smiled gently and there was a kind of sadness there. ‘I’ve heard you on records. You have a remarkable talent.’
‘So have you.’ She felt stronger now. ‘For death and destruction. They chose you well. My foster-father knew what he was doing.’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Nothing is ever that simple. I happened to be available. The right tool at the right time.’
She took a deep breath. ‘What happens now?’
‘I thought we were supposed to be having dinner together, you, I and Liam,’ he said.
The porch door banged open and Devlin walked in. Tanya?’ he called and then paused. ‘Oh, there you are. So you two have met?’
‘Yes, Liam, a long, long time ago,’ Harry Cussane told him, and his hand came out of the right pocket of his jacket holding the Stechkin he had taken from Lubov.
At the cottage, he found cord in the kitchen drawer. ‘The steaks smell good, Liam. Better turn the oven off.’
‘Would you look at that?’ Devlin said to the girl. ‘He thinks of everything.’
‘The only reason I’ve got this far,’ Cussane said calmly.
They went into the living room. He didn’t tie them up, but motioned them to sit on the sofa by the fire. He stepped on to the hearth, reached up inside the chimney and found the Walther hanging on its nail that Devlin always kept there for emergencies.
‘Keeping you out of temptation, Liam.’
‘He knows all my little secrets,’ Devlin said to Tanya. ‘But then he would. I mean, we’ve been friends for twenty years now.’ The bitterness was there in the voice, the shake of raw anger, and he helped himself to a cigarette from the box on the side table without asking permission and lit it.
Cussane sat some distance away at the dining table and held up the Stechkin. These things make very little sound, old friend. No one knows that better than you. No tricks. No foolish Devlin gallantry. I’d hate to have to kill you.’
He laid the Stechkin on the table and lit a cigarette himself.
‘Friend, is it?’ Devlin said. ‘About as true a friend as you are priest.’
‘Friend,’ Cussane insisted, ‘and I’ve been a good priest. Ask anyone who knew me on the Falls Road in Belfast in sixty-nine.’
‘Fine,’ Devlin said. ‘Only even an idiot like me can make two and two make four occasionally. Your masters put you in deep. To become a priest was your cover. Would I be right in thinking that you chose that seminary outside Boston for your training because I was English Professor there?’
‘Of course. You were an important man in the IRA in those days, Liam. The advantages that the relationship offered for the future were obvious, but friends we became and friends we stayed. You cannot avoid that fact.’
‘Sweet Jesus!’ Devlin shook his head. ‘Who are you, Harry? Who are you really?’
‘My father was Sean Kelly.’
Devlin stared at him in astonishment. ‘But I knew him well. We served in the Lincpln Washington Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Just a minute. He married a Russian girl he met in Madrid.’
‘My mother. My parents returned to Ireland where I was born. My father was hanged in England in nineteen-forty for his part in the IRA bombing campaign of that time. My mother and I lived in Dublin till nineteen-fifty-three, then she took me to Russia.’
Devlin said, ‘The KGB must have fastened on you like leeches.’
‘Something like that.’
They discovered his special talents,’ Tanya put in. ‘Murder, for example.’
‘No,’ Cussane answered mildly. ‘When I was first processed by the psychologists, Paul Cherny indicated that my special talent was for the stage.’
‘An actor, is it?’ Devlin said. ‘Well, you’re in the right job for it.’
‘Not really. No audience, you see.’ Cussane concentrated
on Tanya. ‘I doubt whether I’ve killed more than Liam. In what way are we different?’
‘He fought for a cause,’ she told him passionately.
‘Exactly. I am a soldier, Tanya. I fight for my country -our country. As a matter of interest, I’m not an officer of the KGB. I am a lieutenant-colonel in Military Intelligence.’ He smiled deprecatingly at Devlin. ‘They kept promoting me.’