Touch the Devil

‘And why is that?’

‘A question of his personal psychology. Many terrorists, take some of those involved with the Baader-Meinhoff gang, for example, have a craving for public display. They want people to know not only who they are, but that they can make fools of the police and intelligence departments they confront, any time they wish. Barry doesn’t seem to have a need for that kind of publicity, and as it suits our purposes best to give him none, he has remained an unknown quantity as far as the public is concerned.’

‘What about his personal background?’

‘I’m afraid it couldn’t be worse from the point of view of media sensationalism. He is an Ulsterman by birth. Held a commission as a National Service second-lieutenant with the Ulster Rifles. Served in Korea. Excellent record in the field, I might add. He’s a Protestant. His uncle is an Irish Peer, Lord Stramore. Much involved in Orange politics for most of his life, but now in ailing health. Barry is his heir.’

‘Good God,’ the Prime Minister said.

‘During the early years of the Irish Troubles, Barry professed to be a Republican. As usual, he did his own thing. Organised a group called the Sons of Erin, which gave us tremendous problems in the Province. Repudiated totally by the Provisional IRA. In nineteen seventy-two, when Group Four was first set up, I managed to penetrate Barry’s organisation with an agent of mine, a Major Vaughan. The upshot of that little affair was that Barry was badly wounded. That he lived at all was only due to the skill of the surgeons of the Military Wing of the Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast.’

‘What happened then?’

‘He escaped, ma’am. Not even capable of walking, according to his doctors, but walk he did, right out of the hospital, dressed as a porter. Turned up in Dublin within twenty-four hours. We couldn’t touch him there, of course. He was in and out of hospital there and in Switzerland for more than a year.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘Since then, ma’am, he has in some cases to our certain knowledge, and in others to the best of our belief, been responsible for at least fifteen assassinations and a number of bombing incidents. His touch is distinctive and unmistakable, and political commitment seems to be the least of his considerations. A résumé of his activities during the past few years will explain what I mean. In nineteen seventy-three he assassinated the General in command of Spanish Military Intelligence in the Basque country. Responsibility was claimed by the Basque Nationalist Movement, ETA.’

‘Go on.’

‘On the other hand, he was also responsible for the murder of General Hans Grosch during a visit to Munich in nineteen seventy-five. A source of considerable embarrassment to the West German Government. Grosch held a post roughly equivalent to my own in the East German Ministry for State Security. So, as you can see, ma’am, on the one hand Barry kills a Fascist, on the other, a Communist.’

‘You’re saying he has no politics?’

‘None at all.’ Ferguson took a sheet from his briefcase and passed it across. ‘A list of the jobs we think he’s been concerned with. As you can see, his victims have been from every part of the political scene.’

The Prime Minister read the list slowly and frowned. ‘Are you saying then that he works for whoever will pay him?’

‘No, ma’am, I think it’s more subtle than that. Everything he does falls into a pattern, in that it causes maximum damage wherever it happens. For instance, he kills a Spanish diplomat visiting Paris in nineteen seventy-seven – a Fascist. The French government have to react appropriately and within twenty-four hours, every left-wing agitator in Paris is in police hands. Not only Communists, but Socialists. The Socialist Party didn’t like that, which meant the Unions also didn’t like it. Result, unrest amongst the workers, strikes, disruption.’

She paused suddenly lower down his list and glanced up, her face bleak. ‘You mention here a possible involvement in the Mountbatten assassination?’

‘We’ve the best of reasons for believing his advice was sought.’

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It does if one considers his known links with the KGB. I believe that most of the incidents he has been responsible for were commissioned by the KGB, even the assassination of those supposed to be their friends, with the sole purpose of causing the maximum amount of disruption possible in the West.’

‘But Barry is no Marxist?’

‘Frank Barry, ma’am, isn’t anything. Oh, he’ll take their money, I’m sure of that, but he’ll do what he does for the hell of it. I suppose the psychiatrists would have fancy terms to describe his mental condition. Psychopath would only be the start. I’m not really interested. I just want to see him dead.’

The Prime Minister passed the list back to him. ‘Then get on with it, Brigadier.’

Ferguson took the list from her as she pressed a buzzer on her desk. ‘Ma’am?’

‘Department Four has the power – total authority from this office so it would seem. Use it, man. I’m not going to tell you how to do your own job, you’re too good at it. I’ve read your record. The only thing I will say is that it seems obvious to me you must put everything on one side and concentrate all your activities on Barry.’

Ferguson got to his feet and slipped the paper back in his briefcase. ‘Very well, Prime Minister.’

The door opened behind him and the young secretary appeared. The Prime Minister picked up her pen and returned to work as Ferguson moved to the door and was ushered out.

* * *

Ferguson usually preferred to work from his Cavendish Square flat. He was sitting by the fire drinking tea and toasting crumpets on a long brass fork when Kim opened the door and ushered in Harry Fox.

‘Ah, there you are, Harry. Got what I wanted?’

‘Yes, sir, every last piece of paper in the file on Frank Barry.’

Fox was thirty, a slim elegant young man who wore a Guards tie, not surprising in someone who until two years previously had been an acting-Captain in the Blues. The neat leather glove which he wore permanently on his left hand concealed the fact that he had lost the original in a bomb explosion during his third tour of duty in Belfast. He had been Ferguson’s assistant for just over a year.

‘What exactly are we looking for, sir?’

‘I’m not sure, Harry. Jack Corder was the third man I’ve put up against Frank Barry and two out of the three have ended up in a box. We’ve got to come up with something different, that’s all I know for certain.’

‘You’re right, sir. Takes a thief to catch a thief, I suppose.’

Ferguson paused in the act of spearing another crumpet on his fork. ‘What did you say?’

‘Jack Grand of Special Branch was telling me the other day they put one of their men into Parkhurst Prison, posing as a convict. He was attacked within two days and badly injured. I suppose the truth is most crooks can spot a copper a mile away. Frank Barry will be the same, if you think about it. He’d smell a rat in almost anyone you tried to infiltrate into his kind of action.’

‘You could be right,’ Ferguson said. ‘Start reading through those files, aloud, if you please.’

They were at it for six hours, only Kim disturbing them from time to time to replenish the tea and coffee. It was dark when Ferguson got up and stretched and waved to the window.

‘I’d like to know where the bastard is now.’

Fox said, ‘The photos on him are a bit sparse, sir. Nothing since nineteen seventy-two. The earliest seems to be this one taken from a Paris-Match article done by some woman journalist in nineteen seventy-one. Who are the other two with him? Devlin, is it? Liam Devlin and Martin Brosnan.’

Ferguson crossed the room with surprising speed for a man of his bulk and took the news clipping from him. ‘My God, Liam Devlin – and Brosnan. I’d forgotten they’d had dealings with Barry, it’s so long ago.’

‘But who were they, sir?’

‘Oh, a couple of anachronisms from the early days of the Irish Troubles. Before the worst of the bombings and the butchery. The kind of men who thought it was still nineteen twenty-one with Michael Collins carrying the flag for Ireland. Gallant guerrillas up against the might of the British Empire, Flying Columns, action by night.’

‘I think I saw the movie once, sir,’ Fox said.

‘There was a man called Sean McEoin, a Flying Column leader who later became a General in the Free State Army. In nineteen twenty-one, he was surrounded by Black and Tans in a cottage near his own village. There were women and children inside so McEoin ran out in the open with a gun in each hand and shot his way through the police cordon. Devlin and Brosnan are the same kind of idiots.’

‘I can’t say I came up against anyone like that during my time in Ulster,’ Fox said, feelingly.

‘No, well it’s as well to remember that the IRA, like the British Army or any other institution, consists of a wide range of human beings. Still, you cut along now. I want to give this some think time.’

Fox left. Ferguson poured himself a brandy and went and stood at the window, looking down into the square, thinking, with regret, of Jack Corder and the others he had sent against Barry.

‘Somewhere,’ he said softly, ‘that bastard is still laughing at me.’