Dillon purchased the map, which the assistant rolled up tightly and inserted into a protective cardboard tube. He paid for it and they walked back to the car.
“Now what?” Danny asked.
“We’ll take a run round. Have a look at the situation.”
“That suits me.”
Angel sat in the rear, her uncle beside Dillon as they drove down toward the river and turned into Horse Guards Avenue. Dillon paused slightly on the corner before turning into Whitehall and moving toward Downing Street.
“Plenty of coppers around,” Danny said.
“That’s to make sure people don’t park.” A car had drawn in to the curb on their left and as they pulled out to pass, they saw that the driver was consulting a map.
“Tourist, I expect,” Angel said.
“And look what’s happening,” Dillon told her.
She turned and saw two policemen converging on the car. A quiet word, it started up and moved away.
Angel said, “They don’t waste time.”
“Downing Street,” Dillon announced a moment later.
“Would you look at those gates?” Danny said in wonder. “I like the Gothic touch. Sure and they’ve done a good job there.”
Dillon moved with the traffic round Parliament Square and went back up Whitehall toward Trafalgar Square. “We’re going back to Bayswater,” he said. “Notice the route I’ve chosen.”
He moved out of the traffic of Trafalgar Square through Admiralty Arch along the Mall, round the Queen Victoria Monument, past Buckingham Palace and along Constitution Hill, eventually reaching Marble Arch by way of Park Lane and turning into the Bayswater Road.
“And that’s simple enough,” Danny Fahy said.
“Good,” Dillon said. “Then let’s go and get a nice cup of tea at my truly awful hotel.”
Ferguson said, “You’re getting too restless, Martin.”
“It’s the waiting,” Brosnan told him. “Flood’s doing his best, I know that, but I don’t think time is on our side.”
Ferguson turned from the window and sipped a little of the cup of tea he was holding. “So what would you like to do?”
Brosnan hesitated, glanced at Mary and said, “I’d like to go and see Liam Devlin in Kilrea. He might have some ideas.”
“Something he was never short of.” Ferguson turned to Mary. “What do you think?”
“I think it makes sense, sir. After all, a trip to Dublin’s no big deal. An hour and a quarter from Heathrow on either Aer Lingus or B.A.”
“And Liam’s place at Kilrea is only half an hour from the city,” Brosnan said.
“All right,” Ferguson said. “You’ve made your point, both of you, but make it Gatwick and the Lear jet, just in case anything comes up and you need to get back here in a hurry.”
“Thank you, sir,” Mary said.
As they reached the door, Ferguson added, “I’ll give the old rogue a call, just to let him know you’re on your way,” and he reached for the phone.
As they went downstairs Brosnan said, “Thank God. At least I feel we’re doing something.”
“And I get to meet the great Liam Devlin at long last,” Mary said and led the way out to the limousine.
In the small café at the hotel, Dillon, Angel and Fahy sat at a corner table drinking tea. Fahy had the Ordnance Survey map partially open on his knee. “It’s extraordinary. The things they give away. Every detail.”
“Could it be done, Danny?”
“Oh, yes, no trouble. You remember that corner, Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall? That would be the place, slightly on an angle. I can see it in my mind’s eye. I can plot the distance from that corner to Number Ten exactly from this map.”
“You’re sure you’d clear the buildings in between?” Dillon said.
“Oh, yes. I’ve said before, Sean, ballistics is a matter of science.”
“But you can’t stop there,” Angel said. “We saw what happened to that man in the car. The police were on him in seconds.”
Dillon turned to Fahy. “Danny?”
“Well, that’s all you would need. Everything pre-timed, Angel. Press the right switch to activate the circuit, get out of the van and the mortars start firing within a minute. No policeman could act fast enough to stop it.”
“But what would happen to you?” she demanded.
It was Dillon who answered. “Just listen to this. We drive up from Cadge End one morning early, you, Danny, in the Ford transit, and Angel and me in the Morris van. We’ll have that BSA motorcycle in the back of that. Angel will park the Morris, like today, in the garage at the end of the road. We’ll have a duckboard in the back so I can run the BSA out.”
“And you’ll follow me, is that it?”
“I’ll be right up your tail. When we reach the corner of Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall, you set your switch, get out of the Ford and jump straight on my pillion and we’ll be away. The War Cabinet meets every morning at ten. With luck we could get the lot.”
“Jesus, Sean, they’d never know what hit them.”
“Straight back to Bayswater to Angel waiting in the garage with the Morris, put the BSA in the back and away we go. We’ll be in Cadge End while they’re still trying to put the fires out.”
“It’s brilliant, Mr. Dillon,” Angel told him.
“Except for one thing,” Fahy said. “Without the bloody explosives, we don’t have any bloody bombs.”
“You leave that to me,” Dillon said. “I’ll get your explosives for you.” He stood up. “But I’ve got things to do. You two go back to Cadge End and wait. I’ll be in touch.”
“And when would that be, Sean?”
“Soon-very soon,” and Dillon smiled as they went out.
Tania was knocking at his door precisely at noon. He opened it and said, “You’ve got it?”
She had a briefcase in her right hand, opened it on the table to reveal the thirty thousand dollars he’d asked for.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll just need ten thousand to be going on with.”
“What will you do with the rest?”
“I’ll hand it in at the desk. They can keep your briefcase in the hotel safe.”
“You’ve worked something out, I can tell.” She looked excited. “What happened at this Cadge End place?”
So he told her and in detail, the entire plan. “What do you think?” he asked when he’d finished.
“Incredible. The coup of a lifetime. But what about the explosives? You’d need Semtex.”
“That’s all right. When I was operating in London in eighty-one I used to deal with a man who had access to Semtex.” He laughed. “In fact he had access to everything.”
“And who is this man? How can you be sure he’s still around?”
“A crook named Jack Harvey and he’s around all right. I looked him up.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“Amongst other things he has a funeral business in Whitechapel. I looked it up in the Yellow Pages and it’s still there. By the way, your Mini, I can still use it?”
“Of course.”
“Good. I’ll park it somewhere in the street. I want that garage free.”
He picked up his coat. “Come on, we’ll go and have a bite to eat and then I’ll go and see him.”
“You’ve read the file on Devlin, I suppose?” Brosnan asked Mary Tanner as they drove through the center of Dublin and crossed the River Liffey by St. George’s Quay and moved on out of the other side of the city, driven by a chauffeur in a limousine from the Embassy.
“Yes,” she said. “But is it all true? The story about his involvement with the German attempt to get Churchill in the war?”
“Oh, yes.”
“The same man who helped you break out of that French prison in nineteen seventy-nine?”
“That’s Devlin.”
“But, Martin, you said he claimed to be seventy. He must be older than that.”
“A few years is a minor detail where Liam Devlin is concerned. Let’s put it this way, you’re about to meet the most extraordinary man you’ve ever met in your life. Scholar, poet and gunman for the IRA.”