Confessional - Jack Higgins [66]
At that moment in Dublin, Martin McGuiness was watching one of his men put the receiver back on the phone rest.
'The line's dead, that's certain.'
'That seems more than a little strange to me, son,' McGuiness said. 'Let's pay Liam a visit, and let's drive fast.'
It took McGuiness and a couple of his men forty minutes to get there. He stood watching while his men released Devlin and the girl and shook his head.
'Christ, Liam, it would be funny seeing the great Liam Devlin trussed up like a chicken if it wasn't so bloody tragic. Tell me again? Tell me what it's about, then.'
He and Devlin went into the kitchen and Devlin filled him in on what had happened. When he was finished, McGuiness exploded. 'The cunning bastard. On the Falls Road in Belfast City they remember him as a saint, and him a sodding Russian agent pretending to be a priest.'
'I shouldn't think the Vatican will be exactly overjoyed,' Devlin told him.
'And you know what's worse? What really sticks in my throat? He's no fucking Russian at all. Jesus, Liam, his father died on an English gallows for the cause.' McGuiness was shaking with rage now. 'I'm going to have his balls.'
'And how do you propose to do that?'
'You leave that to me. The Pope at Canterbury, is it? I'll close Ireland up so tight that not even a rat could find a hole to sneak out.'
He bustled out, calling to his men and was gone. Tanya came into the kitchen. She looked pale and tired. 'Now what happens?'
'You put on the kettle and we'll have a nice cup of tea. You know, they say that in the old days a messenger bearing bad news was usually executed. Thank God for the telephone. You'll excuse me for a few minutes while I go across the road and ring Ferguson.'
10
BALLYWALTER ON THE COAST just south of Dundalk Bay near Clogher Head could hardly be described as a port. A pub, a few houses, half-a-dozen fishing boats and the tiniest of harbours. It was a good hour and a half after Devlin's phone call to Ferguson that Cussane turned his BSA motorcycle into a wood on a hill overlooking the place. He pushed his machine up on its stand and went and looked down at Ballywalter, clear in the moonlight below, then he went back to the bike and unstrapped his holdall and took out the black trilby which he put on his head instead of the crash helmet.
He started down the road, bag in hand. What he intended now was tricky, but clever if it worked. It was like chess really; trying to think not just one move, but three moves ahead. Certainly now was the time to see if all that information so carefully extracted from the dying Danny Malone would prove worthwhile.
Sean Deegan had been publican in Ballywalter for eleven years. It was hardly a full-time occupation in a village that boasted only forty-one men of the legal age to drink, which explained why he was also skipper of a forty-foot motor fishing boat Mary Murphy. Added to this, on the illegal side of things, he was not only a member of the IRA, but very much on the active list, having only been released from Long Kesh prison in Ulster in February after serving three years' imprisonment for possession of illegal weapons. The fact that Deegan had personally killed two British soldiers in Derry had never been traced to him by the authorities.
His wife and two children were away visiting her mother in Galway and he had closed the bar at eleven, intending fishing early. He was still awake when Cussane came down the street. He had been awakened from his bed by a phone call from one of McGuiness's men. Deegan offered an illegal way out of the country to the Isle of Man, a useful staging post for England. The description of Cussane which he had been given was brief and to the point.
Deegan had hardly put the phone down when there was a knock at the door. He opened it and found Cussane standing there. He knew at once who his nocturnal caller