Touch the Devil

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Majored in English, that’s what our American friends say.’

Fox shrugged and returned to the file. ‘Then in nineteen sixty-six he volunteered for Vietnam. Airborne Rangers and Special Services. And in the ranks, sir, that’s the puzzling thing.’

‘A very important point, that, Harry.’

Ferguson poured himself more tea. ‘Vietnam was never exactly a popular issue in America. If you were at University or College, it was possible to avoid the draft, which was exactly what most young men with Brosnan’s background did. He could have continued to avoid service by staying on at University and taking a doctorate. He didn’t. What’s the word that’s so popular these days, Harry, macho? Maybe that had something to do with it? Perhaps he felt less of a man because he’d avoided it for so long. In the end, the important thing is that he went.’

‘And to some purpose, sir.’ Fox whistled. ‘Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star with Oak Leaves, Vietnamese Cross of Valor.’ He frowned. ‘And the Legion of Honour. How in the hell did the French get involved?’

Ferguson stood up and walked to the window. ‘An interesting one, that. His last flamboyant gesture. He saved the neck of a famous French war photographer, a woman, would you believe it, name of Anne-Marie Audin. Some ambush or other. She pops up in the story again. The photo from the Paris-Match article, remember, with Brosnan, Liam Devlin and Frank Barry? The good Mademoiselle Audin took that, amongst others. She wrote the same story for Life Magazine and got a Pulitzer Prize for it. A behind-the-scenes look at the Irish struggle. Went down very well in Boston.’

Fox reached for the next file. ‘But how in the hell did he move on from that to the IRA?’

‘Wildly illogical, but beautifully simple,’ Ferguson turned and walked back to the fire. ‘I’ll shorthand it for you and save you some time. On leaving the army, Brosnan went to Trinity College, Dublin, to work for that doctorate we mentioned. In August, nineteen sixty-nine, he was visiting an old Catholic uncle on his mother’s side, a priest-in-charge of a Church on the Falls Road in Belfast. When did you first visit that fair city, Harry?’

‘Nineteen seventy-six, sir.’

Ferguson nodded. ‘So much has happened, so much water under the bridge, that the first wild years of the Troubles must seem like ancient history to people like you. So many names, faces.’ He sighed and sat down. ‘During Brosnan’s visit, Orange mobs led by “B” Specials, an organisation now happily defunct, went on the rampage. They burnt down Brosnan’s uncle’s Church. In fact, the old man was so badly beaten he lost an eye.’

‘I see,’ Fox said soberly.

‘No you don’t, Harry. I had an agent once called Vaughan – Major Simon Vaughan. Won’t work for me now, but that’s another story. He really did see, because like Brosnan, he had an Irish mother. Oh, the IRA has its fair share of thugs and mad bombers and too many men like Frank Barry, perhaps, but it also has its Liam Devlins and its Martin Brosnans. Genuine idealists in the Pearse and Connolly and Michael Collins tradition. Whether you agree with them or not, men who believe passionately that they’re engaged in a struggle for which the stake is nothing less than the freedom of their country.’

Fox raised his gloved hand. ‘Sorry, sir, but I’ve seen women and kids run screaming from a bombing too many times to believe that one any more.’

‘Exactly,’ Ferguson said. ‘Men like Devlin and Brosnan want to be able to fight with clean hands and a little honour. Their tragedy is that in this kind of war that just is not possible.’

He got up again and paced the room restlessly. ‘You see, I can’t blame Brosnan for what happened in Belfast that night in August, ’sixty-nine. A handful of Republicans, no more than six in all led by Liam Devlin, took to the streets. They had three rifles, two revolvers and a rather antiquated Thompson sub-machine gun. Brosnan found himself caught up in the thick of it during the defence of the Church, and when one of them was shot dead at Devlin’s side, he picked up the man’s rifle instinctively. He was far and away the most experienced fighting man there, remember. From then on he was caught up in the IRA cause, Devlin’s right-hand man during the period Devlin was Chief of Staff in Ulster.’

‘Then what?’

‘During the first couple of years or so, it was fine. Men like Devlin and Brosnan were able to fight the good old-fashioned guerrilla kind of war that would have delighted Michael Collins’ heart. No bombs – they left that to men like Frank Barry. Taking on the army was the way Devlin saw it. He believed that was the way to gain world sympathy for the Cause. By the way, how would you feel if you were the General Officer commanding Northern Ireland, and you went into the private office of your headquarters at Lisburn one fine morning and found a rose on your desk?’

‘Good God.’

‘Yes, Brosnan loved that sort of nonsensical and foolhardy gesture. The rose was a play on his own name of course. Not only did he do it to the G.O.C., he also left one for the then Ulster Prime Minister and for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The implication was clear enough.’

‘He could have killed and didn’t.’

‘That’s right. Brosnan’s rose.’ Ferguson laughed. ‘We had to make it classified to keep it out of the papers, not that they’d have believed it. Who would?’

‘What happened later?’

‘All changed, didn’t it? An escalation of the worst kind of bloodshed, the bombers gained the ascendancy in the movement. Devlin became Chief Intelligence Officer in Dublin. Brosnan worked with him as a kind of roving aide.’

Reading on through the file, Fox said, ‘It says here he’s got Irish Nationality. How’s that, sir?’

‘Well, the American Government was not exactly delighted with his activities. Then in nineteen seventy-four, Devlin sent him to New York to execute an informer who’d been helped to seek refuge in America by the Ulster Constabulary after selling information which had led to the arrest of nearly every member of the North Belfast Brigade. Brosnan accomplished his task with his usual ruthless efficiency, got out of New York by the skin of his teeth. When the American State Department tried to extradite him, he claimed Irish Nationality, which he was entitled to do under Irish law because his mother was born there. If you’re interested, Harry, I could do the same. My grandmother was born in Cork.’

Fox quickly glanced through the rest of the file. ‘And then the French business.’

‘That’s right. Devlin sent him to France in nineteen seventy-five to negotiate an arms consignment. The middle man concerned turned out to be a police informer. When Brosnan arrived at a fishing village on the Brittany coast to take delivery, a large consignment of riot police was waiting for him. In the ensuing fracas, he wounded two and shot one dead, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment on Belle Isle.’

‘Belle Isle, sir?’

‘The French don’t have Devil’s Island any more, Harry. They just have Belle Isle. In the Mediterranean, of course, which sounds pleasanter, but it isn’t.’

Fox closed the files. ‘All right, sir, but where is all this getting us?’

‘Set a thief to catch a thief, Harry. You said it.’

Fox gazed at him in astonishment. ‘But he’s in prison, sir. You said so yourself.’

‘For the past four years,’ Ferguson said. ‘But what if we could do something about that?’

The internal ’phone rang and Ferguson went to it and picked it up. He nodded. ‘Fine. Tell him we’ll be straight down.’ He turned to Fox. ‘Right, Harry, grab your coat and let’s get moving. We haven’t got much time.’

He moved to the door and Fox followed him. ‘With respect, sir, where to?’

‘Bradbury Lines Barracks at Hereford, Harry. Headquarters of Twenty-second Special Air Service, to be precise. I’ll explain it on the way,’ and he hustled on through the door like a strong wind.

It was cold in the street outside, rain reflecting on the black asphalt, and as the big black Bentley pulled away, Harry Fox leaned back against the seat and buttoned his old cavalry overcoat one-handed. So many things circling in his mind, so much had happened and Brosnan simply wouldn’t go away, this man he had never met and yet felt he knew as intimately as a brother. He closed his eyes and wondered what Brosnan was doing now.

Belle Isle is a rock situated forty miles to the east of Marseilles and some ten miles from the coast. The fortress, an eighteenth century anachronism, seems to grow out of the very cliffs themselves, one of the grimmest sights in the whole of the Mediterranean. There is the fortress, there is the granite quarry, and there are some six hundred prisoners, political offenders or criminals of the most dangerous kind. Most of them are serving life sentences and, the French authorities taking the term seriously, most of them will die there. One thing is certain. No one has ever escaped from Belle Isle.

The reasons are simple. No vessel may approach closer than four miles and the designated clear area around the island is closely monitored by an excellent approach radar system. And Belle Isle has another highly efficient protection system provided by nature itself, a phenomenom known to local fishermen as the Mill Race, a ferocious ten knot current that churns the water into white foam on even a calm day. Hell on earth in a storm.

Martin Brosnan lay on his bed in a cell on the upper landing, reading, head pillowed on his hands. He was stripped to the waist, strong and muscular, his body toughened by hard labour in the granite quarry. There were the ugly puckered scars of two old bullet wounds in his left breast. His dark hair was too long, almost shoulder-length. In such matters the authorities were surprisingly civilised, as the books on the wooden shelf above the bed indicated.

The man on the opposite bed, tossed a pack of Gitanes across. ‘Have a smoke, Martin,’ he said in French.

He looked about sixty-five with very white hair and eyes a vivid blue in a wrinkled humorous face. His name was Jacques Savary, a Union Corse godfather and one of the most famous gangsters in Marseilles in his day. He had been a prisoner in Belle Isle since 1965, would remain there until he died, an unusual circumstance in one of his background for usually the Union Corse, the largest organised crime syndicate in France, was able to use its formidable influence with the judiciary to pull strings on behalf of members of Jacques Savary’s standing who found themselves in trouble.

But Savary was different. He had chosen to ally himself to the cause of the OAS. It has been said that Charles de Gaulle survived at least thirty attempts on his life, but he had never been closer to death than during the attack masterminded by Jacques Savary in March, 1965. The Union had at least saved him from execution, settling instead for a life sentence on Belle Isle, mistakenly assuming that his release could be arranged at some future date.

Rain lashed the window, the wind howled. Savary said, ‘What are you reading?’

‘Eliot,’ Brosnan told him. ‘“What we call the beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”’

‘The Four Quartets. “Little Gidding”,’ Savary said.

‘Good man,’ Brosnan told him. ‘See, all the benefits of an expensive education, Jacques, and you’re getting it for free.’

‘And you also, my friend, have learnt many things. Can you still open the door the way I showed you?’

Brosnan shrugged, swung his legs to the floor, picked up a spoon from his bedside locker and went to the door. The lock was covered by a steel plate and he quickly forced the handle of the spoon between the edge of the plate and the jamb. He worked it across for a few seconds, there was a click and he opened the door a few inches.