Drink With The Devil

Scotstown. That’s the area where you landed. Now all I need are the bearings for the position of Irish Rose.” He looked at Ryan. “What was it again, Michael?”

Pale in the face and with great reluctance, Ryan told him. Barry had a ruler and pencil at hand. “A cinch, this. As you can see, the map is marked in degrees top and bottom.” He quickly drew two lines, one bisecting the other. “There you are, three miles out I make it. Just off Rathlin Island. Did you know that, Michael?”

“It was dark.”

“Ah, well, let’s have a look at the Admiralty Chart for the area. I got one of those, too.”

It was larger in scale and covered the Down coast, the Isle of Man, and the northwest of England. He repeated the exercise. “There you go.” He threw down the pencil. “Fifteen to twenty fathoms she’s lying in.”

“Between ninety and a hundred and twenty feet.” Sollazo nodded. “No problem.”

Barry nodded. “When your uncle phoned me last night to say you were taking off, he told me that as far as the preliminary dive to establish the ship’s position was concerned, you’d do it yourself. He said you were an expert scuba diver.”

“I’ve been diving in the Caribbean for years, the Virgins, St. Lucia.” Sollazo shrugged. “Mori dives with me. We can easily handle a dive like this.”

“Your uncle asked me to provide the equipment. I know the right man. Friendly to our cause, you might say. He has a place on a trading estate on the outskirts of Dublin. I thought you and I could take a run in this afternoon.”

“That’s fine. Mori can baby-sit our friends here. He’ll need to be armed. Can you see to that?”

“There’s an arsenal here if you know where to look for it. I’ll see to it.”

“Fuck you, mister,” Kathleen Ryan said and stormed out.

KILREA COLLEGE WAS next to a convent on the outskirts of the village. The garden was a joy, flowers and bushes of every description. The college itself was Victorian, with Gothic gables and leaded windows. Dillon gave the bell pull a tug and it echoed inside. A moment later the door opened and Liam Devlin stood there.

“So there you are, you young bastard,” he said to Dillon, in Irish.

“As ever was,” Dillon replied in the same language.

Devlin turned to Hannah. “And you’ll be that old sod Ferguson’s good right hand, the famous Chief Detective Inspector Hannah Bernstein.” He looked her over with approval. “The lucky one he is and always was. Anyway, cead mile falte, and that’s Irish for a hundred thousand welcomes. Come away in.”

Hannah was totally astonished. She’d expected an old man of eighty-five and instead found someone full of energy and life, still with some color in his hair, wearing a black silk shirt and Armani slacks cut in the latest fashion. The eyes were the bluest she had ever seen and he had the same ironic quirk to his mouth as did Dillon. It was as if they were laughing at a world too absurd to take seriously.

The sitting room was a delight, all very Victorian, from the fire in the grate and the mahogany furniture to the Atkinson Grimshaw paintings. She was examining them when Devlin brought tea from the kitchen on a tray.

“Good God, these are the real thing?”

“Yes, I invested wisely a few years back. I’ve always had a thing for old Grimshaw. Love his night scenes. Whistler once said that to call him the master of the nocturne was false. That anything he knew he’d learned from Grimshaw.”

He poured the tea and Hannah said, “My grandfather has one. The Thames Embankment at Night.”

“Oh, a man of taste and discernment. What does he do?”

“He’s a rabbi.”

Devlin laughed out loud. “Jesus, girl, and that’s a showstopper if ever I heard one.”

Hannah felt suddenly breathless. What an absolutely marvelous, marvelous man. One of the most extraordinary people she’d ever met.

Devlin sat in a chair by the fire. “So it’s working for the Brits now, is it, Sean?”

“Sure and you know I am.”

“Does that give you a problem, Mr. Devlin?” Hannah asked.

“Call me Liam, girl dear. No, whatever I am, I’m no hypocrite. I once worked for Ferguson myself.”

“He didn’t say.” Hannah frowned.

“Well, he wouldn’t. He wanted someone to break an American Irish lad called Martin Brosnan out of a French prison on Belle Island and me being a friend of Martin’s found it difficult to say no.” He glanced at Dillon. “And he no friend of yours, Sean. Told me he thought they’d done for you after you tried to blow up the British War Cabinet during the Gulf War.”

“Yes, well, I was wearing a nylon and titanium waistcoat and it stopped the bullets,” Dillon said.

Devlin laughed. “Nine lives this one, and I taught him everything I know.” He shook his head and there was an edge to his voice. “You know something, Sean, you’re the dark side of me.”

“And you, Liam, are the good side of me,” Dillon said.

Devlin frowned for a moment and then laughed out loud. “You always did have a way with the words.” He shook his head. “Still, let’s get down to business.”

THEY WENT THROUGH all the information available, and Dillon once again gave a meticulous account of the robbery and the voyage to Down on the Irish Rose. When all this was finished, Devlin sat there frowning, a cigarette in one hand.

“All right. First of all, we don’t want the Garda on this. Sure, they could arrest Ryan, hold him until the Americans asked for extradition. They could even hold Kathleen and this fella Sollazo and his bully boy as accessories, but none of that matters. The only thing that does is finding the Irish Rose and making sure that gold can’t be used for the wrong purposes.”

“So what can we do?” Hannah asked. “I mean, if Barry and the Provisional IRA are in this…”

Devlin cut her off. “I don’t think so. Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, and Sinn Fein have a big investment in the peace process. Sure there’s still the problem of persuading the Provos to give up their arms, but nobody wants trouble at the moment, the politics are too finely balanced.” He shook his head. “No, I’ll bet you a fiver the Provisional IRA Army Council know nothing about this.”

“You mean Barry is in this for his own ends?” Hannah asked.

“Oh, no, a true patriot, Jack. My guess is he’ll play it close to his chest because he knows damn well the Army Council don’t want trouble at this stage of the political game.”

“So what do you suggest, Liam?” Dillon demanded.

“I’ll go and see the Chief of Staff and sound him out. I know the Dublin pub where he has a bite to eat at lunchtime every day.”

“And he’ll see you?” Hannah asked.

Devlin laughed out loud. “They all see me, girl dear, I’m the living legend and that can be very useful, but not you and the lad here.” He turned to Dillon. “A time for peace, but there are those who see you as an apostate working for the Brits. They’d like nothing better than putting a bullet in you.”

“And that’s a fact.”

“Take the Chief Inspector to Casey’s in the village. What the English call good pub grub.” He smiled at Hannah. “I’ll see you later.”

THE PUB ON one of the quays on the Liffey was called the Irish Hussar, a haunt of Irish Republicans, and it was already half full when Liam Devlin went in just after noon. Colum O’Brien, Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA, was sitting in a booth at the far end, a pint of Guinness at one hand and a savory-looking dish before him. He tucked a napkin below his chin.

Devlin said, “Shame on you, Colum, and you tucking into a Lancashire Hot Pot, an English dish.”

O’Brien looked up and smiled with genuine pleasure. “Liam, you ould bastard. What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I was in town on business and a man has to eat.” A young woman came over and Devlin said, “I’ll have the same as your man here.”

“And give him a large Bushmills whiskey,” O’Brien said. “Only the best for Liam Devlin.”

The young woman was truly shocked. “You’re Liam Devlin? I’ve heard of you since I was a child. I thought you