“We have the facilities, of course. I’ll need the go from higher authority. Shouldn’t be a problem. Is he in town at the moment?”
“Don’t know,” said the Tracker.
“Well, not a problem to find out. And I presume the whole bun fight must be invisible and remain so?”
Yes, thought the Tracker, a very invisible bun fight indeed. It was agreed both services would get clearance for a very black operation with no sanction from any magistrate—in other words, totally illegal. But both British spooks were confident that with the Preacher’s trail of blood and death across the country, there would be no objection, right up to ministerial level if need be. The only political caveat would be the usual: Do what you feel you must, but I want to know nothing about it. Leading from the front, as ever.
As he was driven back to his mews cottage in the embassy car, the Tracker mused that there were now two possible routes to the exact location of the Preacher: One was Dardari’s personal desktop computer, if it could be tapped into. The other he was keeping up his sleeve for the moment.
• • •
It was just after dawn the next day, that the MV Malmö eased her way out of Gothenburg port and headed for the open sea. She was a 22,000-ton general-cargo freighter, what in the merchant shipping world is called handy-sized. The yellow-and-blue flag of Sweden fluttered from her stern.
She was a part of the considerable merchant fleet of Harry Andersson, among the last one-of-a-kind tycoons left in Sweden. Andersson had founded his shipping line many years ago with a single aged tramp steamer and had built the line to forty ships and made himself the biggest merchant marine tycoon in the country.
Despite the taxes, he had never relocated abroad; despite the fees, he had never adopted flags of convenience for his vessels. He had never “floated” except on the sea, never the stock exchange. He was sole owner of Andersson Line and, rare in Sweden, a billionaire in his own right. He had had two marriages and seven children, but only his youngest son, young enough to be his grandchild, was eager to become a mariner like his father.
The Malmö had a long trip ahead of her. She had a cargo of Volvo cars, destination Perth, Australia. On her bridge was Captain Stig Eklund; the first and second officers were Ukrainian and the chief engineer Polish. There were ten Filipino crew, including a cook, cabin steward and eight deckhands.
The only supernumerary was the cadet Ove Carlsson, studying for his merchant officer’s ticket and on his first long-distance voyage. He was just nineteen. Only two men on that ship knew who he really was: Capt. Eklund and the lad himself. The old tycoon was determined that if his youngest son was to go to sea on one of his ships, there would be neither bullying caused by resentment nor sycophancy from those seeking favor.
So the young midshipman traveled under the identity of his mother’s maiden name. A friend in government had authorized a genuine passport in the false name, and the passport had secured papers from the Swedish merchant marine authorities in the same name.
The four officers and the cadet were on the bridge that summer morning when the steward brought them coffee as the Malmö pushed her blunt nose into the rising swell of the Skagerrak.
• • •
Agent Opal had indeed managed to acquire a rugged trail bike from a Somali who was desperate to get out of the country with his wife and child and needed the dollars to start afresh in Kenya. What he was doing was utterly illegal under al-Shabaab law and liable to bring him a flogging or worse if he were caught. But he also had a scruffy pickup truck and believed he could make the border if he drove by night and lay up all day in the dense vegetation between Kismayo and the Kenyan frontier.
Opal had also strapped to the rear pillion a large wicker basket in which anyone might carry their meager shopping but which in his case would hide a large extra canister of petrol.
The map he had acquired from the belly of the kingfish showed him his handler’s chosen meeting point was on the coast almost a hundred miles north. On the pitted, rutted track the coast highway had become, he could manage it betwee
n dusk and dawn.
His other purchase was an old but serviceable transistor radio on which he could listen to various foreign stations—also forbidden by al-Shabaab. But living alone in his cabin out of town, pressing the tranny to his ear with the sound low, he could pick up Kol Israel and not be heard by anyone a few yards away. That was how he heard about showers over Ashkelon.
The inhabitants of that merry borough might look up the next day and be perplexed by a blue sky with not a cloud in sight, but that was their problem.
Benny was already with the fishing boat. He had arrived by helicopter, a machine owned and flown by another Israeli on what purported to be a private charter for a wealthy tourist from Nairobi to the Oceans Sports Hotel at Watamu on the coast north of Malindi.
In fact, the helicopter had flown past the coast, turned north past Lamu Island, east of Somalia’s Ras Kamboni Island, until the GPS system located the fishing boat below.
The helicopter held position twenty feet up as Benny fast-roped down to the pitching deck and the hands waiting to grab him.
That evening, Opal set off under cover of darkness. It was Friday, the streets were almost empty, the population at their prayers and the road traffic thin. Twice when the agent saw headlights coming up behind him, he pulled off the road and hid until the truck went by. He did the same when he saw the glow of lights on the horizon ahead. And he rode only by the light of the moon.
He was early. When he knew he must be a few miles short of the meeting point, he pulled off again and waited for dawn. At first light, he went on, but slowly, and there it was: a dry wadi, coming from the desert to his left, but large enough to merit a bridge to pass under. It would flood in the coming monsoon and become a raging torrent, passing under the concrete span of the bridge and through the cluster of giant casuarina trees between the highway and the shore.
He left the road and coaxed his trail bike the hundred yards to the water’s edge. Then he listened. After fifteen minutes, he heard it: the faint snarl of an outboard engine. He flicked his lights twice: up, down, up, down. The buzz turned toward him, and the shape of the rigid inflatable came out of the dark sea. He looked back at the road behind him. No one.
Benny stepped ashore. Passwords were exchanged. Then he gave his agent a hug. There was news from home, eagerly awaited. A briefing, and equipment.
The latter was extremely welcome. He would have to bury it, of course, under the earthen floor of his cabin, and then cover the patch with plywood sheeting. A small but state-of-the-art transceiver. It would take messages from Israel and hold them for thirty minutes, while they were transcribed or memorized. Then it would self-erase.
And it would send messages from Opal to the Office, which, spoken “in clear,” would be compressed into a single “squirt” so short that any listener would need ultra-technology to catch the tenth-of-a-second burst and record it. In Tel Aviv, the burst would be extended back into normal speech.
And there was the briefing. The warehouse, the need to know who lived in it, if they ever left it and, if so, where did they go? A description of any vehicle used by any inhabitant or regular visitor to the warehouse. And if any visitor lived away from the warehouse, a complete description of that residence and its exact location.