Drink With The Devil

Sollazo, who is also my lawyer, will be with you tomorrow.”

“I look forward to meeting him.”

Don Antonio put the phone down. “We have a good source at Green Rapids Detention Center?”

“An excellent one.”

“Phone now. We need a copy of Kelly’s photo as quickly as possible, then get in touch with the airport and tell them to have the Gulfstream ready to go. Let’s say midnight. They’re four hours ahead in Ireland so you’ll be able to see Barry late morning.”

“Of course, Uncle.”

“And then dinner.” Don Antonio smiled. “Suddenly I have quite an appetite.”

IN DUBLIN ON the following morning it was just coming up to noon when Barry answered the sound of the bell at his front door and found Marco Sollazo standing there.

“Mr. Barry?”

“And you’d be Mr. Sollazo?”

“That’s right.”

“Come in for a moment while I get my coat. You’ll have to excuse the mess, I’m on my own these days. My wife died last year.”

Marco Sollazo waited in the small parlour. There was a sofa, two easy chairs, a fireplace, faded family photos of children at various stages of their development. It all fitted with the image of the pleasant-faced sixty-year-old man in the cardigan whom he had just met and yet this man had been for several crucial years Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA.

He came in wearing a raincoat and cloth cap. “We’ll take a walk in the park and then have a drink and a bite to eat at Cohan’s Bar.”

“Anything you like.”

Barry took an umbrella down from a hatpeg in the hall. “Just in case,” he said. “This is Ireland, remember.”

They crossed the road to where the park waited behind green painted railings. Sollazo said, “Your home, is it unsafe to talk there? Do they have you wired for sound?”

“Hell no. Oh, they tried it back in the old days, the British Secret Intelligence Service, Irish Intelligence, Dublin Special Branch. I had my own experts who used to come round once a week and sweep the house. I expect your uncle had to take the same precautions.”

“And still does.”

“Well I’m not Chief of Staff for the IRA anymore.” He smiled. “A time for peace, Mr. Sollazo, that’s what they tell me.”

“So no more IRA?”

Barry laughed out loud. “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. There’s another Chief of Staff in my place, our command structure intact throughout the country, and as your President and the British Prime Minister have found to their cost, we don’t intend to give up our arms.”

“Yes, I understand from the newspapers that the refusal of your people to comply in the matter of arms is a main talking point when the President visits London on Friday.”

“They can talk until they’re blue in the face, it won’t make any difference. We’ll hang on to our arms come what may.”

“You don’t think this peace will last?”

“It never has before.” They turned through the park gates and it started to rain, and Barry raised the umbrella. “I told you it would. Anyway, let’s get down to business.”

Sollazo took the photo his contact at Green Rapids had provided the previous night. “Do you know this man?”

“I certainly do,” Barry nodded. “His name is Michael Ryan, once a notorious gunman for the Loyalist cause, a black Orangeman from Belfast.”

“Would it surprise you to know that he’s been in prison in America for the past ten years?”

Barry smiled. “Now there’s a wonder. He dropped out of sight in nineteen eighty-five, but totally, and I could never figure that out. What did he do?”

“He shot a policeman while robbing a bank. They gave him twenty-five years.”

“Poor sod.” Barry whistled. “He must be sixty-five now. I don’t suppose he’s got much chance of seeing the light of day.”

“Not really. He can apply for probation after fifteen years, but he’d be around seventy by then and not much chance of parole, anyway. He shot a policeman, remember.”

“What name is he using?”

“Liam Kelly. He has a history of heart trouble so they moved him from Ossining to Green Rapids Detention Center. The medical facilities are good and the general hospital in the town is exceptional. He’s visited regularly by his niece, who is a nurse at the hospital. She calls herself Jean Kelly. I’ve seen her. Small and rather ugly in a peasant kind of way. Dark hair, around twenty-five or -six.”

“That would be Kathleen Ryan – she is his niece. Well, now, fancy that and after all these years.” The rain increased in a sudden rush and he took Sollazo by the arm. “Let’s make for the shelter over there. I’d like to hear what you’ve got to say about the Irish Rose.”

WHEN SOLLAZO HAD finished talking, Barry sat there, frowning slightly. Finally he spoke. “Tell me something, why have you come to me?”

“Business,” Sollazo told him, “strictly business. That bullion would be worth one hundred million pounds at today’s prices.”

“And you’d like to get your hands on it?”

“Let me be explicit. My uncle feels that a joint venture would be the way to tackle this affair between ourselves and you of the IRA. A half share each. What could be fairer? If peace fails, fifty million in gold would buy you a great many arms, my friend.”

“Indeed it would, and your uncle, with his usual instinct for doing the right thing, has sent you to entirely the right place and not for the reason you think.”

“I think you should explain.”

“You see, I know as much as anyone about the Irish Rose affair, as much as Ryan himself.”

“But how could you?”

“I know Ryan was up to something, the usual whispers, even a hint that it was gold, so I infiltrated one of my own men into his organization, a man we’ll call Martin Keogh.”

“Not his real name?”

“That’s right. One of my very best operators. He actually was with Ryan every step of the way and took part in the robbery. He was on the Irish Rose when it went down.”

“Tell me,” Sollazo said. “Tell me everything.”

LATER, SITTING IN a corner booth at Cohan’s Bar drinking Guinness and eating ham sandwiches, Sollazo said, “A remarkable story, and this man Keogh? Is he still around?”

“In a manner of speaking. He left the IRA some years ago and worked as a freelance or mercenary, call it what you like. He’s worked for just about everybody in his time, the old KGB, the PLO, even the Israelis.”

“And where is he now?”

“With British Intelligence.”

“That seems rather surprising.”

“The Brits set up a highly secret outfit to combat terrorism and handle the really dirty jobs back in nineteen seventy-two. Since then it’s been headed by a man called Brigadier Charles Ferguson, and he isn’t responsible to the Director of the Security Services. He’s responsible only to the Prime Minister. That’s why it’s known in the trade as the Prime Minister’s Private Army.”

“And the man you call Keogh works for this Ferguson?”