Read Online Touch the Devil by Jack Higgins - Free Book Online Page B

said.
    "Presumably IRA, sir? Anyone important?"
    "A university professor called Devlin. You'll be thoroughly briefed."
    Villiers showed surprise. "Liam Devlin, sir? I thought he'd retired?"
    "That's what he thinks, too," Ferguson said. He hesitated. "Are you certain you can mount this thing right off the cuff, just like that?"
    Villiers grinned and ran a hand over his hair. "That's why I never have a haircut, sir. Special dispensation. I mean, in Crossmaglen you've got to look the part." His shoulders hunched and his voice changed, the hard, distinctive Ulster accent taking over. "Personal camouflage is very important, sir. Other people use language labs to learn how to speak French or whatever. In the SAS, we can teach you how to speak with the accent of any Irish county you care to name within a fortnight."
    "Soldiering," Ferguson said, "has certainly changed since my day."
    The colonel stood up. "Right, gentlemen, I think we'll go over to operations now. Get this thing thoroughly sorted out. You lead the way, Tony."
    Villiers flicked Fox's Guards brigade tie as they went through the door. "Which regiment?"
    Fox, who knew a guardsman when he saw one, long hair or not, said, "Blues and Royals. And you?"
    "Grenadiers," Villiers said. "You lost the hand over there?" "That's right," Fox said. "Picked up the wrong briefcase." "That's the way it goes."
    It was a misty morning as they crossed the parade ground, and the clock tower loomed above them. Villiers paused. "If you're interested, the name of every member of the regiment killed since nineteen fifty is recorded up there."
    Fox paused and peered at the names of men who had died i n e very possible theater of war. He frowned, "Good God, there's a chap listed as having died in Ethiopia in nineteen sixty-eight. What on earth was he doing there?'
    "Search me," Villiers said. "Ours not to reason why, and all that sort of good old British rubbish. You might as well ask ten years from now what I was doing in Mayo tomorrow night."
    Later, as the Bentley turned out through the main gates and they started back to London, Fox said, "You really think they'll pull it off, sir?"
    "By the beginning of nineteen seventy-six, Harry, forty-nine British soldiers had been killed in south Armagh and not a single member of the IRA, so the SAS were moved in to operate undercover. In the year following, only two part-time members of the Ulster Defense Regiment were killed in the entire area. That result speaks for itself."
    "All right, sir, but one thing worries me. So Tony Villiers and his boys are good. The two men he's taking with him were very impressive, I admit that. But Devlin's good, too. I know he's a bit long in the tooth, but what if he decides to shoot first himself . . . ?"
    "Just what the bastard would do," Ferguson said. "But you heard my orders to Villiers. I want him untouched by human hand. -He's no use to me if he's dragging his left leg or something." He yawned. "I'm going to get a little shut-eye, Harry. Wake me at Cheltenham, and we'll have something to eat at that superb cafe."
    He closed his eyes, folded his hands across his stomach, leaned back in the corner and was instantly asleep.
    At that moment, Frank Barry was disembarking from the hydrofoil in St. Helier harbor on the island of Jersey, having just completed the run from St. Malo. According to the forged French passport supplied by the KGB, he was a commercial traveler from Paris named Pierre Dubois. His hair had been soaked in brilliantine and carefully parted at one side, and he wore a large pair of black horn-rimmed glasses. His appearance fitted the photo they' d t aken exactly. Amazing how different he looked, but then, as he had discovered so often in the past, a little was all that it took.
    Fifteen minutes later, a taxi deposited him at the entrance to the airport. He went straight to the British Airways desk and booked a seat on the Manchester flight.
    An hour to kill. He stopped at the duty free shop to buy a