“You will come back. I haven’t asked where you are going, but I know it has to be dangerous. It’s not just business, not ordinary business. But you will come back. You must.”
“I won’t be coming back,” he said quietly. “Go find someone else, Julie.”
She began to sniffle. “I don’t want anybody else. I love you. You don’t love me. That’s why you’re saying you won’t see me again. You’ve got another woman—that’s what it is. You’re going to see another woman—”
“There’s no other woman,” he said, stroking her hair. An airport policeman looked discreetly away. Tears in the departure lounge are not uncommon anywhere. There would be, Shannon knew, no other woman in his arms. Just a gun, the cool, comforting caress of the blued steel against his chest in the night. She was still crying when he kissed her on the forehead and walked through into Passport Control.
Thirty minutes later the Sabena Jet made its last turn over South London and headed for its home in Brussels. Below the starboard wing, the country of Kent was spread out in the sunshine. Weatherwise, it had been a beautiful month of May. From the portholes one could see acres of blossom where the apple, pear, and cherry orchards covered the land in pink and white.
Along the lanes that trickle through the heart of the Weald, the Maythorn would be out, the horse chestnut trees glowing with green and white, the pigeons clattering among the oaks. He knew the country well from the time years ago when he had been stationed at Chatham and had bought an old motorcycle to explore the ancient country pubs between Lamberhurst and Smarden. Good country, good country to settle down in, if you were the settling type.
Ten minutes later, one of the passengers farther back summoned the stewardess to complain that someone up front was whistling a monotonous little tune.
It took Cat Shannon two hours on Friday afternoon to withdraw the money transferred from Switzerland and close his account. He took two certified bank checks, each for £5000, which could be converted into a bank account somewhere else, and from that into more travelers’ checks; and the other £10,000 in fifty $500 checks that needed only countersignature to be used as cash.
He spent that night in Brussels and flew the next morning to Paris and Marseilles.
A taxi from the airport brought him to the small hotel in the outskirts where Langarotti had once lived under the name of Lavallon, and where Janni Dupree, still following orders, was in residence. He was out at the time, so Shannon waited until he returned that evening, and together they drove, in a hired car Shannon had engaged, to Toulon. It was the end of Day Fifty-two, and the sprawling French naval port was bathed in warm sunshine.
On Sunday the shipping agent’s office was not open, but it did not matter. The rendezvous spot was the pavement in front of it, and here Shannon and Dupree met Marc Vlaminck and Langarotti on the dot of nine o’clock. It was the first time they had been together for weeks, and only Semmler was missing. He should be a hundred miles or so along the coast, steaming offshore in the Toscana toward Toulon.
At Shannon’s suggestion, Langarotti telephoned the harbormaster’s office from a nearby café and ascertained that the Toscana’s agents in Genoa had cabled that she was due in on Monday morning and that her berth was reserved.
There was nothing more to do that day, so they went in Shannon’s car along the coast road toward Marseilles and spent the day at the cobbled fishing port of Sanary-sur-Mer. Despite the heat and the holiday atmosphere of the picturesque little town, Shannon could not relax. Only Dupree bought himself a pair of swimming trunks and dived off the end of the jetty of the yacht harbor. He said later the water was still damn cold. It would warm up later, through June and July, when the tourists began to pour south from Paris. By then they would all be preparing to strike at another harbor town, not much larger and many miles away.
Shannon sat for most of the day with the Belgian and Corsican on the terrace of Charley’s bar, the Pot d’Etain, soaking up the sunshine and thinking of the next morning. The Yugoslav or the Spanish shipment might not turn up, or might be late, or might be blocked for some as yet unknown bureaucratic reason, but there would be no reason for them to be arrested in Yugoslavia or Spain. They might be held for a few days while the boat was searched, but that would be all. The following morning was different. If anyone insisted on peering deep into those oil barrels, there would be months, maybe years, spent sweating in Les Baumettes, the great forbidding fortress prison he had passed on Saturday as he drove from Marseilles to Toulon.
The waiting was always the worst, he reflected as he settled the bill and called his three colleagues to the car.
It turned out to be smoother than they thought. Toulon is known as an enormous navy base, and the skyline at the harbor is dominated by the superstructures of the French navy warships lying at anchor. The center of attraction for the tourists and the strollers of Toulon that Monday was the battle cruiser Jean Bart, home from a voyage to the French Caribbean territories, full of sailors with back pay to spend and looking for girls.
Along the broad sweep of esplanade fronting the harbor, the cafés were full of people indulging in the favorite pastime of every Mediterranean country—watching life go by. They sat in brightly colored hordes, gazing from the shaded awnings across the half mile of bobbing yachts—from little outboard-powered runabouts to the sleek sea greyhounds of the very rich.
Up against the eastward quay were the dozen fishing boats that had elected not to go to sea, and behind these were the long, low customs sheds, warehouses, and harbor offices.
It was beyond these, in the small and hardly observed commercial port, that the Toscana slipped into her berth just before noon.
Shannon waited till she was tied up, and from his seat on a bollard 150 feet away he could see Semmler and Waldenberg moving about the decks. There was no sign of the Serbian engineer, who was probably still in his beloved engine room, but two other figures were also on deck, making fast and coiling ropes. These had to be the two new crewmen recruited by Waldenberg.
A small Renault buzzed along the quay and came to a halt by the gangway. A rotund Frenchman in a dark suit emerged and went aboard the Toscana. The representative of Agence Maritime Duphot. Before long he came back down, followed by Waldenberg, and the two strolled over to the customs shed. It was nearly an hour before the two men emerged, the shipping agent to return to his car and drive away into town, the German captain to get back to his ship.
Shannon gave them another thirty minutes; then he too strolled up the gangway and onto the Toscana. Semmler beckoned him into the companionway that led down to the crew’s saloon.
“So, what’s been going on?” Shannon asked when he and Semmler were seated below.
Semmler grinned. “All smooth and easy,” he said. “I got the papers changed to show the new captain, had a complete engine service done, bought an unnecessarily large amount of blankets and a dozen foam-rubber mattresses. No one asked any questions, and the captain still thinks we are going to run immigrants into Britain.
“I used the Toscana’s usual shipping agent in Genoa to book us in here, and the manifest says we are taking on a mixed cargo of sporting goods and leisure equipment for a holiday camp on the coast of Morocco.”
“What about the engine-lubricating oil?”
Semmler grinned. “It was all ordered; then I called up and canceled it. When it didn’t arrive, Waldenberg wanted to delay for a day and wait for it. I vetoed that and said we would get it here in Toulon.”
“Fine,” said Shannon. “Don’t let Waldenberg order it. Tell him you’ve done it yourself. Then when it arrives, he’ll be expecting it. That man who came on board…”
“The shipping agent. He has all the stuff still in bond, and the papers prepared. He’s sending it down this afternoon in a couple of trucks. The crates are so small we can load them ourselves with the derrick.”
“Good. Let him and Waldenberg sort out the paperwork. An hour after the stuff is all aboard, the fuel-company truck will arrive with the oil. Driven by Langarotti. You have enough money left to pay for it?”