Free Touch the Devil by Jack Higgins Page A

"Later, professor. For now, you will please pack a suitcase with whatever you feel you need for an extended trip."
    "And just exactly where might we be going?"
    "Well, if things go according to plan, we should cross into Ulster about three hours from now. Onward transportation, courtesy of the Army Air Corps, tomorrow morning. You should be in London by noon. I'd take a raincoat, if I were you." Villiers had produced a field service dressing pack from one pocket and was opening it with his teeth. "The weather over there's been terrible lately."
    Devlin shook his head. "Where did you go to school, son?" "Eton College."
    "Jesus, and I might have known. What would the Empire have been without you?"
    "Not very much, I suspect," Tony Villiers said crisply. "But time is limited, professor. Please do as I say without any further delay."
    "And so I will." Devlin walked to the door followed by one of the troopers. "But only because I'm fascinated. Can't wait to find out what all this is about. Help yourself to the Bushmills."
    He smiled and walked out into the hall.
    Morecambe is a seaside resort on the Lancashire coast, south of the English Lake District, a quiet town that even during the holiday season caters mainly to older people. Not a great deal goes on there. Someone once unkindly said that when people die in Morecambe they don't bury them, they simply sit them up in the town bus shelters to make the place look busy.
    Frank Barry found it pleasant enough. Not many people on the waterfront, which was only to be expected in November, but then he'd always found seaside resorts out of season stimulating places--the cafes and shops closed for the winter, the empty boardwalks. He walked out along the pier, feeling unaccountably cheerful, and stood at the rail, breathing in the good salt air. The dark waters of Morecambe Bay were being whipped into whitecaps by the wind, and to the north, through the mist, he could see the mountains of the Lake District, a blur on the horizon.
    He lit a cigarette and waited. After a while, he heard footsteps booming hollowly on the boardwalk behind him. The man who leaned on the rail on his right wore a dark raincoat and hat. He was perhaps thirty and had a young, intelligent face. His steel-rimmed glasses were giving him trouble in the rain.
    Barry, who had discarded his horn-rimmed spectacles and washed the brilliantine from his hair at the motel where he had stayed the night before, smiled at him. "A hell of a problem those things in weather like this."
    The young man put the briefcase he was carrying down and wiped his glasses with a handkerchief. "True, Mr. Barry. I tried contact lenses a few years ago but unfortunately had an allergy to them." His English was excellent with just a trace of an accent.
    "You have something for me?"
    The young man touched the briefcase with his foot. "Everything you need."
    "Well, that makes a change," Barry said. "I mean, it's not often you get everything in this life."
    "I have also included a contact in London by which you may reach me in the event of an emergency, Mr. Barry. Please memorize and destroy."
    Barry picked up the briefcase and grinned. "Son, I was doing this sort of thing when you were still hanging on your mother's left breast."
    He walked away long the pier, his feet echoing on the boards.
    The young man stayed where he was. Only when the sound of the echoes had faded did he turn from the rail.
    Barry picked up a rental car at Manchester airport, a Ford Cortina, and was driving it through Lancaster, turning on to the M6 motorway and heading north for the Lake District within twenty minutes of leaving his KGB contact on Morecambe pier. He drove for some ten or twelve miles, then turned into a convenient rest stop, cut the engine, and opened the briefcase.
    There was, as the young man had said, everything he needed. His contact at a place called Marsh End, south of Ravenglass on the Cumbrian coast, all very convenient for the Wastwater proving