Schlinker glanced at the list. It included two rocket- launching tubes of the type used by coast guards to send up distress flares, ten rockets containing magnesium flares of maximum intensity and duration attached to parachutes, two penetrating foghorns powered by compressed-gas canisters, four sets of night binoculars, three fixed-crystal walkie-talkie sets with a range of not less than five miles, and five wrist compa.s.ses.

"Certainly," he said. "I stock all these things."

"I'd like to place an order for the list. As they are off the cla.s.sification of arms, I a.s.sume there would be no problems with exporting them?"

"None at all. I can send them anywhere I want, particularly to a ship."

"Good," said Shannon. "How much would that lot cost, with freight in bond to an exporting agent in Ma.r.s.eilles?"

Schlinker went through his catalogue and priced the list, adding on 10 per cent for freight. "Four thousand, eight hundred dollars," he said.

"I'll be in touch with you in twelve days," said Shannon. "Please have the whole lot ready-crated for freighting. I will give you the name of the exporting agent in Ma.r.s.eilles, and mail you a banker's check in your favor for forty-eight hundred dollars. Within thirty days I expect to be able to give you the remaining twenty-six thousand dollars for the ammunition deal, and the name of the ship."

He met his second contact for dinner that night at the Atlantic. Alan Baker was an expatriate, a Canadian who had settled in Germany after the war and married a German girl. A former Royal Engineer during the war, he had got himself involved during the early postwar years in a series of border-crossing operations into and out of the Soviet Zone, running nylons, watches, and refugees. From there, he had drifted into arms-running to the scores of tiny nationalist or anti-Communist bands of maquis who, left over from the war, still ran their resistance movements in Central and Eastern Eu- rope-with the sole difference that during the war they had been resisting the Germans, while after it they were resisting the Communists.

Most of them had been paid for by the Americans, but Baker was content to use his knowledge of German and commando tactics to slip quant.i.ties of arms to them and take a hefty salary check from the Americans for doing so. When these groups finally petered out, he found himself in Tangier in the early 1950s, using the smuggling talents he had learned in the war and after it to bring cargoes of perfume and cigarettes into Italy and Spain from the then international and free port on the north coast of Morocco. Finally put out of business by the bombing and sinking of his ship in a gangland feud, he had returned to Germany and gone into the business of wheeler-dealing in any commodity that had a buyer and a supplier. His most recent feat had been to negotiate a deal in Yugoslav arms on behalf of the Basques in northern Spain.

He and Shannon had met when Baker was running guns into Ethiopia and Shannon had been at a loose end after returning from Bukavu in April 1968. Baker knew Shannon under his real name.

The short, wiry man listened quietly while Shannon explained what he wanted, his eyes flickering from his food to the other mercenary.

"Yes, it can be done," he said when Shannon had finished. "The Yugoslavs would accept the idea that a new customer wanted a sample set of two mortars and two bazookas for test purposes before placing a larger order if he was satisfied. It's plausible. There's no problem from my side in getting the stuff from them. My relations with the men in Belgrade are excellent. And they are quick. Just at the moment I have to admit I have one other problem, though."

"What's that?"

"End User Certificate," said Baker. "I used to have a man in Bonn, diplomat for a certain East African country, who would sign anything for a price and a few nice big German girls laid on at a party, the sort he liked. He was transferred back to his own country two weeks ago. I'm a bit stuck for a replacement at the moment."

"Are the Yugoslavs particular about End Users?"

Baker shook his head. "Nope. So long as the doc.u.mentation is in order, they don't check further. But there has to be a certificate, and it must have the right governmental stamp on it. They can't afford to be too slack, after all."

Shannon thought for a moment. He knew of a man in Paris who had once boasted he had a contact in an emba.s.sy there who could make out End User Certificates.

"If I could get you one, a good one, from an African country? Would that work?" he asked.

Baker inhaled on his cigar. "No problem at all," he said. "As for the price, a sixty-mm. mortar tube would run you eleven hundred dollars each. Say, twenty-two hundred for the pair. The bombs are twenty-four dollars each. The only problem with your order is that the sums are really too small. Couldn't you up the number of mortar bombs from a hundred to three hundred? It would make things much easier. No one throws off just a hundred bombs, not even for test purposes."

"All right," said Shannon, "I'll take three hundred, but no more. Otherwise I'll go over budget, and that comes off my cut."

It did not come off his cut, for he had allowed a margin for overexpenditure, and his own salary was secure. But he knew Baker would accept the argument as final.

"Good," said Baker. "So that's seventy-two hundred dollars for the bombs. The bazookas cost a thousand dollars each, two thousand for the pair. The rockets are forty-two dollars and fifty cents each. The forty you want come out at... let's see . .."

"Seventeen hundred dollars," said Shannon. "The whole packet comes out at thirteen thousand, one hundred dollars."

"Plus ten per cent for getting the stuff free on board your ship, Cat. Without the End User Certificate. If I could have got one for you, it would have been twenty per cent. Let's face it, it's a tiny order, but the traveling and out-of-pocket expenses for me are constants. I ought to charge you fifteen per cent for such a small order. So the total is fourteen thousand, four hundred dollars. Let's say fourteen and a half, eh?"

"We'll say fourteen four," said Shannon. "I'll get the certificate and mail it to you, along with a fifty-per-cent deposit. I'll pay another twenty-five per cent when I see the stuff in Yugoslavia crated and ready to go, and twenty-five per cent as the ship leaves the quay. Travelers' checks in dollars, okay?"

Baker would have liked it all in advance, but, not being a licensed dealer, he had no offices, warehouses, or business address as Schlinker had. He would act as broker, using another dealer he knew to make the actual purchase on his behalf. As a black-market man, he had to accept these terms, the lower cut, and less in advance.

One of the oldest tricks in the book is to promise to fulfill an arms order, show plenty of confidence, a.s.sure the customer of the broker's absolute integrity, take the maximum in advance, and disappear. Many a black and brown seeker after arms in Europe has had that trick played on him. Baker knew Shannon would never fall for it; besides, 50 per cent of $14,400 was too small a sum to disappear for.

"Okay. The moment I get your End User Certificate I'll get straight onto it."

They rose to leave.

"How long from the time you make your first approach until shipping date?" asked Shannon.

"About thirty to thirty-five days," said Baker. "By the way, have you got a ship?"

"Not yet. You'll need the name, I suppose. I'll let you have it with the certificate."

"If you haven't, I know a very good one for charter. Two thousand German marks a day and all found. Crew, food, the lot. Take you and the cargo anywhere, and discreet as you like."

Shannon thought it over. Twenty days in the Mediterranean, twenty days out to target, and twenty days back.

A hundred and twenty thousand marks, or 15,000. Cheaper than buying one's own ship. Tempting. But he objected to the idea of one man outside the operation controlling part of the arms deal and the ship, and being aware of the target as well. It would involve making Baker, or the man he would have to go to for the charter, virtually a partner.

"Yes," he said cautiously. "What's she called?"

"The San Andrea," said Baker.

Shannon froze. He had heard Semmler mention that name. "Registered in Cyprus?" asked Shannon.

"That's right."

"Forget it," he said shortly.

As they left the dining room, Shannon caught a swift glimpse of Johann Schlinker dining in an alcove. For a moment he thought the German dealer might have followed him, but the man was dining with a second man, evidently a valued customer. Shannon averted his head and strode past.

On the doorstep of the hotel he shook hands with Baker. "You'll be hearing from me," he said. "And don't let me down."

"Don't worry, Cat. You can trust me," said Baker. He turned and hurried off down the street.

"In a pig's ear I can," muttered Shannon and went back into the hotel.

On the way up to his room the face of the man he had seen dining with the German arms merchant stayed in his memory. He had seen the face somewhere but could not place it. As he was falling asleep it came to him. The man was the chief of staff of Provisional IRA.

The next morning, Wednesday, he flew back to London. It was the start of Day Nine.

13.

Martin Thorpe stepped into Sir James Manson's office about the time Cat Shannon was taking off from Hamburg.

"Lady Macallister," he said by way of introduction, and Sir James waved him to a seat.

"I've been into her with a fine-tooth comb," Thorpe went on. "As I suspected, she has twice been approached by people interested in buying her thirty-percent holding in Bormac Trading. It would seem each person used the wrong approach and got turned down. She's eighty-six, halfway senile, and very tetchy. At least, that's her reputation. She's also broad Scottish and has all her affairs handled by a solicitor up in Dundee. Here's my full report on her."

He handed Sir James a buff folder, and the head of Manson Consolidated read it within a few minutes. He grunted several times and muttered, "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," once. When he had finished, he looked up. "I still want those three hundred thousand shares in Bormac," he said. "You say the others went about it the wrong way. Why?"

"She would appear to have one obsession in life, and it's not money. She's rich in her own right. When she married, she was the daughter of a Scottish laird with more land than ready cash. The marriage was no doubt arranged between the families. After her old man died she inherited the lot, mile after mile of desolate moorland. But over the past twenty years the fishing and hunting rights have brought in a small fortune from city-dwelling sportsmen, and parcels of land sold off for industry have made even more. It's been shrewdly invested by her broker, or whatever they call them up there. She has a nice income to live on. I suspect the other bidders offered a lot of money but nothing else. That would not interest her."

"Then what the h.e.l.l would?" asked Sir James.

"Look at paragraph two on the second page, Sir James. See what I mean? The notices in The Times every anniversary, the attempt to have a statue erected, which was refused by the London County Council. The memorial she had put up in his home town. I think that's her obsession-the memory of the old slave-driver she married."

"Yes, yes, you may be right. So what do you propose?"

Thorpe outlined his idea, and Manson listened thoughtfully.

"It might work," he said eventually. "Stranger things have happened. The trouble is, if you try it and she still refuses, you can hardly go back again with another offer couched in a different vein. But then, I suppose a pure cash offer would in any case get the same reaction the previous two proposals met. All right, play it your way. Just get her to sell those shares."

With that, Thorpe was on his way.

Shannon was back in his London flat shortly after twelve. Lying on the mat was a cable from Langarotti in Ma.r.s.eilles. It was signed simply "Jean" and addressed to Keith Brown. Its message was an address, a hotel in a street a little way out of the center of the town, where the Corsican had checked in under the name of Laval-Ion. Shannon approved the precaution. Checking into a French hotel requires the filling out of a form which is later collected by the police. They might have wondered why their old friend Langarotti was staying so far out of town from his usual haunts.

Shannon spent ten minutes extracting the number of the hotel from Continental, Directory Enquiries, and placed a call. When he asked the hotel for M. Lavallon, he was told the monsieur was out. He left a message asking M. Lavallon to call M. Brown in London on his return. He had already given each of the four his own telephone number and made them commit it to memory.

Still using the telephone, he sent a telegram to the poste restante address of Endean under the name of Walter Harris, advising the project manager that he was back in London and would like to discuss something. Another telegram went to Janni Dupree at his flat, instructing him to report to Shannon as soon as he received the cable.

He rang his own Swiss bank and learned that of the salary for himself of 10,000, half that amount had been transferred to him, the credit having come from an unnamed account-holder at the Handelsbank. This he knew to be Endean. He shrugged. It was normal for half the salary only to be paid at this early date. He was confident, from the sheer size of ManCon and its evident eagerness to see Kimba fall from power, that the other 5000 would be his as the operation progressed.

Through the afternoon he typed out a full report of his Luxembourg and Hamburg trip, excluding the names of the firm of accountants in Luxembourg and the two arms dealers. To these sheets he attached a full statement of expenditure.

It was past four when he finished, and he had not eaten since the midmorning snack provided by Lufthansa on the flight from Hamburg. He found half a dozen eggs in the refrigerator, made a complete mess of an omelet, threw it away, and had a nap.

The arrival of Janni Dupree at the door just after six woke him, and five minutes later the phone rang. It was Endean, who had picked up the telegram in the post office.

Endean soon noticed that Shannon was not in a position to talk freely. "Is there someone with you?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Is it connected with business?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to meet?"

"I think we ought," said Shannon. "What about tomorrow morning?"

"Okay. About eleven suit you?"

"Sure," said Shannon.

"Your place?"

"Suits me fine."

"I'll be there at eleven," said Endean and hung up.

Shannon turned to the South African. "How are you getting on, Janni?" he asked.

Dupree had made a little progress in the three days he had been working. The hundred pairs of socks, T-shirts, and underpants were on order and would be ready for collection by Friday. He had found a supplier for the fifty combat tunics and had placed the order. The same firm could have provided trousers to match, but, according to his orders, Dupree was seeking another firm to supply the trousers, so that no one supplier would realize he was providing complete sets of uniforms. Dupree mentioned that no one seemed suspicious in any case, but Shannon decided nevertheless to stick to the original idea.

Janni said he had tried several footwear stores but had not found the canvas boots he was looking for. He would go on trying for the rest of the week and start searching for berets, haversacks, knapsacks, a variety of webbing, and sleeping bags next week. Shannon advised him to contact his first export agent and get the first consignment of underwear and tunics off to Ma.r.s.eilles as soon as possible. He promised Dupree to get from Langarotti the name and address of a consignee agent in Ma.r.s.eilles within the next forty-eight hours.

Before the South African left, Shannon typed out a letter to Langarotti and addressed it to him under his real name at the main post office of Ma.r.s.eilles. In the letter he reminded the Corsican of a conversation they had had six months earlier beneath the palm trees, when the talk had turned to the buying of arms. The Corsican had mentioned that he knew a man in Paris who could get End User Certificates from a diplomat in one of the Paris emba.s.sies of an African republic. Shannon needed to know the name of the man and where he could be contacted.

When he had finished he gave Dupree the letter and ordered him to post it, express rate, that same evening from Trafalgar Square. He explained he would have done it himself, but he had to wait in the flat for Langarotti to call from Ma.r.s.eilles.

He was getting very hungry by eight, when Langarotti finally called, his voice crackling over a telephone line that must have been created personally by the inventor of that antique masterpiece the French telephone network.

Shannon asked him, in guarded terms, how he had been getting on. Before any of the mercenaries had left him, he had warned them all that under no circ.u.mstances was a telephone line to be used to talk openly about what they were doing.

"I checked into a hotel and sent you a telegram with my address on it," said Langarotti.

"I know. I got it," shouted Shannon.

"I hired a scooter and toured all the shops that deal in the kind of merchandise we are looking for," came the voice. "There are three manufacturers in each category. I got the addresses and names of the three boat-makers and wrote off to each for their brochures. I should get them in a week or so. Then I can order the best-suited from the local dealers, quoting the maker's name and brand name of the article," said Langarotti.

"Good idea," said Shannon. "What about the second articles?"

"They depend on the kind we pick from the bro- chures I shall get. One depends on the other. But don't worry. On the second thing we need, there are thousands of every kind and description in the shops along this coast. With spring coming, every shop in every port is stocking up with the latest models."

"Okay. Fine," Shannon shouted. "Now listen. I need the name of a good export agent for shipping. I need it earlier than I thought. There will be a few crates to be sent from here in the near future, and another from Hamburg."

"I can get that easy enough," said Langarotti from the other end. "But I think it will be better in Toulon. You can guess why."

Shannon could guess. Langarotti could use another name at his hotel, but for exporting goods from the port on a small freighter he would have to show his ident.i.ty card. Moreover, in the past year or so Ma.r.s.eilles police had tightened up considerably in their watch on the port and a new customs chief had been drafted in, who was believed to be a holy terror. The aim of both operations was to clamp down on the heroin traffic that made Ma.r.s.eilles the start of the French connection with New York, but a search of a boat for drugs could just as easily turn up arms instead. It would be the worst irony to be caught because of something one was not even involved in.

"Fair enough, you know that area best," said Shannon. "Cable me the name and address as soon as you have them. There is one other thing. I have sent a letter by express rate tonight, to you personally at the main post office in Ma.r.s.eilles. You'll see what I want when you read it. Cable me the man's name at once when you get the letter, which should be Friday morning."

"Okay," said Langarotti. "Is that all?"

"Yes, for the moment. Send me those brochures as soon as you get them, with your own comments and the prices. We must stay in budget."

"Right. By-by," called Langarotti, and Shannon hung up. He had dinner alone at the Bois de St. Jean and slept early.

Endean arrived at eleven the next morning and spent an hour reading the report and accounts and discussing both with Shannon.

"Fair enough," he said at length. "How are things going?"

"Well," said Shannon, "it's early days yet, of course. I've only been on the job for ten days, but a lot of ground has been covered. I want to get all the orders placed by Day Twenty, which will leave forty days for them to be fulfilled. After that there must be an allowance of twenty days to collect all the component parts and get them safely and discreetly aboard the ship. Sailing date should be Day Eighty, if we are to strike on schedule. By the way, I shall need more money soon."