnan asked Mary Tanner as they drove through the center of Dublin and crossed the River Liffey by St. George’s Quay and moved on out of the other side of the city, driven by a chauffeur in a limousine from the Embassy.

“Yes,” she said. “But is it all true? The story about his involvement with the German attempt to get Churchill in the war?”

“Oh, yes.”

“The same man who helped you break out of that French prison in nineteen seventy-nine?”

“That’s Devlin.”

“But, Martin, you said he claimed to be seventy. He must be older than that.”

“A few years is a minor detail where Liam Devlin is concerned. Let’s put it this way, you’re about to meet the most extraordinary man you’ve ever met in your life. Scholar, poet and gunman for the IRA.”

“The last part is no recommendation to me,” she said.

“I know,” he told her. “But never make the mistake of lumping Devlin in with the kind of rubbish the IRA employs these days.”

He retreated into himself, suddenly sombre, and the car continued out into the Irish countryside, leaving the city behind.

Kilrea Cottage, the place was called, on the outskirts of the village next to a convent. It was a period piece, single-storeyed with Gothic-looking gables and lead windows on either side of the porch. They sheltered in there from the light rain while Brosnan tugged an old-fashioned bell pull. There was the sound of footsteps, the door opened.

“Cead míle fáilte,” Liam Devlin said in Irish. “A hundred thousand welcomes,” and he flung his arms around Brosnan.

The interior of the house was very Victorian. Most of the furniture was mahogany, the wallpaper was a William Morris replica, but the paintings on the walls, all Atkinson Grimshaws, were real.

Liam Devlin came in from the kitchen with tea things on a tray. “My housekeeper comes mornings only. One of the good sisters from the convent next door. They need the money.”

Mary Tanner was totally astonished. She’d expected an old man and found herself faced with this ageless creature in black silk Italian shirt, black pullover, gray slacks in the latest fashionable cut. There was still considerable color in hair that had once been black and the face was pale, but she sensed that had always been so. The blue eyes were extraordinary, as was that perpetual ironic smile with which he seemed to laugh at himself as much as at the world.

“So, you work for Ferguson, girl?” he said to Mary as he poured the tea.

“That’s right.”

“That business in Derry the other year when you moved that car with the bomb. That was quite something.”

She felt herself flushing. “No big deal, Mr. Devlin, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“Oh, we can all see that on occasions; it’s the doing that counts.” He turned to Brosnan. “Anne-Marie. A bad business, son.”

“I want him, Liam,” Brosnan said.

“For yourself or for the general cause?” Devlin shook his head. “Push the personal thing to one side, Martin, or you’ll make mistakes, and that’s something you can’t afford to do with Sean Dillon.”

“Yes, I know,” Brosnan said. “I know.”

“So, he intends to take a crack at this John Major fella, the new Prime Minister?” Devlin said.

“And how do you think he’s likely to do that, Mr. Devlin?” Mary asked.

“Well, from what I hear about security at Ten Downing Street these days, I wouldn’t rate his chances of getting in very high.” He looked at Brosnan and grinned. “Mind you, Mary, my love, I remember a young fella of my acquaintance called Martin Brosnan who got into Number Ten posing as a waiter at a party not ten years ago. Left a rose on the Prime Minister’s desk. Of course, the office was held by a woman then.”

Brosnan said, “All in the past, Liam, what about now?”

“Oh, he’ll work as he always has, using contacts in the underworld.”

“Not the IRA?”

“I doubt whether the IRA has any connection with this whatsoever.”

“But they did last time he worked in London ten years ago.”

“So?”

“I was wondering. If we knew who recruited him that time, it could help.”

“I see what you mean, give you some sort of lead as to who he worked with in London?”

“All right, not much of a chance, but the only one we’ve got, Liam.”

“There’s still your friend Flood in London.”

“I know, and he’ll pull out all the stops, but that takes time and we don’t have much to spare.”

Devlin nodded. “Right, son, you leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do.” He glanced at his watch. “One o’clock. We’ll have a sandwich and perhaps a Bushmills together, and I suggest you go to your Lear jet and hare back to London. I’ll be in touch, believe me, the minute I have something.”

Dillon parked round the corner from Jack Harvey’s funeral business in Whitechapel and walked, the briefcase in one hand. Everything was beautifully discreet, down to the bell push that summoned the day porter to open the door.

“Mr. Harvey,” Dillon lied cheerfully. “He’s expecting me.”

“Down the hall past the Chapels of Rest and up the stairs. His office is on the first floor. What was the name, sir?”

“Hilton.” Dillon looked around at the coffins on display, the flowers. “Not much happening.”

“Trade, you mean.” The porter shrugged. “That all comes in the back way.”

“I see.”

Dillon moved down the hall, pausing to glance into one of the Chapels of Rest, taking in the banked flowers, the candles. He stepped in and looked down at the body of a middle-aged man neatly dressed in a dark suit, hands folded, the face touched with makeup.

“Poor sod,” Dillon said and went out.

At the reception desk, the porter picked up a phone. “Miss Myra? A visitor. A Mr. Hilton, says he has an appointment.”

Dillon opened the door to Harvey’s outer office and moved in. There were no office furnishings, just a couple of potted plants and several easy chairs. The door to the inner office opened and Myra entered. She wore skin-tight black trews, black boots and a scarlet, three-quarter length caftan. She looked very striking.

“Mr. Hilton?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Myra Harvey. You said you had an appointment with my uncle.”

“Did I?”

She looked him over in a casual way and behind him the door opened and Billy Watson came in. The whole thing was obviously prearranged. He leaned against the door, suitably menacing in a black suit, arms folded.

“Now what’s your game?” she said.

“That’s for Mr. Harvey.”

“Throw him out, Billy,” she said and turned to the door.

Billy put one rough hand on Dillon’s shoulder. Dillon’s foot went all the way down the right leg, stamping on the instep; he pivoted and struck sideways with clenched fist, the knuckles on the back of the hand connecting with Billy’s temple. Billy cried out in pain and fell back into one of the chairs.

“He’s not very good, is he?” Dillon said.

He opened his briefcase and took out ten one-hundred-dollar bills with a rubber band round them and threw them at Myra. She missed the catch and had to bend to pick them up. “Would you look at that,” she said. “And brand new.”

“Yes, new money always smells so good,” Dillon said. “Now tell Jack an old friend would like to see him with more of the same.”

She stood there looking at him for a moment, eyes narrowed, then she turned and opened the door to Harvey’s office. Billy tried to get up and Dillon said, “I wouldn’t advise it.”

Billy subsided as the door opened and Myra appeared. “All right, he’ll see you.”

The room was surprisingly businesslike with walls paneled in oak, a green carpet in Georgian silk and a gas fire that almost looked real, burning in a steel basket on the hearth. Harvey sat behind a massive oak desk smoking a cigar.

He had the thousand dollars in front of him and looked Dillon over calmly. “My time’s limited, so don’t muck me about, son.” He picked up the bank notes. “More of the same?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t know you. You told Myra you were an old friend, but I’ve never seen you before.”

“A long time ago, Jack, ten years to be precise. I looked different then. I was over from Belfast on a job. We did business together, you and me. You did well out of it as I recall. All those lovely dollars raised by IRA sympathizers in America.”

Harvey said. “Coogan. Michael Coogan.”

Dillon took off his glasses. “As ever was, Jack.”

Harry nodded slowly and said to his niece. “Myra, an old friend, Mr. Coogan from Belfast.”

“I see,” she said. “One of those.”

Dillon lit a cigarette, sat down, the briefcase on the floor beside him and Harvey said, “You went through London like bloody Attila the Hun last time. I should have charged you more for all that stuff.”

“You gave me a price, I paid it,” Dillon said. “What could be fairer?”

“And what is it this time?”

“I need a little Semtex, Jack. I could manage with forty pounds, but that’s the bottom line. Fifty would be better.”

“You don’t want much, do you? That stuff’s like gold. Very strict government controls.”

“Bollocks,” Dillon said. “It passes from Czechoslovakia to Italy, Greece, onwards to Libya. It’s everywhere, Jack, you know it and I know it, so don’t waste my time. Twenty thousand dollars.” He opened the briefcase on his knee and tossed the rest of the ten thousand packet by packet across the desk. “Ten now and ten on delivery.”

The Walther with the Carswell silencer screwed on the end of the barrel lay ready in the briefcase. He waited, the lid up, and then Harvey smiled. “All right, but it’ll cost you thirty.”

Dillon closed the briefcase. “No can do, Jack. Twenty-five I can manage, but no more.”

Harvey nodded. “All right. When do you want it?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“I think I can manage that. Where can we reach you?”

“You’ve got it wrong way round, Jack. I contact you.”

Dillon stood up and Harvey said affably, “Anything else we can do for you?”

“Actually there is,” Dillon said. “Sign of goodwill, you might say. I could do with a spare handgun.”

“Be my guest, my old son.” Harvey pushed his chair back and opened the second drawer down on his right hand. “Take your pick.”

There was a Smith amp; Wesson.38 revolver, a Czech Cesca and an Italian Beretta, which was the one Dillon selected. He checked the clip and slipped the gun in his pocket. “This will do nicely.”

“Lady’s gun,” Harvey said, “but that’s your business. We’ll be seeing you, then, tomorrow.”

Myra opened the door. Dillon said, “A pleasure, Miss Harvey,” and he brushed past Billy and walked out.

Billy said, “I’d like to break that little bastard’s legs.”

Myra patted his cheek. “Never mind, sunshine, on your two feet you’re useless. It’s in the horizontal position you come into your own. Now go and play with your motorbike or something,” and she went back in her uncle’s office.

Dillon paused at the bottom of the stairs and slipped the Beretta inside the briefcase. The only thing better than one gun was two. It always gave you an ace in the hole and he walked back to the Mini-Cooper briskly.

Myra said, “I wouldn’t trust him an inch, that one.”

“A hard little bastard,” Harvey said. “When he was here for the IRA in nineteen eighty-one, I supplied him with arms, explosives, everything. You were at college then, not in the business, so you probably don’t remember.”

“Is Coogan his real name?”

“Course not.” He nodded. “Yes, hell on wheels. I was having a lot of hassle in those days from George Montoya down in Bermondsey, the one they called Spanish George. Coogan knocked him off for me one night, him and his brother, outside a bar called the Flamenco. Did it for free.”

“Really?” Myra said. “So where do we get him Semtex?”

He laughed, opened the top drawer and took out a bunch of keys. “I’ll show you.” He led the way out and along the corridor and unlocked a door. “Something even you didn’t know, darling.”

The room was lined with shelves of box files. He put his hand on the middle shelf of the rear wall and it swung open. He reached for a switch and turned on a light, revealing a treasure house of weapons of every description.

“My God!” she said.

“Whatever you want, it’s here,” he said. “Hand guns, AK assault rifles, M15s.” He chuckled. “And Semtex.” There were three cardboard boxes on a table. “Fifty pounds in each of those.”

“But why did you tell him it might take time?”

“Keep him dangling.” He led the way out and closed things up. “Might screw a few more bob out of him.”

As they went back into his office she said, “What do you think he’s up to?”

“I couldn’t care less. Anyway, why should you worry? You suddenly turned into a bleeding patriot or something?”

“It isn’t that, I’m just curious.”

He clipped another cigar. “Mind you, I have had a thought. Very convenient if I got the little bugger to knock off Harry Flood for me,” and he started to laugh.

It was just after six and Ferguson was just about to leave his office at the Ministry of Defence when his phone rang. It was Devlin. “Now then, you old sod, I’ve news for you.”

“Get on with it then,” Ferguson said.

“Dillon’s control in eighty-one in Belfast was a man called Tommy McGuire. Remember him?”

“I do indeed. Wasn’t he shot a few years ago? Some sort of IRA feud?”

“That was the story, but he’s still around up there using another identity.”

“And what would that be?”

“I’ve still to find that out. People to see in Belfast. I’m driving up there tonight. I take it, by the way, that involving myself in this way makes me an official agent of Group Four? I mean I wouldn’t like to end up in prison, not at my age.”

“You’ll be covered fully, you have my word on it. Now what do you want us to do?”

“I was thinking that if Brosnan and your Captain Tanner wanted to be in on the action, they could fly over in the morning in that Lear jet of yours, to Belfast, that is, and wait for me at the Europa Hotel, in the bar. Tell Brosnan to identify himself to the head porter. I’ll be in touch probably around noon.”

“I’ll see to it,” Ferguson said.

“Just one more thing. Don’t you think you and I are getting just a little geriatric for this sort of game?”

“You speak for yourself,” Ferguson said and put the phone down.

He sat thinking about it, then phoned through for a secretary. He also called Mary Tanner at the Lowndes Square flat. As he was talking to her, Alice Johnson came in with her notepad and pencil. Ferguson waved her down and carried on speaking to Mary.

“So, early start in the morning. Gatwick again, I think. You’ll be there in an hour in the Lear. Are you dining out tonight?”

“Henry Flood suggested the River Room at the Savoy, he likes the dance band.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Would you like to join us, sir?”

“Actually, I would,” Ferguson said.

“We’ll see you then. Eight o’clock.”

Ferguson put down the phone and turned to Alice Johnson. “A brief note, Eyes of the Prime Minister only, the special file.” He quickly dictated a report that brought everything up to date, including his conversation with Devlin. “One copy for the P.M. and alert a messenger. Usual copy for me and the file. Hurry it up and bring them along for my signature. I want to get away.”

She went down to the office quickly. Gordon Brown was standing at the copier as she sat behind the typewriter. “I thought he’d gone?” he said.

“So did I, but he’s just given me an extra. Another Eyes of the Prime Minister only.”

“Really.”

She started to type furiously, was finished in two minutes. She stood up. “He’ll have to hang on. I need to go to the toilet.”

“I’ll do the copying for you.”

“Thanks, Gordon.”

She went out and along the corridor, was opening the toilet door when she realized she’d left her handbag on the desk. She turned and hurried back to the office. The door was partially open and she could see Gordon standing at the copier reading a copy of the report. To her astonishment, he folded it, slipped it in his inside pocket and hurriedly did another.

Alice was totally thrown, had no idea what to do. She went back along the corridor to the toilet, went in and tried to pull herself together. After a while she went back.

The report and a file copy were on her desk. “All done,” Gordon Brown said. “And I’ve requested a messenger.”

She managed a light smile. “I’ll get them signed.”

“Right, I’m just going down to the canteen. I’ll see you later.”

Alice went along the corridor, knocked on Ferguson’s door and went in. He was at his desk writing and looked up. “Oh, good. I’ll sign those and you can get the P.M.’s copy off to Downing Street straight away.” She was trembling now and he frowned. “My dear Mrs. Johnson, what is it?”

So she told him.

He sat there, grim-faced, and as she finished, reached for the telephone. “Special Branch, Detective Inspector Lane for Brigadier Ferguson, Group Four. Top Priority, no delay. My office now.”

He put the phone down. “Now this is what you do. Go back to the office and behave as if nothing had happened.”

“But he isn’t there, Brigadier, he went to the canteen.”

“Really?” Ferguson said. “Now why would he do that?”

When Tania heard Gordon Brown’s voice she was immediately angry. “I’ve told you about this, Gordon.”

“Yes, but it’s urgent.”

“Where are you?”

“In the canteen at the Ministry. I’ve got another report.”

“Is it important?”

“Very.”

“Read it to me.”

“No, I’ll bring it round after I come off shift at ten.”

“I’ll see you at your place, Gordon, I promise, but I want to know what you’ve got now and if you refuse, then don’t bother to call again.”

“No, that’s all right, I’ll read it.”

Which he did and when he was finished she said, “Good boy, Gordon, I’ll see you later.”

He put the phone down and turned, folding the copy of the report. The door to the phone box was jerked open and Ferguson plucked the report from his fingers.