His superiors had every faith in him, and had given himcarte blanche to extend the system, which explained the existence of a small Ulster market town called Drumore in the depths of the Ukraine.
The room he used as an office when visiting from Moscow was conventional enough, with a desk and filing cabinets, a large map of Drumore on the wall. A log fire burned brightly on an open hearth and he stood in front of it enjoying the
heat, nursing a mug of strong black coffee laced with vodka. The door opened behind him as the man in the leather coat entered and approached the fire, shivering.
'God, but it's cold out there.'
He helped himself to coffee and vodka from the tray on the desk and moved to the fire. Paul Cherny was thirty-four years of age, a handsome good-humoured man who already had an international reputation in the field of experimental psychology; a considerable achievement for someone born the son of a blacksmith in a village in the Ukraine. As a boy of sixteen, he had fought with a partisan group in the war. His group leader had been a lecturer in English at the University of Moscow and recognized talent when he saw it.
Cherny was enrolled at the University in 1945. He majored in psychology, then spent two years in a unit concerned with experimental psychiatry at the University of Dresden, receiving a doctorate in 1951. His interest in behaviourist psychology took him to the University of Peking to work with the famous Chinese psychologist, Pin Chow, whose speciality was the use of behaviourist techniques in the interrogation and conditioning of British and American prisoners of war in Korea.
By the time Cherny was ready to return to Moscow, his work in the conditioning of human behaviour by the use of Pavlovian techniques had brought him to the attention of the KGB and Maslovsky in particular, who had been instrumental in getting him appointed Professor of Experimental Psychology at Moscow University.
'He's a maverick,' Maslovsky said. 'Has no respect for authority. Totally fails to obey orders. He was told not to carry a gun, wasn't he?'
'Yes, Comrade Colonel.'
'So, he disobeys his orders and turns a routine exercise into a bloodbath. Not that I'm worried about these damned dissidents we use here. One way of forcing them to serve their country. Who were the policemen, by the way?'
'I'm not sure. Give me a moment.' Cherny picked up the telephone. 'Levin, get in here.'
'Who's Levin?' Maslovsky asked.
'He's been here about three months. A Jewish dissident, sentenced to five years for secretly corresponding with relatives in Israel. He runs the office with extreme efficiency.'
'What was his profession?'
'Physicist - structural engineer. He was, I think, involved with aircraft design. I've every reason to believe he's already seen the error of his ways.'
'That's what they all say,' Maslovsky told him.
There was a knock on the door and the man in question entered. Viktor Levin was a small man who looked larger only because of the quilted jacket and pants he wore. He was forty-five years of age, with iron-grey hair, and his steel spectacles had been repaired with tape. He had a hunted look about him, as if he expected the KGB to kick open the door at any moment, which, in his situation, was a not unreasonable assumption.
'Who were the three policemen?' Cherny asked.
'The sergeant was a man called Voronin, Comrade,' Levin told him. 'Formerly an actor with the Moscow Arts Theatre. He tried to defect to the West last year, after the death of his wife. Sentence - ten years.'
'And the child?'
Tanya Voroninova, his daughter. I'd have to check on the other two.'
'Never mind now. You can go.'
Levin went out and Maslovsky said, 'Back to Kelly. I can't get over the fact that he shot that man outside the bar. A direct defiance of my order. Mind you,' he added grudgingly, 'an amazing shot.'
'Yes, he's good.'
'Go over his background for me again.'
Maslovsky poured more coffee and vodka and sat down by the fire and Cherny took a file from the desk and opened it.' 'Mikhail Kelly, born in a village called Ballygar in Kerry. That's in the Irish Republic. 1938. Father, Sean Kelly, an IRA
activist in the Spanish Civil War where he met the boy's mother in Madrid. Martha Vronsky, Soviet citizen.'
'And as I recall, the father was hanged by the British?'
'That's right. He took part in an IRA bombing campaign in the London area during the early months of the Second World War. Was caught, tried and executed.'
'Another Irish martyr. They seem to thrive on them, those people.'
'Martha Vronsky was entitled to Irish citizenship and continued to live in Dublin, supporting herself as a journalist. The boy went to a Jesuit school there.'
'Raised as a Catholic?'
'Of course. Those rather peculiar circumstances came to the attention of our man in Dublin who reported to Moscow. The boy's potential was obvious and the mother was persuaded to return with him to Russia in 1953. She died two years later. Stomach cancer.'
'So, he's now twenty and intelligent, I understand?'
'Very much so. Has a flair for languages. Simply soaks them up.' Cherny glanced at the file again. 'But his special talent is for acting. I'd go so far as to say he has a genius for it.'
'Highly appropriate in the circumstances.'
'If things had been different he might well have achieved greatness in that field.'
'Yes, well he can forget about that,' Maslovsky commented sourly. 'His killing instincts seem well developed.'
'Thuggery is no problem in this sort of affair,' Cherny told him. 'As the Comrade Colonel well knows, anyone can be trained to kill, which is why we place the emphasis on brains when recruiting. Kelly does have a very rare aptitude when using a handgun, however. Quite unique.'
'So I observed,' Maslovsky said. 'To kill like that, so ruthlessly. He must have a strong strain of the psychopath in him.'
'Not in his case, Comrade Colonel. It's perhaps a little difficult to understand, but as I told you, Kelly is a brilliant actor. Today, he played the role of IRA gunman and he
carried it through, just as if he had been playing the part in a film.'
'Except that there was no director to callcut,' Maslovsky observed, 'and the dead man didn't get up and walk away when the camera stopped rolling.'
'I know,' Cherny said. 'But it explains psychologically wh) hehad to shoot three men and why he fired at Murphy in spite of orders. Murphy was an informer. He had to be seen to be punished. In the role he was playing, it was impossible for Kelly to act in any other way. That is the purpose of the training.'
'All right, I take the point. And you think he's ready to go out into the cold now?'
'I believe so, Comrade Colonel.'
'All right, let's have him in.'
Without the hat and the raincoat Mikhail Kelly seemed younger than ever. He wore a dark polo-neck sweater, a jacket of Donegal tweed and corduroy slacks. He seemed totally composed, almost withdrawn, and Maslovsky was conscious of that vague feeling of irritation again.
'You're pleased with yourself, I suppose, with what happened out there? I told you not to shoot the man Murphy. Why did you disobey my orders?'
'He was an informer, Comrade Colonel. Such people need to be taught a lesson if men like me are to survive.' He shrugged. 'The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. Lenin said that. In the days of the Irish revolution, it was Michael Collins's favourite quotation.'
'It was a game, damn you!' Maslovsky exploded. 'Not the real thing.'
'If we play the game long enough, Comrade Colonel, it can sometimes end up playing us,' Kelly told him calmly.
'Dear God!' Maslovsky said and it had been many years since he had expressed such a sentiment. 'All right, let's get on with it.' He sat down at the desk, facing Kelly. 'Professor Cherny feels you are ready to go to work. You agree?'
zo
'Yes, Comrade Colonel.'
'Your task is easily stated. Our chief antagonists are America and Britain. Britain is the weaker of the two and its capitalist edifice is being eroded. The biggest thorn in Britain's side is the IRA. You are about to become an additional thorn.'
The colonel leaned forward and stared into Kelly's eyes. 'You are from now on a maker of disorder.'
'In Ireland?'
'Eventually, but you must undergo more training in the outside world first. Let me explain your task further.' He stood up and walked to the fire. 'In nineteen fifty-six, the IRA Army Council voted to start another campaign in Ulster. Three years later, and it has been singularly unsuccessful. There is little doubt that this campaign will be called off and sooner rather than later. It has achieved nothing.'
'So?' Kelly said.
Maslovsky returned to the desk. 'However, our own intelligence sources indicate that eventually a conflict will break out in Ireland of a far more serious nature than anything that has gone before. When that day comes, you must be ready for it, in deep and waiting.'
'I understand, Comrade.'
'I hope you do. However, enough for now. Professor Cherny will fill you in on your more immediate plans when I've gone. For the moment, you're dismissed.'
Kelly went out without a word. Cherny said, 'He can do it. I'm certain of it.'
'I hope so. He could be as good as any of the native sleepers and he drinks less.'
Maslovsky walked to the window and peered out at the driving rain, suddenly tired, not thinking of Kelly at all, conscious, for no particular reason, of the look on the child's face when she had attacked the Irishman back there in the square.
'That child,' he said. 'What was her name?'
'Tanya - Tanya Voroninova.'
'She's an orphan now? No one to take care of her?'
'Not as far as I know.'
'She was really quite appealing and intelligent, wouldn't you say?'
'She certainly seemed so. I haven't had any dealings with her personally. Has the Comrade Colonel a special interest?'
'Possibly. We lost our only daughter last year at the age of six in the influenza epidemic. My wife can't have any more. She's taken a job in some welfare department or other, but she frets, Cherny. She just isn't the same woman. Looking at that child back there in the square made me wonder. She might just fit the bill.'
'An excellent idea, Comrade, for everyone concerned, if I may say so.'
'Good,' Maslovsky said, suddenly brightening. 'I'll take her back to Moscow with me and give my Susha a surprise.'
He moved to the desk, pulled the cork from the vodka bottle with his teeth and rilled two glasses. 'A toast,' he said. 'To the Irish enterprise and to...' He paused, frowning, 'What was his code name again?'
'Cuchulain,' Cherny told him.
'Right,' Maslovsky said. 'To Cuchulain.' He swallowed the vodka and hurled his glass into the fire.
WHEN MAJOR TONY VILLIERS entered the officers' mess of the Grenadier Guards at Chelsea Barracks, there was no one there. It was a place of shadows, the only illumination coming from the candles flickering in the candelabra on the long, polished dining-table, the light reflected from the mess silver.
Only one place was set for dinner at the end of the table, which surprised him, but a bottle of champagne waited in a silver ice bucket, Krug 1972, his favourite. He paused, looking down at it, then lifted it out and eased the cork, reaching for one of the tall crystal glasses that stood on the table, pouring slowly and carefully. He moved to the fire and stood there, looking at his reflection in the mirror above it.
The scarlet tunic suited him rather well and the medals made a brave show, particularly the purple and white stripes of his Military Cross with the silver rosette that meant a second award. He was of medium height with good shoulders, the black hair longer than one would have expected in a serving soldier. In spite of the fact that his nose had been broken at some time or other, he was handsome enough in a dangerous kind of way.
It was very quiet now, only the great men of the past gazing solemnly down at him from the portraits, obscured by the shadows. There was an air of unreality to everything and for some reason, his image seemed to be reflected many times in the mirror, backwards into infinity. He was so damned thirsty. He raised the glass and his voice was very hoarse - seemed to belong to someone else entirely.
'Here's to you, Tony, old son,' he said, 'and a Happy New Year.'
He lifted the crystal glass to his lips and the champagne
was colder than anything he had ever known. He drank it avidly and it seemed to turn to liquid fire in his mouth, burning its way down and he cried out in agony as the mirror shattered and then the ground seemed to open between his feet and he was falling.
A dream, of course, where thirst did not exist. He came awake then and found himself in exactly the same place as he had been for a week, leaning against the wall in the corner of the little room, unable to lie down because of the wooden halter padlocked around his neck, holding his wrists at shoulder level.
He wore a green headcloth wound around his head in the manner of the Balushi tribesmen he had been commanding in the Dhofar high country until his capture ten days previously. His khaki bush shirt and trousers were filthy now, torn in many places, and his feet were bare because one of the Rashid had stolen his suede desert boots. And then there was the beard, prickly and uncomfortable, and he didn't like that. Had never been able to get out of the old Guards' habit of a good close shave every day, no matter what the situation. Even the SAS had not been able to change that particular quirk.
There was the rattle of a bolt, the door creaked open and flies rose in a great curtain. Two Rashid entered, small, wiry men in soiled white robes, bandoliers criss-crossed from the shoulders. They eased him up between them without a word and took him outside, put him down roughly against the wall and walked away.
It was a few moments before his eyes became adjusted to the bright glare of the morning sun. Bir el Gafani was a poor place, no more than a dozen flat-roofed houses with the oasis trimmed by palm trees below. A boy herded half a dozen camels down towards the water trough where women in dark robes and black masks were washing clothes.
In the distance, to the right, the mountains of Dhofar, the most southern province of Oman, lifted into the blue sky.
Little more than a week before Villiers had been leading Balushi tribesmen on a hunt for Marxist guerrillas. Bir el Gafani, on the other hand, was enemy territory, the People's Democratic Republic of the South Yemen stretching north to the Empty Quarter.
There was a large earthenware pot of water on his left with a ladle in it, but he knew better than to try to drink and waited patiently. In the distance, over a rise, a camel appeared, moving briskly towards the oasis, slightly unreal in the shimmering heat.