A Darker Place (7 page)

The guards on either side of the gate stayed in their sentry boxes. They knew him well. After all, everyone did. “A hell of a night for it, sir,” one of them called cheerfully as he raised the bar. “Whatever it is.”

Roper smiled back just as cheerfully, pausing for a moment, looking out into that Belfast street that as far as he was concerned was like no other street in any city in the world.

“All right,” he murmured to himself. “Let’s get moving.” He slipped out and turned toward Cohan’s.

 

 

JEAN MURRAY STOOD in the entrance of the bar, sheltering from the rain. She had a large old-fashioned umbrella ready and seemed impatient. “So there you are. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“Will I do?” Roper asked.

She looked him over. “I suppose so. But keep that gob of yours shut. You sound as if you’ve been to Eton or somewhere like that.” She opened the umbrella. “Let’s get moving.”

He fell into step beside her as she walked rapidly. “A rotten night for it.”

“Don’t rub it in. I’ve only had a sandwich all day and I’m starving.”

He kept up with her obediently, passing through one mean street after another, the river not far away. “A hard life, living in a place like this.”

“Well, the British government in London never gave a damn about Belfast, that’s for sure. The forgotten city. Did you know the Luftwaffe blitzed it worse than Liverpool during the war?”

“I suppose they were after Harland and Wolff and the shipyards. They built the
Titanic
here, didn’t they?”

“Jesus and Mary, that’s history, mister,” she said. “It’s what happens now that’s real and the future of this country.”

Jesus and Mary.
Strange on the lips of a young Protestant girl, and he slipped a hand in his pocket and found the butt of the Browning, and then she laughed harshly. “What in the hell is getting into me, talking like a fugging Fenian? It must be the weather.”

They had moved into an area of decaying warehouses and a place where the Union Canal emptied into the river. There were narrow decaying Victorian buildings, like something out of Dickens, an old iron footbridge, and a sign saying “Conroy’s Flour Mill.” An old-fashioned lamp was bracketed above the door, illuminating the area, and there was a light at the window above it.

“Here we are,” she said, and led the way up a narrow wooden stairway. The door at the top stood open, light shining down. “Kenny, we’re here,” she called, paused for a moment so that Roper could see the table in the center of a sizable room, littered with a variety of technical equipment, tools, and vises. She stepped forward, Roper following, his hand in his pocket on the butt of the Browning.

The door slammed behind him, the muzzle of a pistol was rammed against the side of Roper’s skull, and a hard Ulster voice said, “Easy now, or I’ll blow your brains out. Hands high.” Roper did exactly as he was told. He was patted, the Browning soon found. “A Hi-Power? You’ve got taste.” He was pushed toward the table. “Over there and turn.”

Roper did and found himself facing a small wiry young man, hair almost shoulder length, a Beretta automatic in his left hand. He dropped the Browning into the right pocket of the old reefer jacket he wore, and grinned, making him look quite amicable.

“The great man himself.”

“And you’ll be Kenny Murray?”

“As ever was.”

“And there’s no Howler?”

Murray laughed. “Not here, bomb man, not here. It exists, though. I’m working to perfect it all the time.”

“I’m impressed you’d bother,” Roper said. “After all, your purpose is to make bombs explode.”

“It is indeed, but the scientist in me can’t resist a challenge.” Roper turned to Jean, who had taken a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and was lighting one. “Oh, Jean, you disappoint me, turning out to be a decent Catholic girl after all.”

“And you thinking I was some Prod bitch. All the worse for you.” There was anger there, but perhaps at herself.

“So what’s the reason for all this? If you’d wanted to shoot me, you would have,” he said to Kenny.

“You’re absolutely right. I’d love to have taken care of that, but I’m under orders. There are those who would like to have words with you. Information’s the name of the game. Our bomb makers would appreciate the chance to squeeze you dry. So let’s get going. You first.”

“If you say so.”

Roper opened the door and stood for a moment at the top of those dark stairs. He found the rail with his left hand and started down. There was only one thing to do and he’d only get one chance, so halfway down he slipped deliberately in the shadows, cursing and gripping the rail, reaching for the Colt in the ankle holder. In the ensuing scramble, he dropped it in his raincoat pocket.

“Watch it, for Christ’s sake,” Kenny ordered.

“It’s not my fault. The place is a death trap.” Roper hauled himself up and continued.

Kenny laughed. “Did you hear that, Jean?” he said to his sister behind him. “The man’s a bloody comic.”

Roper went out, his right hand in his pocket, and started over the bridge. Halfway across, he paused and turned. “There’s just one thing you should know, you Fenian bastard.”

Kenny stood facing him, holding the Beretta against his right thigh. “And what would that be, bomb man?” he asked amicably.

“You made a mistake. You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

His hand swung up and he shot Kenny between the eyes twice, the hollow-point cartridges fragmenting the back of his skull. Kenny spun around and half fell across the iron rail of the bridge. Jean screamed. Roper leaned down, caught the body by one ankle, and heaved it over into the fast-moving canal.

“There you go,” Roper said. “Are you satisfied now, Jean?”

She started to back away. “Ah, sweet Jesus and Mother Mary. What have I done?”

“You’ll be asking yourself that till your dying day,” Roper told her.

She seemed to suddenly pull herself together. “You’re not going to kill me?” she whispered.

He didn’t say a word, turned, and walked away across the bridge, and behind him she started to sob bitterly, the sound echoing across the waters of the canal that had swept her brother into the River Lagan and out to sea.

 

 

HE WALKED ALL the way back through mean rain-washed streets, the sound of shooting in the distance, walking carefully on side-walks scattered with broken glass, passing bombed-out buildings boarded up. All of a sudden, it had all caught up with him, too many long and weary years, too much killing, too much death.

He made it to Byron Street without getting stopped once, which was something of a surprise, and ended up back in the bar. It was empty, the corporal behind the counter fussing around, stacking bottles.

“Just in time, sir, I’m closing in fifteen minutes. What can I get you?”

“A large scotch, that’ll do it.”

He sat in the corner, his raincoat open, thinking of the nice girl who’d sold him out and the man he’d killed, and it didn’t worry him as it should have. The corporal had the radio on, some late-night show, and someone was singing a Cole Porter number, “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” filled with heartbreaking and melancholic nostalgia, and Giles Roper knew that whatever happened, he was through with Belfast beyond any argument. For the moment he had to return the Colt .25 to Sergeant Clark and report the loss of a Browning Hi-Power, but not now, not tonight. He needed sleep. He needed peace, and he said good night to the corporal and went to bed.

 

 

HE TOOK a pill from his emergency kit, which knocked him out; he slept deeply and came to life again at seven. He lay there for a while, thinking about things, and went and had a hot shower. He had a tea maker in his room, and he made a cup and stood in his robe thinking of the events of the previous night, moving to the window and looking out.

The rain was worse than ever, absolutely pouring, and the women coming in for the day shift down below crowded through the entrance, many of them with umbrellas. He started to turn away and paused to look down there again, for a brief moment convinced that he’d seen Jean Murray, but he was mistaken, had to be. The last place she’d show her face was Byron Street. On the other hand, it would be a long time before he forgot the sight of her standing under the lamp after he’d killed her brother.

He had the day shift starting at nine, and he was just about to get dressed in camouflaged overalls when he had a phone call from the orderly room. “Message from Major Sanderson, sir. He wants you to join him as soon as possible at the Grand Hotel. General Marple flew in from London last night. Special ways-and-means conference.”

“I’ll see to it.”

He groaned. Marple from London, which meant full uniform. He dressed quickly, taking it from the dry-cleaning bag, grateful it hadn’t been worn. It looked rather good when he checked himself in the mirror, and the ribbons for Ireland and the Military Cross set things off nicely. He adjusted his cap, nodded to himself, took a military trench coat from the wardrobe, and went out.

He had his own vehicle on allocation, a Ford pickup painted khaki green. It was parked in the officers’ sector in the corner of the old schoolyard. Vehicles there were never locked in case of emergencies, and the gate sentries were deemed security enough. He opened the driver’s seat, tossed his trench coat into the rear, and got behind the wheel.

He reached the gate and slowed as the sentry stepped out, raising the bar. “You know Jean Murray, don’t you, Fletcher? I thought I saw her earlier.”

“You did, Captain, but she wasn’t around for long and left again. In fact, I think that’s her over there in the church doorway.”

Roper was aware of a sudden chill, drove out slowly toward the other side of the road, and saw her standing there, soaked to the skin, hair plastered to her skull. She was like a corpse walking.

The moment she saw him, she started down the steps. He pulled up at the curb and lowered his window. “What are you doing here, Jean?”

“I wanted to give you a present.” She produced a black plastic control unit about nine inches long. “The Howler, Captain. Kenny did finish it, but this isn’t your present. That’s under the passenger seat, and remember, the Howler has two faces. It can switch on as well as switch off.”

She laughed, and it was like no laugh Giles Roper had ever heard in his life, and as he scrabbled under the seat, pulling out the white plastic shopping bag he found there, the world became an infinity of white blinding light, no pain, not at that moment, simply enormous energy as the explosion took him into the eye of the storm.

 

 

SO JEAN MURRAY died, killed instantly, just another bomber, a statistic of those terrible years, and the Howler, the Holy Grail, the ultimate answer to the bomb, died with her. Her final act of mad revenge started Giles Roper on a road that encompassed dozens of operations, a time of incredible pain and suffering, and yet it was also a journey of self-discovery and real achievement, as he became one of the most significant figures in the world of cyberspace.

He never disclosed what took place on that last night in Belfast. To the authorities, Jean Murray had just been another bomber, and over the years Roper had come to terms with her and was no longer disturbed by the memory. After all, what she and her brother had intended for him was kidnap, torture, and murder. What they had given him, unintentionally, was the wheelchair and the new life that had brought him.

The George Cross had come afterward, although it was a year and a half before he could face the Queen for her to pin it on. By then, his mother had died, and his wife, totally unable to cope, had moved on, pleaded for a quiet divorce, even with all her Catholic conviction, and finally married a much older man.

Roper was now an indispensable part of Ferguson’s security group, spending most of his time at the Holland Park safe house in front of his computer screens, frequently racked with pain that responded only to whiskey and cigarettes, his comfort food, sleeping only in fits and starts and mainly in his wheelchair. Indomitable, as Dillon once said, himself alone, a force of nature.

LONDON

A
t ten-thirty on the morning following his late-night conversation with Svetlana Kelly, Roper, accompanied by Monica, was delivered to the side entrance in the mews beside Chamber Court off Belsize Avenue. Roper was off-loaded, and a CCTV camera beside an ironbound gate in the high wall scanned them.

A voice, not Svetlana’s, said through the speaker, “Would that be Major Roper and Lady Starling?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Doyle told her.

“I’m Katya Zorin, Svetlana’s companion. The gate will open now. Tell them to follow the path inside, and it will bring them round to the conservatory.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” The gate buzzed and opened. Doyle said, “I’ll wait. I’ve got a couple of newspapers.”

Roper went through into a quiet, ordered world of rhododendron bushes, poplars and cypress trees, a weeping willow. Not much color around, but it was, after all, February. The path was York stone, but expertly laid so that the going was smooth. They approached a fountain in granite stone, moved on to the large Victorian house, and there was the terrace of the conservatory. A glass door stood open and Katya Zorin waited.

Roper had looked her up. She was forty and unmarried, born in Brighton to a Russian immigrant who had married an English woman. A senior lecturer at the Slade, where she taught painting, she was a successful portrait painter and had even had the Queen Mother sit for her. She also had a considerable reputation in the theater as a set designer.

She had cropped hair, a kind of Ingrid Bergman look, and wore khaki overalls. “It’s lovely to meet you.” Her handshake was firm. “Just follow me.”

She led the way into a delightful conservatory that was a sort of miniature Kew, crammed with plants of every description. Internal folding doors were open, disclosing a large drawing room, fashioned in period Victorian splendor, but Svetlana Kelly sat in the center of the conservatory in a high wicker chair, a curved wicker table before her, two wicker chairs on the other side of it, obviously waiting for them.