,” 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 café 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 percent 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 Shannon 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-mm. 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 farther. The turning of the door handle interrupted her.
With a start she dropped the cover of the folder, stood back a yard, and began to babble into the unhearing telephone. Her father stood in the doorway.
“All right, Christine, that will be marvelous, darling. I’ll see you on Monday, then. ’By now,” she chattered into the telephone and hung up.
Her father’s set expression had softened as he saw the person