“And now you’ve had enough of the glorious cause,” Ferguson said. “So what have you got for me?”
Riley appeared to hesitate and Dillon said, “Hard as nails this old bugger, Dermot, but very old-fashioned. A man of honor, so tell him.”
“All right.” Riley raised a hand. “You people always thought there were three Active Service Units operating in London. There was a fourth and a different kind of setup. Nice house in Holland Park. Three guys and a woman, all with good jobs in the City. Another thing – all handpicked because they’d been born in England or raised here. Perfect for deep cover.”
“Names?” Ferguson demanded.
“It won’t do you any good. Not one of them has a police record of any kind, but here goes.”
He rattled off four names, which Hannah Bernstein wrote down in her notebook. Dillon watched impassively.
Ferguson said, “Address?”
“Park Villa, Palace Square. It’s on old Victoria Place in a nice garden.”
“So you had dealings with them?” Dillon asked.
“No, but a friend of mine, Ed Murphy, was their supplier. He got a little indiscreet one night. You know how it is with the drink taken. Anyway, he told me all about them.”
“And where’s Murphy now?”
“Rotated back to Ireland last year.”
Dillon turned to Ferguson and shrugged. “If it was me, I’d be long gone, especially after Dermot was lifted.”
“But why?” Hannah demanded. “There’s no connection.”
“But there always is,” Dillon said.
“Stop this bickering,” Ferguson told them. “It’s worth a try.”
He banged on the door, and when it opened and Jackson appeared, took an envelope from his pocket. “Take that to the Governor and get it countersigned. It’s a warrant for this man’s release into my custody. Afterwards, take him back to his cell to collect his things. We’ll be waiting in my Daimler in the courtyard.”
“Very well, Brigadier.” Jackson stamped his booted feet as if back on the parade ground and stood to one side as they filed past.
A number of people were waiting in the rain outside the main gate for prisoners on release. Among them was the lawyer who had called himself George Brown, standing beside a London black cab, an umbrella over his head. The driver looked like your average London cabbie, which he was, a very special breed, dark curly hair flecked with gray, a nose that had at some stage been broken.
“Do you think it’s going to work?” he asked.
At that moment, the gates opened and several men emerged, the Daimler following.
“I do now,” Brown said.
As the Daimler passed, Riley, sitting beside Dillon and opposite Ferguson and Hannah, glanced out and recognized Brown at once. He looked away.
Brown waved to a Ford sedan on the other side of the road and pointed as it moved away from the curb and went after the Daimler.
Brown got into the cab. “Now what?” the driver asked.
“They’ll follow them. Ferguson’s got to keep him somewhere.”
“A safehouse?”
“Perhaps, but what would be safer than having him stay at Dillon’s place in Stable Mews, very convenient, for Ferguson’s flat is just round the corner in Cavendish Square. That’s why I’ve made the arrangements I have. We’ll see if I’m right. In the meantime, we wait here. I chose visiting day because I was just one of two or three hundred people and no one at reception will remember me, but the prison officer who took me to Riley will. Jackson is his name.” He glanced at his watch. “The present shift should have just finished. We’ll wait and see if he comes out.”
Which Jackson did twenty minutes later and hurried away along the street to the nearest tube station. A keen snooker player he was, in a tournament at the British Legion that evening, and wanted to get home to shower and change.
The tube was as busy as usual, and as he entered, the black cab pulled in at the curb and Brown got out and went after him. Jackson went down the escalator and hurried along the tunnel, Brown close behind, but keeping a few people between them. The platform was crowded and Jackson pushed his way through and waited on the edge. There was the sound of the train in the distance, and Brown slipped in closer as the crowd surged forward. There was a rush of air, a roaring now as the train appeared, and Jackson was aware of a hand against his back, the last thing he remembered in this life as he plunged headfirst onto the track and directly into the path of the train.
The black cab driver waited anxiously. He’d already had to turn down several fares, was sweating a little, and then Brown emerged from the tube entrance, hurried along the pavement, and got in the back.
“Taken care of?” the driver asked and switched on his engine.
“As the coffin lid closing,” Brown told him and they drove away.
Ferguson said, “You’ll stay with Dillon at his place. Only five minutes’ walk from my flat.”
“Very convenient,” Riley said.
“And try and be sensible, there’s a good chap. Don’t try playing silly buggers and making a run for it.”
“And why would I do that?” Riley said. “I want to walk away from this clean, Brigadier. I don’t want to have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”
“Good man.”
At that moment, the Daimler turned into Stable Mews, negotiating a gray BT van parked on the pavement, a manhole cover raised behind a small barrier. A telephone engineer wearing a hard hat and a distinctive yellow oilskin jacket with the BT logo printed across the back worked in the manhole.
Ferguson said, “Right, out you get, you two. The Chief Inspector and I have work to do.”
“When will we make the hit?” Dillon asked.
“Sometime tonight. Sooner rather than later.”
The Daimler moved away and Dillon unlocked the door of the cottage and led the way in. It was small and very Victorian, with a scarlet and blue Turkish carpet runner up the hall. A door stood open to a living room, polished wood block floor, a three-piece suite in black leather, oriental rugs scattered here and there. Above the fireplace was an oil painting, a scene of the Thames River by night in Victorian times.
“Jesus,” Riley said, “that’s an Atkinson Grimshaw and worth a powerful lot of money, Sean.”
“And how would you be knowing that?” Dillon asked.
“Oh, once I had to visit Liam Devlin at his cottage at Kilrea outside Dublin. He had at least six Grimshaws on the walls.”
“Five now,” Dillon said and splashed Bushmills whiskey into two glasses on the sideboard. “He gave that one to me.”
“So the old bugger is still alive.”
“He certainly is. Eighty-five and still claiming seventy.”
“The living legend of the IRA.”
“The best,” Dillon said. “On my best day and his worst, the best. To Liam.” He raised his glass.
Outside on the corner of the mews, the man working in the manhole got out, opened the door of the van, and went inside. Another man dressed as a BT engineer sat on a stool manipulating a refractive directional microphone, a tape recorder turning beside it.
He turned and smiled. “Perfect. Heard everything they said.”
And at nine o’clock that evening, Palace Square in Holland Park was sealed off by the police. Ferguson, Dillon, and Riley sat in the Daimler at the gate of Park Villa and watched armed police of the antiterrorist squad smash the front door down with their hammers and flood inside.
“So far so good,” Ferguson said.
Dillon took the car umbrella, got out and lit a cigarette, and stood there in the pouring rain. Hannah Bernstein emerged from the front door and came toward them. She wore a black jump suit and flak jacket, a holstered Smith & Wesson pistol on her left hip.
Ferguson opened the door. “Any luck?”
“A stack of Semtex, sir, and lots of timers. Looks as if we’ve really nipped some sort of bombing campaign in the bud.”
“But no Active Service Unit?”