Dillon took out a cigarette. As he lit it in cupped hands, a voice behind said, “Who are you? What do you want?”

He turned and found a girl in the doorway. She wore baggy trousers tucked into a pair of rubber boots, a heavy roll-neck sweater under an old anorak and a knitted beret like a Tam o’ Shanter, the kind of thing you found in fishing villages on the West Coast of Ireland. She was holding a double-barreled shotgun threateningly. As he took a step toward her, she thumbed back the hammer.

“You stay there.” The Irish accent was very pronounced.

“You’ll be the one they call Angel Fahy?” he said.

“Angela, if it’s any of your business.”

Tania’s man had been right. She did look like a little peasant. Broad cheekbone, upturned nose and a kind of fierceness there. “Would you really shoot with that thing?”

“If I had to.”

“A pity that, and me only wanting to meet my father’s cousin, once removed, Danny Fahy.”

She frowned. “And who in the hell might you be, mister?”

“Dillon’s the name. Sean Dillon.”

She laughed harshly. “That’s a damn lie. You’re not even Irish and Sean Dillon is dead, everyone knows that.”

Dillon dropped into the hard distinctive accent of Belfast. “To steal a great man’s line, girl dear, all I can say is, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

The gun went slack in her hands. “Mother Mary, are you Sean Dillon?”

“As ever was. Appearances can be deceiving.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “Uncle Danny talks about you all the time, but it was always like stories, nothing real to it at all and here you are.”

“Where is he?”

“He did a repair on a car for the landlord of the local pub, took it down there an hour ago. Said he’d walk back, but he’ll be there a while yet drinking, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“At this time? Isn’t the pub closed until evening?”

“That might be the law, Mr. Dillon, but not in Doxley. They never close.”

“Let’s go and get him, then.”

She left the shotgun on a bench and got into the Mini beside him. As they drove away, he said, “What’s your story then?”

“I was raised on a farm in Galway. My da was Danny’s nephew, Michael. He died six years ago when I was fourteen. After a year, my mother married again.”

“Let me guess,” Dillon said. “You didn’t like your stepfather and he didn’t like you?”

“Something like that. Uncle Danny came over for my father’s funeral, so I’d met him and liked him. When things got too heavy, I left home and came here. He was great about it. Wrote to my mother and she agreed I could stay. Glad to get rid of me.”

There was no self-pity at all and Dillon warmed to her. “They always say some good comes out of everything.”

“I’ve been working it out,” she said. “If you’re Danny’s second cousin and I’m his great-niece, then you and I are blood related, isn’t that a fact?”

Dillon laughed. “In a manner of speaking.”

She looked ecstatic as she leaned back. “Me, Angel Fahy, related to the greatest gunman the Provisional IRA ever had.”

“Well, now, there would be some who would argue about that,” he said as they reached the village and pulled up outside the pub.

It was a small, desolate sort of place, no more than fifteen rather dilapidated cottages and a Norman church with a tower and an overgrown graveyard. The pub was called the Green Man and even Dillon had to duck to enter the door. The ceiling was very low and beamed. The floor was constructed of heavy stone flags worn with the years, the walls were whitewashed. The man behind the bar in his shirt sleeves was at least eighty.

He glanced up and Angel said, “Is he here, Mr. Dalton?”

“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 whiskies, 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 washer women,” 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 setup, 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 payday 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.”