Touch the Devil by Jack Higgins

Author:Jack Higgins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Thriller
ISBN: 9780812828726
Publisher: Stein and Day
Published: 1982-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine.

By the time Barry reached Manchester airport, his hair was again soaked in brilliantine and neatly parted, and he was wearing the thick horn-rimmed spectacles. He made the Jersey plane with only twenty minutes to spare and sank into his seat with a certain amount of relief, for there wasn’t another until the following day.

He ordered a large Scotch from the pretty British Airways stewardess in her blue uniform, lit a cigarette, and sat looking out of the window, going over it all in his mind, giving particular attention to Belov.

“Poor Nikolai,” he said softly. “You certainly are in for one hell of a shock, old son.”

His Scotch came, and he sipped it slowly with conscious pleasure. Things were going well, very well indeed.

One hour later he was walking out of the main entrance to Jersey airport to hail a taxi to take him down to the harbor, and it was here that he ran into his first snag. According to a notice chalked up on a blackboard, there was no further sailing to St. Malo that day.

Barry went into the shipping office and spoke to the clerk who exhibited the usual competent indifference that such people do. “Technical trouble, I’m afraid, sir. No problem with the morning sailing. They’ll have another craft over.” .

And Barry, bowing to the inevitable, walked back along the quay into town and booked himself a room for the night at the Royal Yacht Hotel.

Sitting on the balcony of the hotel room at St. Denis, Anne-Marie searched the horizon for Belle Isle. It was a calm day, with excellent visibility. She found it at last, a shadow, no more than that, even when she focused the binoculars.

Devlin came out of his room in a bathrobe, toweling his hair dry from the shower. “If you’re interested, the trawler docked an hour ago at the fish pier.”

“Is Jean-Paul on board?”

“No, he comes tomorrow afternoon with Cresson. He’ll phone me here after I’ve visited the island again, just to make sure everything’s all right.”

“You’ll be going with them tomorrow night?”

“Yes.”

“Can I come?”

She wasn’t pleading, she wasn’t that sort. Devlin said, “What a scoop this all would have been for you! What pictures! Another prize!”

“Bastard,” she said amiably.

He said seriously, “You’ve considered the worst implications. The fact that we may miss them altogether… .”

“Or that they may be dead when we haul them aboard?” She nodded gravely. “Whichever way it goes, I’d like to be there, Liam.” “And why not?”

“Thank you.”

“Thanks is it?” he said. “God save us, and what for? Anyway, I must away out of this and take care of a phone call I’ve been avoiding making for twenty-four hours at least.”

“Important?”

“Ferguson,” he said.

Ferguson had been called away at a moment’s notice by the Director General. When the phone rang at the Cavendish Square flat, Harry Fox was sitting at the desk in the study working on some papers.

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