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 ident.i.ty 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 pa.s.s through the three departments, acc.u.mulating 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.

Schlinker had come to Madrid to present personally the application for an export license. He had been in possession of the full details of the MV Toscana on his arrival, and the seven-page questionnaire had been filled out and presented. Back in his room in the Hotel Mindanao, the German expected no problems here either. The Toscana was a clean ship, small but belonging to a registered shipping company, Spinetti Maritime, as Lloyds Shipping List confirmed. According to the application form, she would wish to berth in Valencia between June 16 and June 20, take the shipment on board, and proceed straight to Latakia on the coast of Syria, where the consignment would be handed over to the Iraqis for trucking to Baghdad. The export license should take no longer than another two weeks, and then application would be made for a movement order, permitting the crates to be taken from the army warehouse and detailing an army officer to mount escort with ten soldiers as far as Valencia quayside. The latter precaution, brought into force over the previous three years, was to prevent any risk of hijacking by the Basque terrorists. The last thing the government of El Caudillo wanted was to see Madrid's bullets being used against the Guardia Civil in Coruna.

As Schlinker prepared to leave for Hamburg, he reflected that his Madrid partner was perfectly capable of ensuring that the liaison with the Army Ministry remained at a cordial level and that the crates would be waiting in Valencia for the arrival of the Toscana on time.

In London a third and seemingly unconnected meeting took place. Over the past three weeks Mr. Harold Roberts, the nominee director of Bormac Trading Company, controlling 30 per cent of the company stock, had been cultivating the chairman, Major Luton. He had several times taken him to lunch and once visited him at his Guildford home. They had become quite friendly.

Throughout their talks, Roberts had made it clear that if the company were to get off the ground and go back into business, whether in rubber or in some other area of trading, a large injection of fresh capital would be needed. Major Luton could well see that. When the time was ripe, Mr. Roberts proposed to the chairman that the company should make a new one-for-two issue of shares-a total, therefore, of half a million of new stock.

At first the major was aghast at the boldness of the move, but Mr. Roberts a.s.sured him that the bank whose nominee he was would find the necessary fresh finance. Mr. Roberts added that in the event that any of the new shares were not taken up by existing shareholders or new shareholders, the Zwingli Bank would take up the rest at full value on behalf of its customers.

The clinching argument was that when news of the fresh share issue broke on the market, the price of Bormac ordinaries would be bound to rise, perhaps by as much again as their present value, which then stood at one shilling and threepence. Major Luton thought of his own hundred thousand shares and agreed. As is so often the case when a man has once weakened, he then went along with Mr. Roberts's proposal without further demur.

The new director pointed out that the pah* of them could form a quorum and hold a directors' meeting able to pa.s.s a resolution binding on the company. At the major's insistence, a letter was still sent to the other four directors, simply stating that it was intended to hold a board meeting to discuss company business, including the possibility of making a share issue.

In the event, only the company secretary, the City solicitor, turned up. The resolution was pa.s.sed and the announcement of the new share issue posted. There was no need for a meeting of shareholders, as in the long-distant past an increase in capital had been authorized but never carried out.

Existing shareholders were given first choice to buy the stock and were sent allotment letters for the appropriate number of new shares. They were also given the right to apply for any shares not subscribed by those to whom they were originally offered.

Within a week, papers and checks signed by Messrs. Adams, Ball, Carter, and Davies, forwarded by the Zwingli Bank, were in the company secretary's hands.

Each man opted to buy fifty thousand of the new shares, including those originally allotted to him because of his existent holdings.

The shares had to be issued at par, which was four shillings each, and, with the existing shares standing at less than a third of that price, it was an unattractive offer. Two City speculators noticed the press announcement and tried to offer to underwrite the issue, a.s.suming there had to be something in the wind. They would have succeeded but for Mr. Roberts. His own bid on behalf of the Zwingli Bank was already in, wishing to buy any shares remaining at the closing of the offer that had not been bought by existing shareholders or Bormac.

Some idiot in Wales agreed to buy a thousand shares, even at the too high price, and another three thousand were bought by eighteen other shareholders scattered around the country, who apparently could not do basic arithmetic or were clairvoyant. Mr. Roberts, as a nominee director, was not in a position to buy for himself, since he owned no stock. But at three in the afternoon of May 20, the closing date of the offer, he subscribed for all the 296,000 remaining unsold shares in the name of the Zwingli Bank, which in turn was buying these on behalf of two of its customers. Their names happened to be Edwards and Frost. Again the bank used designated accounts of its nominee company.

In no case were the rules of the Companies Act regarding disclosure broken. Messrs. Adams, Ball, Carter, and Davies each owned 75,000 of the shares from their first purchase and 50,000 from their second. But as the number of shares now in circulation had risen from 1 million to 1.5 million, each man held less than 10 per cent and was able to remain anonymous. Messrs. Edwards and Frost each owned 148,000 shares, just under the 10-per-cent limit.

What did not appear in public, or even to the directors, was that Sir James Manson owned 796,000 shares in Bormac, an overwhelming majority. He controlled, through Martin Thorpe, the six nonexistent shareholders who had bought so heavily. They could, through Martin Thorpe, direct the Zwingli Bank in its dealings with the company, and the bank controlled his contracted servant, Mr. Roberts. Using their proxies, the six invisible men behind the Zwingli Bank, operating through Harold Roberts, could make the company do anything they wished.

It had cost Sir James Manson 60,000 to buy the original shares, and 100,000 to buy up the bulk of the new issue of half a million. But when the shares reached the predicted 100 each, which he was sure they would do after the chance "discovery" of the Crystal Mountain in the heart of Bormac's Zangaran franchise, he stood to make 80 million.

Mr. Roberts was a contented man when he left the Bormac offices after hearing how many shares his six Swiss-based stockholders had been allotted. He knew that when he placed the share certificates in the hands of Dr. Martin Steinhofer, there would be a handsome bonus for him. Although he was not a poor man, he was relieved to know his retirement in comfort was secured.

In Dinant, Shannon and Langarotti woke from their slumbers shortly after dark had fallen, to find Marc shaking them. Both were stretched out in the back of the empty French truck.

"Tune to be going," said the Belgian.

Shannon looked at his watch. "I thought you said before sunrise," he grumbled.

"That's when we go over," said Marc. "We ought to get these trucks out of town before they become too noticeable. We can park by the roadside for the rest of the night."

They did park, but none of the men slept any more. Instead they smoked and played cards with the pack Vlaminck kept in the glove compartment of his truck. Sitting under the trees by the Belgian roadside in the darkness, waiting for the dawn, feeling the night air on their faces, each could almost think he was back in the African bush again, about to go into action, except for the flashing lights through the trees where cars headed south on the road to France.

As they sat through the wee small hours, tired of playing cards, too tensed to sleep, each fell back into his old habits. Tiny Marc munched the remnants of the bread and cheese his girl, Anna, had made for him. Langarotti stropped his knife blade a little sharper. Shannon gazed at the stars and whistled softly.

18.

There is no great technical difficulty in running an illegal consignment across the Belgian-French border in either direction, and that includes a quant.i.ty of black-market arms.

Between the sea at La Panne and the junction with Luxembourg near Longwy, this border sprawls for miles, and most of it in the southeast corner is through heavily wooded hunting country. Here the border is crossed by scores of side roads and tracks through the forest, and by no means all of them are manned.

Both governments seek to establish some kind of control, using what they call douanes volantes, or flying customs. These are units of customs men who pick a track or side road at random and set up a border post. At the existing customs points, one may reasonably a.s.sume that one vehicle in ten is likely to be stopped and examined. On the unmanned roads, if the flying customs on either side happen to be sitting there for the day, every vehicle going through gets a check. One can take one's choice.

The third alternative is to pick a road where there is definitely no customs post set up, and drive straight through. This method of running cargoes through the frontier is particularly favored by the smugglers of French champagne, who see no reason why this drink connected with mirth and gaiety should receive the attentions of the very unhumorous Belgian import duty. As a bar-owner, Marc Vlaminck knew about this route. It is called the champagne run.

Running south from Namur, the old fortress town of Belgium, following the line of the river Meuse, one comes first to Dinant, and from here the road runs almost due south over the border to the French town called Givet. Along this road there is a finger of French territory that juts upward into Belgium's underbelly, and this corridor of France is surrounded on three sides by Belgian territory. It is also a hunting forest and intersected by scores of tracks and paths. The main road from Dinant to Givet has a customs post on it-in fact, one Belgian post and one French, set four hundred yards apart but in sight of each other.

Shortly before dawn, Marc got out his maps and briefed Shannon and Jean-Baptiste on what he needed to be sure of getting across the border unspotted. When both men understood exactly what was required, they set off in convoy, the Belgian truck in front, driven by Marc, the other two in the French truck, two hundred yards behind.

South from Dinant the road is fairly well built up, with a series of villages whose outskirts almost connect with each other. In the predawn darkness these hamlets were quiet and obscure. At kilometer six, south of Dinant, there is a side road leading to the right, and this Marc took. It was the last they saw of the river Meuse. For four and a half kilometers they ran through undulating country of even-sized, rounded hills, thickly wooded and covered in the lush leaf.a.ge of late May. The run was parallel to the border and into the heart of hunting country. Without warning, Vlaminck swung his truck off to the left, heading again toward the frontier, and after three to four hundred yards he pulled to the side. He climbed down and walked back to the French truck.

"Make it snappy," he said. "I don't want to wait here for long. It's too obvious where I'm heading for, with Ostend number plates." He pointed down the road.

"The border is down there at one and a half kilometers exactly. I'll give you twenty minutes while I pretend to change a tire. Then I get back to Dinant and we meet at the cafe."

The Corsican nodded and let in the clutch. The drill is, if either the Belgian or French customs men have set up a flying barricade, the first vehicle stops and allows itself to be searched. Being clean, it then proceeds south to rejoin the main road, heads into Givet, turns north, and returns via the fixed customs post to Dinant. If either customs post is in operation, it cannot return back up the road within twenty minutes.

At kilometer one and a half, Shannon and Langarotti saw the Belgian post. At each side of the road a vertical steel upright had been placed, embedded in concrete. Beside the right-hand one was a small gla.s.s-and-wood booth, where the customs men could shelter while drivers pa.s.sed their papers through the window. If it was occupied, there would be a red-and-white striped pole, supported by both uprights, blocking the road. There was none.

Langarotti cruised slowly past, while Shannon scanned the booth. Not a sign. The French side was trickier. For half a kilometer the road wound between the flanks of the hills, lost to sight from the Belgian posts. Then came the French border. No posts, no booth. Just a parking area on the left, where the French customs car always parks. There was nothing there. They had been gone five minutes. Shannon gestured to the Corsican to go around two more corners, but there was nothing in sight. A glimmer of light showed in the east over the trees.

"Turn her around," snapped Shannon. "Allez."

Langarotti pulled the truck into a tight turn, almost made it, backed up, and was off toward Belgium like a cork from a bottle of the very best champagne. From then on, time was precious. They shot past the French parking s.p.a.ce, through the Belgian posts, and less than a mile later saw the bulk of Marc's waiting truck. Langarotti flashed his lights, two short, one long, and Marc gunned his engine into life. A second later he was past them, rating through to France.

Jean-Baptiste turned around more leisurely and followed. If Marc drove fast, he could be through the danger area within four minutes, even heavily laden with a ton of cargo. If any customs men hove in sight during the vital five minutes, it was bad luck. Marc would try to bluff it out, say he had got lost, hope the oil barrels stood up to a thorough checking.

There were no officials there, even on the second run. South of the French parking s.p.a.ce is a five-kilometer stretch with no turnings. Even here the French gendarmerie sometimes patrols, but there was nothing that morning. Langarotti caught up with the Belgian truck and followed it at six hundred feet. After three miles Marc turned off to the right at another parking area, and for three more miles wended his way through more back roads until he finally emerged onto a sizable main road. There was a signpost by the roadside. Shannon saw Marc Vlaminck wave his arm out of the window and point to it. The sign said GIVET in the direction from which they had come, and pointed the way they were going with the word REIMS. A muted cheer came wafting back from the truck in front.

They did the change-over on a hard concrete parking lot next to a truckers' caf just south of Soissons. The two trucks, open-doored, were backed up tight against each other, and Marc eased the five barrels from the Belgian truck to the French one. It would have taken Shannon and Langarotti together all their strength, the more so as the loaded truck was squashed on its springs, so the floors of the two vehicles were not at the same height. There was a 6-inch step-up to get into the empty truck. Marc managed it on his own, gripping each barrel at the top in huge hands and swinging it in arcs while balancing it on its lower rim.

Jean-Baptiste went to the caf and returned with a breakfast of long, crisp baguette loaves, cheese, fruit, and coffee. Shannon had no knife, so they all used Marc's. Langarotti would never use his knife for eating. He had his finer feelings. It would dishonor the knife to use it on orange peel.

Just after ten they set off again. The drill was different. The Belgian truck, being old and slow, was soon driven into a gravel pit and abandoned, the license plates and windshield sticker being taken off and thrown into a stream. The truck had originally been of French make anyway. After that, the three proceeded together. Langarotti drove. It was legally his truck. He was licensed. If stopped, he would say he was driving five barrels of lubricating oil south to his friend who owned a farm and three tractors outside Toulon. The other two were hitchhikers he had picked up.

They left the Al autoroute, took the peripheral road around Paris, and picked up the A6 south to Lyon, Avignon, Aix, and Toulon.

Just south of Paris they saw the sign to the right pointing to Orly Airport. Shannon climbed out, and they shook hands.

"You know what to do?" he asked.

They both nodded.

"Keep her under cover and safe till you get to Toulon."

"Don't worry, no one will find this little baby when I've hidden her," said Langarotti.

"The Toscana is due in by June first at the latest, maybe before. I'll be with you before then. You know the rendezvous? Then good luck."

He hefted his bag and walked away as the truck headed south. At the nearby garage he used the telephone, called a cab from the airport, and was driven there an hour later. Paying cash, he bought his single ticket to London and was home in St. John's Wood by sundown. Of his hundred days, he had used up forty-six.

Although he sent Endean a telegram on his arrival home, it was a Sunday, and twenty-four hours. went by before Endean called him at the flat. They agreed to meet on Tuesday morning.

It took him an hour to explain to Endean all that had happened since they last met. He also explained that he had used up all the money both in the cash sum he had retained in London and in the Belgian account.

"What's the next stage?" asked Endean.

"I have to return to France within five days at the latest and supervise the loading of the first section of the cargo onto the Toscana," said Shannon. "Everything about the shipment is legal except what's in those oil barrels. The four separate crates of a.s.sorted uniforms and webbing should pa.s.s without any problem on board, even if examined by customs. The same goes for the nonmilitary stuff bought in Hamburg. Everything in that section is the sort of stuff a ship might normally take on as ship's stores: distress flares, night gla.s.ses, and so on.

"The inflatable dinghies and outboard engines are for shipping to Morocco-at least, that's what the manifest will say. Again, it's perfectly legal. The five oil drums have to go aboard as ship's stores. The quant.i.ty is rather excessive, but there shouldn't be any problem despite that."

"And it there is?" asked Endean. "If Toulon customs men examine those barrels too closely?"

"We're busted," said Shannon simply. "The ship impounded, unless the captain can show he hasn't a clue what was going on. The exporter arrested. The operation wrecked."

"b.l.o.o.d.y expensively," observed Endean.

"What do you expect? The guns have got to go on board somehow. The oil barrels are about the best possible way. There was always that risk involved."

"You could have bought the submachine guns legally, through Spain," said Endean.

"I could," Shannon conceded, "but there would then have been a good chance the order would have been refused. The guns and the ammo together make a matching pair. That would have looked like a special order to outfit one company of men-in other words, a small operation. Madrid might have turned it down on those grounds, or examined the End User Certificate too thoroughly. I could have ordered the guns from Spain and bought the ammunition on the black. Then I would have had to smuggle the ammo on board, and it would have been a much bigger consignment. Either way, there has to be an element of smuggling, and hence of risk. So if it all goes wrong, it'll be me and my men who go down, not you. You're protected by a series of cut-outs."

"I still don't like it," snapped Endean.

"What's the matter?" Shannon mocked. "Losing your nerve?"

"No,"

"So cool it. All you have to lose is a bit of money."

Endean was on the verge of telling Shannon just how much he and his employer stood to lose, but thought better of it. Logic dictated that if the mercenary was going to face prison, he would be as careful as possible.

They talked finance for another hour. Shannon explained that the payment to Johann Schlinker in full, and half to Alan Baker, along with the mercenaries' second months' salary, the 5000 he had transferred to Genoa to fit out the Toscana, and his own traveling, had emptied the Brugge account.

"Also," he added, "I want the second half of my salary."

"Why now?" asked Endean.

"Because the risks of arrest start next Monday, and I shall not be returning to London after that. If the ship is loaded without fuss, she sails for Brindisi while I arrange the pick-up of the Yugoslav arms. After that, Valencia and the Spanish ammunition. Then we head for the target. If I'm ahead of schedule, I'd prefer to kill the extra time on the high seas rather than wait in a port. From the moment that ship has hardware on board, I want her in port as little as possible."

Endean digested the argument. "I'll put it to my a.s.sociates," he said.

"I want the stuff in my Swiss account before the weekend," countered Shannon, "and the rest of the agreed budget transferred to Brugge."

They worked out that, with Shannon's salary paid in full, there would be 20,000 of the original money left in Switzerland. Shannon explained why he needed it all.

"From now on I need a wad of big-denomination travelers' checks in United States dollars on me all the time. If anything goes wrong from now, it can only be of a nature where a fat bribe on the spot might sort out the problem. I want to tidy up all the remaining traces, so that, if we all get the chop, there are no clues left. Also, I may need to make cash bonuses on the spot to the ship's crewmen to persuade them to go ahead when they find out what the job really is, as they must when we are at sea. With the last half-payment for the Yugoslav arms still to come, I could need up to twenty thousand."

Endean agreed to report all this to "his a.s.sociates" and let Shannon know.

The following day he rang back to say that both transfers of the money had been authorized and the letter instructing the Swiss bank had been sent.

Shannon reserved his ticket from London to Brussels for the following Friday, and a Sat.u.r.day morning flight from Brussels to Paris to Ma.r.s.eilles.

He spent that night with Julie, and Thursday as well, and Thursday night. Then he packed his bags, mailed the flat keys with an explanatory letter to the agents, and left. Julie drove him to the airport in her red MGB.

"When are you coming back?" she asked him as they stood outside the "Departing Pa.s.sengers Only" entrance to the customs area of Number Two Building.

"I won't be coming back," he said and gave her a kiss.

"Then let me come with you."

"No."

"You will come back. I haven't asked where you are going, but I know it has to be dangerous. It's not just business, not ordinary business. But you will come back. You must."