Touch the Devil (3 page)

There was a tap at the door, and his man-servant, an ex-Gurkha naik peered in, tying the belt of a bathrobe about his waist.

"Sorry, Kim, work to be done," Ferguson said. "Lots of tea, bacon and eggs to follow. I won't be going back to bed."

The little Gurkha withdrew, and Ferguson went into the sitting room, stirred the fire in the Adam fireplace, poured himself a large brandy, sat down by the telephone, and dialed a number in Paris.

The French security service, the Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre Espionage, the SDECE, is divided into five sections and many departments. The most interesting one is certainly Section Five, most commonly known as the Action Service, the department that more than any other had been responsible for the smashing of the OAS. It was the number of Service Five that Ferguson dialed now.

He said, "Ferguson here, D 15. Colonel Guyon, if you please." He frowned impatiently. "Well, of course he's at home in bed. S
o w
as I. I've only rung you to establish credentials. Tell him to call me back on this number." He dictated it quickly. "Most urgent. Priority One."

He put down the phone, and Kim entered with bacon and eggs, bread, butter, and marmalade on a silver tray. "Delicious," Ferguson said as the Gurkha placed a small table before him. "Breakfast at two-thirty in the morning. What a capital idea. We should do this more often."

As he tucked a napkin around his neck the phone rang. He picked it up instantly. "Ah, Pierre," he said in rapid and excellent French, "I've got something for you. Very nasty indeed. You won't be pleased, so listen carefully."

It was quiet in the warehouse after Jack Corder left. Barry walked to the entrance and locked the judas gate. He paused to light a cigarette and as he turned, a man emerged from the shadows and perched himself on the edge of the table.

Nikolai Belov was fifty years of age and for ten of them had been a cultural attache at the Soviet embassy in Paris. His dark suit was Saville Row as was the blue overcoat, which fitted him to perfection. He was handsome enough in a slightly decadent way, with a face like Oscar Wilde or Nero himself and a mane of silver hair that made him look more like a rather distinguished actor than what he was, a colonel in the KGB.

"I'm not too sure about that one, Frank," he said in excellent English.

"I'm not too sure about anyone," Barry said, "including you, old son, but for what it's worth, Jack Corder's a dedicated Marxist."

"Oh dear," Belov said. "That's what I was afraid of."

"He tried to join the British Communist party when he was an undergraduate at Oxford years ago. It was suggested that someone like him could do more good by keeping his mouth shut and joining the Labor Party, which he did. Trade union organizer for six years, then he blotted his copybook by losing his cool during a miners'

strike three or four years ago and assaulting a policeman while on the picket line with a pickax handle. Put him in hospital for six weeks."

"And Corder?"

"Two years in jail. The union wouldn't touch him with a barge pole after that. Deep down inside, those lads are as conservative as Margaret Thatcher when it comes to being British. Jack came over here last year and involved himself with an anarchist group well to the left of the French Communist party, which is where I picked him up. Anyway, why should you worry, or has the disinformation department of the KGB changed its aims?"

"No," Belov said. "Chaos is still our business, Frank, and the need to create as much as possible in the western world. Chaos, disorder, fear and uncertainty--that's why we employ people like you."

"You haven't left much out, have you?" Barry said, cheerfully.

Belov looked down at the map. "Is this going to work?"

"Come on, now, Nikolai," Barry said. "You don't really want Carrington shot dead on a French country road do you? Very counterproductive, just like the IRA shooting the Queen. Too much to lose, so it isn't worth it."

Belov looked bewildered. "What game are you playing now?"

"You'll find out," Barry said, and added briskly, "I'll still take the cash, by the way. Chaos, disorder, fear, and uncertainty. You'll get your money's worth, I promise you."

Belov hesitated, then took a large manila envelope from his pocket and pushed it across. Barry dropped it into the briefcase along with the map.

"Shall we?"

He led the way to the entrance and unlocked the judas gate. A flurry of wind tossed rain into their faces. Belov shivered and turned up his collar.

"When I was fourteen years of age in nineteen forty-three, I joined a partisan group in the Ukraine. I was with them two years.

It was simpler then. We were fighting Nazis. We knew where we were. But now."

"A different world," Barry said.

"And one in which you, my friend, don't even believe in your own country."

"Ulster?" Barry laughed harshly. "I gave up on that mess a long time ago. As someone once said, there's nothing worse than a collection of ignorant people with legitimate grievances. Now let's get the hell out of here."

The apples in the orchard on the hill above Rigny should have been picked weeks before. The air was heavy with their overripe smell, warm in the unexpected noon-day sun.

Jack Corder lay in the long grass, a pair of Zeiss binoculars beside him, and watched the villa below. It was a pleasant house, built in the eighteenth century from the look of it, with a broad flight of steps leading up to the portico over the main entrance.

There were four cars in the courtyard, at least a dozen CRS police waiting beside their motorcycles, and uniformed gendarmes at the gate. Nothing too ostentatious. The President was known to imitate General de Gaulle in that respect. He hated fuss.

For a while, Corder was a boy again lying in long grass by the River Wharfe, the bridge below him, good Yorkshire sheep scattered across the meadow on the other side. Sixteen years of age with a girl beside him whose name he couldn't even remember, and life had seemed to have an infinite possibility to it. There was an aching longing to be back, for everything in between to be just a dream, and then the President of France, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, stepped out of the house below, followed by the British Foreign Secretary.

The two men stood in the portico, flanked by their aides, as Corder focused his binoculars.

"Jesus," he whispered. "One man with a decent rifle is all it would take to knock out both of them."

The President shook the Foreign Secretary's hand. No formal embrace. That was not his style. Lord Carrington went down the steps and was ushered into the black Citroen.

Corder's throat was dry. He took the transceiver from his pocket, pressed the channel button and said urgently. "This is Red calling. This is Red calling. The package is about to be delivered."

A second later he heard Barry's reply, cool, detached. "Green here. The package will be collected."

Carrington's car was moving toward the entrance followed by four CRS motorcyclists, just as Barry had promised, and Corder jumped to his feet and ran through the orchard to where he had left the Peugeot.

He had plenty of time to reach the main road before the convoy, and the moment he turned on to it he put his foot down, pushing the Peugeot up to seventy-five.

His palms were sweating again, his throat dry, and he lit a cigarette one-handed. He didn't know what was going to happen at St. Etienne, that was the trouble. Probably CRS riot cops descending in droves, shooting everything that moved, which could include him. On the other hand, he had to turn up; he had no other choice, for if he didn't, Barry, being Barry, would smell an instant rat, call the thing off, and disappear into the blue as he had done so many times before.

He was close to St. Etienne now, no more than two or three miles to go, when it happened. As he passed a side turning, a CRS motorcyclist emerged and came after him, a sinister figure in crash helmet and goggles and dark, caped coat. He pulled alongside and waved him down, and Corder pulled in to the edge of the road. Was this Ferguson's way of keeping him out of it?

The CRS man pulled in front, got off his heavy BMW machine, and pushed it on its stand. He walked toward the Peugeot, a gloved finger hooked into the trigger guard of the MAT49 machine carbine slung across his chest. He stood looking down at Corder, anonymous in the dark goggles, then pushed them up.

"A slight change of plan, old son." Frank Barry grinned. "I lead, you follow."

"You've called it off'?" Corder demanded in astonishment. Barry looked mildly surprised. "Jesus, no, why should I do a thing like that?"

He got back on the BMW and drove away. Corder followed him, totally lost now, not knowing what to do for the best. For a moment Corder fingered the butt of the Walther PPK he carried, not that there was much joy there. He'd never shot anyone in his life. It was unlikely that he could start now.

About a mile outside St. Etienne, Barry turned into a narrow country lane, and Corder followed, climbing up between high hedgerows past a small farm. There was a grove of trees on the brow of a green hill. Barry waved him down and turned into them. He pushed the BMW up on its stand, and Corder joined him.

"Look, what's going on, Frank?"

"Did I ever tell you about my grandmother on my mother's side, Jack? Whenever she got a terrible headache there'd be a thunder storm within the hour. Now with me, it's different. I only get a headache when I smell stinking fish, and I've got a real blinder at the moment."

Corder went cold. "I don't understand."

"Nice view from up here." Barry walked through the trees and indicated St. Etienne spread neatly below like a child's model. The garage and pumps on one side of the road, the cafe and parking lot on the other.

He took some binoculars from the pocket of his raincoat and passed them across. "Have a look. I have a feeling it may be a bit more interesting to sit this one out."

Corder focused the binoculars on the garage. Two men, wearing yellow coveralls, worked on the engine of a car. A third waited in the glass booth beside the pumps, talking to the girl, who stood by the door with the pram, wearing a scarlet head scarf, woolen pullover, and neat skirt.

"Any sign of the car?" Barry demanded.

Corder swung the binoculars to examine the road. "No, but there's a truck coming."

"Is there, now? That's interesting."

The truck was of the trailer type, an eight-wheeler with high green canvas sides. As it entered the village, it slowed and turned into the parking lot. The driver, a tall man in khaki overalls, jumped down from the cab and strolled to the cafe door.

Barry took the binoculars from Corder and focused them on the truck. "Bouvier Brothers, Long Distance Transport, Paris and Marseilles."

"He'll move on when he finds the cafe is closed," Corder said.

"Pigs might fly, old son," Frank Barry said, "but I doubt it."

There was a sudden firestorm from inside the truck at that moment, machine-gun fire raking the entire pavement, shattering the glass of the booth, driving the girl back over the pram, cutting down the two gunmen working on the car, riddling its fuel tank, gasoline spilling on to the concrete. It was the work of an instant, no more. There was a flicker of flame as the gasoline ignited, and then the tank exploded in a ball of fire, pieces of the wreckage cascading high in the air. The devastation was complete, and at least twenty CRS riot police in uniform leapt from the rear of the truck and ran across the road.

"Efficient," Barry said calmly. "You've got to give the buggers that."

Corder licked dry lips nervously, and his left hand went into the pocket of his leather jacket, groping for the butt of the Walther. "What could have gone wrong?"

"One of those bastards from Marseilles must have had a big mouth," Barry said. "And if word got back to the Union Corse. . . ." He shrugged. "Thieving's one thing, politics is another. They'd inform without a second's hesitation." He clapped Corder on the shoulder. "But we'd better get out of this. Just follow my tail, like you did before. Nobody is likely to stop us when they see me escorting you."

He pushed the BMW off its stand and rode away. Corder followed. The whole thing was like a bad dream and he could still see, vivid as any image on the movie screen, the body of the girl bouncing back across the pram in a hail of machine-gun fire. And Barry had expected it. Expected it, and yet he had still let those poor sods go through with it.

He followed the BMW closely, through narrow country lanes, twisting and turning. They met no one, and then, a good ten miles on the other side of St. Etienne, came to a small garage and cafe at the side of the road. Barry turned in beside the cafe and braked to a halt. As Corder joined him, he was taking a canvas grip from one of the side panniers.

"I know this place," he said. "There's a washroom at the back. I'm going to change. We'll leave the BMW here and carry on in the Peugeot."

He went around to the rear before Corder could reply, and the young woman in the booth beside the gas pumps emerged and approached him. She was perhaps twenty-five, with a flat, peasant face, and wore a man's tweed jacket that was too large for her.

"Gas, Monsieur?"

"Is there a telephone?" Corder asked.