Deaken's War Page 4

  “1 won’t argue with you,” said Levy. “There’s no purpose in it.”

  He summoned Leiberwitz to escort Azziz back to his room. He took Karen himself. At the bedroom door he said, “I know you came away from Geneva with nothing. I don’t want you to be embarrassed—if there’s anything you need … anything personal, make a list and I’ll get it for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Even underwear,” he said. “I’ll get it myself.”

  She thought he was more discomfited than she was.

  “Don’t be afraid, about the men I mean,” he said. “You won’t be troubled.”

  “Thank you,” she said again.

  “I wanted you to know.”

  “This isn’t what I expected,” she said.

  “Nor me,” admitted the man.

  5

  The Scheherazade was arranged like a gaudy ornament on the skyline, lit brilliantly overall; there was even some form of underwater illumination so that the hull was visible along its entire length. Because of the lighting, Deaken had seen the tender cream away from the side of the vessel while he was still linked by radio telephone from the harbour master’s office to Adnan Azziz. Away from the yacht, it merged into the blackness of the intervening sea. Deaken became conscious of the telephone bank and hurried to it; the number he had been given earlier that day in Geneva was the second box from the left. He looked hard at it, then lifted the receiver. Nothing appeared wrong with it. He turned back towards the most obvious quay steps. Almost at once, the tender emerged from the darkness; there appeared to be a crew of three and a man in civilian clothes. As Deaken looked the man stood up and moved to the side of the vessel that was being brought against the harbour edge. Grey-haired, thin almost to the point of gauntness, official-looking, thought Deaken. He waved unthinkingly, self-consciously stopping the gesture half completed. There was no response from the tender. Two crewmen fended off, making no attempt to secure. The helmsman kept the boat expertly in place by reverse and forward thrusts of the engine.

  “Deaken?” said the man in the suit.

  “Yes.”

  “Grearson. Mr Azziz’s attorney.”

  Deaken stepped awkwardly into the boat. At once it moved away, putting him further off balance. Deaken held a side rail and offered his hand. Grearson looked as if it were holding something offensive.

  In silence they travelled towards the Scheherazade. They were so close it seemed to dominate the skyline now. Deaken thought it looked more like a liner than a yacht. There was a stepped walkway, wider than stairs in normal houses, let down from the side, with a flat landing stage at the bottom, three feet above the lifting sea. The tender coasted perfectly alongside. Deaken followed the other lawyer out as awkwardly as he had boarded; as he climbed he saw the davit hawsers dangling ahead, ready to lift the tender. The winch had whined into operation by the time he gained the deck. Deaken looked around expectantly but, apart from the crew waiting to ease the tender into its cradle, it was deserted.

  “This way,” said Grearson.

  Deaken followed obediently, aware of a clumsiness in the other man’s walk: it was not a limp, more the cautious stiffness of someone nervous of pain. As soon as Deaken went inside the yacht, he was aware of the smell. Cigars, clearly, and perhaps perfume or incense. Combined, it was an odour of richness, luxurious richness. The inner companionways were deeply carpeted and the panelling a dark, heavy mahogany. Where there was metalwork, it gleamed from constant polishing. The companionway led to a landing that crossed the width of the ship and from it, in a double-sided descent of steps, ran a stairway that reminded Deaken of the circle approach in a cinema or theatre. It was, indeed, an approach culminating not in walkways along a lower deck but in a large set of double-fronted doors, highly polished and dark wood again. Grearson, who was still in front, knocked and entered immediately, leaving the door open for Deaken to follow.

  The young lawyer stopped just inside the door. Only the roundness of the portholes showed they were aboard a ship. Deaken guessed a hundred people could have gathered in the stateroom here for a reception without the slightest impression of overcrowding. Padded seating, in white leather, around the bulkheads was broken intermittently by tables from which flowers spilled in profusion. There were larger easy chairs and couches, again in masculine leather, arranged around the room, and two small writing bureaux with a third, lower table upon which were grouped four telephones. There was no colour differentiation; they were all white. To Deaken’s immediate left there was a bar area, with a steward in attendance, a glitter of glass and chrome and four high-legged chairs. The carpeting throughout the entire area was white and long-tufted.

  The man who stood waiting in the middle of the room dominated it, not because of his height and barrel body but from the way he held himself. When he was young, Deaken had attended government and diplomatic functions with his father and seen the same demeanour: it was always from politicians or leaders who were long established, who considered themselves unchallengeable.

  The man was as severely dressed as the American lawyer, in a dark grey, single-breasted suit in some material that shone slightly, but not from overwear. It was probably silk. Like everything, it went with the perfume of wealth.

  “I am Adnan Azziz,” he said. The English was entirely without accent.

  “Richard Deaken.”

  “Yes.” The voice was expressionless, neither hostile nor friendly.

  “There’s a mistake,” said Deaken desperately. “A misunderstanding …”

  “We’ve obeyed your instructions,” cut in Azziz. “Tell me what you want.”

  “They are not my instructions,” exclaimed Deaken.

  “I want my son back, unharmed,” said Azziz.

  Deaken was overwhelmed by a feeling of inadequacy. He was aware of his concertinaed, bagged suit and a collar that his tie didn’t fit properly, the tie that Karen had tried to adjust for him that morning, the last time she had touched him and of his fly-away hair and of the stickiness of his skin, where he had sweated in fear of Underberg and then because he had travelled too far too fast on overheated aircraft and was confronting people he didn’t want to meet. God, he thought; oh dear God!

  “They’ve taken my wife,” he said simply.

  Neither man facing him made any response.

  “Didn’t you hear what 1 said!” demanded Deaken. “They’ve kidnapped my wife. This morning. To make me do this … come here …”

  Azziz looked sideways to Grearson.

  “I said we knew about you,” repeated the American lawyer. He reached to one of the small tables and picked up what appeared to be a telex printout. “You were considered a radical at Rand University,” he said. “After qualifying in international law you were actively involved with subversive movements …” He looked up. “Became famous through it,” he said.

  Deaken closed his eyes against the catalogue. It was like a criminal record, a list of previous convictions to be presented at every opportunity.

  “No more,” he said wearily. “I’m married now. Trying to establish a private practice …”

  “… in Geneva,” picked up Grearson, still consulting the paper and wanting to show Azziz how efficiently he had assembled the information from just the qualification initials after Deaken’s name on the photograph. “Operating there for a year.”

  “Listen,” said Deaken. “Please just listen.” Haltingly at first, anxious for some reaction from the blank, closed faces in front of him, Deaken recounted what had happened in Geneva, setting it out chronologically, as he would have done in court.

  “A shipment to Africa?” queried Azziz.

  “That’s what he said.”

  The Arab looked to his lawyer again. Grearson shook his head.

  “Surely you know about it?” insisted Deaken. “It’s for $50,000,000, for God’s sake!”

  “Which is a comparatively small amount,” said Azziz.

  “It could be a subsidiary sale,” said Gre
arson, talking to the Arab. “There would never have been an End-User certificate if it is going to Africa.”

  Deaken frowned between the two men.

  “Check it, tonight if you can” ordered Azziz.

  As Grearson moved to the telephone bank Azziz said to Deaken, “What’s your wife like?”

  “What?”

  “Describe her.”

  Inexplicably Deaken felt embarrassed. “Blonde,” he said. “She wears it short. Brown eyes. Doesn’t use a lot of makeup—doesn’t have to. Quite short, about five foot five. Slim, too.”

  From the table from which the lawyer had taken the telex sheet, the Arab handed Deaken a photograph. Deaken’s eyes flooded when he saw her and he blinked. She was holding herself stiffly upright, legs tightly together, shoulders squared. There was a school photograph of Karen like that, back in the apartment. Except that there she was smiling.

  “You knew,” said Deaken, looking up to Azziz.

  “Putting her in the picture doesn’t mean she’s a victim … it could have been done to support your story.”

  “Does she look like an accomplice?” said Deaken. “Look at it! Does she?”

  Azziz took the photograph back. “No,” he admitted after a pause.

  “I want her back safely,” said Deaken. “Just like you want your son back.”

  Azziz smiled, for the first time. “If all it means is stopping a small arms shipment, it’ll be easy.”

  At 2 A.M. the Bellicose cleared the Strait of Gibraltar. Edmunson was the officer of the watch. He ordered the freighter’s course twenty degrees to port and entered the reading in the rough log. He was conscious of the ship heaving in the more exposed North Atlantic, but knew from the forecast that the swell was moderate. If the weather held, it was going to be an easy, uneventful voyage.

  A thousand miles away, from the yacht in Monte Carlo harbour, Grearson put down the telephone from his fifth call.

  “France,” he announced to the waiting men.

  6

  They had only bothered with sandwiches and coffee, served and then immediately removed by hovering stewards. In the beginning Azziz and Grearson had talked across him but now they included him in the conversation and listened to his opinions.

  “Marseilles is convenient,” said the Arab.

  “Paris thinks the ship has left already; we shan’t know until the port office opens in the morning,” said Grearson.

  “1 thought you said you couldn’t ship direct,” said Deaken.

  Grearson hesitated. “The End-User certificate was arranged through Portugal,” he said.

  “The what?”

  “End-User certificate,” repeated the other lawyer. “It’s the official documentation, stipulating the destination of any shipment for the benefit of the authorities.”

  “How does it work for this consignment?”

  “They’ve been sold to a Portuguese arms company, with the Azores given as the port of unloading. During the voyage they will be resold to one of our other companies and the ship advised at sea of a different destination.”

  “And not more than one or two Portuguese officials know of the transaction?” anticipated Deaken.

  “It’s a system that works,” said Azziz. He looked attentively at Deaken as if expecting criticism. The South African said nothing.

  “I’m still not happy about excluding the authorities from the kidnap,” said Grearson, picking up the Polaroid photograph which lay between them and staring down at it.

  “I didn’t consider there was a choice,” said Deaken.

  “Nor I,” said Azziz.

  “But I think we could do more,” said Deaken, pleased as first one, then a jumble of ideas occurred to him. He reached forward for the picture. “Cornflowers and daisies,” he said, indicating the vases of flowers visible on the table and sideboard.

  “So what?” said Azziz.

  “Underberg’s appointment with me was for eleven. He was early, by fifteen minutes. The call came from Karen at about eleven thirty.… What time was the boy snatched?”

  “About eleven thirty,” said Azziz.

  Deaken nodded. “ ‘Just after you left,’ “ he recited. “That’s what Karen said, when she called. By the time they grabbed your son, they’d already had Karen for over an hour.”

  Grearson shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “The distance,” said Deaken. “They had to put the boy and Karen together. And Geneva is …” He paused, making a quick calculation. “… Over a hundred and fifty miles from Zurich.” He turned to Azziz. “I want a map. And compasses,” he said.

  The look of annoyance from Azziz, a man who normally gave orders and never took them, was momentary. He gave the instruction to a steward.

  Deaken smiled, happy with the way his mind was working at last—it had been a long time. To Grearson he said, “What’s the first thing the authorities would do, told of a kidnap like this?”

  The American lawyer didn’t reply immediately. Then he said, “Seal the borders.”

  “Right,” said Deaken.

  The steward returned with maps and compasses from the navigation room and handed them to Azziz. The Arab passed them immediately to Deaken.

  “They wouldn’t have taken any chances with the speed limit,” guessed Deaken. “That’s thirty-seven miles in the cities, sixty-two outside …” Deaken found the map and squinted over it. “Basel,” he said, looking up.

  “Why?” demanded Grearson.

  “A good road to the nearest crossing,” said Deaken. “Not more than five or six towns where they would have to slow. Let’s say they averaged fifty miles per hour. Zurich is fifty-three miles from Basel …” To Azziz he said, “How long were the bodyguards unconscious?”

  “They estimate an hour.”

  “Which fits. Just time for them to get across the border.”

  “There seems to be a lot of supposition,” protested Grearson.

  “Not too much,” insisted Deaken, poring over his maps. “If Tewfik was the important one, then Karen would have been taken north. There’s a motorway from Geneva to Lausanne and then again from Bern to Zürich. It would have been an extended route, but worth it for the speed. What time was the photograph delivered at the port office?”

  “Six,” said Grearson at once. “I checked. It was personally delivered, not part of the normal postal run …” Seeing the expectancy on Deaken’s face, Grearson said, “No, they couldn’t remember what the messenger looked like; there’s always a lot of activity in the office at that time of the evening. And there are frequently personal deliveries for Mr Azziz.”

  Deaken went back to his maps, of northern France now. “I was specifically told what flight to catch from Geneva. The reservation had already been made when Underberg gave me the ticket,” he said. “You had to be expecting me. So you had to have the photograph already. Too long by road … too uncertain. So it must have been flown down …” He shook his head. “I don’t think they’d have risked crossing back into Switzerland. If the alarm had been raised, the photograph would have been disastrous for them …” He stabbed the compass point into the map.

  “Strasbourg!” he said. “No borders to cross and a good airport … Why don’t we see if there was a flight from Strasbourg to Nice, say around five o’clock?”

  Azziz nodded at once and Grearson went back to the telephone. It took only nine minutes. “KLM 382,” he said. “From Strasbourg at 1400. Landed Nice at 1655, on schedule.”

  “Time even to get to Monte Carlo by public transport and avoid the risk of being remembered by a taxi driver.”

  “Still supposition,” insisted Grearson. “I agree they’d have got out of Switzerland as quickly as possible, but not that they would have gone north. That’s pure guesswork.”

  “Look,” said Deaken, gesturing around the room. “What do you see?”

  Grearson frowned about him, irritated at not being able to answer the question.

  “What?” he said.

&n
bsp; “Flowers!” said Deaken. “Every sort of flower, a lot of them subtropical.” He picked up the photograph of Karen and Tewfik Azziz. “Cornflowers,” he said. “Cornflowers and daisies. Nothing from the south.”

  “Tenuous,” said Grearson.

  “Can you do better?” said Deaken.

  Grearson looked away without replying.

  “The timing was tight.” Deaken addressed himself directly to Azziz. “A two P.M. departure from Strasbourg would have meant last-minute boarding by one forty-five. And they would have tried to avoid that, because of the risk of anyone remembering. If it took an hour to get to Basel and maybe another fifteen minutes to cross the border, that takes us to twelve thirty.” Deaken stopped, sure of his argument. “That’s all they did. Just crossed the border and stopped almost immediately for the photograph to be taken.” He scribbled a calculation on the map edge, equating his estimated timing with distance, then setting his compass. He used Zurich as the compass point, sweeping a half circle westwards on the map. It covered Sélestat to the north, Le Locle in the south, with Epinal at the westward bulge of the half circle. Deaken reversed the map for the men opposite, pushed it across the table towards them and said, “Somewhere there.”

  Azziz stared downwards for several moments and then said, “You’ve made it sound convincing.”

  “It’s a holiday place,” said Deaken. “A farm.”

  “Why?” said the Arab.

  “Look at the picture,” said Deaken. “It’s a communal room, like a lot of French farms. And the fireplace is a working one, with all the fittings for smoking. But look at the surround. It’s white, not blackened by fire or smoke. It hasn’t been used for a long time.”

  “Maybe,” agreed Azziz.

  “We’ve only their word that they’ll let them go,” said Deaken. “You’ve the resources. Why not inquire specifically around there. We could identify it from a brochure.”

  Azziz looked at Grearson. “We’ll do it,” he decided. “Fix it through Paris in the morning.” To Deaken he said, “They’re making contact at noon?”