The Point Team (17 page)

Now Richards had Morgan spotted again. He came several mornings a week to Hannigan’s and spent an hour or so there. Richards
decided not to risk following him, since his informant had said this could easily spook Morgan. Addendale hadn’t held back
this time. It had been a straightforward “Get rid of Morgan.” Then he was handed an antique weapon! Actually, there was nothing
wrong with the Enfield revolver. It had been standard British
army issue throughout the Second World War and continued in service till replaced by the Browning HP35. In spite of its being
a bit cumbersome in comparison to modern weapons, it was reliable because its double action was built to stand up to the wear
and tear of military use.

Morgan came out of the bar with two other men. Larry Richards recognized one of them. He flipped through the photos rapidly—he
knew the position of the photo vaguely—and checked out the mug shots of a fair-haired man. Willie Stevens. Murder. Possession
of high explosives and firearms. No information as to why he was on the loose. Peregrine Addendale had probably never heard
of him and would expect Richards to capture him with a butterfly net. Fuck that. If Morgan walked down the street with Stevens,
Richards would call it a day. Come back some other time. He wasn’t going to take those two on—and he had no idea who the third
man was—with a fucking King George VI all’s-well-with-the-world Enfield revolver. After all, Larry Richards said aloud, he
was not down from Oxford.

Morgan stood for a while talking with the two men, then shook hands with each and headed off down the sidewalk by himself.
He turned into a street of residential homes and disappeared from Richards’ view. Larry Richards started the car’s engine,
slipped it into gear and drove across the intersection and into the street. He saw Morgan five hundred yards farther along,
drove past him and pulled into a space at a fire hydrant. He pulled on a pair of leather gloves, took out the .38 Enfield,
twirled the chambers and replaced it in his side pocket.

He knew Morgan would register his presence in the parked car. A man on the run notices details in a way that would be paranoia
in someone not being hunted. Richards wanted Morgan to be aware of him—he wanted to see a flicker of fear in the man’s face,
wanted to see him run for his life and then recognize it was too late, that retribution had overtaken him, that death was
here. Such a ceremony was far more satisfying than simply creeping up behind
someone and shooting him in the back. The end result was the same in both cases, but the first method was that of a craftsman
who enjoyed his skills.

The Provisional IRA man strolled by the car with only the most casual of glances inside. Richards was not fooled. If he had
made a move, Morgan would have thrown himself out of the line of fire in a split second. Richards climbed out of the car and
closed the door quietly behind him, and the sinister click of the lock being pressed shut rather than the door being thoughtlessly
slammed caused a perceptible stiffening of Morgan’s body, but he did not turn around. Richards walked on the sidewalk after
him, and for a moment the sound of their footsteps, slightly out of sync, was all that could be heard on the quiet street.

Richards held the .38 beneath his coat. Morgan’s hands swung beside him as he walked. If he reached for a weapon, Richards
would blast him to kingdom come before he could free it. He did not want to move too far from his car, hired as always under
a false name, but he wanted to see some reaction from his victim before he wasted him.

A car came down the street from behind Richards. Morgan quickly turned and began to cross in front of it. The driver had to
brake to a stop to avoid him. But Morgan wasn’t looking at the car, he was looking straight at Richards, and his eyes dropped
to where Richards was holding the revolver beneath his coat. Morgan knew.

“What the hell’s with you, fella?” the driver of the car shouted to Morgan. “Get the fuck outa my way.”

“Shut up, you thick-headed fool,” the Provo responded in a sharp, almost Scottish accent.

The driver jumped out of the car. He had the build of a football player and was in his early twenties. He walked up to Morgan,
still standing in front of the car. Morgan swung out in a sudden uppercut and decked the driver across the hood of his car.
Car doors opened, and two other big bruisers leaped out to join the fray.

Richards smiled and decided that the Provo was unarmed. Well, this was not going to get him out of the trap. As Morgan faced
off against the two, holding up his fists and moving on his feet like a trained boxer, Richards raised the Enfield, sighted
quickly down the barrel and squeezed the trigger.

Morgan was knocked off his feet by the impact of the bullet, and the two men about to fight him looked down in puzzlement
at his body on the road. They were standing next to the running engine and didn’t hear the shot or see Richards walk away
back up the street to his car.

Bob Murphy had called him the previous night and said he wanted him to meet two men, an American and a Frenchman, with a proposition
that might interest him. Richards would drop off the hired car at La Guardia Airport, hopefully vanishing without a trace
there if someone saw the car, then catch a taxi from there to Republic Airport in Farmingdale and fly his Cherokee Six 300
up to Bennington, Vermont.

He got in the car, made a U-turn and tossed the Enfield revolver out the window as he sped away.

Campbell, Verdoux and Murphy spent the morning skeet shooting on Murphy’s private range. The Australian outshot the others
easily, so the close competition was between Campbell and Verdoux. When Andre beat Mike narrowly, it was silently recorded
by Verdoux as another factor that qualified him for the mission—something that showed he still had a good eye and reflexes,
something to demonstrate he was not yet over the hill. Mike pretended not to be aware of this.

Mike knew that Andre was up to something. He had driven into Bennington first thing that morning. Mike suspected he had gone
to make calls on a public phone, and when he took off alone again after lunch, he was sure of it.

“Larry Richards will be in sometime during the after
noon,” Bob Murphy told them. “He had an appointment he couldn’t break this morning, so why not let’s all relax until we get
his call from the airport. I guarantee he’ll fit your team, Mike, and be raring to go.”

“You seem pretty sure of him, Bob,” Campbell commented noncommittally.

“I served with him in Malaysia,” Bob said. “When you chase commies in the jungle with someone, you know real soon whether
you can depend on him as a partner or not.”

“I know what you mean,” Mike agreed.

“After that, Larry was with the SAS in Ulster for a couple of years. I would think whatever he mightn’t have learned in Malaysia,
he picked up on there. A bit of postgraduate study, you might say.”

“Larry Richards was never in Vietnam,” Mike said, “and I hadn’t intended taking anyone along who hadn’t already been there.”

“That’s for you to decide,” Bob conceded, “but I’ve seen combat in both places—Vietnam and Malaysia—and it doesn’t make a
hell of a lot of difference in which one you happen to be if you’re lugging a thirty-five-pound backpack and your equipment
and you’re knee-deep in swamp water crawling with snakes, with mosquitoes big as hummingbirds—’’

“All right, all right,” Mike laughed, “I’ll keep an open mind.”

When the call came from the local airport, Bob left to pick up Larry Richards. Andre Verdoux had said nothing much for a while.
Mike guessed he did not approve of Bob Murphy, but was saying nothing because opposition from him now might endanger his own
place on the team.

Mike teased him. “If you don’t think much of this Aussie, wait until you see the other two I’ve recruited. This is going to
be a real rat pack, Andre.”

The Frenchman gruntled moodily.

When Bob Murphy brought the Englishman, Mike took
the newcomer to one side without delay. What he did not need were contributions from Andre and Bob, negative or positive.

“Well, you seem like you’ve seen a bit of action,” Mike started in a friendly tone.

He told him very little about the mission, that it would be worth a hundred thousand dollars to him, and that it would be
a very high-risk operation.

“Why do you want to go?”

“For the hell of it,” Larry answered.

“Not the money?”

Richards shook his head. “I’d make that much money in a day flying in coke from the Caribbean. No, I want to do some soldiering
again. And if that’s the way I meet my Maker, so be it.”

“Where do you go from Bennington?”

“I live in Rome, New York, not far from Utica. Less than an hour from here by air.”

“You got a wife and kids?”

“Back in England somewhere,” Larry said. “I’m forty-two and I got a girl friend less than half my age. So I’ll be no irreplaceable
loss to anyone except myself.”

“Looks like you’re on the team, then.”

They shook hands and rejoined the others.

After a quick look at Campbell, Verdoux took up the offensive. “Lawrence Richards is a familiar name in some circles. I don’t
suppose you’d be the same one who works for Canadian intelligence in surveillance of French-speaking Quebecois on this side
of the border?”

Richards smiled nonchalantly. “All you Frenchies imagine the Anglo-Saxons are out to get you.”

“I hear our host”—Verdoux gestured to the Australian—“was along on some of your assignments.”

Bob remained silent.

“It seems also”—Verdoux was enjoying himself—”that you haven’t completely severed ties with your mother country, Mr. Richards,
in spite of becoming an American
citizen. I hear that you provided protection of some sort during Her Majesty’s recent visit to California, that you have
been involved in funneling arms to Belize via the Bahamas, that you once were involved with Libyan transactions but they no
longer deal with you, that the Provisional Irish Republican Army has a price of ten thousand dollars on your head … I’m sure
there are other things I’ve forgotten to mention. Bob Murphy doesn’t seem to be involved in anything but spying on the French
Canadians.” Andre paused for effect. “I got all this today with two telephone calls. Imagine what I could come up with if
I had time.”

Mike Campbell swiveled his eyes around to Larry Richards. “Any reason I should trust you to come on this mission?”

Richards dismissed Verdoux with a contemptuous wave. “Certainly Frenchie here is right. I’m a field operative, and since I’m
a successful one I happen to be well-known. Only those who never achieve their objectives manage to stay undercover. But,
Mike—you wonder, am I a security risk to you? According to Frenchie here, the Canadian and British governments trust me to
do work for them—I’m not acknowledging that I do. If they can trust me, why can’t you? The Canadians and British have nothing
to gain from me selling them information about you, and you yourself, Mike, say that Washington is on to you, which is why
you’re recruiting in the lonely hearts columns or whatever. I bet that’s where you found Frenchie.”

Verdoux exchanged an amused look with Campbell and said nothing.

Richards went on, “Take you, for example, Mike. Mad Mike Campbell. How many phone calls do I have to make to give you a lurid
bio? None at all. You’re the last person on earth, Mad Mike, to query me on my résumé.”

“I said you were on the team, Larry. Now shut up.”

Richards clammed up. He and Verdoux exchanged malevolent glances.

“All right, you men,” Mike said in tones of this-is-the-colonel-speaking, “get this and get it straight. We go into training
in five days’ time. You will be informed of your mobilization area twenty-four hours in advance. You will be given a phone
number to call if you want to drop out between now and then, but once in training you’re stuck for the duration of the mission.
I repeat. Once in, no outs. No communications. No nothing. You’ve gone. Clear? Now, I’m a nice guy and I don’t want to have
to see you suffer, so I’m telling you now to start running. If you can run ten miles without throwing up by five days’ time,
training won’t go so hard with you. Because you’ll be running twice that distance in ten days’ time. This is not going to
be a golf-cart war, so if any of you old-timers can’t hack it, do us all a favor and quit now. Any questions?”

“Where do we go for training?” Bob asked.

“Location G.”

That was the end of the question period.

As they drove back to New York, Andre asked Mike, “Where is Location G?”

“Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“You mean I’m going to have to take them jogging around Central Park reservoir?”

Mike laughed. “I think I’ll be able to come up with something better than that. After all, I’ve got five days. What are you
angling for, Andre? Second-in-command?”

“I should think so, considering I’m the only other sane person besides you on this mission. Not forgetting, of course, that
you’re Mad Mike.”

T
HE
two southerners, both from the Mekong Delta, were awed by their visitor. Their agency was not one of the favored ones in
the Ho Chi Minh City bureaucracy, as evidenced by the upturned wooden crates they used as desks and the single light bulb
that provided illumination in that sectioned-off area of the warehouse. The younger of the two southerners still hoped to
use influence to get transferred out of the Commission for International Media Goodwill. The fact was this government bureau
had nothing to do; the international media were not allowed into Vietnam and goodwill was the last thing anyone was expected
to show them. The older man, the commissioner, knew that for better or worse this was where he would have to either sink or
swim in the new freedom of the communist state.

The visitor, totally unexpected, was reputed to have been one of General Giap’s most important intelligence administrators
during the war of liberation against the American imperialists and their puppets. In many ways he looked like Mahatma Gandhi—thin,
ageless, ascetic, wire spectacles, but with a shock of virile, Asiatic black hair instead of a bald pate.