The Dogs of War

“Yes. Kurt?”

“I’m in Genoa.”

“I know. What news?”

“I have it. This time I am sure. She is just what you wanted. But there is someone else who 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 tha

t 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.

sixteen

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 their 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.