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When he had finished, Sha
He explained tersely how the bulk of the £5000 he had imported to London was already spoken for and the other £5000 was needed as a reserve in Brugge. The two identical sums required in Luxembourg and Hamburg were mainly so that he could show his contacts there a certified check to prove his credit before entering into purchasing negotiations. Later, most of the money would be remitted to Brugge and the balance fully accounted for.
“In any case, I can write you out a complete accounting of money spent to date or committed for spending,” he told Endean, “but I have to have your mailing address.”
Endean gave him the name of a professional accommodation address where he had opened a box that morning in the name of Walter Harris, and promised to get the instructions off to Zurich within the hour to have both sums of £5000 awaiting collection by Keith Brown in Luxembourg and Hamburg.
Big Ja
At six there was a second reunion when the other three mercenaries all came around to greet the South African. When he heard Sha
“We going to go fighting again, Cat? Count me in.”
"Good man. So here’s what I want from you. Stay here in London, find yourself a small bed-sitting-room flat. I’ll help you do that tomorrow. We’ll go through the Evening Standard and get you fixed up by nightfall.
"I want you to buy all our clothing. We need fifty sets of T-shirts, fifty sets of underpants, fifty pair of light nylon socks. Then a spare set for each man, making a hundred. I’ll give you the list later. After that, fifty sets of combat trousers, preferably in jungle camouflage and preferably matching the jackets. Next, fifty combat blouses, zip-fronted and in the same jungle camouflage.
"You can get all these quite openly at camping shops, sports shops, and army surplus stores. Even the hippies are begi
"You can get all the T-shirts, socks, and underpants at the same stockist, but get the trousers and blouses at different ones. Then fifty green berets and fifty pairs of boots. Get the trousers in the large size, we can shorten them later; get the blouses half in large size, half in medium. Get the boots from a camping-equipment shop. I don’t want heavy British army boots, I want the green canvas jackboots with front lacing and waterproofed.
“Now for the webbing. I need fifty webbing belts, ammo pouches, knapsacks, and campers’ haversacks, the ones with the light tubular frame to support them. These will carry the bazooka rockets with a bit of reshaping. Lastly, fifty light nylon sleeping bags. Okay? I’ll give you the full written list later.”
Dupree nodded. “Okay. How much will that lot cost?”
"About a thousand pounds. This is how you buy it. Take the Yellow Pages telephone directory, and under Surplus Stores you’ll find over a dozen shops and stockists. Get the jackets, blouses, belts, berets, webbing harnesses, knapsacks, haversacks, and boots at different shops, placing one order at each. Pay cash and take the purchase away with you. Don’t give your real name—not that anyone should ask it—and don’t leave a real address.
“When you have bought the stuff, store it in a normal storage warehouse, have it crated for export, and contact four separate freight agents accustomed to handling export shipments. Pay them to send it in four separate consignments in bond to a shipping freight agent in Marseilles for collection by Mr. Jean-Baptiste Langarotti.”
“Which agent in Marseilles?” asked Dupree.
“We don’t know yet,” said Sha
Langarotti noted the address while Sha
“Ja
The three Europeans produced slips of paper from their pockets while Sha
In the blanks Sha
When he had finished, each man read his own letter and Sha
Last, he gave each £50 in cash to cover the forty-eight-hour stay in London and told them to meet him outside the door of his London bank at eleven the following morning.
When they had gone, he sat down and wrote a long letter to a man in Africa. He rang the writer, who, having checked by phone that it was in order to do so, gave him the African’s mailing address. That evening Sha
Martin Thorpe got his interview with Dr. Steinhofer at the Zwingli Bank just before lunch. Having been previously a
He presented the banker with the six application forms for numbered accounts. Each had been filled out in the required ma
Attached to each form were two other letters. One was a signed power of attorney, in which Messrs. Adams, Ball, Carter, Davies, Edwards, and Frost separately gave power of attorney to Mr. Martin Thorpe to operate the accounts in their names. The other was a letter signed by Sir James Manson, requesting Dr. Steinhofer to transfer to the accounts of each of his associates the sum of £50,000 from Sir James’s account.
Dr. Steinhofer was neither so gullible nor so new to the business of banking as not to suspect that the fact the names of the six “business associates” began with the first six letters of the alphabet was a remarkable coincidence. But he was quite able to believe that the possible nonexistence of the six nominees was not his business. If a wealthy British businessman chose to get around the tiresome rules of his own Companies Act, that was his own business. Besides, Dr. Steinhofer knew certain things about quite a number of City businessmen that would have created enough Department of Trade inquiries to keep that London ministry occupied for the rest of the century.