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Sha
“How long from the time I give you the money until shipment?” he asked.
“Madrid is quite slow in these matters. About forty days at the outside,” said the German.
Sha
While Schlinker was writing out the receipt, Sha
As Schlinker handed him his receipt, Sha
Schlinker smiled broadly. “I own it,” he said. “It is what I am best known for to the general public.”
And a damn good cover for holding a warehouse full of crates labeled “Danger of Explosion,” thought Sha
Schlinker glanced at the list. It included two rocket-launching tubes of the type used by coast guards to send up distress flares, ten rockets containing magnesium flares of maximum intensity and duration attached to parachutes, two penetrating foghorns powered by compressed-gas canisters, four sets of night binoculars, three fixed-crystal walkie-talkie sets with a range of not less than five miles, and five wrist compasses.
“Certainly,” he said. “I stock all these things.”
“I’d like to place an order for the list. As they are off the classification of arms, I assume there would be no problems with exporting them?”
“None at all. I can send them anywhere I want, particularly to a ship.”
“Good,” said Sha
Schlinker went through his catalogue and priced the list, adding on 10 per cent for freight. “Four thousand, eight hundred dollars,” he said.
“I’ll be in touch with you in twelve days,” said Sha
He met his second contact for di
Most of them had been paid for by the Americans, but Baker was content to use his knowledge of German and commando tactics to slip quantities of arms to them and take a hefty salary check from the Americans for doing so. When these groups finally petered out, he found himself in Tangier in the early 1950s, using the smuggling talents he had learned in the war and after it to bring cargoes of perfume and cigarettes into Italy and Spain from the then international and free port on the north coast of Morocco. Finally put out of business by the bombing and sinking of his ship in a gangland feud, he had returned to Germany and gone into the business of wheeler-dealing in any commodity that had a buyer and a supplier. His most recent feat had been to negotiate a deal in Yugoslav arms on behalf of the Basques in northern Spain.
He and Sha
The short, wiry man listened quietly while Sha
“Yes, it can be done,” he said when Sha
“What’s that?”
“End User Certificate,” said Baker. “I used to have a man in Bo
“Are the Yugoslavs particular about End Users?”
Baker shook his head. “Nope. So long as the documentation is in order, they don’t check further. But there has to be a certificate, and it must have the right governmental stamp on it. They can’t afford to be too slack, after all.”
Sha
“If I could get you one, a good one, from an African country? Would that work?” he asked.
Baker inhaled on his cigar. “No problem at all,” he said. “As for the price, a sixty-mm. mortar tube would run you eleven hundred dollars each. Say, twenty-two hundred for the pair. The bombs are twenty-four dollars each. The only problem with your order is that the sums are really too small. Couldn’t you up the number of mortar bombs from a hundred to three hundred? It would make things much easier. No one throws off just a hundred bombs, not even for test purposes.”
“All right,” said Sha
It did not come off his cut, for he had allowed a margin for overexpenditure, and his own salary was secure. But he knew Baker would accept the argument as final.
“Good,” said Baker. “So that’s seventy-two hundred dollars for the bombs. The bazookas cost a thousand dollars each, two thousand for the pair. The rockets are forty-two dollars and fifty cents each. The forty you want come out at… let’s see . ..”
“Seventeen hundred dollars,” said Sha
“Plus ten per cent for getting the stuff free on board your ship, Cat. Without the End User Certificate. If I could have got one for you, it would have been twenty per cent. Let’s face it, it’s a tiny order, but the traveling and out-of-pocket expenses for me are constants. I ought to charge you fifteen per cent for such a small order. So the total is fourteen thousand, four hundred dollars. Let’s say fourteen and a half, eh?”
“We’ll say fourteen four,” said Sha