“I’m quite used to inconvenience,” said Mrs. Barton, but her face softened. It had been a long time since anyone had apologized for putting her to trouble. “Would you care for a cup of tea? I usually make one at this hour.”
Some instinct at the back of Thorpe’s mind prompted him to accept. As they sat over a pot of tea in the back kitchen, which was the housekeeper-companion’s domain, Martin Thorpe felt almost at home. His mother’s kitchen in Battersea had not been dissimilar. Mrs. Barton told him about Lady Macallister, her whining and tantrums, her obstinacy and the constant strain of competing with her all-too-convenient deafness.
“She can’t see all your fine arguments, Mr. Thorpe, not even when you offered to put up a memorial to that old ogre in the sitting room.”
Thorpe was surprised. Evidently the tart Mrs. Barton had a mind of her own when her employer was not listening. “She does what you tell her,” he said.
“Would you like another cup of tea?” she asked. As she poured it, she said quietly, “Oh, yes, she does what I tell her. She depends on me, and she knows it. If I went, she’d never get another companion. You can’t nowadays. People aren’t prepared to put up with that sort of thing these days.”
“It can’t be much of a life for you, Mrs. Barton.”
“It’s not,” she said shortly, “but I have a roof over my head, and food and some clothes. I get by. It’s the price one pays.”
“For being a widow?” asked Thorpe gently.
“Yes.”
There was a picture of a young man in the uniform of a pilot of the Royal Air Force propped on the mantelpiece next to the clock. He wore a sheepskin jacket, a polka-dotted scarf, and a broad grin. Seen from one angle, he looked not unlike Martin Thorpe.
“Your son?” said the financier, with a nod.
Mrs. Barton gazed at the picture. “Yes. Shot down over France in nineteen forty-three.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. One becomes accustomed.”
“So he won’t be able to look after you when she’s dead and gone.”
“No.”
“Then who will?”
“I’ll get by. She’ll no doubt leave me something in her will. I’ve looked after her for sixteen years.”
“Yes, of course she will. She’ll see you all right—no doubt of it.”
He spent another hour in the back kitchen, and when he left he was a much happier man. It was nearly closing time for shops and offices, but from a corner phone booth he made a call to the head office of ManCon, and within ten minutes Endean had done what his colleague asked.
In the West End an insurance broker agreed to stay late in his office that night and receive Mr. Thorpe at ten the next morning.
That Thursday evening Johann Schlinker flew into London from Hamburg. He had arranged his appointment by telephone from Hamburg the same morning, phoning his contact at his home rather than at the office.
He met the diplomat from the Iraqi embassy for dinner at nine. It was an expensive dinner, even more so when the German arms dealer handed over an envelope containing the equivalent in German marks of £1000. In return he took an envelope from the Arab and checked the contents. They took the form of a letter on crested embassy notepaper. The letter was addressed to whom it might concern and stated that the undersigned, being a diplomat on the staff of the London embassy of the Republic of Iraq, had been required and requested by the Interior and Police Ministry of his country to authorize Herr Johann Schlinker to negotiate the purchase of 400,000 rounds of standard 9mm. ball for shipment to Iraq to replenish the stocks of the police forces of the country. It was signed by the diplomat and bore the stamp and seal of the Republic of Iraq, which would normally be on the desk of the Ambassador. The letter further stated that the purchase would be wholly and exclusively for the use of the Republic of Iraq and would under no circumstances be passed, in whole or in part, to any other party. It was an End User Certificate.
When they parted, it was too late for the German to return home, so he spent the night in London and left the following morning.
At eleven on Friday morning, Cat Shannon phoned Marc Vlaminck at his flat above the bar in Ostend.
“Did you find that man I asked you to trace?” he inquired after introducing himself. He had already warned the Belgian to talk very carefully on the telephone.
“Yes, I found him,” replied Tiny Marc. He was sitting up in bed, while Anna snored gently beside him. The bar usually closed between three and four in the morning, so midday was the habitual rising time for both of them.
“Is he prepared to talk business about the merchandise?” asked Shannon.
“I think so,” said Vlaminck. “I haven’t raised the matter with him yet, but a business friend here says he will normally do business after a suitable introduction through a mutual acquaintance.”
“He still has the goods I mentioned to you at our last meeting?”
“Yes,” said the voice from Belgium, “he still has them.”
“Fine,” said Shannon. “Get a meeting and introduction with him yourself first, and tell him you have a customer who has approached you and would like to talk business. Ask him to be available for a meeting next weekend with the customer. Tell him the customer is good and reliable and is an Englishman called Brown. You know what to say. Just get him interested in a business deal. Tell him the customer would wish to examine one example of the goods at the meeting, and if it is up to standard, discuss terms and delivery. I’ll ring you toward the weekend and let you know where I am and when I could come to see you and him together. Understand?”
“Sure,” said Marc. “I’ll get on with it over the next couple of days and set the meeting up for some time to be confirmed later, but during next weekend.”
They exchanged the usual good wishes and hung up.
At half past two a cable from Marseilles arrived at the flat. It bore the name of a Frenchman and an address. Langarotti said he would telephone the man and introduce Shannon with a personal recommendation. The cable concluded by saying inquiries regarding the shipping agent were under way, and he expected to be able to give Shannon a name and address within five days.
Shannon picked up the phone and called the offices of UTA airlines in Piccadilly to get himself a seat on the flight of the following Sunday midnight to Africa from Le Bourget, Paris. From BEA he reserved a ticket to Paris on the first flight the next morning, Saturday.
He put £2000 of the money he had brought back from Germany into an envelope and slipped it into the lining at the bottom of his handgrip, for London airport representatives of the Treasury by and large disapprove of British citizens strolling out of the country with more than the permitted £25 in cash and £300 in travelers’ checks.
Just after lunch Sir James Manson summoned Simon Endean to his office. He had finished reading Shannon’s report and was agreeably surprised at the speed with which the mercenary’s proposed plan of twelve days earlier was being carried out. He had checked the accounts and approved the expenditures. What pleased him even more was the long telephone call he had had from Martin Thorpe, who had spent half the night and most of the morning with an insurance broker.
“You say Shannon will be abroad for most of next week,” he told Endean when his aide entered the office.
“Yes, Sir James.”
“Good. There’s a job that has to be done sooner or later, and it might as well be now. Get one of our standard contracts of employment, the kind we use for the engagement of African representatives. Paste over the name of ManCon with a strip of white paper and fill in the name of Bormac in its place. Make it out for a one-year engagement for the services as West African representative of Antoine Bobi at a salary of five hundred pounds a month. When you’ve got it done, show it to me.”
“Bobi?” queried Endean. “You mean Colonel Bobi?”
“That’s the one. I don’t want the future president of Zangaro running off anywhere. Next week, starting Monday,
you are going down to Cotonou to interview the colonel and persuade him that Bormac Trading Company, whose representative you are, has been so impressed by his mental and business acumen that it would like to engage his services as a West African consultant. Don’t worry. He’ll never check to see who or what Bormac is, or that you are its representative. If I know anything about these lads, the hefty salary will be what interests him. If he’s short of the ready, it ought to be manna from heaven.
“You are to tell him his duties will be communicated to him later, but the sole condition of employment for the moment is that he remain where he is at his house in Dahomey for the next three months or until you visit him again. Persuade him there will be a bonus in salary if he waits where he is. Tell him the money will be transferred to his local account in Dahomean francs. On no account is he to receive any hard currency. He might vamoose. One last thing. When the contract is ready, have it photocopied to hide the traces of the change of name of the employing company, and only take with you photocopies. As for the date on it, make sure the last figure for the year is blurred. Smudge it yourself.”
Endean absorbed the instructions and left to begin setting up the employment under false pretenses of Colonel Antoine Bobi.
That Friday afternoon, just after four, Thorpe emerged from the gloomy Kensington apartment with the four share-transfer deeds he needed, duly signed by Lady Macallister and witnessed by Mrs. Barton. He also bore a letter of authority signed by the old woman, instructing Mr. Dalgleish, her attorney in Dundee, to hand over to Mr. Thorpe the share certificates upon presentation of the letter and proof of identity and the necessary check.
The name of the recipient of the shares had been left blank on the transfer deeds, but Lady Macallister had not noticed. She had been too distraught at the thought of Mrs. Barton packing her bags and leaving. Before nightfall the name of the Zwingli Bank’s nominee company acting on behalf of Messrs. Adams, Ball, Carter, and Davies would be written into the vacant space. After a visit to Zurich the following Monday, the bank stamp and countersignature of Dr. Steinhofer would complete the form, and four certified checks, one drawn against the account of each of the four nominees buying 7.5 percent of the stock of Bormac, would be brought back from Switzerland.
It had cost Sir James Manson 2 shillings to buy each of the 300,000 shares, then quoted at 1 shilling and 1 penny on the Stock Exchange, or a total of £30,000. It had also cost him another £30,000, shunted that morning through three bank accounts, withdrawn once in cash and repaid into a fresh account an hour later, to purchase a life annuity which would assure a comfortable and worry-free end to her days for an elderly housekeeper-companion.
All in all, Thorpe reckoned it was cheap at the price. Even more important, it was untraceable. Thorpe’s name appeared nowhere on any document; the annuity had been paid for by a solicitor, and solicitors were paid to keep their mouths shut. Thorpe was confident Mrs. Barton would have enough sense to do the same. And to cap it all, it was even legal.
fourteen
Benoit Lambert, known to friends and police as Benny, was a small-fry member of the underworld and self-styled mercenary. In point of fact, his sole appearance in the mercenary-soldier field had occurred when, with the police looking for him in the Paris area, he had taken a plane for Africa and signed on in the Sixth Commando in the Congo under the leadership of Denard.
For some strange reason the mercenary leader had taken a liking to the timorous little man and had given him a job at headquarters, which kept him well away from combat. He had been useful in his job, because it enabled him to exercise to good effect the one talent he really did possess. He was a wizard at obtaining things. He seemed to be able to conjure up eggs where there were no chickens and whisky where there was no still. In the headquarters of any military unit, such a man is always useful, and most units have one. He had stayed with the Sixth Commando for nearly a year, until May 1967, when he spotted trouble brewing in the form of a pending revolt by Schramme’s Tenth Commando against the Congolese government. He felt—rightly, as it turned out—that Denard and the Sixth might be drawn into this fracas and there would be an opportunity for all, including headquarters staff, to see some real combat. For Benny Lambert this was the moment to move briskly in the other direction.
To his surprise, he had been allowed to go.
Back in France, he had cultivated the notion of himself as a mercenary and later had called himself an arms dealer. The first he certainly was not, but as for arms, with his variety of contacts he had occasionally been able to provide an item of weaponry here and there, usually handguns for the underworld, occasionally a case of rifles. He had also come to know an African diplomat who was prepared, for a price, to provide a moderately serviceable End User Certificate in the form of a letter from the Ambassador’s personal desk, complete with embassy stamp. Eighteen months earlier he had mentioned this in a bar to a Corsican called Langarotti.
Nevertheless, he was surprised on Friday evening to hear the Corsican on the phone, calling long distance to tell him he would be visited at his home the next day or Sunday by Cat Shannon. He had heard of Shannon, but, even more, he was aware of the vitriolic hatred Charles Roux bore for the Irish mercenary, and he had long since heard on the grapevine that circulated among the mercenaries of Paris that Roux was prepared to pay money to anyone who would tip him off as to Shannon’s whereabouts, should the Irishman ever turn up in Paris. After consideration, Lambert agreed to be at home to see Shannon.
“Yes, I think I can get that certificate,” he said when Shannon had finished explaining what he wanted. “My contact is still in Paris. I deal with him fairly frequently, you know.”
It was a lie, for his dealings were very infrequent, but he was sure he could swing the deal.
“How much?” asked Shannon shortly.
“Fifteen thousand francs,” said Benny Lambert.
“Merde,” said Shannon. “I’ll pay you a thousand pounds, and that’s over the rate.”
Lambert calculated. The sum was just over eleven thousand francs at the current rate. “Okay,” he said.
“You let out one word of this, and I’ll slit your gizzard like a chicken’s,” said Shannon. “Even better, I’ll get the Corsican to do it, and he’ll start at the knee.”
“Not a word, honest,” protested Benny. “A thousand pounds, and I’ll get you the letter in four days. And not a word to anyone.”
Shannon put down five hundred pounds. “You’ll take it in sterling,” he said. “Half now, half when I pick it up.”
Lambert was about to protest but realized it would do no good. The Irishman did not trust him.
“I’ll call you here on Wednesday,” said Shannon. “Have the letter here, and I’ll hand over the other five hundred.”
When he had gone, Benny Lambert thought over what he would do. Finally he decided to get the letter, collect the remainder of his fee, and tell Roux later.
The following evening Shannon flew to Africa on the midnight flight and arrived at dawn on Monday morning.
It was a long drive up-country. The taxi was hot and rattled abominably. It was still the height of the dry season, and the sky above the oil-palm plantations was robin’s-egg blue, without a cloud. Shannon did not mind. It was good to be back in Africa again for a day and a half, even after a six-hour flight without sleep.
It was familiar to him, more so than the cities of Western Europe. Familiar were the sounds and the smells, the villagers walking along the edge of the road to market, columns of women in Indian file, their gourds and bundles of wares balanced on their heads, unwaveringly steady.
At each village they passed, the usual morning market was set out beneath the shade of the palm-thatch roofs of the rickety stalls, the villagers bargaining and chattering, buying and selling, the women tending the stalls while the men sat in the shade and talked of important matters that only they could understand, and the naked brown children scampering through the dust between the legs of their parents
and the stalls.
Shannon had both windows open. He sat back and sniffed the moisture and the palms, the wood smoke and the brown, stagnant rivers they crossed. From the airport he had already telephoned the number the writer had given him and knew he was expected. He arrived at the villa set back from the road in a private, if small, park just before noon.
The guards checked him at the gate, frisking him from ankles to armpits, before letting him pay off the taxi and enter the gate. Inside, he recognized a face, one of the personal attendants of the man he had come to see. The servant grinned broadly and bobbed his head. He led Shannon to one of the three houses in the grounds of the park and ushered him into an empty sitting room. Shannon waited alone for half an hour.
He was staring out of the windows, feeling the cool of the air conditioner dry out his clothes, when he heard the creak of a door and the soft sound of a sandal on tiles behind him. He turned around.
The general was much the same as when they had last met on the darkened airstrip, the same luxuriant beard, the same deep bass voice.
“Well, Major Shannon, so soon. Couldn’t you stay away?”
He was bantering, as he usually did. Shannon grinned as they shook hands.
“I’ve come down because I need something, sir. And because there is something I think we ought to talk over. An idea in the back of my head.”
“There’s not much that an impoverished exile can offer you,” said the general, “but I’ll always listen to your ideas. If I remember rightly, you used to have some fairly good ones.”
Shannon said, “There’s one thing you have, even in exile, that I could use. You still have your people’s loyalty. And what I need is men.”
The two men talked through the lunch hour and through the afternoon. They were still discussing when darkness fell, Shannon’s freshly drawn diagrams spread out on the table. He had brought nothing with him but clean white paper and a variety of colored felt-tipped pens, just in case of a skin search at customs.