Touch the Devil by Jack Higgins Read Free Book Online Page A

famine. Made the family fortune out of shipping during the second half of the nineteenth century, since when they've never looked back. Oil, construction, chemica l p lants--you name it." Fox frowned and looked up. "A Protestant. That's astonishing."
    "Why?" Ferguson said. "A lot of prejudice against the Catholics in America in the old days. Probably one of his ancestors changed sides, and he's hardly the first Protestant to want a United Ireland. What about Wolfe Tone? He started it all. And the man who came closest to getting it from the British government of his day, Charles Stuart Parnell, was another."
    "According to this, Brosnan's mother is a Catholic."
    "Unremittingly so. Mass four times a week. Born in Dublin. Met her husband when she was a student at Boston University. He's been dead for some years. She rules the family empire with a rod of iron. I believe the only human being she has never been able to bend to her will is her son."
    "He did all the right things, it seems. Very Ivy League stuff. Top prep school. Took a degree in English Literature at Princeton." "Majored," Ferguson corrected him.
    "I beg your pardon, sir?"
    "Majored in English, that's what our American friends say."
    Fox shrugged and returned to the file. "Then in nineteen sixty-six he volunteered for Vietnam--Airborne Rangers and Special Services. And an enlisted man, sir, that's the puzzling thing."
    "A very important point, that, Harry."
    Ferguson poured himself more tea. "Vietnam was never exactly a popular issue in America. If you were at university it was possible to avoid the draft, which was exactly what most young men with Brosnan's background did. He could have continued to avoid service by staying on at university and taking a doctorate. He didn't. What's the word that's so popular these days, Harry? Macho? Maybe that had something to do with it. Perhaps he felt less of a man because he'd avoided it for so long. In the end, the important thing is that he went."
    "And to some purpose, sir." Fox whistled. "Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star with Oak Leaves, Vietnamese Cross of Valor." He frowned. "And the Legion of Honor. How in the hell did the French get involved?"
    Ferguson stood up and walked to the window. "An interesting one, that. His last flamboyant gesture. He saved the neck of a famous French war photographer, a woman, would you believe, name of Anne-Marie Audin. Some ambush or other. She pops up in the story again. The photo from the Paris-Match article, remember, with Brosnan, Liam Devlin, and Frank Barry? The good Madamoiselle Audin took that, among others. She wrote the same story for Life magazine. A behind-the-scenes look at the Irish struggle. It went down very well in Boston."
    Fox reached for the next file. "But how the hell did he move on from Vietnam to the IRA?"
    "Wildly illogical, but beautifully simple." Ferguson turned and walked back to the fire. "I'll shorthand it for you and save you some time. On leaving the army, Brosnan went to Trinity College in Dublin to work for that doctorate we mentioned. In August, nineteen sixty-nine, he was visiting an old Catholic uncle on his mother's side, the priest in charge of a church on the Falls Road in Belfast. When did you first visit that fair city, Harry?"
    "Nineteen seventy-six, sir."
    Ferguson nodded. "So much has happened, so much water under the bridge, that the first wild years of the Troubles must seem like ancient history to people like you. So many names, faces." He sighed and sat down. "During Brosnan's visit, Orange mobs led by 'B' Specials, an organization now happily defunct, went on the rampage. They burned down Brosnan's uncle's church. In fact, the old man was so badly beaten he lost an eye."
    "I see," Fox said soberly.
    "No you don't, Harry. I once had an agent called Vaughan -Major Simon Vaughan. Won't work for me now, but that's another story. He really did see, because, like Brosnan, he had an Irish mother. Oh, the IRA has its fair share of thugs