Justin said, 'Have you taken the boat out since you've been back or been flying with Phil Regan? I thought you'd be airborne all the time after you got your licence.'

Instead of replying to his question she said, 'You know, don't you?'

'August the fifth, Nineteen sixty-odd, Father Alan Winkler, St Mary the Virgin Church, Dun Street, Mayfair. A good address.'

'He was a nice old man. Very understanding. He held my hand and prayed for me and you and your father, and said that, in the circumstances, it was God's will that you should be baptized.'

'The persuasion of the truly good,' Talbot said. 'How could you resist that?' He kissed her gently on the forehead. 'What a wonderful person you are. I expect that's why I can't take girls seriously, and never have. They're lucky if they can get a week out of me.'

'But you aren't going to tell me how you suddenly know? Oh, the secrets between us, darling.'

'I've an idea that Mary Ellen knew, am I right?'

'I had to tell her because I told her everything and she blessed me, for it was your father's dying wish. As far as telling you… she felt it should be left to the right moment.'

'I'm forty-five, Mum, if you remember. A long time waiting.'

'We all have our secrets, even from our loved ones.'

'And you think that applies to me?'

'More years ago than I care to remember, you were spending a week's leave at Marley Court when a dispatch rider delivered an order. You read it, told me you'd been recalled for some special operation, went upstairs to pack and left the order on the study table. I know I shouldn't have, but I read it and discovered my son was serving in Twenty-second SAS.'

'So you knew, all those years, and never told me?'

'I couldn't. It was a betrayal, you see, and I couldn't live with you knowing that. My punishment was that I've had to imagine supremely dangerous things happening to you every day. So, yes, my darling boy, I knew then, every time, just as I know now.' She stubbed out her cigarette. 'I've tried to give up these things, but I'm damned if I can. Let's move on. You must be famished.'

'I'd like to call in and see Jack Kelly before we go up to the house,' he said. 'If you don't mind, that is.'

She glanced at her watch. 'A little early for the pub. It's only four-thirty.'

'I'm sorry, Mum.' He laughed, looking like a young boy again for a fleeting moment. 'I suppose I am putting off seeing Colonel Henry for as long as possible. And I do have letters for Jack from his extended family, relatives we have working out there in Pakistan.'

'Of course, love. I'll drop you off and get on up to the house and see how Hannah Kelly is coping.'

They continued in silence for a while and finally he said, 'I've been thinking about our secrets. If it leaked out that I'd operated in the SAS during my army service, I think it would finish me here.'

'I agree, but they'll never know from me. Answer me one question as your mother, though. Did you actually take part in SAS operations in Ulster during the Troubles?'

He had so much to lie about, particularly his present activities. Perhaps he could more easily avoid that by admitting a sort of truth.

'Yes, I did, and on many occasions.'

She kept on driving calmly. 'In view of the personal difficulties in your background, our situation in Kilmartin, couldn't you have avoided it? I understood that the Ministry of Defence allowed choice.'

'It was still left to the individual to make a personal decision.' He was getting into real trouble here. 'It's difficult when the regiment's going to war, for an individual to opt out.'

'I could see that with the Grenadier Guards,' Jean said. 'But you volunteered to join the SAS, am I right?' 'Yes, that's true.'

'So you knew what you were getting into. Covert operations, subterfuge, killing by stealth, action by night. You must have known that your enemy would be the IRA.' She shook her head. 'Why did you do it?'

He broke then. 'Because I loved it: every glorious moment of it. Couldn't get enough. Some psychiatrists might say I was seeking death, but if I was, it was only to beat him at his own game. I lived more in a day…' He broke off, shaking his head. 'Nothing can describe it; it was so real, so damned exciting. It was impossible to take ordinary life seriously ever again.'

'But Afghanistan got you in the end.'

'I think not. Death looked down, took one look and said: Oh, it's you again. Not today, thank you.'

She managed a laugh. 'You fool. Anything else?'

'I don't think announcing to all and sundry that I'm a Catholic is a sound thought. The news that the heir to Talbot Place is a Fenian would have some people dancing a jig for joy – and many who wouldn't.'

'It's your decision, not mine,' Jean Talbot said. 'I'll go along with anything you want and we'll keep our fingers crossed, but remember, Justin, this is Ireland, where a secret is only a secret when one person knows it.'

'Then God help us.' They had passed down the main street, a few parked cars, not many people about, and there was the Kilmartin Arms and the Church of the Holy Name to one side of it, a low stone wall surrounding a well-filled cemetery, the church standing some distance back. There was an old-fashioned lych-gate, a roofed entrance to the churchyard.

'Let me out here,' Talbot said, and his mother braked to a halt. He got out, taking his flight bag with him, and examined the notice board. 'Church of the Holy Name, Father Michael Cassidy. My God, the old devil goes on forever. How old is he?'

'Seventy-eight. He could have had preferment years ago, but he loves this place. You've got the times for Mass and the Confessional.'

'Don't tempt me, but I will have a word with him, and in friendship only. The fact of my new religion stays out of it.'

'I'll get moving then.'

'I shan't be long.' He walked through the lych-gate as she drove off, and threaded his way through the gravestones to a horseshoe of cypress trees. There was a monument there, which bore the names on a bronze plaque of local men who had died while serving in the IRA. He didn't bother with that, but walked through to a well-kept grave with a black granite headstone. The inscription was in gold and read: Killed in Action, Volunteer Sean Kelly, Age 19. August 27, 1979. It said other things, too, about a just cause and the IRA love of country, but Justin Talbot ignored them. Only the name and the age of someone he had truly loved meant anything to him. He turned away, close to weeping, and found Jack Kelly standing some little distance away, lighting his briar pipe.

He carried his sixty-nine years well, dark hair streaked with silver now, a face that had weathered intelligence there, also a quiet good humour. He wore a tweed suit and an open-neck shirt and there were good shoulders to him, a man who could handle himself, which wasn't surprising in someone whose life had been devoted to the IRA.

'Good to see you back, boy,' Kelly said. 'Tim keeps in touch on his mobile. I heard from him you'd been disappearing over the border again to Afghanistan.'

Tim Molloy was his nephew, one of many men in the Kilmartin district who had eagerly accepted the recruitment to Talbot International at good salaries. Tim, for example, was contract manager to the vehicle maintenance side of the business based in Islamabad, servicing civilian convoys to Peshawar and beyond, to the Khyber Pass itself. It was an important and hazardous job.

The truth was that Molloy and the Kilmartin group used their privileged position to off-load arms close to the border to dealers who took them over. Honed by years of experience with the IRA, Molloy's group of ten men, all mainly in their middle years, formed a tightly knit crew that kept themselves to themselves. No one at Talbot International headquarters had the slightest idea of what was going on, except Justin Talbot.