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Baker would have liked it all in advance, but, not being a licensed dealer, he had no offices, warehouses, or business address as Schlinker had. He would act as broker, using another dealer he knew to make the actual purchase on his behalf. As a black-market man, he had to accept these terms, the lower cut, and less in advance.
One of the oldest tricks in the book is to promise to fulfill an arms order, show plenty of confidence, assure the customer of the broker’s absolute integrity, take the maximum in advance, and disappear. Many a black and brown seeker after arms in Europe has had that trick played on him. Baker knew Sha
“Okay. The moment I get your End User Certificate I’ll get straight onto it.”
They rose to leave.
“How long from the time you make your first approach until shipping date?” asked Sha
“About thirty to thirty-five days,” said Baker. “By the way, have you got a ship?”
“Not yet. You’ll need the name, I suppose. I’ll let you have it with the certificate.”
“If you haven’t, I know a very good one for charter. Two thousand German marks a day and all found. Crew, food, the lot. Take you and the cargo anywhere, and discreet as you like.”
Sha
A hundred and twenty thousand marks, or £15,000. Cheaper than buying one’s own ship. Tempting. But he objected to the idea of one man outside the operation controlling part of the arms deal and the ship, and being aware of the target as well. It would involve making Baker, or the man he would have to go to for the charter, virtually a partner.
“Yes,” he said cautiously. “What’s she called?”
“The San Andrea,” said Baker.
Sha
“That’s right.”
“Forget it,” he said shortly.
As they left the dining room, Sha
On the doorstep of the hotel he shook hands with Baker. “You’ll be hearing from me,” he said. “And don’t let me down.”
“Don’t worry, Cat. You can trust me,” said Baker. He turned and hurried off down the street.
“In a pig’s ear I can,” muttered Sha
On the way up to his room the face of the man he had seen dining with the German arms merchant stayed in his memory. He had seen the face somewhere but could not place it. As he was falling asleep it came to him. The man was the chief of staff of Provisional IRA.
The next morning, Wednesday, he flew back to London. It was the start of Day Nine.
13
Martin Thorpe stepped into Sir James Manson’s office about the time Cat Sha
“Lady Macallister,” he said by way of introduction, and Sir James waved him to a seat.
“I’ve been into her with a fine-tooth comb,” Thorpe went on. “As I suspected, she has twice been approached by people interested in buying her thirty-percent holding in Bormac Trading. It would seem each person used the wrong approach and got turned down. She’s eighty-six, halfway senile, and very tetchy. At least, that’s her reputation. She’s also broad Scottish and has all her affairs handled by a solicitor up in Dundee. Here’s my full report on her.”
He handed Sir James a buff folder, and the head of Manson Consolidated read it within a few minutes. He grunted several times and muttered, “Bloody hell,” once. When he had finished, he looked up. “I still want those three hundred thousand shares in Bormac,” he said. “You say the others went about it the wrong way. Why?”
“She would appear to have one obsession in life, and it’s not money. She’s rich in her own right. When she married, she was the daughter of a Scottish laird with more land than ready cash. The marriage was no doubt arranged between the families. After her old man died she inherited the lot, mile after mile of desolate moorland. But over the past twenty years the fishing and hunting rights have brought in a small fortune from city-dwelling sportsmen, and parcels of land sold off for industry have made even more. It’s been shrewdly invested by her broker, or whatever they call them up there. She has a nice income to live on. I suspect the other bidders offered a lot of money but nothing else. That would not interest her.”
“Then what the hell would?” asked Sir James.
“Look at paragraph two on the second page, Sir James. See what I mean? The notices in The Times every a
“Yes, yes, you may be right. So what do you propose?”
Thorpe outlined his idea, and Manson listened thoughtfully.
“It might work,” he said eventually. “Stranger things have happened. The trouble is, if you try it and she still refuses, you can hardly go back again with another offer couched in a different vein. But then, I suppose a pure cash offer would in any case get the same reaction the previous two proposals met. All right, play it your way. Just get her to sell those shares.”
With that, Thorpe was on his way.
Sha
Sha
Still using the telephone, he sent a telegram to the poste restante address of Endean under the name of Walter Harris, advising the project manager that he was back in London and would like to discuss something. Another telegram went to Ja
He rang his own Swiss bank and learned that of the salary for himself of £10,000, half that amount had been transferred to him, the credit having come from an u
Through the afternoon he typed out a full report of his Luxembourg and Hamburg trip, excluding the names of the firm of accountants in Luxembourg and the two arms dealers. To these sheets he attached a full statement of expenditure.
It was past four when he finished, and he had not eaten since the midmorning snack provided by Lufthansa on the flight from Hamburg. He found half a dozen eggs in the refrigerator, made a complete mess of an omelet, threw it away, and had a nap.
The arrival of Ja