The White House Connection. Jack Higgins

son, Lady Helen.’ Dillon nodded. ‘I’m surprised you’d speak to me.’

      ‘I believe war should still have rules, and from what Tony told me, you were an honourable man, however ruthless and, may I say, misguided.’

      ‘I stand corrected.’

      He bowed his head in mock humility. She said, ‘You rogue. You can get me that champagne now, only make sure they open a decent bottle.’

      ‘At your command.’

      He joined Ferguson at the bar. ‘Lady Helen,’ he said. ‘Quite a woman.’

      ‘And then some.’

      The barman poured the champagne into two glasses. ‘There’s something about her, something special. Can’t put my finger on it.’

      ‘Don’t try, Dillon,’ Ferguson told him. ‘She’s far too good for you.’

      It was a week later that they flew from Gatwick to New York in one of her company’s Gulfstreams, and stayed at the Plaza. By that time, she knew the file backwards, every facet of every individual in it, and had also used every facility available in the company’s computer. She had the Colt .25 with her. In all her years flying in the Gulfstreams, she had never been checked by security once.

      She knew everything. For example, that Martin Brady, the Teamsters’ Union official, attended a union gym near the New York docks three times a week, and usually left around ten in the evening. Hedley took her to a place a block away, then she walked. Brady had a red Mercedes, a distinctive automobile. She waited in an alley next to where he had parked it, and slipped out only to shoot him in the back of the neck as he leaned over to unlock the Mercedes.

      That had been Hedley’s suggestion. He’d heard that the mob preferred such executions with a small calibre pistol, usually a .22, but a .25 would do, and this would make the police think they had a mob-versus-union problem.

      Thomas Cassidy, with a fortune in Irish theme pubs, was easy. He’d recently opened a new place in the Bronx and parked in an alley at the rear. She checked it out two nights running and got him on the third, at one in the morning, once again as he unlocked his car. According to The New York Times, there had been a protection racket operating in the area and the police thought Cassidy a victim. She’d known about all that and his complaints to the police from the computer.

      Patrick Kelly, the boss of the construction firm, was even easier. He had a house in Ossining, with countryside all around. His habit was to rise at six in the morning and run five miles. She checked out his usual route, then caught him on the third morning, running with the hood of his track suit up against heavy rain. She stood under a tree as he approached, shot him twice in the heart, then removed the gold Rolex watch from his wrist and the chain from around his neck, again at Hedley’s suggestion. A simple mugging, was all.

      So, everything worked perfectly. She hadn’t needed the pills as much, and Hedley, in spite of his doubts, had proved a rock. Am I truly wicked, she would ask herself, really evil? And then recalled reading that in Judaism, Jehovah was not personally responsible for many actions. He employed angels, an Angel of Death, for example.

      Is that me? she asked herself. But needing justice, she could not be sorry. So she continued until that rainy night in Manhattan, when she waited for Senator Michael Cohan to come home from the Pierre and was sidetracked.

      At the same time that Helen Lang was returning to the Plaza, consoling herself with the thought that she would get Cohan in London, other events were taking place there that would prove to have a profound influence not only on her, but on others she already knew.

      A few hours after Lady Helen went to bed, Hannah Bernstein entered Charles Ferguson’s office at the Ministry of Defence, Dillon behind her.

      ‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but we’ve got a hot one.’

      ‘Really?’ He smiled. ‘Tell me.’

      She nodded to Dillon, who said, ‘There’s an old mate of mine, Tommy McGuire, Irish-American. Been into arms dealing for years. He was caught with a defective brake light in Kilburn last night, and a rather keen young woman probationer insisted on checking the boot of his car.’

      ‘Surprise, surprise,’ Hannah Bernstein said. ‘Fifty pounds of Semtex and two AK47s.’

      ‘How delicious,’ Ferguson replied. ‘With his record, which I’m sure he has, that should draw ten years.’

      ‘Except for one thing,’ Hannah told him. ‘He says he wants a deal.’

      ‘Really.’

      ‘He says he can give us Jack Barry,’ Dillon told him.

      Ferguson went very still, frowning. ‘Where is McGuire?’

      ‘Wandsworth,’ Hannah said, naming one of London’s bleaker prisons.

      ‘Then let’s go and see what he has to say,’ and Charles Ferguson stood up.

      Wandsworth Prison was one of the toughest in the country, what was known as a hard nick. Ferguson saw the governor and served him with the kind of warrant that made that good man sit up. No one was to see McGuire except those designated by Ferguson, not even Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist section, and certainly not anybody from Military Intelligence in Northern Ireland or the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Any deviation from such a ruling could have sent the governor himself to prison for breaching the Official Secrets Act.

      Ferguson, Hannah Bernstein and Dillon waited in an interview room and a prison officer delivered McGuire and withdrew on Ferguson’s nod. McGuire almost had a fit when he saw Dillon.

      ‘Jesus, Sean, it’s you.’

      ‘As ever was.’ Dillon offered him a cigarette and said to the others, ‘Tommy and I go back a long way. Beirut, Sicily, Paris.’

      ‘IRA, of course,’ Ferguson said.

      ‘Not really. Tommy was never one for direct action, but if there was a pound or two in it, he could get you anything. Automatic weapons, Semtex, rocket launchers. Got away with a lot because of his Yank passport and the fact that he always acted as an agent for foreign arms firms. German, French.’ He gave McGuire a light. ‘Still fronting for old Jobert out of Marseilles, but then you would. He has the Union Corse protecting him.’ He turned to Hannah. ‘Worse than the Mafia, that lot.’

      ‘I know who they are, Dillon.’ She looked at McGuire with total contempt. ‘Two AK47s and fifty pounds of Semtex were found in your car last night. Samples, I presume? Who were you going to see?’

      ‘No, you’ve got it wrong,’ McGuire told her. ‘I mean, I didn’t know they were there. I was told there would be a car waiting for me at Heathrow when I got in. The key under the mat. It must have been a setup.’

      Ferguson said coldly, ‘We’ll leave now.’

      ‘Okay, okay,’ McGuire said. ‘You were right about the stuff in the car being samples. They were from Jobert to Tim Pat Ryan. When I flew in, I phoned to arrange the meet and discovered he was dead.’

      ‘Indeed he is,’ Ferguson said. ‘But there was some mention of Jack Barry.’

      McGuire hesitated. ‘Barry used Tim Pat Ryan as a front man in London. It was Ryan who fixed things up. I can give you Jack Barry. I swear it. Just listen.’

      ‘Get on with it, then.’

      Hannah said, ‘So you know Jack Barry?’

      ‘No. I’ve never met him.’

      ‘Then why are you wasting our time?’

      ‘Let me,’ Dillon said and offered McGuire another cigarette. ‘You’ve never met Jack Barry? That’s good, because I have, and he’d cut your balls off for fun if you crossed him. Let me speculate. Jack inherited the Sons of Erin from dear old Frank Barry, alas no longer with us. The Sons of Erin would kill the Pope, which isn’t surprising as our