They did, sitting in the rear while Dillon drove. “What have you got for me, then?” Ferguson asked.

“The last person to see Hannah alive was a Dublin girl, an agency nurse named Mary Killane. Maggie Duncan spoke to her when she finished her shift. Half an hour later, the alarm went off in Hannah’s room and she died in spite of the crash team.”

“What’s your point, Sean?” Ferguson was gentle.

“An hour and a half ago, a man walking his dog by the canal some ten minutes from Rosedene found a dead woman half-in, half-out of the water. Her handbag was still caught around one wrist. It was Mary Killane.”

“My God,” Blake said. “That’s a strange coincidence. And you know I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Especially with two bullets in her,” Dillon told him. “George Langley’s going to do the autopsy tonight. He’s at the scene of the crime now.”

They traveled in silence for a while, and it was Blake who said, “It smells to high heaven. Hannah dies, and then someone wastes the last nurse to deal with her.”

“And somehow a dead Belov is walking around in Siberia,” Ferguson said. “I’ve got an uneasy feeling they’re all related.”

“But like Billy said earlier,” Dillon told him, “if there’s one certainty in the matter, it’s that Belov is dead.”

“And what if he isn’t?” Blake put in.

“I know what I did.”

“Maybe something else happened, something you weren’t aware of.”

“In your dreams,” Dillon told him.

“Maybe. But I’ll tell you what I think. I was with the FBI for a long time, and any good cop will tell you that experience tells you to go with your instincts. And my instincts tell me that everything is linked to what happened at Drumore Place. That’s where we’ve got to begin.”

And he was right, of course.

DRUMORE PLACE DUBLIN MOSCOW

3

Three weeks earlier, Sean Dillon and Billy Salter were at Drumore Place, that great house that was Josef Belov’s pride and joy, engaged in a desperate firefight while the villagers kept their heads down inside their cottages.

At the Royal George, Patrick Ryan had the shutters up while his mother, who was the cook at Drumore Place, and old Hamilton, the butler, cowered in the kitchen, where Ryan joined them.

“Mother Mary, it’s just like the old days,” she moaned.

“Sure, and they never went away,” he told her, which was true, for this was still Provisional IRA country to the core. He splashed whiskey into three glasses. “Get that down you and shut up. It’s none of our affair. The nearest police are twenty miles up the coast. One sergeant and three men, and they’d drive the other way if they knew. God save the good work.” He swallowed his whiskey down and crossed himself as sporadic shooting continued.

There was silence for a while and then they heard a boat engine start in to life down in the harbor. It increased in power, and Ryan hurried through the bar, opened the door and peered out. It had left the tiny harbor and moved beyond the point when the explosion took place. There was a momentary ball of fire, and as it cleared, he saw the boat half under the water, the stern raised, and it looked as if someone was scrambling over, but he could not be certain for a cloud passed over the moon.

Hamilton appeared beside him and the old lady. “What is it?”

“Some sort of explosion on the Kathleen. I can’t be sure, but I think I saw someone. I’m going to check.”

“You’ll need some help. Get some of the men.”

“Don’t be daft. They’ll all stay close to home this night.”

He hurried out to his old Land Rover, got behind the wheel and drove away, down through the village, following the narrow road toward the point, no more than five minutes away, got out and ran toward the top of the steps leading down to the small beach below. It was very dark down there, only the waves dashing in, and then the cloud moved away and the moon shone through and he saw something, head and shoulders perhaps, and started down.

Greta Novikova had been standing in the stern of the Kathleen, Belov and Tod Murphy in the wheelhouse, when the explosion took place in the engine room. The two men didn’t stand a chance, but the force of the blast, a great wind, drove her across the stern rail as the shattered boat lifted and then dove down to its last resting place. She plunged headfirst into the water, lucky enough to slide to one side and miss the propellers. She went under, and surfaced, turning as the sea swallowed the Kathleen. An undertow sucked at her as if greedy to take her with it, and frightened and dazed, she screamed and kicked out toward the cliffs of the point.

There was a trench in the seabed at that place, fully fifty fathoms deep, so that as the Kathleen descended rapidly, there was turbulence on the surface, waves driving toward the small beach, increasing in force and taking her with them.

In the moonlight, she saw Ryan plunging knee-deep in the water to reach for her. She cried out, he grabbed, waist-deep in water, pulling her close.

“I’ve got you.” He waded onto the beach, pulling her behind him. He held her close as she gasped for air. “Who was with you?”

“Belov… Tod Murphy.”

“And Kelly and the others?”

“There was a shoot-out at Drumore Place. I don’t know. You must take me there.”

“Jesus, woman, you’re in no fit state to go anywhere. There’s blood on your face. You must have taken a hell of a battering.”

“I must find out what’s happened to Major Ashimov. I must.”

And it was Kelly he was worried about. After all, if Kelly was still around, there was the IRA to consider.

He patted her shoulder. “I’ve got the Land Rover at the top of the steps. I’ll take you now.”

Yuri Ashimov knew none of this, for he was unconscious, facedown at Drumore Place, not dead, in spite of the two bullets Billy Salter had pumped into him, thanks to the nylon-and-titanium vest he’d been wearing beneath his shirt. An invention of the Wilkinson Sword Company, it was efficient enough to block even a.44 bullet. On the other hand, the shock to the cardiovascular system usually caused unconsciousness for a while.

Lying there, he stirred and groaned, moved a little and pulled himself up. He shook his head to clear it, remembering firing his pistol at Dillon, knocking the AK from his hands, thinking he’d got the bastard and then the shot catching his shoulder, spinning him round, and his last memory, Billy Salter’s face as he’d fired the heart shot. There was a chair nearby; he reached for it, pulled himself up and sat down. He heard a footfall and one of Kelly’s men, Toby McGuire, appeared in the archway.

“What happened to you?” Ashimov asked harshly.

“I was waiting in the summerhouse. Somebody jumped me. Knocked me out with a rifle stock.”

“Where is everybody?”

“Kelly’s dead and O’Neill. I was up and around when Dillon and the other guy came out on the terrace. I kept out of the way, but I heard what they were saying.”

“And what was that?”

Toby McGuire took a deep, shuddering breath and told him about the Kathleen and what had happened.

Ashimov sat there thinking about it. “So that’s what he said about Major Novikova? If she wasn’t willing to take the risks, she shouldn’t have joined?”

“That was it. Then he said to this guy Billy, ‘I expect our day will come.’ ”

“Oh, it will.” Ashimov nodded. “You can count on it. So they went?”

“He said he had all the keys to the cars in the courtyard. Two hours to Belfast and then home, that’s what he said.”

“Right.” Ashimov rose, picked up his pistol from the floor and put it in his waistband.

McGuire said, “What happens now? It’s a right mess.”