Ashimov drove down through the small port, turned into the parking lot of the local pub, the Royal George, which sounded as Orange Loyalist as you would have liked and dated from Loyalist times. But the people locally liked their traditions, and in spite of being staunchly Republican, refused to have the name altered.

As Ashimov got out of his car, a van drew up alongside. There were two young men in it. The one opening the passenger door bumped into Ashimov as he was getting out.

The youth, longhaired and unshaven and wearing an old combat jacket, got out, full of aggression.

“You want to watch it.”

“I’m sorry,” Ashimov said.

“Stupid prick.”

Ashimov reached in the car, found the Beretta and put it in his pocket. “If you say so.”

He walked to the pub entrance, and the young man and his driver burst into laughter. “I said he was a prick.”

Inside, the bar was totally traditional, a beamed ceiling, dark oak booths, logs burning on the great stone hearth, an old marble-topped counter, the barman reading a newspaper, any bottle a man could fancy ranged behind him.

By one of the bow windows, a man of around fifty sat eating a meat-and-potato pie. He had red hair, a reckless look to him, and a slight smile. This was Dermot Kelly, a veteran since the age of seventeen of the Irish troubles. The man who sat in the window seat close to him, smoking and reading a book, was one Tod Murphy, who looked like some sort of intellectual, with his black hair flecked with gray, and steel spectacles. Once a student of theology intent on the priesthood, he had followed the same path as Kelly, although in his case it had included fifteen years in the Maze Prison for murdering five people. It was only the Peace Process that had released him. He looked up, saw Ashimov at the bar and smiled.

The barman, without being told, had taken a bottle of cold vodka from the bar fridge and poured a large one. Before Ashimov could touch it, the two youths who had followed him in ranged alongside him. The youth in the combat jacket picked up the glass.

“What in the hell would this be?” He drank some and made a face. “What kind of shite is that?”

“My kind, and as you’ve touched it, you can buy me another.”

“You what?” The youth grabbed for the front of Ashimov’s coat and the Russian head-butted him.

The youth went down, and his friend cried out in anger and reached for the bottle of vodka on the bar. Dermot said, “Tod.”

Murphy stood up, still holding his book. “Not in here, not without Dermot Kelly’s say-so. I don’t know where you’re from, but this is an IRA pub and this gentleman is a friend of ours.”

“Fuck you,” the youth said and smashed the bottle on the edge of the marble bar. Murphy kicked him under one knee and Ashimov grabbed him by the collar, screwed a short punch into his kidneys and ran him headfirst through the front door.

“Better clear the mess, Michael,” Murphy said to the barman. “The terrible times we live in, Major. Kids down over the border from Belfast, always high on something. If it’s not the drugs, it’s the booze. But not in Drumore. We like a bit of law and order here.”

“IRA law and order.”

“Children can walk to school safe here, old people rest easy in their homes, young women walk home from the village dance, and with Mr. Belov the squire now, most people are in work and grateful. Farms around here are prosperous, thanks to Mr. Belov. If you were hoping to see him, he left yesterday in the helicopter for Belfast and onwards to Moscow.”

“I knew.”

“He’s a close one, Mr. Belov.”

“Because he’s what you might call preoccupied with business on a worldwide scale. Anything else, he leaves to me. Now, what have you got for me?”

Tod Murphy, who as well as learning Irish in the Maze Prison had managed reasonable Russian, held up the book and said in that language, “The City of God, by St. Augustine. Serious reading for a serious man.”

“So you still believe in God in spite of having walked over corpses all these years.”

“Oh, yes,” Tod Murphy said gravely. “Hell and damnation exist, redemption is possible. Christ is risen.”

“As to walking over corpses, Major, we’ve all done that, as I understand it,” Kelly told him.

“Especially Josef Belov,” Ashimov said. “I think you’ll find his body count exceeds the two of you put together.”

“Very possibly, and I say the same of yours. But let’s go up to the castle and we’ll show you the ceiling they’ve refurbished in the Great Hall. Belov was pleased. Let’s see what you think.”

As they drove through the grounds, the vista was more than pleasing: the avenue of beech trees, the moat, the great entrance, the turrets, the towers. There was even a drawbridge that worked on an electronic system. The Great Hall was everything it ought to be: a huge staircase sweeping down, carpets scattered over the flagged floor, two enormous chandeliers hanging from the gilded ceiling, a log fire smoldering on the wide hearth, an oak table, twelve chairs around it, a couch on each side of the fire.

“You’ll have a drink?” Kelly asked. “The kitchen’s working on the lunch now.”

“Why not?”

“And you can tell us why you’ve come,” Murphy said.

“What do you know about a man named Sean Dillon?” Ashimov asked.

Tod Murphy simply stopped smiling and looked astonished. “Sean? What in the hell is he to you?”

Dermot Kelly laughed out loud, and Ashimov said, “What is this? It sounds as if he’s some kind of friend.”

“Ah, Major, you’ll never understand the Irish. Sean was more than a friend. He was the best, a true comrade,” Kelly said. “We were on the run from Brit paratroopers in the sewers of Derry on one famous occasion. I took a bullet in the shoulder, but I could keep going. Tod here got one in the leg and fell by the wayside. When Sean found out, he went back for him.”

“I’ll drink to him any day,” Murphy said.

Ashimov was bewildered. “This man works for Charles Ferguson, who heads the Prime Minister’s secret security service. So secret, it’s known in the trade-”

Kelly cut in, “ – as the Prime Minister’s private army, and they’d need the best, so they got Sean.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You’d need to be Irish to understand us, Major, and it’s got nothing to do with religion. Sean Dillon is the best. They couldn’t touch his collar for years, not the RUC, not the British Army. D’you know how he ended up working for Ferguson? During the Serb War, he was flying medical supplies in for children, the Serbs caught him.”

“It’s what’s called a good deed in a naughty world,” Tod Murphy said. “He was faced with a firing squad – and Ferguson blackmailed him. He saved his skin, wiped his slate clean, and in return Sean became his enforcer. We all know the story.”

And Ashimov, in spite of his wealth of experience, was astonished. “And you don’t mind?”

Kelly said, “I told you. He was a comrade. The best. But if he got you in his sights, you were dead. Still would be.”

“So why do you want to know about him?” Kelly asked, and Ashimov told them.

When he had finished, Murphy said, “So this Ali Selim bowser is on the run in Iraq and you’ve got what’s-her-name, Greta Novikova, on his tail?”

“ Ferguson will have Sean on that one like a dose of salts,” Kelly put in. He turned to Tod Murphy. “Put your priest’s intellect on this. What’s your conclusion?”

“Quite simple. Ferguson doesn’t want a trial at the Old Bailey. The Muslims wouldn’t like that. He’s sent Sean to bring Selim back. A nice, quiet inquisition in some safe house in London, and you and Mr. Belov wouldn’t like that.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. But how would you two feel if I had trouble in London with Ferguson and his people? What would you say if I said I needed you? It would include taking on Dillon.”