Confessional - Jack Higgins [63]
Cussane sat some distance away at the dining table and held up the Stechkin. 'These things make very little sound, old friend. No one knows that better than you. No tricks. No foolish Devlin gallantry. I'd hate to have to kill you.'
He laid the Stechkin on the table and lit a cigarette himself.
'Friend, is it?' Devlin said. 'About as true a friend as you are priest.'
'Friend,' Cussane insisted, 'and I've been a good priest. Ask anyone who knew me on the Falls Road in Belfast in sixty-nine.'
'Fine,' Devlin said. 'Only even an idiot like me can make two and two make four occasionally. Your masters put you in deep. To become a priest was your cover. Would I be right in thinking that you chose that seminary outside Boston for your training because I was English Professor there?'
'Of course. You were an important man in the IRA in those days, Liam. The advantages that the relationship offered for the future were obvious, but friends we became and friends we stayed. You cannot avoid that fact.'
'Sweet Jesus!' Devlin shook his head. 'Who are you, Harry? Who are you really?'
'My father was Sean Kelly.'
Devlin stared at him in astonishment. 'But I knew him well. We served in the Lincoln Washington Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Just a minute. He married a Russian girl he met in Madrid.'
'My mother. My parents returned to Ireland where I was born. My father was hanged in England in nineteen-forty for his part in the IRA bombing campaign of that time. My mother and I lived in Dublin till nineteen-fifty-three, then she took me to Russia.'
Devlin said, 'The KGB must have fastened on you like leeches.'
'Something like that.'
'They discovered his special talents,' Tanya put in. 'Murder, for example.'
'No,' Cussane answered mildly. 'When I was first processed by the psychologists, Paul Cherny indicated that my special talent was for the stage.'
'An actor, is it?' Devlin said. 'Well, you're in the right job for it.'
'Not really. No audience, you see.' Cussane concentrated on Tanya. 'I doubt whether I've killed more than Liam. In what way are we different?'
'He fought for a cause,' she told him passionately.
'Exactly. I am a soldier, Tanya. I fight for my country - our country. As a matter of interest, I'm not an officer of the KGB. I am a lieutenant-colonel in Military Intelligence.' He smiled deprecatingly at Devlin. 'They kept promoting me.'
'But the things you've done. The killing,' she said. 'Innocent people.'
'There cannot be innocence in this world, not with Man in it. The Church teaches us that. There is always iniquity in this life - life is unfair. We must deal with the world as it is, not as it might have been.'
'Jesus!' Devlin said. 'One minute you're Cuchulain, the next you're a priest again. Have you any idea who you really are?'
'When I am priest, then priest I am,' Cussane told him. 'There is no avoiding that. The Church would be the first to say it in spite of what I have been. But the other me fights for his country. I have nothing to apologize for. I'm at war.'
'Very convenient,' Devlin said. 'So, the Church gives you your answer or is it the KGB - or is there a difference?'
'Does it matter?'
'Damn you, Harry, tell me one thing? How did you know we were on to you? How did you know about Tanya? Was it me?' he exploded. 'But how could it have been me?'
'You mean you checked your telephone as usual?' Cussane was at the drinks cabinet now, the Stechkin in his hand. He poured Bushmills into three glasses, carried them on a tray to the table in front of the sofa, took one and stepped back. 'I was using special equipment up there in the attic of my place. Directional microphone and other stuff. There wasn't much that went on here that I missed.'
Devlin took a deep breath, but when he lifted his glass, his hand was steady. 'So much for friendship.' He swallowed the whiskey.