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Eye of the Storm
Copyright
Harper
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HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain by Chapmans 1992
Copyright © Jack Higgins 1992
Jack Higgins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
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Source ISBN: 9780007456024
Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007456031
Version: 2015-01-12
Dedication
In memory of my grandfather Robert Bell, M M Gallant Soldier
Epigraph
The winds of heaven are blowing.
Implement all that is on the table.
May God be with you.
Coded message, Iraq Radio, Baghdad
January 1991
Table of Contents
Prologue
The mortar attack on Number Ten Downing Street when the War Cabinet was meeting at 10.00 a.m. on Thursday, 7 February 1991, is now a matter of history. It has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps it went something like this …
1
It was just before dark as Dillon emerged from the alley and paused on the corner. Rain drifted across the Seine in a flurry of snow, sleet mixed with it, and it was cold, even for January in Paris. He wore a reefer coat, peaked cap, jeans and boots, just another sailor off one of the barges working the river, which he very definitely was not.
He lit a cigarette in cupped hands and stayed there for a moment in the shadows, looking across the cobbled square at the lights of the small café on the other side. After a while he dropped the cigarette, thrust his hands deep in his pockets and started across.
In the darkness of the entrance two men waited, watching his progress. One of them whispered, ‘That must be him.’
He made a move. The other held him back. ‘No, wait till he’s inside.’
Dillon, his senses sharpened by years of entirely the wrong kind of living, was aware of them, but gave no sign. He paused at the entrance, slipped his left hand under the reefer coat to check that the Walther PPK was securely tucked into the waistband of his jeans against the small of his back, then he opened the door and went in.
It was typical of the sort of place to be found on that part of the river: half a dozen tables with chairs, a zinc-topped bar, bottles lined against a cracked mirror behind it. The entrance to the rear was masked by a bead curtain.
The barman, a very old man with a grey moustache, wore an alpaca coat,