The Veteran

by Frederick Forsyth

  On the seat-back the little white aeroplane finally jerked its way round the curve until its nose was pointing at Heathrow. The ensuing figures declaimed twenty miles to touchdown. It was six twelve.

  From the flight deck the crew could see the still dark fields of Berkshire below them and the lights that illuminated Windsor Castle. The undercarriage went down; the flaps eased down in sequence to the full twenty-five degrees required. To a ground observer Speedbird One Zero appeared to be drifting, almost motionless, across the last miles to the concrete; in fact she was still flying at 170 knots, but slowing and dropping.

  Adrian Fallon checked all his instruments yet again and acknowledged the instruction from Heathrow Tower that he was clear to land. Ahead of him a Boeing out of Miami had just cleared the runway and ten miles behind him was a Northwest carrier out of Boston. But their passengers would be going to Terminal Three. As for British Airways’ dedicated Terminal Four, he would be the first of the morning. As his wing passed over the Colnbrook reservoir he went through 800 feet and the airspeed moved easily towards the 138 knots landing speed. At six eighteen Speedbird One Zero touched down.

  Ten minutes later Adrian Fallon brought the huge jetliner to a final stop next to the mobile passenger tunnel, applied the parking brake and let the First Officer close her down. Power went from the main engines to the APU, causing a second-long flicker of the cabin lights, which then resumed burning brightly. Below him the cabin staff at the front end watched the gaping maw of the passenger tunnel move towards them and, as it clamped onto the side of the airliner, hauled back the door.

  Standing immediately outside was a young man in the coveralls of the airport’s technical staff. He spotted Harry Palfrey and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘CSD?’

  ‘The note?’

  The young man nodded. Palfrey palmed him the two sheets of folded paper and he was gone. The CSD turned back with his practised beam to the First Class passengers waiting behind him.

  ‘Goodbye, sir, and I hope you enjoyed the flight.’

  They began to file past him. The eighth to go was the impeccable Mr Hugo Seymour, his sheer grooming singling him out at this dishevelled hour as very definitely one of the quality. Harry Palfrey genuinely hoped that some silly man in the back had not caused him any inconvenience.

  After the First Class cabin was clear came the Club Class passengers, some from the rear, others tumbling down the stairs from the upper cabin. Right down the hull of the Boeing the Economy Class travellers, upright and jostling for space even with ten minutes left to wait, longed for their release like cattle from a pen.

  The Immigration Hall is cavernous at that hour and the line of passport control officers waited behind their desks for the sea of humanity to come. Above and to one side is a mirrored wall, but it is a two-way mirror with a room behind it. Bill Butler stood in that room looking down.

  There were ten passport officers below him, two for UK and European Union passports, eight for the rest of the world. One of his assistants had briefed them all. There was always co-operation between Immigration and Customs, and anyway the briefing had given another boring morning a little extra buzz. Of the First Class passengers only four were British, the rest Thai or Australian. The four UK citizens took only seconds to pass the necessary desk, and as the third received his passport back the immigration officer lifted her head slightly and nodded at the mirror. Bill Butler had the written note in his hand. Cream silk suit, only one. Hugo Seymour. He spoke quickly to a small communicator in his hand.

  ‘Coming out now. Cream silk suit. Crocodile attaché case.’

  Ranjit Gul Singh was a Sikh. He was also a Master of Arts from Manchester University and an officer of Customs and Excise, on attachment to the Knock. An observer that morning would have spotted his first qualification but not the other two. He was in the passage behind passport control, with a dustpan on a long handle and a brush. He took the message in a small earpiece no larger than a hearing-plug in his right ear. Seconds later a cream suit swished past his lowered head.

  Officer Singh watched the businessman disappear into the men’s lavatories halfway down the passage. He addressed his left sleeve in a low mumble.

  ‘He’s gone straight into the men’s washroom.’

  ‘Follow him, see what he does.’

  The Sikh entered the washroom, flicking odd pieces of litter into his dustpan. The man in the cream suit was not entering a cubicle but washing his hands. Gul Singh produced a cloth and began to wipe out the bowls and the handbasins. The other occupant took no notice of him. The Sikh kept himself busy at his lowly task, but he checked to see if there was anyone hidden in the cubicles. Was this a rendezvous, a handover? He was still wiping and cleaning when the businessman dried his hands, picked up his attaché case and left. No contact had taken place. He told Bill Butler.

  At that moment one of the passport officers at the desks for non-UK citizens nodded a shabby-looking hippie past him and raised his eyes to the mirrored wall. Butler took the signal and made a call on his communicator. In the passage leading to the customs hall a young woman who appeared to have disembarked from the aeroplane but had not, and who appeared to be adjusting her shoe, straightened up, noted the jeans and denim shirt ahead of her and began to follow.

  Hugo Seymour had emerged into the passage to find himself no longer alone but in a throng of Economy Class passengers. He’s killing time, thought Bill Butler, losing himself in the mass. But why the stand-out-a-mile suit? That was when the anonymous call came. Butler took the report from the switchboard on his communicator.

  ‘American-sounding voice,’ said the operator. ‘Tagged a Canadian hippie in jeans and denim shirt, long shaggy hair, wispy beard, but he’s carrying a cargo in his haversack. Then hung up.’

  ‘We’re onto him,’ said Butler.

  ‘That was quick, boss,’ said the admiring switchboard operator. Butler was striding down passages unknown to the public to take up position behind another two-way mirror, but this time in the customs area, specifically the Nothing to Declare Green Channel. If either of the suspects headed for the Red Channel, that would be a real surprise.

  He was pleased the anonymous call had come through. It conformed to pattern. The hippie was the decoy, the obvious type. The respectable businessman would have the consignment. Not a bad trick, but this time, thanks to a dutiful citizen with insomnia, sharp eyes and a nosy disposition, it was not going to work.

  The luggage from Bangkok was coming onto Carousel Six and over 200 people were already grouped around it. Most had acquired trolleys from the ranks at the end of the hall. Among the passengers stood Mr Seymour. His real hide hard-frame case had been one of the first to appear but he had not been there. The rest of the First Class passengers were gone. The hide case had already circled twenty times, but he made no eye contact with it, gazing instead at the delivery mouth by the wall whence the cases emerged from the baggage handling area beyond.

  Ten yards away stood the hippie, Donovan, still waiting for his big black haversack. Just approaching the carousel, pushing not one but two trolleys, was Mr Higgins with his wife and daughter. Julie, on her first foreign journey, had insisted she wanted a trolley of her own for her single case and Pooky.

  Piece by piece, the circulating bags were identified by their owners, hauled off the carousel and manhandled onto trolleys. The long shuffling column through the Green Channel had begun and was now swelled by travellers from two other jumbo jets, mainly Americans and some British returning from Caribbean vacations via Miami. A dozen uniformed customs men, looking deceptively bored, some in the carousel hall, others inside the channel, watched.

  ‘There it is, Daddy.’

  Several passengers looked round and smiled indulgently. There was no mistaking Julie Higgins’s case. It was a medium-sized Samsonite, garishly decorated with decals of her favourite cartoon characters: Scooby Doo, Shaggy, Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. Almost at the same time her parents’ two holdall grips c
ame along and the ever-neat John Higgins carefully stacked them so they would not fall off.

  The hippie spotted his haversack, swung it onto his shoulders, disdained a trolley and began to stride to the Green Channel. Mr Seymour finally retrieved his hide suitcase, laid it on a trolley and followed. In the Green Channel Bill Butler stood behind his mirror and watched the tired, pre-dawn crocodile of humanity parading past the glass.

  Inside the carousel hall an idle porter spoke briefly into his sleeve.

  ‘Hippie first, coming now, silk suit ten yards behind.’

  The hippie did not get far. He was halfway from the arch leading to the channel and the exit of blessed relief at the far end when two uniformed customs men stepped into his path. Polite of course. Deadly polite.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, would you mind stepping this way?’

  The Canadian exploded with rage.

  ‘What the hell is this all about, man?’

  ‘Just come with us, sir.’

  The Canadian’s voice rose to a shout.

  ‘Now wait a fucking minute. Thirteen fucking hours on a plane and I don’t need this shit, you hear?’

  The queue behind him stopped as if shot. Then, in the manner of the British when someone is creating a scene, they tried to look the other way, pretend it was not happening, and continue to shuffle forward. Hugo Seymour was among them.

  The Canadian, relieved of both his small and large haversack, still shouting and protesting, was hustled away through a side door to one of the search rooms. The shuffle resumed. The cream-suited businessman had almost made the exit arch when he too was intercepted. Two officers blocked his path and two more closed in behind.

  At first he appeared not to realize what was happening. Then, beneath his tan, he went ashen grey.

  ‘I don’t understand. What seems to be the problem?’

  ‘If you would just be kind enough to come with us, sir.’

  He too was led away. Behind the one-way mirror Bill Butler sighed. Now, the big one. The end of the chase. The cases, and what they contained.

  It took three hours, in two separate suites of rooms. Butler flitted between them both, growing ever more frustrated. When the Customs take luggage apart, they really find it all. If there is anything to find. They had both haversacks emptied and searched to the linings and the frames. Apart from several packs of Lucky Strikes there was nothing. That did not surprise Bill Butler. Decoys never carry anything.

  It was Hugo Seymour who stunned him. They had the hide suitcase through the X-ray machine a dozen times. They measured for hidden compartments and found nothing. The same with the crocodile attaché case. It yielded a tube of Bisodol antacid tablets. Two of these were crushed and the powder chemically tested. The tests revealed antacid tablets. He was stripped, clothed in a paper one-piece, and his clothes X-rayed. Then, naked, he was X-rayed himself to see if he carried any packages internally. Nothing.

  Around ten o’clock, fifteen minutes apart, each had to be released. Seymour was by then loudly threatening legal action. Butler was not fussed by that. They usually did. That was because they had no idea of the real powers of Customs and Excise.

  ‘You want them tailed, boss?’ asked his gloomy Number Two. Butler thought about it and shook his head.

  ‘It was probably a bum steer. If they are innocent patsies, we’ll be following them for nothing. If they are not so innocent, I doubt if the controlling brains behind the Bangkok run will contact them before they have spotted the tail. Leave it. Next time.’

  The Canadian, the first to be released, took the airport coach into London and checked into a seedy hotel near Paddington. Mr Hugo Seymour took a taxi and went to a far more expensive hostelry.

  Just after two p.m. four men in various London streets received phone calls. Each was standing, as arranged, in a public phone booth. Each was told to report to an address. One of them made a call himself, then left for the rendezvous.

  At four p.m. Bill Butler was sitting alone in his car outside a block of serviced apartments, the sort that could be rented by the week, or even the day.

  At five past four the unmarked Transit van he had been awaiting drove up behind him and ten members of his Knock team spilled out. There was no time for briefing. The gang could have a lookout posted, though after watching for thirty minutes he had seen no lace curtain shift. He simply nodded and led the way through the doors of the block. There was a front desk but no-one manning it. He left two disappointed men to watch the lift doors and led the other eight up the stairs. The flat was on the third.

  The Knock does not stand on ceremony. The rammer took off the door lock with a single smash and they were in: young, eager, very fit, adrenalin high. But no guns.

  The five men in the rented drawing room put up no fight. They sat there, looking sandbagged by the suddenness and unexpectedness of the incursion. Butler came in last, very much the man in charge, while his team delved into inside pockets for identification. He took the glowering American first.

  Later voice tests would show it was he who had made the call denouncing the Canadian hippie decoy to the Customs hotline at Heathrow Airport. The grip by his side contained six kilograms of what would turn out to be pure Colombian cocaine.

  ‘Mr Salvatore Bono, I am arresting you on a charge of conspiring with others to import into this country a banned substance . . .’

  When the formalities were over the man from Miami was cuffed and led away. Butler took the hippie next. As the surly Canadian was being taken out Butler called after his colleagues, ‘My car. I want to talk to that one.’

  Mr Hugo Seymour had changed out of his silk suit and into tweed and slacks better adapted for an English day in late January. The second decoy. He, too, relieved of the block of fifty-pound notes totalling £10,000 that he had received for his role in the operation, went quietly. Butler turned to the remaining two.

  The consignment was on the table between them, still in its carrying case, as it had come through Customs. The false bottom had been ripped out to reveal the cavity beneath, in which lay sylthane bags that, after verification, would reveal two kilograms of Thai White heroin. But the decals of Scooby Doo and Shaggy were plainly visible.

  ‘Mr John Higgins, I am arresting you on a charge of importing, and of conspiring with others to import, into this country . . .’

  The dutiful citizen had to be escorted to the bathroom where he threw up. When he was gone Butler turned to the last man, the organizer of the Bangkok dope run. He sat staring bleakly out of the window at the London sky, a sight he knew would in future be minimal.

  ‘I’ve been after you for some time, chum.’

  There was no reply.

  ‘A nice scam. Not one decoy but two. And trotting along behind, avoiding the fracas in the Green Channel, innocent Mr Higgins with his dumpy wife and charming little daughter.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ snapped the middle-aged man.

  ‘Very well. Mr Harry Palfrey, I am arresting you . . .’

  Butler left his last two men to scour the rented flat for any trace of evidence that might have been thrown away in the seconds when the door came down, and descended to the street. He had a long night of work ahead of him, but it was work he would enjoy. His Number Two was at the wheel of his own car, so he slid into the back beside the silent Canadian.

  As the car drew away from the kerb, he said, ‘Let’s get some things straight. When did you first learn that Seymour was your partner in this double bluff?’

  ‘Back there in the flat,’ said the hippie.

  Butler looked thunderstruck.

  ‘What about the conversation in the middle of the night by the lavatory door?’

  ‘What conversation? What lavatory? I had never seen him before in my life.’

  Butler laughed, which he seldom did.

  ‘Of course. Sorry about what they did to you at Heathrow, but you know the rules. I couldn’t blow your cover, even there. Anyway, thanks for the phone call. Nice one, Sean. Tonight the bee
r’s on me.’

  WHISPERING WIND

  Legend has always had it that no white man survived the massacre of the men under General Custer at the Little Bighorn, 25 June 1876. Not quite true; there was one single survivor. He was a frontier scout, aged twenty-four, name of Ben Craig.

  This is his story.

  It was the keen nose of the frontier scout that caught it first: the faint aroma of woodsmoke on the prairie wind.

  He was riding point, twenty yards ahead of the ten cavalrymen of the patrol scouting forward of the main column down the western bank of Rosebud Creek.

  Without turning round the scout raised his right hand and reined in. Behind him the sergeant and the nine troopers did the same. The scout slipped from his horse, leaving it to crop the grass in peace, and trotted towards a low bank between the riders and the creek. There he dropped to the ground and crawled to the crest, peering over the top while remaining hidden in the long grass.

  They were camped between the ridge and the bank of the stream. It was a small camp, no more than five lodges, a single extended family. The teepees indicated Northern Cheyenne. The scout knew them well. Sioux teepees were tall and narrow; Cheyenne built theirs wider at the base, more squat. Pictographs showing hunting triumphs adorned the sides and these too were in the Cheyenne manner.

  The scout estimated the camp would contain between twenty and twenty-five persons, but the half-score of men were away hunting. He could tell by the ponies. There were only seven grazing near the lodges. To move such a camp, with the men mounted and the women and children, folded teepees and other baggage on travois there should have been almost twenty.

  He heard the sergeant crawling up the bank towards him and gestured behind him for the man to stay down. Then the blue uniform sleeve with the three chevrons appeared beside him.

  ‘What do you see?’ said a hoarse whisper.