Touch The Devil Read online

  Downing Street was crowded with departing guests, many of them on foot, moving on to look for taxis elsewhere. Brosnan joined the cheerful crowd, turned the corner into Whitehall, and walked briskly away.

  It was perhaps five minutes later that the Prime Minister finished her memo. She got up, went around the desk and started for the door, intending to go downstairs again. She glanced casually at the champagne and glasses on the tray as she went by, and stopped abruptly. Then she turned and hurried back to her desk and flicked the intercom.

  Ferguson said, “He’s gone, ma’am, not a sign of him.”

  “There wouldn’t be, would there? Not now.”

  The rose lay on the desk between them. Ferguson said, almost plaintively, “I don’t understand. What on earth was he playing at?”

  “But it’s so simple, Brigadier, don’t you see?” She picked up the rose. “No one is safe, that’s what your Mr. Brosnan is saying to us. The kind of world we’ve created.”

  Ferguson went cold, and she laid the rose down very carefully. “And now, Brigadier, I’d better get back to whatever guests I have left.”

  He opened the door for her and she passed through.

  * * *

  Music was playing again as Brosnan stepped through the judas into the warehouse, and the light was on in the office high above him. He went up the steel steps slowly and opened the door. Lily Winter was sitting at the desk examining an antique necklace with an eyeglass. The Doberman got up and pushed himself against Brosnan.

  She took out the eyeglass and looked up at him for a long moment. “So, you went to make war and made peace instead.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Fool.” She took a bottle of brandy from a drawer and a glass and filled it. “Here. Do you think I would have helped you in the first place if I had not sensed it in you?”

  “I stood as close to her as I am to you,” Brosnan said, and the glass shook in his hand. “There were some winter roses in a vase. I put one on the tray and left.”

  “A fine romantic gesture, and what does it prove?”

  “I’ve made a separate peace,” Brosnan said. “A separate peace.” He lay down on the bunk against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “Suddenly I feel old—really old. You know what I mean?”

  “I know,” she said.

  Her voice seemed to come from a long distance. He closed his eyes, and after a while the glass slipped from his hand, and he slept.

  SIXTEEN

  In a private room on the third floor of the Mountjoy Nursing Home in Dublin, Liam Devlin tried to possess himself in patience as the staff nurse removed the dressing from his shoulder and arm. The matron, a formidable lady as stiff as her starched headdress, stood behind the surgeon, watching as he inspected his handiwork.

  “Very nice,” he said. “Very nice indeed.” He nodded to the staff nurse. “Fresh dressing, please.”

  Devlin said plaintively, “For God’s sake, Patrick, when can I go home? A terrible place, this. Not a drink in sight, and they even try to stop you smoking.”

  “A week, Liam,” the surgeon, himself a distinguished professor of Trinity College, said. “Another week and I’ll think about it.” He turned to the matron. “Terrible injuries these car crashes cause. Terrible. He’s a lucky man.”

  “And tobacco and whisky won’t help,” she said. “I’m sure you agree, professor?”

  “Yes, of course. You’re quite right.” She opened the door for him, and he turned to Devlin and shrugged helplessly. “I’ll look in again tomorrow, Liam.”

  When the door closed, Devlin said, “God, she’s a hard one, and that’s the truth.”

  The staff nurse smiled as she finished replacing the dressing and bandages. “Now you don’t really expect me to comment on that, do you, Professor Devlin? I’ll bring your tea in half an hour.”

  She went out, and he lay back against the pillow. There was a timid knock at the door, and a young probationer looked in. She carried a long thin parcel wrapped in gold paper with a bow on it.

  “And what in the blazes is that?” Devlin demanded.

  “Interflora. It’s just been delivered. Shall I open it for you?”

  “That would seem to be a sound idea.”

  He lay there watching as she stood at the table removing the wrapping. “That’s interesting.” She turned, holding a plastic tube containing a single rose. “Somebody loves you, professor.”

  Devlin lay there looking at it for a long moment. “Is there a card?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “No, there wouldn’t be.”

  “You know who it’s from?”

  “Oh, yes,” Devlin said softly. “I know who it’s from. Just leave it on the bed.”

  She went out, and he lay there looking at the rose and then he smiled. “Now then, Martin,” he said softly, “a small celebration would appear to be in order, surely.”

  He reached over, wincing with pain, got the cupboard open at the side of his bed, and took out a bottle of Bushmills and a pack of cigarettes.

  It was one of the most beautiful evenings Anne-Marie Audin had ever known. She sat at an easel on the edge of the cliffs below Devlin’s cottage, painting very fast, trying to catch the last of the evening light. Killaia Bay was below her, and across the water in the far distance, the mountains of Donegal were a purple shadow.

  There was a step behind her. She didn’t look around, some sixth sense telling her who it must be, and Brosnan said, “You get better all the time. That background wash is fantastic.”

  She looked up and frowned. “What happened to your hair?”

  “It’s a long story.” He lit a cigarette and crouched beside her.

  “A change of heart?” she asked.

  “Something like that. I’d forgotten how peaceful it is here.”

  She stopped painting and turned to look at him, her face somber in the evening light. “But for how long, Martin?”

  He had no answer for her—no answer at all. The sea was calm, and the sky the color of brass. A storm petrel cried harshly as it dipped above their heads and fled across the water.

  About the Author

  Jack Higgins is the most famous pseudonym of Harry Patterson, a former don and now one of the world’s most successful thriller writers. Every one of his books since The Eagle Has Landed, including Solo and Luciano’s Luck, has been an international bestseller.