‘No need to panic. They don’t know who I am and they aren’t likely to find out now that I’ve disposed of Levin.’
‘But me?’ Cherny said. ‘If Levin told them about Drumore all those years ago, he must have told them of my part in it.’
‘Of course. You’re under surveillance now. IRA variety, not British Intelligence, so I wouldn’t worry just yet. Get in touch with Moscow. Maslovsky should know about this. He might want to pull us out. I’ll phone you again tonight. And don’t start worrying about your tail. I’ll take care of it.’
Cherny went out and Cuchulain watched through a crack in the door as Michael Murphy slipped from behind the pillar and followed him. There was a bang as the sacristy door opened and shut and an old cleaning woman came down the aisle as the priest in alb and black cassock, a violet stole around his shoulders, came out of the confessional box.
‘Are you finished, Father?’
‘I am so, Ellie.’ Harry Cussane turned, a smile of great charm on his face as he slipped off the stole and started folding it.
Murphy, with no reason to think that Cherny was doing anything other than return to college, stayed some distance
behind him. Cherny stopped and entered a telephone box. He wasn’t in it for long and Murphy, who had paused under a tree as if sheltering from the rain, went after him again.
A car drew into the kerb in front of him and the driver, a priest, got out, went round and looked at the nearside front tyre. He turned and catching sight of Murphy, said, ‘Have you got a minute?’
Murphy slowed, protesting, ‘I’m sorry, Father, but I’ve an appointment.’
And then the priest’s hand was on his arm and Murphy felt the muzzle of the Walther dig painfully into his side. ‘Easy does it, there’s a lad. Just keep walking.’
Cussane pushed him to the top of stone steps that went down to a decaying wooden jetty below. They moved along its broken planks, footsteps echoing hollowly. There was a boathouse with a broken roof, holes in the floor. Murphy wasn’t afraid, but ready for action, waiting his chance.
That’ll do,’ Cussane said.
Murphy stayed, his back towards him, one hand on the butt of the automatic in his raincoat pocket. ‘Are you a real priest?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Cussane told him. ‘Not a very good one, I’m afraid, but real enough.’
Murphy turned slowly. His hand came up out of the raincoat, already too late. The Walther coughed twice, and the bullet caught Murphy in the shoulder spinning him around. The second bullet drove him headfirst into a ragged hole in the floor and he plunged down into the dark water below.
Dimitri Lubov, who was supposedly a commercial attache at the Soviet Embassy, was, in fact, a captain in the KGB. On receiving Cherny’s carefully worded message, he left his office and went to a cinema in the city centre. It was not only relatively dark in there, but reasonably private, for few people went to the cinema in the afternoon. He sat in the back row and waited and Cherny joined him twenty minutes later.
‘Is it urgent, Paul?’ Lubov said. ‘Not often we meet between fixed days.’
‘Urgent enough,’ Cherny said. ‘Cuchulain is blown. Mas-lovsky must be informed as soon as possible. He may want to pull us out.’
‘Of course,’ Lubov said, alarmed. Til see to it as soon as I get back, but hadn’t you better fill me in on the details?’
Devlin was working in his study at the cottage, marking a thesis on T. S. Eliot submitted by one of his students, when the phone rang.
Ferguson said, ‘It’s a fine bloody mess. Someone must have coughed at your end. Your IRA cronies are not exactly the most reliable people in the world.’
‘Sticks and stones will get you nowhere,’ Devlin told him. ‘What do you want?’
‘Tanya Voroninova,’ Ferguson said. ‘Harry told you about her?’
‘The little girl from Drumore who was adopted by this Maslovsky character. What about her?’
‘She’s in Paris at the moment to give a series of piano concerts. The thing is, being foster-daughter to a KGB general gives her a lot of leeway. I mean, she’s considered an excellent risk. I thought you might go and see her. There’s an evening flight from Dublin direct to Paris. Only two and a half hours, Air France.’