“Ask Dillon.”
Russo embraced him, kissed him on both cheeks. “What a blessing.”
Below, the Gate of Fear opened and a number of young, rather scrawny bulls ran out. Young men postured and started to flutter their capes.
“Years ago, Dillon used to come and see me, and being younger and foolish, I’d get up to the kind of nonsense we’re seeing now.”
“A bit of fun,” Billy said.
“Most of the time, but every so often, amongst the young bulls, there is a special one, and I picked it one day. I tried the cape, slipped, it tossed me over its shoulder and this one”—he nodded to Dillon—“vaulted over the barrera down into the arena, and when the bull turned to charge, he dropped on his knees, tore open his shirt.”
“Jesus,” Billy said.
“He called, ‘Hey, toro, just for me.’ The bull came to a halt and two peons pushed me away and the bull stood there snorting and Dillon walked up to it and patted it on the muzzle.”
“What happened?”
“The crowd roared, overflowed the barrera into the ring, carried him round on their shoulders. It couldn’t have been louder on the Playa in Madrid. In the bars here, they used to call him the man who seeks death, and what he did that day is known as the Pass of Death.”
Billy turned to Dillon, who said, “Maybe that’s what I was looking for all this time. Who knows? Now can we go and get a drink? There’s something I need to discuss.”
The café close to the Playa wasn’t too busy at that time in the morning. Inside, the place was light and airy, the walls whitewashed, the bar top marble, bottles crammed against the mirror behind. Bullfighting posters were all over the walls. Four fierce-looking gypsies sat at a table drinking grappa and playing cards. Two young men sat in the corner with guitars and countered each other. The bartender was old and ugly, the scar from a horn in his left cheek.
“A friendly lot,” Billy said.
“If they’re on your side.” Russo called to the barman. “Whiskey all round, Barbera.”
“Not me,” Billy said.
Russo turned to Dillon. “He doesn’t drink?”
“No, he just kills people.”
“But only when necessary,” Billy said.
Russo shook his head. “I must be getting old.”
The whiskey was brought, they toasted each other. “Salut,” Russo said. “What’s it all about, then?”
Dillon told him.
Afterward, Russo said, “Trust you, Dillon, to take on not only the IRA but the Russian Federation. You couldn’t make it easy, could you? But I see where you’re coming from. The woman, the police superintendent. That was dirty. They shouldn’t have done that, and to use the young nurse, then kill her.” He shook his head.
“So what do we do?” Billy asked.
“Oh, I still have considerable influence on this island,” Russo told him. “My name is enough. To start with, I’ll call the receptionist at the Sanders Hotel.”
He took out his mobile and made the call. “This is Russo. What can you tell me about an Irishman called Fitzgerald? Moved in, then moved out. Where did he go?”
The call lasted several minutes. He finally switched off. “Interesting. He left on the overnight ferry for Khufra on the Algerian coast, two hundred miles away. Apparently he’s a friend of Dr. Tomac, who owns the Trocadero and just about everything else in Khufra and is, on occasion, a business associate of mine.”
“Go on,” Dillon said.
Russo did, not forgetting to mention Levin and Greta.
“Well, we know who he is and she’s the mysterious Mary Hall,” Dillon said.
“So what’s your connection with this Dr. Tomac?”
“Cigarette smuggling mainly. There’s more money in that than hard drugs these days, and the court sentences are infinitely smaller. I have a diving concession there. Eagle Deep. It’s exceptional diving. Special clients book me to fly them over in one of my floatplanes.”
“Would we be special clients?” Dillon asked.
“Well, let’s say I owe you, my friend, and anyway, as we’re not into the tourist season, there isn’t much trade and I’m bored and this sounds interesting.”
“Then let’s do it,” Dillon said. “I couldn’t be happier.”
At Tijola, Russo gave Pedro his orders when they loaded the plane, then said to Dillon, “You’re still flying?”
“I keep my hand in.”
“Then it’s all yours.”
He sat beside Dillon, Billy behind. Dillon strapped himself in, fired the engine, allowed the Eagle to slip down the runway into the harbor, let the wheels up and called the tower at Ibiza airport. He indicated his destination; there was a pause and then he got the good word. He taxied out to sea past the end of the pier, turned into the wind and boosted power. He pulled back the column at exactly the right moment and the Eagle climbed effortlessly over an azure sea and lifted.
“How’s it feel?” Russo asked.
“Couldn’t be better.”
Russo opened the map compartment, reached in and produced a Browning. “I presume you two are tooled up?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good, because this is the Khufra we’re going to, where anything goes.”
THE KHUFRA
Chapter 9
Dr. Henry Tomac was very large, sixteen or seventeen stone, wore a creased fawn linen suit and a Panama hat, even though he was sitting at a booth at his pride and joy, the Trocadero. Awnings at the front kept it cool and dark, the great fans in the ceiling rotating relentlessly.
The barmen were Algerians, dressed in white shirts and trousers, scarlet bands at the waist, the headwaiter wearing a scarlet tarbush. You could eat at the Trocadero as well as drink, and the company was mixed and very rough, but Tomac had a number of villainous-looking men who kept things in order, because Tomac demanded order and what Tomac said went in Khufra town.
He sat at his private booth, waving the odd fly out of the way when Dermot Fitzgerald entered, worked his way through the tables, put down his bag and stood there.
“May I join you?”
“Dear boy. Of course you may. Champagne, Abdul,” he called to the headwaiter.
“You may not want to.”
“Oh, dear, have you been a bad boy again?” He savored the champagne Abdul poured. “All right, tell me.”
So this Russian agent Levin and the Novikova woman, you got word that they were coming, that’s it? And you’ve come over because you’re worried they might intend to do away with you?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, they are. The receptionist at Sanders Hotel gave me a phone call earlier. Told me about a couple, a good-looking man and woman, most interested in your whereabouts. It fits in neatly with a call I’ve had from Captain Omar at the airstrip, about a Russian executive jet, and a good-looking man and woman, on their way here. Their pilot brought them in on behalf of Belov International. I’m impressed, Dermot.”
“What can I do?”
“Well, I’m not sure—because there’s another strange thing. I’ve had a second call from my friend, the receptionist at the Sanders Hotel. He’s had a query about your whereabouts from a man he couldn’t afford to offend. A business acquaintance of mine.”
“Who?”
Tomac told him.
Fitzgerald was totally thrown. “I don’t know this person. Mafia? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, well, he obviously knows you. He flies floatplanes here, runs a dive center. Maybe he’s acting for certain people in London who’d like to lay hands on you. You seem to be in demand, Dermot.”
“Help me, for God’s sake.”
“It will cost you.”
“How much? I can pay well.”
“Get out of sight. You can use my apartment. If necessary, I’ll send you to the house at Zarza in the marshes, or one of the diving boats might be better. We’ll see.”
Fitzgerald cleared off, and a few moments later, Levin and Greta appeared, followed by a waiter with their bags. They paused at the top of the stairs, Greta causing quite a stir, then came down and crossed to the bar. Tomac stood up.
“Miss Hall.” He put her hand to his lips. “No more delightful visitor has graced my poor establishment.”
“Dr. Tomac.”
“At your service.” It was like a game they were playing.
“I dislike subterfuge. For good reasons I have been traveling incognita. I am, in fact, Major Greta Novikova. This is Captain Igor Levin of the Russian GRU. We’re here on State business, serious business.”
Tomac managed to look grave. “Please join me. Have the bags sent to the rooms, Abdul. Have some champagne served. This is obviously a matter of the highest importance. Have you spoken of this to Captain Omar, our chief of police?”
As the champagne arrived, Greta said, “In Ibiza we were told that in Khufra there was only one person worth talking to, and that is you, Doctor.”
“You flatter me, Major.” He toasted them. “Your very good health. Now, in what way may I assist you?”
“We seek a young man named Dermot Fitzgerald.”
“For what reason?”
“To save him from those who mean him more than ill will,” she said. “His life could be in danger.”
“Two men, we suspect,” Levin said. “One called Dillon—Irish. The other, Salter.”
“Good heavens.” Tomac managed to look shocked, and at that moment a plane roared quite low overhead.
“What would that be?” Greta asked.
Tomac glanced out. “Oh, a floatplane from Ibiza, Eagle Air. They come in all the time and tie up by the dive center. Look, this is all very disturbing. Why don’t you settle into your rooms and we’ll talk again?”
“I look forward to it.”
Greta walked toward the bottom of the stairs, followed by Levin, who paused and turned. “By the way, you didn’t say whether you know Fitzgerald.”
“No, I didn’t, did I.”
Tomac adjusted his Panama, picked up his stick and walked out.
Dillon made an excellent landing outside the harbor, and Russo took over and taxied round to the other side of the pier. There were a couple of sizable dive boats tied up to a small jetty, a flat-roofed white building with a canopy of deep blue, and a notice that said “Eagle Deep Dive Center.” There was a concrete ramp, as on Ibiza, and Russo dropped his wheels to taxi up.
An Arab was tidying up on the deck of one of the boats and two heavily tanned men stripped to the waist and in jeans were drinking beer in the stern of the other. They both looked around forty, long hair, muscular, fit.
“Not Arab,” Dillon said.
“No, that one is on the other boat, Ibrahim. The others are mine, not only good Italians, but Mafia. The one with the scar on his cheek is Jack Romano. The other is Tino Cameci. They like it here. It’s like a holiday. I phoned before we left. We’re expected. I said you were a master diver looking for action.”
“Well, so is the boy wonder here. Did you mention Fitzgerald?”
“Yes. Romano says they know him. You see the other dive center a hundred yards along? Tomac owns that.” There were three dive boats. “Along with most things here. They tell me Fitzgerald hangs out there when he’s around.”
He took the Eagle up on the ramp and switched off. Romano and Cameci came to greet them and Ibrahim came also and got their luggage. Dillon held on to a briefcase.
“We didn’t expect you for a while, boss,” Romano said in Italian.
“Something came up. Dillon here is like a brother to me.”
Romano’s eyes widened. “The Dillon who saved your son, your wife, may she rest in peace?”
“My friend here doesn’t speak Italian,” Dillon said.
“But a gangster of the first rank in London. His uncle, his capo, saved my bacon in that great city years ago, so we are all friends. Let’s have a drink on it and we’ll discuss why we’re here.”
Sitting under a canopy in the stern of Eagle One was very pleasant. They split a bottle of Chianti, ice cold because Russo liked it that way.
Romano said, “We know this guy Fitzgerald. He’s been coming on and off for a couple of years. He’s a friend of Tomac. Dives from his joint.”
“Is he any good?” Billy asked.
“He thinks he is. You and Dillon, so you both dive?”
Billy smiled. “It’s been known.”
Dillon opened his briefcase and took a computer sheet out. “This Fitzgerald has been a student at London University. I got a friend of mine to access his file. This is his photo. You confirm it’s him?”
They both examined it. “Definitely,” Romano said. “And you tell me he’s IRA?”
“Well, I was IRA and I did many things, but to persuade a young nurse to give this woman, my sick friend, an overdose, then shoot the nurse dead when she’s done her work. I don’t think I ever did a thing like that.”
“It’s a thing no man should do.” Jack Romano bit his thumb.
Cameci said, “Infamita.”
“Well, let’s have another drink to a suitable death for him.” Russo reached for the bottle and Tomac came along the boardwalk.
“Tomac’s come visiting.”
Tomac paused, Ibrahim on Eagle Two bobbed his head to him and there was a brief exchange.
Dillon murmured, “Fruits of a misspent youth, but I speak Arabic. Tomac said, ‘I see you, Ibrahim.’ Ibrahim said, ‘I see you, Effendi.’ Tomac said, ‘Remember who your friends are.’ ”
“Is that so?” Russo said, but by that stage Tomac was at the gangway.
“Ah, my good friend Russo. Permission to come aboard.” All this was delivered with perfect bonhomie.
“Why not?”
Romano stood up and gave him a hand, and Tomac eased his great body along the gangway and made it to a chair.
“Have a glass of Chianti,” Russo told him. “Ice cold, just the way you like it.”
“The way you like it.” Tomac wiped his sweaty face with a large handkerchief and nodded. “Gentlemen.”
“Allow me to introduce Mr. Dillon and Mr. Salter,” Russo said. “I’ve just flown them from Ibiza.”
“Ah, here for the diving, gentlemen?”
Dillon said, “I hear it’s spectacular. I was urged to visit by an Irish friend, one Dermot Fitzgerald.”
“I don’t think I know him.”
Dillon took the photo from the briefcase again. “Perhaps you recognize him?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Of course, I can’t be expected to remember all our customers. Many people come to dive here. You will be staying long?”
“As long as it takes,” Billy said.
“Do you intend to stay at the Trocadero?”
“No, we’ll spend the night here,” Russo told him.
“How agreeable, but I’d be desolated if you failed to visit my poor establishment before you leave.” He heaved himself up. “Until later.” He negotiated the gangway and departed.