Touch the Devil (9 page)

Devlin laughed out loud. "Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Brigadier. I'm not standing in the dock at the Bailey or anywhere else. You know it, I know it, and so does the boy here, if he has an ounce of sense. I was taken against my will, from one sovereign state to another, kidnapped by British troops, carried over the border from the Republic of Ireland into Ulster. Now, I know things haven't been going too well between our two wonderful countries, but if you think the British Cabinet is going to want the stink that this would cause, all the way up to the United Nations, you've lost your marbles."

He was right. He knew it, and so did they. It was Harry Fox who put it into words. "He's got a point, sir. There's no way we can make this work against his will. If he won't play, we'll have to send him back."

"Don't be a fool, Harry. I've known that all along," Ferguson said.

"So," Devlin said. "Let's be having it."

Ferguson said calmly, "When did you last see Brosnan?" Devlin's eyes were wary. "Martin? Four years ago."

"That's right, February, nineteen seventy-five, when you sent him to France. Since when he's taken up permanent residence in a very unpleasant establishment called Belle Isle off the French Mediterranean coast, which you may have heard of."

"A small corner in hell, so they tell me," Devlin said.

"Aptly put, and he's there for life. An establishment like Alcatraz, which proudly boasts that no one has ever escaped from it." "So?"

"What if I could get him out?"

Devlin frowned. "And how would you do that?"

"Some sort of deal with the French authorities."

"But why would you? Why should you go to the trouble?" "Frank Barry."

There was total amazement on Devlin's face. "Frank Barry?" he said. "And what in the name of Christ has he to do with it?"

"Well, if you can keep that Irish tongue of yours still for fifteen minutes, I'll tell you."

Devlin walked up and down the room, the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, smoke curling. "All right?" he said. "A fine mad bastard, Frank Barry is. I'll not deny that or my personal dislike of the man, but it's your flesh he's the thorn in and nailing him to the cross is your affair--not Martin Brosnan's and certainly not mine."

"Frank Barry is at war with the world, Mr. Devlin," Harry Fo
x s
aid.

Devlin laughed. "Oh, but you have a way with the words
,
Captain. Is there just a touch of Irish in your blood somewhere?"

"Be reasonable, Devlin," Ferguson said. "Barry's activities neve
r e
xactly helped your cause. You've got to admit that. He's done as much as anyone to blacken your image in his time, and that was before the suggestion that his advice was used on the Mountbatten affair. One of the worst things that ever happened to the IRA as far as world opinion was concerned."

"I'm with you there," Devlin said. "But you're wrong in one respect. It isn't my cause any longer."

Fox was thunderstruck. "You mean that?"

Devlin nodded. "Oh, I'm still one hundred percent for a united Ireland, but ten years is enough as far as I'm concerned. Too many dead, Captain. A bloody charnel house, and what have we got to show for it? Frankly, I think you'll find Martin Brosnan to be of the same opinion."

"Put it to him," Ferguson said. "Go and see him, that's all I ask." "And how could that be arranged?"

Ferguson nodded to Harry Fox, who opened a file and took out a British passport which he pushed across the desk. Devlin picked it up. It was in the name of Charles Gorman and when he opened it his own picture stared out at him.

"And who would Charles Gorman be?"

"A highly respectable lawyer with offices in Lincoln's Inn, visiting Brosnan to discuss legal matters in connection with the family business and also the possibility of an appeal for clemency."

Devlin shook his head in amazement. "Are you trying to tell me I'm expected or something?"

"Certainly. Tuesday morning, day after tomorrow. You catch the prison supply boat from a place called St. Denis, along the coast from Marseilles."

Devlin tapped the passport with a finger, frowning. "To set up a thing like this must have taken some pull over there in France, even for you."

"Not really," Ferguson said. "The right SDECE contact. Colonel Guyon who heads Service Five now, has a vested interest in running Frank Barry to earth himself, particularly after th
e a
ttempt to assassinate Lord Carrington on French soil. It's through his influence that your appointment to see Brosnan was arranged so expeditiously."

"Service Five?" Devlin grimaced. "They could have given Himmler and his bunch a run for their money. The way I hear it, they enjoy playing with electricity."

"Yes, well, we don't exactly have much choice, do we?"

"And Guyon can arrange Martin's release, is that what you're saying?"

"Not at all." Ferguson shook his head. "That would take some delicate negotiations at a rather higher level. No, for the moment all I want you to do is see Brosnan and find out if he'll agree in principle."

"To what? Freedom, if he agrees to hunt down Frank Barry and act as a kind of public executioner for you!"

"Why not? A simple enough quid pro quo, or do you really think he'd rather spend the rest of his life in a cell on Belle Isle."

Devlin shook his head. "I don't know about this. To start with, you're making a mistake to think Frank Barry would welcome him with open arms. They always disliked each other. Martin thought him a butcher from the beginning and told him so. On the other hand, he's a very complex man, our Martin. The killer's hand is the instinctual part of him that he hasn't been able to control since Vietnam, but up here," he tapped his forehead, "is a scholar, philosopher, and poet of no mean distinction. You could never tell which way he'd jump."

"You mean he needs to be angry?" Ferguson said. "I think I can arrange that, too." Fox took a photo from the file and passed it across.

The girl in it sat on a sand dune with tall grass around her, hugging her knees, face pushed forward, laughing. She was no more than seventeen, with shoulder-length black hair and a face of extraordinary beauty. Devlin's own face was very pale as he picked the photo up.

"You recognize her?" Ferguson asked.

"Yes," Devlin said softly. "Norah Cassidy, Martin's cousin once removed, a nice Belfast girl."

"And what happened to her?"

"She died a year back, so I believe. In France." Devlin passed a hand over his face, then froze. "France?" he whispered. "And just what are you getting at now, Ferguson?"

"She went to the Sorbonne to study French in nineteen seventy-six," Ferguson said. "As you might expect from a girl with her political views, she soon made contact with various extremist political organizations at the university, and then Frank Barry appeared on the scene."

"Barry?" Devlin said. "Barry and Norah? I don't believe it."

"She was his mistress for over a year, but Belfast had left its mark. Like many young women from that city, she'd been on tranquilizers for years. In Barry's company, she progressed to harder drugs. Finally, she was mainlining on heroin. She became more and more dependent on the drug, which suited Barry because it made her more and more dependent on him. The police almost caught him on a farm in Normandy just over a year ago. He escaped by the skin of his teeth but dumped her."

"The bastard," Devlin said.

"What you're going to see now isn't nice, but I think it necessary." Ferguson nodded to Fox. "Now, Harry."

There was a television set in the corner, a video machine underneath it. Fox switched it on, and Ferguson said, "I got this through Guyon from French intelligence. As I said, not nice, but there it is."

The video rolled for a moment then focused. Norah Cassidy's face filled the screen, ravaged, wasted, only a hint of that smiling girl in the photo. She was crying helplessly, and the camera pulled back to show her being held by two nurses. One of them pushed up the wide sleeve of the hospital robe and the camera moved in to show the dozens of tracks on her arm from the heroin fixes, running sores most of them.

The scene changed. She was in bed now, a narrow hospital cot in a white room, straps across the bed to control her as she thrashe
d w
ildly. The scene cut sharply to be replaced by another close-up of the face, in total repose, relaxed, at peace, only she wasn't sleeping--she was dead, and the camera pulled back to reveal her lying naked on a mortuary slab, her head cradled on a wooden block. The pathologist leaned over her with a scalpel.

Ferguson said, "That'll do, Harry, no need to prolong the agony."