"All right, go talk to him, but you know what Catholic priests are like. Seal of the Confessional and all that stuff. He'll never tell you anything."

"True," Roper said, "but he might talk to a fellow Irishman."

"Dillon? Yes, as I recall, he lived in Kilburn for a while in his youth, didn't he? Have you spoken to him about what you just found out about Pool?"

"Not yet."

"Well, get on with it, for heaven's sake." Ferguson turned to Doyle. "Lead on to the kitchen, Sergeant. I need a pot of coffee, very hot and very strong."

"As you say, General."

They went out and Roper sat there thinking about it, then called Dillon, who answered at once. "Any progress to report?"

"I'm afraid you've got enemy action," Roper said. "Ferguson found a prayer card in the driver Pool's wallet."

Dillon reached over and shook Miller awake. "You'd better listen to this."

Miller came awake instantly and listened to the call on speaker. "Can you explain anything more? I mean, the driver and so on."

Roper went straight into Henry Pool, his background, the facts as known. When he was finished, Dillon said, "This notion you have about seeing the priest at Holy Name, I'll handle that. I agree it could be useful."

"On the other hand, Pool was only half Irish, through his mother."

"They're sometimes the worst. De Valera had a Spanish father and was born in New York, but his Irish mother was the making of him. We'll be seeing you round breakfast time. We'd better have words with Clancy Smith, I promised to call him back."

He switched off, and Miller said, "Sean, you were a top enforcer with the IRA and you never got your collar felt once. Do you really think this is some kind of IRA hit?"

"Not really. Most men of influence in the Provisional IRA are now serving in government and the community in one way or the other. Of course, there are splinter groups still in existence-that bunch called the Real IRA, and rumors that the Irish National Liberation Army still waits."

"INLA," Miller said. "The ones who probably killed Mountbatten and certainly assassinated Airey Neave coming out of the underground car park in the House of Commons."

"True," Dillon said. "And they were the great ones for using sleepers. Middle-class professional men, sometimes university educated, accountants, lawyers, even doctors. People think there's something new in the fact that Islamic terror is able to recruit from the professions, but the IRA was there long before them."

"Do you believe IRA sleepers still exist?" Miller asked.

"I guess we can't take the chance they don't. I'm going to call Clancy."

Clancy said, "This really raises the game," once they reached him. "I'm sitting at Blake's bedside now. I'll let you talk to him, but don't talk too long. By the way, we've established that Flynn's American passport was a first-class forgery."

Blake said, "That you, Sean?"

"It sure is, old stick," Dillon said.

"Clancy filled me in about Miller and me and some sort of possible IRA link with these prayer cards."

"And we've now discovered the same card in Ferguson's driver's wallet, and I hear the guy who tried to waste you, Flynn, had a false American passport."

Blake laughed weakly. "I'll tell you something funny about him, Sean. When I had him covered and told him to give up, he didn't say 'Fuck you.' He said 'Fug you.' I only ever heard that when I was in Northern Ireland."

"Which shows you what gentlemen we are over there. Take care, old son, and sleep well." Dillon switched off, and turned to Miller. "You heard all that, so there we are."

Miller glanced at his watch. "Two hours to go. I'll try to get some sleep." He closed his eyes and turned his head against the pillow behind him, reaching to switch off the light.

Dillon simply sat there, staring into the shadows, the verse from the prayer card repeating endlessly in his brain, remembering a nineteen-year-old actor who had walked out of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to accept an offer to work with the National Theatre, and the night when the local priest in Kilburn called to break the news to him that his father, on a visit to Belfast, had been caught in a firefight between PIRA activists and British troops and killed.

"A casualty of war, Sean," Father James Murphy of the Holy Name church had said. "You must say your prayers, not only the Hail Mary, but this special one on the prayer card I give you now. It is a comfort for all victims of a great cause. 'Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, we who are ourselves alone.' "

He tried closing his eyes, but it still went around and around in his brain, and he opened them again, filled with despair, just as he had felt it that day, desolation turning into rage, a need for revenge that had taken the nineteen-year-old on a violent path which had shaped his whole life, a path from which there could be no turning back. Yet, as always, he was saved by that dark streak of gallows humor in him.

"Jesus, Sean," he told himself softly. "What are you going to do, cut your throat? Well, you don't have a razor, so let's have a drink on it."

They landed at Farley just past six in the morning, bad winter weather, gray and rainy. Miller and Dillon went their separate ways, for Miller had a Mercedes provided by the Cabinet Office, his driver, Arthur Fox, waiting. Tony Doyle had driven down from Holland Park, under Roper's orders, in Dillon's own Mini Cooper.

"I'm going home, Sean, to see to my mail, knock out a report on my impressions of Putin and the Russian delegation at the UN, then take it to Downing Street. The Prime Minister will want to see me personally, but he likes things on paper, he's very precise."

"Will you tell him of your exploits in Central Park?"

"I've no reason not to. It happened to me, Sean, I didn't happen to it, if you follow me. The way it's being handled, there is no story, not for the press anyway. The whole thing is an intelligence matter that needs to be solved. He'll understand. He's a moralist by nature but also very practical. He won't be pleased at what's happened, and he'll expect a result."

"Well, let's see how quickly we can give him one."

Dillon got in the Mini beside Tony Doyle, and they drove away. Miller got in the back of the Mercedes and discovered a bunch of mail.

"Good man, Arthur." He opened the first letter.

"Thought you'd like to get started, Major. Traffic's building up already. Could take us an hour to get to Dover Street."

"No problem. I can save a lot of time here due to your usual efficiency."

Dillon arrived at Holland Park just after seven. "I'm going to shower and change, and then I'm going to partake of Maggie Hall's Jamaican version of the great British breakfast."

"Hey, I could give you that," Doyle said, for he was of Jamaican stock, born in the East End of London.

Dillon went into the computer room, but there was no sign of Roper, and then Henderson, the other sergeant, entered wearing a tracksuit.

"Good to see you back, sir. Major Roper's in the wet room having a good soak. We're also hosting General Ferguson. He's in one of the second-floor suites, no sign of movement. If you'll excuse me, I'll get back to the Major."

"Fine, I'm going to my room. Tell him I'll join him for breakfast."

At Dover Street, Miller told Arthur to get a breakfast at the local cafe and come back in an hour. Once inside the house, he went straight upstairs to the spare bedroom, which was now his. It was a decent size for an eighteenth-century town house and had its own shower room. The magnificent master bedroom suite at the end of the landing, once shared with his wife, he had kept exactly as it was before her murder, but the door was locked and opened only once a week by the housekeeper, seeing to the room and keeping it fresh.