A Devil Is Waiting - Jack Higgins [4]
Murphy took the whole thing surprisingly calmly. Remembering that he’d slipped the Colt .25 into his pocket, he watched Holley pick up the Makarov and realized there was still a chance things might go his way.
“I assume I’d be right in supposing that your fortunate arrival isn’t coincidental, Officer. I congratulate you on your performance—the NYPD would be proud of you.”
“I used to be an actor,” Dillon said. “But then I discovered the theater of the street had more appeal. Audience guaranteed, you see, especially in Belfast.”
Murphy was immediately wary. “Ah, that theater of the street? So which side did you play for? You couldn’t be IRA, not the both of you.”
“Why not?” Dillon asked.
“Well, admittedly you’ve got an Ulster accent, but your friend here is English.”
“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, graying 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 Marseilles 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.