M. Boucher's head appeared to be the only object to mar the contours of the otherwise uniformly globular mass. 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 document case some five inches thick.
"Please come in," said Shannon and stepped back.
Boucher entered first, turning slightly sideways to slip through the door, like a large ball of gray worsted fabric on castors. Marc followed, giving Shannon a wink as he caught his eye. They all shook hands. Shannon gestured to an armchair, but Boucher chose the edge of the bed. He was wise and experienced. He might never have got out of the armchair.
Shannon poured them all coffee and went straight to business. Tiny Marc sat and stayed silent.
"Monsieur Boucher, my associate and friend may have told you that my name is Brown, I am English by nationality, and I am here representing a group of
friends who would be interested in acquiring a quantity of submachine carbines or machine pistols. Monsieur Vlaminck kindly mentioned to me that he was in a position to introduce me to someone who might have a quantity of machine pistols for sale. I understand from him that these are Schmeisser nine-mm. machine pistols, of wartime manufacture but never used. I also understand and accept that there can be no question of obtaining an export license for them, but this is accepted by my people, and they are prepared to take all responsibility in this regard. Is that a fair assessment?"
Boucher nodded slowly. He could not nod fast. "I am in a position to make available a quantity of these pieces," he said carefully. "You are right about the impossibility of an export license. For that reason the identity of my own people has to be protected. Any business arrangement we might come to would have to be on a cash basis, and with security arrangements for my own people."
He's lying, thought Shannon. There are no people behind Boucher. He is the owner of this stuff and works alone.
In fact M. Boucher in his younger and slimmer days had been a Belgian SS man and had worked as a cook in the SS barracks at Namur. His obsession with food had taken him into cooking, and before the war he had lost several jobs because he tasted more than he served through the hatch. In the starving conditions of wartime Belgium he had opted for the cookhouse of the Belgian SS unit, one of the several local SS groups the Nazis recruited in the occupied countries. In the SS, surmised the young Boucher, one could eat. In 1944, when the Germans pulled back from Namur toward the frontier, a truckload of unused Schmeissers from the armory had been on its way east when the truck broke down. There was no time to repair it, so the cargo was shifted into a nearby bunker and the entrance dynamited. Boucher watched it happen. Years later he had returned, shoveled away the rubble, and removed the thousand weapons.
Since then they had reposed beneath a trapdoor built into the floor of the garage of his country cottage, a building left him by bis parents, who died in the mid-1950s. He had sold job lots of Schmeissers at various times and had "unloaded" half of his reserve.
"If these guns are in good working order, I would be interested in buying a hundred of them," said Shannon. "Of course, payment would be by cash, in any currency. All reasonable conditions imposed by you would be adhered to in the handing over of the cargo. We also would expect complete discretion."
"As for the condition, monsieur, they are all brand new. Still in their maker's grease and each still wrapped in its sachet of greaseproof paper with seals unbroken. As they came from the factory thirty years ago and, despite their age, still possibly the finest machine pistol ever made."
Shannon needed no lectures about the Schmeisser 9mm. Personally he would have said the Israeli Uzi was better, but it was heavy. The Schmeisser was much better than the Sten, and certainly as good as the much more modern British Sterling. He thought nothing of the American grease-gun and the Soviet and Chinese burp-guns. However, Uzis and Sterlings are almost unobtainable and never in mint condition.
"May I see?" he asked.
Wheezing heavily, Boucher pulled the black case he carried onto his knees and flicked open the catches after twirling the wheels of the combination lock. He lifted the lid and held the case forward without attempting to get up.
Shannon rose, crossed the room, and took the case from him. He laid it on the bedside table and lifted out the Schmeisser.
It was a beautiful piece of weaponry. Shannon slid his hands over the smooth blue-black metal, gripped the pistol grip, and felt the lightness of it. He pulled back and locked the folding stock and operated the breech mechanism several tunes and squinted down the barrel from the foresight end. The inside was untouched, unmarked.
"That is the sample model," wheezed Boucher. "Of course it has had the maker's grease removed and carries only a light film of oil. But the others are identical. Unused."
Shannon put it down.
"It takes standard nine-mm. ammunition, which is easy to come by," said Boucher helpfully.
"Thank you, I know," said Shannon. "What about magazines? They can't be picked up just anywhere, you know."
"I can supply five with each weapon," said Boucher.
"Five?" Shannon asked in feigned amazement. "I need more than five. Ten at least."
The bargaining had begun, Shannon complaining about the arms dealer's inability to provide enough magazines, the Belgian protesting that was the limit he could provide for each weapon without beggaring himself. Shannon proposed $75 for each Schmeisser on a deal for 100 guns; Boucher claimed he could allow that price only for a deal of not less than 250 weapons, and that for 100 he would have to demand $125 each. Two hours later they settled for 100 Schmeissers at $100 each. They fixed time and place for the following Wednesday evening after dark, and agreed on the method for the handover. Shannon offered Boucher a lift back in Vlaminck's car to where he had come from, but the fat man chose to call a taxi and be taken to Brussels city center to make his own way home. He was not prepared to assume that the Irishman, who he was certain was from the IRA, would not take him somewhere quiet and work on him until he had learned the location of the secret hoard. Boucher was quite right. Trust is silly and superfluous weakness in the black-market arms business.
Vlaminck escorted the fat man with his lethal briefcase down to the lobby and saw him away in his taxi. When he returned, Shannon was packing.
"Do you see what I mean about the truck you bought?" he asked Tiny.
"No," said the other.
"We will have to use that truck for the pick-up on Wednesday," Shannon pointed out. "I saw no reason why Boucher should see the real number plates. Have a spare set ready for Wednesday night, will you? It's only for an hour, but if Boucher does want to tip off anyone, they'll have the wrong truck."
"Okay, Cat, I'll be ready. I got the lock-up garage two days ago. And the other stuff is on order. Is there anywhere I can take you? I have the hired car for the rest of the day."
Shannon had Vlaminck drive him westward to Brugge and wait in a cafe while Shannon went to the bank. Mr. Goossens was at lunch, so the pair ate their own lunch in the small restaurant on the main square and Shannon returned to the bank at two-thirty.
There was still £7000 in the Keith Brown account, but a debit of £2000 for the four mercenaries' salaries was due in nine days. He drew a banker's check in favor of Johann Schlinker and placed it in an envelope containing a letter from him to Schlinker that he had written in his hotel room late the previous night. It informed Schlinker that the enclosed check for $4800 was in full payment for the assorted marine and life-saving articles he had ordered a week earlier, and gave the German the name and address of the Toulon shipping agent to whom the entire consignment should be sent in bond for export, for collection by M. Jean-Baptiste Langarotti. Last, he informed Schlinker that he would be telephoning him the coming week to inquire if the End User Certificate for the ordered 9mm. ammunition was in order.
The other letter was to Alan Baker, addressed to his home in Hamburg. The check it contained was in Baker's name for $7200, and Shannon's letter stated that the sum was in full settlement of the required 50-per-cent advance for the purchase of the goods they had discussed over dinner at the Atlantic a week earlier. He included the End User Certificate from the government of Togo and the spare sheet from the same source.
Last, he instructed Baker to get right on with the purchase and promised to be in touch by phone regularly to check on progress. Both letters were mailed from Brugge post office, express rate and registered.
Shannon had Vlaminck drive him from Brugge to Ostend, had a couple of beers with the Belgian in a local bar near the seaport, and bought himself a single ticket on the evening ferry to Dover.
The boat train deposited him at Victoria Station at midnight, and he was in bed and asleep by one in the morning of that Saturday. The last thing he did before sleeping was to send a telegram to Endean's poste restante address to say he was back and he felt they ought to meet.
The Saturday morning mail brought a letter mailed at express rate from Malaga in the south of Spain. It was addressed to Keith Brown but began "Dear Cat." It came from Kurt Semmler and stated briefly that he had found a boat, a converted motor fishing vessel built twenty years earlier in a British shipyard, owned by a British citizen, and registered in London. It flew a British flag, was 90 feet overall and 80 tons deadweight, with a large central hold amidships and a smaller one aft. It was classed as a private yacht but could be reregistered as a coaster.
Semmler went on to say the vessel was for sale at a price of £20,000 and that two of the crew would be worth engaging under the new management. He was certain he could find good replacements for the other two crew members.
He finished by saying he was staying at the Malaga Palacio Hotel and asked Shannon to contact him there with his own date of arrival to inspect the boat. Shannon cabled him he would arrive on Monday.
The boat was called the MV Albatross.
Endean phoned Shannon that afternoon after checking his mail and receiving the telegram. They met
around dinnertime that evening at the flat, and Shan-non presented Endean with his third lengthy progress report and statement of accounts and expenditures.
"You'll have to make further transfers of money if we are to move ahead in the forthcoming weeks," Shannon told him. "We are entering the areas of major expenditure now—the arms and the ship."
"How much do you need at once?" Endean asked.
Shannon said, "Two thousand for salaries, four thousand for boats and engines, four thousand for submachine guns, and over ten thousand for nine-nun, ammunition. That's over twenty thousand. Better make it thirty thousand, or I'll be back next week."
Endean shook his head. "I'll make it twenty thousand," he said. "You can always contact me if you need more. By the way, I would like to see some of this stuff. That will be fifty thousand you'll have gone through inside a month."
"You can't," said Shannon. "The ammunition is not yet bought, nor the boats, engines, and so forth. Nor are the mortars and bazookas, nor the submachine pistols. All these deals have to be put through cash on the barrelhead or in advance. I explained that in my first report to your associates."
Endean eyed him coldly. "There had better be some purchases being made with all this money," he grated.
Shannon stared him out. "Don't threaten me, Harris. A lot of people have tried it; it costs a fortune in flowers. By the way, what about the boat?"
Endean rose. "Let me know which boat and from whom it is being bought. I'll make the credit transfer direct from my Swiss account."
"Please yourself," said Shannon.
He dined alone and well that evening and had an early night. Sunday would be a free day, and he had found Julie Manson was already at home with her parents in Gloucestershire. Over his brandy and coffee he was lost in thought, planning the weeks ahead and trying to visualize the attack on the palace of Zangaro.
It was in the middle of Sunday morning that Julie
Manson decided to call her new lover's flat in London and see if he was there. Outside, the spring rain fell in a steady curtain on the Gloucestershire countryside. She had hoped to be able to saddle up the handsome new gelding her father had given her a month earlier and gallop through the parkland surrounding the family mansion. She had hoped the ride would be a tonic to the feelings that flooded through her when she thought of the man she had fallen for. But the rain had washed out the idea of riding. Instead she was confined to wandering around the old house, listening to her mother's chitchat about charity bazaars and orphan-relief committees, or staring at the rain falling on the garden.
Her father had been working in his study, but she had seen him go out to the stables to talk to the chauffeur a few minutes earlier. As her mother was within earshot of the telephone in the hallway, she decided to use the extension in the study.
She had lifted the telephone beside the desk in the empty room when her eye caught the sprawl of papers lying across the blotter. On top of them was a single folder. She noted the title and idly lifted the cover to glance at the first page. A name on it caused her to freeze, the telephone still buzzing furiously in her ear. The name was Shannon.
Like most young girls, she had had her fantasies, seeing herself as she lay in the darkness of the dormitory at boarding school in the role of heroine of a hundred hazardous exploits, usually saving the man she loved from a terrible fate, to be rewarded by his undying devotion. Unlike most girls, she had never completely grown up. From Shannon's persistent questioning about her father she had already half managed to translate herself into the role of a girl agent on her lover's behalf. The trouble was, most of what she knew about her father was either personal, in his role of indulgent daddy, or very boring. Of his business affairs she knew nothing. And then here, on a rainy Sunday morning, lay her chance.
She flicked her eyes down the first page of the folder and understood nothing. There were figures, costings, a second reference to the name Shannon, a mention of several banks by name, and two references to a man called Clarence. She got no further. The turning of the door handle interrupted her.