Confessional. Part 20

'All in how it's put to her,' Hunter suggested.

'True,' Devlin told him. 'On the other hand, it would probably be a d.a.m.ned sight easier to slip something in her tea.'

It was Hunter's turn to laugh now. 'You know, I like you, Professor, and I'd started off by not wanting to.'

'And why could that be?' Devlin wondered, interested.

'I was a captain in the Rifle Brigade. Belfast, Derry, South Armagh.'

'Ah, I see what you mean.'

'Four tours between nineteen seventy-two and seventy-eight.'

'And that was four tours too many.'

'Exactly. Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, they can give Ulster back to the Indians.'

'The best idea I've heard tonight,' Liam Devlin told him cheerfully and he lit a cigarette and sprawled back in the pa.s.senger seat, felt hat tilted over his eyes.

At that moment in his office at KGB Headquarters in Dzerhin-sky Square, Lieutenant-General Ivan Maslovsky was seated at his desk, thinking about the Cuchulain affair. Cherny's message pa.s.sed on by Lubov, had reached Moscow only a couple of hours earlier. For some reason it made him think back all those years to Drumore in the Ukraine and Kelly in the rain with a gun in his hand, the man who wouldn't do as he was told.

The door opened and his aide, Captain Igor Kurbsky, came in with a cup of coffee for him. Maslovsky drank it slowly. 'Well, Igor, what do you think?'

'I think Cuchulain has done a magnificent job, Comrade General, for so very many years. But now...'

'I know what you mean,' Maslovsky said. 'Now that British Intelligence knows he exists it's only a matter of time until they run him down.'

'And Cherny they could pull in at any time.'

There was a knock at the door and an orderly appeared

with a signal message. Kurbsky took it and dismissed him. 'It's for you, sir. From Lubov in Dublin.'

'Read it!' Maslovsky ordered.

The gist of the message was that Devlin was proceeding to Paris with the intention of meeting with Tanya Voroninova. At the mention of his foster-daughter's name, Maslovsky stood up and s.n.a.t.c.hed the signal from Kurbsky's hands. It was no secret, the enormous affection the General felt for his foster-daughter, especially since the death of his wife. In some quarters he was known as a butcher, but Tanya Voroninova he truly loved.

'Right,' he said to Kurbsky. 'Who's our best man at the Paris Emba.s.sy? Belov, isn't it?'

'Yes, Comrade.'

'Send a message tonight. Tanya's concert tour is cancelled. No arguments. Full security as regards her person until she can be returned safely to Moscow.'

'And Cuchulain?'

'Has served his purpose. A great pity.'

'Do we pull him in?'

'No, not enough time. This one needs instant action. Signal Lubov at once in Dublin. I want Cuchulain eliminated. Cherny also, and the sooner the better.'

'If I might point out, I don't think Lubov has had much experience on the wet side of things.'

'He's had the usual training, hasn't he? In any case, they won't be expecting it which should make the whole thing rather easier.'

In Paris, the coding machine in the intelligence section of the Soviet Emba.s.sy started whirring. The operator waited until the message had pa.s.sed line-by-line across the screen. She carefully unloaded the magnetic tape which had recorded the message and took it to the night supervisor.

'This is an Eyes Only signal from KGB, Moscow, for Colonel Belov.'

'He's out of town,' the supervisor said. 'Lyons, I think. Due

back tomorrow afternoon. You'll have to hold it anyway. It requires his personal key to decode it.'

The operator logged the tape, placed it in her data drawer and went back to work.

In Dublin, Dimitri Lubov had been enjoying an evening at the Abbey Theatre, an excellent performance of Brendan Behan'sThe Hostage. Supper afterwards at a well known fish restaurant on the Quays meant that it was past midnight when he returned to the Emba.s.sy and found the signal from Moscow.

Even when he'd read it for the third time, he still couldn't believe it. He was to dispose not only of Cherny, but Cussane, and within the next twenty-four hours. His hands were sweating, trembling slightly, which was hardly surprising for in spite of his years in the KGB and all that dedicated training, the plain fact was that Dimitri Lubov had never killed anyone in his life.

Tanya Voroninova came out of the bathroom of her suite at the Ritz as the room waiter brought her breakfast tray in; tea, toast and honey, which was exactly what she'd asked for. She wore a khaki-green jumpsuit and brown boots of soft leather and the combination gave her a vaguely military appearance. She was a small, dark, intense girl with untidy black hair which she constantly had to push back from her eyes. She regarded it with disfavour in the gilt mirror above the fireplace and twisted it into a bun at the nape of her neck, then she sat down and started on breakfast.

There was a knock on the door and her tour secretary, Natasha Rubenova came in. She was a pleasant, grey-haired woman in her mid-forties. 'How are you feeling this morning?'

'Fine. I slept very well.'

'Good. You're wanted at the Conservatoire at two-thirty. Complete run-through.'

'No problem,' Tanya said.

'Are you going out this morning?'

'Yes, I'd like to spend some time at the Louvre. "We've been so busy during this visit that it might be my last opportunity.'

'Do you want me to come with you?'

'No thanks. I'll be fine. I'll see you back here for lunch at one o'clock.'

It was a fine soft morning when she left the hotel and went down the steps at the front entrance. Devlin and Hunter were waiting in the Peugeot on the far side of the boulevard.

'Looks as if she's walking,' Hunter said.

Devlin nodded. 'Follow her for a while then we'll see.'

Tanya carried a canvas bag slung from her left shoulder and she walked at quite a fast pace, enjoying the exercise. She was playing Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto that night. The piece was a particular favourite so that she had none of the usual nervous tension that she sometimes experienced, like most artists, before a big concert.

But then, she was something of an old hand at the game now. Since her successes in both the Leeds and Tchaikovsky festivals she had steadily established'an international reputation. There had been little time for anything else. On the one occasion she had fallen in love, she'd been foolish enough to choose a young military doctor on attachment to an airborne brigade. He'd been killed in action in Afghanistan the year before.

The experience, though harrowing, had not broken her. She had given one of her greatest performances on the night that she had received the news, but she had withdrawn from men, there was no doubt about that. There was too much hurt involved and it would not have needed a particularly bright psychiatrist to find out why. In spite of success and fame and the privileged life her position brought her; in spite of having constantly at her shoulder the powerful presence of Maslovsky, she was still, in many ways, the little girl on