‘By the fire, having a beer,’ the old man said.
A fire burned in a wide stone hearth and there was a wooden bench and a table in front of it. Danny Fahy sat there reading the paper, a glass in front of him. He was sixty-five with an untidy grizzled beard and wore a cloth cap and an old Harris Tweed suit.
Angel said, ‘I’ve brought someone to see you, Uncle Danny.’
He looked up at her and then at Dillon, puzzlement on his face. ‘And what can I do for you, sir?’
Dillon removed his glasses. ‘God bless all here!’ he said in his Belfast accent, ‘and particularly you, you old bastard.’
Fahy turned very pale, the shock was so intense. ‘God save us, is that you, Sean, and me thinking you were in your box long ago?’
‘Well, I’m not and I’m here.’ Dillon took a five-pound note from his wallet and gave it to Angel. ‘A couple of whiskeys, Irish for preference.’
She went back to the bar and Dillon turned. Danny Fahy actually had tears in his eyes and he flung his arms around him. ‘Dear God, Sean, but I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.’
The sitting room at the farm was untidy and cluttered, the furniture very old. Dillon sat on a sofa while Fahy built up the fire. Angel was in the kitchen cooking a meal. It was open to the sitting room and Dillon could see her moving around.
‘And how’s life been treating you, Sean?’ Fahy stuffed a pipe and lit it. ‘Ten years since you raised Cain in London town. By God, boy, you gave the Brits something to think about.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without you, Danny.’
‘Great days. And what happened after?’
‘Europe, the Middle East. I kept on the move. Did a lot for the PLO. Even learned to fly.’
‘Is that a fact?’
Angel came and put plates of bacon and eggs on the table. ‘Get it while it’s hot.’ She returned with a tray laden with teapot and milk, three mugs and a plate piled high with bread and butter. ‘I’m sorry there’s nothing fancier, but we weren’t expecting company.’
‘It looks good to me,’ Dillon told her and tucked in.
‘So now you’re here Sean and dressed like an English gentleman,’ Fahy turned to Angel. ‘Didn’t I tell you the actor this man was? They never could put a glove on him in all these years, not once.’
She nodded eagerly, smiling at Dillon and her personality had changed with the excitement. ‘Are you on a job now, Mr Dillon, for the IRA, I mean?’
‘It would be a cold day in hell before I put myself on the line for that bunch of old washerwomen,’ Dillon said.
‘But you are working on something, Sean?’ Fahy said. ‘I can tell. Come on, let’s in on it.’
Dillon lit a cigarette. ‘What if I told you I was working for the Arabs, Danny, for Saddam Hussein himself?’
‘Jesus, Sean, and why not? And what is it he wants you to do?’
‘He wants something now – a coup. Something big. America’s too far away. That leaves the Brits.’
‘What could be better?’ Fahy’s eyes were gleaming.
‘Thatcher was in France the other day seeing Mitterrand. I had plans for her on the way to her plane. Perfect set-up, quiet country road and then someone I trusted let me down.’
‘And isn’t that always the way?’ Fahy said. ‘So you’re looking for another target? Who, Sean?’
‘I was thinking of John Major.’
‘The new Prime Minister?’ Angel said in awe. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Sure and why wouldn’t he? Didn’t the boys nearly get the whole bloody British Government at Brighton?’ Danny Fahy told her. ‘Go on, Sean, what’s your plan?’
‘I haven’t got one, Danny, that’s the trouble, but there would be a pay day for this like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘And that’s as good a reason to make it work as any. So you’ve come to Uncle Danny looking for help?’ Fahy went to a cupboard, came back with a bottle of Bushmills and two glasses and filled them. ‘Have you any ideas at all?’
‘Not yet, Danny. Do you still work for the movement?’
‘Stay in deep cover, that was the order from Belfast so many years ago I’ve forgotten. Since then not a word and me bored out of my socks, so I moved down here. It suits me. I like the countryside here, I like the people. They keep to themselves. I’ve built up a fair business repairing agricultural machinery and I run a few sheep. We’re happy here, Angel and me.’
‘And still bored out of your socks. Do you remember Martin Brosnan, by the way?’
‘I do so. You were bad friends with that one.’
‘I had a run-in with him in Paris recently. He’ll probably turn up in London looking for me. He’ll be working for Brit intelligence.’
‘The bastard.’ Fahy frowned as he refilled his pipe. ‘Didn’t I hear some fanciful talk of how Brosnan got into Ten Downing Street as a waiter years ago and didn’t do anything about it?’
‘I heard that story too. A flight of fancy and no one would get in these days as a waiter or anything else. You know they’ve blocked the street off? The place is a fortress. No way in there, Danny.’
‘Oh, there’s always a way, Sean. I was reading in a magazine the other day how a lot of French Resistance people in the Second World War were held at some Gestapo headquarters. Their cells were on the ground floor, the Gestapo on the first floor. The RAF had a fella in a Mosquito fly in at fifty feet and drop a bomb that bounced off the street and went in through the first-floor window, killing all the bloody Gestapo so the fellas downstairs got away.’
‘What in the hell are you trying to say to me?’ Dillon demanded.
‘That I’m a great believer in the power of the bomb and the science of ballistics. You can make a bomb go anywhere if you know what you’re doing.’
‘What is this?’ Dillon demanded.
Angel said, ‘Go on, show him, Uncle Danny.’
‘Show me what?’ Dillon said.
Danny Fahy got up, putting another match to his pipe. ‘Come on, then,’ and he turned and went to the door.
Fahy opened the door of the second barn and led the way in. It was enormous, oak beams rearing up to a steeply pitched roof. There was a loft stuffed with hay and reached by a ladder. There were various items of farm machinery including a tractor. There was also a fairly new Land Rover, an old BSA 500cc motorcycle in fine condition, up on its stand.
‘This is a beauty,’ Dillon said in genuine admiration.
