He went downstairs to the hall and pulled on his black raincoat, then took one of the two black felt hats from the hall cupboard and went into the study. Inside the crown of the hat he had sewn two plastic clips. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a.38 Smith and Wesson revolver with a two inch barrel. It fitted snugly into the clips and he put the hat into his holdall. The Stechkin he put in the pocket of his raincoat.
So, he was ready. He glanced once around the study of the cottage which had been his home for so long, then turned and went out. He crossed the yard to the garage, opened the door and switched on the light. His motorcycle stood beside the car, an old 3500: BSA in superb condition. He strapped his holdall on the rear, took the crash helmet from the peg on the wall and put it on.
When he kicked the starter, the engine roared into life at once. He sat there for a moment adjusting things, then he crossed himself and rode away. The sound of the engine faded into the distance and after a while there was only silence.
At that moment in Dublin, Martin McGuiness was watching one of his men put the receiver back on the phone rest.
‘The line’s dead, that’s certain.’
‘That seems more than a little strange to me, son,’ McGuiness said. ‘Let’s pay Liam a visit, and let’s drive fast.’
It took McGuiness and a couple of his men forty minutes to get there. He stood watching while his men released Devlin and the girl and shook his head.
‘Christ, Liam, it would be funny seeing the great Liam Devlin trussed up like a chicken if it wasn’t so bloody tragic. Tell me again? Tell me what it’s about, then.’
He and Devlin went into the kitchen and Devlin filled him in on what had happened. When he was finished, McGuiness exploded. The cunning bastard. On the Falls Road in Belfast City they remember him as a saint, and him a sodding Russian agent pretending to be a priest.’
‘I shouldn’t think the Vatican will be exactly overjoyed,’ Devlin told him.
‘And you know what’s worse? What really sticks in my throat? He’s no fucking Russian at all. Jesus, Liam, his father died on an English gallows for the cause.’ McGuiness was shaking with rage now. ‘I’m going to have his balls.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’
‘You leave that to me. The Pope at Canterbury, is it? I’ll close Ireland up so tight that not even a rat could find a hole to sneak out.’
He bustled out, calling to his men and was gone. Tanya came into the kitchen. She looked pale and tired. ‘Now what happens?’
‘You put on the kettle and we’ll have a nice cup of tea. You know, they say that in the old days a messenger bearing bad news was usually executed. Thank God for the telephone. You’ll excuse me for a few minutes while I go across the road and ring Ferguson.’
BALLYWALTER ON THE COAST just south of Dundalk Bay near Clogher Head could hardly be described as a port. A pub, a few houses, half-a-dozen fishing boats and the tiniest of harbours. It was a good hour and a half after Devlin’s phone call to Ferguson that Cussane turned his BSA motorcycle into a wood on a hill overlooking the place. He pushed his machine up on its stand and went and looked down at Ballywalter, clear in the moonlight below, then he went back to the bike.and unstrapped his holdall and took out the black trilby which he put on his head instead of the crash helmet.
He started down the road, bag in hand. What he intended now was tricky, but clever if it worked. It was like chess really; trying to think not just one move, but three moves ahead. Certainly now was the time to see if all that information so carefully extracted from the dying Danny Malone would prove worthwhile.
Sean Deegan had been publican in Ballywalter for eleven years. It was hardly a full-time occupation in a village that boasted only forty-one men of the legal age to drink, which explained why he was also skipper of a forty-foot motor fishing boatMary Murphy. Added to this, on the illegal side of things, he was not only a member of the IRA, but very much on the active list, having only been released from Long Kesh prison in Ulster in February after serving three years’ imprisonment for possession of illegal weapons. The fact that Deegan had personally killed two British soldiers in Derry had never been traced to him by the authorities.