Year of the Golden Ape Read online

  Nor was it likely that the police would visit the building on Dusquesne Street for the next few months, because LeCat had taken a year's lease on the premises. After checking the place personally the following morning, LeCat locked it up and went back to the trawler with Dupont.

  The cognac has been delivered.

  LeCat cabled the message to an address in Paris from where it was sent by a devious route to Sheikh Gamal Tafak who was at that moment at Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia. For 'cognac' Tafak read the phrase 'nuclear device'. Earlier he had received two other similarly cryptic messages from LeCat, one reporting the 'death' of Antoine in Nantes, the other confirming the seizure of the plutonium canister. The day after he had sent his latest message, LeCat flew back to Europe. It was November, time to bring the Englishman, Winter, into his stage of the operation.

  4

  Winter.

  The background of the English adventurer with whom LeCat had previously worked for two years was totally unknown. He had appeared in the Mediterranean one day, materialising out of nowhere, a man looking for a job which paid well, where the rewards would be tax-free, a job with a hint of excitement to ward off the boredom which was always threatening to assail him. He had first met LeCat in Tangier.

  No one ever knew his real name, and no one ever came close enough to call him by his first name, whatever that might have been. In the Mediterranean underworld where this Englishmanearned his living he was simply known as Winter.

  Over six feet tall, in his early thirties, he was lightly built and walked with a brisk step. There was a coldness in his steady brown eyes his associates found disconcerting, an aloofness of manner which discouraged any attempt at intimacy, but within a few minutes of first meeting him, people formed the impression that this glacial Englishman was clever. His personality had a certain hypnotic effect; an adventurer, he always seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

  At that time LeCat was looking for a partner he could trust, which automatically ruled out all his previous associates. And Winter had reduced the problem the Frenchman outlined to its bones in a few words. 'You want to smuggle cigarettes from Tangier to Naples? Forget powerboats and yachts - everyone uses them. Be different - use a trawler.'

  'A trawler?' LeCat had been staggered as they drank wine in a bar overlooking Tangier harbour. 'This is crazy - a trawler has no speed. Anyone can catch you.'

  'If they are looking for you ...'

  Winter worked it out for LeCat inside ten minutes, the new twist to cigarette smuggling which proved so profitable. The Italian police and security services knew exactly what type of vessel to look for - as LeCat had said, you used a power-boat or ,a fast yacht. Winter proposed obtaining a 1,000-ton trawler, a vessel where a large consignment of cigarettes, say as much as one hundred tons, could easily be hidden under eight hundred tons of fish.

  No attempt would be made to get the consignment ashore in the dark from small boats, the normal technique - instead they would sail into Naples in broad daylight as a bona-fide fishing vessel. Who would suspect a trawler? As everyone knew, for smuggling you needed a fast boat . . .

  When Winter raised the question of finance, LeCat admitted he was an agent for the French Syndicate, a group of Marseilles businessmen who were not always over-concerned with legality. In a very short time LeCat purchased a 1,000-ton trawler, Pêcheur, with funds provided by the French Syndicate, and the crew of so-called fishermen were largely made up of LeCat's ex-OAS terrorist friends. The smuggling operation proved highly profitable - until the Italian Syndicate began making menacing noises.

  'One night these people will meet us off the Naples coast,' LeCat warned. 'They think we are poaching on their preserve. And their method of discouraging opposition is likely to be swift and permanent ...'

  Again Winter worked out a plan while they sat at a table in the bar overlooking Tangier harbour. The idea was submitted to the French Syndicate whose top men were impressed once more by Winter's plan, a little too impressed for LeCat's liking. By this time the Englishman had organised the smuggling out of Italy on the return trips to Tangier, valuable works of art stolen from Italy. These paintings fetched high prices from certain American and Japanese millionaires.

  Winter had the foremast removed from the trawler and a platform built over one of the three fish-holds. On this platform an Alouette helicopter could land and take off with ease. LeCat grumbled about the expense, but the French Syndicate chiefs over-ruled him, which did not increase his affection for Winter.

  The Pêcheur made further trips to Naples without incident. No one was worried about the presence of the helicopter on the main deck after Winter had casually mentioned to an Italian Customs man that this was the new fishing technique - the helicopter was used to seek out fish shoals from the air. Then the rival smuggling organisation, the Italian Syndicate, struck.

  The Pêcheur was within twenty miles of the Italian coastline when Winter saw through field-glasses a powerful motor vessel approaching at speed. It was full of armed men and made no reply to Pêcheur's wireless signals. Winter, a skilled pilot - no one ever knew where he acquired the skill - took off in the machine with the most resourceful of LeCat's ex-OAS associates, Andre Dupont. Flying over the Italian Syndicate vessel the first time, Dupont dropped smoke bombs on its deck. On the second run, while Winter held the machine in a steady hover barely fifty feet above the smoke-obscured deck, Dupont dropped two thermite bombs. The vessel was ablaze within seconds; within minutes the armed smugglers had taken to their small boats. When Winter landed again on the Pêcheur he had to exert the whole force of his personality to stop LeCat ramming the helpless boatloads of men. The Frenchman was giving the order to the Pêcheur's captain as Winter came back on to the bridge.

  'Change course! Head straight for them! Ram them!' 'Maintain previous course,' Winter told the captain quietly. 'The object of the exercise,' he informed LeCat, 'is to let them see it is unprofitable to tangle with us. Those people are Sicilians - kill them and you start a vendetta. They'll have enough trouble getting home as it is.' He started walking off the bridge, then turned at the doorway to speak to the captain. 'If you don't maintain course,' he said pleasantly, 'I'll break your arm . ,.'

  The incident was significant on two counts. It set a precedent Winter was later to utilise on a far vaster scale, and it pointed up the vast chasm that opened between LeCat and Winter where human life was concerned. To the Englishman, killing was abhorrent, to be avoided at all costs unless absolutely unavoidable. To the Frenchman it was a way of life, something you did with as little compunction as cleaning your teeth.

  A few months later, sensing that so much success could not continue for ever, Winter withdrew from the smuggling operation. Settling himself in Tangier, he proceeded to enjoy the profits he had made; staying at one of the two best hotels, he shared his luxury suite with first an English girl, later with a Canadian girl. To both of them he explained at the outset that marriage was an excellent arrangement for other people, and it was while he was relaxing that the first oil crisis burst on the world in 1973.

  Winter observed with some cynicism the way the Arab sheikhs ordered Europe about, telling foreign ministers what they could and could not have, and he admired their gall. What he did not admire was world reaction, the scramble for oil at any price, and personally he would have dealt with the new overlords in a very different manner.

  His judgement that the smuggling operation could not last for ever was vindicated when LeCat, having extended the operation to the south coast of France, was caught with a consignment in Marseilles. He was arrested, but only after a flying chase through the streets of the city when he managed to break the leg of one gendarme and fracture the skull of another. He was tried, given a long prison sentence and incarcerated in the Santé in Paris. Later, Winter heard the Frenchman had been released in mysterious circumstances. He shrugged his shoulders, never expecting to see LeCat again.

  Winter, who knew his Mediterranean, did hear that the Pêcheur which put out to sea before LeCat's arrest, later sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar for an unknown destination. What he did not know was that LeCat, using Arab funds this time, had bought the vessel off the French Syndicate. The trawler made the long Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean, passed through the Panama Canal, and then made its way up the Californian coast to the port of Victoria in Canada. It had been anchored in Canadian waters less than a month when the approach was made to Winter.

  For several weeks Winter had known he was being watched. He made a few discreet enquiries, a little money changed hands. He learned that the men who shadowed him were Arabs, and since he had never done anything to arouse Arab hostility, he assumed someone was considering making him a proposition. The name of Ahmed Riad was mentioned.

  Riad, he had heard, had some link with Sheikh Gamal Tafak, although they had never been seen together in public. By this time Winter's opinion of the West was simple and brutal: it had lost the will to survive. When the sheikhs first cut off the oil the West depended on for its very existence, the European so-called leaders had panicked, scuttling round like headless chickens in a desperate attempt to scoop up all the oil they could find, paying any price the sheikhs cared to fix at their OAPEC (Organisation of Arab Petrol-Exporting Countries) meetings, receiving the sheikhs in their various capitals like Lords of Creation. Seeing the writing on the wall, Winter took his decision - he must make one great financial killing and get to hell out of it.

  One million dollars was the sum he had decided on - even with inflation it should last out for the rest of his life. And in the 1970's that kind of money could come from only one source - from the sheikhs themselves. So when Ahmed Riad met him in November, Winter was more than receptive to his approach - providing Riad would pay him one million dollars. From where Riad sat on the Tangier rooftop, Winter appeared to be anything but receptive after thirty minutes' discussion.

  'You are asking me to undertake an operation most men would find impossible, Riad,' Winter said coldly.

  Riad, wearing western clothes, was a hard-faced, plump little man with sweat patches under the armpits of his linen suit. He sat facing the sun, an arrangement Winter manoeuvred by the simple process of hauling out a certain chair when the Arab arrived. It was not only the heat which was making him sweat: he was uncomfortable in the presence of the Englishman.

  Earlier Winter had compelled him to explain what was needed by refusing to discuss terms until he knew exactly what he had to do. Riad had lied convincingly, assuring Winter he would be in complete command of the operation, that LeCat, who had already been approached, would be his subordinate. The plan was, he said, to bring pressure on Britain and America to stop more arms being sent to Israel. A British ship would be hi-jacked off the West Coast of America, would be taken to an American port, and there the demand that no more arms be sent to Israel would be made. The British crew of the seized ship would be hostages until the demand was met.

  It was a shrewd piece of power-play, Winter saw at once. The Americans would hesitate to take a strong line with the lives of another country's men apparently at stake - and if they tried to take a strong line the British government would intervene. 'There is, of course, no question of actually harming the hostages . . .' Riad went on. And this, too, made sense: certain Arab statesmen were trying to drive a wedge in between Britain and America, so the last thing they would wish to do would be to antagonise Britain.

  'Your idea - LeCat's idea- of how to hi-jack a ship is, of course, a joke,' Winter pointed out at one stage. He outlined his own idea which had occurred to him while he was listening. The flicker in Riad's eyes told Winter he had just scored a major point. This was the moment when he told the Arab, 'You are asking me to undertake an operation most men would find impossible ... so the fee must be reasonable,' Winter continued.

  'Reasonable?' Riad blinked in the sun. They had said this man was a hard negotiator.

  'From my point of view,' Winter said coldly. 'Otherwise it is not worth the risk. The fee for my controlling this operation will be one million dollars.'

  'It is quite impossible,' Riad repeated, sinking back slowly into his chair. 'We could not even discuss a sum like that...'

  'I agree. I'm not prepared to discuss it myself. Accept it - or forget the whole idea.'

  'You insult me . . .' Riad was perched at the edge of his chair as though on the verge of imminent departure. 'You are like all Westerners used to be - before they discovered they would die without oil, our oil...'

  'It's not your oil. Your ancestors just happened to pitch their tents in the right place. We had to find and dig it out for you.' Winter poured some more black coffee and then left the pot in the middle of the table. 'If you want more coffee, there's some in the pot...'

  They must need me badly he was thinking. Arab pride had lately become overweening; had, in fact, reached the stage where only Arab pride existed as far as the sheikhs were concerned. A dangerous combination - supreme economic power allied with fierce pride. Couldn't the West see this ?

  'We are prepared to pay you a fortune for your cooperation,' Riad said stiffly. 'We are prepared to pay you the sum of six hundred thousand dollars. Not one cent more.'

  'If you think my figure of one million is negotiable, forget it.' Winter's manner was icy and Riad, who had been staring into the unblinking brown eyes, looked away. To Riad, a shrewd man, it was beginning to get through: Winter meant what he said.

  'You cannot fix the figure just like that,' the Arab said with a show of spirit. 'We are employing you! It is up to us to fix the fee...'

  paused as the Arab's eyes flickered at the implication that he might be short of funds. 'On the other hand, I don't believe you. To your masters one million is something they could lose on the way to the bank and not bother to go back for —'

  The viciousness of the outburst startled Riad. He had the feeling that Winter himself was about to leave the rooftop, and Riad was horribly conscious of Gamal Tafak's last words to him.

  'We need that Englishman, Ahmed - an Englishman can operate in the West without suspicion. Our own spies watching oil movements are shadowed everywhere by Western security services. And it is a British ship which must be involved. You must persuade him - if you have to negotiate for a week and in the end offer him the full amount...'

  A week ? They had been sitting on this rooftop for little more than half an hour and already Riad was trembling inwardly with fury and fear - fury at the way he was being treated, fear at the thought he might lose the Englishman.

  'You can indeed . . .' Winter stubbed out his cigarette in the saucer. 'And you can catch the first plane back to Jeddah and tell them you have failed.'

  Winter glanced at him without speaking - to show how absurd he thought the idea was.

  Winter glanced at his watch, took out his wallet and put money on the table to pay for the coffee.

  Arrangements were concluded about payment into a Beirut bank; Winter was quite certain that no bank in the western world would be safe, once this operation was concluded. He was provided with one hundred thousand dollars for immediate expenses, given a Paris number where he could contact LeCat. He flew to Paris the next day.

  On November 3 he spent an acrimonious morning with the ex-OAS terrorist in a Left Bank flat, tearing up all LeCat's plans and substituting his own. LeCat, a clever and resourceful man when working to a plan put before him, was not capable of originating the plan itself. 'You are playing at pirates,' Winter told him roughly when the Frenchman pushed his own plan for seizing a British cargo ship - plenty of them called at Victoria in Canada and sailed away again. 'This idea of yours of colliding with a vessel at sea is pure moonshine. In any case, the vessel we hi-jack must be an oil tanker. It has a compact crew, about thirty men, ample fuel supplies aboard, but above all it provides a platform we can land the helicopter on while the tanker is at sea ...'

  Winter checked over the terrorist team LeCat had assembled, which included a number of men he had known during the Pêcheur's smuggling operation days. He didn't like some of them, vicious thugs who would have done better to die in Algeria, but it was too late to start switching things around: zero hour for the hi-jack was January. 'Just make sure you keep them under control,' he told the Frenchman. 'No harm must come to the hostages.'

  'Riad has already told me that,' the Frenchman replied with his eyes half-closed.

  Winter left Paris the following day and flew to London. First he checked the transfer of twenty-five thousand dollars from a Paris bank to a City bank which he had arranged before leaving Paris. The money had arrived, he collected a cheque book, and armed with this he took a taxi to Mount Street where the Mayfair estate agents live. He found the property he was looking for in an agent's window, a glossy photograph advertised as 'Fine Old Manor House, East Anglia. Six Months' Lease'. After a brief discussion with the agent, he hired a car and drove to East Anglia where he put up for the night at King's Lynn.

  he had hoped, it was exactly what he wanted. The house itself, Cosgrove Manor, was surrounded with parkland, and the twenty acres of isolated grounds concealed it completely from the road. He concluded the deal at once, explaining that his family would be coming over from Australia in the next few weeks. The six months' rent he paid in advance with a cheque drawn on the London bank in the name of George Bingham.

  The following morning he drove back to London, reserved a room at Brown's Hotel in Albemarle Street, again in the name of George Bingham, and then took a cab to the world-famous shipping organisation, Lloyd's of London. Wearing a tweed suit and rimless glasses, he posed as a writer researching a book on the oil crisis.

  After making certain enquiries about shipping movements, he consulted the Shipping Register, a remarkable publication produced daily which records the present positions of all vessels at sea. It took him several hours to check on ships moving up and down the West Coast of America, but when he left the building he was fairly sure he had found his target ship. The following day he flew by Polar Route direct to Los Angeles, and there he caught another plane on to San Francisco.