LITMIR.BIZ

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me about it.’

      Which Dillon did and afterwards Roper said, ‘Very strange, especially the prayer card. You’ve got a point, Sean, I’ll check it online. OK, talk things over and let me know what you decide.’

      Dillon handed the Codex back. ‘What do you want to do?’

      ‘Let’s go back to the hotel and talk.’

      But just as soon as they got back to the Plaza and reached the suite, the room telephone sounded. It was Clancy Smith. ‘I heard you were in town.’

      ‘Good to hear from you,’ Dillon said, and put the phone on speaker.

      ‘Not this time, Sean. I believe you and Major Miller were expecting to see Blake?’

      ‘We certainly were. He missed quite a speech.’

      ‘He’s in a hospital on Long Island, suffering from a gunshot wound. I’m with him now, but he’s just had surgery so he’s not exactly in top shape. The police recovered the body of his assailant, a man named Jack Flynn.’

      ‘An Irish name,’ Dillon said, his voice grim.

      ‘We’ve recovered his Social Security card and driver’s licence, and an American passport, and they look kosher to me. Place of birth New York. We’ll check to see if he’s got a record, which I expect he has. Something’s odd about all this. Blake rambled a lot to the receiving doctor and said the guy started to fire at him the moment he got on the boat. He seemed intent on killing him from the word go.’

      ‘I see.’ Dillon frowned. ‘Anything else, anything about this Flynn character that would help with his background?’

      ‘Not really,’ Clancy said. ‘Except for one thing. He appears to have been of a religious turn of mind. There was a sort of prayer card in his wallet.’

      Dillon said, ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death, we who are ourselves alone?’

      ‘How in hell do you know that?’ Clancy was truly shocked.

      ‘The Irish for “ourselves alone” is Sinn Fein, Clancy.’

      ‘Are you saying this has got something to do with the IRA?’

      ‘Clancy, this is Miller,’ the major interrupted. ‘Early evening before we left for the UN, I took a walk in Central Park. I was carrying, a Colt .25 in an ankle-holster, and good job I was.’

      ‘OK,’ Clancy said. ‘Tell me the worst.’

      Miller did. ‘I could have killed this Barry guy, but I didn’t. It seemed unlikely he’d want to make a police case out of it. It was only later, when Dillon was looking at the computer photo of me Barry had in his wallet that he discovered the prayer card. It seemed like a curio, but now that we have two of them, it gets more interesting.’

      ‘It sure does,’ Clancy said. ‘I’ll make careful enquiries with the NYPD and find out where this Barry guy ended up, then move him so we can get some answers. I can assure you that you will be kept out of it, Major.’

      ‘Well, that eases my mind,’ Miller told him. ‘You seem on top of your game, Clancy.’

      ‘I’d better get moving. When are you returning to London?’

      ‘Sooner than we’d expected,’ Miller said. ‘Because we’ve got more news for you. Just after eleven o’clock London time, General Ferguson was leaving a function to go home and his car blew up.’

      Clancy was horrified. ‘What happened to him?’

      ‘He was blown over by the blast as he walked towards the limousine. They’ve been checking him out at Rosedene, and he seems all right.’

      ‘Unfortunately, the driver was killed. I think he was closer to the car and the bomb went off prematurely,’ Dillon said. ‘Ferguson’s going to play the whole thing down as some sort of engine failure leading to the explosion. No talk of bombs.’

      ‘Well, that makes sense. I can see where he’s going. But for this to happen to Charles Ferguson, on top of everything else tonight, is hardly a coincidence.’

      ‘Which is why I’m going to call our two pilots now. We’re leaving instantly.’

      ‘Well, don’t let me hold you, gentlemen. I’ll stay in touch.’

      Perhaps an hour and a half later, their Gulfstream lifted out into the Atlantic, leaving the lights of New York behind and rose to thirty-thousand and headed east. Miller and Harry sat on either side in wide comfortable seats, and Parry, one of the pilots, entered the cabin.

      ‘If there’s anything you want, it’s in the kitchen area. You know where the drinks cabinet is, Sean.’

      ‘You’re too kind,’ Dillon told him. ‘How long?’

      ‘The weather in the mid-Atlantic isn’t perfect, but at the worst, I’d say we’ll make Farley Field in six hours.’

      He went out and Dillon’s Codex sounded. It was Clancy. ‘Have I got news for you.’

      Dillon put his phone on speaker and leaned towards Miller.

      ‘I traced Barry to Mercy Hospital, and get this. He was waiting to go into the operating room when some guy in scrubs turned up and stuck a hypodermic in him. A nurse discovered him, he knocked her out and ran for it. Long gone, my friends.’

      ‘Whoever was behind Barry didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut,’ Dillon said. ‘But how did they find out where he was so quickly?’

      ‘I’ve seen the nurse’s statement. When he was in great pain and waiting to be prepped, she heard him call somebody on his mobile, very worked up, very agitated. He said, “It’s me, you bastard, I’m in Mercy Hospital with a bullet in my knee and you’d better do something about it or else.” She said she took the phone from him and put it on the side table.’

      ‘Don’t tell me,’ Dillon said. ‘It’s gone.’

      ‘So no way of tracing who his employer was. No point in showing the nurse any faces. The guy was in green scrubs, a face mask, skullcap, the works. Oh, the police will go through the motions, but I’d say that’s it. You’re still out of it, Major, which is the main thing. Stay in touch, and if you make any sense out of the prayer card thing, let me know.’

      Dillon switched off his phone. Got up, went to the kitchen, found a half-bottle of Krug champagne in the ice box, thumbed off the cork, took two glasses and returned to his seat. He filled one glass and handed it to Miller, then filled the other.

      ‘Are we celebrating something?’ Miller asked.

      ‘Not exactly, it’s just that champagne always concentrates my mind wonderfully. Drink up, and we’ll decide who’s going to call Roper.’

      Roper listened with considerable calm under the circumstances, but then as the man constantly at the centre of the storm at the Holland Park safe house communication centre, he had long since stopped being surprised at anything.

      ‘So one prayer card is certainly interesting, and two, more than a coincidence.’

      ‘Exactly,’ Dillon said. ‘And three would be enemy action.’

      ‘George Langley’s doing the post-mortem now on Pool, so Ferguson’s still at Rosedene. I’ll give him a call and ask him to have a look in Pool’s wallet. I’ll be back.’

      ‘There you go,’ Dillon said to Miller. ‘Mystery piles on mystery.’

      ‘We’ll wait and see,’ Miller told him. ‘What about a little shut-eye?’

      ‘On a plane? Never.’ Dillon rose and picked up the empty half-bottle of Krug. ‘I’m sure there was another half-bottle in the kitchen. I’ll go and see.’

      At Rosedene, Maggie Duncan, the matron, a no-nonsense

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