On Dangerous Ground Read Online Free PDF

Dillon stood, he smiled, and it was like no smile she had ever seen before, warm and immensely charming, changing his personality completely. She had come here wanting to dislike this man, but now . . .
    He took her hand. “And what would a nice Jewish girl like you be doing in such bad company? Will you have a glass of champagne?”
    “I don’t think so, I’m on duty.” She was slightly uncertain now and took a seat.
    Dillon went to the bar, returned with another glass, and poured Krug into it. “When you’re tired of champagne, you’re tired of life.”
    “What a load of cobblers,” she said, but took the glass.
    Ferguson roared with laughter. “Beware this one, Dillon. She ran across a hoodlum emerging from a supermarket with a sawed-off shotgun last year. Unfortunately for him she was working the American Embassy detail that week and had a Smith and Wesson in her handbag.”
    “So you convinced him of his wicked ways?” Dillon said.
    She nodded. “Something like that.”
    Ferguson’s Guinness and oysters appeared. “We’ve got trouble, Dillon, bad trouble. Tell him, Chief Inspector.”
    Which she did in a few brief sentences. When she was finished, Dillon took a cigarette from a silver case and lit it with an old-fashioned Zippo lighter.
    “So what do you think?” she asked.
    “Well, all we know for certain is that Billy Quigley is dead.”
    “But he did manage to speak to the Brigadier,” Hannah said. “Which surely means Ahern will abort the mission.”
    “Why should he?” Dillon said. “You’ve got nothing except the word that he intends to try and blow up the President sometime tomorrow. Where? When? Have you even the slightest idea, and I’ll bet his schedule is extensive!”
    “It certainly is,” Ferguson said. “Downing Street in the morning with the P.M. and the Israeli Prime Minister. Cocktail party on a river steamer tomorrow night and most things in between.”
    “None of which he’s willing to cancel?”
    “I’m afraid not.” Ferguson shook his head. “I’ve already had a call from Downing Street. The President refuses to change a thing.”
    Hannah Bernstein said, “Do you know Ahern personally?”
    “Oh, yes,” Dillon told her. “He tried to kill me a couple of times and then we met for face-to-face negotiations during a truce in Derry.”
    “And his girlfriend?”
    Dillon shook his head. “Whatever else Norah Bell is, she isn’t that. Sex isn’t her bag. She was just an ordinary working-class girl until her family was obliterated by an IRA bomb. These days she’d kill the Pope if she could.”
    “And Ahern?”
    “He’s a strange one. It’s always been like a game to him. He’s a brilliant manipulator. I recall his favorite saying. That he didn’t like his left hand to know what his right hand was doing.”
    “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Ferguson demanded.
    “Just that nothing’s ever what it seems with Ahern.”
    There was a small silence, then Ferguson said, “Everyone is on this case. We’ve got them pumping out a not very good photo of the man himself.”
    “And an even more inferior one of the girl,” Hannah Bernstein said.
    Ferguson swallowed an oyster. “Any ideas on finding him?”
    “As a matter of fact, I have,” Dillon said. “There’s a Protestant pub in Kilburn, the William of Orange. I could have words there.”
    “Then what are we waiting for?” Ferguson swallowed his last oyster and stood up. “Let’s go.”
     
     
    The William of Orange in Kilburn had a surprising look of Belfast about it with the fresco of King William victorious at the Battle of the Boyne on the whitewashed wall at one side. It could have been any Orange pub in the Shankhill.
    “You wouldn’t exactly fit in at the bar, you two,” Dillon said as he sat in the back of the Daimler. “I need to speak to a man called Paddy Driscoll.”
    “What is he, UVF?” Ferguson asked.
    “Let’s say he’s a fund-raiser. Wait here. I’m going ’round