Eye of the Storm (31 page)

“God bless all here,” Dillon told him, walked across to the table and stood there, the briefcase in his right hand.

“You didn’t do too well,” Aroun said.

Dillon shrugged. “You win some, you lose some.”

“I was promised great things. You were going to set the world on fire.”

“Another time perhaps.” Dillon put the briefcase on the table.

“Another time.” Aroun’s face was suddenly contorted with rage. “Another time? Let me tell you what you have done. You have not only failed me, you have failed Saddam Hussein, President of my country. I pledged my word to him, my word, and because of your failure, my honor is in shreds.”

“What do you want me to do, say I’m sorry?”

Rashid was sitting on the edge of the table, swinging a leg. He said to Aroun. “In the circumstances, a wise decision not to pay this man.”

Dillon said, “What’s he talking about?”

“The million in advance that you instructed me to deposit in Zurich.”

“I spoke to the manager. He confirmed it had been placed in my account,” Dillon said.

“On my instructions, you fool. I have millions on deposit at that bank. I only had to threaten to transfer it elsewhere to bring him to heel.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Dillon said calmly. “I always keep my word, Mr. Aroun. I expect others to keep theirs. A matter of honor.”

“Honor? You talk to me of honor.” Aroun laughed out loud. “What do you think of that, Josef?”

Makeev, who had been standing behind the door, stepped out, the Makarov in his hand. Dillon half-turned and the Russian said, “Easy, Sean, easy.”

“Aren’t I always, Josef?” Dillon said.

“Hands on head, Mr. Dillon,” Rashid told him. Dillon complied. Rashid unzipped the biker’s jacket, checked for a weapon and found nothing. His hands went round Dillon’s waist and discovered the Beretta. “Very tricky,” he said and put it on the table.

“Can I have a cigarette?” Dillon put a hand in his pocket and Aroun threw the newspaper aside and picked up the Smith & Wesson. Dillon produced a cigarette pack. “All right?” He put one in his mouth and Rashid gave him a light. The Irishman stood there, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “What happens now? Does Josef blow me away?”

“No, I reserve that pleasure for myself,” Aroun said.

“Mr. Aroun, let’s be reasonable.” Dillon flicked the catches on his briefcase and started to open it. “I’ll give you back what’s left of the operating money and we’ll call it quits. How’s that?”

“You think money can make this right?” Aroun asked.

“Not really,” Dillon said and took the Walther with the Carswell silencer from the briefcase and shot him between the eyes. Aroun went over, his chair toppling, and Dillon, turning, dropped to one knee and hit Makeev twice as the Russian got off one wild shot.

Dillon was up and turning, the Walther extended, and Rashid held his hands at shoulder height. “No need for that, Mr. Dillon, I could be useful.”

“You’re damn right you could be,” Dillon said.

There was a sudden roaring of an aircraft passing overhead. Dillon grabbed Rashid by the shoulder and pushed him to the French windows. “Open them,” he ordered.

“All right.” Rashid did as he was told and they went out on the terrace from where they could see the Navajo landing in spite of the mist rolling in.

“Now who might that be?” Dillon asked. “Friends of yours?”

“We weren’t expecting anyone, I swear it,” Rashid said.

Dillon shoved him back in and put the end of the Carswell silencer to the side of his neck. “Aroun had a nice private safe hidden safely away in the apartment at Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. Don’t tell me he didn’t have the same here.”

Rashid didn’t hesitate. “It’s in the study, I’ll show you.”

“Of course you will,” Dillon said and shoved him toward the door.

 

Mary taxied the Navajo along the strip and lined it up to the Conquest and the Citation. She killed the engine. Brosnan was already into the cabin and had the door open. He went down quickly and turned to give Flood a hand. Mary followed. It was very quiet, wind lifting the snow in a flurry.

“The Citation?” Mary said. “It can’t be Hernu, there hasn’t been enough time.”

“It must be Aroun’s,” Brosnan told her.

Flood pointed to where Dillon’s footsteps, clearly visible in the snow, led toward the track to the wood, the château standing proudly on the other side. “That’s our way,” he said and started forward, Brosnan and Mary following.

T
HE STUDY WAS surprisingly small and paneled in bleached oak, the usual oil paintings of past aristocrats on the walls. There was an antique desk with a chair, an empty fireplace, a television with a fax machine and shelves lined with books on one wall.

“Hurry it up,” Dillon said and he sat on the end of the desk and lit a cigarette.

Rashid went to the fireplace and put his hand to the paneling on the right-hand side. There was obviously a hidden spring. A panel opened outwards revealing a small safe. Rashid twirled the dial in the center backwards and forwards, then tried the handle. The safe refused to open.

Dillon said, “You’ll have to do better.”

“Just give me time.” Rashid was sweating. “I must have got the combination wrong. Let me try again.”

He tried, pausing only to wipe sweat from his eyes with his left hand, and then there was a click that even Dillon heard.

“That’s it,” Rashid said.

“Good,” Dillon told him. “Let’s get on with it.” He extended his left arm, the Walther pointing at Rashid’s back.

Rashid opened the safe, reached inside and turned, a Browning in his hand. Dillon shot him in the shoulder spinning him around and shot him again in the back. The young Iraqi bounced off the wall, fell to the floor and rolled on his face.

Dillon stood over him for a moment. “You never learn, you people,” he said softly.

He looked inside the safe. There were neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills, French francs, English fifty-pound notes. He went back to the Great Hall and got his briefcase. When he came back he opened it on the desk and filled it with as much money as he could from the safe, whistling softly to himself. When the briefcase could hold no more he snapped it shut. It was at that moment he heard the front door open.

 

Brosnan led the way up the snow-covered steps, the Browning Mordecai had given him in his right hand. He hesitated for a moment and then tried the front door. It opened to his touch.

“Careful,” Flood said.

Brosnan peered in cautiously, taking in the vast expanse of black and white tiles, the curving stairway. “Quiet as the grave. I’m going in.”

As he started forward, Flood said to Mary, “Stay here for the moment,” and went after him.

The double doors to the Great Hall stood fully open and Brosnan saw Makeev’s body at once. He paused, then moved inside, the Browning ready. “He’s been here, all right. I wonder who this is?”

“Another on the far side of the table,” Flood told him.

They walked round and Brosnan dropped to one knee and turned the body over. “Well, well,” Harry Flood said, “even I know who that is. It’s Michael Aroun.”

 

Mary moved into the entrance hall, closing the door behind her, and watched the two men go into the Great Hall. There was a slight eerie creaking on her left and she turned and saw the open door to the study. She took the Colt .25 from her handbag and went forward.

As she approached the door, the desk came into view and she also saw Rashid’s body on the floor beside it. She took a quick step inside in a kind of reflex action and Dillon moved from beind the door, tore the Colt from her hand and slipped it into a pocket.

“Well, now,” he said, “isn’t this an unexpected pleasure?” and he rammed the Walther into her side.

 

“But why would he kill him?” Flood asked Brosnan. “I don’t understand that.”

“Because the bastard cheated me. Because he wouldn’t pay his debts.”

They turned and found Mary at the door, Dillon behind her, the Walther in his left hand, the briefcase in the other. Brosnan raised the Browning. Dillon said, “On the floor and kick it over, Martin, or she dies. You know I mean it.”

Brosnan put the Browning down carefully then kicked it across the parquet floor.

“Good,” Dillon said. “That’s much better.” He pushed Mary toward them and sent the Browning sliding into the outer hall with the toe of his boot.

“Aroun we recognize, but as a matter of interest, who was this one?” Brosnan indicated Makeev.

“Colonel Josef Makeev, KGB, Paris Station. He was the fella that got me into this. A hardliner who didn’t like Gorbachev or what he’s been trying to do.”

“There’s another body in the study,” Mary told Brosnan.

“An Iraqi Intelligence captain named Ali Rashid, Aroun’s minder,” Dillon said.

“Gun for sale, is that what it’s come down to, Sean?” Brosnan nodded to Aroun. “Why did you really kill him?”

“I told you, because he wouldn’t pay his debts. A matter of honor, Martin. I always keep my word, you know that. He didn’t. How in the hell did you find me?”

“A lady called Myra Harvey had you followed last night. That led us to Cadge End. You’re getting careless, Sean.”

“So it would seem. If it’s any consolation to you, the only reason we didn’t blow the entire British War Cabinet to hell was because you and your friends got too close. That pushed me into doing things in a hurry, always fatal. Danny wanted to fit stabilizing fins on those oxygen cylinders that we used as mortar bombs. It would have made all the difference as regards their accuracy, but there wasn’t time, thanks to you.”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” Brosnan said.

“And how did you find me here?”

“That poor, wretched young woman told us,” Mary said.

“Angel? I’m sorry about her. A nice kid.”

“And Danny Fahy and Grant at the airfield? You’re sorry about them, too?” Brosnan demanded.

“They shouldn’t have joined.”

“Belfast and the Tommy McGuire shooting, it was you?” Mary said.

“One of my better performances.”

“And you didn’t come back on the London train,” she added. “Am I right?”

“I flew to Glasgow, then got the shuttle to London from there.”

“So what happens now?” Brosnan asked.

“To me?” Dillon held up the briefcase. “I’ve got a rather large sum in cash that was in Aroun’s safe in here and a choice of airplanes. The world’s my oyster. Anywhere, but Iraq.”

“And us?” Harry Flood looked ill, his face drawn with pain and he eased his left arm in the sling.

“Yes, what about us?” Mary demanded. “You’ve killed everyone else, what’s three more?”

“But I don’t have any choice,” Dillon said patiently.

“No, but I do, you bastard.”

Harry Flood’s right hand slipped inside the sling, pulled out the Walther he had been concealing in there and shot him twice in the heart. Dillon staggered back against the paneling, dropping his briefcase and slid to the floor, turning over in a kind of convulsion. Suddenly he was still and lay there, facedown, the Walther with the Carswell silencer still clutched in his left hand.

 

Ferguson was in his car and halfway back to London when Mary called him using the phone in Aroun’s study.

“We got him, sir,” she said simply when he replied.

“Tell me about it.”

So she did, Michael Aroun, Makeev, Ali Rashid, everything. When she was finished, she said, “So that’s it, sir.”

“So it would appear. I’m on my way back to London, just passed through Epsom. I left Detective Inspector Lane to clear things up at Cadge End.”

“What now, Brigadier?”

“Get back on your plane and leave at once. French territory, remember. I’ll speak to Hernu now. He’ll take care of it. Now go and get your plane. Contact me in mid-flight and I’ll give you landing arrangements.”

The moment she was off the line he phoned Hernu’s office at DGSE’s headquarters. It was Savary who answered. “Ferguson here, have you got an arrival time for Colonel Hernu at Saint-Denis?”

“The weather isn’t too good down there, Brigadier. They’re landing at Maupertus Airport at Cherbourg and will proceed onwards by road.”

“Well what he’s going to find there rivals the last act of Macbeth,” Ferguson said, “so let me explain and you can forward the information.”

 

Visibility was no more than a hundred yards at the airstrip, mist drifting in from the sea as Mary Tanner taxied the Navajo to the end of the runway, Brosnan sitting beside her. Flood leaned over from his seat to peer into the cockpit.

“Are you sure we can make it?” he asked.

“It’s landing in this stuff that’s the problem, not taking off,” she said and took the Navajo forward into the gray wall. She pulled the column back and started to climb and gradually left the mist behind and turned out to sea, leveling at nine thousand feet. After a while she put on the automatic pilot and sat back.

“You all right?” Brosnan asked.

“Fine. Slightly drained, that’s all. He was so—so elemental. I can’t believe he’s gone.”

“He’s gone all right,” Flood said cheerfully, a half-bottle of Scotch in one hand, a plastic cup held awkwardly in the other, for he had discovered the Navajo’s bar box.

“I thought you never drank?” Brosnan said.

“Special occasion.” Flood raised his cup. “Here’s to Dillon. May he roast in hell.”

 

Dillon was aware of voices, the front door closing. When he surfaced it was like coming back from death to life. The pain in his chest was excruciating, but that was hardly surprising. The shock effect of being hit at such close quarters was considerable. He examined the two ragged holes in his biker’s jacket and unzipped it, putting the Walther on the floor. The bullets Flood had fired at him were embedded in the Titanium and nylon vest Tania had given him that first night. He unfastened the Velcro tabs, pulled the vest away and threw it down, then he picked up the Walther and stood.