Dogs of War (34 page)

With a start she dropped the cover of the folder, stood back a yard, and began to babble into the un-hearing telephone. Her father stood in the doorway.
"All right, Christine, that will be marvelous, darling. I'll see you on Monday, then. 'By now," she chattered into the telephone and hung up.
Her father's set expression had softened as he saw the person in the room was his daughter, and he walked across the carpet to sit behind his desk. "Now what are you up to?" he said with mock gruffness.
For answer she twined her soft arms around his neck from behind and kissed him on the cheek. "Just phoning a friend in London, Daddy," she said in her small, little-girl voice. "Mummy was fussing about in the hall, so I came in here."
"Humph. Well, you've got a phone in your own room, so please use that for private calls."
"All right, Daddikins." She cast her glance over the papers lying under the folder on the desk, but the print was too small to read and was mostly columns of figures. She could make out the headings only. They concerned mining prices. Then her father turned to look up.
"Why don't you stop all this boring old work and come and help me saddle up Tamerlane?" she asked him. "The rain will stop soon, and I can go riding."
He smiled up at the girl who was the apple of his eye. "Because this boring old work happens to be what keeps us all clothed and fed," he said. "But I will, anyway. Give me a few more minutes, and I'll join you in the stable."
Outside the door, Julie Manson stopped and breathed deeply. Mata Hari, she was sure, could not have done better.
15
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 trav-
el 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 Hooe, 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 Switzer-
land'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 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 Sir 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 per cent 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 Bor-mac 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 had 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 Krediet-bank. 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 ot tea in a cafי 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 sawn 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 darkness himself, well to one side of the glow of his own lights.