Hayward had wound down the window. He’d had hopes at first sight of this character, but had then been forced to the conclusion that it was only another Greek. Doing a round of the guard-posts, or something. Now, hopes soared.
‘Mr Hayward? Are you the guy who’s busting a gut to get to Kyrenia?’
‘Right! You’re — American?’
‘Canadian, sir.’ He was a lieutenant, unshaven, bleary-eyed, but friendly. ‘I’m from CANCON, sir — Canadian Contingent, that’s to say.’ He pointed. ‘We live right there at the hotel.’
It was plainly visible, about a minute’s stroll from here. And this sector was Canadian-controlled, apparently. So why the hell that Greek bastard had wanted him to waste time with the Swedes… The Canadian said. ‘Here’s your pass. Mr Hayward, all signed and sealed as they say. And you need to display this plate — right here… OK?’
It came out of his greatcoat pocket, a plate like an ordinary car number-plate, for display behind the windscreen.
‘You’ll have no problems now, sir.’
‘I’m more than grateful.’
‘Entirely welcome, sir.’
The barrier swung up. And down the road he had no problems with the Turks at their checkpoint. Clear of the town, he put his foot down — to save a few seconds, having wasted hours.
On the waterfront in Kryrenia, a woman swathed in black was washing the steps outside a restaurant. He asked her if she could tell him where he’d find the harbour master’s office, and she straightened to an upright position on her knees, her black eyes taking in this short, stout foreigner in his crumpled suit before waving a wet hand towards the west side of the harbour.
He set off that way, walking, with the new sun already warm on his back. Feeling overdressed in a suit and hard-soled shoes, as well as unwashed, unshaven, tired and hungry. There was a jetty on that side of the basin; a small ship tied up there was either half loaded or half unloaded. Signs here and there of the day’s work starting: not with a rush, exactly, but there were some fishermen sorting nets, a boy loading lobster-pots into a bright blue rowing boat.
It was an attractive little port. He knew that in different circumstances he might have appreciated its charms more keenly.
He couldn’t find the harbour master’s office. There was a customs house but it was locked, apparently empty. That ship, with ropes from a crane dangling into an open hold, wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, and none of the yachts around the quay seemed big enough. Pleasure-boats, smart little toys, nothing that matched up to what he imagined would be the Swale party’s requirements.
Still snooping round for the harbour master, he noticed masts outside the harbour. They were motionless: a yacht presumably at anchor. Seeing some steps nearby, he climbed them to get a view over the top of the nearer clutter.
She was big, all right. You didn’t have to know anything about yachts to see there’d be plenty of room in that one. And she’d have a fair turn of speed, he guessed. Also — staring out at her, feeling his stubbled jaw and jowls — it intrigued him that she was alone out there, shunning the company of the lesser fry inside the harbour.
Shunning close inspection by sneaky coppers?
He started back down the steps. Maybe that lad with the blue boat would row him out.
9
The drab-patterned bulk of the Hercules was parked a few hundred metres — sprinting distance — from the transit block in which the SBS team were to be accommodated. The Hercules that had brought them out from Lyneham had landed about three-quarters of an hour ago, dropping thunderously into the glare of the rising sun, condensation showering the Marines’ heads — six men each side perched on their nylon seats, seatbelts clamped shut, the sleeping bags in which they’d spent the journey rolled and in the straps on their bergens. With steep changes in height in the C130s you always got the rain-showers, whether you were going up or coming down, condensation gathered on the ceiling and then ran off in streams. It was how the Crabs got their laughs, Geoff Hosegood had suggested. Ben Ockley had allowed himself a brief look at the base and its environs, standing to look out of one of the small ports in the fuselage in the minute or so before he’d had to sit down and fix his seatbelt. Nothing seemed to have changed much in the past four or five years: a few extra buildings here or there maybe, but the sight of it was so familiar it was almost a home-coming, the sovereign base sprawling among its low surrounding dunes and the long jut of land towards Cape Gata to the southeast. The land rose there, he remembered, ending in a cliff a couple of hundred feet high at the Cape itself, but the peninsula as a whole was low and flat, with a salt lake in its centre glittering now like a great tinted mirror in the day’s first light. The base area was billiard-table flat: an expanse of airfield and runways, brick barrack buildings and family quarters, workshops, hangars, stores, recreational amenities, sports grounds, the entire spread of it spiked and studded with masts and antennae of all kinds. The Hercules had banked then, giving him a slanting view of vividly blue sea curving up the peninsula’s east side: rocky coastline in the south, then shingle and black sand edging Akrotiri Bay all the way around the curve to Limassol where the tourists played. He’d turned, sliding down into his seat, clicking the belt shut and donning his green beret to keep his head dry.
It had looked more attractive from up there, he thought, than it did down here at ground level. Especially since the flight lieutenant who’d been assigned to the team as RAF liaison officer an who’d met them — together with an NCO from something called ‘Movements’ and a truck for the transfer of their gear from one aircraft to another — especially since this Flight Lieutenant Morgan had given a negative answer to the question Ben had asked as soon as his boots had hit the tarmac: had there been any news, sightings, reports from any of the Cyprus harbours.
‘Damn-all.’ A shake of the head. ‘Up to half an hour ago, nix.’
So much for the hopes of instant action, expectations of the target being identified at first light, pinpointed and held on a Nimrod’s Searchwater radar screen. He’d even worried about it, during the last hour or so of the incoming flight — whether he’d be justified in sacrificing half an hour to let the guys eat some breakfast, whether he’d be wrong to allow it or even crazier not to accept that small loss of time in order to get a meal into them before they dropped. Because they wouldn’t be taking much in the way of rations, only snacks to keep them going for a few hours on the water. He was still talking to this liaison character — tall, thin, face like a chicken’s — when they’d heard the mounting roar of an aircraft taking off, and then seen it as it lifted — from a distant part of the airfield, a Nimrod soaring gracefully into the bright dawn sky. The flight lieutenant had said with an air of satisfaction, ‘There — your surveillance operation under way. Not bad timing, eh?’
‘That’s the start of it?’
‘Well, yes…’
‘It’s light now. The surveillance was supposed to have been effective as from first light.’
In other words, that Nimrod should have been on station now, not just starting out… He made a quick calculation: distance from here to the patrol area between Cyprus and the coast of Syria maybe a hundred and twenty miles; and Nimrods flew — or could fly — at upward of five hundred m.p.h., maybe nearer six hundred. So all right, they hadn’t lost all that much time on the job. Maybe…
The Hercules, unfortunately, wouldn’t get there quite as fast. Not half as fast. All the more important, therefore, that there should be no time lost here on the ground. When the word came, he wanted to have his team airborne within minutes.
No reason they should not be. The C130’s engines were being kept warmed up, and the gear was all loaded now: boats rigged, the outboards’ gas-tanks full, drysuits unpacked and laid out ready for their owners to climb into them during the air transit.
*
Neither the boy with the boatload of lobster-pots nor the old sailor picking weed out of their nets had any interest in Hayward’s proposal
that they might ferry him out to reconnoitre the big yacht. In fact the way they stared at him gave him an impression that in their eyes he might have been suggesting something illegal or improper.
He’d given up on them, was heading eastward along the quay-side when a female voice called a question to him: ‘Why’d you want to visit those buggers anyway?’
Female Australian. She was in the stern end of a rather smart little yacht — yellow hull with a red stripe around it — on which there’d been no sign of life when he’d passed twenty minutes earlier. The girl was blonde, tall, tanned, and about the age of his own elder daughter. Bikini pants — white — were just visible under a man’s checked shirt hanging loose, unbuttoned.
Hayward crouched on the edge of the quay, held Swale’s portrait our towards her.
‘I’m looking for this fellow. If he’s here at all, he’ll be on some boat. My guess is it’d be a biggish one, so when I saw that thing outside there—’
‘Might he be a poof, by any chance?’
The question surprised him. He frowned. ‘Most unlikely. No, he can’t be.’
‘Doesn’t look it, I’ll say that.’ She shrugged. ‘Not that you can always tell, not straight off.’ She jerked a thumb seaward. ‘Reason I asked is that lot are as queer as you’d ever get. Owner’s a Frog — real old queen, plus what he calls his “crew”… Millionaire, I heard.’
Hayward withdrew the photograph. ‘You’ve saved me a trip.’
‘Might’ve had yourself a ball, eh?’
‘Well, thanks.’
‘That guy’s supposed to be here, but you’re not sure, and you don’t know him very well — right?’
‘Right. Anyway, I take it you haven’t seen him. If he’s here, he’d’ve got here yesterday.’
‘You a copper, then?’
‘I’d have to be, wouldn’t I.’
‘That or bloody Mafia.’ She smiled at him. ‘What’s he done?’
‘Nothing — yet. I’m here to — well, stop him doing it. He’s with a crowd he wouldn’t be with if he knew who they were.’
‘I hope you find him, then.’
He nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘You said he’d’ve got in yesterday, but I don’t recall anything come in, not yesterday.’ She waved an arm seaward: and she had no bra on, under that loose-hanging shirt. Becoming aware of the degree of self-exposure, she pulled the shirt together, secured one button… ‘I mean, wouldn’t pitch up here in a bloody dinghy, would he.’
‘He’d’ve come by air. The boat would’ve been here waiting for him. For him and these others.’
‘Oh. I get you…’ Thinking about this. she brightened. ‘So he’d’ve some from the airport by taxi, wouldn’t he. Maybe Ahmet brought him. Or he’d know who did. I mean, it’s not a big place, this… How did you get here?‘
‘Car. I drove up from Larnaca.’ He asked her. ‘This taxi—’
‘Hey!’ She’d spun round. staring seaward. You could see the yacht’s masts from here, over the top of the mole. Turning back, blowing her cheeks out… ‘I must be bloody stupid. There was another boat out there. Came — well, you could be right, at that, I didn’t see her come… Big sort of caique thing, know what I mean?’
‘No, but I’d like to.’
‘Yeah, she was on the anchorage last night, I’d swear to it. Could’ve moved about sundown, I suppose…’ Slapping her forehead: ‘Look, I’m sorry. I only just woke up, and last night we—’
‘A sort of what did you say it was?’
‘Caique. Only bigger, fifty feet or more… Look, hang on a mo’.’ She turned away, ducking to push her head and shoulders into the narrow cabin entrance. Hayward had a different view of her now… Warning himself that the fact there’d been some other ship here didn’t mean it had had Swale on it; in the last week there could have been fifty or a hundred boats in and out without Swale on any of them. He heard a male voice from inside, a low grumbling tone, and allowed himself to wonder what he’d have to grumble about. Then she was out again and the right way up, flushed under the dark tan and telling him, ‘She was there on the anchorage last night, he reckons. So she’s not gone long or far yet. For what good that does you.’
So Swale might have been here last night. Might have left eight or ten hours ago, or one hour ago. Might even have been hidden in the offshore mist when he’d been catching glimpses of seascape from the mountain road.
He asked her again, to get it right: ‘Caique?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. But you want to ask Ahmet about your bloke?’ She pointed. ‘Up there, and to your right off the quay, either first or second corner. Small caff place, he’d be having his brekker and you’d see his cab — Renault, shit-coloured thing — well, like two-tone. OK?’
‘Thanks!’
Running — for a hundred-to—one chance. But there’d be a consolation prize too: If he did not strike lucky, he’d have breakfast…
The Renault was there, unmistakable. And it was parked outside a café — which called itself a restaurant, according to the sign in English. Hayward pushed through the dangling bead curtain, the fly-restrainer. He was in a large, rather bare room in which there was only one other person, a small, dark, balding man hunched over Turkish-language newspaper and his breakfast. The aroma of strong coffee was so alluring that for a moment he almost forgot what he’d just come racing up the alley for. He also saw and smelt fresh bread, smelling so good that he knew it would be still warm from the oven. The cab-driver was loading a piece of it with clear honey, spooning it on directly from a glass bowl and then stuffing his face so that the stubbled cheeks bulged with it.
‘Ahmet? That your taxi out there?’
Staring: eyes wide, and incapable of speech, fortunately knowing this and not attempting it. The proprietor — could have been this one’s brother — appeared from the back, wiping his hands on a rag.
‘Have breakfast, you like?’
‘Please.’ He’d just about sunk to his knees and begged for it, if he’d had to. ‘Coffee, bread and honey, same as his.’
‘No problem!’
The other one swallowed, and croaked, ‘Taxi, you? Airport?’
‘No. Thanks, but…’ He pulled a chair back from another table, a few feet away, and sat down, took out Swale’s photograph. ‘I’m looking for this man. He’s British. A friend — I have an important message for him… Did you bring him here in your taxi — last night maybe?’
Ahmet had begun to push food into his mouth again, holding the print in the other hand. It would soon be sticky with honey, Hayward guessed. This ceased to bother him when he saw a slow nod beginning.
‘Airport — him in taxi, me. Sure…’
‘Last night? You brought him here?’
‘Night, sure.‘ Ahmet reached to show him the face of his watch, pointing at the figure twelve. ‘Taxi me here, this sir.’ He touched the portrait again. ‘Taxi airport for Girne. Kyrenia you saying.’
‘You drove him here from the airport at midnight. Did you bring him to a boat?’
‘Hah?’
He remembered the Aussie girl’s word for it. ‘Caique?’
‘Gulet.’
‘Sorry, chum, I don’t—’
‘Wait, you.’ Ahmet pushed his chair back and went to the doorway, looking back to gesture at Hayward to stay where he was. His breakfast happened to be arriving at the same time.
‘OK?’
‘Fantastic!’
The taxi door slammed, then Ahmet pushed in through the rattling beads. The proprietor was withdrawing, waving his hands in the air and muttering, ‘Fantastic, fantastic…’ Ahmet placed a brightly-coloured pamphlet in front of Hayward. It was an advertisement for some holiday outfit, Bluewater Cruises. On the front was a photograph of a timber-built craft, two-masted, rather old-fashioned looking with its high bowsprit. Ahmet’s forefinger jabbed at it. ‘Gulet. No caique, no. Gulet, him.’ He waved towards the quayside, then pointed at Swale’s portrait: ‘Come for gulet in taxi me. Understa
nd?’
*
Breakfast on board the Salome — fruit, bread, rolls, Turkish honey — had been cleared away, and Max was washing up. The gulet’s diesel was pushing her along at about seven knots.
‘You wanted to see this, Bob.’ Leila spread a chart in front of him. ‘We are here — steering this course — which will bring us here — Anamur Burnu. We anchor a few hours, and you can land if you want. Try out the boat? Tonight we go east along this coast — while you sleep, your last good night for sleeping — and maybe stop again a short time in this bay.’
Bob read out the place-name: ‘Ovacik.’ He pointed to the first anchorage, Anamur Burnu. ‘We’ll land this afternoon, anyway. Stretch our muscles. All right, Charlie?’
Tait grunted approval. Bob asked Leila, ‘Might get ashore tomorrow as well?’
‘I don’t think so. Depends on progress tonight, but we may not even stop.’
‘Straight to the target area?’
‘Not so straight. This way — as if we were going into the Gulf of Iskenderun. We’ve come from the west, we’re cruising around this coast — a Turkish gulet cruising in Turkish waters. Close inshore, most of the time.’ She pointed upward. ‘Up there a Turkish flag. We have Turk registration also, Marmaris is our home port.’
‘I thought Jaffa — or Tel Aviv—’
‘In Turk waters, we’re Turks, believe me… But you see, this leaves only a short passage before it’s dark tomorrow.’ She nodded at Charlie. ‘You’re wondering who would be looking for us. You’re right — nobody. I hope… But naturally there is surveillance of such a coast, by Syrians, maybe also from Cyprus by the—’ she’d checked herself — ‘by your people.’ She asked Bob, ‘Officially, your people wouldn’t know of your coming, would they?’
Special Deception Page 18
