The Deceiver

out—probably to the Germans of the Faction, successors to the Baader-Meinhof gang, who were diminished in numbers but still deadly and prepared to take contract work in exchange for arms.

“Did they ask where you would want the shipment for the American terror group, if they agree to sell?” McCready asked Rowse.

“Yes.”

“And you told them?”

“Anywhere in Western Europe.”

“Plans for getting it to the States?”

“Told them what you said. I’d remove the consignment, which is quite small in bulk, from wherever they delivered it to a rented garage known only to me. I’d return with a camper van or mobile home, with hidden compartments behind the walls. Drive the van north through Denmark, on the ferry to Sweden, up to Norway and take it on one of the many freighters crossing to Canada. Just another tourist on a wild­life-watching vacation.”

“They like that?”

“Terpil did. Said it was neat and clean. Al-Mansour ob­jected that it would mean crossing several national frontiers. I pointed out that in the holiday season, camper vans pour across Europe, and that at each stage I would say I was picking up my wife and kids at the next capital’s airport after they flew in. He nodded several times.”

“All right. We’ve made our pitch. Now we have to wait and see if you’ve convinced them. Or if their greed for revenge against the White House will outweigh natural caution. It has been known.”

“What happens next?” asked Rowse.

“You go back to the hotel. If they swallow the American scheme and include your package in the shipment, al-Mansour will contact you, either personally or by courier. Follow his instructions to the letter. I’ll only close in on you for a situation report when the coast is clear.”

“And if they don’t swallow it?”

“Then they’ll try to silence you. Probably ask Mahoney and his boys to do the job as a sign of good faith. That’ll give you your chance at Mahoney. And the sergeants will be close by. They’ll move in to pull you out alive.”

“The hell they will,” thought Rowse. That would blow away London’s awareness of the plot. The Irish would scatter, and the whole shipment would reach them by another route at another time and place. If al-Mansour came for him directly or indirectly, he would be on his own.

“Do you want a warning bleeper?” asked McCready. “Something to bring us running?”

“No,” said Rowse shortly. There was no point in having one. No one would come.

“Then go back to the hotel and wait,” said McCready. “And try not to tire yourself to exhaustion with the pretty Mrs. Browne. With an ‘e.’ You might need your strength later.”

McCready then drifted away into the throng. He too knew he could not intervene if the Libyans or the Irish came for Rowse. What he had decided to do, in case the Libyan fox had not believed Rowse, was to bring in a far larger team of watchers and to keep an eye on Mahoney. When he moved, the Irish arms consignment would be moving. Now that he had found Mahoney, the IRA man was the better bet as a trace to the shipment.

Rowse completed his tour of the monastery and emerged into the brilliant sunshine to find his car. Bill, from his cover under the pines up on the hill below the tomb of the late President Makarios, watched him go and alerted Danny that their man was on his way back. Ten minutes later, McCready left, driven by Marks. On the way down the hill they gave a lift to a Cypriot peasant standing by the roadside and thus brought Bill back to Pedhoulas.

Fifteen minutes into the forty-minute drive, McCready’s communicator crackled into life. It was Danny.

“Mahoney and his men have just entered our man’s room. They’re ransacking it. Giving it a right going over. Shall I get out on the road and warn him?”

“No,” said McCready. “Stay put and keep in touch.”

“If I speed up, we might be able to overtake him,” sug­gested Marks.

McCready glanced at his watch. An empty gesture. He was not even calculating the miles and the speed to Pedhoulas.

“Too late,” he said. “We’d never catch him.”

“Poor old Tom,” said Bill from the back.

Unusually with subordinates, Sam McCready lost his tem­per. “If we fail, if that load of shit gets through, poor old shoppers at Harrods, poor old tourists in Hyde Park, poor old women and children all over our bloody country,” he snapped.

There was silence all the way to Pedhoulas.

Rowse’s key was still hanging on its hook in the reception lobby. He took it himself—there was no one behind the desk—and walked upstairs. The lock to his room was unda­maged; Mahoney had used the key and replaced it in the lobby. But the door was unlocked. Rowse thought the maid might still be bed-making, so he walked right in.

As he entered, a powerful shove from the man behind the door sent him staggering forward. The door slammed shut, access to it barred by the stocky one. Danny’s long-range photographs had been sent down to Nicosia with the courier before dawn, faxed to London, and identified. The stocky one was Tim O’Herlihy, a killer from the Derry Brigade; the beefy ginger-haired one by the fireplace Eamonn Kane, an enforcer from West Belfast. Mahoney sat in the room’s only armchair, his back to the window, whose curtains had been drawn to filter the brilliant daylight.

Without a word Kane grabbed the staggering Englishman, spun him around, and flattened him against the wall. Skilled hands ran quickly over Rowse’s short-sleeved shirt and down each leg of his trousers. If he had been carrying McCready’s offered bleeper, it would have been discovered and ended the game there and then.

The room was a mess, every drawer opened and emptied, the contents of the wardrobe scattered all over. Rowse’s only consolation was that he carried nothing that an author on a research trip would not have had— notebooks, story outline, tourist maps, brochures, portable typewriter, clothes, and washkit. His passport was in his back trouser pocket. Kane fished it out and tossed it to Mahoney. Mahoney flicked through it, but it told him nothing he did not already know.

“So, Sass-man, now perhaps you’ll tell me just what the fuck you’re doing here.”

There was the usual charming smile on his face, but it did not reach the eyes.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” said Rowse indignantly.

Kane swung a fist that caught Rowse in the solar plexus. He could have avoided it, but O’Herlihy was behind him and Kane was to one side. The odds were loaded, even without Mahoney. These men were not Sunday-school teachers. Rowse grunted and doubled, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily.

“Don’t you now? Don’t you now?” said Mahoney without rising. “Well, normally I have other ways than words of explaining myself, but for you, Sass-man, I’ll make an excep­tion. A friend of mine in Hamburg identified you there a couple of weeks back. Tom Rowse, former captain in the Special Air Service Regiment, well-known fan club of the Irish people, asking some very funny questions. Two tours in the Emerald Isle behind him, and now he turns up in the middle of Cyprus just when my friends and I are trying to have a nice quiet holiday. So once again, what are you doing here?”

“Look,” said Rowse. “Okay, I was in the regiment. But I quit. Couldn’t take any more of it. Denounced them all, the bastards, three years ago. I’m out, well out. The British Establishment wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire. Now I write novels for a living. Thriller novels. That’s it.”

Mahoney nodded to O’Herlihy. The punch from behind caught him in the kidneys. He cried out and dropped to his knees. Despite the odds, he could have fought back and finished at least one of them, maybe two, before going down himself for the last time. But he took the pain and slumped to his knees.

Despite Mahoney’s arrogance, Rowse suspected the terror­ist chief was puzzled. He must have noticed Rowse and Hakim al-Mansour in conversation on the terrace last night, before driving off. Rowse had returned from that all-night session, and Mahoney was on the point of receiving a very big favor from al-Mansour. No, the IRA man had not turned lethal—yet. He was just having fun.

“You’re lying to me, Sass-man, and I don’t like it. I’ve heard this just-doing-my-research story before. You see, we Irish are a very literary people. And some of the questions you have been asking are not literary at all. So what are you doing here?”