‘There’s no such thing,’ Devlin told him. ‘About a thousand years ago, I flew from Germany to Ireland in a Dornier bomber on behalf of England’s enemies and jumped by parachute from six thousand feet. I’ve never got over it.’
They reached Hunter’s Peugeot in the car park and as they drove away, Hunter said, ‘You can stay the night with me. I’ve got an apartment on the Avenue Foch.’
‘Doing well for yourself, son, if you’re living there. I didn’t know Ferguson handed out bags of gold.’
‘You know Paris well?’
‘You could say that.’
‘The apartment’s my own, not the Department’s. My father died last year. Left me rather well off.’
‘What about the girl? Is she staying at the Soviet Embassy?’
‘Good God, no. They’ve got her at the Ritz. She’s something of a star, you see. Plays rather well. I heard her do a Mozart concerto the other night. Forgotten which one, but she was excellent.’
‘They tell me she’s free to come and go?’
‘Oh, yes, absolutely. The fact that her foster father is General Maslovsky takes care of that. I followed her all over the place this morning. Luxembourg Gardens, then lunch on one of those boat trips down the Seine. From what I hear, her only commitment tomorrow is a rehearsal at the Conservatoire during the afternoon.’
‘Which means the morning is the time to make contact?’
‘I should have thought so.’ They were well into Paris by now, just passing the Gare du Nord. Hunter added, ‘There’s a bagman due in from London on the breakfast shuttle with documentation Ferguson’s having rushed through. Forged passport. Stuff like that.’
Devlin laughed out loud. ‘Does he think all I have to do is ask and she’ll come?’ He shook his head. ‘Mad, that one.’
‘All in how it’s put to her,’ Hunter suggested.
‘True,’ Devlin told him. ‘On the other hand, it would probably be a damned sight easier to slip something in her tea.’
It was Hunter’s turn to laugh now. ‘You know, I like you, Professor, and I’d started off by not wanting to.’
‘And why could that be?’ Devlin wondered, interested.
‘I was a captain in the Rifle Brigade. Belfast, Derry, South Armagh.’
‘Ah, I see what you mean.’
‘Four tours between nineteen seventy-two and seventy-eight.’
‘And that was four tours too many.’
‘Exactly. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, they can give Ulster back to the Indians.’
‘The best idea I’ve heard tonight,’ Liam Devlin told him cheerfully and he lit a cigarette and sprawled back in the passenger seat, felt hat tilted over his eyes.
At that moment in his office at KGB Headquarters in Dzerhin-sky Square, Lieutenant-General Ivan Maslovsky was seated at his desk, thinking about the Cuchulain affair. Cherny’s message passed on by Lubov, had reached Moscow only a couple of hours earlier. For some reason it made him think back all those years to Drumore in the Ukraine and Kelly in the rain with a gun in his hand, the man who wouldn’t do as he was told.
The door opened and his aide, Captain Igor Kurbsky, came in with a cup of coffee for him. Maslovsky drank it slowly. ‘Well, Igor, what do you think?’
‘I think Cuchulain has done a magnificent job, Comrade General, for so very many years. But now…’
‘I know what you mean,’ Maslovsky said. ‘Now that British Intelligence knows he exists it’s only a matter of time until they run him down.’
‘And Cherny they could pull in at any time.’
There was a knock at the door and an orderly appeared
with a signal message. Kurbsky took it and dismissed him. ‘It’s for you, sir. From Lubov in Dublin.’
‘Read it!’ Maslovsky ordered.
The gist of the message was that Devlin was proceeding to Paris with the intention of meeting with Tanya Voroninova. At the mention of his foster-daughter’s name, Maslovsky stood up and snatched the signal from Kurbsky’s hands. It was no secret, the enormous affection the General felt for his foster-daughter, especially since the death of his wife. In some quarters he was known as a butcher, but Tanya Voroninova he truly loved.
‘Right,’ he said to Kurbsky. ‘Who’s our best man at the Paris Embassy? Belov, isn’t it?’