Deaken's War Read online

  “Azziz has a good reputation, hasn’t he?”

  “Just general caution,” said Makimber.

  “We could still help.”

  “We’re grateful for everything you’ve done so far. It’s important, if we’re going to get independence, for it to be exactly that, independence.”

  Archetypal intellectual revolutionary, thought Underberg. Makimber could probably quote verbatim whole chunks of Marx and Engels and Lenin; maybe, if he wasn’t trying to be fashionable, even Stalin.

  “It’s good to know we remain friends.”

  “We always made it clear there was no question of endangering our relationship.”

  “It’s still a good assurance,” said Underberg.

  “It won’t take long,” said Makimber, gesturing towards the unloading. “Port office has it scheduled to sail at six.”

  “Are you going back to Angola?”

  “Benguela by tomorrow night. And if that’s not possible, then in through Lobito.”

  The quayside encounter had unsettled Makimber and he decided not to disclose his intention of checking the shipment through Dakar, just as he was ensuring its untroubled passage here in Madeira. It was a precaution; just as it had been a precaution to take photographs and attempt to create a file on Underberg. When Namibia was independent a proper intelligence system would be set up, not oppressive or brutal like all the others seemed to be. Just protective, to ensure there would be no danger to the properly and democratically elected government. “I’ve told you how important this is,” he said. “With what the ship is carrying we’re going to wake the world up to what those South African bastards are doing in our country.”

  Underberg wondered idly if Makimber already had his victory speech drafted; it would be full of rhetoric and artistic inference, he guessed. They always were, from this sort of man. Makimber would expect some reference to be made, he supposed. “We’d like to attend the celebrations,” he said.

  “You’ll be honoured guests,” said Makimber. “We don’t forget our friends.”

  Now it was Underberg who motioned towards the freighter. “You did there.”

  Makimber wearily shook his head at the other man’s tenacity. “That conversation goes round in circles,” he said. “No hard feelings?”

  “Of course not.”

  Makimber paused uncertainly. Then he said, “Will you and your people be there?”

  “I don’t know,” said Underberg. “Angola certainly.”

  “It might be better if you weren’t.”

  It was late when the Alouette brought Grearson back to the yacht. Deaken and Azziz had already played the tape recording through twice and the Palestinian secretary. Mitri, made a transcript while the three men ate. They dined properly this time, in the saloon, with laced linen and crystal. Deaken wondered if the women he had seen earlier in the day would join them, but the heavy mahogany table was only set for three places. It was a superb meal, salmon mousse and then duck. What would Karen be eating? thought Deaken. He pushed his plate aside, barely touched.

  “I hope Ortega isn’t going to be difficult,” said Grearson, setting out on the path he had rehearsed with Azziz at a private meeting before they had joined Deaken in, the dining room.

  “Ortega?” queried Deaken.

  “Hernandez Ortega,” explained the lawyer. “The Portuguese intermediary.”

  “It’s a book transaction, an arrangement?” Deaken said to Azziz, immediately alarmed.

  “Yes,” said the Arab.

  “So where’s the problem?”

  “A price had been already agreed for the repurchase,” said Grearson. “But I haven’t been able to contact Ortega all day. I think he wants more.”

  “How much more?” demanded Deaken.

  “We won’t know until we get hold of him.”

  “So the shipment isn’t yours!”

  “That’s why I was late back,” said Grearson. “I spent the afternoon trying to trace Ortega down in Lisbon. He wasn’t available.”

  “Purposely avoiding you?” queried Azziz.

  “I think so—it’s a tedious negotiating ploy.”

  Deaken looked sharply between the two men. To the Arab he said, “You don’t seem very concerned.”

  “Of course I’m concerned.”

  “You heard the tape,” pressed Deaken. “They’re impatient.”

  “Whatever Ortega wants, I’ll pay. You know that,” said Azziz.

  “But when?”

  “We’ve got forty-eight hours,” reminded Azziz. “It’ll be resolved by then.”

  “Everything?” pressed Deaken.

  “My son isn’t going to die, Mr Deaken,” said the Arab. “Neither is your wife.”

  Mitri came soft-footed into the dining saloon, halting just inside the door. He carried the recorder in one hand and in the other the transcript and several copies.

  “The stateroom,” decided Azziz, rising from the table.

  The two lawyers stood with him and filed behind the Arab into the adjoining room. They took their copies from the secretary and each read, in silence, for several minutes. Grearson finished first. He was nearest the recorder. He pressed the play button, listening to the two voices with his head bent over the typescript, as if he were checking its accuracy.

  “Bad,” judged Grearson, when the tape stopped. He snapped off the machine and stared at Deaken. “You handled it very badly.”

  “How else could I have handled it?” said Deaken, immediately knowing a dip in his new-found confidence.

  “You were told not to be subservient.”

  “I had nothing to argue with, no pressure.”

  “It should have been handled better,” insisted Grearson.

  “What would you have done?”

  “Not pleaded … not shown any desperation,” said the American at once.

  “I am desperate. They’ve had my wife for two days now.”

  “You won’t get her back by showing your weakness.”

  “Where’s the strength, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Arguing between ourselves is stupid,” said Azziz. To Deaken he said, “I think you could have been more forceful. I recognize the difficulty, but there should have been more force.”

  “What have you achieved?” fought back Deaken. “We’re no closer now to meeting their demands than we were twenty-four hours ago. You don’t even own the bloody stuff they want stopped. And what about trying to locate wherever it is they’re being held … what’s been done about that?”

  “I’ve briefed Paris,” said Grearson.

  “So they’ve had a whole day. What have they found out?”

  “We haven’t heard.”

  “Haven’t you called them?” said Deaken, outraged.

  “There’s no point in arguing,” repeated Azziz.

  “I agree I didn’t get anywhere,” conceded Deaken. “I wasn’t in a position to. But you tell me precisely what you’ve achieved? You’re doing the bare minimum and trying to look busy flying around in helicopters. If you couldn’t get Ortega to a telephone, why didn’t you go personally to Lisbon? You had the facilities.”

  “You’re right,” said Azziz. “Coming back here was an error of judgement.”

  “Why don’t I do what he should have done today?” said Deaken. “Let me go, with your full authority.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” said Grearson stiffly.

  “I want to know the stuff is back,” said Deaken. “I want to get that whole bloody thing over.”

  Azziz nodded. “Why not?” he said. “If you want involvement, then you can have it.”

  “I said I don’t think that’s necessary,” protested Grearson.

  “It’s decided,” said Azziz.

  As if on cue there was a sound at the door, which immediately opened. At first, because she was dressed, Deaken didn’t recognize the girl who had surprised him that morning on deck, staring down at the swimming pool. Carole was wearing white again, a plain white sh
eath with just a diamond pin on the right shoulder. The other girls waited complacently behind her.

  “You said ten,” Carole said to Azziz.

  “Quite right.” To Deaken Azziz said, “We’re going ashore, to the casino. Why not join us?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Deaken.

  “Suit yourself,” said Azziz.

  “Would you like me to stay?” Carole asked him directly.

  Deaken felt himself colouring. “No,” he said.

  She pouted, an expression of professional disappointment. “Sure?”

  “Positive.”

  At the top of the steps leading into the tender, Grearson said to Azziz, “It went the way you wanted. But I’m still not sure it’s a good idea letting him see Ortega.”

  “We’ll call Lisbon before he gets there.”

  “There’s a limit to what we can tell Ortega.”

  “We can tell him enough to make it sound convincing,” said Azziz. “And it’ll get the damned man out of my way. He irritates me.”

  From below, one of the girls called something up to them but neither heard. Azziz waved. “You sure about this mercenary fellow?”

  “He impressed me,” said the lawyer. “Let’s hope he impresses me,” said Azziz. Grearson looked down into the waiting tender. “I like the dark one,” he said.

  “Carole?”

  “If that’s her name.” “Then she’s yours,” said the Arab.

  In Brussels Harvey Evans replaced the telephone after almost eight hours of continuous use; because of the time difference, he had left America until last. If they kept their promises and flew in the following day, he had a unit. Not precisely the one he wanted but men he had worked with before and whose capabilities he knew. Evans stretched the cramp from his shoulders, dropped two cubes of ice into the Scotch and then stood at his apartment window, looking out over the rue des Alexiens. Evans believed in instinct and his instinct told him that this was going to be something good, damned good. He took a deep swallow of his drink. It had taken long enough.

  11

  Deaken felt satisfied, physically to be doing something. Apart from the brief, thirty-minute excursion to the quay-side telephone, he had been aboard the yacht for two days, and until the helicopter lifted him off and whirled away, just off land, he hadn’t realized how claustrophobic he had found it.

  Beneath him the coastline of the Riviera unrolled, as if on display for his benefit. It was early, just after six, and the Corniche was quiet, just an occasional car and once, near Antibes, what appeared to be an almost unmoving procession of three lorries, the large, trailer-drawing camions with chimneys just behind the cab spouting out black exhaust. The helicopter was low enough for him to make out the inscription on the sides; two road haulage, from different companies, and a chemical container. They seemed intrusive, like a blemish on a pretty face. Out to sea a tanker made its way eastward. Two yachts were moving in the same direction, both under sail, wakes zigzagged behind them as they tacked to catch the wind. It seemed early for such effort.

  Through the headset Deaken heard the pilot pick up instructions from Marseilles flight control. Almost at once he took the machine farther out from the land and then swung it to starboard, bringing them in directly from the sea. Deaken had expected to be put down in a separate section but realized as the helicopter made its final descent that he was only a hundred yards from an airliner. A group of people stood waiting, shielding themselves from the machine’s downdraft. Deaken got out, ducking low, the rotor blades still clopping above his head. There was an airline representative, a customs official and an immigration officer. The deference was obvious. The formalities were cursory and within minutes Deaken was being led to the waiting aircraft. He was conscious of other passengers already aboard, staring through the windows at his arrival. The first officer was waiting at the top of the steps, leading him immediately into the first-class section with the invitation, once they had taken off, to join them at any time on the flight deck. As Deaken fastened his safety belt, the steward came alongside with the drinks trolley.

  “I don’t drink at seven thirty in the morning,” refused Deaken.

  “Anything you want, just call, Mr Deaken,” said the man.

  They even knew his name, thought Deaken. So this was power. He wanted to despise it but couldn’t. He was flattered by it, he admitted to himself. Excited too. He ate a solicitously served breakfast and then, for politeness rather than because he wanted to, went onto the flight deck for the transit landing in Madrid. It enabled him to inquire about timing. They were on schedule, the captain told him: Lisbon arrival was 10:20.

  They were ten minutes early and he was ushered off first. Deaken had travelled only with a briefcase, so there was no luggage reclaim delay and he went through customs unchecked. The arrangement with Azziz before Deaken had left the Scheherazade was to telephone Ortega’s office to learn the result of the Arab’s contact while he was en route. If Ortega was there, an appointment would have been arranged; if not, his secretary would pass on an alternative location. The response was quick when he dialled the number, the language conveniently moving into English when he identified himself. Mr Ortega was expecting him at eleven.

  After the frustration of the previous forty-eight hours, it was proving remarkably easy, thought Deaken; almost too easy. He hoped it was not a bad omen.

  He actually enjoyed the drive from the airport, locating the silver thread of the Tagus River looping out to the Atlantic as the taxi topped one of the enclosing hills of Lisbon. He had never been to the Portuguese capital. It had the slightly declining, faded atmosphere of a once great and important place shunted aside by circumstance, like a dowager of a lost fortune forced to wear the patched clothes of a previous age. Deaken liked it. He thought it was a nicely packaged, easily manageable city, with a lot of churches and black-shawled women, and statues of warriors on horseback looking into the distance for something to capture.

  Ortega’s office was in an area of tightly packed streets, on the rua da Assunc,ao. After the opulence of the past two days. Deaken had expected it to be an impressive place, perhaps occupying an entire building, and to be at least as imposing as the smoked-glass, ground-floor suites which he hurried past every day on his way to the garret on the avenue Pictet de Rochemont in Geneva. It wasn’t. A second-floor warren of rooms was reached by a not particularly clean set of stairs, to a waiting area, a secretary’s annexe leading to Ortega’s sanctum at the end of a small corridor. The carpeting began here, dramatically improving in quality beyond Ortega’s door. There was a large desk, elaborately carved and brass inlaid, leather furniture, including a matching couch, and a side table supporting the model of a propeller-driven aircraft which Deaken couldn’t identify. One wall was occupied by a map of the world and another dominated by the photograph of a man in a grey lounge suit and a lapel full of medals.

  Ortega stood but didn’t come forward to greet his visitor. The Portuguese was a small, dapper man; the white summer suit immaculate, the pink silk pocket handkerchief complementing the pink silk tie. He smiled when they shook hands and Deaken saw both the man’s eye-teeth were gold. It was a peculiar affectation—a rich vampire, thought Deaken.

  “You’ll be with Grearson’s department?” said Ortega.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Deaken.

  Ortega gestured Deaken to a chair in front of the desk and seated himself. Instead of increasing his stature, which Deaken guessed was the intention, the size of the desk made Ortega look more diminutive.

  “There were no difficulties with the shipment leaving France?” Ortega raised an immaculate eyebrow.

  “So I understand,” said Deaken. The man was presenting his references.

  “Or at Madeira.”

  Deaken concealed his lack of knowledge. “Sailed satisfactorily?”

  “Five thirty this morning,” said Ortega. “As I knew it would; I’ve never had trouble there.”

  “Mr Azziz is grateful; he asked
me to tell you that.” He hadn’t but Deaken had never found flattery a drawback.

  Ortega smiled his gold-tipped smile.

  “It’s an important cargo,” he said, still bargaining.

  “Aren’t they all?” said Deaken. For the first time he was on something like an even footing, although he hadn’t known about Madeira and wondered what else there was to learn.

  “Africa’s a good market,” said Ortega. “More money available there than in South America and they’re prepared to spend it, for the right material.”

  “My involvement usually begins after the deals have been struck,” lured Deaken. “And, as you said, I’m new.”

  “Big enough for country agencies to get involved,” said Ortega, adopting the lecturer’s pose towards which Deaken had hoped he would move. “Great Britain is in there. France. So’s America. Russia is particularly active: once there’s a big sale, then there’s dependence for spares and ammunition and the purchaser becomes a client state.”

  “With national agencies involved, it must make it all the more difficult for independents,” said Deaken.

  “That’s where Azziz has the advantage over the rest of us,” said Ortega. “He’s independent but he’s understood to have Saudi Arabian backing, real or otherwise—he’s got the best of both worlds.”

  And appears to enjoy it, thought Deaken. He wondered if Carole had slept with Azziz the previous night, and felt immediately irritated by himself. Why should it matter to him? “There should be no difficulty after Madeira,” he continued, still searching.

  Ortega looked down at the papers in front of him again.

  “Dakar by Saturday,” he said. The smile flashed again. “But then that’s nothing to do with me, is it?”

  “As I said, Mr Azziz is extremely grateful.”

  “Which is why you’re here.”

  “A percentage was agreed, I believe?” said Deaken. Although there was no limit, he didn’t want to concede any more than he had to. Azziz had accused him of panic the previous day. Did Azziz’s opinion matter, any more than his bedmate? Why the hell couldn’t he dispel the inferiority complex?