Touch the Devil

‘He tried to join the British Communist Party when he was an undergraduate at Oxford years ago. It was suggested that someone like him could do more good by keeping his mouth shut and joining the Labour Party, which he did. Trade Union Organiser for six years, then he blotted his copybook by losing his cool during a miners’ strike three or four years ago and assaulting a policeman in the picket line with a pickaxe handle. Put him in hospital for six weeks.’

‘And Corder?’

‘Two years in gaol. The Union wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole after that. Deep down inside, those lads are as conservative as Margaret Thatcher when it comes to being British. Jack came over here when he got out and involved himself with an anarchist group well to the left of the French Communist Party which is where I picked him up. Anyway, why should you worry, or has the Disinformation Department of the KGB changed its aims?’

‘No,’ Romanov said. ‘Chaos is still our business, Frank, and we need to create as much as possible in the Western world. Chaos, disorder, fear and uncertainty, which is why we employ people like you.’

‘You haven’t left much out, have you?’ Barry said cheerfully.

Romanov looked down at the map. ‘Is this going to work?’

‘Come on, now, Nikolai,’ Barry said. ‘You don’t really want Carrington shot dead on a French country road, do you? Very counterproductive, just like the IRA shooting the Queen. Too much to lose, so it isn’t worth it.’

Romanov looked bewildered. ‘What game are you playing now?’

‘Oh, you know me,’ Barry said, ‘the game’s the thing,’ and added briskly, ‘I’ll still take the cash, by the way. Chaos, disorder, fear and uncertainty. I’ll do my best to see you get your money’s-worth.’

Romanov hesitated, then took a large manilla envelope from his pocket and pushed it across. Barry dropped it into the briefcase along with the map.

‘Shall we?’

He led the way to the entrance and unlocked the judas gate. A flurry of wind tossed rain into their faces. Romanov shivered and turned up his collar.

‘When I was fourteen years old in nineteen forty-three, I joined a partisan group in the Ukraine. I was with them two years. It was simpler then. We were fighting Nazis. We knew where we were. But now?’

‘A different world,’ Barry said.

‘And one in which you, my friend, don’t even believe in your own country.’

‘Ulster?’ Barry laughed harshly. ‘I gave up on that mess a long time ago. As someone once said, there’s nothing worse than a collection of ignorant people with legitimate grievances. Now let’s get to hell out of here.’

The apples in the orchard on the hill above Rigny should have been picked weeks before, were already over-ripe, and the air was heavy with the smell of them, warm in the unexpected noon-day sun.

Jack Corder lay in the long grass, a pair of Zeiss binoculars beside him, and watched the villa below. It was a pleasant house, built in the eighteenth century from the look of it with a broad flight of steps leading up to the portico over the main entrance.

There were four cars in the courtyard, at least a dozen CRS police waiting beside their motor cycles and uniformed gendarmes at the gate. Nothing too ostentatious. The President was known to imitate General de Gaulle in that respect and hated fuss.

For a while, Corder was a boy again lying in long grass by the River Wharfe, the bridge below him, good Yorkshire sheep scattered across the meadow on the other side. Sixteen years old with a girl beside him whose name he couldn’t even remember, and life had seemed to have an infinite possibility to it. He felt an aching longing to be back, for everything in between to be just a dream, and then the President of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, stepped out of the house below, followed by the British Foreign Secretary.

The two men stood in the portico flanked by their aides as Corder focused his binoculars.

‘Jesus,’ he whispered. ‘One man with a decent rifle is all it would take to knock out both of them.’

The President shook the Foreign Secretary’s hand. No formal embrace. That was not his style. Lord Carrington went down the steps and was ushered into the black Citroen.

Corder’s throat was dry. He took the transceiver from his pocket, pressed the channel button and said urgently. ‘This is Red calling. This is Red calling. The package is about to be delivered.’

A second later he heard Barry’s reply, cool, detached. ‘Green here. The package will be collected.’

Carrington’s car was moving towards the entrance followed by four CRS motorcyclists, just as Barry had promised and Corder jumped to his feet, turned and ran through the orchard to where he had left the Peugeot. He had plenty of time to reach the main road before the convoy and the moment he turned on to it, he put his foot down, pushing the Peugeot up to seventy-five.

His palms were sweating again, his throat dry, and he lit a cigarette one-handed. He didn’t know what was going to happen at St Etienne, that was the trouble. Probably CRS riot cops descending in droves, shooting everything that moved which could include him. But he had to turn up; had no other choice, for if he didn’t, Barry, being Barry, would smell an instant rat, call the thing off and disappear into the blue as he had done so many times before.

He was close to St Etienne now, no more than two or three miles to go, when it happened. As he passed a side turning, a CRS motorcyclist emerged and came after him, a sinister figure in crash helmet and goggles and dark, caped coat. He pulled alongside and waved him down and Corder pulled in to the edge of the road. Was this Ferguson’s way of keeping him out of it?

The CRS man pulled in front, got off his heavy BMW machine and pushed it on its stand. He walked towards the Peugeot, a gloved finger hooked into the trigger guard of the MAT49 machine carbine slung across his chest. He stood looking down at Corder, anonymous in the dark goggles, then pushed them up.

‘A slight change of plan, old son.’ Frank Barry grinned. ‘I lead, you follow.’

‘You’ve called it off?’ Corder demanded in astonishment.

Barry looked mildly surprised. ‘Jesus, no, why should I do a thing like that?’

He got back on the BMW and drove away. Corder followed him, totally lost now, not knowing what to do for the best. For a moment Corder fingered the butt of the Walther PPK he carried, not that there was much joy there. He’d never shot anyone in his life. It was unlikely that he could start now.

About a mile outside St Etienne, Barry turned into a narrow country lane and Corder followed, climbing up between high hedgerows past a small farm. There was a grove of trees on the brow of a green hill and Barry waved him down and turned into them. He pushed the BMW up on its stand and Corder joined him.

‘Look, what’s going on, Frank?’

‘Did I ever tell you about my grandmother on my mother’s side, Jack? Whenever she got a terrible headache there’d be a thunder-storm within the hour. Now with me, it’s different. I only get a headache when I smell stinking fish and I’ve got a real blinder at the moment.’

Corder went cold. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Nice view from up here.’ Barry walked through the trees and indicated St Etienne spread neatly below like a child’s model. The garage and forecourt were on one side of the road, the cafe and carpark on the other.

He took some binoculars from the pocket of his raincoat and passed them across. ‘Have a look. I have a feeling it may be a bit more interesting to sit this one out.’

Corder focused the binoculars on the fore-court of the garage. Two of the men, wearing yellow overalls, worked on the engine of a car. The third waiting in the glass office beside the petrol pumps talking to the girl who stood at the door with the pram, wearing a scarlet headscarf, woollen jumper and neat skirt.

‘Any sign of the car?’ Barry demanded.

Corder swung the binoculars to examine the road. ‘No, but there’s a truck coming.’

‘Is there, now? That’s interesting.’

The truck was of the trailer type, an eight-wheeler with high green canvas sides. As it entered the village, it slowed and turned into the carpark. The driver, a tall man in khaki overalls jumped down from the cab and strolled to the cafe door.

Barry took the binoculars from Corder and focused them on the truck. ‘Bouvier Brothers, Long Distant Transport, Paris and Marseilles.’

‘He’ll move on when he finds the cafe’s closed,’ Corder said.

‘Pigs might fly, old son,’ Frank Barry told him, ‘But I doubt it.’

There was a sudden firestorm from inside the truck at that moment, machine gun fire raking the entire forecourt area, shattering the glass of the office, driving the girl back over the pram, cutting down the two gunmen working on the car, riddling its fuel tank, petrol spilling on to the concrete. It was the work of an instant, no more, there was a flicker of flame as petrol ignited and then the tank exploded in a ball of fire, pieces of wreckage flying high in the air. The holocaust was complete and at least twenty CRS riot police in uniform leapt from the rear of the truck and ran across the road.

‘Efficient,’ Barry said calmly. ‘You’ve got to give the buggers that.’

Corder licked dry lips nervously and his left hand went into the pocket of his leather jacket, groping for the butt of the Walther.