Confessional. Part 13

'About Devlin,' White said as they started to leave the city. 'There's a tale I heard about him once. Would you know if it's true, I wonder?'

'Ask me.'

'The word is, he went to Spain in the thirties, served against Franco and was taken prisoner. Then the Germans got hold of him and used him as an agent here during the big war.'

That's right.'

'The way I heard it, after that, they sent him to England. Something to do with an attempt by German paratroopers to kidnap Churchill in nineteen forty-three. Is there any truth in that?'

'Sounds straight out of a paperback novel to me,' Fox said.

White sighed and there was regret in his voice. 'That's what I thought. Still, one h.e.l.l of a man for all that,' and he sat back and concentrated on his driving.

An understatement as a description of Liam Devlin, Fox thought, sitting there in the darkness: a brilliant student who had entered Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of sixteen and had taken a first cla.s.s honours degree at nineteen, scholar, writer, poet and highly dangerous gunman for the IRA in the thirties, even when still a student.

Most of what White had said was true. He had gone to Spain to fight for the anti-fascists, he had worked for the Abwehr in Ireland. As to the Churchill affair? A story whispered around often enough, but as to the truth of it? Well, it would be years before those cla.s.sified files were opened.

During the post-war period, Devlin had been a Professor at a Catholic seminary called All Souls just outside Boston. He'd been involved with the abortive IRA campaign of the late fifties and had returned to Ulster in 1969 as the present troubles had begun. One of the original architects of the Provisional IRA, he had become increasingly disillusioned by the bombing campaign and had withdrawn active support to

the movement. Since 1976, he had held a position in the English Faculty at Trinity.

Fox had not seen him since 1979 when he had been coerced, indeed, blackmailed, by Ferguson into giving his active a.s.sistance in the hunting down of Frank Barry, ex-IRA activist turned international terrorist for hire. There had been various reasons why Devlin had gone along with that business, mostly because he had believed Ferguson's lies. So, how would he react now?

They had entered a long village street. Fox pulled himself together with a start as White said, 'Here we are - Kilrea, and there's the convent and that's Devlin's cottage, set back from the road behind the wall.'

He turned the car into a gravel driveway and cut the engine. Til wait for you, Captain, shall I?'

Fox got out and walked up a stone flagged path between rose bushes to the green painted porch. The cottage was pleasantly Victorian with most of the original woodwork and gable ends. A light glowed behind drawn curtains at a bow window. He pressed the bellpush. There were voices inside, footsteps and then the door opened and Liam Devlin stood looking out at him.

DEVLIN WORE a dark blue flannel shirt open at the neck, grey slacks and a pair of highly expensive-looking Italian brogues in brown leather. He was a small man, no more than five foot five or six, and at sixty-four his dark, wavy hair showed only a light silvering. There was a faded scar on the right side of his forehead, an old bullet wound, the face pale, the eyes extraordinarily vivid blue. A slight ironic smile seemed permanently to lift the corner of his mouth - the look of a man who had found life a bad joke and had decided that the only thing to do was laugh about it.

The smile was charming and totally sincere. 'Good to see you, Harry.' His arms went around Fox in a light embrace.

'And you, Liam.'

Devlin looked beyond him at the car and Billy White behind the wheel. 'You've got someone with you?'

'Just my driver.'

Devlin moved past him, went along the path and leaned down to the window.

'Mr Devlin,' Billy said.

Devlin turned without a word and came back to Fox. 'Driver, is it, Harry? The only place that one will drive you to is straight to h.e.l.l.'

'Have you heard from Ferguson?'

'Yes, but leave it for the moment. Come along in.'

The interior of the house was a time capsule of Victoriana: mahogany panelling and William Morris wallpaper in the hall with several night scenes by the Victorian painter, Atkinson Grimshaw, on the walls. Fox examined them with admiration as he took off his coat and gave it to Devlin. 'Strange to see

these here, Liam. Grimshaw was a very Yorkshire Englishman.'

'Not his fault, Harry, and he painted like an angel.'

'Worth a bob or two,' Fox said, well aware that ten thousand pounds at auction was not at all out of the way for even quite a small Grimshaw.

'Do you tell me?' Devlin said lightly. He opened one half of a double mahogany door and led the way into the sitting room. Like the hall, it was period Victorian: green flock wallpaper stamped with gold, more Grimshaws on the walls, mahogany furniture and a fire burning brightly in a fireplace that looked as if it was a William Langley original.

The man who stood before it was a priest in dark ca.s.sock and he turned from the fire to greet them. He was about Devlin's height with iron-grey hair swept back over his ears. A handsome man, particularly at this moment as he smiled a welcome; there was an eagerness to him, an energy that touched something in Fox. It was not often that one liked another human being so completely and instinctively.

'With apologies to Shakespeare, two little touches of Harry in the night,' Devlin said. 'Captain Harry Fox, meet Father Harry Cussane.'

Cussane shook hands warmly. 'A great pleasure, Captain Fox. Liam was telling me something about you after you rang earlier.'

Devlin indicated the chess table beside the sofa. 'Any excuse to get away from that. He was beating the pants off me.'

'A gross exaggeration as usual,' Cussane said. 'But I must get going. Leave you two to your business.' His voice was pleasant and rather deep. Irish, yet more than a hint of American there.

'Would you listen to the man?' Devlin had brought three gla.s.ses and a bottle of Bushmills from the cabinet in the corner. 'Sit' down, Harry. Another little snifter before bed won't kill you.' He said to Fox, 'I've never known anyone so much on the go as this one.'

'All right, Liam, I surrender,' Cussane said. 'Fifteen minutes, that's all, then I must go. I like to make a late round

at the hospice as you know and then there's Danny Malone. Living is a day-to-day business with him right now.'

Devlin said, Til drink to him. It comes to us all.'

'You said hospice?' Fox enquired.

'There's a convent next door, the Sacred Heart, run by the Little Sisters of Pity. They started a hospice for terminal patients some years ago.'

'Do you work there?'

'Yes, as a sort of administrator c.u.m priest. Nuns aren't supposed to be worldly enough to do the accounts. Absolute rubbish. Sister Anne Marie, who's in charge over there, knows to every last penny. And this is a small parish so the local priest doesn't have a curate. I give him a hand.'

'In between spending three days a week in charge of the press office at the Catholic Secretariat in Dublin,' Devlin said. 'Not to mention flogging the local youth club through a very average five performances ofSouth Pacific, complete with a star cast of ninety-three local school kids.'

Cussane smiled. 'Guess who was stage manager? We're tryingWest Side Story next. Liam thinks it too ambitious, but I believe it better to rise to a challenge than go for the easy choice.'

He swallowed a little of his Bushmills. Fox said, 'Forgive me for asking, Father, but are you American or Irish? I can't quite tell.'

'Most days, neither can he,' Devlin laughed.

'My mother was an Irish-American who came back to Connacht in 1938 after her parents died, to seek her roots. All she found was me.'

'And your father?'

'I never knew him. Cussane was her name. She was a Protestant, by the way. There are still a few in Connacht, descendants of Cromwell's butchers. Cussane is often called Patterson in that part of the country by pseudo-translation from Casan, which in Irish means path.'