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His lights picked up the army jeep keeping station to a covered 8-ton truck, and as he swept past he noted the name on the truck’s side. It was the name of the trucking company Schlinker had given him. Driving ahead of the truck was another army vehicle, a four-door sedan, evidently with an officer sitting alone in the back. Sha
At Valencia he took the ring road around the sleeping city, following the signs to the E26 highway to Barcelona. The motorway ran out just north of Valencia, and he was back to crawling behind orange trucks and early farm vehicles, past ’the miraculous Roman fortress of Sagunto, hacked by the legionaries out of the living rock and later converted by the Moors into a citadel of Islam. He drove into Castellan just after four and followed the signs labelled PUERTO.
The port of Castellan lies three miles from the main town, down a narrow, arrow-straight road that leads from the city to the sea. At the end of the road it is impossible to miss the port and harbor, for there is nothing else there.
As usual with Mediterranean ports, there are three separate harbors, one for freighters, one for yachts and pleasure craft, and one for fishing vessels. In Castellan the commercial port lies to the left as one faces the sea, and like all Spanish ports is ringed by a fence, and the gates are ma
Sha
He was at the main gate at quarter to six, smiled and nodded at the Guardia Civil sentry, who stared coldly back. In the rising sunlight he could see the army staff car, truck, and jeep, with seven or eight soldiers milling around them, parked a hundred yards away. At 6:10 a civilian car arrived, parked next to the gate, and sounded its horn. A small, dapper Spaniard climbed out. Sha
“Sevor Moscar?”
“Si.”
“My name’s Brown. I’m the seaman who’s got to join his ship here.”
The Spaniard puckered his brows. “Por favor? Que?”
“Brown,” insisted Sha
The Spaniard’s face lightened. “Ah, si. El marinero. Come, please.”
The gate had been opened, and Moscar showed his pass. He babbled for several seconds at the guard and the customs man who had opened the gate, and pointed at Sha
The search started at nine. There was no warning. The captain’s manifest had been presented and checked out. It was perfectly in order. Down on the quay the truck from Madrid was parked, along with the car and the jeep. The army escort captain, a thin, sallow man with a face like a Moor’s and a lipless mouth, consulted with two customs officers. Then the latter came aboard. Moscar followed. They checked the cargo to make sure it was what the manifest said and no more. They peered into nooks and cra
At half past noon the Toscana slipped out of Castellan harbor and turned her helm south to Cape San Antonio. Cat Sha
Carl Waldenberg came up behind him. “That’s the last stop?” he asked.
“The last where we have to open our hatches,” said Sha
“I’ve only got charts as far as the Strait of Gibraltar,” objected Waldenberg.
Sha
As the captain left to return to his cabin and start to plot his course and speed, Sha
Anyone listening would have heard another sound amid their screaming, the sound of a man whistling “Spanish Harlem.”
Far away to the north, another ship slipped her moorings and under the guidance of a port pilot eased her way out of the harbor of Archangel. The motor vessel Komarov was only ten years old and something over five thousand tons.
Inside her bridge, the atmosphere was warm and cosy. The captain and the pilot stood side by side, staring forward as the quays and warehouses slipped past to her port side, and watching the cha
In the stern two men leaned over the rail beneath the flag with the hammer-and-sickle emblem and watched the Russian Arctic port slip past. Dr. Ivanov clipped the crushed cardboard filter of his black cigarette between his teeth and sniffed the crisp, salt-caked air. Both men were wrapped against the cold, for even in June the wind off the White Sea is no invitation to shirtsleeves. By his side, one of his technicians, younger, eager for his first trip abroad, turned to him.
“Comrade Doctor,” he began.
Ivanov took the stump of the Papiross from his teeth and flicked it into the foaming wake. “My friend,” he said, “I think, as we are now aboard, you can call me Mikhail Mikhailovich.”
“But at the institute—”
“We are not at the institute. We are on board a ship. And we will be in fairly close confinement either here or in the jungle for months to come.”
“I see,” said the younger man, but he was not to be repressed. “Have you ever been to Zangaro before?”
“No,” said his superior.
“But to Africa,” insisted the younger man.
“To Ghana, yes.”