Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1

by Ian St. James

  But Twomey surprised him. "We've found the link," he said softly. "Or, to be more precise, we've found a link."

  Ross managed to stop his relief from showing and said nothing.

  "Starts with this fellow Hayes." Twomey puffed on his pipe. "Tubby Hayes to your guest at the Health Farm. Hayes and a fool of a parliamentary secretary, who'd better remain nameless - though God knows for how long - be the very devil to hush this up. Hayes has been big in electronics for years, not just domestic stuff, but things for the military too - security devices mainly. Started making sneakies for the French years ago - showed his stuff to our people, but there was nothing new to it and we had our own sources - so we told him nothing doing. But Hayes was persistent, made a few friends, did some favours - catered to all tastes, if you know what I mean." He leered at Ross to make sure. "Anyway, he picked up a few contacts - not difficult when you're throwing cash and crumpet around - and amongst them was this parliamentary secretary whom he set out to impress. Stressed how much business he was doing with the Frogs - how much they trusted him - even mentioned the Marisa shipments, dates, consignments, the whole damn shooting match - all classified. Then he asked for a list of our agencies - not for the first time you understand - but this time he more than just asked, follow? Went on about past indiscretions, the rising cost of London tarts - enough to push the point home before coming right out with it - bold as brass - film of some damn debauchery in exchange for active help in securing contracts."

  Ross wondered which French agency had leaked information to Hayes and felt glad not to be running it. Someone's head would roll - if it hadn't already.

  "Thank God this bloody fool secretary panicked," Twomey said. "Made a clean breast of the whole thing to his Minister the next morning. I got called in and decided to give Hayes enough rope to hang himself." Twomey bobbed with a small nod of self-approval. "Gave him an inquiry big enough to get this damn fool's film - and then passed your name and Spitari's address down the line."

  "You blew us?" Astonishment gave way to anger as Ross realised the implications.

  Twomey shrugged. "You only had another few months there anyway. We all know that, don't we? And I had to see what would happen. Couldn't give him anyone else - nothing personal - you do see that, don't you?"

  Ross burned. Six months earlier a German newspaper had published a certain address in Milan and twenty-four hours later the house had been bombed and two operatives killed. Even now the sole survivor was fighting for his sight and learning to live with a face that would be forever disfigured. No, Twomey, nothing personal'— not with your own daughter there. That proves it, doesn't it? Like hell it does. Red-faced with temper he asked, "What happened then?"

  "We switched the Marisa consignment and put Hayes under surveillance," Twomey hesitated. "The Marisa end went all right - more or less - but Hayes must have got wind of us - because he skipped two days ago."

  Ross bit his tongue. Brilliant, he thought - Hayes slips out from under and the Marisa gets hit. Absolutely brilliant!

  Twomey read his mind. "Hayes getting away was a bad show, but the Marisa thing was something else. Half Lowestoft was wired up when that container went on board—"

  "But not the high seas!" Ross erupted, tormented by the thought of Spitari's being blown sky high at any moment.

  "They stole some sand!" Twomey snapped back, "Not plutonium."

  That seemed so unimportant to Ross right then that it took him a minute to get his temper under control. When he calmed down he asked, "So Hayes is the link with Katoul?"

  "We think so. We raided his businesses last night. LeClerc is being briefed about the Paris factory now - I think he ought to get over there to handle it."

  Ross was about to comment on that when a knock at the door revealed the marine sergeant. "I'm sorry to interrupt, sir," he said to Twomey. "But I thought you'd want to see this straightaway."

  Twomey read the telex placed in front of him and swore violently. Then he read it again carefully and signed one corner as proof of having seen it. He let the door close on the departing marine before confiding in Ross. "Report from the Berkshire Constabulary. Hayes has been found - dead - picked out of the Thames at Maidenhead."

  Ross groaned. Another door closed - another lead snuffed out before they even got to it. Thought of Hayes prompted a memory, it was vague at first but when it crystallised in his mind he said, "According to Brand, Hayes and Katoul were strangers to each other."

  "According to Brand," Twomey said drily.

  "You think he's lying?"

  "Someone is. Brand's a man of some reputation, but he's not renowned for his sympathy toward the establishment'. If this story ever leaks out I'm damn sure whose side Brand will be on."

  "So squeeze him harder?"

  "I've sent the film and a few other bits and pieces on Hayes to the Health Farm already." Twomey began to scrape his pipe into the ashtray for the second time that morning. "So I don't doubt the process has already started."

  0800 Saturday

  Elizabeth's eyes were growing. They were green lakes, shimmering emerald flecked with gold in fields of snow. White snow - smooth cold snow surrounding cool green water water so still that ice frosted the surface like glass. Yet sweat poured down my face, soaked my shirt and trickled into the waistband of my trousers. Someone was hurting my arm. It ached, throbbed, trembled with pain. Then the golden brown voice told me to relax and I forgot about it. All pain fell away. I was floating - relaxed and floating - looking down on my body strapped to the chair, watching the ebony that was Max and the grey that was the doctor and the beauty that was Elizabeth. But the lakes had gone and the curious cat-like eyes watched me without blinking, while all the time the golden brown voice coaxed and soothed and pleaded.

  Then the grey voice said, "Block the vein again. And have the megimide ready."

  "It's ready," Max said. He sounded a long way away. Perhaps he was in the other room or out in the courtyard. Or even back in the steam room. Good old Max. Atta boy Max - don't you have anything to do with it.

  "For God's sake," said the golden brown voice angrily. "Can he stand that much? He's not a bull like Max—"

  "Time," said the grey voice. "We're running short of time. I want him responding for at least half an hour."

  But she still scolded. She held me in her arms, wiping the sweat from my face. Oh Elizabeth, I can smell your skin, feel the plump curve of your breast, enjoy your body under my hands.

  "Negib Katoul," the golden brown voice whispered in my ear. "Changed his name, didn't he Harry?"

  "Yes."

  "What was his new name?"

  "Khouli-Yassif Khouli."

  "And they changed his face too - didn't they?"

  "Yes. They changed him altogether - he was a different man."

  "Different? How afferent?"

  "Rich - assured - worldly. Yassif Khouli as opposed to Negib Katoul. He was an animal, Elizabeth - an animal. Negib should have died in the camps - perhaps he really died when he found Haleem with me - perhaps the boy I knew died then. Yassif Khouli was—"

  "The man in the pale grey suit, wasn't he? The man you glimpsed with Tubby Hayes on the river that day."

  I giggled. How silly to get it wrong. How stupid. Oh Elizabeth, how could you be so lovely and yet be so blind? Mind! You with your big green eyes which see nothing.

  "How did Negib become rich, Harry? Where did all the money come from?"

  I was laughing arid feeling randy at the same time. Oh Elizabeth, you're beautiful. How many men have told you that? My lush voluptuous Mata Hari.

  "Where did the money come from, Harry?"

  "Money? He was so rich. It was really so simple - so simple to become so incredibly rich. Opium from the Turkish poppy fields - smuggled through Lebanon into France - converted to heroin and exported to the States."

  "It was big business in the sixties, wasn't it?"

  "Big! Big, big, big!" I was laughing helplessly, clinging to her body, pulling her into
the chair with me, fondling her, kissing her. "It was big! It is big!" Her hand was in mine and I was pushing it under the sweat-soaked waistband of my trousers. "Elizabeth - you can feel how big, feel—"

  "Soon, Harry, soon," said the golden brown voice. "Later - in bed - not here—"

  "Why not? Here is where I want you. Here and now, my beautiful green-eyed goddess - my white-faced spook—"

  "Soon, Harry, I promise." Cool hands wiped my face and unbuttoned my soaking wet shirt, caressing hands which saved me from drowning in the sea of my own sweat. "When did you meet Negib again? Was it with Suzy?"

  "He was an animal I tell you. A dangerous animal. More dangerous than you - you're just a cat - a wonderful, purring cat - with the loveliest eyes in the world."

  "What made him an animal? Why Harry, tell me - please tell me."

  "An animal," I giggled and clung to the lush fullness of her body. "But I beat him in the end. He was bad for Suzy. Bad for my daughter. I had to do something." The golden body twisted in my arms and the golden voice kept saying soon. But soon wasn't enough. "Now, Elizabeth, now!"

  "Will you tell me in bed? Will you? Harry, darling, tell me everything?"

  "Everything, I promise. Come on, I'll carry you. Look, I'm so strong, so very strong." Then I was falling and hands were holding me upright, hands which slipped and skidded over my wet body - until we were in her room - beneath the fan - in the huge, soft bed with her golden brown body.

  I never visited Suzy unexpectedly. Except that once. It was last year and about eight months after I had seen her with Tubby Hayes. I was in Paris and the chap from L'Express who was supposed to have dinner with me couldn't make it. He was stuck out at Lyons or somewhere, covering a story which had dragged out for an extra day so, unexpectedly, I had time on my hands. I phoned Suzy from the hotel and when her number was engaged I thought what the hell - her place was only a few minutes' walk away, why not go round to see her?

  It took her a long time to answer the door. So long in fact that had it not been for the engaged telephone only five minutes earlier I would have given up and tried again in the morning. Even the boy from the Surete was missing from the parked cars opposite. But just as I was writing a note to stick through the letterbox, the door opened.

  She was surprised. I remembered the look on her face at Henley that time, and it was the same expression, surprise, tinged with apprehension and mingled with fear. She said my name in a very loud voice and seemed unsure about inviting me in, so that we stood awkwardly on the threshold for at least a couple of minutes. Then she stepped aside and waved me across the entrance lobby.

  I smoke too many cigarettes to have a good sense of smell, but some scents register instantly. And by then I had visited too many American camps in Vietnam to be mistaken about that smell. The thought of her being into the habit had never occurred to me, but it hit me then like a sledgehammer, and I was about to say something about it as we entered the drawing room.

  A man sat on the sofa. He was in his forties, I guessed, well-dressed, smooth black hair, prosperous looking - looked like the son of an Italian industrialist if you know the type. He seemed startled to see me, but I put that down to the unexpectedness of my visit. Until he spoke.

  "Hello Harry, it's been a long time again, hasn't it?"

  It was Negib. His nose had been shortened and the angle of his ears to his head altered somehow. His hair was smooth and uncrinkled and even his teeth were different - but it was Negib all right. He and Suzy were amused by my astonishment and giggled about it for minutes afterwards, the smug "aren't we clever" type of giggle that got on my nerves eventually.

  "Meet my business partner," Suzy waved a hand at Negib. "Yassif Khouli."

  "Khouli?" The name struck a chord immediately and suddenly all of my doubts crystallised. For months I had pondered on her affluence, telling myself that she was involved in legitimate business, and comparing her with others I knew who were making fortunes from the newly-rich in the Middle East. But her involvement with Negib - Yassif Khouli - changed all that.

  "Everything you see," Suzy indicated the apartment. "Negib made possible."

  Negib sensed my concern. "I'm sure Harry doesn't want to hear—"

  "Oh, but I do," I insisted, staring at him. Trying to match that face to the voice was like watching a badly dubbed film. "I'm very interested, Negib. What business are you involved in these days?"

  He tried to dismiss it. "Oh you know, Harry, this and that."

  "This and that must be pretty dangerous - for you to alter your appearance and change your name."

  His false teeth showed in a false smile. "When I left the PLO I just wanted to make a new start, that's all. Politics is a dangerous game. Mossad had a hit team looking for me, and I'd grown tired of Arafat's tantrums. And Habbash is no better - wasting time bombing London supermarkets when he should be cultivating allies strong enough to stand up to the Jews."

  "And that's what you're doing - making friends and influencing people? Funny, but I never pegged you for a Dale Carnegie type."

  "A political movement needs funds, Harry, and it's not compulsory for its leaders to starve in a garret."

  I waved Suzy's glance to the paintings on the wall. "And how you came by all of this doesn't worry you?"

  She must have detected a note of censure, because she answered coldly: "Our business interests subsidise our political activities."

  There was still a chance I thought - still a chance that she didn't know - a chance that Negib was using her and had never told her what his business interests were. But I had to find out.

  "So you're in business with him," I began, but she put a hand to her temple as if nursing a headache. "Harry, I've had a rotten day and I can do without any sermonising from you."

  She did know. Sick with anger I looked back at Negib. Negib who brought nothing but trouble whenever he turned up. He sat with a sneer on his face, watching my humiliation and enjoying it.

  "I was in the Normandy in Beirut the other day," I said as steadily as possible. "Someone was telling me all about Yassif Khouli and his business interests."

  He shrugged. "People get envious—"

  "Or revolted!"

  Suzy sprang to his defence. "All right, Harry, so now you know where the money comes from. I've told you before - it's none of your damn business."

  "But Suzy, you'll destroy yourself. Don't you see that? It's a vicious racket—"

  "It's America's biggest consumer import," Negib laughed. "Worth four billion dollars a year."

  "Don't come the business analyst with me, Negib. It won't work."

  "Oh, but it does," he contradicted. "It works very well. Buy a kilo of raw opium for thirty-five dollars, convert it to heroin and sell it for two thousand."

  "Ruining thousands of lives in the process!"

  Suzy went white with temper. "And saving thousands of others. Palestinian lives!"

  "Yeah? How? How many Palestinians have you helped? I don't see any signs—"

  "You will," she blazed. "Alliances are being formed now—"

  "What bloody alliances? Alliances with half a million addicts in New York."

  "That's their business! The legacy from Vietnam." Her laugh was a sneering bitter sound in the elegance of that room. "Oh, the States might leave Nam but the Vietnam war will never leave the States."

  "Damn right it won't! So long as people like you feed the habit."

  "Oh, will you shut up!" she screamed, ugly with temper. "You're no better than a filthy voyeur anyway, rushing from place to place watching the world squirm in its misery. What do you ever do about it? Write about it, turn it into some grisly fairy story, then run away from it. And all the time you're putting money in the bank and living in the best hotels. That's how concerned you are about the misery in the world."

  "I don't contribute to it."

  "That's right, Harry, you don't. You don't do anything! Just write your pious bullshit about the state of the world. Did you ever try to change it?
Did you? Did you ever say this is a monstrous injustice and I'll fight and fight until it's put right? Did you hell! Well, that's what we're doing and if life becomes hell on earth for a few American pigs in the process that's a bonus not a drawback."

  "The ends justify the means?"

  "Of course they do! They always have, but your kind never admit it."

  "You're wrong Suzy. Nothing worthwhile was ever built—"

  She spat with temper. "Will you stop being so bloody sanctimonious! Do you think I even want to listen? Isn't it enough that I put up with your bloody claptrap whenever we meet—"

  "I never realised it was such a hardship."

  "You never realised anything," she shouted furiously.

  "You never even realised that we didn't meet again by accident. You never realised we planned it, did you?"

  The silence which followed deafened me. My ears buzzed in a noiseless vacuum, broken finally by my shocked voice saying, "Planned? I don't understand. It was—"

  "You're a contact, Harry," Negib interrupted smoothly. "That's all, a contact. You're less committed than some - you don't take Israel's side on every issue. Sometimes we can feed you an angle for your column - that's all."

  I was still looking at Suzy. "And that's all I am?"

  "What the hell d'you want to be?" she sneered. "My sugar daddy?" She giggled hysterically. "My sugar god daddy? Come off it, I've seen the looks you give me, the way you take my elbow—"

  "That's ridiculous."

  "Is it? Well, if you don't want that what the hell do you want? To claim me as your daughter? Is that it? Don't look so bloody shocked. Did you think I didn't know? Never knew you took a little Arab whore in her own bed—"

  "Shut up! Don't call her—"

  "She went with you, didn't she? What kind of Arab—"

  "I said shut up! I don't know what Negib's been telling you, but—"

  "Enough to give me a gutful of you," she screamed. I took a step toward her, but she backed away. "Get away from me will you - I never want to see you again - understand! Never! Never, never, never!" For an instant she stood there, white-faced and trembling like a leaf, then she put her hands to her face and ran from the room.