“Okay. The moment I get your End User Certificate, I’ll get straight onto it.”

They rose to leave.

“How long from the time you make your first approach until shipping date?” asked Shannon.

“About thirty to thirty-five days,” said Baker. “By the way, have you got a ship?”

“Not yet. You’ll need the name, I suppose. I’ll let you have it with the certificate.”

“If you haven’t, I know a very good one for charter. Two thousand German marks a day and all found. Crew, food, the lot. Take you and the cargo anywhere, and discreet as you like.”

Shannon thought it over. Twenty days in the Mediterranean, twenty days out to target, and twenty days back. A hundred and twenty thousand marks, or £15,000. Cheaper than buying one’s own ship. Tempting. But he objected to the idea of one man outside the operation controlling part of the arms deal and the ship, and being aware of the target as well. It would involve making Baker, or the man he would have to go to for the charter, virtually a partner.

“Yes,” he said cautiously. “What’s she called?”

“The San Andrea,” said Baker.

Shannon froze. He had heard Semmler mention that name. “Registered in Cyprus?” asked Shannon.

“That’s right.”

“Forget it,” he said shortly.

As they left the dining room, Shannon caught a swift glimpse of Johann Schlinker dining in an alcove. For a moment he thought the German dealer might have followed him, but the man was dining with a second man, evidently a valued customer. Shannon averted his head and strode past.

On the doorstep of the hotel he shook hands with Baker

. “You’ll be hearing from me,” he said. “And don’t let me down.”

“Don’t worry, Cat. You can trust me,” said Baker. He turned and hurried off down the street.

“In a pig’s ear I can,” muttered Shannon and went back into the hotel.

On the way up to his room the face of the man he had seen dining with the German arms merchant stayed in his memory. He had seen the face somewhere but could not place it. As he was falling asleep it came to him. The man was the chief of staff of Provisional IRA.

The next morning, Wednesday, he flew back to London. It was the start of Day Nine.

thirteen

Martin Thorpe stepped into Sir James Manson’s office about the time Cat Shannon was taking off from Hamburg.

“Lady Macallister,” he said by way of introduction, and Sir James waved him to a seat.

“I’ve been into her with a fine-tooth comb,” Thorpe went on. “As I suspected, she has twice been approached by people interested in buying her thirty percent holding in Bormac Trading. It would seem each person used the wrong approach and got turned down. She’s eighty-six, halfway senile, and very tetchy. At least, that’s her reputation. She’s also broad Scottish and has all her affairs handled by a solicitor up in Dundee. Here’s my full report on her.”

He handed Sir James a buff folder, and the head of Manson Consolidated read it within a few minutes. He grunted several times and muttered, “Bloody hell,” once. When he had finished, he looked up. “I still want those three hundred thousand shares in Bormac,” he said. “You say the others went about it the wrong way. Why?”

“She would appear to have one obsession in life, and it’s not money. She’s rich in her own right. When she married, she was the daughter of a Scottish laird with more land than ready cash. The marriage was no doubt arranged between the families. After her old man died she inherited the lot, mile after mile of desolate moorland. But over the past twenty years the fishing and hunting rights have brought in a small fortune from city-dwelling sportsmen, and parcels of land sold off for industry have made even more. It’s been shrewdly invested by her broker, or whatever they call them up there. She has a nice income to live on. I suspect the other bidders offered a lot of money but nothing else. That would not interest her.”

“Then what the hell would?” asked Sir James.

“Look at paragraph two on the second page, Sir James. See what I mean? The notices in The Times every anniversary, the attempt to have a statue erected, which was refused by the London County Council. The memorial she had put up in his hometown. I think that’s her obsession—the memory of the old slave driver she married.”

“Yes, yes, you may be right. So what do you propose?”

Thorpe outlined his idea, and Manson listened thoughtfully.

“It might work,” he said eventually. “Stranger things have happened. The trouble is, if you try it and she still refuses, you can hardly go back again with another offer couched in a different vein. But then, I suppose a pure cash offer would in any case get the same reaction the previous two proposals met. All right, play it your way. Just get her to sell those shares.”

Tags: Frederick Forsyth Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net