It had been only a step from selling illegal arms to providing training in their use. He'd enjoyed every moment of that in the mountains over the border in Afghanistan, and then it had been only logical to take the next step-from training the Taliban to leading them in battle. He'd immediately been seized by the old thrill, and he felt no guilt at all.
The surprise had been when Al Qaeda had discovered what he was up to, and not only approved, but insisted he continue. The strange thing was that there had been a thrill to that, too. It wasn't as if he needed the money. It was all part of a wonderful, lunatic madness. Anyway, right now he needed rest and recreation. It would be nice to see his mother again. He hadn't kept in touch much this time. It was better to use mobile and satellite phones sparingly these days, unless they were totally encrypted and encoded. Too many people failed to realize that every conversation you made was out there somewhere and capable of being retrieved.
He wondered if his mother had made one of her rare visits to the family estate, Talbot Place, in County Down. Her own mother, Mary Ellen, had died the previous year, but his grandfather, 'Colonel Henry' to the servants, was still alive at ninety-five.
Soldier, lawyer, politician, Member of Parliament at Stormont, and a Grand Master in the Orange Lodge, Colonel Henry was a resolute defender of the Protestant cause who had loathed Roman Catholics-Fenians, as he called them-all his life. Now in his dotage, he was surrounded by workers and house servants who were mainly Catholic, thanks to Mary Ellen, a Protestant herself, who had employed them for years. Justin Talbot's mother despised the man.
Talbot yawned again and decided that if his mother had gone to Ulster, he would fly across himself, possibly in one of the firm's planes. He could use a break. He closed his eyes and drifted off.
At that moment, his mother, Jean Talbot, was crossing a hillside high above Carlingford Lough, the Irish Sea way beyond. A seventy-one-year-old woman, slim and fit and young for her age, in both looks and energy, as the Irish saying went, was wearing an Australian drover's coat, heavy boots, a cap of Donegal tweed and carrying a walking stick. The house dog, Nell, a black flat-coat retriever, was about her business, running hither and thither. Jean reached her destination, a stone bothy with a bench outside. She sat down, took out a packet of cigarettes, and lit one.
The sun shone, the sky was blue and the morning wind had dropped to a dead calm. This was an amazing place with an incredible backdrop, the Mourne Mountains. Far down below was the village of Kilmartin, and Talbot Place, the splendid old Georgian house that had been the family home for two hundred and fifty years, the house in which she had been born.
She stubbed out her cigarette carefully, stood up, whistled to Nell and turned. It was good to be back and yet, as always, she already felt restless and ill at ease; as usual, her father was the problem. During the Second World War, with him away and her mother in charge, she had been educated at a local Catholic boarding school run by nuns who accepted day-girls and didn't mind a Protestant or two. She had never known her father and was terrified of the arrogant, anti-Catholic bully who returned after the war and was outraged to find his daughter in the hands of nuns, and 'bloody Fenians' all over the estate.
Mary Ellen's quiet firmness defeated him, as did the good humour of his tenants, who smiled and touched their caps to Colonel Henry, convinced, as Jean Talbot realized as she grew up, that he was a raving lunatic. The nuns succeeded with her so well that she was accepted by St Hugh's College, Oxford, to study fine art.
To her father, busy with the law and politics at Stormont, it was all a waste of time, but she had enough talent to then be accepted by the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, after Oxford. Mary Ellen hugged her in delight, but her father said it was time she settled down and gave him an heir.
Her answer was to get pregnant by a sculptor named Justin Monk, a Roman Catholic separated from his wife who'd refused him a divorce on religious grounds. Shortly after the birth, he'd been badly injured in a motorcycle accident. Jean was able to visit him once and show him the baby and promised to name it after him. He died soon afterwards.
When Henry Talbot and Mary Ellen came to visit her in her London lodgings, he had looked at Justin in his cot and destroyed any hope his daughter might have had left for a future relationship with her father.
'A bastard, is that the best you can do? At least he's a Protestant; I suppose that's something. I've got things to do. I'm meeting people at Westminster. I'll leave you to your mother.'
After he had gone, Mary Ellen said, 'is he a Protestant?'
'Justin begged me to have him baptized in the faith. What could I do? He was dying. Do you hate me for it?'
'My darling, I love you for it. It was the decent thing to do.' She embraced the baby. 'But I'd make it our secret, if I were you. If they had even a hint of it on the estate, it would be all over Kilmartin.'
'All over County Down,' Jean had said. 'And what about my son?'
'Don't tell him, either. It's a burden to tell a child and expect him to hold it secret. One day in the future, when you think it's right, you can tell him. So what will you do now?'
'I intend to continue my work. At the Slade they feel that I have a gift for portraiture, and I intend to concentrate on that.'
'Excellent, but you'll need a home. I'll stay a bit in London and we'll find you a house. In Mayfair, I think, and we'll need a housekeeper and a nanny.'
'But what will he say?'
'He's left everything to me. We can afford it, dear. I don't think you've ever appreciated how wealthy you and Justin will be one of these days, whether you like it or not. Talbot money is old money-and you'd be surprised how much property we own in the West End of London. In fact, now that I think of it, there's a superb Regency house on Marley Court off Curzon Street, very convenient for Park Lane and Hyde Park. Let's take a look.'
Marley Court it was, and her beloved son had grown up there, and gone to school as a day-boy at St Paul's-she couldn't bear the thought of sending him away. His visits to Talbot Place were frequent, of course, particularly during the long summers, for his grandmother adored him and his grandfather grudgingly admitted he was a fine rider.
He was also popular with the estate workers and the locals, but their respect for Mary Ellen ensured that anyway. Through the long, hard, brutal days of the Troubles, Talbot Place had remained inviolate because of her. It was remarkable when you considered that most Catholics in the area were Nationalists, and the Provisional IRA was so powerful that the countryside from Warrenpoint as far as Crossmaglen in County Armagh was designated bandit country by the British Army.
Talbot Place could have been burnt to the ground, not a stick nor stone left standing, and certain extreme elements would have done exactly that, but local opinion stayed their hand. Half the village was employed on the estate, and Mary Ellen and the boy were inviolate-which also meant that Colonel Henry's life was spared as well; though it wasn't deserved, many people would say.
There had been a problem in August 1979, when her son was fifteen, when the British Army had suffered its worst defeat in the Troubles, that terrible ambush only a few miles away at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint. That many of the local men were IRA did not surprise her. It meant that some of her workers would be, too. But she had been shocked to hear that a nineteen-year-old stable boy named Sean Kelly, son of Jack Kelly, publican of the Kilmartin Arms and a great friend of her son's, had been killed in an exchange of fire with wounded soldiers at Narrow Water.