A Conflict of Interests (29 page)

Kingman just knew it was going to be one of those days when he didn't get a moment to himself. The phone had been ringing nonstop from the time he'd arrived at the office and now, less than a minute after the last caller had hung up, the damned thing was trilling again like a demented canary. Answering it with a gruff "Yes," he discovered he had Franklin on the line.

'Tom Coghill?" Franklin said casually. "You any idea where he's got to, Bert?"

"No." Kingman frowned. Something in Franklin's tone of voice sounded a warning note and he had a nasty feeling that he would find himself in the shit if he wasn't careful. "No, why should I? The CIB's got him under its wing."

"That's just the trouble, it hasn't." Franklin paused, hummed and hawed as though collecting his thoughts, then said, "They tried to get in touch with Coghill last night, but he didn't answer the phone. Same thing happened this morning."

"Perhaps it's out of order, Charlie."

"I don't think so. They've been around to his flat and he isn't at home." Franklin paused again, this time to clear his throat. "You did withdraw his passport, didn't you, Bert?"

"His passport?" Kingman gripped the phone tighter. "I took the warrant card off him. Nobody said anything about his passport."

"It's standard procedure, you know that."

"Are you implying he's skipped the country?"

"He may have," Franklin said. "I'm sure I would in his shoes. His ex-wife has been shouting her mouth off. Seems her boyfriend was diddling the Inland Revenue with her reluctant help. She claims she told Coghill about it and he encouraged her to go along with the fraud. Said if she asked for a bigger cut, the extra money would help with the housekeeping."

Kingman closed his eyes and swore under his breath. Someone had decided that Coghill had to be muzzled and now Franklin seemed to be implying it was entirely his fault that the bloody situation had gone sour.

"I don't like it, Charlie," he said fiercely. "Why should you and I end up carrying the can?"

"I'm not the one who forgot to withdraw his passport," Franklin reminded him.

"You owe me."

"What?"

"A favor," Kingman said. "Remember that little talk we had on Saturday when you said there were a number of people in the Home Office who would like to see Coghill taken off the Whitfield case? Well, now I'm presenting you with the marker."

"I'm not sure I like your attitude."

"I'm not wild about it either, but that doesn't alter the fact that you're going to tell the CIB that if Coghill really is missing, it's their fault and nobody else's."

"But…"

"No buts, Charlie, just do it." Kingman put the phone down. Not for the first time in the last few days, he found himself wishing he'd stayed in Majorca.

The airfield used by ECAS had been built for the RAF Transport Command during the latter stages of World War II. Following the cessation of hostilities, the base had been deactivated by the Air Ministry and the land returned to its former owners, with the exception of a few acres taken up by the one-time headquarters, living accommodation and maintenance area which were no longer suitable for agricultural purposes. Most of the buildings still standing had been leased by a light engineering firm that specialized in reconditioning air engines. The rest, a semiderelict control tower and part of the old dispersal apron, belonged to ECAS.

Bernie Urquhart, the chairman and principal stockholder of ECAS, was six foot three and thin as a beanpole. He had a long, angular face, drooping eyelids that looked as though they were about to close at any moment, and a black mustache that was equally lethargic. Despite a sleepy appearance and a slow, deliberate way of talking, he was far from being indolent. When money was in the offing, he had a mind like a cash register.

"Let's see if I've got this straight," he drawled. "I've been hired to fly somebody to an unknown destination on the Continent from an unknown point of departure."

"What are you complaining about?" Coghill said. "You've done business with Mr. Jalud before and he's agreed to pay you five hundred pounds for the job."

"Yeah, but he forgot to mention the plane would have to sit on the ground all day. Now I shall have to cancel an important charter flight to Newcastle-upon-Tyne and lose a very good customer who'll never come to me again. I figure I'm entitled to some compensation."

"How much?"

"Two hundred and sixty pounds for the round trip, plus another four hundred for loss of future earnings."

"You should have taken that into account when you quoted a price," Coghill told him.

"I agree," Jalud said, then glared at the Australian. "You've already had all the money you'll get out of me."

It was another way of saying there would be no more lucrative contracts if Urquhart insisted on pushing his luck. Judging by his ironic smile, Coghill figured the Australian had already concluded that the special delivery service he'd been running for Jalud was a thing of the past. Clandestine flights in and out of the UK depended on absolute secrecy, and that no longer pertained. Jalud had showed up with a police officer and that was all the evidence Urquhart needed to know his cover had been blown.

"Okay, let's forget the compensation." Urquhart smiled, as if to show it was all the same to him. "Let's talk about my passenger instead. Something tells me he's a real hard case. I mean, you don't have to be a genius to guess that you people wouldn't go to all this trouble unless you wanted him pretty badly. Putting two and two together, I'd say this passenger is the same man who's been grabbing all the headlines lately."

"And?" Coghill said quietly.

"A little danger money would come in handy."

"Perhaps that's something we can discuss after the 11:30 call."

"Why not? Anything to please you, Miss Brooke." Urquhart turned in her direction and looked her over from head to toe, first appraising her bare, shapely legs, then moving slowly upward. "Anything," he repeated with special emphasis.

"Try pleasing me instead," Coghill said.

"Something eating you, old sport?"

"Yes. I just don't think you're in a position to drive a bargain."

There was another and more personal reason for his anger. The truth was, he'd taken exception to the way Urquhart had eyed Caroline, obviously visualizing the body underneath the navy blue skirt and white silk blouse. It occurred to him that his attitude was wholly irrational, especially since he scarcely knew her, and he wondered in passing why it was he should feel compelled to leap to her defense.

"That's where we differ," Urquhart said. "I know when I'm being asked to do somebody a favor."

"Then you're more stupid than I thought." Coghill jerked a thumb at Jalud. "The kind of charter work you've been doing for Raschid could put you behind bars for years."

"You want to check the records before you start accusing people, old sport. Every flight plan was cleared with Air Traffic Control."

"I don't give a damn what you've filed. By the time I've finished with your staff, you can use those flight plans for lavatory paper. I'll question them one at a time and I guarantee there'll be discrepancies in their stories."

Coghill wasn't sure how the two ground-staff men would react, and the ex-Army Air Corps pilot who was licensed to fly the single-engined Pioneer could be a tough nut to crack, but the secretary in the office next door was vulnerable.

"What are you suggesting then?" Urquhart grumbled. "That we leave things as they are?"

"It might be a good idea."

The telephone rang in the adjoining office, then the extension on the folding table Urquhart used as a desk started trilling — 11:30 on the dot, not a minute before, not a minute after. Coghill thought that was one thing to be said for Patterson, the man was punctual.

"Remember what I said," he told Jalud. "Don't be in too much of a hurry to come to the phone, and spin the conversation out as much as you can."

Coghill leaned forward, picked up the eavesdropper that the plumbers had attached to the receiver with an umbilical cord and held it to his right ear, then signaled Urquhart to take the call. The Australian did so, giving his name and extension.

Patterson said, "My name's Kingfisher. I understand Mr. Jalud is with you?"

"He's around somewhere," Urquhart drawled. "Do you want to have a word with him?"

"That's the general idea."

"Okay. Hold on while I give him a shout."

"Where the hell is he?"

"Having a crap." Urquhart put the phone down, clumped over to the adjoining office in the control tower and jerked the door open. "Raschid?" he bellowed in a voice that made his secretary jump. "There's a guy called Kingfisher on the line asking for you."

Coghill checked the time by his wristwatch. Tracing an incoming call through the standard dialing network was never an easy task and, so far, the telephone engineers had been working on the problem for exactly one minute fifty. They needed longer much longer, but he could hear Patterson muttering to himself and there was a real danger he'd hang up and call back again later. He looked up, caught Jalud's eye and gave him the nod. The Libyan picked up the phone, licked his lips and said hello in a voice that sounded breathless.

"Jesus H. Christ," Patterson exploded. "You picked a fine time to go to the men's room."

"It was necessary," Jalud said woodenly. "I have an upset stomach."

"Fuck your stomach. Have you fixed that flight to the Continent yet?"

"Yes. It cost me…"

"I don't hear the Cherokee," Patterson snapped, cutting him off in midsentence.

"What?"

"The plane, goddamn it. I told you I wanted to hear it running up."

"Ah, yes. Well, Mr. Urquhart said…"

"I don't give a shit what your fucking bush pilot said. I'll call back in five minutes and when I do, that Cherokee had better be purring like a cat."

Jalud opened his mouth to say something, realized the connection had been terminated and slowly replaced the receiver.

"Four minutes twelve seconds." Coghill frowned. "I didn't hear him feed any coins into the box."

Neither had Urquhart, nor his secretary who'd answered the incoming call and spoken to Patterson before switching him through to the extension. As a result, Caroline Brooke suggested there was only one way to make absolutely sure, and that was for her to monitor the phone in the outer office. It was also evident to Coghill that any further delaying tactics were likely to prove counterproductive, and although Urquhart complained it would be a waste of good fuel, he didn't press the point and the Cherokee was running sweetly when the second call came through at 11:40.

This time around, Patterson spoke to Urquhart. The conversation was brief, entirely one-sided and was terminated at 11:42. In the intervening two minutes, Urquhart was given details of their proposed flight, departing Southend at 2115 hours for Bordeaux, and instructed to obtain the appropriate clearance from the British and French civil aviation authorities. He was also warned to stand by for a final telephone call fifteen minutes before the estimated time of departure.

"Kingfisher's a real sly bastard," Urquhart said. "He knows the Cherokee has a maximum range of 385 miles, so he picks an airfield near the limit which just happens to be equipped with a radar ground control approach. And the phone call at 2100? That's when he tells me where we're really going."

"What did you expect?" Coghill said. "The man's a professional."

And he was a rank amateur in comparison. Patterson was fourteen years older and fourteen years more experienced. He'd beaten the Viet Cong at their own game and was a born survivor. He had Caroline's word for that.

"Can you spare me a minute, Tom?"

"Yes, of course." Coghill turned around, saw Caroline jerk her head toward the door and followed her out of the control tower. She walked on past the two Pioneers and the Piper Cherokee on the dispersal apron and didn't stop until they were well out of earshot. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"I'm not sure, Tom." A thumb crept toward her mouth and she nibbled at the nail. "Patterson didn't use a phone booth."

"Is that official?"

"The engineers say they aren't sure, but I didn't hear any coins go down in the box."

If Caroline was right, it meant Patterson had made both calls from a private number, but the worry lines on her forehead told him there was more to it than that. "You're upset about something," he said quietly. "You want to tell me what it is?"

"They also said they'd had no luck with the first telephone call. They couldn't even give me an approximate location."

"They only had four minutes, Caroline. I'm no expert, but I think it's asking a lot to expect them to get a fix in that time."

"I think they were lying, Tom. Oh, I went through the proper channels, completed the necessary forms to obtain the home secretary's approval for the operation and submitted the request to Vaudrey in accordance with our standing instructions, but he may not have sent the application on. With his connections, Nicholas could have set the whole thing up on a completely unofficial basis. If he did, then the results of the phone tap would go directly to him and we'd be left out in the cold."

"That's a cheering thought," Coghill said.

"What are we going to do, Tom?"

"There's nothing we can do, except wait and hope for the best. If Patterson contacts us at 2100 hours, we'll know they couldn't trace the number. If he doesn't, it's reasonable to assume that your boss has grabbed him."

"We've got a conflict of interests," she mused. "You both want Patterson for different reasons, Nicholas because he wants access to the CIA computer and you because Patterson has murdered four people and it's a question of simple justice."

"And you?" he asked. "What do you want, Caroline?"

"The same as you," she said with total commitment.

21.

Vaudrey folded the map and tossed it on to the shelf behind the rear seat of the Cortina. They were clear of Woodford now, heading northeast toward Newmarket on the All, and while his sense of direction wasn't infallible, it was unlikely the driver could lose his way on a dead-straight road. Beside him, Walter Zellick stretched out his left leg and planted it on the other side of the transmission hump in an effort to make himself more comfortable.