Outside the door, Julie Manson stopped and breathed deeply. Mata Hari, she was sure, could not have done better.
fifteen
The Spanish authorities are far more tolerant to tourists than is generally thought. Bearing in mind the millions of Scandinavians, Germans, French, and British who pour into Spain each spring and summer, and since the law of averages must provide that a certain percentage of them are up to no good, the authorities have quite a lot to put up with. Irrelevant breaches of regulations such as importing two cartons of cigarettes rather than the permitted one carton, which would be pounced on at London airport, are shrugged off in Spain.
The attitude of the Spanish authorities has always tended to be that a tourist really has to work at it to get into trouble in Spain, but once he has made the effort, the Spaniards will oblige and make it extremely unpleasant for him. The four items they object to finding in passenger luggage are arms and/or explosives, drugs, pornography, and Communist propaganda. Other countries may object to two bottles of duty-free brandy but permit Penthouse magazine. Not Spain. Other countries have different priorities, but, as any Spaniard will cheerfully admit, Spain is different.
The customs officer at Malaga airport that brilliant Monday afternoon cast a casual eye over the bundle of £1000 in used £20 notes he found in Shannon’s travel bag and shrugged. If he was aware that, to get it to Malaga, Shannon must have carried it with him through London airport customs, which is forbidden, he gave no sign. In any case, that was London’s problem. He found no copies of Sexy Girls or Soviet News and waved the traveler on.
Kurt Semmler looked fit and tanned from his three weeks orbiting the Mediterranean looking for ships for sale. He was still rake-thin and chain-smoked nervously, a habit that belied his cold nerve when in action. But the suntan gave him an air of health and set off with startling clarity his close-cropped pale hair and icy blue eyes.
As they rode from the airport into Malaga, Semmler told Shannon he had been in Naples, Genoa, Valletta, Marseilles, Barcelona, and Gibraltar, looking up old contacts in the world of small ships, checking the lists of perfectly respectable shipping brokers and agents for ships for sale, and looking some of them over as they lay at anchor. He had seen a score, but none of them suitable. He had heard of another dozen in ports he had not visited, and had rejected them because he knew from the names of their skippers they must have suspect backgrounds. From all his inquiries he had drawn up a list of seven, and the Albatross was the third. Of her qualities, all he would say was that she looked right.
He had reserved Shannon a room in the Malaga Palacio in the name of Brown, and Shannon checked in there first. It was just after four when they strolled through the wide gates of the south face of the Acera de la Marina square and onto the docks.
The Albatross was drawn up alongside a quay at the far end of the port. She was as Semmler had described her, and her white paint glistened in the sun and heat. They went aboard, and Semmler introduced Shannon to the owner and captain, George Allen, who showed him over the vessel. Before very long Shannon had come to the conclusion that it was too small for his purposes. There were a master cabin to sleep two, a pair of single cabins, and a saloon where mattresses and sleeping bags could be laid on the floor.
The after hold could, at a pinch, be converted into a sleeping area for another six men, but with the crew of four and Shannon’s five, they would be cramped. He cursed himself for not warning Semmler there were six more men expected who would also have to be fitted in.
Shannon checked the ship’s papers, which appeared to be in order. She was registered in Britain, and her Board of Trade papers confirmed it. Shannon spent an hour with Captain Allen, discussing methods of payment, examining invoices and receipts showing the amount of work that had been done on the Albatross over recent months, and checking the ship’s log. He left with Semmler just before six and strolled back to the hotel, deep in thought.
“What’s the matter?” asked Semmler. “She’s clean.”
“It’s not that,” said Shannon. “She’s too small. She’s registered as a private yacht. She doesn’t belong to a shipping company. The thing that bugs me is that she might not be accepted by the exporting authorities as a fit vessel to take on board a load of arms.”
It was too late back at the hotel to make the calls he wanted to make, so they waited till the following morning. Shortly after nine Shannon called Lloyds of London and asked for a check of the Yacht List. The Albatross was there all right, listed as an auxiliary ketch of 74 tons NRT, with her home port given as Milford and port of residence as Hope, both of them in Britain.
Then what the hell’s she doing here? he wondered, and then recalled the method of payment that had been demanded. His second call, to Hamburg, clinched it.
“Nein, not a private yacht, please,” said Johann Schlinker. “There would be too great a possibility she would not be accepted to carry freight on a commercial basis.”
“Okay. When do you need to know the name of the ship?” asked Shannon.
“As soon as possible. By the way, I have received your credit transfer for the articles you ordered in my office. These will now be crated and sent in bond to the address in France you supplied. Secondly, I have the paperwork necessary for the other consignment, and as soon as I receive the balance of the money owing, I will go ahead and place the order.”
“When is the latest you need to know the name of the carrying vessel?” Shannon bawled into the phone.
There was a pause while Schlinker thought. “If I receive your check within five days, I can make immediate application for permission to buy. The ship’s name is needed for the export license. In about fifteen days after that.”
“You will have it,” said Shannon and replaced the receiver. He turned to Semmler and explained what had happened.
“Sorry, Kurt. It has to be a registered company in the maritime freighting business, and it has to be a licensed freighter, not a private yacht. You’ll have to keep on searching. But I want the name within twelve days and no later. I have to provide the man in Hamburg with the ship’s name in twenty days or less.”
The two men parted that evening at the airport, Shannon to return to London and Semmler to fly to Madrid and thence to Rome and Genoa, his next port of call.
It was late when Shannon reached his flat again. Before turning in, he called BEA and booked a flight on the noon plane to Brussels. Then he called Marc Vlaminck and asked him to be present at the airport to pick him up on arrival, to take him first to Brugge for a visit to the bank and then to the rendezvous with Boucher for the handover of the equipment.
It was the end of Day Twenty-two.
Mr. Harold Roberts was a useful man. Born sixty-two years earlier of a British father and a Swiss mother, he had been brought up in Switzerland after the premature death of his father, and retained dual nationality. After entering banking at an early age, he had spent twenty years in the Zurich head office of one of Switzerland’s largest banks before being sent to their London branch as an assistant manager.
That had been just after the war, and over the second twenty-year period of his career he had risen to become the manager of the investment accounts section and later overall manager of the London branch, before retiring at the age of sixty. By then he had decided to take his retirement and his pension in Swiss francs in Britain.
Since retirement he had been available for several delicate tasks on behalf not only of his former employers but also of other Swiss banks. He was engaged on such a task that Wednesday afternoon.
It had taken a formal letter from the Zwingli Bank to the chairman and the secretary of Bormac to achieve the introduction to them of Mr. Roberts, and he had been able to present letters corroborating his engagement as an agent of the Zwingli Bank in London.
Two further meetings had taken place between Mr. Roberts and the secretary of the company, the second one attended by the chairman, Major Luton, younger brother of the deceased under manager for S
ir Ian Macallister in the Far East.
The extraordinary board meeting had been agreed on, and was called in the City offices of the secretary of Bormac. Apart from the solicitor and Major Luton, one other director had agreed to come to London for the meeting and was present. Although two directors made up a working board, three gave an outright majority. They considered the resolution put by the company secretary and the documents he placed before them. The four unseen shareholders whose interests were being looked after by the Zwingli Bank undoubtedly did now own between them 30 percent of the stock of the company. They certainly had empowered the Zwingli Bank to act on their behalf, and the bank had incontrovertibly appointed Mr. Roberts to represent it.
The argument that clinched the discussion was the simple one that if a consortium of businessmen had agreed together to buy up such a large amount of Bormac stock, they could be believed when their bank said on their behalf that their intention was to inject fresh capital into the company and rejuvenate it. Such a course of action could not be bad for the share price, and all three directors were shareholders. The resolution was proposed, seconded, and passed. Mr. Roberts was taken onto the board as a nominee director representing the interests of the Zwingli Bank. No one bothered to change the company rule stipulating that two directors constituted a quorum with power to pass resolutions, although there were now six and no longer five directors.
Mr. Keith Brown was becoming a fairly regular visitor to Brugge and a valued customer at the Kredietbank. He was received with the usual friendliness by Mr. Goossens, and the latter confirmed that a credit of £20,000 had arrived that morning from Switzerland. Shannon drew $10,000 in cash and a certified bank check for $26,000 in the name of Johann Schlinker of Hamburg.
From the nearby post office he mailed the check to Schlinker by registered mail, accompanied by a letter from himself asking the arms dealer to go ahead with the Spanish purchase.
He and Marc Vlaminck had nearly four hours to kill before the rendezvous with Boucher, and they spent two of them taking a leisurely pot of tea in a café in Brugge before setting off just before dusk.
There is a lonely stretch of road between Brugge and Ghent, which lies 44 kilometers to the east. Because the road twists and winds through flat farmland, most motorists prefer to take the new motorway E5, which also links the two Flemish towns as it runs from Ostend to Brussels. Halfway along the old road the two mercenaries found the abandoned farm that Boucher had described, or rather they found the faded notice board pointing down the track to the farm, which was hidden from view by a clump of trees.
Shannon drove on past the spot and parked, while Marc got out and went to check the farm over. He came back twenty minutes later to confirm the farm was indeed deserted and there were no signs that anyone had been there for quite a time. Nor were there any preparations in progress to provide an unpleasant reception for the two buyers.
“Anyone in the house or outbuildings?” asked Shannon.
“The house is locked front and back. No signs of interference. I checked out the barns and stables. No one there.”
Shannon glanced at his watch. It was dark already, and there was still an hour to go. “Get back there and keep a watch from cover,” he ordered. “I’ll watch the front entrance from here.”
When Marc had gone, Shannon checked the truck once again. It was old and rattled, but it was serviceable and the engine had been looked over by a good mechanic. Shannon took the two false number plates from the facia and whipped them onto the real number plates with sticky insulating tape. They could be ripped off easily enough once the truck was well away from the farm. On each side of the truck was a large publicity sticker that gave the vehicle a distinctive air but which could also come off in a hurry. In the back were the six large sacks of potatoes he had ordered Vlaminck to bring with him, and the broad wooden board sawed to make an internal tailgate when slotted into place. Satisfied, he resumed his vigil by the roadside.
The truck he was expecting turned up at five to eight. As it slowed and swung down the track to the farm, Shannon could make out the form of the driver hunched over the wheel and beside him the blob surmounted by a pimple of a head that could only be M. Boucher. The red taillights of the vehicle disappeared down the track and went out of sight behind the trees. Apparently Boucher was playing it straight.
Shannon gave him three minutes; then he too pulled his truck off the hard road and onto the track. When he got to the farmyard, Boucher’s truck was standing with sidelights on the center. He cut his engine and climbed down, leaving his own sidelights on, the nose of his truck parked ten feet from the rear of Boucher’s.
“Monsieur Boucher,” he called into the gloom. He stood in the darkness himself, well to one side of the glow of his own lights.
“Monsieur Brown,” he heard Boucher wheeze, and the fat man waddled into view. He had evidently brought his “helper” along with him, a big, beefy-looking type whom Shannon assessed as being good at lifting things but slow-moving. Marc, he knew, could move like a ballet dancer when he wished. He saw no problem if it came to trouble.
“You have the money?” asked Boucher as he came close.
Shannon gestured to the driving seat of the truck. “In there. You have the Schmeissers?”
Boucher waved a pudgy hand at his own truck. “In the back.”
“I suggest we get both our consignments out onto the ground between the trucks,” said Shannon. Boucher turned and said something to his helper in Flemish, which Shannon could not follow. The man moved to the back of his own truck and opened it. Shannon tensed. If there were to be any surprises, they would come when the doors opened. There were none. The dull glimmer from his own truck’s lights showed ten flat, square crates and an open-topped carton.
“Your friend is not here?” asked Boucher.
Shannon whistled. Tiny Marc joined them from behind a nearby barn.
There was silence. Shannon cleared his throat. “Let’s get the handover done,” he said. He reached into the driving compartment and pulled out the fat brown envelope. “Cash, as you asked for. Twenty-dollar bills. Bundles of fifty. Ten bundles.”
He stayed close to Boucher as the fat man flicked through each bundle, counting with surprising speed for such plump hands, and stuffing the bundles into his side pockets. When he had reached the last he pulled all the bundles back out and selected a note at random from each. By the light of a pencil flashlight he scanned them closely, the samples, checking for forgeries. There were none. At last he nodded.
“All in order,” he said and called something to his helper. The man moved aside from the truck doors. Shannon nodded at Marc, who went to the truck and heaved the first crate onto the grass. From his pocket he produced a wrench and prized up the lid. By the light of his own flashlight he checked the ten Schmeissers lying side by side in the crate. One of them he took out and checked for firing-mechanism pin and breech movement. He replaced the machine pistol and smacked the loose lid back down tight.
It took him twenty minutes to check all ten cases. While he did so the big helper brought by M. Boucher stood nearby. Shannon stood at Boucher’s elbow, twelve feet away. Finally Marc looked into the open-topped crate. It contained five hundred magazines for the Schmeissers. He tested one sample magazine to ensure it fitted and that the magazines were not for a different model of pistol. Then he turned to Shannon and nodded.
“All in order,” he said.
“Would you ask your friend to help mine load them up?” asked Shannon of Boucher. The fat man passed the instruction to his assistant. Before loading, the two beefy Flemings removed the potato sacks, and Shannon heard them discussing something in Flemish. Then Boucher’s helper laughed. Within another five minutes the ten flat crates and the carton of magazines were loaded in Marc’s truck.
When the crates of arms were loaded, Marc placed the board in position as a tailgate which came halfway up the back of the truck. Taking a knife, he slit the first sack, hefted it onto his shoulder, and
emptied the contents into the back of the van. The loose potatoes rolled about furiously, finding the cracks between the edges of the crates and the sides of the van and filling them up. With a laugh, the other Belgian started to help him. The quantity of potatoes they had brought more than covered every trace of the ten crates of guns and the carton of magazines. Anyone looking in the back would be confronted with a sea of loose potatoes. The sacks were thrown into the hedge.
When they were finished, both men came around from the back of the truck together.
“Okay, let’s go,” said Marc.
“If you don’t mind, we’ll leave first,” said Shannon to Boucher. “After all, we now have the incriminating evidence.”
He waited till Marc had started the engine and turned the truck around so that it was facing the drive back to the road before he left Boucher’s side and leaped aboard. Halfway down the track there was a particularly deep pothole, over which the truck had to move with great care and very slowly. At this point Shannon muttered something to Marc, borrowed his knife, and jumped from the truck to hide in the bushes by the side of the lane.
Two minutes later, Boucher’s truck came along. It too slowed almost to a halt to negotiate the pothole. Shannon slipped from the bushes as the truck went past, caught up, stooped low, and jammed the knife point into the rear offside tire. He heard it hiss madly as it deflated; then he was back in the bushes. He rejoined Tiny Marc on the main road, where the Belgian had just ripped the stickers from the sides of their vehicle and the false number plates off front and back. Shannon had nothing against Boucher; he just wanted a clear half hour’s start.
By ten-thirty the pair was back in Ostend, the truck loaded with spring potatoes was garaged in the lockup Vlaminck had hired on Shannon’s instructions, and the two were in Marc’s bar on Kleinstraat, toasting each other in foaming steins of ale while Anna prepared a meal. It was the first time Shannon had met the well-built woman who was his friend’s mistress, and, as is the tradition with mercenaries when meeting each other’s womenfolk, he treated her with elaborate courtesy.