The following evening Shannon flew to Africa on the midnight flight and arrived at dawn on Monday morning.

It was a long drive upcountry. The taxi was hot and rattled abominably. It was still the height of the dry season, and the sky above the oil-palm plantations was robin's-egg blue, without a cloud. Shannon did not mind. It was good to be back in Africa again for a day and a half, even after a six-hour flight without sleep.

It was familiar to him, more so than the cities of Western Europe. Familiar were the sounds and the smells, the villagers walking along the edge of the road to market, columns of women in Indian file, their gourds and bundles of wares balanced on their heads, unwaveringly steady.

At each village they pa.s.sed, the usual morning market was set out beneath the shade of the palm-thatch roofs of the rickety stalls, the villagers bargaining and chattering, buying and selling, the women tending the stalls while the men sat in the shade and talked of important matters that only they could understand, and the naked brown children scampering through the dust between the legs of their parents and the stalls.

Shannon had both windows open. He sat back and sniffed the moisture and the palms, the woodsmoke and the brown, stagnant rivers they crossed. From the airport he had already telephoned the number the writer had given him and knew he was expected. He arrived at the villa set back from the road in a private, if small, park just before noon.

The guards checked him at the gate, frisking him from ankles to armpits, before letting him pay off the taxi and enter the gate. Inside, he recognized a face, one of the personal attendants of the man he had come to see. The servant grinned broadly and bobbed his head. He led Shannon to one of the three houses in the grounds of the park and ushered him into an empty sitting room. Shannon waited alone for half an hour.

He was staring out of the windows, feeling the cool of the air-conditioner dry out his clothes, when he heard the creak of a door and the soft sound of a sandal on tiles behind him. He turned around.

The general was much the same as when they had last met on the darkened airstrip, the same luxuriant beard, the same deep ba.s.s voice.

"Well, Major Shannon, so soon. Couldn't you stay away?"

He was bantering, as he usually did. Shannon grinned as they shook hands.

"I've come down because I need something, sir. And because there is something I think we ought to talk over. An idea in the back of my head."

"There's not much that an impoverished exile can offer you," said the general, "but I'll always listen to your ideas. If I remember rightly, you used to have some fairly good ones."

Shannon said, "There's one thing you have, even in exile, that I could use. You still have your people's loyalty. And what I need is men."

The two men talked through the lunch hour and through the afternoon. They were still discussing when darkness fell, Shannon's freshly drawn diagrams spread out on the table. He had brought nothing with him but clean white paper and a variety of colored felt-tipped pens, just in case of a skin search at customs.

They reached agreement on the basic points by sundown and elaborated the plan through the night. Only at three in the morning was the car summoned to drive Shannon back to the coast and the airport for take-off on the dawn plane to Paris.

As they parted on the terrace above the waiting car and its sleepy chauffeur, they shook hands again.

"I'll be in touch, sir," said Shannon.

"And I'll have to send my emissaries immediately," replied the general. "But in sixty days the men will be there."

Shannon was dead tired. The strain of the constant traveling was beginning to tell; the nights without sleep, the endless succession of airports and hotels, negotiations and meetings, had left him drained. In the car driving to the south he slept for the first time in two days, and dozed again on the plane trip back to Paris. The flight stopped too many tunes to allow a real sleep: an hour at Ouagadougou, another at a G.o.dforsaken strip in Mauretania, and again at Ma.r.s.eilles. He reached Le Bourget just before six in the evening. It was the end of Day Fifteen.

While he was landing in Paris, Martin Thorpe was boarding the overnight sleeper train to Glasgow, Stirling, and Perth. From there he could take a connecting train to Dundee, where were situated the old-established offices of Dalgleish and Dalgleish, attorneys-at-law. He carried in his briefcase the doc.u.ment signed before the weekend by Lady Macallister and witnessed by Mrs. Barton, along with the checks issued by the Zwingli Bank of Zurich, four of them, each in the sum of 7500 and each enough to purchase 75,000 of Lady Macallister's shares in Bormac.

Twenty-four hours, he thought as he drew down the blinds of his first-cla.s.s sleeping compartment, blotting out the sight of the scurrying on the platform of King's Cross station. Twenty-four hours should see it through, and they would be home and dry; and three weeks later a new director on the board, a nominee responding to the strings pulled by him and Sir James Manson. Settling himself on the bunk, his briefcase under the pillow, Martin Thorpe gazed up at the ceiling and enjoyed the feeling.

Later that Tuesday evening Shannon was settled into a hotel not far from the Madeleine in the heart of Paris's 8th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. He had had to forsake his regular Montmartre hideout, where he was known as Carlo Shannon, because he was now using the name of Keith Brown. But the Plaza-Surne was a good subst.i.tute. He had bathed and shaved and was about to go out for dinner. He had telephoned to reserve a table at his favorite eating place in the quarter, the Restaurant Mazagran, and Madame Michele had promised him a filet mignon the way he liked it, with a tossed-lettuce salad by the side and a Pot de Chirouble to wash it down.

The two person-to-person calls he had put in came through almost together. First on the line was a certain M. Lavallon from Ma.r.s.eilles.

"Do you have that shipping agent yet?" asked Shannon when they had exchanged greetings.

"Yes," said the Corsican. "It's in Toulon. A very good one, very respectable and efficient. They have their own bonded warehouse on the harbor."

"Spell it out," said Shannon. He had pencil and paper ready.

"Agence Maritime Duphot," spelled Langarotti and dictated the address. "Send the consignments to the agency, clearly marked as the property of Monsieur Langarotti."

Shannon hung up, and the hotel operator came on the line immediately to say a Mr. Dupree was calling from London.

Shannon dictated the name and address of the Toulon agent to him, letter by letter.

"Fine," Janni said at length. "I've got the first of the four crates ready and bonded here. I'll tell the London agents to get the stuff on its way as soon as possible. Oh, by the way, I've found the boots."

"Good," said Shannon, "well done."

He placed one more call, this time to a bar in Ostend. There was a fifteen-minute delay before Marc's voice came through.

"I'm in Paris," said Shannon. "That man with the samples of merchandise I wanted to examine . . ."

"Yes," said Marc. "I've been in touch. He's prepared to meet you and discuss prices and terms."

"Good. I'll be in Belgium Thursday night or Friday morning. Tell him I propose Friday morning over breakfast in my room at the Holiday Inn near the airport."

"I know it," said Marc. "All right, I'll put it to him and call you back."

"Call me tomorrow between ten and eleven," said Shannon and hung up.

Only then did he slip on his jacket and head for a long-awaited dinner to be followed by a long-desired full night's sleep.

While Shannon slept, Simon Endean also was winging his way southward to Africa on the overnight flight. He had arrived in Paris by the first flight on Monday and taken a taxi immediately to the emba.s.sy of Dahomey in the Avenue Victor Hugo. Here he had filled out a lengthy pink form requesting a six-day tourist visa. It was ready for collection just before the closing of the consular office on the Tuesday afternoon, and he had caught the midnight flight to Cotonou via Niamey. Shannon would not have been particularly surprised to know that Endean was going to Africa, for he a.s.sumed the exiled Colonel Bobi had to play a part in Sir James Manson's scheme of things and, that the former commander of the Zangaran army was cooling his heels somewhere along the mangrove coast. But if Endean had known Shannon had just returned from a secret visit to the general in the same area of Africa, it would have quite ruined his sleep aboard the UTA. DC-8 that night, despite the pill he had taken to ensure an uninterrupted slumber.

Marc Vlaminck called Shannon at his hotel at ten-fifteen the next day. "He agrees to the meeting, and he'll bring the sample," said the Belgian. "Do you want me to come too?"

"Certainly," said Shannon. "When you get to the hotel, ask at reception for the room of Mr. Brown. One other thing. Have you bought that truck I asked you to get?"

"Yes, why?"

"Has this gentleman seen it yet?"

There was a pause while Vlaminck thought. "No."

"Then don't bring it to Brussels. Hire a car and drive yourself. Pick him up on the way. Understand?"

"Yes," said Vlaminck, still perplexed. "Anything you say."

Shannon, who was still in bed but feeling a sight better, rang for breakfast and had his habitual five minutes under the shower, four of them in steaming hot water and sixty seconds under a stream of ice-cold.

The coffee and rolls were on the side table when he emerged. He placed two calls from the bedside phone, to Benny Lambert in Paris and Mr. Stein of Lang and Stein in Luxembourg.

"Have you got that letter for me?" he asked Lambert.

The little crook's voice sounded strained. "Yes. I got it yesterday. Luckily my contact was on duty on Monday, and I saw him that night. He produced the letter of introduction yesterday evening. When do you want it?"

"This afternoon," said Shannon.

"All right. Have you got my fee?"

"Don't worry, I've got it right here."

"Then come to my place about three," said Lambert.

Shannon thought for a moment. "No, I'll meet you here," he said and gave Lambert the name of his hotel. He preferred to meet the little man in a public place. Rather to his surprise, Lambert agreed to come to the hotel with what sounded like elation in his voice. There was something not quite right about this deal, but Shannon could not put his finger on it. He did not realize that he had given the Paris crook the information he would later sell to Roux.

Mr. Stein was engaged on the other phone when the call came, so, rather than wait, Shannon said he would ring back. This he did an hour later.

"About the meeting to launch my holding company, Tyrone Holdings," he began.

"Ah yes, Mr. Brown," said Stein's voice. "Everything is in order. When would you suggest?"

"Tomorrow afternoon," replied Shannon. It was agreed the meeting would be in Stein's office at three. Shannon got the hotel to reserve a seat on the express from Paris to Luxembourg just after nine the next morning.

"I must say, I find it all very strange, very strange indeed."

Mr. Duncan Dalgleish, Senior, in appearance and manner matched his office, and his office looked as if it had been the scene for the reading of the will of Sir Walter Scott.

He examined the four share-transfer deeds signed by Lady Macallister and witnessed by Mrs. Barton carefully and at length. He had muttered, "Aye," in sorrowful tones several times, and the glances he shot at the younger man from London were disapproving. He was evidently quite unused to handling certified checks from a bank in Zurich, and he had held them between forefinger and thumb as he read them. He was examining the four deeds again as he spoke.

"Yell understand, Lady Macallister has been ap- preached before concerning the sale of these shares. In the past she has always seen fit to consult the firm of Dalgleish, and I have always seen fit to advise her against selling the stock," he went on.

Thorpe thought privately that no doubt other clients of Mr. Duncan Dalgleish were holding on to piles of valueless stock on the basis of his advice, but he kept his face polite.

"Mr. Dalgleish, you must agree the gentlemen whom I represent have paid Lady Macallister close to twice the face value of the stock. She, for her part, has freely signed the deeds and empowered me to collect the shares on presentation of check or checks totaling thirty thousand pounds. Which you now hold in your hand,"

The old man sighed again. "It's just so strange that she should not have consulted me first," he said sadly. "I usually advise her on all her financial matters. For this I hold her general power of attorney."

"But her own signature is still perfectly valid," insisted Thorpe.

"Yes, yes, my power of attorney in no way invalidates her own power to sign on her behalf."

"Then I would be grateful if you would let me have the share certificates so that I can return to London," said Thorpe.

The old man rose slowly. "Would you excuse me, Mr. Thorpe?" he said with dignity and withdrew into an inner sanctum. Thorpe knew he was going to telephone London and prayed Lady Macallister's hearing aid would make it necessary for Mrs. Barton to interpret for the pair of them on the telephone. It was half an hour before the old attorney came back. He held a large wad of old and discolored share certificates in his hand.

"Lady Macallister has confirmed what you say, Mr. Thorpe. Not, of course, that I doubted your word, ye understand. I felt obliged to speak with my client before completing such a large transaction."

"Of course," said Thorpe, rose, and held out his hand. Dalgleish parted with the shares as if they had been his own.

An hour later Thorpe was in his train, rolling through the springlit countryside of Angus County on his way back to London.

Six thousand miles away from the heather-clad hills of Scotland, Simon Endean was seated with the hulking form of Colonel Bobi in a small rented villa in the residential district of Cotonou. He had arrived on the morning plane and checked into the Hotel du Port, whose Israeli manager had helped him trace the house where the Zangaran army officer lived in the straitened circ.u.mstances of exile.

Bobi was a lumbering giant of a man with a face of brooding brutishness and ma.s.sive hands. The combination pleased Endean. It was of no consequence to him with what disastrous effects Bobi might rule Zangaro in succession to the equally disastrous Jean Kimba. What he had come to find was a man who would sign away the mineral rights of the Crystal Mountain range to Bormac Trading Company for a pittance and a hefty bribe to his personal account. He had found what he sought.

In exchange for a salary of 500 a month the colonel would be delighted to accept the post of West African consultant to Bormac. He had pretended to study the contract Endean had brought, but the Englishman noted with pleasure that when he turned to the second page, which Endean had stapled upside down between the first and third pages, Bobi's expression did not flicker. He was illiterate, or the next thing to it.

Endean explained the terms of the contract slowly in the mishmash of language they had been using, a mixture of basic French and Coast-pidgin English. Bobi nodded soberly, his small eyes, much flecked with bloodshot vessels around the whites, studying the con- tract intently. Endean stressed that Bobi was to remain in his villa or near it for the next two to three months., and that Endean would return to see him again in that time.

The Englishman elicited that Bobi still had a valid Zangaran diplomatic pa.s.sport, a legacy of a visit he had once made outside Zangaro at the side of the Defense Minister, Kimba's cousin.

Shortly before sundown he scrawled what could pa.s.s for a signature on the bottom of the Bormac doc.u.ment. Not that a signature really mattered. Only later would Bobi be told that Bormac was putting him back into power in exchange for mining rights. Endean surmised that, if the price was right, Bobi would not quibble.

The following morning at dawn Endean was on another plane, heading back to Paris and London.

The meeting with Benny Lambert took place, as agreed, in the hotel. It was short and to the point. Lambert handed over an envelope, which Shannon flicked open. From it he took two pieces of paper, both identical and both bearing the printed crest and letterhead of the stationery of the Amba.s.sador in Paris of the Republic of Togo.

One of the sheets was blank, except for a signature on the bottom and an emba.s.sy seal. The other sheet was a letter in which the writer stated that he had been authorized by his government to engage the services of---------to apply to the government of--------- for the purchase of the military weapons listed on the attached sheet. The letter concluded with the usual a.s.surance that the weapons were intended solely for use by the armed forces of the Republic of Togo and would not be given or sold to any third party. This too was signed and decorated with the seal of the republic.

Shannon nodded. He was confident Alan Baker would be able to insert his own name as the authorized agent and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as the vender government in such a way as to leave no trace of the insertion. He handed to Lambert the 500 he owed him, and the latter left.

Like most weak men, Lambert was indecisive. He had for three days been on the verge of calling Charles Roux and telling him that Shannon was in town and seeking an End User Certificate. He knew the French mercenary would be more than interested in the news, but he did not know why. He a.s.sumed it was because Roux regarded Paris and its resident mercenaries as his private preserve. He would not take kindly to a foreigner coming there to set up an operation in either arms or men without cutting Roux in on the deal as equal partner or, more desirable, as the patron, the boss of the project. It would never occur to Roux that no one would want to finance him to set up an operation because he had blown far too many already, taken too many bribes to kill a project, and cheated too many men of their salary.

But Lambert was afraid of Roux and felt he ought to tell him. He had been on the verge of doing so that afternoon, and would have if Shannon had not had the balance of 500 with him. But to have warned Roux in those circ.u.mstances would have cost the little crook that 500, and he was sure Roux would not have made up such a large sum to him simply for a tip-off. What Lambert did not know was that Roux had placed a killing contract on the Irishman. So in his state of ignorance he worked out another idea.

He could collect his full 1000 from Shannon and tell Roux the Irishman had approached him with a request for an End User Certificate, which he had promptly refused. There was just one snag. He had heard enough of Shannon to be afraid of him also, and he feared that if Roux was in contact with the Irishman too soon after Lambert's own meeting at the hotel, Shannon would guess from whom the tip-off came. He decided to wait until the following morning.

When he finally gave Roux the tip-off, it was too late. Roux telephoned the hotel at once under another name and asked if a Mr. Shannon was staying there. The chief desk clerk replied quite truthfully that there was no one of that name at the hotel.

Cross-examined, a thoroughly frightened Lambert claimed he had not actually visited the hotel but had simply received a call from Shannon, who had given that hotel as the place where he was staying.

Shortly after nine Roux's man Henri Alain was at the reception desk of the Plaza-Surene and established that the only Englishman or Irishman who had stayed in the hotel the previous night exactly corresponded in description to Cat Shannon, that his name and pa.s.sport had been those of Keith Brown, and that he had reserved through the reception desk a ticket on the 9:00 a.m. express train to Luxembourg. Henri Alain learned two more things: of a meeting that M. Brown had had in the residents' lounge the previous afternoon, and a description of the Frenchman with whom he had been seen speaking. All this he reported back to Roux at midday.

In the French mercenary leader's flat, Roux, Henri Alain, and Raymond Thomard held a conference of warvRoux made the final decision.

"Henri, we've missed him this time, but the chances are that he still knows nothing about it. So he may well return to that hotel next time he has to overnight in Paris. I want you to get friendly, real friendly, with someone on the staff there. The next time that man checks in there, I want to know, but at once. Understand?"

Alain nodded. "Sure, patron. I'll have it staked out from the inside, and if he even calls to make a reservation, we'll know."

Roux turned to Thomard. "When he comes again, Raymond, you take the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. In the meantime, there's one other little job. That s.h.i.t Lambert lied his head off. He could have tipped me off last night, and we'd have been finished with this affair. So he probably took money off Shannon, then tried to take some more off me for out-of-date information. Just make sure Benny Lambert doesn't do any walking for the next six months."

The floating of the company to be known as Tyrone Holdings was shorter than Shannon could have thought possible. It was so quick it was over almost before it had begun. He was invited into Mr. Stein's private office, where Mr. Lang and a junior partner were already seated. Along one wall were three secretaries-as it turned out, the secretaries of the three accountants present. With the required seven stockholders on hand, Mr. Stein set up the company within five minutes. Shannon handed over the balance of 500, and the thousand shares were issued. Each person present received one and signed for it, then pa.s.sed it to Mr. Stein, who agreed to keep it in the company safe. Shannon received 994 shares in a block const.i.tuted by one sheet of paper, and signed for them. His own shares he pocketed. The articles and memorandum of a.s.sociation were signed by the chairman and company secretary, and copies of each would later be filed with the Registrar of Companies for the Archduchy of Luxembourg. The three secretaries were then sent back to their duties, the board of three directors met and approved the aims of the company, the minutes were noted on one sheet of paper, read out by the secretary, and signed by the chairman. That was it. Tyrone Holdings SA existed in law.

The other two directors shook hands with Shannon, calling him Mr. Brown as they did so, and left. Mr. Stein escorted him to the door.

"When you and your a.s.sociates wish to buy a company in the chosen field of operations, to be owned by Tyrone Holdings," he told Shannon, "you will then need to come here, present us with a check for the appropriate amount, and buy the new issue at one pound per share. The formalities you can leave to us."

Shannon understood. Any inquiries would stop at Mr. Stein as company chairman. Two hours later he caught the evening plane for Brussels, and he checked into the Holiday Inn just before eight.

The man who accompanied Tiny Marc Vlaminck when they knocked at Shannon's door the following morning just after ten was introduced as M. Boucher. The pair of them, standing on the threshold when he opened the door, looked like a comic turn. Marc was bulky, towering over his companion, and he was beefy in every place. The other man was fat, extremely fat -the sort of fatness a.s.sociated with fairground sideshows. He seemed almost circular, balanced like one of those children's spherical plastic toys that cannot be overturned. Only on closer examination was it apparent there were two tiny feet in brilliantly polished shoes beneath the ma.s.s, and that the bulk const.i.tuting the lower half was divided into two legs. In repose, the man looked like one single unit.

M. Boucher's head appeared to be the only object to mar the contours of the otherwise uniformly globular ma.s.s. It was small at the top and flowed downward to engulf his collar and hide it from view, the flesh of the jowls resting thankfully on the shoulders. After several seconds Shannon conceded that he also had arms, one on each side, and that one held a sleek doc.u.ment case some five inches thick.

"Please come in," said Shannon and stepped back.