The President’s Daughter

“And you expect Ferguson to get my sentence squashed for that?” Riley shook his head. “Maybe if he’d been able to nick an ASU.” He shrugged. “It won’t do.”

“Yes, he’ll want more and you’re going to give it to him. Two years ago, an Arab terrorist group called the Army of God blew up a Jumbo as it was lifting off from Manchester. More than two hundred people killed.”

“So.”

“Their leader was a man called Hakim al Sharif. I know where he’s been hiding. I’ll tell you and you tell Ferguson. There’s nothing he’d like better than to get his hands on that bastard, and he’s certain to use Dillon to pull the job off.”

“And what do I do?”

“You offer to go with him, to prove you’re genuine in this thing.” Brown smiled. “It will work, Mr. Riley, but only if you do exactly as I tell you, so listen carefully.”

Brigadier Charles Ferguson’s office was on the third floor of the Ministry of Defense overlooking Horse Guards Avenue. He sat at his desk, a large, untidy man with a shock of gray hair, wearing a crumpled fawn suit and a Guards Brigade tie. He was frowning slightly as he pressed his intercom.

“Brigadier?”

“Is Dillon there, Chief Inspector?”

“Just arrived.”

“I’ll see the both of you. Something’s come up.”

The woman who led the way was around thirty and wore a fawn Armani trouser suit. She had close-cropped red hair and black horn-rimmed spectacles. She was not so much beautiful as someone you would look at twice. She could have been a top secretary, a company director, and yet this was Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Bernstein, product of an orthodox Jewish family, M.A. in Psychology from Cambridge, father a professor of surgery, grandfather a rabbi, both hugely shocked when she had elected to join the police. A fast-track career had taken her to Special Branch, from where Ferguson had procured her secondment as his assistant. In spite of her appearance and the crisp English upper-class voice, she had killed in the line of duty on three occasions to his knowledge, had taken a bullet herself.

The man behind her, Sean Dillon, was small, no more than five feet five, with the kind of fair hair that was almost white. He wore dark cords and an old black leather flying jacket, a white scarf at his throat. His eyes seemed to lack any kind of color and were very clear and he was handsome enough, a restless, animal vitality to him. The left corner of his mouth was permanently lifted into the kind of smile that said he didn’t take life too seriously, perhaps never had.

“God save the good work, Brigadier,” he said cheerfully in the distinctive accent that was Ulster Irish.

Ferguson laid down his pen and removed his reading glasses. “Dermot Riley. He ring a bell for you, Dillon?”

Dillon took out an old silver case, selected a cigarette, and lit it with a Zippo lighter. “You could say that. We were not much more than boys fighting together in the hard days in the seventies in the Derry Brigade of the Provisional IRA.”

“Shooting British soldiers,” Hannah Bernstein said.

“Well, they shouldn’t have joined,” Dillon told her cheerfully and turned back to Ferguson. “He was lifted last year by Scotland Yard’s Antiterrorist Squad right here in London. Supposed to have been a member of one of the Active Service Units.”

“As I recall, they found Semtex at his lodgings and assorted weaponry.”

“True,” Dillon said, “but when they stood him up at the Old Bailey, he wouldn’t cough. They sent him down for fifteen years.”

“And good riddance,” Hannah said.

“Ah, well, now, everyone has their own point of view,” Dillon told her. “To you he’s a terrorist, whereas Dermot sees himself as a gallant soldier fighting a just cause.”

“Not anymore he doesn’t,” Ferguson said. “I’ve just had a call from the Governor at Wandsworth Prison. Riley wants to do a deal.”

“Really?” Dillon had stopped smiling, a slight frown on his face. “Now why would he want to do that?”

“Have you ever been inside Wandsworth, Dillon? If you had, you’d know why. Hell on earth, and Riley’s had six months to sample it and another fourteen and a half years to go, so let’s see what he’s got to say.”

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