“You’re lying to me, Sass-man, and I don’t like it. I’ve heard this just-doing-my-research story before. You see, we Irish are a very literary people. And some of the questions you have been asking are not literary at all. So what are you doing here?”
“Thrillers,” wheezed Rowse. “Thrillers nowadays have to be accurate. Can’t get away with vague generalizations. Look at le Carré, Clancy—you think they don’t research every last detail? It’s the only way nowadays.”
“Is it now? And a certain gentleman from across the water that you were talking with last night—he one of your co-writers?”
“That’s between us. You’d better ask him.”
“Oh, I did, Sass-man. This morning, by phone. And he asked me to keep an eye on you. If it were left to me, I’d have the lads drop you off a very tall mountain. But my friend asked me to keep an eye on you. Which I will do, day and night, until you leave. But that was all he asked me. So just between us, here’s a little something for the old times.”
Kane and O’Herlihy waded in. Mahoney watched. When Rowse’s legs gave way, he went down to the floor, doubling up, protecting the lower stomach and genitals. He was too low for a good punch, so they used the feet. He rolled his head away to avoid brain damage, feeling the toecaps thud into his back, shoulders, chest, and ribs, choking on the wave of pain until the merciful blackness came after a kick on the back of the head.
He came to in the manner of people who have been in a road accident: first gingerly aware that he was not dead, and then conscious of the pain. Beneath his shirt and trousers, his body was one large ache.
He was lying on his face, and for a while he studied the pattern of the carpet. Then he rolled over: a mistake. He ran a hand to his face. There was one lump on the cheek below the left eye; otherwise it was more or less the same face he had been shaving for years. He tried to sit up and winced. An arm went behind his shoulders and eased him into a sitting position.
“What the hell happened here?” she asked.
Monica Browne was on her knees beside him, one arm around his shoulders. The cool fingers of her right hand touched the lump below his left eye.
“I was passing, saw the door ajar. ...”
Quite a coincidence, he thought, then dismissed the idea.
“I must have fainted and thumped myself as I went down,” he said.
“Was that before or after you wrecked the room?”
He glanced around. He had forgotten about the tumbled drawers and the scattered clothes.
She unbuttoned his shirt front. “Jesus, that was some fall,” was all she said. Then she helped him up and led him to the bed. He sat on it. She pushed him backward, lifted his legs, and rolled him onto the mattress.
“Don’t go away,” she said unnecessarily. “I have some liniment in my room.”
She was back in minutes, closing the door behind her and giving the key a swift turn. She unbuttoned his Sea Island cotton shirt and slipped it from his shoulders, tut-tutting at the sight of the four bruises, now turning a fetching blue, that adorned his torso and ribs.
He felt helpless, but she seemed to know what she was doing. A small bottle was uncorked, and gentle fingers rubbed liniment into the bruised areas. It stung. He said, “Ow.”
“It’ll do you good, take the swelling down, help the discoloration. Roll over.”
She eased more liniment into the bruises on his shoulders and back.
“How come you carry liniment around?” he mumbled. “Do all your dining partners end up like this?”
“It’s for horses,” she said.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Stop fussing—it has the same effect on stupid men. Roll back.”
He did so.
She stood over him, her golden hair falling about her shoulders. “They hit you in the legs as well?”
“All over.”
She unbuttoned the waistband of his trousers, unzipped them, and eased them down and off without a fuss. It was no strange task for a young wife with a husband who drank too much. Apart from one lump on the right shin, there were another half-dozen bluish areas on the thighs. She massaged the liniment into them. After the sting, the sensation was of pure pleasure. The odor reminded him of the days when he played Rugby at school. She paused and set the bottle down.
“Is that a bruise?” she asked.
He glanced down toward his jockey shorts. No, it was not a bruise.
“Thank God,” she murmured. She turned away and reached for the zipper at the back of her cream shantung dress. The filtered light from the curtains gave the room a low, cool glow.
“Where did you learn about bruises?” he asked.
After the beating and the massage, he was feeling drowsy. His head was drowsy, anyway.
“Back in Kentucky, my kid brother was an amateur jockey,” she said. “I patched him up a few times.”
Her cream dress slid to the floor in a pool. She wore tiny Janet Reger panties. No bra strap crossed her back. Despite the fullness of her breasts, she needed none. She turned around. Rowse swallowed.
“But this,” she said, “I did not learn from any brother.”
He thought fleetingly about Nikki back in Gloucestershire. He had not done this before, not since marrying Nikki. But, he reasoned, a warrior occasionally needs solace, and if it is offered, he would be less than human to refuse.
He reached up for her as she straddled him, but she took his wrists and pressed them back on the pillow.
“Lie still,” she whispered. “You’re far too ill to participate.”
But for the next hour or so she seemed quite content to be proved wrong.
Just before four she rose and crossed the room to open the curtains. The sun had passed its azimuth and was moving toward the mountains.
Across the valley Danny the sergeant adjusted his focus and said, “Cor, you dirty bastard, Tom.”
The affair lasted for three days. The horses did not arrive from Syria, nor any message for Rowse from Hakim al-Mansour. She checked with her agent on the coast regularly, but always the answer was “Tomorrow.” So they walked through the mountains, took picnics high above the cherry orchards where the conifers grow, and made love among the pine needles.
They breakfasted and dined on the terrace, while Danny and Bill watched in silence from across the valley and Mahoney and his colleagues glowered from the bar.
McCready and Marks stayed at their pension in Pedhoulas village while McCready organized more men from Nicosia Station and a few from Malta. As long as Hakim al-Mansour made no contact with Rowse to indicate that their prepared story had, or had not, been accepted, the key was the Irishman Mahoney and his two colleagues. They were running the IRA enterprise; so long as they stayed, the operation would not move into the shipment phase.
The two SAS sergeants were to give backup to Rowse; the rest would keep the IRA men under surveillance at all times.
On the second day after Rowse and Monica first made love, McCready’s team was in place, scattered through the hills covering every road in and out of the area from observation posts in the hills.
The telephone line to the hotel had been intercepted and tapped. The monitoring listeners were ensconced in another nearby hotel. Few of the newcomers could speak Greek, but fortunately tourists were common enough for another dozen not to arouse suspicions.
Mahoney and his men never left the hotel. They, too, were waiting for something: a visit, or a phone call, or a hand-delivered message.
On the third day Rowse was up as usual just after dawn broke. Monica slept on, and it was Rowse who took the tray of morning coffee from the waiter at the door. When he lifted the coffee pot to pour his first cup, he saw a folded wafer of paper beneath it. He put the wafer between the cup and the saucer, poured the coffee, and walked with it into the bathroom.
The message said simply, “Club Rosalina, Paphos, 11 P.M. Aziz.”
That posed a problem, Rowse mused as he flushed the fragments of the message down the
toilet. Easing Monica out of the picture for the few hours it would take to get to Paphos and back in the middle of the night would not be easy.
The problem was solved at midday, when fate intervened in the form of Monica’s shipping agent, who called to say that the three stallions would be arriving from Latakia in the port of Limassol that evening, and could she please be present to see them signed for and settled in their stables outside the port?
She left at four o’clock, and Rowse made life easier for his backup team by walking up to Pedhoulas village and ringing the manager of the Apollonia to say that he had to go to Paphos that evening for dinner and what, please, was the best route? The message was picked up by the listeners and passed to McCready.
The Rosalina Club turned out to be a casino in the heart of the Old Town. Rowse entered it just before eleven and soon saw the slim, elegant figure of Hakim al-Mansour seated at one of the roulette tables. There was a chair vacant next to him. Rowse slid into it.
“Good evening, Mr. Aziz. What a pleasant surprise.”
Al-Mansour inclined his head gravely. “Faites vos jeux,” called the croupier.
The Libyan placed several high-denomination chips on a combination of the higher numbers. The wheel spun, and the dancing white ball elected to fall into the slot number four. The Libyan showed no annoyance as his chips were swept away. That single throw would have kept a Libyan farmer and his family for a month.
“Nice of you to come,” said al-Mansour as gravely. “I have news for you. Good news, you will be pleased to hear. It is always so agreeable to impart good news.”
Rowse felt relieved. That morning, the fact that the Libyan had sent the message to him instead of an order to Mahoney to lose the Englishman forever among the mountains had been hopeful. Now, it looked even better.
Rowse watched as the Libyan lost another pile of chips. He was inured to the temptation of gambling, regarding the roulette wheel as the most stupid and boring artifact ever invented. But the Arabs compare only with the Chinese as gamblers, and even the cool al-Mansour was entranced by the spinning wheel.
“I am happy to tell you,” said al-Mansour as he placed more chips, “that our glorious Leader has acceded to your request. The equipment you seek will be provided—in full. There. What is your reaction?”
“I’m delighted,” said Rowse. “I’m sure my principals will put it to ... good use.”
“We must all fervently hope so. That is, as you British soldiers say, the object of the exercise.”
“How would you like payment?” asked Rowse.
The Libyan waved a deprecatory hand. “Accept it as a gift from the People’s Jamahariya, Mr. Rowse.”
“I am very grateful. I am sure my principals will be, too.”
“I doubt it, for you would be a fool ever to tell them. And you are not a fool. A mercenary, perhaps, but not a fool. So as you will now be making a commission of not one hundred thousand dollars but half a million, perhaps you will split that with me? Shall we say, fifty-fifty?”
“For the fighting funds, of course.”
“Of course.”
Retirement fund, more like, Rowse thought, then said aloud, “Mr. Aziz, sir, you have a deal. When I can pry the money out of the clients, half will come to you.”
“I do hope so,” murmured al-Mansour. This time he won, and a pile of chips was pushed toward him. Despite his urbanity, he was delighted. “My arm is very long.”
“Trust me,” said Rowse.
“Now that, my dear chap, would be insulting ... in our world.”
“I need to know about shipment. Where to collect, when.”
“And so you shall. Soon. You asked for a port in Europe. I think that can be arranged. Return to the Apollonia, and I will be in touch very soon.”
He rose and handed Rowse his remaining pile of chips. “Do not leave the casino for another fifteen minutes,” he said. “Here—enjoy yourself.”
Rowse waited for fifteen minutes, then cashed in the chips. He preferred to buy Nikki something nice.
He left the casino and strolled toward his car. Because of the narrow streets of the Old Town, parking was at a premium even late at night. His car was two streets away. He never saw Danny or Bill, who were in doorways up and down the road.
As he approached his car, an old man in blue denim and a forage cap was brushing the garbage from the gutters with a yard-broom.
“Kali spera,” croaked the old road-sweeper.
“Kali spera,” replied Rowse. He paused. The old man was one of those, finally beaten by life, who do the menial jobs all over the world. He remembered the wad of money from al-Mansour’s winnings, pulled out a large-denomination note, and tucked it into the old man’s top pocket.
“My dear Tom,” said the road-sweeper, “I always knew you had a good heart.”
“What the hell are you doing here, McCready?”
“Just keep jiggling with your car keys and tell me what happened,” said McCready as he pushed his broom.
Rowse told him.
“Good,” said McCready. “It looks like a ship. That probably means they’re tacking your small cargo onto the much larger one for the IRA. We must hope so. If yours is simply sent as a one-shot by a different route in a different container, we’re back to where we started. Left with Mahoney. But as your load is only a van-full, they may pack them all together. Any idea which port?”
“No, just Europe.”
“Go back to the hotel, and do what the man says,” ordered McCready.
Rowse drove off. Danny, on a motorcycle, went after him to ensure that Rowse had no follower other than himself. Ten minutes later, Marks arrived with the car and Bill to pick up McCready.
On the drive back, McCready sat in the rear and thought. The ship, if ship it was, would not be Libyan registered. That would be too obvious. Probably a chartered freighter, with a no-questions-asked captain and crew. There were scores of such to be found all over the eastern Mediterranean, and Cyprus was a favored country of registry.
If it was chartered locally, it would have to go to a Libyan port to take on the arms, probably to be buried beneath a perfectly normal cargo like crated olives or dates. The IRA team would probably go with it. When they left the hotel, it was vital that they be followed to the loading dock so the name of the ship could be noted for later interception.
Once noted, the plan was for the vessel to be tracked by a submarine at periscope depth. The submarine was on standby under the waters off Malta. A Royal Air Force Nimrod from the British air base at Akrotiri on Cyprus would guide the sub toward the steaming freighter, then make itself scarce. The sub would do the rest until Royal Navy surface vessels could make the intercept in the English Channel.
McCready needed the ship’s name, or at least the port of destination. With the name of the port, he could have his friends at Lloyds Shipping Intelligence find out what vessels had reserved berthings in that port and for which days. That would narrow the choice down. It could be he no longer needed Mahoney, if only the Libyans would tell Rowse.
The message to Rowse came twenty-four hours later by telephone. It was not al-Mansour’s voice but another. Later, McCready’s engineers traced it to the Libyan People’s Bureau in Nicosia.
“Go home, Mr. Rowse. You will be contacted there shortly. Your olives will arrive by ship at a European port. You will be contacted personally with arrival and collection details.”
McCready studied the intercept in his hotel room. Did al-Mansour suspect something? Had he seen through Rowse but decided on a double-bluff? If he suspected Rowse’s real employers, he would know that Mahoney and his group were also under surveillance. So was he ordering Rowse to England in order to take the watchers off Mahoney? Possibly.
In case it was not only possible but true, McCready decided to play both ends. He would leave with Rowse for London, but the watchers would stay with Mahoney.
Rowse decided to tell Monica the next morning. He had got back to the hotel from Paphos before
her. She arrived from Limassol at three A.M., flushed and excited. Her stallions were in beautiful condition, now stabled outside Limassol, she told him as she undressed. She only needed the transit formalities to be completed to bring them to England.
Rowse awoke early, but she was ahead of him. He glanced at the empty space in the bed, then went down the corridor to check her room. They gave him a message at the reception desk, a brief note in one of the hotel’s envelopes.
Dear Tom,
It was beautiful but it’s over. I’m gone, back to my husband and my life and my horses. Think kindly of me, as I will of you.
Monica.
He sighed. Twice he had briefly thought she might be something other than she seemed. Reading her note, he realized he had been right at the beginning—she was just a civilian. He also had his life—with his country home and his writing career and his Nikki. Suddenly he wanted to see Nikki very badly.
As he drove back to the Nicosia Airport, Rowse guessed his two sergeants were somewhere behind him. They were. But McCready was not. Using the Head of Station in Nicosia, he had found a Royal Air Force communications flight heading for Lyneham, Wiltshire, that would get in ahead of the scheduled British Airways flight. McCready was already on it.
Just before midday, Rowse glanced out of the porthole of the plane and saw the green mass of the Troodos Mountains slipping away beneath the wing. He thought of Monica, and Mahoney still propping up the bar, and al-Mansour, and he was glad to be going home. For one thing, the green fields of Gloucestershire were a good deal safer than the caldron of the Levant.
Chapter 5
Rowse’s flight touched down just after lunch, with the time gained from flying west from Cyprus. McCready had preceded him by an hour, though Rowse did not know it. As he emerged from the airplane cabin into the jetway connecting to the terminal, a trim young woman in a British Airways uniform was holding up a sign saying, MR. ROWSE.
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