The President’s Daughter. Jack Higgins

the cottage and led the way in. It was small and very Victorian, with a scarlet and blue Turkish carpet runner up the hall. A door stood open to a living room, polished wood-block floor, a three-piece suite in black leather, oriental rugs scattered here and there. Above the fireplace was an oil painting, a scene of the Thames by night in Victorian times.

      ‘Jesus,’ Riley said, ‘that’s an Atkinson Grimshaw and worth a powerful lot of money, Sean.’

      ‘And how would you be knowing that?’ Dillon asked.

      ‘Oh, once I had to visit Liam Devlin at his cottage at Kilrea outside Dublin. He had at least six Grimshaws on the walls.’

      ‘Five now,’ Dillon said, and splashed Bushmills whiskey into two glasses on the sideboard. ‘He gave that one to me.’

      ‘So the old bugger is still alive.’

      ‘He certainly is. Eighty-five and still claiming seventy.’

      ‘The living legend of the IRA.’

      ‘The best,’ Dillon said. ‘On my best day and his worst, the best. To Liam.’ He raised his glass.

      Outside on the corner of the mews, the man working in the manhole got out, opened the door of the van and went inside. Another man dressed as a BT engineer sat on a stool manipulating a refractive directional microphone, a tape recorder turning beside it.

      He turned and smiled. ‘Perfect. Heard everything they said.’

      At nine o’clock that evening, Palace Square in Holland Park was sealed off by the police. Ferguson, Dillon and Riley sat in the Daimler at the gate of Park Villa and watched armed police of the Anti-Terrorist Squad smash the front door down with their hammers and flood inside.

      ‘So far so good,’ Ferguson said.

      Dillon took the car umbrella, got out and lit a cigarette and stood in the pouring rain. Hannah Bernstein emerged from the front door and came towards them. She wore a black jump suit and flak jacket, a holstered Smith and Wesson pistol on her left hip.

      Ferguson opened the door. ‘Any luck?’

      ‘A stack of Semtex, sir, and lots of timers. Looks as if we’ve really nipped some sort of bombing campaign in the bud.’

      ‘But no Active Service Unit?’

      ‘I’m afraid not, Brigadier.’

      ‘I told you,’ Dillon said. ‘Probably long gone.’

      ‘Sod it!’ Ferguson told him. ‘I wanted them, Dillon.’

      Riley said, ‘Well, I kept my side of the bargain. Not my fault.’

      ‘Yes, but not enough,’ Ferguson told him.

      Riley was really working very well. He added a little anxiety to his voice. ‘Here, you won’t send me back, not to Wandsworth?’

      ‘I don’t really have much choice.’

      Riley switched to panic. ‘No, not that. I’ll do anything. Lots of things I could tell you, and not just about the IRA.’

      ‘Such as?’

      ‘Two years ago. The jumbo from Manchester that blew up over the Irish Sea. Two hundred and twenty dead. That Arab fundamentalist lot, the Army of God, were behind that and you know who was in charge.’

      Ferguson’s face had gone very pale. ‘Hakim al-Sharif.’

      ‘I can get him for you.’

      ‘You mean you know where that murderous bastard is?’

      ‘I spoke with him last year. He was also supplying arms for the IRA.’

      Ferguson raised a hand. ‘That’s enough.’ He looked up at Hannah. ‘Get in, Chief Inspector. We’ll go to Dillon’s cottage and pursue this further.’

      The kettle in Dillon’s kitchen was the old-fashioned kind that whistled when it boiled. Ferguson was on the telephone, checking in to the office, and Riley was on the couch by the fireplace, Hannah Bernstein at the window.

      She got up as the kettle sounded, and Dillon said, ‘None of that. It wouldn’t be politically correct. I’ll make the tea.’

      ‘Fool, Dillon,’ she told him.

      He made a large pot, put it on a tray with milk and sugar and four mugs and took it in. ‘Barry’s Tea, Dermot,’ he said, naming one of Ireland’s favourite brands. ‘You’ll feel right at home.’

      Hannah poured and Ferguson put the phone down. He took the tea Hannah offered and said. ‘All right, let’s start again.’

      Riley said, ‘Before I was lifted here in London last year, I was pulled in by the chief of staff in Dublin as a courier. I had to fly to Paris, visit a certain bank where there was a briefcase in a safe deposit. All I know is it was a lot of money in American dollars. I never knew how much. I understood it was a down-payment against an arms shipment to Ireland.’

      ‘And then?’

      ‘I had exact instructions and I followed them. Flew to Palermo in Sicily, where I hired a car and drove across to the south coast of the island, a fishing port called Salinas, a real nothing of a place. I was told to phone a certain number and simply say: “The Irishman is here.”’

      ‘Go on,’ Ferguson urged.

      ‘Then I was to wait at this bar on the waterfront called the English Café.’

      The story was so good that Riley was almost believing in it himself, and it was Dillon who said, ‘And they came?’

      ‘Two men in a Range Rover. Arabs. They took me to this villa by the sea about six or seven miles out of Salinas. Nothing else around. There was a jetty, some sort of motor boat.’

      ‘And Hakim al-Sharif?’ Hannah asked.

      ‘Oh, yes. Very hospitable. He checked out the cash, gave me a sealed letter for the chief of staff in Dublin and made me stay the night.’

      ‘How many people?’ Dillon asked.

      ‘The two fellas that picked me up were obviously his minders, then there was an Arab couple in a small cottage next door. The woman cooked and her husband was a general handyman. It seemed as if they looked after the place when he was away.’ He drank some of his tea. ‘Oh, and there was a younger Arab woman who lived with them. I think she was there to make Hakim happy on occasions. That’s how it seemed, anyway.’

      ‘Anything else of interest?’ Ferguson asked.

      ‘Well, he wasn’t your ordinary Muslim. Drank a great deal of Scotch whisky.’

      ‘So he opened up?’ Dillon said.

      ‘Only to the extent that his tongue loosened. Kept going on about the jobs he’d pulled and how he’d made fools of the intelligence services of a dozen countries. Oh, and he told me he’d had the villa for six years. Said it was the safest base he’d ever had, because all the local Sicilians were crooks of one sort or another and everybody minded their own business.’

      ‘And he’s still there?’ Hannah asked.

      Riley managed to sound reluctant. ‘I don’t see why not, but I couldn’t swear to it.’

      There was silence. Ferguson said, ‘God, I’d love to get my hands on him.’

      ‘Well, if he is there, and I think there’s a fair chance he is,’ Riley said, ‘you could get what you want. I mean, it’s another country, but you knock people off from other countries all the time, don’t tell me you don’t.’

      ‘It’s certainly a thought.’ Ferguson nodded.

      ‘Look, send Dillon,’ Riley said. ‘Send whoever you want and I’ll go with them, put myself on the line every step of the way.’

      ‘And make a