Dogs of War (35 page)

"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 prised up the lid. By the light of his own flashlight he checked the ten Schmeis sers 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 oth-
er's womenfolk, he treated her with elaborate courtesy.
Vlaminck had reserved a room for him at a hotel in the town center, but they drank until late, talking about old battles and skirmishes, recalling incidents and people, fights and narrow escapes, alternately laughing at the things that seemed hilarious in retrospect and nodding glumly at the memories that still rankled. The bar stayed open as long as Tiny Marc drank, and the lesser mortals sat around and listened.
It was almost dawn when they got to bed.
Tiny Marc called for him at his hotel in the middle of the morning, and they had a late breakfast together. He explained to the Belgian that he wanted the Schmeissers packaged in such a way that they could be smuggled over the Belgian border into France for loading onto the ship in a southern French port.
"We could send them in crates of spring potatoes," suggested Marc.
Shannon shook his head. "Potatoes are in sacks, not crates," he said. "The last thing we need is for a crate to be tipped over in transit or loading, so that the whole lot falls out. I've got a better idea." For half an hour he told Vlaminck what he wanted done with the submachine pistols.
The Belgian nodded. "All right," he said when he understood exactly what was wanted. "I can work mornings in the garage before the bar opens. When do we run them south?"
"About May fifteenth," said Shannon. "We'll use the champagne route. I'll bring Jean-Baptiste up here to help, and we'll change to a French-registered truck at Paris. I want you to have everything packed and ready for shipment by May fifteenth."
Marc accompanied him down to the car ferry to Dover, for the truck would not be used again until it made its last run from Ostend to Paris with its cargo of illegal arms. Shannon was back in London by early evening.
He spent what remained of the day writing a full
report for Endean, omitting to mention from whom he had bought the guns or where they were stored. He attached to the report a statement of expenditure and a tally of what was left in the Brugge account.
The first morning mail of that Friday brought a large packet from Jean-Baptiste Langarotti. It contained a sheaf of brochures from three European firms that manufactured the rubberized inflatable semi-rigid boats of the kind he wanted. They were variously advertised as being capable of use as sea-rescue launches, power boats, speed craft for towing water-skiers, pleasure boats, launching vessels for sub-aqua diving, runabouts, and fast tenders for yachts and suchlike. No mention was made of the fact that they all had been developed from an original design produced to give marine commandos a fast and maneuverable type of assault craft.
Shannon read each brochure with interest. Of the three firms, one was Italian, one British, and one French. The Italian firm, with six stockists along the Cote d'Azur, seemed to be the best suited for Shannon's purpose and to have the best delivery capability. Of their largest model, an 18-foot launch, there were two available for immediate delivery. One was in Marseilles and the other in Cannes. The brochure from the French manufacturer showed a picture of their largest example, a 16-foot craft, speeding through a blue sea, tail down, nose up.
Langarotti said in his letter there was one of these available at a shop for marine equipment in Nice. He added that all the British-made models needed to be ordered specially and, last, that although there were several more of each type available in brilliant orange color, he was concerning himself only with those in black. He added that each could be powered by any outboard engine above 50 horsepower, and that there were seven different makes of engine available locally and immediately which would suit.
Shannon replied with a long letter instructing Langarotti to buy the two models made by the Italian firm that were available for immediate delivery, and the
third of French manufacture. He stressed that on receipt of the letter the Corsican should ring the stockists at once and place a firm order, sending each shopkeeper a 10-per cent deposit by registered mail. He should also buy three engines of the best make, but at separate shops.
He noted the prices of each item and that the total came to just over £4000. This meant he would overrun on his estimated budget of £5000 for ancillary equipment, but he was not worried by that. He would be under budget on the arms and, he hoped, the ship. He told Langarotti he was transferring to the Corsican's account the equivalent of £4500, and with the balance he should buy a serviceable second-hand 20-hundred-weight truck, making sure it was licensed and insured.
With this he should drive along the coast and buy his three crated inflatable assault craft and his three outboard engines, delivering them himself to his freight agent in Toulon to be bonded for export. The whole consignment had to be in the warehouse and ready for shipment by May 15. On the morning of that day Langarotti was to rendezvous with Shannon in Paris at the hotel Shannon usually used. He was to bring the truck with him.
The mercenary leader sent another letter that day. It was to the Kredietbank in Brugge, requiring the transfer of £4500 in French francs to the account of M. Jean-Baptiste Langarotti at the head office of the Sociיtי Gיnיral bank in Marseilles.
When he got back to his flat, Cat Shannon lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He felt tired and drained; the strain of the past thirty days was taking its toll. On the credit side, things seemed to be going according to plan. Alan Baker should be setting up the purchase of the mortars and bazookas from Yugoslavia for pick-up during the early days of June; Schlinker should be in Madrid buying enough 9mm. ammunition to keep the Schmeissers firing for a year. The only reason he had ordered such an excessive amount of rounds was to make the purchase plausible to the Spanish
authorities. Clearance for their export should be obtained for mid to late June, provided he could let the German have the name of the carrier by the middle of May, and provided the ship and its company were acceptable to the officials in Madrid.
Vlaminck should already have the machine pistols stowed for transporting across Belgium and France to Marseilles, to be loaded by June 1. The assault craft and engines should be loaded at the same time in Toulon, along with the other ancillary gear he had ordered from Schlinker.
Apart from smuggling the Schmeissers, everything was legal and aboveboard. That did not mean things could not still go wrong. Perhaps one of the two governments would make problems by taking overlong or refusing to sell on the basis of the provided documentation.
Then there were the uniforms, which Dupree was presumably still buying in London. They too should be in a warehouse in Toulon by the end of May at the latest.
But the big problem still to be solved was the ship. Semmler had to find the right ship, and he had been searching in vain for almost a month.
Shannon rolled off his bed and telephoned a telegram to Dupree's flat in Bayswater, ordering him to check in. As he put the phone down, it rang again.
"Hi, it's me."
"Hello, Julie," he said.
"Where have you been, Cat?"
"Away. Abroad."
"Are you going to be in town this weekend?" she asked.
"Yes. Should be." In fact there was nothing more he could do and nowhere he could go until Semmler contacted him with news of a ship for sale. He did not even know where the German was by this time.
"Good," said the girl on the phone. "Let's spend the weekend doing things."
It must be the tiredness. He was getting slow on the uptake. "What things?" he asked.
She began to tell him in precise and clinical detail until he interrupted her and told her to come straight around and prove it.
Although she had been bubbling with it a week earlier, in the thrill of seeing her lover again Julie had forgotten the news she had for him. It was not until nearly midnight that she remembered. She bent her head low over the half-asleep mercenary and said, "Oh, by the way, I saw your name the other day."
Shannon grunted.
"On a piece of paper," she insisted. Still he showed no interest, his face buried in the pillow beneath crossed forearms.
"Shall I tell you where?"
His reaction was disappointing. He grunted again.
"In a folder on my daddy's desk."
If she had meant to surprise him, she succeeded. He came off the sheet in one movement and faced her, gripping both her upper arms hard. There was an intensity about his stare that frightened her.
"You're hurting me," she said irrelevantly.
"What folder on your father's desk?"
"A folder." She sniffed, on the verge of tears. "I only wanted to help you."
He relaxed visibly, and his expression softened. "Why did you go looking?" he asked.
"Well, you're always asking about him, and when I saw this folder, I just sort of looked. Then I saw your name."
"Tell me about it from the beginning," he said gently.
When she had finished she reached forward and coiled her arms around his neck. "I love you, Mr. Cat," she whispered. "I only did it for that. Was it wrong?"
Shannon thought for a moment. She already knew far too much, and there were only two ways of ensuring her silence. "Do you really love me?" he asked.