A Prospect of Vengeance

'In the cricket, Reg.' Knowing that Buller despised all sports, he felt he was somehow reasserting himself. 'It was rather depressing, as I recall.'

'You can say that again! That whole bloody winter was depressing — '

'I meant the cricket.' Quite deliberately, he decided to keep the man in his place by ignoring 'Mad Dog' for the moment.

'What did your chap on The People have to tell you, then?'

'Huh!' Buller licked his lips, as though he had just remembered that the pubs were open again (in so far as they ever closed in Fleet Street). 'He'd just seen his gaffer —

Robert Maxwell in person — comin' down from on high en route to his helicopter pad . . . An' 'e looks around — Captain Bob looks around — an' sez: 'Ah! probably the largest electronic newsroom in Europe!'' He grinned at Ian. 'Which is what he always says, apparently. An' no one takes the slightest notice of 'im — ' The grin congealed suddenly, as he realized what was happening. 'You don't remember 'Mad Dog' O'Leary, then?'

'Of course I do.' Ian attempted a superior Tully-expression.

'He tried to blow up the Northern Ireland Secretary in Yorkshire, at some university ceremony. And then they cornered him, and shot him. So what?'

'So what? So what — ?' Reg Buller spluttered slightly. Then dummy2

he pointed at the brightly projected headlines. 'It's all there, damn it!'

Ian had to study the words again —

Cornered at last in a remote Yorkshire beauty spot, 'Mad Dog' O'Leary died as he lived yesterday afternoon: in a hail of gunfire —

The only thing odd about that, it seemed to him, was there were too many words in the first sentence, including a subordinate clause, for good tabloid journalism.

Tipped off by informants, British Secret Service agents gunned him down without mercy. But he killed an innocent girl before he died —

Nothing odd about that, either. Except another subordinate clause, anyway. 'I don't see what's all there, Reg. You tell me

— ?'

'Christ, man!' Reg Buller started rewinding the microfilm at break-neck pace, stopping and starting with other arresting headlines — BREAD: PANIC BUYING — HOME LOANS

SHOCK . . . and OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN SPEAKS OUT —

swearing all the while. Then he stopped rewinding and swearing, and adjusted the focus. 'There, then!'

dummy2

They were back to the abortive bombing of the University of North Yorkshire, when the Mad Dog had failed to kill the Northern Ireland Secretary, and half the university faculty with him, ' thanks to the selfless heroism of a British Secret Service agent masquerading as a professor, in mortar-board and gown' .

'So — ?' For a guess, it was the same reporter — or the same rewrite man, and the same sub-editor, acting on the same instructions from an editor or proprietor who had either decided that the Security Service needed a bit of favourable PR, or had been successfully lobbied to the same effect; but, either way, that repetition of the legendary 'British Secret Service', with all its nuances of James Bond, was a dead give-away. Because no one on the spot would ever have used that description. And now, in the post-Peter Wright era, it wouldn't have been fashionable: most likely, it would have been 'SAS marksmen', if not the Special Branch's anti-terrorist squad.

Buller was shaking his head, though. 'You haven't really looked — have you?'

'At the papers?' He had read more responsible accounts than this one, of the same event. There's more in the Guardian, Reg— '

'This is the one that matters. This is my man, who was there before any of the big ones.' Buller grimaced at him. 'But you're also forgetting what I told you yesterday, before Johnny and the Lady disturbed us — an' afterwards, when dummy2

they'd gone off.'

More accurately, when Buller had ordered them off, thought Ian: Jenny through the front door, to take off one watcher; and then John Tully, through the back way, to draw away his comrade. And then, after Reg had lunched on bread-and-cheese and a bottle of Pere Patriach (the Cologne beer being exhausted), Ian himself had been ordered into the rain ('although I don't reckon they'll have put anyone on you, seeing as you don't do much at the sharp end anymore . . .

But, just in case, anyway — ?'); and, although that had been insulting, he had obeyed; but now he must remember what had passed between them before he had done so.

'About David Audley, you mean, Reg?' Buller had talked with

'a bloke I know', was what he remembered: with Reg Buller there was an inevitable succession of 'blokes', from dukes to dustmen, via policemen and journalists, all of whom seemed to owe him one favour for another; but in this instance it had been almost certainly ('No names — right?') one of his old Special Branch mukkers —

Buller nodded, only half mollified by such a simple correct answer. 'Look how it stacks up: 'masquerading as a professor', eh? And 'mortar-board an' gown' — ? Who'd they choose for that — that's got the balls to do it, as well, in cold blood?'

There was more here than either Reg himself or his favourite newspaper had said. 'In cold blood?'

Another nod. 'Somebody carried O'Leary's bomb out of that dummy2