Dogs of War (39 page)

"Yes, mon ami, I think you're right. We have to take the hit-man. But first he must be lured out."
"Will you help me, Jean-Baptiste?"
"Of course," said Langarotti. "Whoever it is, it is not the Union. It is not my people, so I am your man."
They spent close to an hour with a street map of Paris on the table in front of them. Then Langarotti left.
During the day he parked his Marseilles-registered truck at an agreed prearranged spot. In the late afternoon Shannon went to the reception desk and asked the way to a well-known restaurant a mile away. He was within earshot of the hotel clerk who had been described to him by Langarotti. The chief receptionist told him where the restaurant was.
"Within walking distance?" asked Shannon.
"But certainly, m'sieur. About fifteen minutes, maybe twenty."
Shannon thanked him and used the desk telephone to make a reservation in the name of Brown for ten o'clock that night. He did not leave the hotel all day.
At nine-forty exactly, carrying his overnight bag in one hand and a light raincoat over the other arm, he left the hotel and turned up the street in the direction for the restaurant. The route he took was not direct. It led down two streets even smaller than the one in which the hotel was situated. As he walked, he left the other pedestrians behind and entered streets in the first ar-rondissement which were dimly lit and where no passers-by came his way. He dawdled, passing the time staring into lighted shop windows, killing time until the hour of his restaurant reservation was long past. He never looked back. Sometimes, in the quiet, he thought he could hear the soft slap of a moccasin somewhere up the dim-lit streets behind him. Whoever was there, it was not Langarotti. The Corsican could move without disturbing the dust.
It was past eleven when he reached the dark, black alley he had been told was there. It led to his left and had no lights in it at all. The far end was blocked by a row of bollards, making it into a cul-de-sac. On each side the walls were blank and tall. Any light that might
have entered the alley from the other end was muted by the bulk of the French truck that stood parked there, empty but with its rear doors open. Shannon walked toward the truck's gaping back and, when he reached it, turned.
Like most fighting men, he always preferred to face danger rather than knowing it was somewhere behind. He knew from past experience that, even when moving backward, it is safer always to face the danger source. At least, then, you can watch it. Moving up the alley with his back to the entrance, he had felt the hairs on his neck prickling. If the psychology was wrong, he could be very dead. But the psychology had been right. Keeping to empty streets, the man behind him had stayed well back, hoping for just such an opportunity as now presented itself.
Shannon tossed his bag and raincoat to the ground and stared at the hulking shadow that blocked the vertical streak of lamplight from the end of the alley. He waited patiently. He hoped there would be no sound, not in the center of Paris. The shadow paused, assessed the situation, and evidently checked Shannon for a gun. But the sight of the open truck reassured the hit-man. He assumed Shannon had simply parked it there for discretion's sake and had been all this time returning to it.
The shadow in the alley moved softly forward. Shannon could make out the right arm, out of the raincoat pocket now, held forward, holding something. The face was in shadow, the whole man was a silhouette, but he was big. His form stood dead center in the cobbled cul-de-sac, stopped now, raising his gun. He paused for several seconds as he aimed, then slowly lowered it again, straight-armed, down to his side. It was almost as if he had changed his mind.
Still staring at Shannon from the shadow-black face, the man slowly leaned forward and went onto his knees. Some shots do this to steady themselves. The gunman cleared his throat, leaned forward again, and placed both his hands, knuckles down, on the cobbles
in front of him. The metal of the Colt .45 clattered on the stones. Slowly, like a Moslem facing Mecca at the hour of prayer, the gunman bowed his head, staring for the first time in twenty seconds not at Shannon but at the cobbles. There was a light splashing sound, as of a liquid running fast onto cobbles, and finally the man's arms and thighs gave out. He slumped forward into the puddle of his own aortic blood and went to sleep, quite gently, like a child.
Shannon was still standing against the doors of the truck. With the man down, a shaft of lamplight came from the lit end of the alley. It glistened on the polished black sheen of the four-inch bone knife-handle that protruded upward from the mackintoshed back of the man on the pavement, slightly left of center, between the fourth and fifth ribs.
The Cat looked up. There was another figure against the lamplight, small, spare, motionless, still standing fifteen yards from the body at the point where it had made its throw. Shannon hissed, and Langarotti padded noiselessly down the cobbles.
"I thought you'd left it too late," said Shannon.
"Non. Never too late. He could not have squeezed the trigger of that Colt at any time since you emerged from the hotel."
The rear of the truck was already laid with a large sheet of tough industrial plastic over a canvas tarpaulin. The tarpaulin had loopholes all around the edge for easy lashing into a bundle, and plenty of cord and bricks were stacked at the far end. Each taking an arm and a leg, the two men swung the body up and inward. Langarotti climbed in to retrieve bis knife, while Shannon shut the doors. He heard them securely locked from the inside.
Langarotti climbed into the front seat and started up. Slowly he backed out, down the alley and into the street. As he swung the truck around before driving off, Shannon approached the driver's window.
"Have you had a good look at him?"
"Sure."
"You know him?"
"Yes. Name of Thomard, Raymond. In the Congo once for a short period, more of a city type. Professional hit-man. But not quality. Not the sort one of the big contractors would use. More likely to work for his own boss."
"Who's that?" asked Shannon.
"Roux," said Langarotti. "Charles Roux."
Shannon swore quietly and viciously. "That bastard, that stupid, ignorant, incompetent fool. He could have fouled up a whole operation just because he wasn't invited to come in on it."
He fell silent and thought for a while. Roux had to be discouraged, but in a way that would keep him out of the Zangaro affair once and for all.
"Hurry up," said the Corsican, the engine still running. "I want to get this customer put to bed before anyone comes along."
Shannon made up his mind and spoke urgently and rapidly for several seconds.
Langarotti nodded. "All right. Actually, I like it. It should fix that bugger for a long time. But it will cost extra. Five thousand francs."
"Done," said Shannon. "Get moving, and meet me outside the Porte de la Chapelle metro station in three hours."
They met Marc Vlaminck for lunch in the small South Belgian town of Dinant by agreement. Shannon had called him the previous day and given him the instructions and the rendezvous. Tiny Marc had kissed Anna good-by that morning, and she had given him his lovingly packed suitcase of clothes and his snack box with half a loaf, some butter, and a hunk of cheese for midmorning break. As usual, she had told him to take care of himself.
He had driven the truck, carrying in the back five 200-liter drums of engine oil by Castrol, across Belgium without being stopped. There was no reason why he
should be. His license was in order, as were the permit for the truck and the insurance.
As the three men sat over lunch at a main-street cafe, Shannon asked the Belgian, "When do we go over?"
"Tomorrow morning, just before sun-up. It's the quietest time. Did you two sleep last night?"
"Nope."
"You'd better get some rest," said Marc. "I'll watch over both trucks. You can have till midnight."
Charles Roux was another one who was tired that day. All the previous evening, since he had received the telephone call from Henri Alain about Shannon walking to his restaurant meal, he had waited for news. There had been none by midnight, when there should have been a call from Thomard to say it was all over. There had been none by three in the morning and none by sunrise.
Roux was unshaven and puzzled. He knew Thomard was no match for Shannon on equal terms, but he was sure the Irishman would be taken in the back as he walked through one of the quieter streets on his way to the evening meal.
At midmorning, as Langarotti and Shannon in their empty truck were passing without trouble into Belgium north of Valenciennes, Roux finally slipped on a pair of trousers and a shut and took the elevator five floors down to the lobby to check his mailbox.
There did not seem to be anything wrong with the lock of his mailbox, a container some twelve inches tall, nine wide, and nine deep, screwed to the wall of the lobby along with a score more for the other tenants. There was no indication that it had been opened, but of course a clever burglar would have picked the lock.
Roux used his personal key to unlock the door and swung it open.
He stood for about ten seconds without moving. Nothing changed about him except the normal ruddy
color of his face, which slid into a chalky gray. Still staring, mesmerized, he began to mutter, "Mon Dieu, O mon Dieu . . ." over and over again like an incantation. His stomach turned over; he felt as he had at the moment in the Congo when he had heard the Congolese soldiers questioning his identity as he lay inside the bandages on a stretcher while John Peters smuggled him out from certain death. He felt he wanted to urinate, run, but could only sweat with fear. With an air of almost sleepy sadness, eyes half closed, lips gummed together, the head of Raymond Thomard gazed back at him from inside the mailbox.
Roux was not squeamish, but he was no lionheart either. He closed the box, went back to his flat, and started on the brandy bottle, for medicinal purposes only. He needed a lot of medicine.
Alan Baker emerged from the office of the Yugoslav state arms company into the bright sunshine of Belgrade, feeling well pleased with the way things were going. On receiving Shannon's down payment of $7200 and the End User Certificate, he had gone to a licensed arms dealer for whom he had occasionally done work in the past on a subcontractual level. As in the case of Schlinker, the man had felt the amount of weaponry and money involved in the proposed deal to be derisory, but he had yielded to Baker's argument that if the buyers were satisfied with the first consignment they might well return for more, a lot more.
So he had given Baker his fiat to fly to Belgrade and make application for the purchase, using the certificate from Togo, duly filled out with the appropriate names, and with a letter of authority from the dealer appointing Baker his representative.
It meant Baker would lose a part of his cut, but it was the only way he could be received in Belgrade, and for such a small deal he had in any case allowed a mark-up of 100 per cent on the buying price of the arms.
His five days of talks with Mr. Pavlovic had been
fruitful and had included a visit to the state warehouse, in which he had selected the two mortar tubes and two bazookas. The ammunition for both was standard and supplied in crates of twenty bazooka rockets and ten mortar bombs.
The Yugoslavs had accepted the Togolese End User Certificate without demur, and although Baker, the licensed dealer, and probably Mr. Pavlovic, must be aware the certificate was just a piece of paper, the air was maintained that the government of Togo was eagerly awaiting the chance to buy Yugoslavia's weaponry for testing. Mr. Pavlovic had also required full payment in advance, and Baker had had to pay over what remained of the $7200 Shannon had given him, after his travel costs, plus $1000 of his own. He was confident Shannon's balance of another $7200 would reimburse him and, even after the licensed dealer had taken his cut, leave $4000 for Baker's pocket.
His morning's talks had confirmed that the goods would be granted an export license and sent by army lorries to a bonded warehouse at the port of Ploce in the northwest, close to the holiday resorts of Du-brovnik and Split.
It was here that the Toscana should dock to take the shipment aboard, any time after June 10. With a light heart, Baker took the next flight for Munich and Hamburg.
Johann Schlinker was in Madrid that morning, May 20. He had Telexed the full details of the deal in 9mm. ammunition that he wanted to put through to his Madrid partner, a Spanish national, a full month earlier, and had later flown to the Spanish capital himself with his Iraqi End User Certificate, as soon as he had received Shannon's $26,000 in full payment.
The Spanish formalities were more complicated than those Alan Baker had discovered in Belgrade. Two applications were necessary, the first to buy the hardware, the second to export it. The application to buy had been made three weeks earlier and over the past twenty
days had been vetted by the three departments of state in Madrid who concern themselves with such matters. First the Finance Ministry had been needed to confirm that the full purchase price of $18,000 had been received into the appropriate bank in hard currency. A few years earlier, only United States dollars had been acceptable, but more recently Madrid was more than happy to take German marks.
The second department was the Foreign Ministry. Its job had been to confirm that the buyer country was not a state to which Spain was opposed. There was no problem with Iraq, since the great bulk of Spanish arms exports habitually go to the Arabs, with whom Spain has always maintained close and friendly relations. The Foreign Ministry had no hesitation in confirming its approval of Iraq as a recipient of Spanish 9mm. ball ammunition,
Last, the Defense Ministry had been required to confirm that nothing in the proposed sale was on the secret list or among the categories of arms not for export. With simple small-arms ammunition, this too had been no problem.
Although there had been no sticky problems with such a consignment, it had taken eighteen days for the papers to pass through the three departments, accumulating more paperwork as they went, until the final dossier emerged with the stamp of approval. At this point the crates of ammunition were taken from the CETME factory and stored in a warehouse of the Spanish army on the outskirts of Madrid. From this point the Army Ministry took over, and notably the head of its arms-export section, Colonel Antonio Salazar.