The Judas gate

***

The Citation X landed at Belfast City just after noon, Chuck Alan sitting alone in the cockpit. He parked as instructed, went in the cabin and opened the door. He found Justin dozing. He shook his shoulder lightly and Justin's eyes opened. He seemed puzzled for a moment, as if unaware of where he was, and the sweat on his forehead was more obvious.

He smiled suddenly, 'Hi, old buddy, are we there?'

'Belfast City,' Alan said. 'You don't look too good.'

Justin sat up, reached for a napkin and wiped his face. 'I'm good, Chuck, just fine.' He reached in the rucksack, found the medical kit and the morphine pack. He extracted a phial and jabbed it in his left arm.

'What in the hell are you doing?' Chuck Alan demanded. 'What's going on, boss?'

'Morphine's going in, Chuck, it kills the pain, which is good if you've been shot, which I was back in that stinking marsh.' Justin was obviously light-headed now.

'Look, I don't know what I've been involved with or what happened back there this morning. I don't think I've heard machine gun fire like it since Iraq, but I think you should probably be in the hospital.'

A man in ground-crew overalls peered in. 'We've brought your Mercedes from the VIP car park Major Talbot. They presumed you needed it.'

'Well, that's damned nice of them.' Justin picked up his rucksack with his right hand and said to Alan, 'You should be at Frensham.'

Justin went down the steps carefully, like a drunk, and walked to the Mercedes, where the ground-crew man held the driver's door open for him. He put the rucksack on the passenger seat, slid behind the wheel, switched on the engine and lowered the window.

'Bon voyage, old buddy, happy landings.' He drove away, was waved through security without a search, smiling and calling hello to various officials who knew him well. A few minutes later and he was part of the busy city traffic of Belfast. Chuck had to hang on for another hour for his departure slot, and waited in the private lounge, drinking black coffee and going over it all in his mind. He finally did the right thing and called the house number he'd been given for Talbot Place. A man's voice answered.

'It's Chuck Alan, Mr Talbot's pilot. I was hoping to speak to his mother.'

'I'm afraid she's out. I'm the estate manager, Jack Kelly. I thought you were in Algeria?'

'We've just got back.'

'Is there something wrong? I know Justin was up to no good.'

Chuck hesitated. 'Look, this is my boss we're talking about.'

'Just tell me the worst,' Kelly ordered.

Which Alan did, and when he was finished, said, 'I know it sounds difficult to believe-'

Kelly cut him off. 'Not where Justin's concerned. I'm going to change your orders. You do have your Talbot credit card?'

'I sure do.'

'Cancel your departure, put the Citation in for a flight check, refuelling and so on, and then go down to the Europa, book in and await further instructions. I don't know how this business is going to turn out, but you could be needed. Understand?'

'Perfectly, Mr Kelly, I'll get moving on that at once.' Jean Talbot had been up the mountain again with Nell, hoping that the strong wind blowing in from the Irish Sea would clear her head of the dark thoughts that had filled it since Justin's departure. She was surprised to see Kelly's old Morris driving towards her on the lower track. It stopped. Kelly got out and came towards her.

She knew it must be trouble of a sort, and hurried to meet him. 'What is it? Justin?'

'Get in the car out of the wind and I'll tell you.'

She took the passenger seat, Nell scampered in the back, and Kelly got behind the wheel as it started to rain.

'Jack, what's going on?' And then the thought hit her and she turned pale, 'Oh, dear God, he's dead?'

'No, but I understand he's been shot.'

'Then where is he?'

'It would appear he's driving down from Belfast.' Kelly started the Morris and coasted down to the road below.

She took a deep breath to pull herself together. 'What's been going on, Jack? I've heard half of everything for too long. Who is my son, really, what kind of man?'

'I don't think he's ever known that,' Kelly told her. 'The little Protestant bastard who was really a Catholic bastard, a boy who had to survive a bigger bastard, Colonel Henry Talbot. But forget all that. The serious trouble he's in started after he left the army and went to Pakistan and Peshawar.'

'Why was that?'

'He and our happy band of brothers from Kilmartin were selling illegal arms over the border to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Selling arms became also agreeing to train people in their use. Al Qaeda, discovering what he was doing, blackmailed him into working for them.'

She said, in horror, 'You're asking me to believe he would go along with that?'

'He didn't have a choice, Jean, and certainly not at first. The trouble is he found he liked it. Action and passion are everything to him. You know your own son.'

She nodded, calmer now. 'Just how bad is what he's done?'

'He's led a Taliban group, some of them including British Muslims, in battle against American and British forces.' 'And killed people?' 'A great many, I'm afraid.'

'This can't be happening.' She shook her head. 'Why hasn't he been arrested?'

'The authorities don't know who he is. I do, because the other year he confided in me. He's controlled by a man in London called the Preacher, and Justin has a codename, Shamrock. Dillon and Daniel Holley, whom you met, are working for General Charles Ferguson of British Intelligence, trying to find out who Shamrock is.'

'So where does Algeria come in?'

'False information was fed by Al Qaeda sources to Ferguson that Shamrock was known to be in a pretty unsavoury part of Algeria. Justin devised the plot, which was to draw Ferguson's people to hunt for him, unaware that they were the hunted themselves.'

'And this is what he's back from – and with a bullet in him? Where is he?'

'Like I said, he's on his way from Belfast City Airport, driving his Mercedes SL.'

They were on the coast road now and she seemed to have recovered. 'What do you suggest? Do we go looking for him or do we just wait for him to turn up?'

The problem was solved, for Jack's mobile sounded at that moment. It was Hannah. 'The strangest thing, Jack. I went down to the pub for a few things and noticed Justin's Mercedes by the church lych-gate.'

'Is he in it?'

'No, I found him sitting on the bench beside Sean's grave.' 'But it's raining, for Christ's sake.' 'I know. Could he be drunk?'

'I wish he were, but I'm afraid not. We're on our way, I'm with Jean.' He explained what was happening and put his foot down so that they were there in fifteen minutes. They found Hannah with a raincoat over Justin's shoulders and Father Cassidy holding an umbrella.

'Justin, dear, what are you doing?' Jean said.

'Hello, Mum, just paying my respects to Sean and all the brave young men. A bloody sight braver than I could ever be, eh, Jack?' And then he started to cry, slow and bitter tears.

She cradled his head for a moment. 'It's all right, love, it's all right, just let's get you home.'

He nodded and reached for Kelly and grabbed him by the coat. 'Only no hospital, Jack. This is good old Ulster, where all gunshot wounds must be reported to the police. You're the expert, you know that.'

'Don't worry yourself, boy,' Jack Kelly eased him up and, as Justin groaned, said, 'Where are you shot?'

'Left side and straight through. I don't know how the hell Dillon did it. It was dawn light, so it was appalling visibility and pouring with bloody rain, just like this. A snap shot was all he managed, but it was enough. The man's a bloody marvel. He's done for me. Natural justice, in a way, when you think what I did to his uncle.' He started to laugh helplessly. They got him into the back of the Morris, Jean holding him. Hannah joined her husband in the front and called Dr Ryan on her mobile, then alerted Murphy at Talbot Place. He was waiting anxiously at the front door and, seeing the situation, got Colonel Henry's wheelchair out of the cloakroom. He and Jean crowded into the lift and took him up to his bedroom. Kelly and his wife followed upstairs, and Hannah got bath towels and spread them on the bed so they could lay him out.