The Hidden Target (35 page)

***

“Well?” Fahri wanted to know as the Fiat picked up speed. “Will she go with you?”

Claudel shook his head.

“I am glad. A crazy idea.”

“The only one possible at this time.”

“No towns to hide in, no safe house to—”

“Okay, okay. Slow up, Fahri. We’re getting too far ahead of them.”

Fahri slackened speed but not his criticism. “They saw the car. You took a risk.”

“Less risk than I would have to take at Zahidan. Remember how she was guarded at Kerman.” And how they slipped away, a day earlier than they had told their innkeeper. If it hadn’t been for Fahri’s early prayers, Claudel might not have seen the camper being readied for departure. (Now, apparently, the idea of sleeping bags in open country had been discarded for the overnight safety of a town and a small inn. The campers were finding out that what had been romantic fun in Europe was becoming increasingly difficult in stranger lands. Just wait, thought Claudel, until they start down through central India: leopards, a tiger perhaps, certainly packs of wild dogs.)

“They saw the car,” Fahri repeated. “That was your second contact with the girl. We must not risk a third at Quetta or a fourth at Lahore.”

“I’ll wait until Bombay.”

“That is good!” Fahri relaxed, his teeth a brilliant white in contrast with his olive skin and black moustache. He glanced at the small speaker on the dashboard, its beeps now sounding steady and true. “We’ve got contact. They are catching up.” He increased his speed.

“We can switch it off. We don’t need to track them now.”

“Just testing it. You are sure your Australian friends have the right receiving device?”

“I’m sure,” Claudel said with a brief smile. “They are already outside Quetta, waiting for the camper to appear.” There was only one road reliable enough for motor traffic coming down from the Baluchistan plateau. Shawfield wouldn’t risk the weight and size of a camper on anything less than a solid surface. “They’ll pick up its signal easily.”

“A long wait for them. Seven, eight days.”

“That’s part of the job, isn’t it? Waiting.” Claudel thought of Nina. She would have the longest wait of all. “That girl has courage. Underneath, she is frightened. But what is courage without fear? Blind stupidity,” he answered himself.

“Will she survive?” Fahri had his doubts. “One little innocent against a pack of wolves? No place for a woman. They should stay where they belong.”

There was a moment’s silence. “Tonight,” Claudel said, “we’ll send our report to London.”

“We send a report to Istanbul, too?”

“Kahraman has no interest in the girl.”

“Just ask if I may go south with you to Bombay.” That was where the real action could be. Fahri’s dark eyes gleamed at the prospect.

“You’ve got business in the north where carpets are made and refugees come over the mountains from Afghanistan,” Claudel reminded him. It was better that Fahri should leave him once they reached India, let him travel alone. From now on, he thought, we are a marked pair.

J.P. Merriman & Co. was becoming—to Ronald Gilman’s surprise and Bob Renwick’s amusement—a successful business. Its downstairs department found its advisers on construction abroad in demand and its surveyors actually at work: their services were seemingly what was needed by hotel chains with an eye on expansion into romanticised areas for well-heeled tourists, such as Tahiti, Bali, Fiji, Kashmir. “It was your idea,” Renwick told Gilman, “so why be astonished? It will pay the rent, keep a roof over our heads.”

“Your idea has been expanding, too,” Gilman said, not to be outdone in generosity. “It’s working.”

“Slowly.”

“That’s always the way. Slow but sure. And then—the end is in sight. Suddenly, one more file can be closed.”

“One way or the other,” Renwick said. It may have been the cold October drizzle outside, or the lack of heat in Gilman’s attic room—the small electric fire looked better than it felt— but Renwick’s usual optimism was chilled. Too much inaction, too many reports analysed and broken down and reassembled in different ways to give new leads and clearer assessments.

Gilman said, “Don’t tell me you are depressed by the way Interintell is growing. It had to increase its scope, Bob. Couldn’t be confined to NATO. Terrorism doesn’t belong only to the North Atlantic areas. We’ve got three additional investigations running at this moment, and two countries outside NATO are concerned enough to ask for our help.”

“I know, I know. Expansion is necessary, but it might just be happening too soon.” With expansion, there would come— inevitably—publicity. And at this moment, any publicity might give Theo warning of a new force moving against him. “Theo—” began Renwick, and stopped. Theo had been his investigation from the beginning. “So much seems to be hanging fire. Perhaps it’s time to give Theo a jolt, make him feel the best-laid plans may need a change here or an alteration there, set him a little off balance. But let’s avoid publicity—if we can. Keep Interintell’s name out of it, Ron. For now.”

“And take no credit for nailing Theo?”

“Whoever got credit for keeping the peace—except the politicians?” Renwick drew his chair closer to the fire.

Gilman smiled. “Just think of Bombay and temperatures around ninety degrees. Are you really leaving tomorrow? You’ll be a week ahead of the camper’s arrival.”

“Its scheduled arrival,” Renwick said pointedly.

“They’ve still more than seven hundred miles to travel, and none of them easy.” The camper, on reaching Pakistan, had travelled south, still keeping in Pakistan, to reach Hyderabad and some students at its Sind University. From there, heading for India at last, it had been faced with the Great Desert. That had been skirted more or less, but even after that success the camper’s direction was convoluted, turning north before it swept around to the south again. “One hell of a route they chose.”

“Chosen for them,” Renwick said. Then he actually laughed. “So Theo does make miscalculations. When he decided on that route, he must have been trying to have the camper avoid any heavy monsoon rains—these last from June until October, usually. But this year the monsoons have failed. There’s drought instead of floods.”

“That was his second miscalculation,” Gilman observed. The Afghanistan scene hadn’t seemed to need Soviet military intervention when the camper’s route had been initially planned, but the invasion forces were already beginning to group along the frontier.

“Otherwise,” Renwick reminded him, “he has done too damned well. He has now set up offices for West-East Travel in Honolulu and Hong Kong.” The pattern established in Los Angeles and Istanbul had been repeated: Theo, with a supply of false passports and changes in his appearance to match their photographs and descriptions, had entered foreign countries with the greatest of ease. Once there, he had only needed a couple of hours to appear as Mr. Otto Remp from Düsseldorf in order to sign the final documents—and to keep his home office convinced that their Herr Remp was doing exactly what they had sent him travelling to do. “Two offices still to be arranged,” said Renwick thoughtfully.

“Singapore. Bombay. Where will he appear first?”

“I’m betting on Bombay. James Kiley will need a hefty dollop of hard cash when he arrives there.” The last place where he had picked up a quantity of money had been in Hyderabad—at a small private bank where an account had been established in Kiley’s name. “Theo must have an army of agents scattered around.”

“Well, he has pretty strong backing. We may not have their army of agents, but we’re doing not so badly.” At least Claudel and Fahri had delivered the camper over to Mahoney and Benson, the two Australians, who were old friends of Renwick’s. They had managed to stage a breakdown of their Ferrari at Quetta, given themselves the excuse that their trip over the Himalayas to India was out of the question until next summer, and had succeeded—by an exchange of cars— in following the camper as far as Hyderabad. After that they had noted its direction for the Indian frontier, notified A.K. Roy in time for his two agents to pick up the trail. “Roy is a formidable type,” Gilman said. They had been good friends since their Oxford days. “I’ve known him for twenty years, and one thing is certain: he is not going to let Mr. Otto Remp set up a front for espionage right in his own back yard. He comes from Maharashtra, you know, and that’s the province where Bombay lies.”

So that, thought Renwick, is why Gilman, who had several strong contacts in India, had chosen Roy for this operation. “I hope he has been investigating any recent foreign interest in Bombay real estate.” For once we might learn in advance where Theo-in-diguise reverts to Otto Remp for the final transactions.

“Roy is doing that right now,” Gilman said. “When do you want to meet him?”

“As soon as I arrive in Bombay.” Renwick’s depression had lifted. He was already seeing several possibilities of getting close to Theo at last. “Theo—” He smiled. “What about giving him a real shock in time for his Bombay appearance?”

“Shake him up,” Gilman agreed. “But how?”

“Ilsa Schlott.” Yesterday she had been arrested by New Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Squad, but quietly: nothing had yet appeared in the newspapers. “Would your inspector friend consider a little publicity?”

“How much?”

“Nothing to damage any of his continuing investigations into her contacts here in London. The news of her arrest will have to be made public, you know. Why not now? We’ll use the information that we got from Diehl last week to flesh out the bald details Scotland Yard will give to the press.” Richard Diehl, in West Germany, had done a mammoth job at digging deep into the past history of the People’s Revolutionary Force for Direct Action—enough to send Erik and Marco, its founders, and Theo, their adopted counsellor and friend, into convulsions. “Your contact at Scotland Yard wouldn’t object to that, would he?”

Gilman took off his glasses, polished them thoughtfully. “It might be a boost for his section. Only he’d have to see a copy of Diehl’s report—just in case the politicians came asking too many questions.”

“We’ll give him a copy of one part of Diehl’s report—the one that we’re willing to have published. That should bolster any answer he has to give.”

“He’ll give the minimum. What shall he call Diehl—a reliable source of information?”

“Should be enough for the moment. Later your friend can be more exact. He understands that, doesn’t he?”

“He’s more security-minded than even you are.” Gilman replaced his glasses and rose. “Eleven o’clock. I’ll make us a cup of tea. Gemma bought me this electrical gadget to boil water. Let’s see if it works. And you can get your thoughts into shape for a press release.”

“How much will be reported—before we add our contribution?”

“Ilsa Schlott arrested in a Camberwell garage—charged with recruitment of terrorists for a training period abroad. Two terrorists returning to London last week, their training complete, also arrested. So were the owner of the garage and his chief mechanic; three employees detained for questioning—and two are talking—regarding cars altered to suit Miss Schlott’s specifications. Two of these cars have been identified: used for the transport of weapons. Miss Schlott, enrolled at University College as a medical research student, has been resident in London since September 1978. On a false passport. Name and nationality are both invented.”

“She was actually caught on a visit to that garage? That was pretty neat timing by your friend,” Renwick said admiringly.

“It seemed a good opportunity to nab her. Flagrante delicto. Stands up nicely in court. You know—” Gilman broke off in exasperation—“I don’t think this bloody thing is going to work, dammit.”

Renwick let him struggle with Gemma’s brainchild, and concentrated on the garage in Camberwell. “No mention of a green camper?”

“Actually, yes. But I wasn’t sure you’d want that publicised.”

“When did the garage start working on that camper?”

“In early February. Finished the job by May. There was a good deal of work needed. Including the services of an electronics expert whose shop just happens to be next to the garage. He and his electrician are in custody, too. Altogether, a nice haul.”

“No records kept, of course, on Schlott’s special orders.”

“None. But the two talking employees saw the camper, knew it was something special although they weren’t allowed to work on it. One of them—he’s an odd-job man—was in the garage when a thin dark stranger, young, six feet tall, took possession of the camper in June. Arrived with Ilsa Schlott, said nothing; just got into the camper and drove off. The quickest exit our odd-job man had ever seen.” Gilman gave up his battle with tea-making. “I’ll ring for Liz to bring us some of her brew.”

“I’d rather talk.” No interruptions wanted, thought Renwick. “Ron—why don’t we use the camper? Or would your inspector be against that?”

“No. Because the green camper cost a lot of money. Because Ilsa Schlott pretends to be a student on scholarship. That would make the press and the public realise there is ample justification for these arrests.”

“Then let’s give Theo a real jolt.”

“You think it out. And I’m having that cup of tea.” Gilman pressed the button twice to warn Liz. “She’ll be here in five minutes.” He sat down behind his small desk in the little office he had walled off from the main floor of the communications section, reflecting how much of a contrast it was to his regular office a few streets away. Here, everything was scaled down, built in, made of metal and plastic: there, his panel room had a real desk, a fireplace, and armchairs that sagged in the right places. Renwick seemed oblivious to the discomforts of this hygienic setup. He had even lost his early-morning depression. “I see you’ve hit on something. Let’s hear it.”

“Let’s wait for that blasted tea to arrive,” Renwick said.

“Would you rather have a coffee?”

Renwick shook his head: Liz made coffee out of some concentrate in a bottle. She arrived within the next minute, bringing not only a tray with a brown teapot, two cups, milk and sugar, a plate of digestive biscuits, but also a folder tucked under one arm. “The latest reports, just arrived,” she said in her high, fluting voice, and placed them in the last free foot of desk space. A pretty girl, thought Renwick, who plays beauty down: neatly competent in tweed suit and flat-heeled shoes. No frills about her manner, either. She left at once, with a friendly nod for Gilman’s “Thank you, Liz,” and a shy smile in Renwick’s direction.