The Dogs Of War Part 12

"Okay, I'm on," said Marc, and they drove into the main square at Brugge.

The Kredietbank head office is situated at number 25 in the Vlamingstraat, a narrow thoroughfare flanked by house after house in the distinctive style of eighteenth-century Flemish architecture, and all in a perfect state of preservation. Most of the ground floors have been converted into shops, but upward from the ground floors the faades resemble something from a painting by one of the old masters.

Inside the bank, Shannon introduced himself to the head of the foreign accounts' section, Mr. Goossens, and proved his ident.i.ty as Keith Brown by tendering his pa.s.sport. Within forty minutes he had opened a current account with a deposit of 100 sterling in cash, informed Mr. Goossens that a sum of 10,000 in the form of a transfer from Switzerland could be expected any day, and left instructions that of this sum 5000 was to be transferred at once to his account in London. He left several examples of his Keith Brown signature and agreed on a method of establishing his ident.i.ty over the phone by reeling off the twelve numbers of his account in reverse order, followed by the previous day's date. On this basis oral instructions for transfers and withdrawals could be made without his coming to Brugge again. He signed an indemnity form protecting the bank from any risk in using this method of communication, and agreed to write his account number in red ink under his signature on any written instruction to the bank, again to prove authenticity.

By half past twelve he was finished and joined Vlaminck outside. They ate a lunch of solid food accompanied by the inevitable french-fried potatoes at the Cafe des Arts on the main square before the town hall, and then Vlaminck drove him back to Brussels airport. Before parting from the Fleming, Shannon gave him 50 in cash and told him to take the Ostend-Dover ferry the next day and be at the London flat at six in the evening. He had to wait an hour for his plane and was back in London by teatime.

Simon Endean had also had a busy day. He had caught the earliest flight of the day to Zurich and had landed at Kloten Airport by just after ten. Within an hour he was standing at the counter of the Handels-bank of Zurich's main office, at 58 Talstra.s.se, and opening a current account in his own name. He too left several specimen signatures and agreed with the bank official who interviewed him on a method of signing all written communications to the bank simply by writing the account number at the bottom of the letter and under the day of the week on which the letter had been written. The day would be written in green ink, while the account number would invariably be in black. He deposited the 500 in cash that he had brought, and informed the bank the sum of 100,000 would be transferred into the account within the week. Last, he instructed the bank that as soon as the credit had been received they were to remit 10,000 to an account in Belgium which he would identify for them later by letter. He signed a long contract which exonerated the bank from anything and everything, including culpable negligence, and left him no protection whatever in law. Not that there was any point in contesting a Swiss bank before a Swiss court, as he well knew.

Taking a taxi from Talstra.s.se, he dropped a wax-sealed letter through the door of the Zwingli Bank and headed back to the airport.

The letter, which Dr. Martin Steinhofer had in his hand within thirty minutes, was from Sir James Manson. It was signed in the approved manner in which Manson signed all his correspondence with his Zurich bank. It requested Dr. Steinhofer to transfer 100,000 to the account of Mr. Simon Endean at the Handelsbank forthwith, and informed him that Sir James would be calling on him at his office the following day, Wednesday.

Endean was at London airport just before six.

Martin Thorpe was exhausted when he came into the office that Tuesday afternoon. He had spent the two days of the weekend and Monday going methodically through the 4500 cards in the Moodies index of companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange.

He had been concentrating on finding a suitable sh.e.l.l company and had sought out the small companies, preferably founded many years ago, largely run-down and with few a.s.sets, companies which over the past three years had traded at a loss, or broken even, or made a profit below 10,000. He also wanted a company with a market capitalization of under 200,000.

He had come up with two dozen companies that fitted the bill, and these names he showed to Sir James Manson. He had listed them provisionally in order from 1 to 24 on the basis of their apparent suitability.

He still had more to do, and by midafternoon he was at Companies House, in City Road, E.C.2.

He sent up to the archivists the list of his first eight companies and paid his statutory fee for each name on the list, giving him, as it would any other member of the public, the right to examine the full company doc.u.ments. As he waited for the eight bulky folders to come back to the reading room, he glanced through the latest Stock Exchange Official List and noted with satisfaction that none of the eight was quoted at over three shillings a share.

When the files arrived he started with the first on his list and began to pore over the records. He was looking for three things not given in the Moodies cards, which are simply synopses. He wanted to study the distribution of the ownership of the shares, to ensure that the company he sought was not controlled by the combined board of directors, and to be certain there had not been a recent build-up of share holdings by another person or a.s.sociated group, which would have indicated that another City predator was looking for a meal.

By the time Companies House closed for the evening, he had been through seven of the eight files. He could cover the remaining seventeen the following day. But already he was intrigued by the third on his list and mildly excited. On paper it looked great, from his point of view-even too good, and that was the rub. It looked so good he was surprised no one had snapped it up ages ago. There had to be a flaw somewhere, but Martin Thorpe's ingenuity might even find a way of overcoming it. If there was such a way-it was perfect.

Simon Endean phoned Cat Shannon at the latter's flat at ten that evening. Shannon reported what he had done, and Endean gave a resume of his own day. He told Shannon the necessary 100,000 should have been transferred to his new Swiss account before closing time that afternoon, and Shannon told Endean to have the first 10,000 sent to him under the name of Keith Brown at the Kredietbank in Brugge, Belgium.

Within a few minutes of hanging up, Endean had written his letter of instruction to the Handelsbank, stressing that the transferred sum should be sent at once but that under no condition was the name of the Swiss account-holder to become known to the Belgian bank. The account number alone should be quoted on the transfer, which should be by Telex. He mailed the letter express rate from the all-night post office in Trafalgar Square just before midnight.

At eleven-forty-five the phone rang again in Shannon's flat. It was Semmler on the line from Munich. Shannon told him he had work for all of them if they wanted it, but that he could not come to Munich. Semmler should take a single ticket by air to London the following day and be there by six. He gave his address and promised to repay the German his expenses in any case, and pay his fare back to Munich if he declined the job. Semmler agreed to come, and Shannon hung up.

The next on the line was Langarotti from Ma.r.s.eilles. He had checked his poste restante box and found Shannon's telegram waiting for him. He would be in London by six and would report to the flat.

Janni Dupree's call was late, coming through at half past midnight. He too agreed to pack his bags and fly the eight thousand miles to London, though he could not be there for a day and a half. He would be at Shannon's flat on Thursday evening instead.

With the last call taken, Shannon read Small Arms of the World for an hour and switched off the light. It was the end of Day One.

Sir James Manson, first cla.s.s on the businessman's Trident III to Zurich, ate a hearty breakfast that Wednesday morning. Shortly before noon he was ushered respectfully into the paneled office of Dr. Martin Stein-hofer.

The two men had known each other for ten years, and during this time the Zwingli Bank had several times carried out business on Manson's behalf in situations where he had needed a nominee to buy shares which, had it become known that the name of Manson was behind the purchase, would have trebled in value. Dr. Steinhofer valued his client and rose to shake hands and usher the English knight to a comfortable armchair.

The Swiss offered cigars, and coffee was brought, along with small gla.s.ses of Kirschwa.s.ser. Only when the male secretary had gone did Sir James broach his business.

"Over the forthcoming weeks I shall be seeking to acquire a controlling interest in a small British company, a public company. At the moment I cannot give the name of it, because a suitable vehicle for my particular operation has not yet come to light. I hope to know it fairly soon."

Dr. Steinhofer nodded silently and sipped his coffee.

"At the start it will be quite a small operation, involving relatively little money. Later, I have reason to believe news will hit the Stock Exchange that will have quite an interesting effect on the share value of that company," Sir James went on.

There was no need for him to explain to the Swiss banker the rules that apply in share dealings on the London Stock Exchange, for Steinhofer was as familiar with them as Manson, as he was also with the rules of all the main exchanges and markets throughout the world.

Under British company law, any person acquiring 10 per cent or more of the shares of a public quoted company must identify himself to the directors within fourteen days. The aim of the law is to permit the public to know who owns what, and how much, of any public company.

For this reason, a reputable London stockbrokerage house, buying on behalf of a client, will also abide by the law and inform the directors of their client's name, unless the purchase is less than 10 per cent of the company's stock, in which case the buyer may remain anonymous.

One way around this rule for a tyc.o.o.n seeking to gain secret control of a company is to use nominee buyers. But again, a reputable firm on the Stock Exchange will soon spot whether the real buyer of a big block of shares is in fact one man operating through nominees, and will obey the law.

But a Swiss bank, not bound by the laws of Britain, abiding by its own laws of secrecy, simply refuses to answer questions about who stands behind the names it presents as its clients, nor will it reveal anything else, even if it privately suspects that the front men do not exist at all.

Both of the men in Dr. Steinhofer's office that morning were well aware of all the finer points involved.

"In order to make the necessary acquisition of shares," Sir James went on, "I have entered into a.s.sociation with six partners. They will purchase the shares on my behalf. They have all agreed they would wish to open small accounts with the Zwingli Bank and to ask you to be so kind as to make the purchases on their behalf."

Dr. Steinhofer put down his coffee cup and nodded. As a good Swiss, he agreed there was no point in breaking rules where they could be legally bent, with the obvious proviso that they were not Swiss rules, and he could also see the point in not wantonly sending the share price upward, even in a small operation. One started by saving pfennigs, and one became rich after a lifetime of application.

"That presents no problem," he said carefully. "These gentlemen will be coming here to open their accounts?"

Sir James exhaled a stream of aromatic smoke. "It may well be they will find themselves too busy to come personally. I have myself appointed my financial a.s.sistant to stand in for me-to save time and trouble, you understand. It may well be the other six partners will wish to avail themselves of the same procedure. You have no objection to that?"

"Of course not," murmured Dr. Steinhofer. "Your financial a.s.sistant is who, please?"

"Mr. Martin Thorpe." Sir James Manson drew a slim envelope from his pocket and handed it to the banker. "This is my power of attorney, duly notarized and witnessed, and signed by me. You have my signature for comparison, of course. In here you will find Mr. Thorpe's full name and the number of his pa.s.sport, by which he will identify himself. He will be visiting Zurich in the next week or ten days to finalize arrangements. From then on he will act in all matters on my behalf, and his signature will be as good as mine. Is that acceptable?"

Dr. Steinhofer scanned the single sheet in the envelope and nodded. "Certainly, Sir James. I see no problems."

Manson rose and stubbed out his cigar. "Then I'll bid you good-by, Dr. Steinhofer, and leave further dealings in the hands of Mr. Thorpe, who of course will consult with me on all steps to be taken."

They shook hands, and Sir James Manson was ushered down to the street. As the solid oak door clicked quietly shut behind him, he pulled up his coat collar against the still chilly air of the north Swiss town, stepped into the waiting hired limousine, and gave instructions for the Baur au Lac for lunch. One ate well there, he reflected, but otherwise Zurich was a dreary place. It did not even have a good brothel.

a.s.sistant Under Secretary Sergei Golon was not in a good humor that morning. The mail had brought a letter to his breakfast table to notify him that his son had failed the entrance examination for the Civil Service Academy, and there had been a general family quarrel. In consequence, his perennial problem of acid indigestion had elected to ensure him a day of unrelenting misery, and his secretary was out sick.

Beyond the windows of his small office in the West Africa section of the Foreign Ministry, the canyons of Moscow's windswept boulevards were still covered with snow slush, a grimy gray in the dim morning light, waiting tiredly for the thaw of spring.

"Neither one thing nor the other," the attendant had remarked as he had berthed his Moskvitch in the parking lot beneath the ministry building.

Golon had grunted agreement and taken the elevator to his eighth-floor office to begin the morning's work. Devoid of a secretary, he had taken the pile of files brought for his attention from various parts of the building and started to go through them, an antacid tablet revolving slowly in his mouth.

The third file had been marked for his attention by the office of the Under Secretary, and the same clerkish hand had written on the cover sheet: "a.s.sess and Instigate Necessary Action." Golon perused it gloomily. He noted that the file had been started on the basis of an interdepartmental memorandum from Foreign Intelligence, that his ministry had, on reflection, given Amba.s.sador Dobrovolsky certain instructions, and that, according to the latest cable from Dobrovolsky, they had been carried out. The request had been granted, the Amba.s.sador reported, and he urged prompt action.

Golon snorted. Pa.s.sed over for an amba.s.sadorship, he held firmly to the view that men in diplomatic posts abroad were far too p.r.o.ne to believe their own parishes were of consummate importance.

"As if we have nothing else to bother about," he grunted. Already his eye had caught the folder beneath the one he was reading. He knew it concerned the Republic of Guinea, where the constant stream of telegrams from the Soviet Amba.s.sador reported the growth of Chinese influence in Conakry. Now that, he mused, was something of concern. Compared to this, he could not see the importance of whether there was, or was not, tin in commercial quant.i.ties in the hinterland of Zan-garo. Besides, the Soviet Union had enough tin.

Nevertheless, action had been authorized from above, and, as a good civil servant, he took it. To a secretary borrowed from the typing pool, he dictated a letter to the director of the Sverdlovsk Inst.i.tute of Mining, requiring him to select a small team of survey geologists and engineers to carry out an examination of a suspected tin deposit in West Africa, and to inform the a.s.sistant Under Secretary in due course that the team and its equipment were ready to depart.

Privately he thought he would have to tackle the question of transportation to West Africa through the appropriate directorate, but pushed the thought to the back of his mind. The painful burning in his throat subsided, and he observed that the scribbling stenographer had rather pretty knees.

Cat Shannon had a quiet day. He rose late and went into the West End to his bank, where he withdrew most of the 1000 his account contained. He was confident the money would be replaced, and more, when the transfer came through from Belgium.

After lunch he rang his friend the writer, who seemed surprised to hear from him. "I thought you'd left town."

"Why should I?" asked Shannon.

"Well, little Julie has been looking for you. You must have made an impression. Carrie says she has not stopped talking. But she rang the Lowndes, and they said you had left, address unknown."

Shannon promised he'd call. He gave his own phone number, but not his address. With the small talk over, he requested the information he wanted.

"I suppose I could," said the friend dubiously. "But honestly, I ought to ring him first and see if it's okay."

"Well, do that," said Shannon. "Tell him it's me, that I need to see him and am prepared to go down there for a few hours with him. Tell him I wouldn't trouble him if it wasn't important, in my opinion."

The writer agreed to put through the call and ring him back with the telephone number and address of the man Shannon wished to talk to, if the man agreed to speak to Shannon.

In the afternoon Shannon wrote a letter to Mr. Goos-sens at the Kredietbank to tell him that he would in the future give two or three business partners the Kredietbank as his mailing address and would keep in contact by phone with the bank to check whether any mail was waiting for collection. He would also be sending some letters to business a.s.sociates via the Kredietbank, in which case he would mail an envelope to Mr. Goossens from wherever he happened to be. He requested Mr. Goossens to take the envelope which would be enclosed, addressed but not stamped, and forward it from Brugge to its destination. Last, he bade Mr. Goossens deduct all postal and bank charges from his account.

At five that afternoon Endean called him at the flat, and Shannon gave him a progress report, omitting to mention his contact with his writer friend, whom he had never mentioned to Endean. He told him, however, that he expected three of his four chosen a.s.sociates to be in London for their separate briefings that evening, and the fourth to arrive on Thursday evening at the latest.

Martin Thorpe had his fifth tiring day, but at least his search was over. He had perused the doc.u.ments of another seventeen companies in the City Road, and had drawn up a second short list, this time of five companies. At the top of the list was the company that had caught his eye the previous day. He finished his reading by midafternoon and, as Sir James Manson had not returned from Zurich, decided to take the rest of the day off. He could brief his chief in the morning and later begin his private inquiries into the set-up of his chosen company, a series of inquiries to determine why such a prize was still available. By the late afternoon he was back in Hampstead Garden Suburb, mowing the lawn.

10.

The first of the mercenaries to arrive at London's Heathrow Airport was Kurt Semmler, on the Lufthansa flight from Munich. He tried to reach Shannon by phone soon after clearing customs, but there was no reply. He was early for his check-in call, so he decided to wait at the airport and took a seat by the restaurant window overlooking the ap.r.o.n of Number Two building. He chain-smoked nervously as he sat over coffee and watched the jets leaving for Europe.

Marc Vlaminck phoned to check in with Shannon just after five. The Cat glanced down the list of three hotels in the neighborhood of his apartment and read out the name of one. The Belgian took it down in his Victoria Station phone booth, letter by letter. A few minutes later he hailed a taxi outside the station and showed the paper to the driver.

Semmler was ten minutes after Vlaminck. He too received from Shannon the name of a hotel, wrote it down, and took a minicab from the front of the airport building.

Langarotti was the last, checking in just before six from the air terminal in Cromwell Road. He too hked a taxi to take him to his hotel.

At seven Shannon rang them all, one after the other, and bade them a.s.semble at his flat within thirty minutes.

When they greeted one another, it was the first indication any of them had had that the others had been invited. Their broad grins came partly from the pleasure of meeting friends, partly from the knowledge that Shannon's investment in bringing them all to London with a guarantee of a reimbursed air fare could only mean he had money. If they wondered who the patron might be, they knew better than to ask.

Their first impression was strengthened when Shannon told them that he had instructed Dupree to fly in from South Africa on the same terms. A 500 air ticket meant Shannon was not playing games. They settled down to listen.

"The job I've been given," he told them, "is a project that has to be organized from scratch. It has not been planned, and the only way to set it up is to do it ourselves. The object is to mount an attack, a short, sharp attack, commando-style, on a town on the coast of Africa. We have to shoot the s.h.i.ts out of one building, storm it, capture it, knock off everyone in it, and pull back out again."

The reaction was what he had confidently expected. The men exchanged glances of approval. Vlaminck gave a wide grin and scratched his chest; Semmler muttered, "Kla.s.se," and lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one. Langarotti remained deadpan, his eyes on Shannon, the knife blade slipping smoothly across the black leather around his left fist.

Shannon spread a map out on the floor in the center of the circle, and the men eyed it keenly. It was a hand-drawn map depicting a section of seash.o.r.e and a series of buildings on the landward side. It was not accurate, for it excluded the two curving spits of shingle that were the identifying marks of the harbor of Clarence, but it sufficed to indicate the kind of operation required.

The mercenary leader talked for twenty minutes, outlining the kind of attack he had already proposed to his patron as the only feasible way of taking the objective, and the three men concurred. None of them asked the name of the destination. They knew he would not tell them and that they did not need to know. It was not a question of lack of trust, simply of security. If a leak were sprung in the secret, they did not want to be among the possible suspects.

Shannon spoke in strongly accented French, which he had picked up in the Sixth Commando in the Congo. He knew Vlaminck had a reasonable grasp of English, as a barman in Ostend must have, and that Semmler commanded a vocabulary of about two hundred words. But Langarotti knew very little indeed, so French was the common language, except when Dupree was present, when everything had to be translated.

"So that's it," said Shannon as he finished. "The terms are that you all go on a salary of twelve hundred and fifty dollars a month from tomorrow morning, plus expenses for living and traveling while in Europe. The budget is ample for the job. Only two of the tasks that have to be done in the preparation stages are illegal, because I've planned to keep the maximum strictly legal. Of these tasks, one is a border crossing from Belgium to France, the other a problem of loading some cases onto a ship somewhere in southern Europe. We'll all be involved in both jobs.

"You get three months' guaranteed salary, plus five thousand dollars' bonus each for success. So what do you say?"

The three men looked at each other. Vlaminck nodded. "I'm on," he said. "Like I said yesterday, it looks good."

Langarotti stropped his knife. "Is it against French interests?" he asked. "I don't want to be an exile."

"You have my word it is not against the French in Africa."

"D'accord," said the Corsican simply.

"Kurt?" asked Shannon.

"What about insurance?" asked the German. "It doesn't matter for me, I have no relatives, but what about Marc?"

The Belgian nodded. "Yes, I don't want to leave Anna with nothing," he said.

Mercenaries on contract are usually insured by the contractor for $20,000 for loss of life and $6000 for loss of a major limb.

"You have to take out your own, but it can be as high as you want to go. If anything happens to anyone, the rest swear blind he was lost overboard at sea by accident. If anyone gets badly hurt and survives, we all swear the injury was caused by shifting machinery on board. You all take out insurance for a sea trip from Europe to South Africa as pa.s.sengers on a small freighter. Okay?"

The three men nodded.

"I'm on," said Semmler.

They shook on it, and that was enough. Then Shannon went into the jobs he wanted each man to do.

"Kurt, you'll get your first salary check and one thousand dollars for expenses on Friday. I want you to go down to the Mediterranean and start looking for a boat. I need a small freighter with a clean record. Get that: it must be clean. Papers in order, ship for sale. One hundred to two hundred tons, coaster or converted trawler, possibly converted navy vessel if need be, but not looking like an MTB. I don't want speed, but reliability. The sort that can pick up a cargo in a Mediterranean port without exciting attention, even an. arms cargo. Registered as a general freighter owned by a small company or its own skipper. Price not over twenty-five thousand pounds, including the cost of any work that needs doing on it. Absolute latest sailing date, fully fueled and supplied for a trip to Cape Town, not later than sixty days from now. Got it?"

Semmler nodded and began to think at once of his contacts in the shipping world.

"Jean-Baptiste, which city do you know best in the Mediterranean?"

"Ma.r.s.eilles," said Langarotti without hesitation.

"Okay. You get salary and five hundred pounds on Friday. Get to Ma.r.s.eilles, set up in a small hotel, and start looking. Find me three large inflatable semi-rigid craft of the same kind as Zodiac makes. The sort de- veloped for water sports from the basic design of the Marine Commando a.s.sault craft. Buy them from separate suppliers, then book them into the bonded warehouse of a respectable shipping agent for export to Morocco. Purpose, water-skiing and sub-aqua diving at a holiday resort. Color, black. Also three powerful outboard engines, battery-started. The boats should take up to a ton of payload. The engines should move such a craft and that weight at not less than ten knots, with a big reserve. You'll need about sixty horsepower. Very important: make sure they are fitted with underwater exhausts for silent running. If they can't be had in that condition, get a mechanic to make you three exhaust-pipe extensions with the necessary outlet valves, to fit the engines. Store them at the same export agent's bonded warehouse, for the same purpose as the dinghies: water sports in Morocco. You won't have enough money in the five hundred. Open a bank account and send me the name and number, by mail, to this address. I'll send the money by credit transfer. Buy everything separately, and submit me the price lists by mail here. Okay?"

Langarotti nodded and resumed his knife-stropping.

"Marc. You remember you mentioned once that you knew a man in Belgium had knocked off a German store of a thousand brand-new Schmeisser submachine pistols in nineteen-forty-five and still had half of them in store? I want you to go back to Ostend on Friday with your salary and five hundred pounds and locate that man. See if he'll sell. I want a hundred, and in first-cla.s.s working order. I'll pay a hundred dollars each, which is way over the rate. Write me by letter only, here at this flat, when you have found the man and can set up a meeting between him and me. Got it?"

By nine-thirty they were through, the instructions memorized, noted, and understood.

"Right. What about a spot of dinner?" Shannon asked his colleagues.