Dogs of War (36 page)

"Yes. Really."
"Would you want anything bad to happen to me because of something you did or said?"
She pulled herself back from him, staring deep into his face. This was much more like the scenes in her schoolgirl dreams. "Never," she said soulfully. "I'd never talk. Whatever they did to me."
Shannon blinked several times in amazement. "Nobody's going to do anything to you," he said. "Just don't tell your father that you know me or went through his papers. You see, he employs me to gather information for him about the prospects of mining in Africa. If he learned we knew each other, he'd fire me. Then I'd have to find another job. There is one that's been offered to me, miles away in Africa. So you see, I'd have to go and leave you if he ever found out about us."
That struck home, hard. She did not want hun to go. Privately he knew one day soon he would have to go, but there was no need to tell her yet.
"I won't say anything," she promised.
"A couple of points," said Shannon. "You said you saw the title on the sheets with mineral prices on them. What was the title?"
She furrowed her brow, trying to recall the words. "That stuff they put in fountain pens. They mention it in the ads for the expensive ones."
"Ink?" asked Shannon.
"Platium," she said.
"Platinum," he corrected, his eyes pensive. "Lastly, what was the title on the folder?"
"Oh, I remember that," she said happily. "Like something out of a fairy tale. The Crystal Mountain."
Shannon sighed deeply. "Go and make me some coffee, there's a love."
When he heard her clattering cups in the kitchen he leaned back against the bedhead and stared out over London. "You cunning bastard," he breathed. "But it won't be that cheap, Sir James, not that cheap at all."
Then he laughed into the darkness.
That same Saturday night Benny Lambert was ambling home toward his lodgings after an evening drinking with friends in one of his favorite cafes. He had been buying a lot of rounds for his cronies, using the money, now changed into francs, that Shannon had paid him. It made him feel good to be able to talk of the "big deal" he had just pulled off and buy the admiring bar girls champagne. He had had enough, more than enough, himself, and took no notice of the car that cruised slowly behind him, two hundred yards back. Nor did he think much of it when the car swept up to him as he came abreast of a vacant lot half a mile short of his home.
By the time he took notice and started to protest, the giant figure that had emerged from the car was hustling him across the lot and behind a hoarding that stood ten yards from the road.
His protests were silenced when the figure spun him around and, still holding him by the scruff, slammed a fist into his solar plexus. Benny Lambert sagged and, when the grip on his collar was removed, slumped to the ground. Standing above him, face shadowed in the obscurity behind the hoarding, the figure drew a two-foot iron bar from his belt. Stooping down, the big man grabbed the writhing Lambert by the left thigh and jerked it upward. The iron bar made a dull whumph as it crashed down with all the assailant's force onto the exposed kneecap, shattering it instantly. Lambert screamed once, shrilly, like a skewered rat, and fainted. He never felt the second kneecap being broken at all.
Twenty minutes later, Thomard was phoning his employer from the booth in a late-night cafי a mile away.
At the other end, Roux listened and nodded. "Good," he said. "Now I have some news for you. The hotel where Shannon usually stays. Henri Alain has just informed me they have received a letter from Mr. Keith Brown. It reserves a room for him on the night of the fifteenth. Got it?"
"The fifteenth," Thomard said. "Yes. He will be there then."
"And so will you," said the voice on the phone. "Henri will keep in touch with his contact inside the hotel, and you will remain on standby, not far from the hotel, from noon of that day onward."
"Until when?" asked Thomard.
"Until he comes out, alone," said Roux. "And then you will take him. For five thousand dollars."
Thomard was smiling slightly when he came out of the booth. As he stood at the bar sipping his beer, he could feel the pressure of the gun under his left armpit. It made him smile even more. In a few days it would earn him a tidy sum. He was quite sure of it. It would, he told himself, be simple and straightforward to take a man, even Cat Shannon, who had never even seen him and did not know he was there.
It was in the middle of a Sunday morning that Kurt Semmler phoned. Shannon was lying naked on his back on the bed while Julie puttered around the kitchen making breakfast
"Mr. Keith Brown?" asked the operator.
"Yes. Speaking."
"I have a personal call for you from a Mr. Semolina in Genoa."
Shannon swung himself off the bed and crouched on the edge, the telephone up to his ear. "Put him on the ljne," he ordered.
The German's voice was faint, but reception was reasonably clear. "Carlo?"
"Yes. Kurt?"
"I'm in Genoa."
"I know. What news?"
"I have it. This tune I am sure. She is just what you wanted. But there is someone else would like to buy her also. We may have to outbid them if we want the boat. But she is good. For us, very good. Can you come out and see her?"
"You're quite sure, Kurt?"
"Yes. Quite sure. Registered freighter, property of a Genoa-based shipping company. Made to order."
Shannon considered. "I'll come tomorrow. What hotel are you staying at?"
Semmler told him.
"I'll be there on the first available plane. I don't know when that will be. Stay at the hotel in the afternoon, and I'll contact you when I get there. Book me a room."
A few minutes later he was booked on the Alitalia flight to Milan at 0905 the following morning, to make a connection from Milan to Genoa and arrive at the port just after one in the afternoon.
He was grinning when Julie returned with the coffee. If the ship was the right one, he could conclude the deal over the next twelve days and be in Paris on the fifteenth for his rendezvous with Langarotti, secure in the knowledge that Semmler would have the ship ready for sea, with a good crew and fully fueled and supplied, by June 1.
"Who was that?" asked the girl.
"A friend."
"Which friend?"
"A business friend."
"What did he want?"
"I have to go and see him."
"When?"
"Tomorrow morning. In Italy."
"How long will you be gone?"
"I don't know. Two weeks. Maybe more."
She pouted over her coffee cup. "So what am I supposed to do all that time?" she asked.
Shannon grinned. "You'll find something. There's a lot of it about."
"You're a shit," she said conversationally. "But if you have to go, I suppose you must. It only leaves us till tomorrow morning, so I, my dear Tomcat, am going to make the best of it."
As his coffee was spilled over the pillow, Shannon reflected that the fight for Kimba's palace was going to be a holiday compared with trying to satisfy Sir James Manson's sweet little daughter.
16
The port of Genoa was bathed in late-afternoon sunshine when Cat Shannon and Kurt Semmler paid off their taxi and the German led his employer along the quays to where the motor vessel Toscana was moored. The old coaster was dwarfed by the two 3000-ton freighters that lay on either side of her, but that was no problem. To Shannon's eye she was big enough for her purposes.
- There was a tiny forepeak and a four-foot drop to the main deck, in the center of which was the large square hatch to the only cargo hold set amidships. Aft was the tiny bridge, and below it evidently were the crew quarters and captain's cabin. She had a short, stubby mast, to which a single loading derrick was attached, rigged almost vertical. Right aft, above the stern, the ship's single lifeboat was slung.
She was rusty, her paint blistered by the sun in many places, flayed off by salt spray in others. Small and old and dowdy, she had the quality Shannon looked for—she was anonymous. There are thousands of such small freighters plying the coastal inshore trade from Haifa to Gibraltar, Tangier to Dakar, Monrovia to Simonstown. They all look much the same, attract no attention, and are seldom suspected of being up to
anything beyond carrying small cargoes from port to port.
Semmler took Shannon on board. They found their way aft to where a companionway led down into the darkness of the crew quarters, and Semmler called. Then they went on down. They were met at the bottom by a muscular, hard-faced man in his mid-forties who nodded at Semmler and stared at Shannon.
Semmler shook hands with him and introduced him to Shannon. "Carl Waldenberg, the first mate."
Waldenberg nodded abruptly and shook hands. "You have come to look her over, our old Toscana?" he asked.
Shannon was pleased to note he spoke good, if accented, English and looked as if he might be prepared to run a cargo that did not appear on the manifest, if the price was right. He could understand the German seaman's interest in him. Semmler had already briefed him on the background, and he had told the crew his employer would be coming to look the ship over, with a view to buying. For the first mate, the new owner was an interesting person. Apart from anything else, Waldenberg had to be concerned about his own future.
The Yugoslav engineer was ashore somewhere, but they met the deckhand, a teenage Italian boy reading a girlie magazine on his bunk. Without waiting for the Italian captain's return, the first mate showed them both Over the Toscana.
Shannon was interested in three things: the ability of the boat to accommodate another twelve men somewhere, even if they had to sleep out on deck in the open; the main hold and the possibility of secreting a few crates below the flooring down in the bilges; and the trustworthiness of the engines to get them as far as, say, South Africa.
Waldenberg's eyes narrowed slightly as Shannon asked his questions, but he answered them civilly. He could work out for himself that no fare-paying passengers were coming on board the Toscana for the privilege
of sleeping wrapped in blankets on the hold-cover under the summer stars; nor was the Toscana going to pick up much freight for a run to the other end of Africa. Cargo sent that distance will be shipped in a bigger vessel. The advantage of a small coaster is that she can often load a cargo at very short notice and deliver it two days later a couple of hundred miles away. Big ships spend longer in port while turning around. But on a long run like that from the Mediterranean to South Africa, a bigger ship makes up in extra speed what she spent in port before setting out. For the exporter, the Toscanas of the sea have little attraction for trips of more than 500 miles.
After seeing the boat they went topside, and Wal denberg offered them bottles of beer, which they drank in the shade of the canvas awning set up behind the bridge. That was when the negotiations really started. The two Germans rattled away in their own language, the seaman evidently putting the questions and Semmler answering.
At last Waldenberg looked keenly at Shannon, looked back at Semmler, and nodded slowly. "Possibly," he said in English.
Semmler turned to Shannon and explained. "Waldenberg is interested why a man like yourself, who evidently does not know the charter cargo business, wants to buy a freighter for general cargo. I said you were a businessman and not a seaman. He feels the general cargo business is too risky for a rich man to want to hazard money on it, unless he has something specific in mind."
Shannon nodded. "Fair enough. Kurt, I want a word with you alone."
They went aft and leaned over the rail while Waldenberg drank his beer.
"How do you reckon this guy?" muttered Shannon.
"He's good," said Semmler without hesitation. "The captain is the owner also, and he is an old man and wants to retire. For this he has to sell the boat and retire on the money. That leaves a place vacant as captain.
I think Waldenberg would like it, and I agree with that. He has his master's license, and he knows this boat inside out. He also knows the sea. That leaves the question of whether he would run a cargo with a risk attached. I think he would, if the price is right."
"He suspects something already?" asked Shannon.
"Sure. Actually he thinks you are in the business of running illegal immigrants into Britain. He would not want to get arrested, but if the price is right, I think he would take the risk."
"Surely the first thing is to buy the ship. He can decide whether to stay on later. If he wants to quit, we can find another captain."
Semmler shook his head. "No. For one thing, we would have to tell him enough beforehand for him to know roughly what the job was. If he quit then, it would be a breach of security."
"If he learns what the job is and then quits, he only goes out one way," said Shannon and pointed his forefinger down at the oil-slicked water beneath the stern.
"There's one other point, Cat. It would be an advantage to have him on our side. He knows the ship, and if he decides to stay on he will try to persuade the captain to let us have the Toscana, rather than the local shipping company that is sniffing around. His opinion counts with the captain, because the old boy wants the Toscana to be in good hands, and he trusts Waldenberg."
Shannon considered the logic. It appealed to him. Time was running short, and he wanted the Toscana. The first mate might help him get it and could certainly run it. He could also recruit his own first mate and make sure he was a kindred spirit. Apart from that, there is one useful precept about bribing people: Never try to bribe them all; just buy the man who controls his own subordinates, and let him keep the rest in line. Shannon decided to make an ally of Waldenberg if he could. They strolled back to the awning.
"I'll be straight with you, mister," he told the German. "It's true if I bought the Toscana she would not
be used for carrying peanuts. It's also true that there would be a slight element of risk as the cargo went on board. There would be no risk as the cargo went ashore, because the ship would be outside territorial waters. I need a good skipper, and Kurt Semmler tells me you're good. So let's get down to basics. If I get the Toscana I'll offer you the post of captain. You get a six-month guaranteed salary double your present one, plus a five-thousand-dollar bonus for the first shipment, which is due ten weeks from now."
Waldenberg listened without saying a word. Then he grinned and uncoiled himself from where he sat. He held out his hand. "Mister, you just got yourself a captain."
"Fine," said Shannon. "Except the first thing is to buy the boat."