Send for the Saint (12 page)

“And when you sign, you sign for life,” supplied the Saint succinctly.

“Quite so.” Pelton paused, with his head cocked in his characteristic manner. “I’ll come straight to the point, then. Does the name John Rockham mean anything to you?”

Simon shook his head.

“Never heard of him. Sounds like a boxer, or someone who should have a diamond named after him. What’s his line of business?”

“His line of business, as you put it,” Pelton said in his rather precise tones, “involves masterminding a nasty little — or not so little — organisation of ex-military and criminal misfits. Even if you’ve never heard of Rockham himself, I think you may well have heard of The Squad.”

“The Squad? … “A furrow appeared fleetingly in the Saint’s brow as he tried to recall something that had been printed only lightly on his memory. “Wait a minute — it does ring a bell. Those three big bank raids in the summer. Rumour had it, in the unorthodox circles in which I sometimes move, that a gang calling themselves The Squad were responsible. And the same gang were credited with that lulu of a currency snatch at the airport.”

“Your information came from … underworld sources?” inquired Pelton, and the Saint nodded.

“Heard it on the grapevine. But I’ve been abroad — so I’ve had fewer lines open than usual. Or should it be tendrils?”

Pelton regarded Simon soberly.

“What else did the grapevine have to say about The Squad?”

“Just that it’s some sort of highly drilled private army. Everything run like a military operation — and they specialise in uniformed strikes. The bank jobs were all on the same pattern — four men dressed in the bank security company’s uniforms and driving their vans, if you please. It was neat, slick, and thoroughly professional,” said the Saint, who gave credit where it was due. “And they got away with oodles of boodle.”

Pelton sighed heavily, and inclined his head at an even more avian angle.

“If only Rockham’s enterprise stopped there,” he said ruefully. “We’d be more than happy to let the usual authorities deal with him and his cohorts. In fact we — I mean SIS — would never have needed to become involved at all. But Rockham’s more than just a very enterprising criminal leader. There have been — other jobs.”

“What sort of jobs?”

“Jobs your grapevine won’t have attributed to The Squad. For the simple reason that they never got into the papers.”

“I’m interested,” said the Saint flatly. “Give me a for instance.”

A ripple of discomfort ruffled the surface of Pelton’s business-like self-possession.

“For a start,” he said, “army stores. Five raids in all, in various parts of the country. One was an ordnance depot. They’ve all been hushed up, with considerable difficulty.”

It took the Saint several incredulous moments to find his voice.

“You’re not seriously telling me they’ve raided the army?”

“I’m not in the habit of making jokes of that sort,” Pelton replied dryly.

“Naturally not,” Simon said with a completely straight face. “What did they get away with?”

Pelton counted the items off on the fingers of one hand.

“An assortment of uniforms — various regiments. Enough of the latest weaponry to equip The Squad twice over — and we reckon there are about fifty of them all told. Plenty of ammunition to go with the firearms. Three three-ton lorries. And two jeeps.”

The Saint expressed himself in a long soundless whistle.

“There was also the little matter of a high-speed naval launch taken at gun-point from Portsmouth Harbour,” Pelton went on. “Apart from which there have been two raids on police stations in the home counties. The Squad emerged with a couple of brand-new Police Wolseleys and a dozen and a half assorted uniforms. All ranks below Assistant Commissioner.”

“How embarrassing for our boys in blue,” murmured the Saint with the ghost of a smile. “Ye gods, but the man has nerve!” There was a note of something almost like respect in Simon Templar’s voice. “The very citadels of Law and Order in its most capital-letter solemnity! Even I, in my most youthful exuberance, never went so far as to actually hold up a citadel of Law and Order. They did hold them up, I suppose?”

Pelton nodded, shrugging as he did so.

“And do you mean to say,” continued the Saint, “that all these raided parties surrendered their uniforms and whatnot without a murmur? I’d love to have seen those bobbies, waving goodbye in their underwear — “

“It’s true that most of the people concerned as victims of these raids were completely taken by surprise.” Pelton said with total earnestness. “It isn’t every day, for example, that the police manning a fairly small station are suddenly faced with a dozen or more men armed with tommy-guns. There was very little they could have done, in the circumstances. There was, as you say, no fight. Except at the ordnance depot. “

“And what happened there?”

“Rockham lost two men — out of perhaps twenty-five. The army lost twelve,” Pelton said quietly; and the Saint grew suddenly very sober.

“I’m sorry if I seemed flippant just now,” he said with a grim quietness that matched Pelton’s own.

For a long moment the fighting lines of Simon Templar’s jaw tightened and there was a frozen sapphire glint in his eyes that went a long way to explain his well-attested capacity for arousing an unholy fear among even the most hardbitten specimens of humanity.

“The Squad’s a tough outfit, all right,” Pelton said. “But even that isn’t the half of it, Simon. Rockham’s nobody’s fool, and as far as we can tell, all these jobs — as well as some less spectacular ones — in fact virtually everything he’s done in the year or so since he started — has been of a preparatory nature. Recruiting, training, equipping — consolidation of military resources, you might call it.”

Simon wouldn’t have called it any such thing; but he conquered the urge to say so, and instead asked the obvious question.

“What are The Squad preparing for?”

“Contract work,” said Pelton. “You see, Rockham regards himself as the leader not just of a criminal gang, but of a troop of mercenary commandos. A trained group of ruthless fighting men for hire. And he’s not fussy about who’d hire them.”

Simon Templar had been in the business long enough to know that the fount of criminal enterprise would never dry up. There always would be brand new rackets, and new variants of old ones, for as long as there were villains left in the world to dream them up; and for this fact of life he had been known to offer fervent thanks to whatever gods might be appointed to watch over the interests of freelance buccaneers. Without the mercifully inexhaustible springs of villainy, life for Simon Templar might have soon got boring. As things were, there was always the pulse-quickening moment when, as now, he realised that another glorious new vista of ungodliness was beginning to open up before his eyes. True, the present vista was little more than a promising monochrome preview, but there was a part of the Saint’s consciousness that responded directly to the emanations of adventure, like a finely tuned radio receiver. It was a pity, Simon mused, that he’d made up his mind in advance to turn down whatever assignment it was that Pelton was planning to offer …

He pondered a while, trying to put together some background out of what he knew about the mercenary game.

“What’s your definition of a mercenary?” he asked; and Pelton inclined his head and replied with his usual precision.

“In the normal sense, a mercenary soldier is one who fights under a foreign flag for payment, in the form of wages or of spoils, or both.”

Simon nodded thoughtfully.

“That’s more or less what I’d have said. Though I’ve a kind of feeling it leaves something out.”

“It certainly does in the case of The Squad. Although we’ve reason to believe that some of Rockham’s men have fought abroad, the modus operandi he seems to prefer is rather different. He prefers to take his orders, or commissions, not from a foreign military commander, but from the foreign power’s intelligence agents — in this country.”

Simon Templar sat up slowly in his chair.

“You mean from — what I believe you people call the other side?”

“Hostile or potentially hostile powers, yes.” Pelton was bland and matter-of-fact. “As I said, The Squad are not fussy.”

“And these commissions — what sort of commissions?”

Pelton spread his well-tended hands.

“Whatever dirty work they want done. Theft of UK Government property and information. Political abduction. Jailbreaks. Assassination — you’ll remember the shooting of the American Trade Attach� last month …”

“That was The Squad again ?”

“We’re ninetynine percent certain.”

Simon Templar’s reckless fighting features settled into an even more thoughtful expression. Colour was trickling into the picture by the second — and the particular chromatic mixture was one that didn’t at all please his highly individual taste.

“Where’s The Squad based?” he asked.

“On a big country estate in the wilds of Hampshire, not far from Petersfield. It used to be a private school, and before that a stately home. Ideal for Rockham’s purposes. Ostensibly he runs it as a kind of exclusive health farm, to discourage too many local questions.”

“And the place is well guarded, I suppose?”

“A veritable fortress. High walls, barbed-wire fences,
armed patrols, dogs — the lot.”

“Why not drop a bomb on it?” suggested the Saint pragmatically.

Pelton ran a hand through his sparse grey hair and sighed with the resigned patience of a civil servant accustomed to the bureaucratic brakes that inhibit his enterprise.

“There are times,” he said, “When I really do envy you free-lancers your scope for direct action. Of course we could smash The Squad out of existence in a matter of minutes, if we chose. And you can imagine how the army are chafing at the bit, after their own contact with The Squad. But the fact is, we daren’t break up the organisation just yet — not until we know a good bit more about it. So far we’re by no means certain the Squad � the entire organisation — or even its centre.”

“No point in cutting off a tentacle and leaving the octopus,” ventured the Saint.

“Exactly. There’s still a great deal we don’t know. As I said, Rockham’s information is good. Our own is less good. Which is where you come in — if you’ll do it. We badly need a man on the inside, Simon.”

“An infiltrator?” The Saint’s lazy blue eyes searched Pelton’s face. “But why me? There must be plenty of first-class agents in SIS, and several in your own department who’d be suitable. What about Randall, for instance? This assignment might have been tailor-made for him.”

Simon’s reference was to Jack Randall, one of his most affectionately remembered war-time colleagues, an American anglophile who had joined Pelton’s department after the peace.

“In my opinion, you’re the best man for the job,” Pelton said candidly, but also with a hint of evasion which, at the time, Simon only half-registered. “Though in view of your reputation I had the devil of a time convincing the red-tape wallahs at the Ministry, I can tell you. And even more of a job persuading them to sanction a fee that wouldn’t strike you as totally derisory.”

“Don’t tell me the amount,” said the Saint quickly. “It won’t make any difference. I’m afraid I’m not taking the job. I won’t deny I’m fascinated and tempted — by the thought of getting to grips with this cross between Al Capone and the Foreign Legion, and I won’t deny that I’m flattered. But I’m a freelancer through and through. So thanks — but I did warn you,” he ended rather lamely.

Somehow, having said all that, the Saint was uneasily aware that something still remained to be said, or asked. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Pelton looked less disappointed than he ought to have done — as if, for him, the game was not yet lost.

And that was when Simon remembered the faint note of evasion that had crept into Pelton’s voice. Somewhere there had been something out of place, or out of tune, or micrometrically out of focus …

And then suddenly, before he had groped even halfway to an answer, he was chilled by an icy wind of apprehension; and he found himself almost by instinct steering the conversation towards its source.

“I’m afraid you’ll just have to use one of your own men after all,” he told Pelton in a voice that outran his conscious mind.

“But I daren’t,” Pelton said. “At least, not a frontline man. For all we know, Rockham may even have photos of some of our regular operators — courtesy of one of the Opposition’s intelligence. I can’t take that risk. Whereas you — your face would never be associated with us now. And besides, the cover I have in mind for you involves an element of disguise — “

“Well, if your infiltrator’s appearance is going to be altered anyway, I can’t see that there’d be any special risk of recognition,” Simon put in reasonably. “And as it happens Randall’s an expert in that line, as he proved in France. Why not let him have a crack at it? Or is he busy elsewhere?”

Pelton hesitated for a long moment; and when he spoke Simon knew that the evasion had been real.

“No, he’s not busy,” Pelton said with deliberate calm.

“Prepare yourself for a shock, Simon. I’m afraid Randall has already met The Squad.”

The Saint went very still.

“What’s happened to him?” he asked levelly; but he had a premonition of what the answer would be.

“Randall is dead. You’ll remember there always was a streak of recklessness in him. He insisted on going over the wall, down at Rockham’s HQ, to see what he could nose out. His body was fished out of the Thames a week ago. Unidentifiable — except by a secret mark known to us.

3
It was as if a photographic flash-bulb had been exploded in front of Simon Templar’s eyes. For a while he scarcely saw the man before him, and yet certain details registered mechanically on the film of his memory, so that as much as a year later he might have been able to picture accurately the exact shape of a patch of chipped-off paint on the skirting board beyond Pelton’s desk in that supremely un memorable office.

He had worked with Randall. And then their paths had diverged, as men’s paths do. But to Simon Templar, Randall was a part of the memory of those days when he had found another kind of satisfaction, as complete in its way as any he had known before or since, when Simon and Randall and others had forged links of mutual respect and brotherhood amid the often hair-raising exigencies of their exploits with the French resistance workers. Frenchman and American and Briton had spoken for once in the same accents, the accents of determination and freedom. Men had been bonded then in a kind of loyalty that only the menace of a common enemy can cement; and it was understood as an inevitable fact of life, and not to be questioned, that when one brave man fell, any of his friends and comrades would step forward to take his place, with a purpose made only more firm by the knowledge of the risks involved …