Confessional. Part 33

'I just wondered what was happening there, that's all. Tell him I'll see you at Dun Street at six-thirty. Don't worry, Paul. I'll handle things.'

He rang off and Cherny got straight back to Lubov. 'Six-thirty, is that all right?'

'Fine,' Lubov told him.

'He asked me if you'd heard anything about the girl in Paris.'

'No, not a word,' Lubov lied. Til see you at three-thirty.' He rang off, poured himself a drink, then unlocked the top drawer of his desk, took out a case and opened it. It contained a Stechkin automatic pistol and a silencer. Gingerly, he started fitting them together.

In his office at the Secretariat, Harry Cussane stood at the window, looking down into the street. He had listened in to Devlin's conversations with Ferguson before leaving the cottage and knew that Tanya Voroninova was due that evening. It was inconceivable that Lubov would not have heard, either from Moscow or Paris, so why hadn't he mentioned it?

The meeting at Dun Street was unusual enough in itself, but in view of that meeting, why meet Cherny in the usual back row at the cinema first? What could possibly be the need? It didn't fit, any of it, and every instinct that Cussane possessed, honed by his years in the trenches, told him so. Whatever Lubov wanted to see them for, it was not conversation.

Paul Cherny was reaching for his raincoat when there was a knock at the door of his rooms. When he opened it, Harry Cussane was standing outside. He wore a dark trilby hat and raincoat of the kind affected by priests and looked agitated.

'Paul, thank G.o.d I caught you.'

'Why, what is it?' Cherny demanded.

'The IRA man who followed you, the one I disposed of the other day. They've set another one on. This way.'

Cherny's rooms were on the first floor of the old greystone college building. Cussane went up the stairs quickly to the next floor and turned at once up another flight of stairs.

'Where are we going?' Cherny called.

Til show you.'

On the top landing, the tall Georgian window at the end had its bottom half pushed up. Cussane peered out. 'Over there,' he said. 'On the other side of the quad.'

Cherny looked down to the stone flags and the green gra.s.s of the quadrangle. 'Where?' he asked.

There was the hand in the small of his back, a sudden violent push. He managed to cry out, but only just as he overbalanced across the low windowsill and plunged head first towards the stone flags eighty-feet below.

Cussane ran along the corridor and descended the back stairs hurriedly. In a sense, he had been telling the truth. McGuiness had indeed replaced Murphy with a new watchdog, in fact two of them this time, sitting in a green Ford Escort near the main entrance, not that it was going to do them much good now.

Lubov had the back row to himself. In fact, there were only five or six people in the cinema at all as far as he could see in the dim light. He was early, but that was by intention, and he fingered the silenced Stechkin in his pocket, his palms damp with sweat. He'd brought a flask with him and took it out now and swallowed deep. More Scotch to give him the courage he needed. First Cherny and then Cussane, but that should be easier if he was at the warehouse first and waiting in ambush. He took another swig at the flask, had just replaced it in his pocket when there was a movement in the darkness and someone sat down beside him.

'Paul?' he turned his head.

An arm slid round his neck, a hand clamped over his mouth. In the second that he recognized Cussane's pale face under the brim of the black hat, the needle point of the stiletto the other held in his right hand probed in under his ribs, thrusting up into the heart. There was not even time to struggle. A kind of blinding light, no pain, then only darkness.

Cussane wiped the blade carefully on Lubov's jacket, eased him back in the seat as if asleep. He found the Stechkin in the dead man's pocket, took it out and slipped it into his own. He had been right, as usual. The final proof. He got up, went down the aisle, a shadow only in his black coat, and left through one of the exit doors.

He was back at the office in the Secretariat within half an hour, had hardly sat down when Monsignor Halloran came in. Halloran was very cheerful and obviously excited.

'Have you heard? Just had the confirmation from the Vatican. The Pope's visit is on.'

'So they've decided. You'll be going across?'

'Yes indeed. Seat booked in Canterbury Cathedral. An historic occasion, Harry. Something for people to tell their grandchildren about.'

'For those who have any,' Cussane smiled.

Halloran laughed. 'Exactly, which hardly applies to us. I must be off. I've got a dozen things to organize.'

Cussane sat there thinking about it, then reached for his raincoat where he'd thrown it on a chair and took the poniard out in its leather sheath. He put it in one of the desk drawers then took out the Stechkin. What a bungling amateur Lubov had been to use a weapon of Russian manufacture. But it was the proof that he had needed. It meant that to his masters he was not only expendable. He was now a liability.

'So what now, Harry Cussane?' he asked himself softly. 'Where do you go?'

Strange that habit, when speaking to himself, of addressing Cussane by his full name. It was as if he were another person which, in a way, he was. The phone rang and when he answered, Devlin spoke to him.

'There you are.'

'Where are you?'

'Dublin airport. I'm picking up a house-guest. A very pretty girl, actually. I think you'll like her. I thought we all might have supper tonight.'

'That sounds nice,' Cussane said calmly. 'I've agreed to take evening Ma.s.s, though, at the village church. I'll be finished at eight. Is that all right?'

'Fine. We'll look forward to seeing you.'

Cussane put the phone down. He could run, of course, but where and to what purpose? In any event, the play had at least one more act to go, all his instincts told him that.

'No place to hide, Harry Cussane,' he said softly.

When Harry Fox and Tanya came through the gate into the arrival hall, Devlin was waiting, leaning against a pillar, smoking a cigarette, wearing the black felt hat and trenchcoat. He came forward, smiling.

'Cead mile failte,'he said and took the young woman's hands. 'That's Irish for a hundred thousand welcomes.'

'Goraibh maith agat.' Fox gave him the ritual thanks.

'Stop showing off.' Devlin took her bag. 'His mother was a decent Irishwoman, thank the Lord.'

Her face was shining. 'I'm so excited. All this is so - so unbelievable.'

Fox said, 'Right, you're in safe hands now. I'm off. There's a return flight in an hour. I'd better book in. We'll be in touch, Liam.'

He went off through the crowd and Devlin took her elbow and led her to the main entrance. 'A nice man,' she said. 'His hand? What happened?'

'He picked up a bag with a bomb in it in Belfast one bad night and didn't throw it fast enough. He gets by very well with the electronic marvel they've given him.'

'You say that so calmly,' she said as they crossed to the carpark.

'He wouldn't thank you for the wrong kind of sympathy. Comes of his particular kind of upbringing. Eton, the Guards. They teach you to get on with it, not cry in your beer.' He handed her into his old Alfa Romeo sports car. 'Harry's a special breed, just like that ould b.a.s.t.a.r.d Ferguson. What's known as a gentleman.'

'Which you are not?'

'G.o.d save us, my ould mother would turn in her grave to hear you even suggest it,' he said as he drove away. 'So, you decided to give things some more thought after I left Paris? What happened?'