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It was quiet on the waterfront, water lapping against the breakwater, music playing from somewhere, cooking smells. The boat was a forty-foot cruiser festooned with nets, as Carter had indicated. Two men in knitted caps and reefer coats worked on deck forward of the wheelhouse.
“I know it doesn’t look much, but she can do twenty-five knots,” he said, and called, “Only me,” and added to Ha
He went down the companionway and into the main saloon. There were a couple of charts spread across the table.
“Here you are,” he said. “Salinas, and there’s the villa to the east. I’ve circled it in red.”
They all leaned over the table, and Riley found that he was sweating and felt a distinct need to throw up. It was Ha
“Nothing more for me here, so I’ll go back to the English Café, book a room, then I’ll phone Ferguson on my mobile just to bring him up to date.”
She went up the companionway, the others following. When they reached the deck, Dillon said, “Grand legs you’ve got on you, girl, and well shaped. Must come from pounding the beat when you were a constable.”
“Mind your ma
“You mean there’s still a chance for me?”
“Oh, go to hell,” she said and walked away along the jetty.
“We’d better go and have a look at that chart again,” Carter said and led the way below. Dermot followed, his heart pounding, for he knew this must be it.
Dillon leaned over the table, and Carter said, “By the way, are you carrying, Mr. Dillon?”
“Of course.”
“Your usual Walther?”
It was then, as some instinct, the product of twenty years of the wrong kind of living, told Dillon he was in very bad trouble indeed, that Carter produced a Browning.
“Hands on head, old chap, nothing silly.” He felt in Dillon’s pockets and found the Walther in one of them. “There we are. Hands behind your back.”
Dillon did as he was told, and Carter took some handcuffs from the table drawer and handed them to Riley. “Cuff him.”
Dillon shook his head. “Naughty, Dermot, very naughty.”
“Arnold, get down here,” Carter called in Hebrew.
Dillon, having once worked for Israeli intelligence, recognized the language at once. It was not one of his best, but he knew enough to get by.
One of the seamen appeared in the entrance. “I’m here, Aaron. You’ve got him, then?”
“What does it look like? You and Raphael make ready for sea. I’ve got to go after the woman.”
“Will you kill her?”
“Of course not. We need her to communicate to Ferguson in London. Go on, get moving.” He turned to Riley. “You stay here and watch him.”
“What about my money?” Riley asked thickly.
“You’ll get it when we get there.”
“Get where?”
“Just shut up and do as you’re told,” and he went up the companionway.
Dillon said, “You might as well tell me, Dermot.”
Which Riley did in finest detail, Brown and the visit to Wandsworth, details of the plot as it had been put to him – everything.
“So good old Hakim isn’t up the coast at his villa?”
“I wouldn’t know. I never even heard of him till Brown told me his name.” He shook his head. “You’ve got to realize, Sean, it was Brown who came up with everything, the false ASU arms dump in London, this bloody Hakim fella.”
“And you never communicated with him once after leaving Wandsworth?”
“He said there was no need; that he’d always be on my case.”
“So how did he know we were coming?”
“I asked him about that. He said directional microphones were a wonderful invention. He said you could be in the street and still hear what went on in a house.”
“The BT van in the mews,” Dillon said. “The clever bastards.”
“I’m sorry, Sean, but you’ve got to see it from my point of view. All those years facing me in prison. Brown’s offer was something I couldn’t refuse.”
“Oh, shut up,” Dillon told him, “and get out my wallet.”
Dermot did as he was told. “And what am I supposed to do with this?”
“You’ll find five thousand dollars in assorted bills in there and you’re going to need it, old son. It was my operating money.”
“But they’re paying me twenty thousand pounds,” Riley said. “I don’t need it.”
“Oh, yes, you do, you poor bloody fool,” Dillon told him.
Ha
She felt restless and strangely unsure of herself, thinking of Dillon and the job in hand. She didn’t approve of Dillon, never had. All that killing for the IRA and the work he’d done for just about every terrorist group there was. Of course since working for Ferguson, he’d compensated. But her knowledge of his earlier misdeeds simply wouldn’t go away.
She did an unusual thing for her, went to the bar and ordered a cognac, then she went outside and sat at the small corner table.
“Damn you, Dillon!” she said softly.
Something cold nudged her in the nape of the neck and the man who had called himself Carter said softly, “Don’t turn around, Chief Inspector. I should imagine you’re carrying, so take the weapon from your bag in your left hand and hold it up.”
She did as she was told. “What is this?”
He took the gun from her. “Let’s say all is not what it seems. By the way, we got Hakim for you. Consider that a bonus, but everything else was a means to an end. Poor Dermot, his conscience is killing him, but he did as he was told simply to get out of Wandsworth.”
“But to what purpose?”
“We needed Dillon. Oh, we’ll send him back quite soon and all will be revealed. Tell Ferguson we’ll be in touch and he’ll have to manage without him for a while. Now put your hands on your head.”
There was a short silence. She said, “But why? And what happened to the real Carter and his men?”
There was no reply, and when she turned cautiously he had gone. She went down the steps and hurried along the waterfront, but as she reached the jetty she heard an engine start and then the boat eased away. There was one man in the wheelhouse, another coiling lines in the stern. Nothing to be done, and she turned and hurried along the waterfront.
Carter went down the companionway and found Dillon seated on a bench seat, Riley with a glass in his hand, sitting morosely on the other side of the table.
“Ah, you found the whiskey,” Carter said.
“You saw the Chief Inspector?”
“Yes, and gave her a message for Ferguson.”
“That was kind of you. You were talking Hebrew earlier. I don’t speak it, but I recognize the language. If you’re Israeli, that’s the grand English public-school accent you’ve got.”
“My father was a diplomat in London. I went to St. Paul’s.”
“Not bad. Dermot has revealed all, by the way. So Hakim was just a fantasy?”
“Not at all. The villa exists and Hakim was in residence.”
“You say was?”
“We did you a favor. I dropped in with my boys last night and knocked him off.”
“Just him?”
At that moment, the engines rumbled into life. “Oh, no, we killed all of them.”
“Including the two women?”
Carter shrugged. “No choice, it had to be all of them. The Arab nations are at war with us, Dillon, so it’s all or nothing. As an old IRA hand, I’d have thought you’d appreciate that.”