The Cobra

He established a charity to bring succor to Third World refugees and in its name took a long lease on a shabby and obscure warehouse in Anacostia, a few blocks from Fort McNair. This would house the offices on the top floor, and beneath that several floors of used clothing, fly sheets, tarpaulins, blankets and tents.

In reality, there would be little office work in the traditional sense. Paul Devereaux had spent years railing against the transformation of the CIA from a very hard-nosed spy agency into a vast bureaucracy. He loathed bureaucracy, but what he did want, and was determined to have, was a communications center to rival anyone else's.

After Cal Dexter, his first recruit was Jeremy Bishop, retired like himself, but one of the most brilliant communications and computer aces ever to serve at Fort Meade, Maryland, HQ of the National Security Agency, a vast complex of eavesdropping technology known as the "Puzzle Palace."

Bishop began to devise a comms center into which every scintilla of information about Colombia and cocaine acquired by thirteen intel-gathering agencies would be patched by presidential decree. For this, a second cover story was needed. The other agencies were told the Oval Office had ordered the preparation of a report to end all reports on the cocaine trade, and their cooperation was mandatory. The agencies grumbled but acquiesced. A new think tank. Another twenty-volume report that no one would ever read. What else was new?

And there was the money. Back in the CIA's SEE (Soviet/East Europe) division, Devereaux had come across Benedict Forbes, a former Wall Street banker who had been co-opted to the Company for a single operation, found it more exciting than trying to warn people about Bernie Madoff and stayed. That was in the Cold War. He, too, was now retired, but he had forgotten nothing.

His specialty had been covert bank accounts. Ru

Forbes began to draw down the allotted dollars from a bewildered Treasury and place them where they could be accessed as and when needed. In the computer age, this could be anywhere. Paper was for dodos. A few taps on a computer could release enough for a man to retire-so long as they were the right taps.

As his HQ was being established, Devereaux sent Cal Dexter on his first overseas assignment.

"I want you to go to London and buy two ships," he said. "It seems the Brits are coming in with us. Let us use them. They are rather good at this. A shell company is being set up. It will have funds. It will be the titular purchaser of the ships. Then it will disappear."

"What kind of ships?" asked Dexter. The Cobra produced a single sheet of paper, which he had typed himself.

"Memorize and burn. Then let the Brits advise you. The paper contains the name and private number of the man to contact. Commit nothing to paper, and certainly not to a computer or a cell phone. Keep it in your head. It's the only private place we have left."

Though Dexter could not know it, the number he would call would ring in a large green-and-sandstone block on the side of the Thames at a place called Vauxhall Cross. Those inside never called it that: only the "office." It was the HQ of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service.

The name on the about-to-be-burned sheet was Medlicott. The man who would answer would be the deputy chief, and his name was not Medlicott. But the use of that word would tell "Medlicott" who was talking: the Yankee visitor who really was named Dexter.

And Medlicott would propose Dexter go to a gentlemen's club in St. James's Street to join a colleague named Cranford whose real name was not Cranford. They would be three at that lunch, and it was the third man who knew all about ships.

This byzantine routine had stemmed from the daily morning conference inside the office two days earlier. At the close of business, the chief had remarked:

"By the way, there is an American arriving in a couple of days. The PM has asked me to help him. He wants to buy ships. Covertly. Anyone know anything about ships?"

There was a pause for cogitation.

"I know a fellow who is the chairman of a major Lloyd's broker in the City," said the controller, Western Hemisphere.

"How well do you know him?"

"I broke his nose once."

"That's usually quite intimate. Had he upset you?"

"No. We were playing the wall game."

There was a slight chill. The phrase meant both men had gone to the ultra-exclusive school called Eton College, the only place where the bizarre and seemingly no-rules wall game was played.

"Well, take him to lunch with your shipping friend and see if the brokerage can help him buy ships on the quiet. It might make a tidy commission. Compensation for the broken nose."

The meeting broke up. Dexter's call duly came, from his room at the discreet Montcalm Hotel. "Medlicott" passed the American to his colleague "Cranford," who took the number and said he would call back. And he did, an hour later, to set up lunch the next day with Sir Abhay Varma at Brooks's Club.

"And I'm afraid suits and ties are required," said Cranford.

"No problem," said Dexter. "I think I can knot a tie."

Brooks's is quite a small club on the west side of St. James's Street. Like all the others, it has no nameplate for identification. The received wisdom is that if you are a member or invited, you know where it is, and if you are not it doesn't matter, but it is usually identified by the potted shrubs that flank the door. Like all St. James clubs, it has its character and patronage, and that of Brooks's tends to be senior civil servant and occasional spook.

Sir Abhay Varma turned out to be the chairman of Staplehurst amp; Company, a major brokerage specializing in shipping and situated in a medieval alleyway off Aldgate. Like Cranford, he was fifty-five, plump and jovial. Before he put on the weight during all those City Guild di

As per custom, the men confined conversation at the lunch table to small talk-weather, crops, how was the flight-and adjourned to the library for coffee and port. Unheard by anyone else, they were able to relax under the gaze of the painted Dilettantes on the wall above them and talk business.

"I need to buy two ships. Very quietly, very discreetly, the purchase concluded by a shell company in a tax haven."

Sir Abhay was not in the slightest fazed. It happened all the time. For tax reasons, of course.

"What kinds of ships?" he asked. He never queried the American's bona fides. He was vouched for by Cranford, and that was good enough. After all, they had been at school together.

"I don't know," said Dexter.

"Ticklish," said Sir Abhay. "I mean, if you don't know. They come in all roles and sizes."

"Then let me level with you, sir. I want to take them off to a discreet shipyard and have them converted."

"Ah, a major refit. Not a problem. What are they supposed to end up as?"

"Is this between ourselves alone, Sir Abhay?"

The broker glanced at the spook as if to ask what kinds of chaps does this chap think we are?

"What is said in Brooks's, stays in Brooks's," murmured Cranford.

"Well, each is to become a floating base for U.S. Navy SEALs. Harmless to look at, not so harmless inside."

Sir Abhay Varma beamed.

"Aha, rough stuff, eh? Well, that clarifies things a bit. A total conversion. I'd advise against tankers of any kind. Wrong shape, an impossible cleaning job and too many pipes. Same with an ore carrier. Right shape but usually vast, bigger than you want. I'd go for a dry-bulk carrier, a grain ship, surplus to owner's requirements. Clean, dry, easy to convert, with deck covers that come off to let your chaps in and out fast."