‘Garbo is not unknown to me,’ she said, ‘and I’m duly flattered. However, you still have not told me what it says for you?’
‘A profound question when one considers the day,’ Devlin told her. ‘At seven o’clock this morning, they celebrated a rather special Mass in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The Pope together with cardinals from Britain and the Argentine.’
‘And will this achieve anything?’
‘It hasn’t stopped the British Navy proceeding on its merry way or Argentine Skyhawks from attacking it.’
‘Which means?’
‘That the Almighty, if he exists at all, is having one hell of a joke at our expense.’
Tanya frowned. ‘Your accent intrigues me. You are not English, I think?’
‘Irish, my love.’
‘But I thought the Irish were supposed to be extremely religious?’
‘And that’s a fact. My old Aunt Hannah had callouses on her knees from praying. She used to take me to Mass three times a week when I was a boy in Drumore.’
Tanya Voroninova went very still. ‘Where did you say?’
‘Drumore. That’s a little market town in Ulster. The church there was Holy Name. The thing I remember most was my uncle and his cronies, straight out from Mass and down the road to Murphy’s Select Bar.’
She turned, her face very pale now. ‘Who are you?’
‘Well, one thing’s for sure, girl dear.’ He ran a hand lightly over her dark hair. ‘I’m not Cuchulain, last of the dark heroes.’
Her eyes widened and there was a kind of anger as she plucked at his coat. ‘Who are you?’
‘In a manner.of speaking, Viktor Levin.’
‘Viktor?’ She looked bewildered. ‘But Viktor is dead. Died somewhere in Arabia a month or so ago. My father told me.’
‘General Maslovsky? Well, he would, wouldn’t he? No, Viktor escaped. Defected, you might say. Ended up in London and then Dublin.’
‘He’s well?’
‘Dead,’ Devlin said brutally. ‘Murdered by Mikhail Kelly or Cuchulain or the dark bloody hero or whoever you want
to call him. The same man who shot your father dead twenty-three years ago in the Ukraine.’
She sagged against him. His arm went round her in support, strong and confident. ‘Lean on me, just put one foot in front of the other and I’ll take you outside and get you some air.’
They sat on a bench in the Tuileries Gardens and Devlin took out his old silver case and offered her a cigarette. ‘Do you use these things?’
‘No.’
‘Good for you, they’d stunt your growth and you with your green years ahead of you.’
Somewhere, he’d said those self-same words before, a long, long time ago. Another girl very much like this one. Not beautiful, not in any conventional sense, and yet always there would be the compulsion to turn and take a second look. There was pain in the memory that even time had not managed to erase.
‘You’re a strange man,’ she said, ‘for a secret agent. That’s what you are, I presume?’
He laughed out loud, the sound so clear that Tony Hunter, seated on a bench on the other side of the Henry Moore exhibit reading a newspaper, glanced up sharply.
‘God save the day.’ Devlin took out his wallet and extracted a scrap of pasteboard. ‘My card. Strictly for formal occasions I assure you.’
She read it out loud. ‘Professor Liam Devlin, Trinity College, Dublin.’ She looked up. ‘Professor of what?’
‘English literature. I use the term loosely, as academics do, so it would include Oscar Wilde, Shaw, O’Casey, Brendan Behan, James Joyce, Yeats. A mixed bag there. Catholics and Prods, but all Irish. Could I have the card back, by the way? I’m running short…’
He replaced it in his wallet. She said, ‘But how would a professor of an ancient and famous university come to be involved in an affair like this?’
‘You’ve heard of the Irish Republican Army?*
‘Of course.’
‘I’ve been a member of that organization since I was sixteen years of age. No longer active, as we call it. I’ve some heavy reservations about the way the Provisionals have been handling some aspects of the present campaign.’
‘Don’t tell me, let me guess.’ She smiled. ‘You are a romantic at heart, I think, Professor Devlin?’