They did the change-over on a hard concrete parking lot next to a truckers' cafי 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 cafי 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 assorted uniforms and webbing should pass 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 glasses, 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 quantity 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."
"Bloody 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 associates," 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 associates" 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 Saturday morning flight from Brussels to Paris to Marseilles.
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 Passengers 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."
"I won't be coming back," he said quietly. "Go find someone else, Julie."
She began to sniffle. "I don't want anybody else. I love you. You don't love me. That's why you're saying you won't see me again. You've got another woman, that's what it is. You're going to see another woman—"
"There's no other woman," he said, stroking her hair. An airport policeman looked discreetly away. Tears in the departure lounge are not uncommon anywhere. There would be, Shannon knew, no other woman in his arms. Just a gun, the cool, comforting caress of the blued steel against his chest in the night. She was still crying when he kissed her on the forehead and. walked through into Passport Control.
Thirty minutes later the Sabena jet made its last turn over South London and headed for its home in Brussels. Below the starboard wing, the country of Kent was spread out in the sunshine. Weatherwise, it had been a beautiful month of May. From the portholes one could see the acres of blossom where the apple, pear, and cherry orchards covered the land in pink and white.
Along the lanes that trickle through the heart of the Weald, the Maythorn would be out, the horse-chestnut trees glowing with green and white, the pigeons clattering among the oaks. He knew the country well from the time years ago when he had been stationed at Chatham and had bought an old motorcycle to explore the ancient country pubs between Lamberhurst and Smar-den. Good country, good country to settle down in, if you were the settling type.
Ten minutes later, one of the passengers farther back summoned the stewardess to complain that someone up front was whistling a monotonous little tune.
It took Cat Shannon two hours on Friday afternoon to withdraw the money transferred from Switzerland
and close his account. He took two certified bank checks, each for £ 5000, which could be converted into a bank account somewhere else, and from that into more travelers' checks; and the other £10,000 in fifty $500 checks that needed only countersignature to be used as cash.
He spent that night in Brussels and flew the next morning to Paris and Marseilles.
A taxi from the airport brought him to the small hotel in the outskirts where Langarotti had once lived under the name of Lavallon, and where Janni Dupree, still following orders, was in residence. He was out at the time, so Shannon waited until he returned that evening, and together they drove, in a hired car Shannon had engaged, to Toulon. It was the end of Day Fifty-two, and the sprawling French naval port was bathed in warm sunshine.
On Sunday the shipping agent's office was not open, but it did not matter. The rendezvous spot was the pavement in front of it, and here Shannon and Dupree met Marc Vlaminck and Langarotti on the dot of nine o'clock. It was the first time they had been together for weeks, and only Semmler was missing. He should be a hundred miles or so along the coast, steaming offshore in the Toscana toward Toulon.
At Shannon's suggestion, Langarotti telephoned the harbormaster's office from a nearby cafe and ascertained that the Toscana's agents in Genoa had cabled that she was due in on Monday morning and that her berth was reserved.
There was nothing more to do that day, so they went in Shannon's car along the coast road toward Marseilles and spent the day at the cobbled fishing port of Sanary. Despite the heat and the holiday atmosphere of the picturesque little town, Shannon could not relax. Only Dupree bought himself a pair of swimming trunks and dived off the end of the jetty of the yacht harbor. He said later the water was still damn cold. It would
warm up later, through June and July, when the tourists began to pour south from Paris. By then they would all be preparing to strike at another harbor town, not much larger and many miles away.
Shannon sat for most of the day with the Belgian and Corsican on the terrace of Charley's bar, the Pot d'Etain, soaking up the sunshine and thinking of the next morning. The Yugoslav or the Spanish shipment might not turn up, or might be late, or might be blocked for some as yet unknown bureaucratic reason, but there would be no reason for them to be arrested in Yugoslavia or Spain. They might be held for a few days while the boat was searched, but that would be all. The following morning was different. If anyone insisted on peering deep into those oil barrels, there would be months, maybe years, spent sweating in Les Baumettes, the great forbidding fortress prison he had passed on Saturday as he drove from Marseilles to Toulon.
The waiting was always the worst, he reflected as he settled the bill and called his three colleagues to the car.
It turned out to be smoother than they thought. Toulon is known as an enormous navy base, and the skyline at the harbor is dominated by the superstructures of the French navy warships lying at anchor. The center of attraction for the tourists and the strollers of Toulon that Monday was the battle cruiser Jean Bart, home from a voyage to the French Caribbean territories, full of sailors with back pay to spend and looking for girls.
Along the broad sweep of esplanade fronting the harbor, the cafes were full of people indulging in the favorite pastime of every Mediterranean country— watching life go by. They sat in brightly colored hordes, gazing from the shaded awnings across the half-mile of bobbing yachts—from little outboard-powered runabouts to the sleek sea greyhounds of the very rich.
Up against the eastward quay were the dozen fishing boats that had elected not to go to sea, and behind
these were the long, low customs sheds, warehouses, and harbor offices.
It was beyond these, in the small and hardly observed commercial port, that the Toscana slipped into her berth just before noon.
Shannon waited till she was tied up, and from his seat on a bollard 150 feet away he could see Semmler and Waldenberg moving about the decks. There was no sign of the Serbian engineer, who was probably still in his beloved engine room, but two other figures were also on deck, making fast and coiling ropes. These had to be the two new crewmen recruited by Waldenberg.
A small Renault buzzed along the quay and came to a halt by the gangway. A rotund Frenchman in a dark suit emerged and went aboard the Toscana. The representative of Agence Maritime Duphot. Before long he came back down, followed by Waldenberg, and the two strolled over to the customs shed. It was nearly an hour before the two men emerged, the shipping agent to return to his car and drive away into town, the German captain to get back to his ship.