In Treacherous Waters

by Richard V Frankland

  As the two men got into their taxi Pieter said, “The incinerator was almost white hot, boss, what were you getting rid of?”

  “Oh, just tidying up the office, you know, old paperwork, stuff I no longer need.”

  “You gave Carla the day off?”

  “What?”

  “I said, did you give Carla the day off, she usually comes out to the car when you leave.”

  “She was busy.”

  At the airport the party had only just checked in when their flight was called which meant that Vermeulen and his wife were out of breath on arrival at the gate. The last minute booking meant that they were all separated on the flight and in the chaos at Lagos airport it took time for them to become reunited again. Anna-Maria had expected someone to be at the airport to greet them and was surprised when Vermeulen bought tickets for a flight to Dakar leaving her wondering why he had not asked Carla to book the onward flight. There was thankfully only a short time to wait before boarding for the Dakar flight was called, which cut down the nuisance approaches made by officials and black-market currency touts falsely accusing them of taking the local currency, Naira, out of the country.

  The very uncomfortable flight from Lagos to Dakar arrived in the early evening and here they were met by Abdoulaye Niang, the tallest African Anna-Maria had ever seen, who, in a convoy of cars took them to the Radisson Blu overlooking the vast Atlantic. She knew that Vermeulen had money but was surprised to find herself sharing a top floor luxurious suite with her mother and stepfather.

  Given only a short time to freshen up and change, however, Anna-Maria and her mother then found themselves dining alone while Vermeulen sat the other side of the hotel’s Little Buddha restaurant talking to Niang, both men closely protected by their bodyguards.

  “I did not realise that Dakar was such a dangerous place,” said Anna-Maria looking across the restaurant at her stepfather, her slender fingers toying with the wine glass held close to her lips.

  “It does not appear dangerous to me,” replied her mother not linking Anna-Maria’s comment to the direction of her eyes.

  “It obviously is for Jan, Mama, look at the bodyguards he and his friend have around them, but apparently not dangerous for us, or maybe we are of no consequence.” Anna-Maria had noted the haunted look on her stepfather’s face during the journey; had something happened exposing his illegal activities. Her stomach lurched and the sense of fear returned strongly.

  Lucia Vermeulen looked at her daughter sharply, “I’m sure he considers us of great importance.”

  “Really, Mama?”

  “Yes, really, Anna-Maria.”

  “Or is it that only he has something to fear?”

  Her mother looked at her questioningly but did not reply, she had also noticed the change in her husband’s demeanour.

  As their meal progressed Anna-Maria studied her mother, who she frankly had never quite understood, she being always very close to her father whose intellectual prowess she had inherited. Lucia Vermeulen was still, at the age of fifty, a very attractive woman retaining a good figure, slim legs and beautiful skin. Why a woman of her looks and personality had been attracted to Jan Vermeulen, an ugly bull of a man, Anna-Maria frequently wondered, surely it was not the sex. The thought brought a mischievous grin to her face.

  The next afternoon they left Dakar on a flight to St Louis in northern Senegal where, after a quick visit by Vermeulen to the left luggage lockers, they were bundled into a hired Mercedes minibus where Vermeulen announced, “We’re not stopping here, we’re crossing the border into Mauritania to complete a deal, after that I don’t know yet, but it has to be somewhere away from Africa.”

  His wife’s face turned pale, “Why, Jan, why? What’s wrong?” Her voice now edged with panic.

  “Someone in my organisation has chosen to betray me, someone who now has a very short life expectancy,” Vermeulen replied menacingly, his paranoia now taking over his thoughts and reactions.

  Anna-Maria’s heart missed a beat and she fought to keep her expression of confusion and panic mirroring that of her mother’s. Karl and Pieter, the two minders, looked at each other and both shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads, “It ain’t nothin’ to do wiv us, boss,” Pieter the driver said indignantly. Working for ten years with Vermeulen had taught him just how dangerous the man could be and the implied threat had obviously made him nervous; he was also still wondering why Carla or Emmanuel had not seen them off from the house, normally Carla would carry her boss’s briefcase out to the car or taxi for him.

  Vermeulen turned in his seat and looked at the two men thoughtfully for a couple of seconds making them both feel very uncomfortable. “Here, check the contents in these,” he ordered, passing two black holdalls over the seat to Karl.

  “What is there to betray, Jan?” Lucia Vermeulen asked, now suspicious, confused and scared by the tone of his threats.

  “My main business is arms trading and some loose-tongued individual has informed the British, who still think that they bloody well govern Africa. They then told the authorities in Luanda but fortunately I have friends.”

  Vermeulen’s disclosure of his real business interests brought a gasp from his wife, while Anna-Maria with her hands covering her face had time to compose an expression of shocked outrage. The sharp sound of a zip made Anna-Maria look round at Karl and she instantly realised why Vermeulen had visited the airport’s left luggage lockers. Even in the subdued light of the vehicle she recognised that Karl was holding a machine pistol in each hand.

  “Let me out!” she screamed, “Let me out! I don’t want to be anywhere near you. How could you, how could you; my poor David was massacred by that Cabinda group armed by people like you.” Her tears were real enough; the death of her husband was still very deeply felt.

  “You are staying where you are, you little airhead. Do you think that I will let you go screaming your head off at a time like this!”

  Anna-Maria’s mother gave a shriek. “How dare you speak to Anna-Maria like that, how dare you,” she cried. “How could you have deceived us like this? You are to let us go right now.”

  Vermeulen just turned his back on her and instructed Pieter to go faster.

  “Jan, you are to stop this vehicle now and let us out! Do you hear me, Jan, we want to get out! Jan, Jan you are not listening, Jan!”

  Her protests continued until Vermeulen turned and screamed at her, “If you want to live you will shut up! Now, do you hear me? Shut up!”

  There was a stunned silence in the vehicle following Vermeulen’s outburst, everyone realising that he meant every word. For Anna-Maria though, the episode had been a relief, Vermeulen had called her an airhead, a fair indication that he did not suspect her as the cause of his problems.

  ***

  According to Senior British Agent, Leonard Staunton, who was in Angola at the time of David Patterson’s death, sources suggested that Patterson had changed sides and was working for the arms dealer and was killed, along with his men, for trying to swindle the group by selling them defective equipment.

  Devastated by her husband’s death, Anna-Maria moved back to live with her mother and stepfather where things would probably have returned to some form of normality had she not been contacted nearly six months later by an Englishman named Alexander Campbell, purporting to be her late husband’s uncle. They met in a Luanda hotel where Campbell revealed that rather than being an uncle he was her late husband’s boss and the true reason for her husband’s frequent visits to Cabinda. He also firmly stated that he believed Anna-Maria’s stepfather or his employees were the ones guilty of her husband’s murder, not the FlecPM rebel group.

  Campbell had timed the meeting to take place when her mother and stepfather were away visiting Moscow and St Petersburg, giving Anna-Maria a period in which to consider this shattering information and give careful consideration to his request for her to act as an informant against her stepfather; with her stepfather away she was able to search his office a
nd it did not take her long to find out the truth and bring about a redirection of her anger and bitterness. Her immediate feelings of rage quickly moulded into a cold anger and calculated desire for revenge, a change that made her a very willing and capable spy into her stepfather’s affairs.

  Returning from Russia, Jan Vermeulen found his stepdaughter apparently unchanged in her manner and attitude towards him, they had never really liked each other. To her mother the new coolness that she detected she took to be her daughter’s lingering grief at the loss of her husband. Wisely, Anna-Maria kept the knowledge of her stepfather’s real business dealings to herself fearing that her mother, if told, would warn her husband, after all how could a wife be so unaware of what was going on. The only real change her stepfather experienced shortly after his return was the ambushing by government forces, of a shipment of arms destined for a Liberian rebel movement. The next two shipments intended for the FlecPM had also been flagged up to London by Anna-Maria, but this time they were just tracked through to the town of Dinge, where the trade was allowed to go through, but those involved were identified by David Patterson’s replacement for later arrest.

  Based on the reliability of her information Alex Campbell had returned to Luanda for a further meeting with Anna-Maria, during which he gave her his direct contact details and told her that it was to be the only route for future information. It would be some time before she would discover the importance of the selective contact route.

  A period of quiet followed until Anna-Maria’s spying revealed a plan for the supply of weapons to Senegal for use in Western Sahara by a militant section of the opposition, based across the border in Mauritania.

  At this point Campbell had decided to act against the group in Cabinda and information was leaked to the Angolan authorities in the hope that the arrest of Vermeulen would also disrupt the Senegal arms’ shipment.

  ***

  Campbell’s tip-off to the Angolan authorities coincided with Vaughan’s return to duty following his convalescence at the private clinic used by SIS. After signing in at the discreet offices of DELCO Publishing in London’s Chelsea district, Vaughan made his way to Lieutenant Penny Heathcote’s office.

  “Good afternoon, Lieutenant.”

  “Good afternoon, you look a lot better than when I last saw you. The Commodore is studying your medical report at the moment, it seems as if you have made a good recovery.”

  “So I’ve been told,” replied Vaughan. “Is there anything on for me here?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Oh,” replied Vaughan, puzzled.

  He studied the redheaded Lieutenant whilst she shuffled a heap of paper on her desk into order. Beneath the tidily combed and clip-held red hair was a very pretty elfin face with piercing blue eyes that revealed a sharp brain. She was slender but not thin, and in fact had a good figure. Vaughan liked her a lot and respected her cool professional attitude towards him. Rumour had it that she had been close to a field agent before who had unfortunately been killed while on duty.

  He was about to ask why he had been summoned when Heathcote said, “How are the girls?”

  “Remote,” he replied simply. Heathcote looked up and stared at him questioningly. “Clare and Louise both seem to be totally taken with Sarah’s new friend Evan, who I must say seems to be a nice chap, what little I have seen of him. I went up to Derbyshire last weekend and took both the girls up to the Lake District horse riding, well ponies, that’s their latest craze, neither wants to go sailing anymore.”

  “Is that Rebecca still in touch with your wife?”

  “That devious bitch; no, she seems to have disappeared off the scene. She probably hasn’t got through the money that she and Jerry got for the cottage that I was required to buy for Sarah.”

  “Part of the divorce settlement?”

  Vaughan nodded.

  “Has this Evan, moved in with her yet?”

  “I’m not sure, I haven’t wanted to ask the girls that type of question and I have been telling myself it’s no longer something that I have any control over. If he is it would make my bank balance a lot better off if they got married, I know that.”

  The intercom buzzer sounded. “The Commodore will see you now.”

  A few minutes later Vaughan knocked on Campbell’s office door. “Come in. Ah, Vaughan, good to see you. I’ve just finished reading your medical report, you’re damn lucky to be alive let alone recover the way you have.”

  “So Sister Mitchell went to great lengths to point out, Sir.”

  “Good to see you back,” said Campbell, carefully sliding a folder into his briefcase. “How is the family?”

  “Well, thank you, Sir. Sarah apparently has a new romantic interest who the girls appear to have taken to.”

  “Umm, how do you feel about that?”

  “Disappointed but not surprised, the type of pressure that her parents and her friend Rebecca exerted made the chances of us getting back together again next door to nil anyway, so I’ve been trying hard to switch off my feelings for her.”

  “I’m sorry, Vaughan, it seems so bloody ridiculous the way she reacted to the Murata affair.”

  “Well, it is what it is, Sir, and I can’t see a way to turn back the clock, as much as I would like to.”

  Campbell stood up, walked across to the window and pulled a face as he looked at the rain pouring down outside. “At the present time we don’t have anything that suits an agent of your specific talents, but there is the possibility of a cloud appearing on the horizon, so I would like you to return to Madeira and get your yacht ready as soon as possible.”

  “Right, Sir.”

  Just then there was a knock on the office door. “Come in.” Heathcote entered the room. “Yes, Lieutenant, what is it?”

  “I thought you should know straight away, Sir, that Luanda report that the person you identified for them has left the country and they think he has travelled to Lagos, but there was no official record of him arriving.”

  “On entry he probably used a false passport, I doubt if they were able to have crosschecked with the passenger lists. We need a detailed check on the complete boarding list from Luanda.”

  “Right, Sir.”

  The Lieutenant left leaving the Commodore staring out of the window deep in thought, while Vaughan sat silently studying a photograph of an aircraft carrier’s flight deck and Campbell in the uniform of a Commander saluting the Queen.

  “Lieutenant Heathcote will issue you with some additional charts which may come in useful,” said Campbell, breaking the silence, “But for the purposes of communication you are to use this, and only this, number.”

  Turning back to his desk the Commodore handed Vaughan a slip of paper.

  Memorising it Vaughan handed it back. “Only to that number it is, Sir.”

  “That is my direct number, ensure that you use number withheld if you make a call and should any voice other than mine answer it, end the call immediately.”

  “Understood, Sir.”

  When the meeting was over Vaughan collected the charts and air ticket from Heathcote and, leaving the offices, walked around the corner to spend the night in the Firm’s hotel, a select apartment block complete with doorman and desk porter.

  “Good afternoon, Ballard.”

  “Hello, Mr Vaughan, nice to see you back, sir,” said Ballard, opening the door into the reception area.

  Nodding to the desk porter, Vaughan walked over to the retina reader and placed his hand on the palm scanner as he looked at the camera lens.

  “That’s fine, Mr Vaughan, I’ve put you in room eighteen again. Dinner is at seven.”

  “Thanks, do you want to look at these?” replied Vaughan pointing to his luggage.

  “Yes, sir, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Vaughan smiled at the porter’s politeness; there would have been no way he could have got further into the building without having his luggage thoroughly checked.

  Later, sitting in his room he
thought about the meeting with Campbell and in particular the insistence associated with communication. ‘Why the Commodore’s direct line when there was apparently nothing immediate for me to handle? There was something else during that visit, a definite tension or atmosphere. The whole office was hushed with everyone’s heads down seemingly working but not communicating as freely as they had done in the past. I got some odd looks as well when I walked through the general office especially from the sector four people, something is not right but I haven’t got time to worry about it now. What was it that Sergeant Instructor McClellan said? Ah yes, obey the last order, and the last order was return to Madeira and prepare to put to sea.’ With that thought Vaughan got into bed.

  ***

  It was late morning when the ferry nudged the North bank ramp of the Senegal River crossing point at the town of Rosso. The women were glad of the darkened windows that hid them in part from the teeming mass of foot passengers pressed up against the side of their vehicle aboard the dilapidated vessel, many of them peering in and some trying the door handles. To Anna-Maria’s amazement once ashore they were met, and without undue bureaucracy, in fact just a few handshakes, were waved through Africa’s most corrupt border post. It was only then that she realised the powerful web her stepfather had established. Until that moment she had assumed he was a small-time crook, but no longer; for white people to cross this border with such apparent ease proved that Vermeulen was seriously big time.

  Their passage through the town was slow, the streets full of people reluctant to move out of the way. Lumbering bullock carts drawn by malnourished long-horned cattle were everywhere, together with herds of long-eared sheep all trampling their way along the dust-covered road littered with refuse of all kinds. The buildings, typical of that part of Africa, were run down and in poor repair, old broken air-conditioning units dangled from the walls of a few buildings that had once been the smart new venture in town. Everyone seemed to be covered in dust, their clothes shabby and the shoes, worn by a few, were down at heel. The smell of dust and sewage pervaded everywhere, even within the recycled air-conditioning of the minibus. On the outskirts of the town they turned right along a rutted track between a mixture of hovels and more substantial dwellings to eventually turn into the high walled courtyard of an Arab style building.