Drink with the Devil - Jack Higgins

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going on is that you leave the gangway alone until I’ve gone down it,’ Keogh said.

      Dolan tried to rush him and Keogh swiped him across the face with the Walther. Dolan staggered back with a cry of pain and Keogh went down the gangway. He turned at the bottom and smiled up at Tully.

      ‘To our next merry meeting at Marsh End.’

      ‘Bastard!’ Tully called.

      Keogh laughed and walked away through the rain.

      Jack Barry was sitting at the desk of his study when the portable phone went.

      Keogh said, ‘It’s me.’

      Barry said, ‘Where are you?’

      ‘Wapping High Street in old London Town.’

      ‘So what’s happening?’

      ‘You were right about the gold.’

      ‘Is that a fact? Tell me.’

      ‘It’s complicated, but here goes,’ and Keogh went through the whole business step-by-step.

      When he was finished, Barry said, ‘Christ, but it’s the ruthless bastard you are. Will Tully play?’

      ‘He will. A hundred thousand pound pay day. He isn’t going to turn that down.’

      ‘Right. Let’s say everything works. What happens on board the Irish Rose once you put to sea? They’ll try to take you.’

      ‘Of course, but we’ll be prepared.’

      ‘You, Ryan and his niece? God save us all.’

      ‘Oh, He will, He will. What about the Kilalla end?’

      ‘Oh, I think I can promise you an interesting reception. A considerable contribution to IRA funds. It could win us the war.’

      ‘Just think of that,’ Keogh told him, ‘and it’s only taken seven hundred years.’

      Barry laughed. ‘Go on, dark hero, get on with it and keep in touch,’ and he switched off his phone.

      In the parlour at the William & Mary, Ryan and Kathleen sat at the table and listened to what Keogh had to say. Keogh helped himself to a Bushmills on the side.

      Bell said, ‘You shot him?’

      ‘Only a little.’ Keogh sipped a little Bushmills. ‘The lobe of his right ear.’

      Kathleen’s face was infused with excitement. ‘That taught the bastard a lesson.’

      Ryan said, ‘You think he’ll still come?’

      ‘Of course he will. He wants his hundred thousand pounds.’

      ‘But he’ll try for more on the run to Ulster?’

      ‘Yes, well we know that so we’ll just have to be prepared, won’t we?’

      ‘I suppose so.’ Ryan took a deep breath. ‘We’ll catch the Glasgow Express in the morning. We’ll leave at Carnforth and take the local train to Barrow.’

      ‘Then what?’

      ‘We’ll be met,’ Ryan told him. ‘Something else I didn’t tell you. I have a cousin who runs a sheep farm in the Lake District not far from Ravenglass. But enough of that now. I’m for bed. We’ll need an early start.’

      As the Irish Rose moved down the Thames, Tully stood at the wheel, his head disembodied in the light of the binnacle. His right ear was covered by a taped bandage. The door of the wheelhouse opened and Dolan entered with a mug in one hand. He put it down by the wheel.

      ‘Tea,’ he said. ‘Are you OK?’

      ‘I’m fine,’ Tully told him.

      ‘So what about that little bastard?’

      ‘Oh, when the right time comes I’m going to cut his balls off.’ Tully reached for the mug and drank some tea. ‘There’s an old Sinn Fein saying: Our day will come. Well mine certainly will where Keogh’s concerned.’

      He swung the wheel and increased power.

       3

      The Glasgow Express wasn’t particularly busy. Keogh sat opposite Kathleen at a corner table. Ryan took the one opposite. Almost immediately he opened his briefcase and took out a file. He started to work his way through it, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.

      The girl took the copy of The Midnight Court from her carrying bag and an Irish dictionary which she put on one side. A strange one, Keogh thought, a strange one indeed. He sat there gazing out of the window wondering what she would say, what her reaction would be if she knew he was everything she hated. A Roman Catholic and an IRA enforcer. God, but the fat would be in the fire the day that got out.

      About an hour out of London an attendant appeared pushing a trolley with tea, coffee, sandwiches and newspapers. Ryan stopped working and took a coffee. The girl asked for tea and so did Keogh. He also bought The Times and the Daily Mail and spent the next hour catching up on the news.

      There wasn’t much on the Irish situation. A bomb in Derry which had taken out six shops in one street, a tit-for-tat killing of two Catholics on the Falls Road, retaliation for the shooting of a Protestant in the Shankill and an Army Air Corps helicopter flying in to the command post at Crossmaglen had come under machine-gun fire. Just another day, they’d say in Ulster.

      And then, half-way through The Times, he came to an article entitled HOW LONG, OH LORD, HOW LONG? It was written by a retired Member of Parliament, once a Minister at the Northern Ireland Office, who not unreasonably felt that sixteen years of bloody war in Ireland was enough. His preferred solution was an independent Ulster as a member of the British Commonwealth. Incredible how naive on the subject even politicians could be.

      Keogh closed the paper, lit a cigarette and sat back, watching the girl. To his amusement he saw that she frequently consulted the dictionary. She glanced up and saw him smile.

      She frowned. ‘What’s so funny?’

      ‘Not much. You just seem to be having some difficulty with that.’

      ‘It’s not easy. I only started learning three months ago. There’s a phrase here that’s damned difficult to work out.’

      Keogh, a fluent Irish speaker, could have helped, but to disclose the fact would have been a serious error. People who spoke Irish were Catholics and Nationalists, it was as simple as that.

      Ryan had finished the file, put it back in his briefcase and leaned back in the corner, closing his eyes.

      ‘He seems tired,’ Keogh observed.

      ‘He does too much, almost burns himself out. He’s a believer, you see. Our cause is everything to him. Meat and drink.’

      ‘You too, I think.’

      ‘You have to have something to believe in in this life.’

      ‘In your case, the death of your family gave you that?’

      ‘The murder of my family, Martin, the murder.’

      There was no answer to that, could never be. Her face was white and intense, eyes filled with rage.

      Keogh said, ‘Peace, girl dear, peace. Go on, read your book,’ and he picked up the Daily Mail and started on that.

      Another half hour and the attendant returned. They had more tea, and ham sandwiches. Ryan was still asleep.

      ‘We’ll leave him be,’ the girl said.

      They ate in companionable silence. When they were finished Keogh lit another cigarette. ‘Sixteen, Kate, and the whole of life ahead of you.

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