A Darker Place. Jack Higgins
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and ended up back in the bar. It was empty, the corporal behind the counter fussing around, stacking bottles.
‘Just in time, sir, I’m closing in fifteen minutes. What can I get you?’
‘A large Scotch, that’ll do it.’
He sat in the corner, his raincoat open, thinking of the nice girl who’d sold him out and the man he’d killed, and it didn’t worry him like it should have. The corporal had the radio on, some late-night show, and someone was singing a Cole Porter number, ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’, filled with heartbreaking and melancholic nostalgia, and Giles Roper knew that whatever happened, he was through with Belfast beyond any argument. First he had to return the Colt .25 to Sergeant Clark and report the loss of a Browning Hi-Power, but not now, not tonight. He needed sleep. He needed peace, and he said goodnight to the corporal and went to bed.
From his emergency kit he took a pill that knocked him out, slept deeply and came to life again at seven. He lay there for a while, thinking about things, and went and had a hot shower. He had a tea-maker in his room and made a cup and stood in his robe thinking of the events of the previous night, moving to the window and looking out.
The rain was worse than ever, absolutely pouring, and the women coming in for the day shift down below crowded through the entrance, many of them with umbrellas. He started to turn away and paused, to look down there again, for a brief moment convinced that he’d seen Jean Murray, but he was mistaken, had to be. The last place she’d show her face, Byron Street. On the other hand, it would be a long time before he forgot the sight of her standing under the lamp after he’d killed her brother.
He had the day shift starting at nine and was just about to get dressed in camouflage overalls when he had a phone call from the orderly room. ‘Message from Major Sanderson, sir. He wants you to join him as soon as possible at the Grand Hotel. General Marple flew in from London last night. Special ways-and-means conference.’
‘I’ll see to it.’
He groaned. Marple from London, which meant full uniform. He dressed quickly, taking it from the dry cleaning bag, grateful it hadn’t been worn. It looked rather good when he checked himself in the mirror, and the ribbons for Ireland and the Military Cross set things off nicely. He adjusted his cap, nodded to himself, took a military trench coat from the wardrobe and went out.
He had his own vehicle on allocation, a Ford pick-up painted khaki green. It was parked in the officers’ sector in the corner of the old schoolyard. Vehicles there were never locked in case of emergencies, and the gate sentries were deemed security enough. He opened the driver’s seat, tossed his trench coat into the rear, and got behind the wheel.
He reached the gate and slowed as the sentry stepped out, raising the bar. ‘You know Jean Murray, don’t you, Fletcher? I thought I saw her earlier.’
‘You did, Captain, but she wasn’t around for long and left again. In fact, I think that’s her over there in the church doorway.’
Roper was aware of a sudden chill, drove out slowly towards the other side of the road, and saw her standing there, soaked to the skin, hair plastered to her skull. She was like a corpse walking.
The moment she saw him, she started down the steps. He pulled up at the kerb and lowered his window. ‘What are you doing here, Jean?’
‘I wanted to give you a present.’ She produced a black plastic control unit about nine inches long. ‘The Howler, Captain. Kenny did finish it, but this isn’t your present. That’s under the passenger seat and, remember, the Howler has two faces. It can switch on as well as switch off.’
She laughed, and it was like no laugh Giles Roper had ever heard in his life, and as he scrabbled under the seat, pulling out the white plastic shopping bag he found there, the world became an infinity of white blinding light, no pain, not at that moment, simply enormous energy as the explosion took him into the eye of the storm.
So, Jean Murray died, killed instantly, just another bomber, a statistic of those terrible years, and the Howler, the Holy Grail, the ultimate answer to the bomb, died with her. Her final act of mad revenge started Giles Roper on a road that encompassed dozens of operations, a time of incredible pain and suffering, and yet it was also a journey of self-discovery and real achievement, as he became one of the most significant figures in the world of cyberspace.
He never disclosed what took place on that last night in Belfast. To the authorities, Jean Murray had just been another bomber, and over the years Roper had come to terms with her and was no longer disturbed by the memory. After all, what she and her brother had intended for him was kidnap, torture and murder. What they had given him unintentionally, was the wheelchair, and the new life that had brought him.
The George Cross had come afterwards, although it was a year and a half before he could face the Queen for her to pin it on. By then, his mother had died, and his wife, totally unable to cope, had moved on, pleaded for a quiet divorce, even with all her Catholic convictions, and finally married a much older man.
Roper was now an indispensable part of Ferguson’s security group, spending most of his time at the Holland Park safe house in front of his computer screens, frequently racked with pain which responded only to whisky and cigarettes, his comfort food, sleeping only in fits and starts and mainly in his wheelchair. Indomitable, as Dillon once said, himself alone, a force of nature.
At 10.30 on the morning following his late-night conversation with Svetlana Kelly, Roper, accompanied by Monica, was delivered to the side entrance in the mews beside Chamber Court off Belsize Avenue. Roper was off-loaded, and a CCTV camera beside an ironbound gate in the high wall scanned them.
A voice, not Svetlana’s, said through the speaker, ‘Would that be Major Roper and Lady Starling?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Doyle told her.
‘I’m Katya Sorin, Svetlana’s companion. The gate will open now. Tell them to follow the path inside, and it will bring them round to the conservatory.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’ The gate buzzed and opened. Doyle said, ‘I’ll wait. I’ve got a couple of newspapers.’
Roper went through into a quiet, ordered world of rhododendron bushes, poplars and cypress trees, a weeping willow. Not much colour around, but it was, after all, February. The path was York stone, but expertly laid so that the going was smooth. They approached a fountain in granite stone, moved on to the large Victorian house, and there was the terrace of the conservatory. A glass door stood open and Katya Sorin waited.
Roper had looked her up. She was forty and unmarried, born in Brighton to a Russian immigrant who had married an English woman. A senior lecturer at the Slade, where she taught painting, she was a successful portrait painter and had even had the Queen Mother sit for her. She also had a considerable reputation in the theatre as a set designer.
She had cropped hair, a kind of Ingrid Bergman look, and wore khaki overalls. ‘It’s lovely to meet you.’ Her handshake was firm. ‘Just follow me.’
She led the way into a delightful conservatory which was a sort of miniature Kew, crammed with plants of every description. Internal folding doors were open, disclosing a large drawing room, fashioned in period Victorian splendour, but Svetlana Kelly sat in the centre of the conservatory in a high wicker chair, a curved wicker table before her, two wicker chairs on the other side of it, obviously waiting for them.
‘My dear Lady Starling, how nice to meet you. Katya and I looked you up on the internet. Brains and beauty, such a wonderful combination.’
Monica had been well prepared by Roper. In a way, she felt she knew them already.
‘And such good bone structure.’