“Poor old Tom,” said Bill from the back.
Unusually with subordinates, Sam McCready lost his temper. “If we fail, if that load of shit gets through, poor old shoppers at Harrods, poor old tourists in Hyde Park, poor old women and children all over our bloody country,” he snapped.
There was silence all the way to Pedhoulas.
Rowse’s key was still hanging on its hook in the reception lobby. He took it himself—there was no one behind the desk—and walked upstairs. The lock to his room was undamaged; Mahoney had used the key and replaced it in the lobby. But the door was unlocked. Rowse thought the maid might still be bed-making, so he walked right in.
As he entered, a powerful shove from the man behind the door sent him staggering forward. The door slammed shut, access to it barred by the stocky one. Danny’s long-range photographs had been sent down to Nicosia with the courier before dawn, faxed to London, and identified. The stocky one was Tim O’Herlihy, a killer from the Derry Brigade; the beefy ginger-haired one by the fireplace Eamonn Kane, an enforcer from West Belfast. Mahoney sat in the room’s only armchair, his back to the window, whose curtains had been drawn to filter the brilliant daylight.
Without a word Kane grabbed the staggering Englishman, spun him around, and flattened him against the wall. Skilled hands ran quickly over Rowse’s short-sleeved shirt and down each leg of his trousers. If he had been carrying McCready’s offered bleeper, it would have been discovered and ended the game there and then.
The room was a mess, every drawer opened and emptied, the contents of the wardrobe scattered all over. Rowse’s only consolation was that he carried nothing that an author on a research trip would not have had—notebooks, story outline, tourist maps, brochures, portable typewriter, clothes, and washkit. His passport was in his back trouser pocket. Kane fished it out and tossed it to Mahoney. Mahone
y flicked through it, but it told him nothing he did not already know.
“So, Sass-man, now perhaps you’ll tell me just what the fuck you’re doing here.”
There was the usual charming smile on his face, but it did not reach the eyes.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” said Rowse indignantly.
Kane swung a fist that caught Rowse in the solar plexus. He could have avoided it, but O’Herlihy was behind him and Kane was to one side. The odds were loaded, even without Mahoney. These men were not Sunday-school teachers. Rowse grunted and doubled, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily.
“Don’t you now? Don’t you now?” said Mahoney without rising. “Well, normally I have other ways than words of explaining myself, but for you, Sass-man, I’ll make an exception. A friend of mine in Hamburg identified you there a couple of weeks back. Tom Rowse, former captain in the Special Air Service Regiment, well-known fan club of the Irish people, asking some very funny questions. Two tours in the Emerald Isle behind him, and now he turns up in the middle of Cyprus just when my friends and I are trying to have a nice quiet holiday. So once again, what are you doing here?”
“Look,” said Rowse. “Okay, I was in the regiment. But I quit. Couldn’t take any more of it. Denounced them all, the bastards, three years ago. I’m out, well out. The British Establishment wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire. Now I write novels for a living. Thriller novels. That’s it.”
Mahoney nodded to O’Herlihy. The punch from behind caught him in the kidneys. He cried out and dropped to his knees. Despite the odds, he could have fought back and finished at least one of them, maybe two, before going down himself for the last time. But he took the pain and slumped to his knees.
Despite Mahoney’s arrogance, Rowse suspected the terrorist chief was puzzled. He must have noticed Rowse and Hakim al-Mansour in conversation on the terrace last night, before driving off. Rowse had returned from that all-night session, and Mahoney was on the point of receiving a very big favor from al-Mansour. No, the IRA man had not turned lethal—yet. He was just having fun.
“You’re lying to me, Sass-man, and I don’t like it. I’ve heard this just-doing-my-research story before. You see, we Irish are a very literary people. And some of the questions you have been asking are not literary at all. So what are you doing here?”
“Thrillers,” wheezed Rowse. “Thrillers nowadays have to be accurate. Can’t get away with vague generalizations. Look at le Carré, Clancy—you think they don’t research every last detail? It’s the only way nowadays.”
“Is it now? And a certain gentleman from across the water that you were talking with last night—he one of your co-writers?”
“That’s between us. You’d better ask him.”
“Oh, I did, Sass-man. This morning, by phone. And he asked me to keep an eye on you. If it were left to me, I’d have the lads drop you off a very tall mountain. But my friend asked me to keep an eye on you. Which I will do, day and night, until you leave. But that was all he asked me. So just between us, here’s a little something for the old times.”
Kane and O’Herlihy waded in. Mahoney watched. When Rowse’s legs gave way, he went down to the floor, doubling up, protecting the lower stomach and genitals. He was too low for a good punch, so they used the feet. He rolled his head away to avoid brain damage, feeling the toecaps thud into his back, shoulders, chest, and ribs, choking on the wave of pain until the merciful blackness came after a kick on the back of the head.
He came to in the manner of people who have been in a road accident: first gingerly aware that he was not dead, and then conscious of the pain. Beneath his shirt and trousers, his body was one large ache.
He was lying on his face, and for a while he studied the pattern of the carpet. Then he rolled over: a mistake. He ran a hand to his face. There was one lump on the cheek below the left eye; otherwise it was more or less the same face he had been shaving for years. He tried to sit up and winced. An arm went behind his shoulders and eased him into a sitting position.
“What the hell happened here?” she asked.
Monica Browne was on her knees beside him, one arm around his shoulders. The cool fingers of her right hand touched the lump below his left eye.
“I was passing, saw the door ajar. ...”
Quite a coincidence, he thought, then dismissed the idea.
“I must have fainted and thumped myself as I went down,” he said.
“Was that before or after you wrecked the room?”