Читать книгу Eye of the Storm - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 9

Dillon paused outside Le Chat Noir on the end of the small pier for the second time that night. It was almost deserted, a young man and woman at a corner table holding hands, a bottle of wine between them. The accordion was playing softly and the musician talked to the man behind the bar at the same time. They were the Jobert brothers, gangsters of the second rank in the Paris underworld. Their activities had been severely curtailed since Pierre, the one behind the bar, had lost his left leg in a car crash after an armed robbery three years previously.

As the door opened and Dillon entered, the other brother, Gaston, stopped playing. ‘Ah, Monsieur Rocard, back already.’

‘Gaston.’ Dillon shook hands and turned to the barman. ‘Pierre.’

‘See, I still remember that little tune of yours, the Irish one.’ Gaston played a few notes on the accordion.

‘Good,’ Dillon said. ‘A true artist.’

Behind them the young couple got up and left. Pierre produced half a bottle of champagne from the bar fridge. ‘Champagne as usual I presume, my friend? Nothing special, but we are poor men here.’

‘You’ll have me crying all over the bar,’ Dillon said.

‘And what may we do for you?’ Pierre enquired.

‘Oh, I just want to put a little business your way.’ Dillon nodded at the door. ‘It might be an idea if you closed.’

Gaston put his accordion on the bar, went and bolted the door and pulled down the blind. He returned and sat on his stool. ‘Well, my friend?’

‘This could be a big pay day for you boys.’ Dillon opened the briefcase, took out one of the road maps and disclosed the stacks of hundred-dollar bills. ‘Twenty thousand American. Ten now and ten on successful completion.’

‘My God!’ Gaston said in awe, but Pierre looked grim.

‘And what would be expected for all this money?’

Dillon had always found it paid to stick as close to the truth as possible and he spread the road map out across the bar.

‘I’ve been hired by the Union Corse,’ he said, naming the most feared criminal organisation in France, ‘to take care of a little problem. A matter of what you might term business rivalry.’

‘Ah, I see,’ Pierre said. ‘And you are to eliminate the problem?’

‘Exactly. The men concerned will be passing along this road here towards Valenton shortly after two o’clock tomorrow. I intend to take them out here at the railway crossing.’

‘And how will this be accomplished?’ Gaston asked.

‘A very simple ambush. You two are still in the transport business, aren’t you? Stolen cars, trucks?’

‘You should know. You’ve bought from us on enough occasions,’ Pierre told him.

‘A couple of vans, that’s not too much to expect, is it?’

‘And then what?’

‘We’ll take a drive down to this place tonight.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Eleven o’clock from here. It’ll only take an hour.’

Pierre shook his head. ‘Look, this could be heavy. I’m getting too old for gunplay.’

‘Wonderful,’ Dillon said. ‘How many did you kill when you were with the OAS?’

‘I was younger then.’

‘Well, it comes to us all, I suppose. No gunplay. You two will be in and out so quickly you won’t know what’s happening. A piece of cake.’ He took several stacks of hundred-dollar bills from the briefcase and put them on the bar counter. ‘Ten thousand. Do we deal?’

And greed, as usual, won the day as Pierre ran his hands over the money. ‘Yes, my friend, I think we do.’

‘Good. I’ll be back at eleven then.’ Dillon closed his briefcase, Gaston went and unlocked the door for him and the Irishman left.

Gaston closed the door and turned. ‘What do you think?’

Pierre poured two cognacs. ‘I think our friend Rocard is a very big liar.’

‘But also a very dangerous man,’ Gaston said. ‘So what do we do?’

‘Wait and see.’ Pierre raised his glass. ‘Salut.’

Dillon walked all the way to the warehouse in rue de Helier, twisting from one street to another, melting into the darkness occasionally to check that he wasn’t being followed. He had learned a long time ago that the problem with all revolutionary political groups was that they were riddled with factions and informers, a great truth where the IRA was concerned. Because of that, as he had indicated to Aroun, he preferred to use professional criminals whenever possible when help was needed. Honest crooks who did things for cash, that was the phrase he’d used. Unfortunately it didn’t always hold true and there had been something in big Pierre’s manner.

There was a small Judas gate set in the larger double doors of the warehouse. He unlocked it and stepped inside. There were two cars, a Renault saloon and a Ford Escort, and a police BMW motorcycle covered with a sheet. He checked that it was all right, then moved up the wooden stairs to the flat in the loft above. It was not his only home. He also had a barge on the river, but it was useful on occasions.

On the table in the small living room there was a canvas holdall with a note on top that simply said, As ordered. He smiled and unzipped it. Inside was a Kalashnikov PK machine gun, the latest model. Its tripod was folded, the barrel off for easy handling and there was a large box of belt cartridges, a similar box beside it. He opened a drawer in the sideboard, took out a folded sheet and put it in the holdall. He zipped it up again, checked the Walther in his waistband and went down the stairs, the holdall in one hand.

He locked the Judas and went along the street, excitement taking control as it always did. It was the best feeling in the world when the game was in play. He turned into the main street and a few minutes later, hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to Le Chat Noir.

They drove out of Paris in Renault vans, exactly the same except for the fact that one was black and the other white. Gaston led the way, Dillon beside him in the passenger seat, and Pierre followed. It was very cold, snow still mixed with the rain, although it wasn’t lying. They talked very little, Dillon lying back in the seat eyes closed so that the Frenchman thought he was asleep.

Not far from Choisy, the van skidded and Gaston said, ‘Christ almighty,’ and wrestled with the wheel.

Dillon said, ‘Easy, the wrong time to go in a ditch. Where are we?’

‘Just past the turning to Choisy. Not long now.’ Dillon sat up. The snow was covering the hedgerows but not the road. Gaston said, ‘It’s a pig of a night. Just look at it.’

‘Think of all those lovely dollar bills,’ Dillon told him. ‘That should get you through.’

It stopped snowing, the sky cleared showing a half-moon, and below them at the bottom of the hill was the red light of the railway crossing. There was an old disused building of some sort at one side, its windows boarded up, a stretch of cobbles in front of it lightly powdered with snow.

‘Pull in here,’ Dillon said.

Gaston did as he was told and braked to a halt switching off the motor. Pierre came up in the white Renault, got down from behind the wheel awkwardly because of the false leg and joined them.

Dillon stood looking at the crossing a few yards away and nodded. ‘Perfect. Give me the keys.’

Gaston did as he was told. The Irishman unlocked the rear door, disclosing the holdall. He unzipped it as they watched, took out the Kalashnikov, put the barrel in place expertly, then positioned it so that it pointed to the rear. He filled the ammunition box, threading the cartridge belt in place.

‘That looks a real bastard,’ Pierre said.

‘Seven point two millimetre cartridges mixed with tracer and armour piercing,’ Dillon said. ‘It’s a killer all right. Kalashnikov. I’ve seen one of these take a Land Rover full of British paratroopers to pieces.’

‘Really,’ Pierre said and as Gaston was about to speak, he put a warning hand on his arm. ‘What’s in the other box?’

‘More ammunition.’

Dillon took out the sheet from the holdall, covered the machine gun, then locked the door. He got behind the driving wheel, started the engine and moved the van a few yards, positioned it so that the tail pointed at an angle towards the crossing. He got out and locked the door and clouds scudded across the moon and the rain started again, more snow in it now.

‘So, you leave this here?’ Pierre said. ‘What if someone checks it?’

‘What if they do?’ Dillon knelt down at the offside rear tyre, took a knife from his pocket, sprang the blade and poked at the rim of the wheel. There was a hiss of air and the tyre went down rapidly.

Gaston nodded. ‘Clever. Anyone gets curious, they’ll just think a breakdown.’

‘But what about us?’ Pierre demanded. ‘What do you expect?’

‘Simple. Gaston turns up with the white Renault just after two this afternoon. You block the road at the crossing, not the railway track, just the road, get out, lock the door and leave it. Then get the hell out of there.’ He turned to Pierre. ‘You follow in a car, pick him up and straight back to Paris.’

‘But what about you?’ the big man demanded.

‘I’ll be already here, waiting in the van. I’ll make my own way. Back to Paris now. You can drop me at Le Chat Noir and that’s an end of it. You won’t see me again.’

‘And the rest of the money?’ Pierre demanded as he got behind the Renault’s wheel and Gaston and Dillon joined him.

‘You’ll get it, don’t worry,’ Dillon said. ‘I always keep my word just as I expect others to keep theirs. A matter of honour, my friend. Now let’s get moving.’

He closed his eyes again, leaned back. Pierre glanced at his brother, switched on the engine and drove away.

It was just on half-past one when they reached Le Chat Noir. There was a lock-up garage opposite the pub. Gaston opened the doors and Pierre drove in.

‘I’ll be off then,’ Dillon said.

‘You’re not coming in?’ the big man asked. ‘Then Gaston can run you home.’

Dillon smiled. ‘No one’s ever taken me home in my life.’

He walked away, turning into a side street and Pierre said to his brother, ‘After him and don’t lose him.’

‘But why?’ Gaston demanded.

‘Because I want to know where he’s staying, that’s why. It stinks, this thing, Gaston, like bad fish stinks, so get moving.’

Dillon moved rapidly from street to street, following his usual pattern, but Gaston, a thief since childhood and an expert in such matters, managed to stay on his trail, never too close. Dillon had intended returning to the warehouse in rue de Helier, but pausing on the corner of an alley to light a cigarette, he glanced back and could have sworn he saw a movement. He was right, for it was Gaston ducking into a doorway out of sight.

For Dillon, even the suspicion was enough. He’d had a feeling about Pierre all night, a bad feeling. He turned left, worked his way back to the river and walked along the pavement and past a row of trucks, their windscreens covered with snow. He came to a small hotel, the cheapest sort of place, the kind used by prostitutes or truckers stopping overnight, and went in.

The desk clerk was very old and wore an overcoat and scarf against the cold. His eyes were wet. He put down his book and rubbed them. ‘Monsieur?’

‘I brought a load in from Dijon a couple of hours ago. Intended to drive back tonight, but the damn truck’s giving trouble. I need a bed.’

‘Thirty francs, monsieur.’

‘You’re kidding,’ Dillon said. ‘I’ll be out of here at the crack of dawn.’

The old man shrugged. ‘All right, you can have number eighteen on the second landing for twenty, but the bed hasn’t been changed.’

‘When does that happen, once a month?’ Dillon took the key, gave him his twenty francs and went upstairs.

The room was as disgusting as he expected even in the diffused light from the landing. He closed the door, moved carefully through the darkness and looked out cautiously. There was a movement under a tree on the river side of the road. Gaston Jobert stepped out and hurried away along the pavement.

‘Oh dear,’ Dillon whispered, then lit a cigarette and went and lay on the bed and thought about it, staring up at the ceiling.

Pierre, sitting at the bar of Le Chat Noir waiting for his brother’s return, was leafing through Paris Soir for want of something better to do when he noticed the item on Margaret Thatcher’s meeting with Mitterrand. His stomach churned and he read the item again with horror. It was at that moment the door opened and Gaston hurried in.

‘What a night. I’m frozen to the bone. Give me a cognac.’

‘Here.’ Pierre poured some into a glass. ‘And you can read this interesting titbit in Paris Soir while you’re drinking.’

Gaston did as he was told and suddenly choked on the cognac. ‘My God, she’s staying at Choisy.’

‘And leaves from that old air force field at Valenton. Leaves Choisy at two o’clock. How long to get to that railway crossing? Ten minutes?’

‘Oh, God, no,’ Gaston said. ‘We’re done for. This is out of our league, Pierre. If this takes place, we’ll have every cop in France on the streets.’

‘But it isn’t going to. I knew that bastard was bad news. Always something funny about him. You managed to follow him?’

‘Yes, he doubled around the streets for a while, then ended up at that fleapit old François runs just along the river. I saw him through the window booking in.’ He shivered. ‘But what are we going to do?’ He was almost sobbing. ‘This is the end, Pierre. They’ll lock us up and throw away the key.’

‘No they won’t,’ Pierre told him. ‘Not if we shop him, they won’t. They’ll be too grateful. Who knows, there might even be a reward in it. Now what’s Inspector Savary’s home number?’

‘He’ll be in bed.’

‘Of course he will, you idiot, nicely tucked up with his old lady where all good detectives should be. We’ll just have to wake him up.’

Inspector Jules Savary came awake cursing as the phone rang at his bedside. He was on his own, for his wife was spending a week in Lyon at her mother’s. He’d had a long night. Two armed robberies and a sexual assault on a woman. He’d only just managed to get to sleep.

He picked up the phone. ‘Savary here.’

‘It’s me, Inspector, Pierre Jobert.’

Savary glanced at the bedside clock. ‘For Christ’s sake, Jobert, it’s two-thirty in the morning.’

‘I know, Inspector, but I’ve got something special for you.’

‘You always have, so it can wait till the morning.’

‘I don’t think so, Inspector. I’m offering to make you the most famous cop in France. The pinch of a lifetime.’

‘Pull the other one,’ Savary said.

‘Margaret Thatcher. She’s staying at Choisy tonight, leaves for Valenton at two? I can tell you all about the man who’s going to see she never gets there.’

Jules Savary had never come awake so fast. ‘Where are you, Le Chat Noir?’

‘Yes,’ Jobert told him.

‘Half an hour.’ Savary slammed down the phone, leapt out of bed and started to dress.

It was at exactly the same moment that Dillon decided to move on. The fact that Gaston had followed him didn’t necessarily mean anything more than the fact that the brothers were anxious to know more about him. On the other hand …

He left, locking the door, found the backstairs and descended cautiously. There was a door at the bottom which opened easily enough and gave access to a yard at the rear. An alley brought him to the main road. He crossed, walked along a line of parked trucks, chose one about fifty yards from the hotel, but giving him a good view. He got his knife out, worked away at the top of the passenger window. After a while it gave so that he could get his fingers in and exert pressure. A minute later he was inside. Better not to smoke so he sat back, collar up, hands in pockets and waited. It was half-past three when the four unmarked cars eased up to the hotel. Eight men got out, none in uniform, which was interesting.

‘Action Service, or I miss my guess,’ Dillon said softly.

Gaston Jobert got out of the rear car and stood talking to them for a moment then they all moved into the hotel. Dillon wasn’t angry, just pleased that he’d got it right. He left the truck, crossed the road to the shelter of the nearest alley and started to walk to the warehouse in rue de Helier.

The French secret service, notorious for years as the SDECE has had its name changed to Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, DGSE, under the Mitterrand government in an attempt to improve the image of a shady and ruthless organisation with a reputation for stopping at nothing. Having said that, measured by results, few intelligence organisations in the world are so efficient.

The service, as in the old days, was still divided into five sections and many departments, the most famous, or infamous depending on your point of view, being Section Five, more commonly known as Action Service, the department responsible for the smashing of the OAS.

Colonel Max Hernu had been involved in all that, had hunted the OAS down as ruthlessly as anyone in spite of having served as a paratrooper in both Indo-China and Algeria. He was sixty-one years of age, an elegant, white-haired man who now sat at his desk in the office on the first floor of DGSE’s headquarters on the Boulevard Mortier. It was just before five o’clock and Hernu, wearing horn-rimmed reading glasses, studied the report in front of him. He had been staying the night at his country cottage forty miles out of Paris and had only just arrived. Inspector Savary watched respectfully.

Hernu removed his glasses. ‘I loathe this time of the morning. Takes me back to Dien Bien Phu and the waiting for the end. Pour me another coffee, will you?’

Savary took his cup, went to the electric pot on the stand and poured the coffee, strong and black. ‘What do you think, sir?’

‘These Jobert brothers, you believe they’re telling us everything?’

‘Absolutely, sir, I’ve known them for years. Big Pierre was OAS which he thinks gives him class, but they’re second-rate hoods really. They do well in stolen cars.’

‘So this would be out of their league?’

‘Very definitely. They’ve admitted to me that they’ve sold this man Rocard cars in the past.’

‘Of the hot variety?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Of course they are telling the truth. The ten thousand dollars speak for them there. But this man Rocard, you’re an experienced copper, Inspector. How many years on the street?’

‘Fifteen, sir.’

‘Give me your opinion.’

‘His physical description is interesting because according to the Jobert boys, there isn’t one. He’s small, no more than one sixty-five. No discernible colour to the eyes, fair hair. Gaston says the first time they met him he thought he was a nothing and then he apparently half-killed some guy twice his size in the bar in about five seconds flat.’

‘Go on.’ Hernu lit a cigarette.

‘Pierre says his French is too perfect.’

‘What does he mean by that?’

‘He doesn’t know. It’s just that he always felt that there was something wrong.’

‘That he wasn’t French?’

‘Exactly. Two facts of interest there. He’s always whistling a funny little tune. Gaston picked it up because he plays accordion. He says Rocard told him once that it was Irish.’

‘Now that is interesting.’

‘A further point. When he was assembling the machine gun in the back of the Renault at Valenton he told the boys it was a Kalashnikov. Not just bullets. Tracer, armour piercing, the lot. He said he’d seen one take out a Land Rover full of British paratroopers. Pierre didn’t like to ask him where.’

‘So, you smell IRA here, Inspector? And what have you done about it?’

‘Got your people to get the picture books out, Colonel. The Joberts are looking through them right now.’

‘Excellent.’ Hernu got up and this time refilled his coffee cup himself. ‘What do you make of the hotel business? Do you think he’s been alerted?’

‘Perhaps, but not necessarily,’ Savary said. ‘I mean what have we got here, sir? A real pro out to make the hit of a lifetime. Maybe he was just being extra careful, just to make sure he wasn’t followed to his real destination. I mean, I wouldn’t trust the Joberts an inch, so why should he?’

He shrugged and Max Hernu said shrewdly, ‘There’s more. Spit it out.’

‘I got a bad feeling about this guy, Colonel. I think he’s special. I think he may have used the hotel thing because he suspected that Gaston might follow him, but then he’d want to know why. Was it the Joberts just being curious or was there more to it?’

‘So you think he could have been up the street watching our people arrive?’

‘Very possibly. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t know Gaston was tailing him. Maybe the hotel thing was a usual precaution. An old Resistance trick from the war.’

Hernu nodded. ‘Right, let’s see if they’ve finished. Have them in.’

Savary went out and returned with the Jobert brothers. They stood there looking worried and Hernu said, ‘Well?’

‘No luck, Colonel. He wasn’t in any of the books.’

‘All right,’ Hernu said. ‘Wait downstairs. You’ll be taken home. We’ll collect you again later.’

‘But what for, Colonel?’ Pierre asked.

‘So that your brother can go to Valenton in the Renault and you can follow in the car just like Rocard told you. Now get out.’ They hurriedly left and Hernu said to Savary, ‘We’ll see Mrs Thatcher is spirited to safety by another route, but a pity to disappoint our friend Rocard.’

‘If he turns up, Colonel.’

‘You never know, he just might. You’ve done well, Inspector. I think I’ll have to requisition you for Section Five. Would you mind?’

Would he mind? Savary almost choked with emotion. ‘An honour, sir.’

‘Good. Go and get a shower then and some breakfast. I’ll see you later.’

‘And you, Colonel.’

‘Me, Inspector.’ Hernu laughed and looked at his watch. ‘Five-fifteen. I’m going to ring British intelligence in London. Disturb the sleep of a very old friend of mine. If anyone can help us with our mystery man it should be he.’

The Directorate General of the British Security Service occupies a large white and red brick building not far from the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, although many of its departments are housed in various locations throughout London. The special number that Max Hernu rang was of a section known as Group Four, located on the third floor of the Ministry of Defence. It had been set up in 1972 to handle matters concerning terrorism and subversion in the British Isles. It was responsible only to the Prime Minister. It had been administered by only one man since its inception, Brigadier Charles Ferguson. He was asleep in his flat in Cavendish Square when the telephone beside his bed awakened him.

‘Ferguson,’ he said, immediately wide awake, knowing it had to be important.

‘Paris, Brigadier,’ an anonymous voice said. ‘Priority one. Colonel Hernu.’

‘Put him through and scramble.’

Ferguson sat up, a large, untidy man of sixty-five with rumpled grey hair and a double chin.

‘Charles?’ Hernu said in English.

‘My dear Max. What brings you on the line at such a disgusting hour? You’re lucky I’m still on the phone. The powers that be are trying to make me redundant along with Group Four.’

‘What nonsense.’

‘I know, but the Director General was never happy with my freebooter status all these years. What can I do for you?’

‘Mrs Thatcher overnighting at Choisy. We’ve details of a plot to hit her on the way to the airfield at Valenton tomorrow.’

‘Good God!’

‘All taken care of. The lady will now take a different route home. We’re still hoping the man concerned will show up, though I doubt it. We’ll be waiting though, this afternoon.’

‘Who is it? Anyone we know?’

‘From what our informants say, we suspect he’s Irish though his French is good enough to pass as a native. The thing is, the people involved have looked through all our IRA pictures with no success.’

‘Have you a description?’

Hernu gave it to him. ‘Not much to go on, I’m afraid.’

‘I’ll have a computer check done and get back to you. Tell me the story.’ Which Hernu did. When he was finished Ferguson said, ‘You’ve lost him, old chap. I’ll bet you dinner on it at the Savoy Grill next time you’re over.’

‘I’ve a feeling about this one. I think he’s special,’ Hernu said.

‘And yet not on your books and we always keep you up to date.’

‘I know,’ Hernu said. ‘And you’re the expert on the IRA, so what do we do?’

‘You’re wrong there,’ Ferguson said. ‘The greatest expert on the IRA is right there in Paris, Martin Brosnan, our Irish-American friend. After all, he carried a gun for them till nineteen seventy-five. I heard he was a Professor of Political Philosophy at the Sorbonne.’

‘You’re right,’ Hernu said. ‘I’d forgotten about him.’

‘Very respectable these days. Writes books and lives rather well on all that money his mother left him when she died in Boston five years ago. If you’ve a mystery on your hands he might be the man to solve it.’

‘Thanks for the suggestion,’ Hernu said. ‘But first we’ll see what happens at Valenton. I’ll be in touch.’

Ferguson put down the phone, pressed a button on the wall and got out of bed. A moment later the door opened and his manservant, an ex-Gurkha came in, putting a dressing-gown over his pyjamas.

‘Emergency, Kim. I’ll ring Captain Tanner and tell her to get round here, then I’ll have a bath. Breakfast when she arrives.’

The Gurkha withdrew. Ferguson picked up the phone and dialled a number. ‘Mary? Ferguson here. Something big. I want you at Cavendish Square within the hour. Oh, better wear your uniform. We’ve got that thing at the Ministry of Defence at eleven. You always impress them in full war paint.’

He put the phone down and went into the bathroom feeling wide awake and extremely cheerful.

It was six-thirty when the taxi picked up Mary Tanner on the steps of her Lowndes Square flat. The driver was impressed, but then most people were. She wore the uniform of a captain in the Women’s Royal Army Corps, the wings of an Army Air Corps pilot on her left breast. Below them the ribbon of the George Medal, a gallantry award of considerable distinction and campaign ribbons for Ireland and for service with the United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus.

She was a small girl, black hair cropped short, twenty-nine years of age and a lot of service under the belt. A doctor’s daughter who’d taken an English degree at London University, tried teaching and hated it. After that came the army. A great deal of her service had been with the Military Police. Cyprus for a while, but three tours of duty in Ulster. It had been the affair in Derry that had earned her the George Medal and left her with the scar on her left cheek which had brought her to Ferguson’s attention. She’d been his aide for two years now.

She paid off the taxi, hurried up the stairs to the flat on the first floor and let herself in with her own key. Ferguson was sitting on the sofa beside the fireplace in the elegant drawing room, a napkin under his chin while Kim served his poached eggs.

‘Just in time,’ he said. ‘What would you like?’

‘Tea, please. Earl Grey, Kim, and toast and honey.’

‘Got to watch our figure.’

‘Rather early in the day for sexist cracks, even for you, Brigadier. Now what have we got?’

He told her while he ate and Kim brought her tea and toast and she sat opposite, listening.

When he finished she said, ‘This Brosnan, I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Before your time, my love. He must be about forty-five now. You’ll find a file on him in my study. He was born in Boston. One of those filthy rich American families. Very high society. His mother was a Dubliner. He did all the right things, went to Princeton, took his degree then went and spoiled it all by volunteering for Viet Nam and as an enlisted man. I believe that was nineteen sixty-six. Airborne Rangers. He was discharged a sergeant and heavily decorated.’

‘So what makes him so special?’

‘He could have avoided Viet Nam by staying at university, but he didn’t. He also enlisted in the ranks. Quite something for someone with his social standing.’

‘You’re just an old snob. What happened to him after that?’

‘He went to Trinity College, Dublin, to work on a doctorate. He’s a Protestant, by the way, but his mother was a devout Catholic. In August sixty-nine, he was visiting an uncle on his mother’s side, a priest in Belfast. Remember what happened? How it all started?’

‘Orange mobs burning Catholics out?’ she said.

‘And the police not doing too much about it. The mob burned down Brosnan’s uncle’s church and started on the Falls Road. A handful of old IRA hands with a few rifles and handguns held them off and when one of them was shot, Brosnan picked up his rifle. Instinctive, I suppose. I mean Viet Nam and all that.’

‘And from then on he was committed?’

‘Very much so. You’ve got to remember that in those early days, there were plenty of men like him in the movement. Believers in Irish freedom and all that sort of thing.’

‘Sorry, sir, I’ve seen too much blood on the streets of Derry to go for that one.’

‘Yes, well I’m not trying to whitewash him. He’s killed a few in his time, but always up front, I’ll say that for him. He became quite famous. There was a French war photographer called Anne-Marie Audin. He saved her life in Viet Nam after a helicopter crash. Quite a romantic story. She turned up in Belfast and Brosnan took her underground for a week. She got a series out of it for Life magazine. The gallant Irish struggle. You know the sort of thing.’

‘What happened after that?’

‘In nineteen seventy-five he went to France to negotiate an arms deal. As it turned out it was a set-up and the police were waiting. Unfortunately he shot one of them dead. They gave him life. He escaped from prison in seventy-nine, at my instigation, I might add.’

‘But why?’

‘Someone else before your time, a terrorist called Frank Barry. Started off in Ulster with a splinter group called the Sons of Erin, then joined the European terrorist circuit, an evil genius if ever there was one. Tried to get Lord Carrington on a trip to France when he was Foreign Secretary. The French hushed it up, but the Prime Minister was furious. Gave me direct orders to hunt Barry down whatever the cost.’

‘Oh, I see now. You needed Brosnan to do that?’

‘Set a thief to catch a thief and so forth, and he got him for us.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘He went back to Ireland and took that doctorate.’

‘And this Anne-Marie Audin, did they marry?’

‘Not to my knowledge, but she did him a bigger favour than that. Her family is one of the oldest in France and enormously powerful politically and he had been awarded the Legion of Honour for saving her in Viet Nam. Anyway, her pressure behind the scenes bore fruit five years ago. President Mitterrand granted him a pardon. Wiped the slate clean.’

‘Which is how he’s at the Sorbonne now? He must be the only professor they’ve had who shot a policeman dead.’

‘Actually one or two after the war had done just that when serving with the Resistance.’

‘Does the leopard ever change its spots?’ she asked.

‘Oh, ye of little faith. As I say, you’ll find his file in the study if you want to know more.’ He passed her a piece of paper. ‘That’s the description of the mystery man. Not much to go on, but run it through the computer anyway.’

She went out.

Kim entered with a copy of The Times. Ferguson read the headlines briefly then turned to page two where his attention was immediately caught by the same item concerning Mrs Thatcher’s visit to France as had appeared in Paris Soir.

‘Well, Max,’ he said softly, ‘I wish you luck,’ and he poured himself another cup of coffee.