Cloak of Darkness (4 page)

“No, thanks. Never use them. That stuff can kill you.”

But bullets and whisky can’t? Renwick smiled. So the red lighter and cigarette pack had just been props for the pub scene. Or another subterfuge, like a moustache shaved off—there was a less deep tan over Moore’s upper lip—and completely different clothes? “Come on, Al. Begin! I’m listening.” He took a cigarette, closed the case, laid it once more on the table top.

Moore glanced over at the bottle of Scotch. “Want me to keep a clear mind?” he asked. “Is that it?”

“That’s it,” Renwick said brusquely. “Let’s get started.” He pointed to the corner of the couch. “And keep your voice down.” As Moore resumed his seat with a one-finger salute, Renwick flicked his lighter, but it didn’t catch.

“Get one thing straight,” Moore was saying, leaning forward, elbows on knees, his left hand fingering his heavy signet ring. “I’m no informer.”

“Just a reliable source of information,” Renwick assured him. The lighter failed again. Renwick dropped it into his pocket and found some matches.

“And I’m no terrorist. I’m a soldier. That’s my trade and I’m good at it. That’s why Exports Consolidated hired me. Ever hear of them?”

“Yes.” A report on Exports Consolidated had been on Renwick’s desk for the last month, part of a general survey of armaments sold by Americans and shipped abroad to Third World countries. It was a flourishing business these days, with plenty of competition from European merchants as well as from Soviet Russia and its allies. Renwick’s special interest in such trafficking had been roused by one of the simple questions that, as soon as he asked it, demanded an answer: where did today’s international terrorists get their sophisticated weapons, and how? “Exports Consolidated once exported agricultural machinery, then expanded into military hardware. Nothing illegal about that. Unfortunately.”

“Nothing illegal?” Moore laughed.

“You tell me,” Renwick said softly.

“It began with Vietnam.”

What didn’t? thought Renwick but restrained himself.

“A buddy of mine—we were in the same outfit—was killed there. When I got back stateside, I went to see his wife. She was an old friend. She had been running her father’s business, learning everything she could from him. Built it up, made a go of it. Agricultural machinery, can you beat that? When her father died, she owned the shop. Then Mitchell Brimmer came along—you heard of him?”

Renwick stubbed out his cigarette, compressed his lips. Brimmer was the founder and head of Exports Consolidated. He had been in Vietnam, too. Not as a soldier. Began as an agent, low grade, in the CIA; quit the Agency to become a journalist in Saigon, then business-man. Or perhaps he had been that all along. He made good contacts, helpful friends, but he seemed to have helped them, too. Legitimate business apparently: no drug smuggling, no gems, no official secrets. Interested in agricultural machinery, wasn’t he? Moved back from Saigon to the States, set up a firm there, expanded it and—”

“That he did. Took over several outlets for agricultural machinery. He made an offer to—to my friend. A good deal. She had brains, and he knew it. Paid her a fair price and offered her more money than any she could set aside for herself. So she took the job.”

“Doing what?”

“Keeping the books and a chance to rise with his firm. She did, too. But that was during my second tour of duty, when I was at NATO, and after that—well, I was a couple of years with the Green Berets. Then I tried some soldiering abroad—in Africa, mostly.” Moore noticed Renwick’s expression. He said quickly, defensively, “I wasn’t a mercenary. Sure I was paid, but I trained troops to fight. Troops.” He shook his head over that memory. “A bunch of slobs when I got them, but I turned out soldiers, all right.”

“Guerrillas?”

“Call them what you like, but they damn sure weren’t terrorists. They meet the enemy in a fire fight, a fair skirmish. They don’t infiltrate a town and pretend they’re ordinary folks, and then start plotting where they’ll hide the bombs to blow up civilians. That isn’t war, kill or be killed. That’s bloody murder.”

“There’s a difference,” Renwick agreed, but it was a subtle one and sometimes fragile. Guerrillas on a rampage could leave a lot of innocent civilians maimed, raped, or dead. “So you’re against terrorism. And assassination.”

Moore looked at him sharply.

“You told me that. In the taxi,” Renwick reminded him. “But you haven’t finished about your wars in Africa.”

“Two years were enough. In seventy-eight I came back to New York and met—met my friend. She was Brimmer’s good right hand by that time. She told me I was just the man that her boss was looking for. Or one of the men—he hired three of us, all with plenty of experience. Exports Consolidated was by then into selling arms to countries that could pay for them—or had rich friends who’d oblige. They wanted the newest and best, and instructors to show them how to use the weapons. Sure, I jumped at the job. It was big money, and travel, and I got respect, too.”

Don’t rush him, Renwick decided. He has got to justify himself. But even in Moore’s self-explanations, the shape of something ominous was beginning to form.

“One thing I made clear to Brimmer from the start. I’d train soldiers. I’d instruct them in weapons. But I wasn’t teaching a damn thing to terrorists. I wasn’t running a school for assassins, either.”

“He agreed to that?” What about South Yemen? Renwick wondered.

“With a joke and a slap on the back. So everything went fine. Big and bigger money. Brimmer can afford it; he’s making millions. He’s got business contacts everywhere. And three months ago, he joined up with another big outfit that sells arms. It’s international, so my friend says. Based in Europe.”

That was news to Renwick. “Their name?”

“Brimmer isn’t telling. And you won’t find the merger in any financial pages. Anyway, when I got back to New York—”

“Your friend”—Renwick cut in quickly—“surely she knows the name of that firm.”

“It isn’t important.”

“Just part of the picture, Al. I must have all of it, as complete as possible, if you want my help. That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it? You don’t need money, that’s obvious.”

“Wouldn’t take it—” Moore began angrily.

“That’s right. You are no informer. What’s the firm’s name?”

“Klingfeld & Sons. They don’t sound like much, but she says they’re high-powered. Offices in Paris, Geneva, Rome.”

“Each firm is keeping its own name?” A strange merger. Stranger yet was the fact that Klingfeld & Sons was not on any list of armament traffickers that Renwick had ever seen.

“They’re a silent partner in Exports Consolidated. She says it’s funny: Klingfeld is bigger than Brimmer.”

“Can’t go on calling your girl ‘she’, Al. What’s her name?”

Moore’s lips tightened.

Renwick’s voice was sharp. “Look—how many personal and invaluable secretaries does Brimmer have? We can trace her. Easily.”

“Lorna.” The name, incomplete, came unwillingly.

Had dear Lorna instructed Moore not to give her name; not Klingfeld’s, either? It had been like pulling teeth to extract these two small items from Moore. “I take it Lorna is a close friend of yours. Very close? Then you can believe what she tells you. You trust her completely?”

“Trust her? Lorna saved me from blowing everything when I got back to New York last week. That son of a bitch Brimmer had sent me out to South Yemen. I didn’t object to that. I’ve been in Libya, Chad, Lebanon, Zaire, Tanzania, the Sudan. Politics? No interest. I train soldiers, I’m worth my hire. That’s that. But in Yemen—” Moore’s sudden anger almost choked him. “In Yemen, I wasn’t instructing a bunch of camel drivers in how to handle grenades and antitank guns. I was given a bunch of goddamned know-it-all terrorists yapping about ideals with murder in their eyes. Couldn’t quit, either, unless I wanted to be found behind cargo containers at the docks with my throat slit—that happened to one guy I knew who tried to bug out.”

Renwick’s spine went tense. “Where did the terrorists come from? Who paid their way?”

Moore shrugged his shoulders. “Must have come from ten, twelve, fifteen countries—Europe, South America, the Mideast— you name them, I had them. And the weapons sold by Exports Consolidated didn’t come direct. Re-routed through other countries. Rockets, the newest explosives, top-secret detonators and electronic devices, army supplies we don’t sell anyone.”

“Illegal trafficking in weapons and military equipment,” Renwick said softly. Then Brimmer must be using false or cover agreements in sales abroad; falsified accounts, too, in the purchasing of supplies, and bribery. A mess of corruption wherever Brimmer moved. “Get me a sample of one page of his business ledger—”

“That’s only the half of it,” Moore interrupted, either determined to tell things his way or unwilling to involve Lorna in supplying proof of Brimmer’s flourishing conspiracy. He rushed on, and Renwick kept silent. “That super-secret equipment was beyond me or anyone else in Yemen. Brimmer is sending in an expert this week from California—fifty thousand dollars for him out of a two-hundred-thousand fee for Brimmer with compliments of Yemen’s big friend in North Africa.” Moore paused, well pleased with the effect he was producing. “So I came back from Yemen ready to tell Brimmer to go shove it. Lorna met me at Kennedy, warned me to ease off. For now. That was what she was doing, going along, arousing no suspicion in Brimmer or anyone at the office. But she had had it. Like me. Too dangerous if Brimmer thought we were backing out. We knew too much.”

“What changed her? She must have known all along about the sale of illegal arms and secret payoffs. If,” Renwick added, “she is as important to Brimmer as you say she is.”

“She keeps the records—the private ones. Not the books that are handled by the accountants and shown to the income-tax boys. She’s important, all right.” He was proud of his Lorna.

“What changed her?”

“A list that Brimmer made. The Klingfeld people insisted on it, passed him some information, too. He didn’t like the idea, Lorna said, but he swallowed it. Couldn’t refuse his new partners, could he? He might lose more than his business.”

“Did Lorna see that list?”

“Yes. Later, she made a copy—photographed it. Took a chance after office hours when Brimmer was in Washington. He has a lot of friends there. Good old Mitch Brimmer, everyone’s pal.”

“That list—what’s it about?” If it jolted Lorna into revolt, it had to be something that scared her. And Lorna didn’t sound like a woman who would be easily scared out of an oversized salary and all the comforts of New York.

“Names. Nine names. Men who are dangerous. Too interested in Exports Consolidated. Asking questions, looking for answers. They could blow Brimmer’s operation sky-high.”

“And what does he plan for them?” Renwick sounded cool, kept his voice detached.

“His Minus List, he calls it. That’s his kind of joke. You see, he already had a Plus List—had it for the last five years.”

Patience, Renwick warned himself. Moore’s evasive, embarrassed. Don’t rush him. “A Plus List? Men who are
not
dangerous?”

“More than that. People who help him and get well paid for it. They are hooked and they don’t know it. Too busy counting up the dollars deposited for them in numbered bank accounts— the Bahamas, Switzerland, any place where they can dodge the tax man. They’ve got influence, can persuade a supplier to sell what shouldn’t be sold, can introduce Brimmer around, vouch for him.”

“So he has a list of them, too?” And that’s something I want to see, thought Renwick. “Everything is recorded? An exact accounting?”

“A page to each man. Brimmer needs to know how much he has paid out, when and where. It’s kept damn secret, you can bet your life on that!”

A page to each man... “It’s in book form, then. A small ledger or a diary?”

Moore’s face went blank. “I didn’t say that.”

“Just a lot of loose leaves clipped together?” Renwick asked, openly disbelieving; but he got no rise from Moore. “If Lorna has a copy...” Renwick left the suggestion floating. No doubt she had, for Moore’s strange small smile seemed to confirm it.

“That’s not for you,” Moore said. “That’s for Lorna and me to deal with.” He rose, started over to the bottle of Scotch. “The Minus List is yours. You can nail Brimmer with that.”

So that’s my function, thought Renwick: nail Brimmer and let clever Lorna and her devoted Alvin deal with corruption in high places. With Brimmer out of circulation, they’d feel safe to start a new life—new names, new country—financed, of course, by some of the dirty money now in numbered bank accounts: blackmail barefaced and simple, no matter how they justified it, and they would. Brimmer’s friends had been overpaid, could well afford to transfer some of their hidden assets to those who had done the hard work. And if anyone ignored that suggestion? He’d lose more than twenty percent (or was Lorna aiming at thirty?) if Internal Revenue were to receive a copy of his page in Brimmer’s little account book. Renwick shook his head. Al, he told the big man’s back, you may have survived battles and bullets, but I doubt if you’ll survive this.

Moore, coming back with a drink in his hand and a quick one inside him, noticed that head shake. “You’re the man to deal with it. But you’ve got to move soon. And fast.”

“Well need real evidence. Nine names listed for what?”

“Real evidence?” Moore swallowed a gulp of Scotch as he sat down again. “Real? It’s in Brimmer’s own writing. Just jotted down the names at his last meeting with Klingfeld’s men in Mexico—two weeks ago, Lorna said. He wouldn’t even allow it out of his hands to be typed.”

“Nine names listed for what?” Renwick repeated. Careers ruined, possibly, with the help of Brimmer’s powerful friends.

“Assassination.”

For a long moment, there was no sound or movement in the room. Then Renwick’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s true, believe me! You know what he wanted me to do? Pick out ten men I could trust—two squads of five men each— train them to co-ordinate, plan, and execute.”

“And how did you handle that suggestion?” A refusal, and Moore would never have reached London with all that money in his pocket. In spite of his protestations—
I’m no assassin
— could I be facing one right now? He’s nervous, on edge, increasingly worried. Why?